Documents You Shouldn't Use Against Transit

I have a problem with people using documents they don't quite understand to fight against transit they don't understand. In a recent Daily Planet article, there's a lady who argues that transit lines often overestimate ridership and underestimate cost. She uses the Contractor Assessment Report to make her point.

An August 2007 study by the Federal Transit Administration entitled “Contractor Performance Assessment Report” compared average weekday boardings for completed projects with the predictions made during the EIR process. Of 19 New Starts projects (mostly light rail), 16 had boardings below the forecasts, with some as low as 20-30 percent of forecast figures.

Ridership forecasts for busways performed even more poorly, according to the report, where “none of the available busway forecasts proved to be accurate. It appears from the limited sample that forecasts of ridership on busway projects . . . will not exceed 41 percent of the forecasts.”

First off, the busways in this study were either in freeway right of ways like Houston or built on an existing freight right of way as a new road like in Pittsburgh. These bear no resemblance at all to the arterial running Oakland BRT plan and should not be compared to them as much as I think these first generation busway projects show that buses are no replacement for rail.

This is a document that was done a number of years ago but recently cleaned up and released by the Bush administration folks under Ma Peters. It was a follow up to the famous Pickrell Report which was used by wingers and libertarians alike to say that transit was worthless. But as Todd Litman notes, you can't take the start number and compare it to the end when you have design changes in the middle of the plan among other things.

Studies by Pickrell (1992) and Flyvbjerg (2005) suggested that many earlier rail transit projects exceeded projected costs and failed to achieve first-year ridership predictions. But much of what Pickrell classified as cost overruns where actually adjustments due to design changes...

The FEIS numbers are also from the late 80's early 90's when ridership models for transit were still being honed due to the fact that we had just started building transit projects again after a long time off with a few metro subway lines in between. I'm not going to say things were perfect and there were some mistakes made, but I feel like now the FTA is starting to overcompensate for that. Recently ridership has been going over estimates like Charlotte, Denver, Minneapolis etc etc. In this report, the ridership estimates are extrapolated which make it look a bit worse if you look at the numbers without looking at the year they were forcast for. I'll also note that building automated guideways was a bad idea back then. 6% of ridership is really bad.

Ridership forecasts are developed to reflect trips in a particular year. For eleven of the twentyone projects included in this study, the ridership forecast year remains in the future (as of this writing).

The Capital Costs aren't anything different from what you would find with major freeway projects. Some over and some under the final estimate. But my main problem is using this report against transit at all, especially since the processes are completely different now. I know this report will get used again against transit at some point in the future, but I really wish it wouldn't, because without context, its worthless.

Guess Who!

Just when you thought you could go a year without hearing his name, he pops his car loving face up through the wack a mole hole to write another bs study on rail. Never mind that he has been debunked more times than anyone can remember, he still gets his funding from the Reason Foundation. You know, that place that doesn't believe in transportation choice and believes that the free market = automobiles. It doesn't hurt that they are funded by oil companies and beneficiaries.

But on to the report. Here's the first zinger.

It is possible that HSR can serve legitimate public and environmental purposes and be a financial success in California. However, the current CHSRA proposal cannot achieve such objectives.

I'm not sure what other CHSRA proposal they were referring to, like they were proposing another one? Perhaps we should wait 20 years right? Because it will be so much cheaper. Why do they even say this when they don't even believe it.

Here's another favorite:

It should give pause that previous HSR projects have been halted in three states—California (for Los Angeles–San Diego), Texas and Florida. The federally sponsored HSR program for Boston– New York–Washington serves only a fraction of its projected ridership and carries a fraction of the passengers that European and Japanese lines carry.

Because you can compare real high speed rail with a line that barely gets over 100 miles per hour. Apples to Apples right? And how about the Texas comparison, where HSR was stopped by airline lobbiests for Southwest Airlines, because they were so scared of what it would do to thier business.

I could go on but you really don't want to read my rant. If so inclined you can read the report for yourself. It's pretty gross and has a lot of generalizations.

And yes...they play the fear card.

Terrorism against rail targets is a concern considering the extent of attacks that continue to occur on rail systems around the world.

Typical of current culture warrior thinking. When you can't win with the facts, try to scare people.

Ma Peters Doesn't Want You to Spend on Infrastructure

What? So weird.

Turn of the Century

Ever wondered where the population centers were at the turn of the century after the railroads had taken hold? Well here's your map. Very cool.

H/T Mike Lydon

Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries

Super Capacitors in Transit

New technology is gaining ground really fast. A promising development in energy storage is the nanoflower supercapacitor. The reason why its so important is that if perfected, it would be possible for light rail lines to gain more power through regenerative breaking and burst through intersections or short stretches of track without connecting to overhead wires.

Standard Response: X Project is a Black Hole

I've noticed a lot of taxpayer associations popping up talking about black holes. Perhaps they are scared of a certain super collider, but its usually a rail line that will severely hamper their ability to drive. Right? I mean they are freedom destroyers. This one is in response to the Norfolk Light Rail to Virginia Beach:

"This project is nothing but a black hole on the backs of the taxpayers," said Robert Dean of the Virginia Beach Taxpayer Alliance.

Project Name - Verb - Black Hole

Those Pie Charts Again

Rob Puentes at Brookings used the pies to talk to congress (Grist has a greater review here, and you can get the speech transcript here). A few commenters on Yglesias' site said well duh, people in the center city are richer. Really? Well let's debunk that right now with a report by CNT on the diversity of housing near transit. Areas around transit stations are more diverse than the region as a whole.

Eighty-six percent of transit zones are either more economically diverse, more racially diverse or more diverse on both points than the average census tract (when the comparison area is either the average of all central city tracts in the region if the given transit zone is in the central city, or the average of all suburban tracts in the region if the given transit zone is in a suburb). This is especially true in regions with extensive transit systems — Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco — but is not limited to these cities. Diverse transit zones are present in all transit regions, including Dallas, Cleveland and Syracuse. Furthermore, 59 percent of residents near transit are people of color.

This backs up my point that in order to increase income diversity around transit, we need to have more extensive transit systems. That way, it doesn't become such a niche market. A few other findings from the report:

Diversity is found in central city transit zones and suburban (non-central city) transit zones, suggesting that the low transportation costs and the increased accessibility that transit offers supports diversity in both urban and suburban contexts.

Neighborhoods near transit provide housing to a greater share of the region’s lower-income households than regions overall.

Transit zones support important segments of the population in terms of both housing tenure and household size.

Transit zones have a greater than average proportion of homeowners who spend more than 30 percent of income on housing: 35 percent versus 31 percent.

Transit zones provide important mobility opportunities — and the economic benefits that accrue from it — that allow people to live with fewer cars. In three-quarters of transit zones, households have one car or less. In some small transit systems, fully 100 percent of transit zones house a majority of households with one car or less. This low rate of auto ownership is true for higher-income households in transit zones as well as lower-income ones.

Transit zones provide important environmental benefits given their high rates of non-auto travel to work and low rates of land consumption per household.

I suggest reading it, but those are the basics.

Things I Like To Hear

What Joe Biden says:

In the next car, Biden told another passenger that “If we get elected, it will be the most train-friendly administration ever.”

Actions are always better than words, but this is the right direction.

John Kerry Considering HSR Bill?

Not sure but apparently there's something a brewing....

Related Cinema

Batman Begins

Bruce Wayne: Did you build this train, Dad?
Thomas Wayne: Gotham's been good to our family, but the city's been suffering. People less fortunate than us have been enduring very hard times. So we built a new, cheap, public transportation system to unite the city. And at the center...Wayne Tower.
Bruce Wayne: Is that where you work?
Thomas Wayne: No, I work at the hospital. I leave the running of our company to much better men.
Bruce Wayne: Better?
Thomas Wayne: Well...more interested men.