The Language of Transit

Who else thinks the word subsidy needs to be ejected from the lexicon of transit advocates and opponents? Dan at Permanent Campaigns writes a piece for MassTransitMag on Language which should start a larger discussion on framing the issues we care about.

We transit advocates have a problem: bad language. Listen to what we ask for:

Operating assistance
Formula funding
Guaranteed appropriations

Boring!

Right now we seem like we’re still on the welfare train, asking for government handouts without any compelling, exciting opportunities for the nation to embrace.

Our Low Gas Taxes

Stephen Rees has a post up from the Economist showing gas taxes around the world. On this list we're the lowest! Yay....or something...not. We don't pay the full price for the externalities of using oil. Not only that, we've developed in a way that forces our dependence on it.

Last week I filled up my tank and saw it was about $50. Not a big hit considering the next time I go back to the pump will be about a month and a half from now. Last year I figured out that I spent 4% of my income on transportation. The average American spends 17.5%. So imagine if every person had an option to reduce their transportation costs by 10% or more. For a family that makes $35,000 per year, thats $3,500 that could go to a new home, to education, to local businesses, or to better food. Otherwise that 10% goes to an oil company, which I must say paid my dads salary which kept a roof over my head and well fed, but also makes a lot of fat cats at the top rich, and can send money to folks that don't like us.

If we paid the true cost of gas and everyone could have access to transit like Fred, Adron, or Ben we'd be a lot better off as a country and investing more in our respective communities.

Sprawl and Regeneration in Budapest

Sprawl is not limited to the United States. In fact my favorite transit city is under attack from all flanks. Budapest is feeling the horrors of eurosprawl and like everywhere else, it comes with a cost.

"We've exchanged [Victorian-era] London-type smog for Los Angles-type smog," laments Janos Zlinszky of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe. "The nature of our environmental problems is shifting."

Across east-central Europe, a region once blighted by Communist-era pollution, economic development is bringing on a new set of environmental problems and, in some cases, bringing back old ones.

The main culprit? American style suburbs. Never would have guessed.

Budapest's worsening air pollution is due in large part to the advent of American-style suburban housing developments and shopping centers, according to Andras Lukacs, president of the Clean Air Action Group. "Several hundred thousand people have moved out of central Budapest and gone to these new so-called residential parks in what used to be green areas," he says. "Each day they come back to their jobs here, but because public transportation isn't so good out there, they take their cars."

But public transit is awesome in the city. They are building two new subway lines in addition to the three they have already. During communism, the transit share was 80% but that system came with a heavy price including an underinvestment in all infrastructure. Many buildings are falling apart and have to have some really hefty scaffolding. Here is a photo I took of the big box sprawl. It was noticeable on the train so I took a shot. The photo below the sprawl is some building scaffolding that keeps building pieces from falling while they are repairing it.

AC on Density #2

I mentioned AC's post on Density earlier. In his most recent post, he calculates the weighted densities for 34 regions. I'm wondering how San Jose had such a high density. Perhaps for the same reason that Los Angeles' density is relatively high, due to natural boundaries hemming in exurban growth. Atlanta on the other hand is flat as a pancake and is the worst sprawl offender.

Want to Chat With Fellow Transit Nerds?

I like discussions on transit. It's fun to sit around and shoot the breeze about whatever is going on. Here in San Francisco there used to be forums over at the SF Cityscape where the folks would gather to talk about transit, but its migrated over to Ess Eff. Cityscape still has some awesome resources including a huge blogroll.

As forums go though, I don't think there has ever been one about the transit oriented lifestyle but over at the Metro Rider LA Fred Camino and the gang have done just that. So if you want to go talk transit, check it out. And if anyone wants visit Frank up in Seattle and jump start a conversation there, he's got one too, although the comments section to his blog and over at STB are pretty lively. And down in my hometown of Houston Christof and the gang have the CTC forums.

Are there any other transit forums out there? I know there are a number of yahoo groups with epic battles taking place daily between the transit folks and anti-planners/libertarians but I hadn't seen any in other places.

Greening Car Myth + Capacity Issues

In Forbes, Michael Repogle writes an article on the problems with auto travel increases even in the face of new technologies.

A key arena for innovation will be finding ways to grow the world's communities and economies while at the same time reducing how much driving the population is doing. The forecast growth in motor vehicle traffic--60% over the next two decades in the U.S. and many times that in China and India--threatens to overwhelm gains won through increasing vehicle fuel efficiency.

Which is the main rub, that VMT will increase so much that it will overwhelm any solutions we come up with such as everyone having a Prius type gas sipper. The only way to solve this issue is with more compact development and better transit.

The key to success is to keep car traffic from growing to unsustainable levels to begin with. A 2007 Urban Land Institute study found that shifting two-thirds of new U.S. growth to compact neighborhoods where cars are not the only transportation option would save 85 million tons of CO2 annually by 2030. That figure is more than the combined annual emissions of over 16 million regular passenger cars.

While Michael claims the transit solution is BRT, I think he's been drinking too much of the Bill Vincent cool-aid. In keeping with most BRT peddlers out there, he spreads the rumor in a major print medium that BRT is cheaper than LRT. With most new BRT lines in the United States built as hybrid buses instead of trolleybuses, and just operating as express buses they are not helping the problem either. In suburban areas and less congested routes BRT will be a major part of the solution, but in urban areas, it is a necessity that we build rail lines that can have multiple car consists and have major capacity. The Orange Line in Los Angeles which is already at capacity and takes 15 minutes longer to finish the same distance as the Gold Line LRT, even with its speed limits. The LACMTA is looking to expand it but there is hardly room for more people.

The thing that bothers me most is what if a lot of people need to use transit in cities? On some lines, particularly in San Francisco, there is a capacity problem. A recent study to open up Muni for free rides showed how overwhelmed the system would be if a substantial number of new people hopped on due to free rides. This scares me a bit. New York City has been handling massive increases quite well but even they need to expand and are in the process of building new subway tunnels. If we ever have a big shock and a ton of people hop on transit, there are going to be problems. And not having the capacity of a subway system spine here, it will show the limits of buses as the only solution as peddled by many rubber tire advocates. Buses will always be the bones of a transit system, but our spine should have capacity to move more people than a 60 foot bus.

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.