Midnight Notes

So sad to see that Elana Schor is moving on from Streetsblog. You can still follow her work but it's not likely to be all transportation all the time.
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I can appreciate the want to allow people to walk and bike to the store and perhaps consume less in general. But saying that people can't buy a lot of groceries seems like a bit of overkill to me.

The plan intends to discourage large purchases, which will help ensure that people walk or bike home.

I really only have time to go to the store once a week and I walk and use a single reusable bag. But if you have a large family that can be a bit tougher. What do you all think?
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If you haven't seen the dramatic photos that show the change of the Vancouver skyline, i suggest taking a look at Price Tags.
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I think Megan McArdle completely underestimates the value of buses and bikes in congestion pricing schemes. She doesn't make a single mention of them. While the subways in New York are crushed, if you limited traffic and gave buses and bikes some lanes, you might find that transit service could improve and people could get around the city just fine without their cars. While I love the subways and think many cities should have better subway systems (ie San Francisco) I think we discount the roll of buses and bikes at our own peril.

TTI Congestion Lacking

Ok, I get it. TTI says we as a country are a congested place. But who's fault is that? It's certainly not mine. Riding BART almost every day I never see the congestion. But why? Because I chose to live somewhere I can avoid it. Many other people around the country make that choice as well. I realize some people don't. But where is the calculation of money saved on transit systems or cities that promote walkable and bikeable neighborhoods that operate efficiently and allow people to leave for work at the same time every day for 20 years and never see a change. We know the congestion issue is a big one because most people drive. But should we be talking about congestion in terms of cars alone? Perhaps in cities that don't have transit. But is it a bit disingenuous to say that the Bay Area is one of the most congested when in parts it isn't, or people have ways to avoid it if they so choose? I think it might be.

Found It!!! IBM Congestion Pricing Commercial

I posted on this last Sunday when I saw the commercial. Glad IBM got around to posting it on youtube.

IBM Congestion Pricing Commercial

Has anyone seen this? I saw it this morning during the Miami/Baltimore game but wasn't able to find anything on youtube yet. Here's a link to the IBM ad campaign. There's even a podcast about the Stockholm pricing scheme that IBM implemented, which I haven't been able to watch yet. But if anyone finds the commercial let me know and I'll post it.

Mental Block Hop

On a loop around from our post on transit and energy usage, Matt discusses the issues of fares and the thought that transit should have little or no cost to use, just like empty roads. BUT, only if they are not crowded. That is time for congestion pricing. Empty buses, as that study showed do us no good. Heck I wouldn't mind if Muni were free during off periods. I was talking to a friend today who mentioned when he has his Muni pass, it makes him take transit more, because all he has to do is hop on. I would do the same thing, not worrying about getting quarters out of my bag. As he said, it's just enough of a mental block to discourage it, just like losing my parking spot discourages me from driving.

Tolls Would Pay for BRT

Does anyone feel like if they tolled downtown San Francisco, that BRT would be able to carry the load on Geary that would swell with new riders? It already seems like a sardine tin. I hope Tom's comments pertain also to Geary, not just the Muni Metro tunnel.

Drivers interviewed said that better transit service will be necessary if the plan is to work. Tom Radulovich, a BART director from San Francisco, told the board that trains are already crowded and urged investments in BART and Muni Metro as part of the plan.

"We've already reached our design capacity," he said, "and are going to need to make investments in expanding rail capacity."

When in Doubt...

make stuff up. Don't let those silly facts get in the way.

Socialist Roads Scholars

I'm a huge fan of Alex Marshall. Sometimes he writes at Streetsblog and others in different magazines and journals. Today he's in Governing Magazine saying what everyone was thinking. The Libertarians and Conservatives who hate transit so much and are all about free markets become socialists when it comes to roads. Government intervention? Only for roads.

Given all this, I find it exceedingly strange that a group of conservative and libertarian-oriented think tanks — groups that argue for less government — have embraced highways and roads as a solution to traffic congestion and a general boon to living. In the same breath, they usually attack mass-transit spending, particularly on trains. They seem to see a highway as an expression of the free market and of American individualism, and a rail line as an example of government meddling and creeping socialism.

Among the most active of these groups is the Reason Foundation, a self-described libertarian nonprofit organization with a $7 million budget that has its own transportation wing. Some typical highway-oriented papers on Reason's Web site include "How to Build Our Way Out of Congestion" and "Private Tollways: How States Can Leverage Federal Highway Funds." Rail transit is taken on in papers with titles such as "Myths of Light Rail Transit," and "Rethinking Transit 'Dollars & Sense': Unearthing the True Cost of Public Transit." I didn't see any papers about unearthing the true cost of our public highway network.

Nope, in their minds, if you toll it, they will come. Don't get me wrong. I think congestion pricing has merits in certain instances, but wholesale tolling of roads is dumb. Depending on a single mode of transport is dumb too. Didn't anyone ever tell them when they were kids that they couldn't eat steak all the time but needed bread, milk, fruits, and vegetables?

H/T The Political Environment

Congestion Pricing Dies on the Vine

I have to say that even though I wanted this plan because it would have proven the benefits of transit over cars, there is a very small piece of me that is glad that Mary Peters got the shaft. This money came off the backs small bus agencies around the country and that should not be tolerated. People that depend on transit the most were paying for these pilot projects. Not that the idea didn't have merit, but if you're going to play with money, why not take it out of the ginormous highway fund instead of the bus fund.

Eric says it best, New York just approved a citywide parking lot.

Obama on Congestion Pricing

REPORTER: Later, in an exclusive interview with WNYC, Senator Obama said he supports congestion pricing.

OBAMA: I think Mayor Bloomberg's proposal for congestion pricing is a thoughtful and innovative approach to the problem.

REPORTER: Obama said congestion pricing should not replace federal funding of mass transit.

Obama just keeps getting better and better.

H/T Streetsblog

"He Had No Transportation Experience"

Anyone know an arabian horse judge for the DOT job? Today in the Washington Post there was an expose on Tyler Duval, a Bush appointee because of connections ("It was a friend of a friend thing") and DJ Gribbin who was a family friend of Dick Cheney. Their goal is to reduce the roll of government in transportation expenditures and instead privatize everything. But transit means nothing to them because as it stands, it can't be sold off to the highest bidder. So as we've been saying, they have been trying to kill transit as evidenced by their recent try to get toll roads into the new starts program.

Even if the next president reverses its policies, the Bush administration will leave a legacy of new toll roads across the country, a growing number of public roads leased to private companies, and dozens of stalled commuter rail, streetcar and subway projects -- including the $5 billion extension of Metro to Dulles International Airport.

As mentioned in a post by Steve Davis at Smart Growth America, one of the targets Duval and Gribbin hope to get rid of with congestion pricing is earmarks. But as he also mentions, earmarks are a small part of the total expenditures with most of the money going to state DOTs who spend it without goals or measures of success on freeways. But many of the earmarks are projects that have merit, but can't wrestle funding away from We've seen this in the last week where there has been a fight over an earmark for the Central Corridor, a very worthy project.

But here's a catch with the congestion money giveaways. The funding for those pilot congestion pricing projects came from funds that usually go to replacing buses in cities and the small starts program. Congestion pricing has nothing to do with funding for buses in rural areas or in cities that need to replace older buses but have seen their funding continue to sucked up by gasoline prices.

"I couldn't believe they could get away with this, to just take that money away," said Mark Munson, director of the Regional Transit Authority in Dubuque, which has been frequently forced to deny trips to the elderly and disabled because there are not enough buses and volunteers can't fill all the gaps.

Duvall is unapologetic, saying the traditional pork-barrel process of divvying up transportation dollars is bad policy. The proof, he said, is the fact that increased government spending on transportation has not slowed congestion.

If pricing is implemented, there should be a real plan to give people an alternative of real rapid transit. The New York plan is great because they have plenty of alternatives to get places in the pricing zone. Ryan discusses the need to do both as well. And Frank at Orphan Road warns us to be wary of going too far.

This is the reason why it really matters who becomes President next. Political appointments really have a huge push on policy and if we keep the same trajectory, we'll be stuck with these two guys for 4 more years.

And if you think there were a lot of innocent contractors on the death star, Ryan has some conspiracy theories for you as well. I'm not sure if they are that far from the truth given what has happened since Bush took office.

Parking Lot Congestion Pricing?

I was reading up on the Seattle congestion pricing debate over at Seattle Transit Blog and Orphan Road and was thinking about ways to address the equity issue of congestion pricing. I'm wondering what kind of tax isn't regressive. Is it the land tax? Perhaps.

But what about a rush hour parking tax?

Parking garages have meters that do timestamping, so why not charge a fee for parking between 8:00 and 9:30 and leaving between 4:30 and 6:00. When you use that funding for expanding transit, you can then expand to road based congestion pricing after expanding transit. That way if you don't have any other options, you can still get in and park if its early or late making people vary their timing surely making it more equitable. I'm sure there are drawbacks because this just popped into my head and I didn't think it through completely but I'd like to hear people's take on it. It could be too limited to workers downtown for instance. Or people could just write it off on their taxes unless that benefit was taken away.