Doing bad things to bad people...
Posted on 05/09/2003 2:39:43 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Some simplifying force in human nature loves to set up false dichotomies. You know what we're talking about. As in: You're a cat person, I'm a dog person. You're a wine person, I'm a beer person. You're a bus person, I'm a car person.
Some of the criticism of two new light-rail extensions, planned for Clackamas County, stems from this kind of black-and-white thinking, carried over into the realm of public policy. Exaggerate the "transit vs. car" quarrel via a talk show or two, and before you know it, a thick layer of rhetorical asphalt has paved over all the complexities of our transportation system.
If you champion light rail, you're falsely painted as anti-highway. But our light-rail system -- in addition to helping the 36,500 or so people who use it every day -- is a huge help to everyone who loves to drive.
Some people in Clackamas County have discovered this for themselves over the past few years, as they studied the best transportation alternatives to connect them to downtown Portland. They didn't necessarily start out hospitable to light rail. Indeed, in 1997, Milwaukie voters ousted their mayor and two city council members in part over a planned light-rail route.
But after exhaustive public meetings and an in-depth look at other options -- including river transport -- light-rail re-emerged victorious. Part of the credit goes to Metro Councilor Brian Newman, a planner by training, who helped forge a new consensus during three years of meetings, first as a private citizen, later as a member of the Milwaukie City Council and finally as a Metro Councilor.
Recently, the Metro Council approved plans for two light-rail extensions, one along Interstate 205 from Gateway to Clackamas Town Center, which would open in 2009. A second extension is planned from downtown Portland to Milwaukie, which could open by 2014. These would cost $1 billion, and they aren't done deals (the second route would likely require a public vote). Something may change along the way, of course, but based on what we know now, it appears prudent to keep moving forward with these plans.
Just consider what a difference light rail makes at rush hour on Interstate 84 and U.S. 26. Figures collected by Metro's transportation planners indicate that, between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., roughly 10,000 people are headed eastbound from downtown Portland. Another 9,000 are headed westbound. In both directions, at rush hour, about 26 percent of the total number of people traveling are on light rail.
Freeway travel is bad enough, but just imagine the congestion if all those light-rail travelers, eastbound and westbound, were added to the road.
Although it's true, and nice perhaps, that Portland has become synonymous with the success of its light-rail system, that's not why Portland should keep pursuing light rail. The reason has nothing whatsoever to do with Portland's image. It has everything to do with keeping up a smoothly running transportation system.
In Portland, OR, that is exactly ALL it is. Commie Vera and her cohorts are doing Stalin's work.
roughly 10,000 people are headed eastbound from downtown Portland. Another 9,000 are headed westbound. In both directions, at rush hour, about 26 percent of the total number of people traveling are on light rail.
Time to do the numbers, ladies and gentlemen.
10,000 + 9000 = 19,000 commuters
26 percent on light rail = 5000.
$1 billion cost divided by 5000 commuters = $200,000 per commuter.
Wouldn't it be cheaper just to pay them early retirement?
Doing bad things to bad people...
Sic Transit Light Rail:
Al Gore's Anti-Auto Boondoggle
By Wendell Cox
Published in The Weekly Standard of July 17, 2000.
Recently, Vice President Gore announced a 10 year $25 billion mass transit proposal intended to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. A principal initiative would be to build additional miles of subways and light rail lines. In announcing the program, the Vice President said "You should … have the choice … to park your car at a light rail station and be moved swiftly into a newly thriving downtown…" Unfortunately, things are not so simple.
The Vice President does have it right on one count, however. Transit is about downtown. But downtowns are no longer the dominant locus of commercial activity, and are becoming less so with every passing years. For decades the overwhelming majority of new jobs have been created outside downtown. Now, less than 10 percent of employment in the nation's metropolitan areas is downtown. Even in the New York City area, the number is below 20 percent. That means that for at least 90 percent of commuters, there is no transit choice.
Transit plays a significant role in the nation's largest downtown areas. More than one-third of commuters ride transit to work in nine downtowns, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco. But in other downtowns the numbers are much smaller. And outside downtowns, such as in the suburban "edge cities" like Tyson's Corner in Washington, Perimeter Center in Atlanta or Schaumburg in Chicago and elsewhere, transit's market share is insignificant, often two percent or less.
This is because everywhere but downtown employment densities are far too small to support the extent of transit service that would be necessary to attract non-downtown commuters out of their cars. Simply put, not enough jobs or residences are within walking distance of transit stops. And, traveling between transit stops that are within walking distance usually takes much longer than commuting by automobile, because of slow operating speeds and the necessity of transferring from one route to another. People who commute by transit to jobs outside downtowns tend to have no choice, because they do not have automobiles available for their trips. This is a characteristic shared with 70 percent of transit riders, according to federal data.
The unfortunate, but indisputable fact is that transit has virtually no impact on traffic congestion except for work trips beginning or ending in the largest downtown areas. The Gore program seems oblivious to this.
The view that transit is the solution to traffic congestion is not without superficial justification. Tourists, especially policy wonks, travel to places where rail transit makes a big difference --- New York City, the Loop in Chicago, downtown San Francisco, central London, central Paris or Hong Kong. But what they all too often fail to realize is that little of metropolitan America looks like these places --- not even the suburbs of New York, Chicago or San Francisco, which have lower population densities than the suburbs of Los Angeles.
Further, the recent experience in rail development in the United States gives no comfort to the "transit solves traffic congestion" hypothesis. More than $10 billion has been spent in Washington, DC to build nearly 100 miles of subway. Yet, Washington's traffic congestion is worse than everywhere except Los Angeles, where $8 billion has been spent to build more than 450 miles of rail. After $3 billion of spending on rail in Atlanta, only 10 percent of commuters can reach their jobs within 40 minutes on transit. In contrast, for 100 percent of Atlanta area commuters, average work trip travel time is approximately 30 minutes. Making automobile competitive transit available to all in of Atlanta alone would require at least double the Vice-President's 10 year $25 billion budget, every year.
Then there is the matter of light rail --- the "spruced up" 19th century streetcar (trolley) technology by which the Vice-President suggests commuters will be "moved swiftly." There is nothing swift about light rail. Despite high levels of traffic congestion, automobile commutes normally take one-half the time of light rail.
The fact is that transit, rail or bus, is not a choice for at least 90 percent of people commuting to work in the nation's metropolitan areas. It not a choice for an even larger percentage of non-work trips. This is because transit is incapable of competing with the convenience and especially the travel time of the automobile. That is why transit's urban market share is under two percent, and why every year, the increase in urban automobile usage alone exceeds total transit usage (measured in person miles).
There is no point in throwing additional billions at rail systems to expand choices for a very few. As with virtually all of the rail systems built in the last quarter century, traffic congestion will continue to worsen in the rail corridors. But, worse, the emphasis on this a boutique rail strategy will consume financial, technical and administrative resources that would more appropriately be used to solve the transportation problems of all.
Wendell Cox was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley (1977-1985) and chaired two American Public Transit Association national committees. He is principal of Wendell Cox Consultancy in Belleville, Ill., an international public policy firm.
Where in heaven's name did you ever learn how to "do the numbers"?
Arthur Anderson?
Sheesh! When does anybody amortize construction costs over the number of passengers serviced during one hour on one day? You compeletely ignore that there are usually TWO such peak periods every workday: both morning AND afternoon rush hours. Plus all the commuters who utilize the system during non-peak periods.
Wouldn't it be cheaper just to pay them early retirement?
Nope. It's much better that they continue to work and pay taxes like everybody else. A good mass-transit system facilitates such commerce and helps expand the tax-base, lowering the tax that must be paid by each individual by spreading the load over more people. Paying people to take early retirement shrinks the tax base, putting more of a load on fewer people.
Many communities choose to subsidize transit systems because they enhance the local economy in ways that are not directly measurable by myopicly focusing on the costs/revenues of the transit system alone. As an example, even those who choose to continue traveling by car benefit from reduced traffic congestion and increased availability of parking. And downtown merchants benefit because they gain customers from those who would otherwise avoid the downtown shopping district if they had to drive.
I don't know of any law that is capable of "forcing" businesses into a city.
Usually such attempts have the opposite effect.
OTOH, cities often offer incentives, subsidies or other enticements to attract businesses to their location. Such enticements include adequate services such as fire/police protection and efficient transportation systems.
You left out the poison pill of any type of public transportation these days: Cost
The public bureaucratic mentality is simply unable to cope with costs.
When "public" money is involved, no limits are seen to either employee demands or fare levels or using other related costs as a cash cows.
Of course neglecting normal highways and freeways is becoming increasingly transparent as an argument for a new limitlessly expensive public transportation system.
In my experience, here in California the reverse is true.
But I suppose it depends on your definition of "subdidize".
Only a small fraction of gasoline taxes paid are used to build and maintain highways. These taxes once upon a time were committed exclusively for highway maintenance and expansion.
If they can get those two things fixed, I'm riding.
Hmmmmm.
Two unsupported assertions in one paragraph.
I am used to the dishonesty of the hope-over-reality contingent.
Here in the Sacramento California area, our predessesors in the 50s and 60s wisely acquired the land necessary to build a traffic ring around the city, and thus exercise that rarest of modern commodities: common sense.
A ring a la Paris or DC would have aided both intertate travel and local commute.
In the last 20 years, the greenie-unconscious brigade maneuvered the sale of strategic portions of these public lands to stymie automobile traffic planning.
They then went into their automobile-is-the world's-greatest-threat act that would do Al Gore proud.
A self-fulfilling prophecy.
Honesty from the controllers and social tinkerers is non existent.
There is something inherently dishonest for those receiving the subsidies to be defining "benefits" enjoyed by others.
Ya think?
Successful cities don’t solve their congestion problems. They manage them. All successful cities are congested. It’s the nature of the beast.
Adulthood comes when you understand that you can’t have everything you want, but have to settle for what is possible. In the city, “what is possible” is what permits the optimum flow of commerce.
I said, and you still dont get my point - forcing people off of what they want is social engineering at its worst. This whole attitude of forcing people out of cars by underbuilding roads is wrongheaded.
We’ve finally come to understand that the decision – forced by an earlier generation’s social engineering – to rely on the private automobile to drive a city’s transportation, was wrongheaded. The automobile was the trendy solution of its day. We’re sadder but wiser now. We understand the need for high-density transportation to serve the high-density workplace and the high-density neighborhood.
If the shoe fits, wear it. It is socialist to demand that people get restricted rights to spend their money as they see fit. It is socialist to insist that you know better than people themselves how to organize their lives. It is socialist to say 'of course you give up rights to live in XXX' ... It doesnt have to be that way. ONly socialist insist on it!
If you live in certain upscale suburbs, there are compacts, covenants and neighborhood associations that restrict your property rights. You might have the money to paint your house a hideous shade of purple. You might want to paint your house that hideous shade of purple. But the neighborhood association will require its approval before you paint your house, and if it refuses that permission, you don’t paint your house. End of story.
Your neighbors are not socialists. Before you do something that might lower their property values, they want to weigh in on your actions and prevent them if necessary. If you don’t like living that way, don’t move into that neighborhood. Pick one without a neighborhood association and a whole lot of rules you don’t want to follow. Or live where your nearest neighbor is five miles away.
When you live in an area of dense population, the fact that you have the money to do something, and the fact that you want to do something, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be allowed to do something. There are other people’s interests to be considered. This was once called “being neighborly”.
In a city, those “other people” may be a number of large corporations whose interest is to keep commerce flowing via high-density means. No one will attempt to pry that steering wheel out of your cold, dead hands. The powers-that-be will simply put money into solutions that work for a city, and those who refuse to take the hint will steam and stew in traffic in their SOV’s.
We dont WANT boondoggle LRTs, can you get that through your skull? I wont ride it, I dont need it. May NYC needs a subway, or DC or chicago, but not the smaller cities of America and not my town.
I don’t know how big “your town” is. I don’t know if it’s a city, suburb, exurb or rural community where people drive their tractors to the general store.
If it’s a city, others will ride those transit systems if you don’t, and they’ll be thankful that they are available. Even smaller cities densify over time and become bigger cities. When you reach a certain critical mass, you need rail transit of one stripe or another to survive and thrive.
Some of us want, enjoy and appreciate the system of transportation that gives maximum flexibility and options to people. Even giving it a malodorous name like "sprawl" when it is nothing more than lower-density housing than a city build with townhomes. I guess if we call Phoenix 'normal' and just referred to anything denser than LA as a "sardine can city", the shoe might be on other foot...And many of us want to live with a nice big backyard, and we will pay in $$ on houses and in time on commute to get that - do YOU get it? Not everybody WANTS URBAN CONDO LIVING!
I don’t have a problem with sprawl. When you live and work in a lower-density suburb, the automobile is the only way to go. But if you live in a suburb and work in a city, you’re better off taking some form of mass transportation to avoid clogging the city and creating congestion. The city is better off, too.
But the real problem occurs when lower-density suburbs densify. A long time ago, before Los Angeles became a major city, towns like Pasadena and Long Beach were cities in their own right. Once Los Angeles became a major metropolis, the two aforementioned cities became suburbs. But as densification occurred, they again became cities. Now mass transit has become an issue in these cities – after nearly a century.
Across Lake Washington from Seattle sit the suburbs of Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland. Thirty years ago they were true suburbs. Now they are a single city, even though they are made up of three separate municipalities. Downtown Bellevue looks like any downtown in Orange County, California or suburban Dallas-Fort Worth. Redmond is the home of Microsoft. (‘Nuff said.) Congestion and parking have become such problems that people are now seriously exploring a suburban monorail system complementary to, but not connected with, Seattle’s monorail which is now in the early stages of engineering. This is an intelligent reaction to densification and its attendant problems.
I agree with any mechanism that gets users to pay their way for use of products, goods, even public goods. Mass transit riders should PAY THEIR OWN WAY and so should the highway transit users.
Fine. If you’re willing to end any and all hidden subsidies for highways, I’ll agree that subsidies for transit systems should end.
Wonderful St Louis eh? Only 27% of expenses are covered by fares. ...
So what? Until we eliminate any and all subsidies for highways – hidden or open – I’m not going to get my shorts in a knot over subsidized trolleys.
You can get more transportation problems solved through properly designed roads than with mass transit boondoggles ...
If you truly believe that, then I’m wasting my time arguing with you.
It is now three times as expensive to travel by mass transit as by automobile, on a per-passenger-mile basis.
Only if you ignore the hidden subsidies for highways and count the overt subsidies for mass transit.
Competition for taxpayers' funds between special interest lobbies promoting road building and social engineers favoring mass transit has resulted in taxpayers funding both -- although roads pay their way through taxes while mass transit has required increasing subsidies.
I refer you to my original post which thoroughly demolished this argument. What you are quoting is pure, unadulterated BS from the various PR organs of the highway lobby. These people have an agenda, and it’s not about making cities run more efficiently.
In September of 1999, I sat next to Wendell Cox on a train from Seattle to Vancouver (BC) and back as part of a function with the Amtrak Reform Council. I spent much of the day helping Paul Weyrich's aide push Mr. Weyrich around Vancouver in his wheelchair. I learned more from 15 minutes with Paul Weyrich than I did listening to Wendell Cox opine in the bar car on the ride back south.
Wendell is a wonderfully personable individual who can glibly shoot off one pseudo-fact after another. But he's a paid agent of the highway lobby, and that needs to be taken into consideration whenever he opens his mouth.
Only once have I sat down, read a Wendell Cox essay and agreed with him without qualification. He recently wrote that it would make more sense to move trucks on freight trains for long distances and then let trucks handle short-haul moves only. I agreed with him because only a week before I had testified to the Washington State Senate Highways & Transportation Committee on precisely that subject, and a month later I made a longer presentation to the State Transportation Commission on the same subject -- all in connection with the Cascade Foothills Rail Corridor.
Once in a blue moon, Wendell and I are on the same page.
This is the only area on which we are in complete agreement. Once these systems were privately owned. Then a combination of unionization and the minimum wage made it uneconomical for private interests to run them. The unions learned to milk the systems because union members were voters.
I'd like to level the playing field and return to the days of private ownership. But that's going to require more political will than anybody has nowadays.
There's this amazing new discovery that is all the rage throughout the country. It's called "free-market capitalism", and by golly, it sure does seem to make things better in the long run. Maybe you should give it a chance someday. Rather than forcing the majority (who vote against the light rail system) to pay for it through the force of government (read: gunpoint), you should leave it to entrepreneurs to find a way to provide it, using that curious new-fangled idea called "freedom of choice". They will provide it, once a sufficient number of people feel it is worth a sufficient fee to cover the expenses. These numbers will be reached as soon as traffic congreetion gets inconvenient enough. Traffic congestions will get to that point evetually via ever-expanding population growth. See how that works? It's really cool!
Until then, keep your enthusiasms out of my family's budget, thankyouverymuch.
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