Maximize transit, minimize traffic

The Oregonian ^ | 05/06/03 | editorial

[jagrmeister]

You are forgiven for your lack of humor and intellect.

[Risa]

>>NONE of these systems run unsubsidized by the taxpayers, and the rates of subsidization are nothing short of ridiculous. When the taxpayers have to fork over $15 per passenger mile, it becomes relatively obvious that we can save money by sending them in chauffeured limos, or by simply buying them new Cadillacs.<<

Taxpayers subsidize the costs associated with car travel, too, such as roads and highways. And in my experience, building more roads and highways relieves the problem for a short time, only.
regards,
risa

[Risa]

>>It's hilarious how all these public transportation advocates ride their care everywhere and assume everyone else will suffer public trans.<<

Well, long ago, the automobile advocates ensured the destruction of the right-of-way for rail and other forms of public transportation to enrich themselves. And no one ever mentions how heavily we subsidize the necessities for travel by automobile.

What would you suggest we do to relieve the traffic congestion, which many people also consider a form of 'suffering'?

regards,
ris

[dalereed]

As far as i'm concerned they should eliminate all forms of public transportation!

Don't tax me to move someone else form point A to point B.

I don't know of any transit system that starts where a person is and goes to where they want to go and never at the time they need to go.

The last time I was on a public transportation system, other than an airliner, was in 1945 when I got my bicycle! The bicycle went into the trash in 1952 when I got my 129mph in the quarter 40 Ford!

[WOSG]

"Maximize boondoggles, minimize transportation."

Good comment!

Light rail is bad economics. These systems cost a lot of money indeed, and have the worst capability profile of any system - get the low volume of buses witht he high fixed costs of trains - what a boneheaded idea ... look at this article re: Denver:

http://i2i.org/Publications/IP/Transportation/isrtdone.htm

See Figure 9.

"The need for new criteria is illustrated by the experience of the last 15 years. During the 1980s and 1990s, nine U.S. cities have constructed light rail systems. Don H. Pickerell, USDOT National Transportation Systems Center Economist, said in a 1990 study that actual LRT ridership averages 66% to 85% lower than initial forecasts, and actual capital costs average 13% to 50% higher than original estimates. Thus, average cost per rider is 5.4 times greater than originally projected. RTD's projections merit intense scrutiny to ensure that they are accurate and to ensure that Denver does not repeat the experience of these other nine cities. "

[WOSG]

passengers pay 35% of the operating costs on a national average."

You realize that is a pathetic number. It should be 100%. For highways, it is: Gas taxes fund highways construction and people pay for their own private vehicles, so the whole system is funded by the users.

YOu cant say that about these light rail boondoggles.

See figure 10. The average is under 30% ...

http://i2i.org/Publications/IP/Transportation/isrtdone.htm




And the LRT advocates miss the point about congestion and why it will NEVER clear up, unless you out and out build more highways: Once the congestion level falls to make driving better than riding people will go back to cars.
The 15mph LRT average is not compelling. fixed rail would be far more effective, but is simply not useful in low-to-medium density cities - this leaves mass transit fans bereft of a scheme. so they push the worst-of-all-worlds light-rail system . a mistake, THOSE CITIES SHOULD SIMPLY BUILD HIGHWAYS and use carpooling lanes for congestion reduction.

[supercat]

THOSE CITIES SHOULD SIMPLY BUILD HIGHWAYS and use carpooling lanes for congestion reduction.

As congestion worsens, people will move closer to where they work. As conjestion lessens, people move further from where they work. Trying to overcome these tendencies is futile.

[discostu]

9.7 billion trips divided by 288 million people means 33.6 trips per person. That doesn't even make one trip per person per week. And we're supposed to pay how much for this crap?

[discostu]

You don't have to go tit-for-tat on his stats, just divide them by the appropriate population numbers. It's easy to get big sounding numbers in large metro areas, but when you actually start checking for the percentage of the population they're talking about it's usually a pitance. They refuse to grock one simple thing: Americans don't like public transportation. It's slow, it doesn't give door-to-door coverage, it's impossible to run errands on your way home from work, and while you're waiting for your connection your outside in the weather which sucks 4 months of the year pretty much everywhere in the country (different 4 months depending on where you are). We like our cars and everything they represent. I'm not against any of these systems per se, but I sure hell won't use them and any numbers check shows most Americans aren't and won't use them. If people were actually going to use them they should be built, but since they're not the money and space should be used on something they will, or better yet not even taken from the people in the first place.

[foreverfree]

bump

[jagrmeister]

>automobile advocates ensured the destruction of the right-of-way for rail and other forms of public transportation to enrich themselves

How exactly?

>And no one ever mentions how heavily we subsidize the necessities for travel by automobile.

The issue isn't which corporations benefit. That's a conspiracy-based liberal mindset. I could care less which companies benefit. I care about cost-efficient means of transportation. Public transportation is a pipe dream which has consistently proven impractical and costly. People often assume that public trans success in Europe is exportable to the US. Often it is not, except in our largest cities, since the population density is much less in most of the US when compared to Europe.

[weegee]

I picked up a "progressive" freebee monthly (with the innocuous title "Houston Intown" but elesewhere a reader will learn that it is the sister publication of the Upper Kirby Progressive").

The lefties living in the plush areas "near" downtown oppose north side highway expansion (totally out of their districts and of no bother to them) because they don't want to see the people who live in outlying areas (and who are taxed as citizens of Houston) enjoying a quick ride into town for work commutes (or even to come into town for entertainments).

The biggest laugh comes when one realized that some of these plush neighborhoods are actually in other cities (West University, Bellaire) yet their citizens work in Houston.

Don't count on leftist snobs to be honest in their push for rail (no rail lines have been proposed for their neighborhoods either).

You are right about the price per rider (we've seen the same thing with bus lines here and are just now getting back into rail).

Subsidized housing is the same way. Homes could have been bought for cheaper than these systems cost to operate. Consider to the trillions of dollars spent on the "war on poverty". Can we end that war yet? The libs keep talking about wanting an "exit strategy" for the war on terror (how do we know when it's over, how much will it cost, etc.) and I've heard the same about the war on drugs ("we should end it..."). When will the war on poverty end?

[Risa]

>>That's a conspiracy-based liberal mindset<<

Haha! I suspect, if you review some business history, you will find it a well-known, well-documented historical fact that the automobile giants did this.

>>I could care less which companies benefit<<

You raised the issue of parties publishing misinformation to their benefit, not I.

>Public transportation is a pipe dream which has consistently proven impractical and costly<<

Not true in Portland, Maine. Amtrack has had overwhelming success with it's recently (2 years ago) opened rail-service to points in southern Maine and to Boston. People readily choose the rail over the tiresome thruway traffic jams, and are eager for the rail service to expand north of Portland. In the past, the thruway was expanded to relieve traffic jams, but the result was even more traffic, and more congestion. Besides, no one wants the entire state to be consumed by pavement for the almighty automobile.

risa

[Risa]

>>The APTA is an advocacy group and it's statistics need to be viewed from that viewpoint<<

oops. I read your post again, and I see that your statement says nothing about benefit to anyone. I apologize to you for not carefully reading words, and then stating you said something you didn't.

regards,
risa

[discostu]

Actually that's pretty well proven, Ford et al spent a lot of money lobbying to have the trolley systems removed from all over the country. It was pretty freaking brutal. IMHO they were right, trolleys are ugly, in the way, the tracks are obnoxious, and the cable system to make them run is even uglier. They also pressed hard to keep cities from adopting subway systems. They saw public transportation as the enemy of privately owned cars and knew where the butter was (the exception being busses because GM was making good money on them).

I still think public transportation would have seriously shrunk and not been significantly more popular than it is now, but the record is there. The car companies put a lot of time money and political clout into killing local rail in as many forms as possible.

[Publius]

Gas taxes fund highways construction and people pay for their own private vehicles, so the whole system is funded by the users.

Absolutely, totally wrong. Highways are heavily subsidized, and unfortunately most of those subsidies are invisible, thus making it difficult for people to understand that they're getting a free ride at the expense of taxpayers. The best way to understand highway funding is to think of three concentric circles.

Concentric Circle #1: Fuel Taxes

Thanks to the efforts of the Better Roads Movement in the post-World War I period, many states have constitutional amendments that restrict the use of fuel tax money for highways only. Those who managed to escape this effort of the highway lobby ended up with similar statutory restrictions on fuel tax use. It would be wonderful if the contents of Concentric Circle #1 could pay the total cost of highway construction and maintenance, but it can’t. More money is needed.

Concentric Circle #2: Other Transportation Taxes

Many states have motor vehicle excise taxes, a sort of property tax on cars. There are state licensing fees for cars and tonnage fees for trucks. There are taxes and fees galore in different states, and while some of them can be spent on rail, transit, environmental abatement and port facilities, the lion’s share goes to highways. It would be wonderful if the contents of Concentric Circles #1 and #2 could pay the total cost of highway construction and maintenance, but they can’t. Still more money is needed.

Concentric Circle #3: The General Fund

We all know about the federal income tax. Most states have a broad-based tax such as a sales tax or income tax. This money can be used for anything, but in every state the legislature appropriates some money for highway construction and maintenance out of the general fund. Here transportation needs compete with education, welfare and a whole lot of other state needs, so the battles can be savage.

When you average a lot of numbers you can lose sight of each number’s individual uniqueness. So when I say that an average of 30% of highway funding comes from state and federal general funds, that covers a multitude of higher and lower numbers. But it’s a fact. The contents of this circle are a subsidy, pure and simple. This subsidy permits you to drive on the public highways and not pay what a cost accountant would deem “your fair share”.

If you truly want highways to be funded from the contents of Concentric Circles #1 and #2 -- i.e. by user fees and subsidy-free -- you’ll have to raise the combined federal and state fuel taxes to at least $2 per gallon to pay for it. This will effectively destroy the trucking industry and force shippers to move goods by rail. It will also take the ability to own and operate a car out of the hands of millions of Americans, who will actually be forced to rub shoulders with their neighbors on buses and trains.

But it gets even worse: Transportation taxes will never go down. Why? Every time you build a new highway or increase capacity on an old one, you increase the maintenance base of your system. That means the cost of maintaining your highway system will always increase. And that means your transportation tax burden will always increase. You’re on a treadmill to penury unless you find a way to step off. There are two ways: triage and privatization.

Triage

Have you ever seen a state remove the number from a highway and turn it over to a county or municipality? It does happen on occasion. Some state highway departments have the authority to give and take highways at will (Maryland). In other states the legislature makes the call, either consulting with the highway department (Washington) or dictating to it (New Jersey). But this merely shifts the burden elsewhere. Most states have formulae for handing out the contents of Concentric Circles #1 and #2 to counties and municipalities. But these monies get mixed with property tax revenue and other county and city taxes to maintain non-state highways. Somebody’s taxes will still go up.

Another method of triage is to tear out a highway. This has only been done in two places that I know of. In Portland, Oregon, a short freeway link was demolished to make way for an urban park along the Willamette River. In San Francisco a freeway was demolished because it was both an eyesore and was badly damaged in the 1989 earthquake. I don’t see roads being torn out on a massive scale in my lifetime.

Old Privatization Paradigm: The “Closed” Financial System

The Pennsylvania Turnpike was built in the Thirties on the model of the German autobahns. It had no speed limit and bypassed the major cities. After World War II, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois linked up to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and spent a decade building a toll limited access highway to permit people to go from New York to Chicago at high speed without encountering a traffic light. People gladly paid for the privilege.

To avoid complaints that people were paying twice -- once at the toll booth and again at the gas pump -- the highways were built on a “closed” financial system. The toll highway authority was authorized by the state legislature to issue revenue bonds based on future revenues to be generated by tolls and by leases from gas stations and restaurants at the service plazas. No tax money was used. (A member of the authority that owns the Atlantic City Expressway toll road once commented to me, “Owning and operating a toll road is like having a license to print money.”)

Some of these toll authorities were authorized to exist in perpetuity, and others were to be reviewed by the legislature every time a bond issue was redeemed. When the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act of 1956 was passed, the federal government forbade the use of Highway Trust Fund money on any toll road, even if it carried an interstate number. This created an interesting situation in Connecticut.

In 1975, a bridge on the Connecticut Turnpike collapsed into a river, killing nearly 100 people. An engineering study showed the cost of fixing up the basic infrastructure to be in the billions and the cost of expanding the highway to be even higher. You may remember the cost of money in the Carter era, which is why the state thought that authorizing a new bond issue for the turnpike would be a mistake. So the state legislature violated the principle of a closed financial system and appropriated enough money to call the remaining bonds, dissolve the turnpike authority and take the tolls off the turnpike. This opened it up for Highway Trust Fund money because it was Interstate 95, and the federal-state split in those halcyon days was 90-10. The Connecticut congressional delegation went to Washington with palms outstretched and brought home enough highway pork to rebuild Interstate 95 on the federal nickel.

New Privatization Paradigm: The “Mixed” Financial System

Virginia, Florida, Texas, Colorado and California have been building toll roads where the principle of “toll equity” permits mixing gas tax money with toll income. These toll highways permit motorists to bypass badly congested suburban areas and charge a premium on this based on time of day. It is a “mixed” financial system, which normally would have people up in arms because they are in fact paying for the highway twice. But the roads have become popular enough that Texas is considering building an entirely new statewide network using this principle.

Public Transportation

Before the Depression, America had the best privately owned transportation system in the world -- our railroads. After the Depression, the cost of labor made it impossible for private entities to make money hauling passengers by rail. That is true today more than ever. But there are people who do in fact make money from light rail lines (trolleys) or heavy rail metros (subways) -- the owners of properties near the stations.

It used to take 20 years before a new rail line created growth along its right of way. Now it comes even before the line opens. Portland's Westside MAX, for example, engendered over $6 billion in real estate development along the line, not only with respect to shopping and office space, but also with respect to housing development. These are the people who make a profit from rail transit.

Rail transit is offered today as a public service at taxpayer expense to provide an alternative to more roads. Why? Because rail provides more bang for the buck. To improve a highway, you have to build wider. That's expensive, and it gets more expensive each time you have to increase a highway's capacity. The Ironclad Law of Transportation Dynamics is, "Transportation infrastructure creates its own demand." Every time you increase highway capacity, you buy yourself only 3 to 5 years before the road fills up, and it becomes time for the next generation of improvements. Look at a map of Southern California, and you'll see what happens when the highway lobby gets its own way for 50 years.

To improve a rail line, you build longer. By this I mean longer station platforms and running longer trains. This is much cheaper than building wider and provides more bang for the transportation buck.

All successful cities are congested, and urban life is all about managing congestion, not eliminating it. (If you want to see a city that is not congested, visit Buffalo.) The key is to facilitate commerce, and that's why smaller cities, as they grow and densify, look more and more like the older eastern cities with their subways and trolleys.

Building rail is cheaper than building highways and produces greater throughput. People may not like to give up the freedom of the single-occupancy automobile, but as population density grows in an area, it is unreasonable to expect to drive your SOV on an empty urban freeway at the height of the rush hour at 70 mph.

I often compare this to living in a house versus living in an apartment. If you live in a house, you can practice the piano, crank up the stereo or have a shouting match with your spouse without incurring major trouble with your neighbors. If you live in an apartment and try any of these things, you will get a warning the first time and get evicted the second time.

Living in the city is like living in an apartment. Rugged individualism doesn’t work in the city. When people are densely packed together and your neighbors are above, below and next to you, decisions are made and lives are lived collectively. That’s why public transportation is built and operated with subsidies. Just like highways.

Light Rail Sometimes Fails

There are three notable failures in the world of light-rail systems.

• Buffalo, for the reason mentioned above. It is a dying city, and the idea of revitalizing it by building a light rail line was foolish.
• Los Angeles Green Line. This was the price that had to be paid to build I-105, the Century Freeway. Because the combined right of way ran next to the major defense plants of Los Angeles County, it was thought that a rail line would make life easier for commuters to these facilities. Unfortunately, by the time the line opened, the Cold War had ended, and the plants were empty. On its western end, the line fails to go into Los Angeles International Airport because the authority that runs the airport did not want anything to reduce the revenue from its parking lots. The eastern end is at Norwalk, which is nowhere.
• Hudson-Bergen in North Jersey. The starter line was only one-third of what the proper starter line should have been. The line is in heavy use in Jersey City, thanks to Bret Schundler bringing that municipality back from the dead. But the line runs empty elsewhere. However, once full build-out occurs and the line runs all the way along the west side of the Hudson River, it should be a success.

Regretably, I will soon be able to include the Camden-Trenton diesel light rail line in this list of failures. It will open later his year.

But Light Rail Usually Succeeds

San Diego, Calgary and Portland have been hugely successful. I don’t measure success by whether the line can support itself from the fare box. That is naïve. I ask the question, “If the line disappeared tomorrow morning, would there be gridlock in the region?” For the above cities, the answer is a resounding Yes.

San Jose’s line is a bit questionable right now, but that will change over time.

Denver’s line has become a success.

Salt Lake City and St. Louis are expanding their lines because the people are demanding it.

Conclusion

Portland has decided to become a European-style city, concentrating its people in urban villages, and relying on rail to get people around. This is a wise choice. This is what makes a successful, sustainable city.

[JimRed]

Mass transit is a wonderful idea that does not work very well in most places.

[Willie Green]

Thank-you for setting the record straight, Publius.

It should be noted that another misleading comparison is that of comparing light rail construction costs to that of adding another freeway lane.
Adding freeway lanes does nothing to alleviate traffic congestion in densely populated urban areas. Quite the opposite: they funnel MORE traffic into the area, increasing the potential for gridlock and lack of suitable parking. And it just isn't feasible to continually expand the width of ALL the roads in a densely constructed urban area.

The dedicated right-of-way of light-rail systems avoids this madness, permitting large numbers of commuters to travel quickly and conveniently without compounding the traffic problem.

[WOSG]

"San Diego, Calgary and Portland have been hugely successful. I don’t measure success by whether the line can support itself from the fare box. That is naïve. "

That's not naive, that is a hard-headed reality requirement. if not, these systems are simply unaffordable. I showed average of only 30% recovery from user fees, that's quite poor. We cannot and should not systems that end up having huge costs per passenger-mile. we might as well rent stretch limos instead for riders, it would be cheaper!

you say: "it is unreasonable to expect to drive your SOV on an empty urban freeway at the height of the rush hour at 70 mph. " Why not? Why build such a low standard into the system? can we at least beat 15mph that many of these LRT systems average? The fact is, if you set low standards for speed and flexibility for the system, you will build something people wont use. I go 20 miles in 30 minutes each day, on a very congested highway. I hate the commute and would love rapid transit solution - but if the answer is a slow-poke LRT that would take over an hour to even get partway there, then lots of walking and/or park-n-ride, forget it!

Dont social engineer the people around the transport system. build something people will use.

"Building rail is cheaper than building highways and produces greater throughput. "

I am not against rail systems per se nor a car fanatic, but I am against wishful-thinking-based transport proposals.
This blanket statement has been proven wrong in many cases of mass transit construction and results (comparing $ per passenger mile). LRT is IMHO the worst-of-all-worlds. if you want high capacity at low footprint, you need fixed-rail or subways. LRT otoh does *not* have greater throughput than highway, certainly on a $ basis vs. roadway. That is IMHO the dilemma, its a force-fit solution that doesnt work in most american cities with low density that are tying it. Austin TX has been trying it here as well, to make an LRT boondoggle that will have low performance, low ridership.

Is the metro mass transit system self-funded? OF COURSE NOT - it is heavily subsidized by in our local community sales taxes, then plenty of federal funding as well.

As for highway funding, you assert but didnt lay out the numbers for subsidies of highway. Good description of categories, but waht are the dollars in each bucket?
I know for a fact that plenty of gasoline tax revenue is diverted from highways. Bill Clinton in 1993 for one was using gas tax revenue for mass transit. IN other cases, the gas taxes go into general funds. I am all for making highways self-funding via gas taxes etc. but let's get real: Whatever the finding per passenger mile of roads, the subsidy if any is a pittance compared to cost/passenger mile of car/road transport.

[WOSG]

"Portland has decided to become a European-style city, concentrating its people in urban villages,"

You miss a BIG POINT: What if people living in the town/city dont want to live that way???

http://www.nctimes.com/news/2001/20010325/a.html

Excerpt:

But people in Portland don't have more choices, Charles said.

By drawing an urban-growth boundary around the Oregon metropolis, officials have so sharply restricted the supply of land available for development that housing prices have gone through the roof ---- even as the average lot size has shrunk to 5,000 square feet, he said.

Portland's experience also shows that smart growth fails to reduce congestion on freeways and streets, as advertised, Charles said. There, traffic is getting worse, not better, and congestion remains the No. 1 concern of area residents as it was 10 years ago, he said.

Placing people closer to jobs does in fact reduce the length of some home-to-work trips, said Steven Hayward, senior fellow for the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and a leading smart-growth critic. But the problem is, the savings from those trips gets overwhelmed by the overall increase in driving, as more people are packed into an area.

"Smart growth, over time, actually makes traffic congestion worse," Hayward said.