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Kill-Switch Rule Under Consideration

By | | Transportation
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Section 24220 of the 2021 infrastructure law directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to require that automakers include a device in new cars that will passively detect whether the driver is drunk and keep them from operating the car. NHTSA has until November of this year to write the rule and then new cars made beginning two years after that must comply. The law specifically states that if NHTSA can’t find a device that will accomplish this, then it doesn’t have to require one.

U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Nathanael T. Miller.

This law has led to fears that the government will require automobiles to have “kill switches” that the government can remotely control, thus shutting down people’s freedom of mobility at any time. Defenders of the policy argue that these fears are overblown. Last month, NHTSA issued its advance notice of proposed rule making on the subject and it’s worth looking at it before comments are due next Tuesday, March 5. Continue reading →

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Transit’s Growth, Decline, and Pending Demise

By | | Transportation
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Who said the following? “The basic objective of our Nation’s transportation system must be to assure the availability of the fast, safe, and economical transportation services needed in a growing and changing economy. . . . This basic objective can and must be achieved primarily by continued reliance on unsubsidized privately owned facilities, operating under the incentives of private profit and the checks of competition to the maximum extent practicable. . . . This means . . . equality of opportunity for all forms of transportation and their users and undue preference to none. It means greater reliance on the forces of competition and less reliance on the restraints of regulation. And it means that, to the extent possible, the users of transportation services should bear the full costs of the services they use, whether those services are provided privately or publicly.”

Click image to go to Bookfinder.com to find the lowest current price for this book.

  1. Ronald Reagan;
  2. Milton Friedman;
  3. Ayn Rand; or
  4. The Antiplanner?

In fact, the answer is 5. John F. Kennedy. Or at least this statement was contained in Kennedy’s April 2, 1962 message to Congress on having an “efficient transportation system.” This means it was probably written by staffers in the Department of Commerce, as the Department of Transportation did not yet exist. Whoever wrote it was at least willing to talk the talk of free markets and fiscal conservatism. Continue reading →

FRA Dreams Up Amtrak Schemes

By | | Transportation
13 Comments

Ever been in Billings, Montana and wanted to go to El Paso? Or have you been in New York and wanted to spend 36 hours traveling to Dallas? How about going from Minneapolis to Denver via Pierre, South Dakota? Or Detroit to New Orleans? These are just some of the 15 new long-distance trains that the Federal Railroad Administration has tentatively proposed to add to Amtrak’s network.

Click image for a larger view. Click here to download the full draft proposal that was released last week.

Some of the proposals would restore Amtrak routes that have been discontinued, including trains from Salt Lake City to Seattle, Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, Chicago to Florida, and Chicago to Seattle on the former Northern Pacific route through southern Montana. Other proposals would restore trains that were discontinued even before Amtrak, such as New York to New Orleans via Chattanooga and Montgomery, which would be in addition to Amtrak’s current New York-New Orleans route via Charlotte and Birmingham. Continue reading →

New Panic Over Farmlands

By | | News commentary, Useful Data
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The Department of Agriculture’s latest Census of Agriculture has generated new fears about “disappearing farm lands.” The census found that the United States had 22 million (2.8 percent) fewer acres of farm lands in 2022 than in 2017 and 40 million (4.3 percent) fewer acres than in 2012. The census is conducted every five years in years ending in a 2 or a 7.

Oregon Public Broadcasting responded to the release by reporting that “Oregon continues to lose farmlands” which “raises red flags for some agricultural land conservation advocates.” However, a closer look at available data is needed before panicking. Continue reading →

December Driving 96.9% of 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
12 Comments

U.S. residents drove 96.88 percent as many miles in December of 2023 as in the same month in 2019, according to estimates released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. Though this is down from 104.3 percent in November, driving has been hovering around 100 percent of 2019 levels all year.

In fact, the estimates indicate, Americans drove 100.1 percent as many miles in 2023 as they did in 2019 and 102.0 percent as many miles in 2023 as in 2022. I would judge that driving has completely recovered from the pandemic and is now growing at pre-pandemic levels. Decreases in rush-hour driving due to remote work are made up for by increases in non-rush-hour driving by remote workers running errands, going out for coffee, or attending meetings as well as by people moving from urban to rural areas or from some states to others. Continue reading →

Transit Carried 73.7% in December

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
4 Comments

Transit carried 73.7 percent as many riders in December 2023 as the same month in 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration yesterday. As I predicted last month, this was a slight decline from the 74.9 percent reported for November because November had one more business day in 2023 than 2019 while December had one fewer.

Amtrak ridership, as a share of 2019 levels, declined from 103.1 percent in November to 93.6 percent in December according to Amtrak’s monthly performance report released last week. This may suggest that holiday travelers are still wary of taking trains. It also raises questions about why Amtrak numbers have been bouncing up and down so much over the past several months. Air travel has not been so bouncy: according to TSA passenger counts, air travel grew from 101.2 of 2019 levels in November to 103.1 percent in December. Continue reading →

Do More Subsidies Increase Efficiency?

By | | Transportation
10 Comments

Streetsblog posted an article yesterday that quotes and attempts to refute the Antiplanner by claiming that increasing subsidies to transit agencies actually makes them more efficient. The article, written by former Strong Towns staffer Kea Wilson, misinterprets both the Antiplanner’s quote and the meaning of efficiency.

Does reducing the share of transit costs that are covered by farebox revenues increase efficiency? Photo by AgentAkit.

Transit systems get more efficient when they are more heavily subsidized, Wilson asserts. How can this be true? Efficiency is economically defined as “when all goods and factors of production in an economy are distributed or allocated to their most valuable uses and waste is eliminated or minimized.” Before the pandemic, transit agencies were typically spending four times as much money moving someone a passenger-mile as automobiles. That sounds pretty inefficient to me and increasing subsidies even more is likely to be even more inefficient. Continue reading →

The Benefits of Congestion Relief

By | | Transportation
16 Comments

Data published by the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory a few months ago reveals some of the benefits of congestion relief that resulted from the COVID pandemic. I’ve used 2019 data in the past to show that residents of U.S. urban areas can reach far more jobs in a 20-minute auto drive than a 60-minute transit trip. The latest data for 2021 reveal that the number of jobs reachable by transit or bicycle was about 9 percent greater in 2021 than 2019, but the number reachable by a 20-minute auto drive was 66 percent greater.

On average, over 50 urban areas and for trips of 10 to 60 minutes, auto users were able to reach 48 percent more jobs in 2021 than in 2019. Solid lines show 2021 and dotted lines show 2019.

These numbers are the average of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas, but for some the increased access caused by less traffic was much greater. In a 20-minute auto drive, residents of Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and Washington could reach more than twice as many jobs in 2021 than in 2019. Of course, jobs are only one possible set of destinations that became more accessible; other social and economic opportunities also became equally more accessible. Continue reading →

What’s Happening in Oregon and Vermont?

By | | Follow up
15 Comments

A few weeks ago, I noted that there appeared to be correlation between government efforts to get more people into multifamily housing and low fertility rates. The correlation is not perfect — I estimated about 0.4 — because there are a lot of factors that affect fertility rates, but it appears strong enough that, if the goal is to have a healthy demographic structure, then single-family housing should be preferred.

Click image for a larger view. Source: BirthGauge.

Unfortunately, the census data I had available didn’t allow me to make a standard calculation of birth rates, so I used a substitute. Now, a group called BirthGauge has published the above map showing birth rates calculated the standard way. It does show that birth rates are lowest in the Pacific Coast and north Atlantic Coast states that have done the most to restrict new single-family housing in favor of multifamily. Continue reading →

Elites Want to Ban Gasoline Cars, Gas Stoves

By | | News commentary
9 Comments

Urban elites are far more likely than other Americans to oppose gasoline powered cars, SUVs of all types, and gas stoves, according to a survey released last week by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The survey defined “elites” as people who have post-graduate degrees, live in households that earn more than $150,000 a year, and live in zip codes with densities of more than 10,000 people per square mile, which is about four times the average urban density in the U.S.

The cities of Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco all average more than 10,000 people per square mile. Photo by Mai-Linh Doan.

Conducted by Scott Rasmussen, the survey found that 72 percent of these elites (and 81 percent of Ivy League elites) favored banning gasoline-powered cars, compared with 24 percent of Americans as a whole. Further, 58 percent of elites favored banning SUVs compared with 16 percent of Americans and 66 percent of Ivy League elites, while 69 percent of elites (and 80 percent of Ivy League elites) favored banning gas stoves compared with 25 percent of all Americans. Continue reading →