Information Underload 101

This is about the 100th article by Ben Wear about the cost of the Capital Metro Commuter Rail Line. Sure it's something citizens want to hear about, but in a more intelligent world, he would be asking questions about how the system is only going to have a few runs a day and the technical details of what would fix that or how it got to this point that anything even needed to be fixed. You know, information that would keep something disappointing like that from happening again. Or possibly how light rail downtown could possibly realign development in Austin or even how there are a billion different ways to fund transit lines with innovative ideas. But no, Austin is stuck with yet another article about the cost of the line.

As you all know, I'm not a reporter. But if I were to write a column on transportation, I would probably educate myself about what the best practices are around the country and fill my feed reader with every single piece of transportation information I can to inform my writing. I try to do that anyway but I don't get paid to write and I don't have a whole city to inform. But newspapers wonder why they are losing readers and market share to other sources and I would say its because the information they give is just too basic, especially on issues such as transportation.

While blog commentary will never take the place of reporting, they are creating an elevated discussion about niche issues such as transit and development. As I was discussing with a colleague the other day, if we were relating blogs to college courses, newspapers are often the intro courses and blogs the upper level electives. Feel free to look at the course schedule.

Update 1.30.09: David has more on newspaper issues including simple things they can do like linking out.

Thursday Links

Portland Transport has photos of Oregon Iron Works first American made streetcar.
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A high speed rail connection will soon be forged between Helsinki and St. Petersburgh Russia. I imagine that would be quite the beautiful trip.
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Looks like Gavin was talking a bit too fast for the bus boys at AC Transit.

Fernandez told Newsom that if he wants the first phase of the Transbay Terminal project delayed until funding is secured for the rail piece, terms of an agreement between AC Transit and the Transbay board may be ''threatened or violated.'' He asked the mayor to clarify his intentions.

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The Fort Worth Streetcar is moving forward. Kevin updates us and notes that they are thinking of paying for part of the capital with toll revenue.

The Marketing Worked...Too Well?

No one I know thinks the Caltrain baby bullet is actually fast in terms of overall speed. Especially when compared to say a Shinkansen, TGV, or ICE train. But the marketing seems to have worked so well, some on the peninsula are asking, why do we need high speed rail if we've already got the Baby Bullet. The HSR Compatability Blog answers that question in full detail. The short answer, there is a reason it's only a baby.

Crazy Pills All Around!

We have nothing to show for tossing bones to the R's. They got concessions but we know the bill got watered down because of it. Now the auto industry is going to be using our money to be dinosaurs. What did we vote for in November. I forgot.

At least more funding got into the package. And Mr. Dukakis assures us that the future will be good.

Wired.com: The Obama administration has promised more rail and transit funding. Are we going to see things start to happen?

Dukakis: No question about it. This economic mess we're in has actually turned out to be a huge opportunity to invest in transit projects. Despite the concerns out there, I think this is a huge opportunity.

Wired.com: What concerns?

Dukakis: There's worry that the states just aren't ready to move on stuff. They haven't done the planning and the engineering they need to jump into major projects when the funding is there. We have a major construction-management problem in this country. In Massachusetts, the governor wants to build a four-mile light-rail extension using existing right of way [tracks and property that are already in place], and it's going to take six years to complete. How can that be? Chinese and Irish immigrants were laying four miles of track a day on the transcontinental railroad, and that was in the 1860s.

Was there any money for engineering in the bill? I agree that it shouldn't take six years to build the green line. It should have been done yesterday. But unless there is some sort of signal from the administration that engineering should begin and go faster on more of these lines because the money will start flowing, there's no reason for transit agencies to push harder for it. That just means that the cycle continues as to whether it should be done at all. This is why the next transportation bill is so important. Let's get it right.

The Recycling Bin

Is anyone else tired of the same old recycled junk? Can someone remind me if the Interstate Highway System we started building in the 1950's ever turned a profit. I think it was a long term investment that granted returns in other ways. Some good, some not so good. From the Wall Street Journal on the stimulus:

We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years...

How many times do you think these guys took the Acela to DC to hang out with thier cronies. I guess they don't believe in the investment. Rupert's opinion page hacks are dumber than a box of rocks. This is a gem though:

Most of the rest of this project spending will go to such things as renewable energy funding ($8 billion) or mass transit ($6 billion) that have a low or negative return on investment. Most urban transit systems are so badly managed that their fares cover less than half of their costs. However, the people who operate these systems belong to public-employee unions that are campaign contributors to . . . guess which party?

Would you like some cheese with that whine? Does no one on the R team understand how all transportation works? It's like they believe air traffic controllers come from magical fairly land and highway funds come out of an oil derrick. Where did they get these opinions from anyways? It certainly wasn't from the Manhattan news staff, most of whom I'm sure drive to work right?? I heard the cracker jack factory had some openings. Perhaps you could fill the boxes with this noise.

They Elect Representatives

More on the Virginia Beach saga. An editorial in the local paper is calling on city leaders to be..well..leaders. Apparently back in 1999 while sister city Norfolk was moving forward with its light rail plan under the guidance of its leaders, the folks in Virginia Beach passed the buck.

Ten years ago, the council abdicated its responsibility, punting the issue to voters with no recommendations and too little information. Eight of 11 members declined even to take a position.

Then-Vice Mayor Will Sessoms and Councilwoman Barbara Henley said they supported light rail but did not actively campaign for it. Not surprisingly, in the absence of information and leadership, voters rejected it. The 1999 referendum became an excuse to delay action on the Norfolk Southern line, a critical corridor for the city's future.

I'm amazed of late how much politicians who were elected to lead want to hide behind voters to make decisions for them or decide that they want things to be bipartisan if only for the reason that they can blame the other side when things go wrong. Take for example the stimulus package. At this very moment I'm sure its getting watered down in hopes of bipartisanship, something one side has made clear they don't believe.

But the Virginian Pilot makes a good point:

Voters don't decide which highways get built, whether the government should mail taxpayers stimulus checks or send troops to the Middle East. They elect representatives to make those decisions.

If Virginia Beach's leaders support moving forward with light rail, they must publicly make the case for it, one strong enough to sway the city's voters.

Why is it that we can build roads and don't have to ask anyone but when we make an investment in transit we have to ask usually not once, but a number of times to do it. Politicos always hide behind the decision when they should be embracing it. In cities where they have rejected rail referendums, they have been feeling it the last year. In cities where leaders and voters have made it happen, they have benefited from the investment, even if its short of what it should really be.

Quote of the Day

I just had to copy Frank:

So state gas taxes are sort of like tobacco taxes… if the tobacco revenue were funneled into advertising cigarettes.

MTC Meeting Tonight

It might still be possible to get more money to bikes and transit projects from MTC. Check out Transbay Blog's post about tomorrow's meeting. If you go, tell them to shove the road money.

My annoyance goes far. They have done no modeling to see what would happen with Oakland or San Francisco core BART expansions in terms of land use and green house gas changes. There's no real true modeling as the Streetsblog post mentions to real bike infrastructure and improvements to Muni and other agency bus movement would go a long way as well. Curbing cars with congestion pricing downtown would be good, but only if they improve transit capacity and speeds into downtown and the areas within the cordon. As I always say, it shouldn't take me an hour to go three miles on the bus. That should be the goal, better transit service, not better car service during peak hours.

Pushing Hard or Hardly Pushing?

Where was Gavin during the campaign? I know a lot of people like Gavin, but I can't stand his moves on transit. It just seems like he's never pushed very hard for big ideas and he's always kind of floated in the wind when it comes to them, waiting till the last minute to voice the right answer. Sometimes he's all wrong on auto issues like allowing cars into Golden Gate park on the weekends.

Why isn't the TEP getting a French push like HSR? How come its not getting hammered in right now? He could be a real leader on that. I'm glad to see he's behind HSR. But it would have been nice to hear him scream about it during the campaign.

When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Larry?

A number of recent blog posts as well as Peter DeFazio in an interview with Rachel Maddow have pointed blame for the reduction in rail funding in the stimulus package at the Obama folks and more directly at former treasury secretary and Obama advisor Larry Summers. It's not surprising that he is in favor of tax cuts given his plea for them even before the economic slowdown in 2007. Recently he's become a convert to infrastructure in words alone, but it doesn't seem like the actions are following through. Instead they've put in tax cuts as funding for infrastructure, particularly rail was junked. But as Tom states at Angry Bear:

The underlying problem is that helicoptering money to "consumers" by way of tax cuts or lump-sum grants a la last year's stimulus payments does little or nothing to help satisfy demands that are latent due to incomplete markets. Give me $100 and I can drive to Chicago for the day, not insignificantly because past public infrastructure spending built the roads from here to there. Give everyone in Madison $100 and it still does sod all for extending the Amtrak Hiawatha service, seeing as the city was cut off from such passenger rail network as still exists in the upper Midwest and reconnecting it requires a substantial investment. Maybe in libertarian fantasyland, there are no such things as collective action problems, but elsewhere overcoming them may be considered to be a useful function of government.

As opponents like to say, 90% of people drive, well then we should spend 90% on roads. But its a cycle of spending that causes this to happen. As we've seen in places like Copenhagen, if you build infrastructure to support other modes such as cycling and transit, you will get more and more riders and shift the policies. This is what we did in the 50's in support of the automobile. It was a collective push to increase funding and regulations for that mode that led to its rise. At the time, many felt it was the way of the future, but looking back we know that was completely wrong.

But the issue with the stimulus that continues is the fact that we aren't doing enough and a lot of people don't seem to understand what is "enough". Calling $3 billion adequate is kind of lame, especially given the $250 billion in new projects that are in que as well as the thought that California's high speed rail line would be $40 itself. There is a want for a national high speed rail network, or at least start of work on the key city to city lines that would increase productivity and connectivity. And the excuse that it won't be started fast enough is based on existing FTA and DOT timelines in which transit is suffocated based on underfunding. Another excuse is that we should wait for the next transportation bill. But if we are able to make investments now and write a bill that can fold some of them in, why not do it?

While many will point to the New Deal as a major part of what got us out of the depression, the cap was World War II in which we turned auto plants into tank and plane manufacturers and people saved instead of continuing thier spending. No extra rubber around for new cars, only for the war effort. In fact, this poster reminds us of the lengths people took to save energy and resources. Imagine if in this time period of hardship people were asked to save a little more and come together to build or invest in more of what is needed such as education and technology.


If I were in charge, perhaps I would have an office of infrastructure reconciliation. This means bringing our rail infrastructure up to a current standard and increasing output dramatically, much like China. We'll have to also wait and see on the idea of an infrastructure bank but this is no time to comprimise or seek middle ground as Mr. Summers stated Obama will do. Tax cuts are an idea of the Republicans, thier solution to EVERYTHING over the last 30 years. After a while, there's not much left to cut. Look where that has gotten us. Seems like this is a time to strike forward with big thoughts and ideas.