The Others

John over at RT Rider has an interesting post about his observations of a lady who clearly didn't feel comfortable at the bus stop with folks that weren't like her. This comes on the same day that I have a discussion with a person I had invited to a concert next week. Since the show is downtown, I asked if we could meet somewhere off of Muni so she didn't have to walk through a somewhat seedy part of Market Street by herself. She responded that she didn't take transit. Oh she'd tried it a few times but transit had always let her down.

The first thing that came to mind was oh man, we are not going to get along, the second was, how much different is the transit riding experience to females than it is to someone such as me who is somewhat tall, somewhat driven to take transit, and can be a bit scary myself when I haven't shaved in a bit? Would ridership go up if the situation were improved such that females felt safer and more comfortable on transit? I know many girls that are pretty hardcore about transit and aren't worried at all. But then there are those that I know that don't like to take it, especially alone. I think improving it for those types would improve it for everyone. Is that a standard to meet?

Muni History - Video of Twin Peaks Tunnel Opening

George B sent this to one of my email lists and if you're from San Francisco you'll appreciate it for sure.

So Basically...

the TEP was just a way to figure out which routes to cut. Awesome. You know, more people would take transit if you weren't always screwing them over. Though its not just Muni. You can give a big kiss to your state legislature for giving transit the bird over the next five years. And Gavin, you can take your Gubernatorial run and shove it down your fake green... anyone else angry?

Milwaukie Max Gets into PE

I hope that means that the New Starts Report lists are coming out soon. Can't wait for that data mine. Makes me wonder what other lines made it into Preliminary Engineering. Here's an interesting look though into what happens when transit agencies submit to the FTA.

In applying for preliminary engineering, TriMet sent the transit administration a six-foot stack of documents on the project.

What a waste of paper. I'm sure everyone has a copy.

The Problem is Not Just in Atlanta

Jay Bookman always has great columns in the AJC about how messed up things are in Atlanta and Georgia in general. But after reading it, it just sounds like every other MPO or State issue in the country. Too much money gets political and not data driven attention and that means a lot of money generated by Metro areas gets funneled into the less urban parts of the state. Even within metro areas the funding goes to the suburbs rather than urban areas. This is why I'm worried that in most places, even funding the MPOs by bypassing the state won't be good enough to step the tide of urban underinvestment.

If transportation funds were instead allocated on the basis of data, need and transportation impact, metro Atlanta would fare much better. This is where the need is greatest; this is where the impact would be most noticeable. But that’s not how things work.

State leaders are now trying to muscle through a “reform” of the system. But rather than make our transportation planning more professional and data-driven, the goal is to make it even it more political. For example, it is supposedly “reform” to give the Legislature the power to spend up to 20 percent of transportation money on projects it gets to approve. Now, how many professional transportation planners sit in the General Assembly? Do you think that money will be allocated to where it would do the most good for Georgia, or to where it would do the most good for powerful legislators?

In Texas, they are deciding on a bill to allow regions to tax themselves, and in recent years it's been state legislators who have cut it down for what I can see because they just are against taxes. It's not about letting people decide for themselves that they need more local funding. In fact, this need to raise taxes is a direct function of funding not being allocated correctly in the first place.

I do have to disagree with Jay on one thing, traffic isn't the issue. They've had more than enough money to build roads that are rediculously huge and part of the reason why traffic is so bad is because of Metro Atlanta's land use problem. They have let developers go nuts wherever they want and subsequently people are living in one place and driving everywhere to get there. I highly suggest A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe for some real estate fiction based on Atlanta.

Ridership Ahead in Phoenix

It's really not known when the initial novelty of the line wears off but I would say around 6 months you really know what you're gonna get. With that said, Phoenix is showing signs of promise at sticking to over 35% of projections.

Ridership for the Valley's new light-rail system appears to be stabilizing at a level well above expectations, Metro's chief executive officer said Wednesday. Although passenger counts for March were incomplete, Rick Simonetta cautioned, data collected through three and a half weeks show the average number of boardings during weekdays was more than 34,300.

Giving Up the Ghost

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I'm tired of always being on the losing end of things and have decided to switch. I'm giving up being pro rail and deciding to go with the winners in the anti-transit movement. I've taken a long hard look at all the BS rail projects I've been advocating for over the last three years of this blog and decided that really they are too expensive and don't give the flexibility that buses give. In fact, building more rail is likely to cause greater gridlock.

I'm also thinking about leaving San Francisco and it's hatred of cars. Because of its lack of zoning, I can become a developer in Houston and make tons of money building anything anywhere I want, unless there is a deed restriction of course. I'll be sure and build lots of parking and hopefully I can meet up with my friend Robert Bruegmann who has converted me to the ways of doing things right.

And can we give up on this lefty fantasy for high speed rail already? I'm tired of having to fight off people that know so much more about HSR than the experts. Especially folks in Palo Alto. They really know thier stuff. Why can't we just let them have their way and be done with it. Besides, rail is a 19th century technology.

Finally, stop making me pay for other people's transit. We subsidize the hell out of public transit and in a free market world (the United States is the best place in the world because it has a completely unfettered market) it should pay for itself. This article says everything I want to say and more but just felt like I couldn't being a good liberal and all.

But maybe the taxpayers grew tired of subsidizing a failed government-run transit system. According to the March 29 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Metro system is bleeding money. It faces an operating deficit of $45 million in 2009 – expected to reach $50 million in 2010.

All transit is a failure. I'm just realizing this now but wish I would have just given in years ago. I want to be on the winning side for once. Let's stop building rail lines and start building more roads. And get those bikes and pedestrians off my street. It was designed for cars and should stay that way.

Anyways, if you believe that I would ever say any of the stuff above Happy April Fools. Hopefully you didn't get suckered again.

Curious Cameras on Trams

I thought this was an interesting video from 1908. I think people knew the camera was on the streetcar, and just like today were trying to ham it up.

Calculating Social Justice

I love how the blogosphere works. Someone posts on an older story and makes it relevant again and it screams across the blogs like a meteor. Today STB posted on an older Intermodality post that got to Ryan which I imagine is where it got picked up by Markos of teh big Orange.

Kos' post also brought me to this post at A Future Oakland that put forward some fun stats that drive me crazy every time the social justice folks bring them up, which they do often. The issue I have is with the use of the National Transit database to compare subsidy across different mode types for the sole purpose of saying that one mode is better for poor or minority folks than others. Why they always want to pick this fight is beyond me and its a symptom of thier not being able to connect the different types of modes and thier function to regional job opportunty expansion for lower income job seekers. Check out this chart from Public Advocates dot org, a law firm devoted to social justice.

You can see that the chart doesn't discuss income levels but rather race, I imagine as a proxy for income levels? I'm also not sure what they mean by subsidy but I'm guessing its Capital funding+operating per rider? And as an issue, these lines all perform different services at different distances which affects the costs. No mention that BART and Caltrain riders pay higher fares than AC Transit riders. No mention that per passenger mile (a standard measure across modes), Caltrain and BART are far more efficient than AC Transit. There are a couple of reasons for this and AC's would be better compared to itself if it didn't include the less productive routes or $40 a trip paratransit but those are necessary services.

I want to believe in the social justice movement but they shoot themselves in the foot with dumb charts like this that don't tell me anything except that they don't understand transit operations or regional connectivity to jobs for lower income workers. If I were arguing on the social justice angle, I would start by saying that funding for road expansions is being wasted on suburbs that are leaching tax base and making people spend more of thier hard earned money on transportation. We also shouldn't be saying that AC is more efficient because thats false based on per passenger mile comparison and its operating type. Comparing AC to Caltrain per rider based on 20 mile trip versus a mile or two mile trip is rediculous and doesn't get us anywhere. Based on the 2007 NTD here are the comparisons for operating costs:

Caltrain is 27 cents per passenger mile.
BART is 34 cents per passenger mile
AC is $1.32 per passenger mile.

If we're going to look at capital and operating per passenger mile, it comes out to this in 2007:

BART: 50.9 cents per passenger mile
Caltrain: 60.3 cents per passenger mile
AC Tranist: $1.57 per passenger mile

Versus a Per Trip operations calculation:

AC Transit is $4.02
BART is $4.21
Caltrain is $7.28

What the argument should be is that expansion funding should stop going to stuff like ebart and expansion freeways and should start going to core expansion of AC Transit, Muni, BART, Caltrain Metro East etc. Put the transit where the riders are and it will be helpful for everyone to connect with job opportunities.

This culture war against rail that takes people to job centers in places like Concord and Walnut Creek needs to stop. Would it be more efficient to run buses? No. First that means more cars on the freeway because less people would be taking transit. It also means that more of downtown Oakland and San Franciso would be parking lots inducing less walking trips overall. But if we didn't look at regional transit systems, we would be allowing the bay area fiefdoms of transit to limit the job opportunities for low income workers. In Portland, the Max lines actually allow workers to reach a greater number of opportunities. This 2006 paper on economic development for the FTA by Strategic Economics shows an interesting chart below. But basically regional connectivity provides more opportunities for jobs that make it possible for upward mobility.

A preliminary analysis of transit ridership by industry and occupation in Portland, Oregon indicates that fixed guideway transit connects to more diverse employment opportunities than local bus. An Entropy Index was used to measure the diversity of incomes for occupations in industries with the highest percentage of transit ridership in the region. Entropy index scores are stated as a decimal and the lower the number, the more concentrated the occupational and income mix within that industry.

As Table 1 shows, industries with high percentages of bus ridership also tend to have low Entropy Index scores for an overall average of 0.54. For the most part, these were industries with a high percentage of low wage jobs. However, industries where workers use fixed guideway transit and/or bus and fixed guideway transit to get to work had a much greater diversity income diversity with an average index score of 0.89. This analysis demonstrates that fixed-guideway transit provides connectivity to jobs with different income opportunities, and possibly greater opportunities for advancement, while bus provides the best connectivity for workers in predominantly low-income industries with little opportunity for advancement.

If anything, the issue of expansion should point to the fact that suburban jurisdictions have too much power in how transportation funds are allocated. If it were equitable towards the core, services such as AC Transit would get more funding for more service, but it wouldn't make them more efficient in moving people. They are still a bus company.

This should tell you that MTC is shafting Oakland and San Francisco by not spending more on more efficient rail and metro type service for trunk lines that would serve hundreds of thousands of people. Compare the expansion of BART to San Jose versus a Geary Subway. A Geary Subway would cost around $3 billion and carry 100,000 riders easy the first day. The BART to San Jose line will not get anywhere close to that ridership number and cost a lot more money. These are the decisions that are being made based on regional politics rather than real expansion needs. The up front costs are more but the efficiency of operations leads to less cuts and better travel times for all riders in the core and connections beyond.

Just because people are poor or of a different race doesn't mean they deserve inferior or just one type of service. A network of service that serves different travel sheds is the best way to get people to thier jobs and open up the region for opportunity for all. The fight against the modes that take people further needs to be better thought out as a regional strategy for improving core service rather than pitting modes against each other, especially operations as efficient as BART or Caltrain. It's not very productive and the way the social justice movement is going now can only fail if they are going to bring data such as the chart above to the game.

Flame on...

The Indigo Line

The Fairmount Line is the only T Commuter rail line that stays within the Boston city limits. It's also been neglected over the years with poor maintenance and limited stations through one of the more challenged neighborhoods in Boston. However there have been recent plans by the CDCs to add five or so stations and make this line a part of the rapid transit network and use the new station construction to get better service on the line as well as more opportunities for affordable housing. Because of the patterns of parcelization and built out nature of the corridor, it would be hard to expect a major renaissance but small progress is to be expected.

Better service would definitely improve the corridor too. It will be interesting to see how it works out. Recent planning and funding put forward by the Patrick administration suggests that this will be done soon but rejoicing should wait until its actually complete. For more information on this corridor, check out the report chapter by Reconnecting America that discusses tools and policies for revitalization. (Warning, 38MB)