Acela Gains Travel Share on Airlines

Showing what is possible for the future of many corridors across the country, the Acela (Kinda High Speed Rail) has been gaining share on the airlines in the same corridor. It kind of strikes me as silly that anyone would want to go through crazy security lines and airport traffic when you can just hop on the train in the city.

Wired has a few reasons why the train is gaining.

Obama on Transit

In today's Charlotte Observer, staff asked Barack Obama how he felt about federal support for mass transit:

His response:

I'm a strong supporter, as part of our broader energy strategy. You know, if we are designing cities, and urban communities and suburban communities around two-hour commutes, then we are destined to continue down the course of climate change. And mass transit not only is far more environmentally sound, but with oil prices sky high, and not likely to go down significantly, because of increased demand by China and India, it gives individuals much more of an incentive to look at trains and mass transit as an alternative.

Eh. I want to hear a more substantive discussion, but anything beats McCain, who has said he wants to kill Amtrak through privatization. I imagine Mary Peters will get to stick around too, and we already know her record.

Putting It Into American Terms

So Bush's budget wants to shift money from the transit account into the highway account. PIRG is getting really aggressive on this now and made this statement at the end of a recent press release:

“Bush’s proposal is like taking your star quarterback out of the game because the defense is giving up too many points”

Right on.

Rail to Oakland, The Other Oakland

That PIRG report has made its rounds and now a group in Pittsburgh wants to use the evidence from it to kick off a campaign to take rail from Pittsburgh to Oakland, the neighborhood. It is the third largest downtown center in Pennsylvania and has many Universities and a top notch medical center. It's also where Mr. Rogers began discussing his neighborhood at WQED.

It's also not connected by any of the rail lines or busways that Pittsburgh has built over the years. Given the previous cost estimate of $750 million dollars 15 years ago, I'm imagining this 2-3 mile expansion will be a subway. The layout for those not familiar is below. The orange is the existing light rail which includes a downtown subway and tunnels in the hills. The red is the east busway, the first 6.8 mile section was completed in 1983 at a cost of $115 million ($244 2007 or $36M per mile) and the yellow is the currently under construction North Shore Connector which will open up the north side for rail expansion. It's a rather hilly landscape and like San Francisco, one of the reasons the light rail lines were saved is because of their tunnels.

If You See Someone, Say Something

Ben has an post up about subway love in NYC. I've often wondered what, if any, etiquette there was to talking to girls (or guys) that caught your eye on transit. Some of my friends have said that it creeps them out while others are indifferent. One of my friends said that she gave a specifically creepy guy an evil look until he moved seats.

Apparently its not unusual to find creepy people on the subway, but its not unusual to see cute girls either...although most seem to have wedding rings. I certainly don't want to get the evil eye and I usually try to follow the golden rule, do unto others... And since I really don't like being bothered, I find it really hard to bother other people. So I end up listening to NPR or watching Diggnation and every once in a while catching a glimpse of a cute girl walking on or off the Muni or BART.

"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.

Real Density Comparisons

AC calculates real density by weighted averages of census tracks. Check it out.

Why Are We Giving People Money?

The recent downturn in the economy and the credit crunch/housing crash have left a lot of people wondering, how do we fix this problem. Jerome a Paris who diaries at Daily Kos has stated that part of the problem is that we are creating too much debt for ourselves and our income has been level on average since 2001. But how do we generate more income for workers who have seen wages stagnate and some jobs shipped elsewhere or flat out disappear from the coming(if not already here) home construction bust? Also how do we create lasting value?

A national infrastructure program. That is spending on alternative energy infrastructure and massive transit upgrades. This would do two things as Jerome states so well:

...provide a real boost to the economy in the sectors that actually need it, would reduce oil&gas consumption and carbon emissions, and be an actual investment in the future, as opposed to the current drain on the future that's been engineered via debt used on mindless consumption of junk.

It would sure beat everyone getting $600 dollars to spend on goods made overseas. But what makes this a better investment? Recently a report from the Institute of Policy Studies came out that discussed the jobs created in the defense industry versus other key sectors that need investment. Spending on education and transit created far more jobs than defense. Transit was the highest job creator and created predominantly middle class jobs with incomes between $32-$64k. I would imagine greater increases in spending for transit would generate even more jobs as there are needs for manufacturing when demand is created.

(H/T Free Public Transit Blog)

More Research and Reports

APTA - The Broader Connection Between Transit and Energy/GHGs

People living in households near public transit travel 12 fewer miles per day which is 27 percent less than persons in households with no access to public transit according to the study. This equates to an individual household reduction of 223 gallons of gasoline a year.

Smart Growth America - Growing Cooler

They warn that if sprawling development continues to fuel growth in driving, the projected 59 percent increase in the total miles driven between 2005 and 2030 will overwhelm expected gains from vehicle efficiency and low-carbon fuels. Even if the most stringent fuel-efficiency proposals under consideration are enacted, notes co-author Steve Winkelman, “vehicle emissions still would be 40 percent above 1990 levels in 2030 – entirely off-track from reductions of 60-80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 required for climate protection.“

Department of Homeland Security - Transit Threat Assessment

The Greenness of Cities - Edward Glaeser

Over the past 50 years, automobile oriented suburbs have grown much more quickly than denser urban areas, and over the past six years, the four fastest growing American metropolitan areas have been Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix—all hot places that use an impressive amount of electricity to create a pleasant year-round climate. Cars and air conditioners both lead to signifi cant emissions of carbon dioxide, which an increasing body of evidence has linked to potentially dangerous climate change. If this evidence is correct, then there are serious social costs associated with new forms of development that tend to be extremely energy intensive.

It's Space Race Time, and LA is Rockin!

We've been following the Transit Space Race for over a year now and more cities keep jumping into the race. Yesterday Los Angeles vaulted into the upper tier of the race with an announcement of their long range plan. We've covered them before, but there are some extra goodies in the announcement. Now if we could only get increased federal funding for rail projects...

From Curbed LA:

Strategic Unfunded Projects
Tier 1: Currently Under Planning or Environmentally Cleared/Route Refinement Study

-Regional Connector
-Metro Subway Westside Extension to La Cienega
-Harbor Subdivision Alternate Rail Technology between LA Union Station and Metro Green Line Aviation Station
-Metro Subway Westside Extension to City of Santa Monica
-Burbank/Glendale Light Rail from LA Union Station to Burbank Metrolink Station
-Metro Gold Line Eastside Extenstion from Atlantic/Pomona Station to City of Whittier
-Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension from Sierra Madre Villa Station to Azusa
-Metro Green Line Extension from Redondo Beach Station to South Bay Galleria
-Metro Gold Line Extension from Sierra Madre Villa Station to Montclair
-Metro Green Line Foothill Extension between Norwalk Station and Norwalk Metrolink Station
-Mero Green Line Extension to LAX
-West Santa Ana Branch ROW Corridor Maglev between LA Union Station and Santa Ana Metrolink Station

Tier 2
-Metro Red Line Extension from North Hollywood Station to Burbank Airport Metrolink Station
-Vermont Corridor Subway
-"Yellow" Line Light Rail between Metro Red Line North Hollywood Station and Regional Connector
-I-405 Corridor Busway between Metro Orange Line Sepulveda Station and Metro Green Line Aviation Station
-"Silver" Line Light Rail between Metro Red Line Vermont/Santa Monica Station and City of La Puente
-Metro Green Line Extension from LAX to Expo Santa Monica Station
-SR-134 Transit Corridor Bus Rapid Transit between Metro Red Line North Hollywood Station and Metro Gold Line Del Mar Station
-Metro Green Line Extension between South Bay Galleria and Pacific Coast Hwy Harbor Transitway Station