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Table 1-40 Redux

By | | Transportation
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Last July 14, I devoted an entire Antiplanner policy brief to a review of a single table in the Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ publication, National Transportation Statistics, table 1-40, passenger-miles by mode. My main concerns were that the table overestimated bus miles and failed to include walking and cycling miles.

Just four weeks later, on August 11, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics issued an update to table 1-40. The update reduces the number of bus passenger-miles (though not by as much as I estimated) and added walking and cycling miles.

Walking and cycling numbers are based on the National Household Travel Survey, which is repeated every five to eight years. As a result, table 1-40 only includes numbers for the years of that survey. Fortunately, the most recent survey was in 2017, so the numbers should be pretty comparable with the latest numbers for other modes, which are for 2018. Continue reading →

The Streetcar Intelligence Test

By | | Policy brief
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The first electric streetcars and the first internal-combustion engine automobiles were first developed just over 130 years ago. Initially, each went about 8 to 10 miles per hour. Today, people routinely drive automobiles at 70 to 80 miles per hour, and some supercars can go well over 200 miles per hour. Meanwhile, according to the American Public Transportation Association, the average speed of streetcars is a whopping 6.9 miles per hour.

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

Streetcars were rendered obsolete in 1927 with the introduction of the Twin Coach bus, the first bus that was both cheaper to buy and cheaper to operate than streetcars. Within a decade, half of America’s streetcar systems had converted to buses. The infamous General Motors streetcar conspiracy, which began in 1937, was actually a conspiracy to take business away from Twin Coach buses, not to destroy streetcars which were already rapidly disappearing. By 1974, only six cities still had streetcars, usually because they went through tunnels or used a dedicated right of way not open to buses. Continue reading →

Post-Pandemic Propaganda for Rail Transit

By | | Transportation
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Writing in the September Trains magazine, which isn’t available on line, transit advocate Malcolm Kenton argues that rail transit agencies can thrive in a pandemic and post-pandemic world by shifting strategies. But he doesn’t mean shifting business strategies to attract more riders; he means shifting propaganda strategies to attract more tax dollars.

“Transit advocates will need to tell a different story that de-emphasizes ridership as the key measure of success and focuses less on attracting higher-income riders,” he says. “Instead, the pandemic reveals how dependent we all are on effective transit even if we never set foot on a train or bus, and even if trains or buses carry much less than their capacities.” Continue reading →

Highway Subsidies in 2018

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Highway subsidies in 2018 totaled to $47.1 billion, substantially less than the $54.3 billion in subsidies received by transit agencies. Considering that highways move about 100 times as many passenger miles (and infinitely more freight) than transit, this is a serious disparity.

Click image to download the table in Excel format.

I base the $47.1 billion on the latest issue of Highway Statistics, table HF-10, which was recently posted by the Federal Highway Administration. Although this table is dated April, 2020, it wasn’t available in June when I most recently calculated transportation subsidies. Continue reading →

A Project That’s No Longer Needed

By | | Transportation
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A proposed new 2-mile transit line connecting LaGuardia Airport with the New York subway system will cost $2 billion, make traffic congestion worse, dump 87,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and probably isn’t necessary due to the pandemic. The first three conclusions come from a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) released last week by the Federal Aviation Administration, while the fourth is based on the huge changes in transportation habits that have already taken place as a result of the pandemic.

LaGuardia, the New York area’s smallest commercial airport. Photo by Patrick Handrigan.

According to the environmental impact statement, the new transit line, which would be an automated people mover, is needed primarily because of “increasing and unreliable travel times” to the airport as a result of traffic congestion. A survey of air travelers conducted by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (which runs the airport) found that slightly more than half of air travelers took taxis or ride-hailing services to the airport, another 36 percent took a car, and close to 6 percent took courtesy shuttles. Only 6.2 percent took mass transit. Continue reading →

Transit “Is Riddled with Inequities”

By | | Transportation
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The transit industry has developed two systems: one for “choice” riders and one for “dependent” riders, “that is to say white and Black,” says urban planner Christof Spieler. A former member of the Harris County (Houston) Metro board of directors, Spieler points out one place where Metro offers riders a choice between bus-rapid transit and a local bus. The BRT is three times faster than the local bus, has plusher seats, and costs $3.25 a ride compared with $1.25 for the local bus.

Spieler makes many good points and I am glad that an urban planner is finally taking this issue seriously. Unfortunately, his inevitable solution — that we should spend more money on transit — is wrong.

Spieler never mentions the Los Angeles Bus Riders’ Union case, in which the NAACP represented minorities whose bus service had declined so that Los Angeles Metro could pay for new rail transit lines to middle-class neighborhoods, but maybe he was unfamiliar with that case. As documented here, LA Metro was ordered by the court to restore bus service for ten years, which it did. Bus ridership recovered, but as soon as the ten years was up, it cut bus service and went back to building rail transit. Continue reading →

Should We Replace Rapid Transit with Buses?

By | | Policy brief
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Metro. Rapid transit. Subway. Elevated. Underground. U-bahn. All of these types of transit are included in what the Federal Transit Administration calls heavy rail. Unfortunately, none of these terms are very accurate.

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

Heavy-rail train cars weigh less than light-rail cars. Even the best metros can’t get you everywhere in a metropolitan area. Rapid transit isn’t very rapid, averaging around 20 miles per hour not counting the time it takes to get to or from a station or to wait for trains. Subways aren’t always under the ground and elevateds aren’t always above the ground. Continue reading →

Is Aerial Firefighting Cost-Effective?

By | | Wildfire
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Last Wednesday afternoon, I watched four large airtankers drop tens of thousands of gallons of fire retardant on the Green Ridge Fire, which is burning within sight of my backyard. The airtankers included two twin-jet MD-87s, a DC-7, and a CV-580.

A DC-7 dumps 3,000 gallons of retardant on an area already painted red with the stuff to try to keep the fire on the left from to the right (south) overnight. Click image for a larger view.

Between them, the four planes were capable of dumping more than 11,000 gallons of retardant, and they each made several passes at the fire. A west wind was pushing most of the fire to the east, but there was also some push to the south. The tankers were painting a wide swath of forest red south of the burning area to try to slow or halt the southerly expansion of the fire. Continue reading →

June Driving Down 13 Percent

By | | Transportation
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Americans drove 13 percent less in June 2020 than they did in the same month of 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. This is an improvement from May, which was 25 percent less than in 2019, and April, which was 40 percent less.

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Will the Cities Come Back?

By | | Housing, News commentary
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“The Twilight of Great American Cities Is Here,” screams the headline of an article by my friend, Joel Kotkin. He argues that, between the pandemic and the riots following the George Floyd death, people are not going to return to the cities.

Certainly, rents are down and vacancy rates are up in New York City and San Francisco. But does that mean that the cities won’t bounce back after the pandemic is over?

A major pandemic does not “introduce something novel,” observes a historian named Stephen Davies. Instead, “it accelerates and magnifies trends and processes that were already under way.” It can also bring “a final stop to processes that were already exhausted.” Continue reading →