Debunking O'Toole #3,520

Mr. Setty at PublicTransit.us is debunking Randal's latest try to put down light rail yet again. This time the claim is that a Prius is more energy efficient:

With most renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydroelectric, "gross energy" is essentially meaningless in this "Prius vs. Electric Transit" argument, except that efficient extraction of available energy keeps the price of the power obtained down. Taking O'Toole's reasoning to its logical extreme, if wind and solar only captures 10% of the available energy, or a hydroelectric project only captures 25% of the energy available, he'd still report absurdly high BTU's expended. Never mind that in these cases, nature still radiates this energy into Earth's environment--whether humans choose to tap into it or not.

People Are Using the T Word!

Paul Krugman of the New York Times is blogging transit. Did he use the T word? Really? In the first post he discusses three different cities.

Atlanta is the poster child for sprawl, and as a result it has hardly any alternatives to cars: 89 percent of workers drive; less than 4 percent take public transit.

Boston is an older city, with an extensive transit system from the days when most people didn’t have cars. Even so, 79 percent of the labor force drives to work, but 11 percent do take public transit.

And then there’s Toronto. It’s still more auto-centered than not — but 22 percent of workers take public transit.

The thing about Toronto, they never got rid of their streetcars. I wonder how much that has to do with their ability to keep transit numbers up. Now they are off on a light rail expansion to fill in some gaps.

You can read some more thoughts on Krugman's posts here(Bellows), here(Yglesias), here(City Comforts), and (BT). Are things starting to change in the US? Are people actually starting to discuss land use and transportation? Frank at Orphan Road covers this as well:

I've been ranting for a while now about the connection between land use patterns and energy consumption, but for a whle it seemed like shouting into the wind, especially as national politicians talked about how some magic pill like ethanol was going to solve all our problems. Lately, though, it seems like the connection between land use, public transit, energy consumption and national security is finally starting to gel in people's minds.

I hope you're right.

Dumb Idea

Governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano decided not to tax sprawl homebuilders and instead asked them to help raise the sales tax for transportation. First off, homebuilders are the ones that gain the most from new transit and transportation infrastructure, they should pay for it. Second, why are they still building in that desert???

Arnold on HSR

From the Financial Times quoting Governor Schwarzenegger on a trip with French President Sarkozy:

"I could not believe we were going at 350km an hour"

Believe it Governor, and make it happen here.

Obama at Hayward Field

ph.obama_00724_5-9-08.jpg
Originally uploaded by oregonianphoto

Man this is pretty cool for a track fan. Barack Obama at the Mecca of Track and Field in the United States. Hayward Field. Flotrack will have a video tomorrow I'll post up if I can get the code.

History Lesson: Demise of Twin Cities Rapid Transit

Twin Cities Rapid Transit was one of the best streetcar companies in the country before its demise. It's secondly most famous for the streetcar burning photos that many cite when discussing conspiracy theories.


Well part of the story I had never heard before was told on one of my listserves by transit expert and former Deputy Secretary of Transportation for Pennsylvania Ed Tennyson. He states that at one point TCRT had saved up $10 million dollars to buy new streetcars and repair the tracks but got destroyed by Wall Street speculators. Well, I'll let his words tell the story. I'll add links for emphasis:

The Twin City street car to bus conversion was ironically caused by a pro-street car management, a man named Strouse, I think he was. During gasoline rationing he saved up ten million dollars ($ 160 million at today's prices) to buy more PCC cars, re-lay more track, moderninze the rail system.

A shrewd vulture on Wall Street named Green saw all that money in the bank and solicited the stockholder votes to throw out the sfreet car management so Green could disburse all that money to stockholders including himself. His first attempt failed as the stockholder had pride in the company but inflation hit them (and everyone else) so Green prevailed on his second take over attempt. Strouse was fired and the money was paid out to stockholders leaving nothing for renewals.

Wall Street neophytes saw those big dividends and sent the stock price soaring. Green soid his. Buy low and sell high. Local politicians took Green's place, one named Fred Osanna(In the picture above), a political lawyer. He got a promise from General Motors to loan him all the money he needed to rid the city of street cars and they had National City Lines send him their Barney Larrick to manage the job.

Since there would be no more profits, Osanna and Larrick sold all of the copper wires, car baen property and salvage from scrapping cars to their wives or other relatives at a rock bottom price. Their relatives waited a few weeks then sold all the junk on the market for far more than they paid Twin City Rapid Transit for it. Roy Chalk did the same thing in Washington but was careful not to go to jail. Osanna and Larrick both went to jail, for defrauding the other stockholders.

Austin Hits the Pause Button

It seems that Austin is going to take a breath on the issue of light rail. This means no election in the fall. But another alarming issue is the loss of direct flights from Austin's airport. In fact, being a smaller non-hub airport, this means that with rising gas costs and cuts, traffic could drop. But why does that matter for rail? Because one of Brewster's plans was to use revenue from the airport to connect a line there. In fact there was a huge list of possible funding sources. If I were Austin, I wouldn't rule it out, but I might be worried that it won't produce as much as expected. Now that there won't be an election in the fall, perhaps folks have time to think up a few more sources. And perhaps it's more important now to start thinking about high speed rail to make the short connections in Texas.

Increasing Value

In Toronto a study recently completed posits that with the completion of the Spadina Line expansion, land costs will have risen 20%. I hope they are doing something to capture some of that increased value. The Star reports.

"In the future, these areas will outperform the rest of the region. If the market goes up everywhere, these areas will increase by 10 to 20 per cent or more. If values in the GTA drop, these will drop by 10to 20 per cent less," forecasts Campbell.

Campbell said he doesn't own property in the area, but will be looking this week for multi-residential units as an investment.

Access to transportation is just one of many real estate criteria used to determine value, but it is becoming increasingly important as highways grow more congested and gas prices increase.

The Tragedy of California

Yglesias laments the weather wasted in Southern California. I would include Northern California and most of the Bay Area that is not served by transit in that assessment.

The thing you really forget about the deplorable land use and development patterns in southern California (and the Southwest more generally) until you come back out here is how goddamn nice the weather is, a fact that takes the situation out of the realm of farce and into tragedy. You know what a good place to never walk anywhere would be? Boston or Chicago in the winter. Or maybe DC or New York in the summer. That's some nasty weather to be walking around in.

But LA would be a great place to walk or ride a bike to work all year 'round. But it's our bad weather belt that has the walkable cities, and our sunny and temperate all the time region that barely has sidewalks.

Miami Faces Some Hurdles, Is the Next Dulles

Miami has been trying to build its North Corridor Metro line for a while now. Today the Miami Herald discusses an increased push on the part of the local leaders for the line.

Desperate to regain a shot at $700 million in federal funding for expanded Metrorail service, Miami-Dade leaders promised Monday to quickly improve the county transit department's financial and operational plans.

''We're going to have to have not only great planning, but great action,'' said U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, who prodded the Federal Transit Administration to write a step-by-step plan last month for reviving the county's funding application.

This is another Dulles. I fully expect to see Peters and Simpson to whip out a big red pen on this project. The Feds don't believe in Metros and will not as long as they are compared to highways using highway metrics. They've made it abundantly clear that all they care about is tolls and roads. Don't believe the lip service.