west north

Every once in a while, I forget to update the blog — I posted all of twice last month. Sorry about that. (However, some inbound links meant that last month was actually a record for page-views — and I do have that annoying habit of rewriting old posts instead of writing new ones. Hey, it’s recycling!) Some bookmarks for future reference:

* Want a preview of the parking-based congestion pricing strategy that’s coming to downtown Chicago? Check out the SFpark Smart Parking Management Program, now being rolled out under the same USDOT Urban Partnership Program. SF MTA also focuses on the benefits to drivers, which (unfortunately) the press here has neglected. DC has also started a “performance parking” program around its new baseball stadium, although they’ve sensibly (per Shoup) taken the revenues and reinvested them locally rather than citywide. DC is also investigating similar ideas for its upcoming zoning rewrite. (h/t: PedShed)

* At first glance, a collapse in SUV demand (”Some desperate car dealers and consumers are willing to lose thousands of dollars just to get rid of their SUVs”) might seem like a boon for safety. And it will be, over the long run, as these monsters will make up a smaller proportion of vehicles on the road. (Engines tuned for efficiency rather than power should also dampen the deadly horsepower race.)

“The SUV craze was a bubble and now it is bursting,” said George Hoffer, an economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University whose research focuses on the automotive industry. “It’s an irrational vehicle. It’ll never come back.”

As Keith Bradsher pointed out in High & Mighty, though, the bursting of that bubble will put cheap used SUVs into the hands of used-car buyers: a demographic group that is nowhere near as careful with their cars as the new-car buyers are. Millions of SUVs are reason enough to fear the roads; millions of SUVs with failing brakes and transmissions, driven by under/un-insured young drivers? Even worse.

One policy that could simultaneously (and rapidly) reduce gas demand and improve safety? A gas tax used (in part) to buy back and scrap gas guzzlers, as proposed by economist Philip Verleger and mentioned here in 2005. (Globe article via Streetsblog)

* Looking for inspiration in re-imagining ugly urban arterials like Ashland or Western? Take a look at the many “Avenue” corridor plans created throughout Toronto in recent years.

* The Dalai Lama is reputed to have once posed this koan: “What would the world be like if everyone drove a motor car?” Here’s a hint, from a Times article by Jad Mouawad:

William Chandler, an energy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, estimates that if the Chinese were using energy like Americans, global energy use would double overnight and five more Saudi Arabias would be needed just to meet oil demand. India isn’t far behind. By 2030, the two counties will import as much oil as the United States and Japan do today.

New oil “production” (extraction) is growing slowly, and yet demand is booming. Part of the result is skyrocketing prices, which will hopefully dampen demand. But will it dampen demand by the 11 billion of barrels annually we’ll need to restore market equilibrium?

global oil consumption will jump by some 35 percent by the year 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, a leading global energy forecaster for the United States and other developed nations. For producers it will mean somehow finding and pumping an additional 11 billion barrels of oil every year.

And, of course, discouraging words about the US.

What about the United States? The country has shown little willingness to address its energy needs in a rational way. James Schlesinger, the nation’s first energy secretary in the 1970s, once said the United States was capable of only two approaches to its energy policy: “complacency or crisis.”

The United States is the only major industrialized nation to see its oil consumption surge since the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s. This can partly be explained by the fact that the United States has some of the lowest gasoline prices in the world, the least fuel-efficient cars on the roads, the lowest energy taxes, and the longest daily commutes of any industrialized nation. The result: about a quarter of the world’s oil goes to the United States every day, and of that, more than half goes to its cars and trucks.

So, basically, America’s cars and trucks consume about as much oil as all of China and India (total population about 2.5 billion, more than eight times’ America’s) do. Now, who’s to blame here?

* Mobilizing the youth vote: “They organized a whole bunch of young kids in bars to vote,” he said. “It hurt, of course it hurt. But I’m over it.” — Burt Natarus [h/t: Trib/Clout Street]

* Newest estimate on SmartBikeDC’s launch is late May, just ahead of my next DC trip. Fingers crossed!

* I seem to get a lot of questions about bike parking. Quick answers: to have racks installed on city sidewalks or in CTA stations, call 311. For recommendations for racks on private property, see this PDF pamphlet from CDOT & CATS.

* More headlines from our warmer future, showing up in today’s papers: record energy prices sending truckers and pilots onto the dole, panicked stockpiling of food in California, food riots worldwide. Funny how more energy bouncing about in the atmosphere does not, perhaps due to entropy (dang it), result in cheaper energy for humans.

* Minneapolis joins the bike station movement next week with the Freewheel Midtown Bike Center, located on the greenway level at the Midtown Exchange.

* Seen in a Shell advertisement (Economist, 26 April), touting its gas-to-liquids and cellulosic ethanol:

More crowded cities means more fumes, more noise and more smog. So what to do?

At Shell, we believe the solution is a combination of cleaner fuels, cleaner engines, better public transport and better urban planning. We are doing our best with fuel improvements.

A bunch of bike/transportation related briefs.

* Bike sharing is moving forward, according to news items posted to the Bike Sharing Blog. Fran Spielman reports in the Sun-Times that JCDecaux has offered to trade ad panels for 1,000 downtown bikes here. (Any chance they’d offer a similar deal to neighborhoods?) Back East, Clear Channel still intends to be first in the USA by placing bike stations in DC this month [via DC Business Journal], with Arlington and Bethesda studying proposals for launch later this year.

* Bill Fulton in CP&DR notes that California officials, when pressed at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference on how they plan on cutting transportation-related carbon emissions (as part of their broader, likely unattainable CO2 goals), really didn’t know yet. Transportation claims an outsized share of California’s CO2 emissions, as is typical of the West Coast.

* A bit further north, British Columbia’s government has advanced a budget that includes a carbon tax of surprising magnitude. Marc Lee from the Progressive Economics Forum notes: “The government chose to stick to a narrow definition of revenue neutrality, with all carbon tax revenues recycled through low-income tax credits and tax cuts… a low-income carbon tax credit that will piggyback on the GST credit. The credit is worth $100 for adults and $30 for children with a phase-out period.”

(GST credit — hear that? Sales tax rate in Vancouver = 12%, includes free health care, spotless trains, and a $300 annual credit. Sales tax rate in Chicago = 10.25%, includes, well, what?)

* Greg Hinz in Crain’s notes that CMAP, fresh off its reorganization, intends for its 2040 plan to actually include real capital planning, not just the “grab bag” of projects that typified CATS capital plans in the past. (”Every agency submitted their plans to us, and we stapled them together.”) Hinz: “Of particular importance is how Mr. Blankenhorn says the new group will approach giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to requests for billions of dollars in federal aid for [infrastructure]… Mr. Blankenhorn says the region actually will use metrics — yardsticks to value each proposed project against an absolute standard — to allow the region to set its own priorities.” Of course, whether there will be capital funding to make such plans around hinges on the state’s willingness to back such an effort — now, we have the odd spectacle of suburban Republicans blasting the governor (and Daley joining in separately, on behalf of CTA, and apparently suggesting a bunch of pie-in-the-sky customer-facing ideas) for severely underfunding transit capital (albeit their pet appears to be Metra’s STAR Line).

* Not everyone is quite as blind to transportation finance woes as Springfield. I’ll try to follow the upcoming federal reauthorization fight as best I can; the first shot across the bow was recently issued by the Steve Breese’s greenway maps include a GIS viewer to see trail corridors that cross jurisdictions (like the Valley Line) and their progress to date.

* A recent Jon Hilkevitch column gives this astonishing example of car dependency:

in Aurora, where city building inspector Allen LaFan says he can stand at the bus stop near his house and watch his child get on and off the school bus, because the entire trip amounts to crossing a busy intersection that is not pedestrian-friendly.

“I can wave to the school,” LaFan said.

The situation represents an unending cycle. More children are being transported to school on buses or in private cars because the streets are not safe. But that leads to more vehicles and more traffic, increasing the potential danger to all pedestrians.

* Streetsblog gives a cite for the “the corn that could feed an SUV for a week could feed a human for a year” tidbit recently published in an Economist survey of food prices: Lester Brown from EPI.

* Civia Cycles, the new upper-end commuter bike brand from QBP (TPTB behind Surly) strives to make the morning commute easier with clothing recommendations, matched to your local weather forecast. Every winter, I think that I’ll scribble down notes on this topic, but never do — and, as a result, end up having to guess again each fall what I will need to wear. At first glance, this guy’s internal thermometer appears to be 10 degrees cooler than mine; I guess I overheat easily. It’s also all “bikey” clothing, unleavened by “real” clothes.

* And, okay, not transportation related, but Vince Michael notes the irony of redeveloping [Alby Gallun in Crain's covering the unveiling of the proposal] that paragon of “towers in the park” urban renewal, Lake Meadows. Now that the railyards and industrial lofts and public housing projects are gone, the only big privately held parcels left — and with deteriorating physical plants to boot — are the private housing projects. I’ll write more later on historic preservation and urban renewal.

Two video games that I spent much time with during high school suddenly make so much more sense — after wandering around Japanese cities for a few days. A-Train and SimTower, both of which were published in the USA by Maxis (creator of SimCity), have at their hearts urban and business models that respond to conditions quite unique to Japan — a society that, despite its considerable automotive might, practically defines “transit oriented development.” Both games were fascinating looks into the integrally interlinked role that transportation, both horizontal and vertical, plays in a densely populated society.

In A-Train, the game player is put in charge of a for-profit commuter and freight railway system serving local travel within a growing metropolitan region. As with Japanese rail systems, the lion’s share of potential profits stem not from railway operations but from the two “ancillary” businesses also in the simulation: property development and stock market speculation (based on the “keiretsu” cross-holdings model that was an integral part of the “Japan Inc.” business model).

Indeed, a 1997 study by Takahiko Saito comparing Japan’s “major private railways” found that 55% of operating profits (aka EBITDA, an earnings figure that excludes capital spending) stem from non-transportation operations. In most cases (and in the much larger case of Hong Kong’s MTR) property development, management, and operations were the largest contributor to profits — oh, and note that buses are usually run at a loss, presumably because they support profits elsewhere in the operation.

Ratings and Investment Information, a financial research firm, confirms that is still the case for the private railway sector: “transport’s contribution is… just under 50%” of EBITDA cash flow. The mainline railway business is just not that profitable, despite the railways being in a uniquely ideal profit-generating situation, with uniformly high densities across huge urban areas, and very aggressive management. Saito writes:

The fact that railway companies engaged in commuter transport in large cities could maintain sound management without government subsidy is remarkable to managers of railway companies in other countries. The traffic market in large Japanese cities is extremely favourable to railway management.

One strange “bug” that the game’s Wikipedia entry notes results from an anti-trust situation: the human player competes against the simulation to develop property, but only the player can place certain high-value developments (particularly recreational facilities like stadia, golf courses, and ski resorts). Since the player has a monopoly on these facilities, their market value is bid up tremendously, and their construction offers a ready source of cash and/or leverage opportunities. Indeed, winning the game seems well nigh impossible without exploiting this loophole; in particular, the capital cost of building new rail infrastructure simply cannot be recovered solely through railroad profits.

The game curiously omits the notion that freeways would compete with the rails for intra-urban traffic. The cost of driving in Japan — despite the lack of a Singapore-style conscious price-rationing system for road space, a combination of high tolls (a crosstown roundtrip can easily cost $40, as the expressways are also privately owned) and high prices for imported gas — discourages single occupant car trips.

(Of course, long distance rail companies in Japan still cheerily accept government subsidies for capital costs and to cover operating deficits in rural areas — a formula that could serve Amtrak well, except that almost all of America is “rural” by Japanese standards.)

SimTower gives the player a blank slate of land upon which to build a mixed-use skyscraper. Here, the transportation challenge is vertical, rather than horizontal: arranging a menu of wildly varying mixed uses (offices, condos, shops, hotel rooms, ballrooms, fast food, restaurants, cinemas, lobbies, a wedding chapel, a subway station, parking) around various circulation elements (local and express elevators, stairs, and escalators). Many of the simulated occupants were assumed to never leave the tower in the course of a day.

Mixed-use skyscrapers certainly aren’t unheard of in the USA, but the degree to which uses are mixed together and shoehorned in is far greater in land-short Japan: dozens of blocks in even small cities are lined with three-to-ten story buildings, perhaps on 3,000 square foot sites, stacked high with shops, fast-food joints, and bars. Underground retail concourses, second-floor shops, even food courts high inside skyscrapers and department stores don’t just exist, they thrive. One particular thing that surprised me about the game was the occupants’ seemingly insatiable demand for restaurants; true to form, Japanese shopping malls often have as many (or more!) eateries as shops — a nation of tiny kitchens and long working hours results in considerable demand for eating out. The main JR train station in Nagoya (one of the first large instances of a post-privatization JR company branching out into property) houses five floors with perhaps 50 eateries (from breakfast through cocktails) high above ground level, in addition to countless more food options at or below grade in several interconnected buildings.

The most ambitious mixed-use complexes surround or surmount railroad transfer stations, which offer the broadest market reach. Tokyo, with its longstanding decentralizing policy of terminating the private suburban railways at the circular Yamanote line (only subway and JR lines extend into the core), offers the most obvious illustration of this concept: each intersection between the Yamanote and a major suburban railway has spawned an urban node that surely rivals Midtown Manhattan in urban energy. And since the terminals are controlled by private railroads, they have a strong economic incentive to fill their station areas with a land-use mix promoting round-the-clock ridership — hence the preference for retail and entertainment over blank, faceless office towers.

To be sure, countless social and economic differences mean that these lessons can’t be transferred directly to America. However, the Japanese experience does demonstrate that private real estate interests — guided, of course, by public policy (e.g., the world’s highest farm subsidies) — can have tremendous success in profitably creating transit-oriented development, and illustrates the stupendous amount of urban value that transit infrastructure can generate.

The most amazing thing I read last week was mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech to a USCM meeting on climate change. Emphasis added:

Leadership is not waiting for others to act, or bowing to special interests, or making policy by polling or political calculus. And it’s not hoping that technology will rescue us down the road or forcing our children to foot the bill. Leadership is about facing facts, making hard decisions and having the independence and courage to do the right thing, even when it’s not easy or popular. We’ve all heard people say, “It’s a great idea, but for the politics.” And let me give you just one example from New York.

Last spring, as part of our PlaNYC initiative, we proposed a system of congestion pricing based on successful programs in London, Stockholm and Singapore. The plan would charge drivers $8 to enter Manhattan on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., which would help us reduce the congestion that is choking our economy, the pollution that has helped produce asthma rates that are twice the national average, and the carbon dioxide that is fueling global warming.

Now, the question is not whether we want to pay, but how do we want to pay. With an increased asthma rate? With more greenhouse gases? Wasted time? Lost business? Higher prices? Or do we charge a modest fee to encourage more people to take mass transit and use that money to expand mass transit service? When you look at it that way, the idea makes a lot of sense, but for the politics, because no one likes the idea of paying more. But being up front and honest about the costs and benefits, we’ve been able to build a coalition of supporters that includes conservatives and liberals, labor unions and businesses, and community leaders throughout the city.

There is no problem that can’t be solved if we have the courage to confront it head-on — and put progress above politics. Mayors around the country are doing it — and those in Washington can, too.

Just a few days later in Seattle, the transportation bond proposal that I referenced earlier failed — possibly because it wasn’t pro-transit enough. Chris McGann reporting in the P-I:

Though voters rejected Proposition 1, an extensive poll commissioned by the Sierra Club showed that if the transit element of the measure had appeared on the ballot alone, it would have passed.

The Sierra Club joined forces with the anti-transit crowd and campaigned against Proposition 1, believing the measure included too much freeway expansion, relied on general taxes, including the sales tax, and did not address global warming.

According to the poll, 52 percent of voters say they would have voted for the transit portion had it been presented alone… “The single largest reason [a group of voters who we would describe as pro-transit defectors] gave (for voting no) was environmental impacts like global warming,” [pollster Thomas Riehle from RT Strategies] said… 20% [of No voters] objected to Prop 1’s impact on the environment.

Meanwhile, back here under the clouds in Planet Illinois, the Tribune’s Jon Hilkevitch notes that CTA’s facilities are falling apart.

Rail passengers aren’t spared from the ills of ancient infrastructure either. They must endure longer commutes each year as trains crawl as slowly as 5 m.p.h. through numerous “slow zones” caused by crumbling viaducts or deteriorated tracks.

In fact, the slow-zones cover about 50 miles of track, more than one-fifth of its rail network, according to the CTA.

The neglect of the rail system has also led to derailments, including one in July 2006 in which a Blue Line subway train jumped tracks held barely in place by rusted screw spikes and fastening clips…

The cost of repairing and maintaining the old buses is soaring. The CTA said it spends $16 million a year to keep the old buses in running order, more than five-fold the $3 million cost for upkeep on newer models.

Despite the clearly inefficient use of public money, the failure to renew transit infrastructure has received much less attention among politicians and other decision-makers than the prospect of hundreds of thousands of commuters losing their bus routes to service cuts.

Even if the current transit operating crisis were resolved, the system would remain under siege until a funding stream is established to overhaul and replace aging equipment, transit officials said…

Increasing amounts of the CTA’s capital budget — more than a combined $150 million since 2003 — have been diverted to operations to help balance annual budgets and reduce the threatened service cuts and fare increases under the CTA’s doomsday plans…

Without the state launching a successor to Illinois FIRST, non-federal capital funding to the CTA during the next five years is projected at one-tenth the level in 2002, according to CTA budget documents.

Shoring up, modernizing and expanding the mass transit system in the six-county Chicago metropolitan area comes with a breathtaking price tag that exceeds $10 billion during the next five years for CTA, Metra and Pace combined, according to the Regional Transportation Authority…

“My concern is Springfield passing the kind of capital bill they are talking about — totaling only $425 million for all three transit agencies — and that there won’t be discussions about another capital bill for years,” [CTA chair Carole] Brown said. “It would just put us in such a difficult position.”

Of course, the city’s half-billion dollar annual take from TIF revenue — the same buzz-worthy “value capture” revenue stream that’s building new rail systems in Atlanta, Portland, and NoVa — would be an ideal source of funds to seed the system renewal that CTA so badly needs. After all, improving transit is an almost sure-fire way to raise property values. (I’d point out that many of the exceptions listed there, as in Miami, San Jose, and San Diego, placed rail through low-value industrial corridors in the interest of reducing ROW acquisition costs.)

Yet it’s going to take a whole lot more money to get this done. NYC Transit spent nearly $20 billion in the 1980s on renewing its capital stock, about $40 billion in today’s dollars; upgrading the signals to allow automated operations just on the L line cost nearly $300 million. And yet — the governor, and even more shockingly Emil Jones, would rather pick the pockets of Chicago’s math-challenged to gold-plate a bunch of empty Downstate roads.

Man, it’s just like we stepped into a time machine and went back to the 1960s all over again! Cars and trucks are just gliding across acres and acres of shiny new concrete, all around the Chicago area!

“The 12½-mile southern extension of the North-South Tollway (Interstate Highway 355) cuts through prairies, forests, farms and wetlands close to where residential subdivisions, office parks, warehouses and malls are rapidly being developed. The $730 million tollway extension runs three lanes in each direction through more than a dozen communities from Bolingbrook to New Lenox and connects Interstate Highways 55 and 80… Daily traffic projections suggest that about 125,000 vehicles a day will use the I-355 extension when it opens next month, the toll authority said.” — Jon Hilkevitch, Tribune, 22 Oct.

Soon-to-be-bulldozed prairies, forests, farms and wetlands. Yay, progress!

“All lanes on the Dan Ryan Expy. should be open — ending two years of construction on the Chicago area’s busiest expressway, state officials announced Thursday… mainline construction on the $975 million project will be wrapping up a few days ahead of IDOT’s Oct. 31 deadline.” — Monifa Thomas, Sun-Times, 26 Oct.

Huzzah! Oh well, it was $425,000,000 over budget. Whoops. Well, I’m sure the extra money was just sitting in a cash drawer somewhere. Okay, make that a cash room, the size of a racquetball court,(1) 20′ x 40′ x 20′, filled within 19″ of its brim with dollar bills.(2)

Oh. But wait, there’s this:

Calling Illinois “the poster child for neglect…” “It seems that the state and the governor are walking away from a minimal responsibility to maintain an existing system, let alone dramatically enhance it,” [U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.)] said in response to testimony at the hearing about rusting CTA trains and buses, crumbling viaducts, and miles of streets and dozens of bridges in disrepair in the Chicago area. — Hilkevitch, Trib, today

Oh well. That optimistic, forward-looking, shiny-new-things feeling was nice while it lasted, or maybe it would be nice if I drove. Or maybe lived in Houston — Houston! No zoning! — which at current rates will pass Chicago in population by mid-century, anyways.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority board voted Thursday to use light rail on all five of its next rapid transit lines as required in a 2003 referendum… In 2005, residents and elected officials along the planned North, East End, Southeast and Uptown routes were dismayed to learn that Metro analysis showed the cost would be too high and ridership too low to justify federal funding for rail… [T]he five new lines would increase the number of rail cars needed to about 100 from the present 18. Metro officials hope to have all five of the planned light rail lines completed in late 2012. — Rad Sallee reporting in the Houston Chronicle

Man, it’s sad when you manage to get upstaged by Texas — and by Texas government, no less.

Anyhow, next subject. Let’s look at demonstration of why Fix It First is almost always a good idea: a bit of preventive maintenance cost much less than a lot of comprehensive reconstruction; fixing existing infrastructure leverages prior generations’ wise investments; and it puts money into places where people already live and work — we’ve already shaped our lives around what’s there.

The Block 37 “superstation” is $100, $150M over its $200M budget; it’s just the first part of a project that will cost a billion dollars, serve about 5,000 riders a day,(3) and demolish countless historic neighborhoods along the Blue Line.(4) Let’s say that the 5,000 riders a day served by this earn 50% more than average; at a 13.5 minute time savings, that’s $24,605 in time saved daily.

Just the cost overrun on Block 37 could more than pay for the entire $105.7 million Slow Zone Elimination Project on the Red and Blue lines.(5) Assuming 10 minute travel time savings for 196,269 weekday passengers(6) and a time cost of $14.60 an hour (from TTI), that project will save the region’s economy $477,587 — nearly half a million dollars — in time every day. Plus, it will be done in 2008.

1. A visual aid, courtesy Davina at the University of South Florida: (Flickr)

2. Visualization calculated from here.

3. The 2006 business plan projects 1.68M riders a year in 2010 at $10/ticket. Assuming weekend ridership is 50% of weekday ridership, that works out to 5,385 riders a day.

4. Express trains require passing tracks, in particular at stations, where otherwise the express trains would be stuck behind locals. Where are Blue Line stations located? Many in the Kennedy median, and oh no, we can’t possibly remove any road ROW. Some in subways, which are frightfully expensive to tunnel — and the rest, like my own station at Damen, are elevated above and embedded into lovely, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. Guess we’ll have to demolish those, then. From the business plan, page 20:

Two 3,000-foot passing tracks would be constructed, one southbound at California/Milwaukee, the other northbound at Damen/Milwaukee. These will allow the express train to pass a stopped Blue Line local train. In addition, the two stations would be reconstructed to accommodate this additional track. At Damen/Milwaukee, the station reconstruction is also planned to eliminate the “jog” in the mainline tracks at North Avenue.

Oh, that pesky Wicker Park. Always in the way.

5. This project is funded, as I understand it, from bonds levied on the assumption that federal funds will be granted, assuming that state matching funds comes through — a double assumption)

6. I’ve already achieved a 10 minute savings, thanks to the completed Milwaukee subway improvements; Kennedy/O’Hare passengers will save nearly 30 minutes apiece, Red Line riders somewhat less.

Last week’s hackneyed analysis was criticized in some quarters for not looking at the particular areas in which service would be cut. I’ve isolated 33 bus routes to be cut which terminate downtown (not counting the impact of cutting connecting services out in the neighborhoods, notably a number of Northwest Side and Evanston routes connecting to the Blue and Purple Lines, respectively); these carried 134,043 passengers on an average September 2006 weekday. Compare that to the 287,000 cars [or 574,000 car trips] entering downtown on an average weekday.

20 of these routes serve either the north lakefront or as downtown circulators — predominantly White, higher-income areas. These routes carried 64,905 passengers on an average weekday. Assume 75% of trips are for work (reasonable, since many run only at rush hours and Sunday boardings are 25% of weekday boardings); that’s 25,962 commuters a day. Add in 60% of the riders on the south/west side (but still downtown-serving; Sunday/weekday ratio 31%) routes to be cut, for 45,081 downtown commuters who are dependent bus routes that will soon expire. Let’s say that 20% of them (9,016) get fed up with the commute and decide to leave the downtown workforce — far lower than the 61% of CTA-riding City Colleges students who will have to end or curtail their classwork due to the cuts.

Assuming the citywide median wage of $36,600, that’s $330 million in payroll gone: nearly $36 million in state and local taxes (assuming 10.8%). And at 220 square feet per employee, that’s negative net absorption of two million square feet of office space — almost enough to vacate AT&T, 311 S. Wacker, or indeed any skyscraper downtown except the Mart, Aon, or Sears.

This would be an initial impact, of course. Over the long run, reducing transportation capacity into the region’s primary job center will make it difficult for employers to justify the significant rent premiums they pay for downtown space — or even to locate in this region. Transit moves half of all people going into downtown, and without those people — or even without a large fraction thereof — countless businesses will see their margins (made on the last few sales, the last few employees) vanish.

Estimates by the Partnership for New York City of the economic development impacts of the Second Avenue Subway say that new jobs and new development capacity — indirect benefits of the project — will amount to 50% more positive economic impact than the already huge direct benefits in transportation productivity (time savings, increased ridership). Applying that figure to the recent Metropolis 2020 study — which showed a 21% return on investment for transit system investments, counting only time savings (increasing to as much as 61% when such investments are leveraged with transit supportive land use) results in ROIs of 53-153%. Not only is this state leaving that huge fortune on the table, but we risk spiraling down a vicious vortex as the process works in reverse: turning time saved into time wasted, job growth and new development into decline and abandonment.

The 84 bus routes to be cut by CTA carried 308,262 passengers on an average September 2006 weekday. At an average vehicle occupancy (AVO) of 1.2,* that’s equivalent to 256,885 cars a day of capacity. Compare to these local roads’ AADTs (trucks excluded):

I-90 at Fullerton: 244,400
I-290 at Ashland: 189,700
Lake Shore Drive at Diversey: 150,650
Lake Shore Drive at Jackson: 131,700
I-55 at Damen: 131,500
and, just for kicks, let’s look at how many people some other transportation facilities nationwide carry on an average weekday:
Bay Area Rapid Transit: 365,300 (5th largest heavy rail system in country)
Miami-Dade Transit: 347,400
Portland Tri-Met: 325,400
Metra: 310,800 (2nd largest commuter rail system in country)
Seattle’s King County Transit buses: 294,500
Denver RTD: 267,400
San Diego MTS, Trolley, and Transit: 265,200
Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Transit: 241,700
St. Louis Bi-State Development Agency: 186,200
All Illinois transit services outside Chicago or St. Louis: 58,500
I-35W bridge over Mississippi, Brooklyn Bridge: 140,000 AADT (incl. trucks)
Golden Gate Bridge: 106,400 ADT

If the Kennedy bridge at Fullerton collapsed, or if terrorists took out both I-55 and Lake Shore Drive, or if Metra just up and died, how would this state’s government react? I bet they wouldn’t spend years squabbling, dilly-dallying, grand-standing, and pork-padding. Just because buses aren’t sexy doesn’t mean that they don’t serve the honest purpose of moving people around the transportation network — or that, when they’re cut, that people won’t be as hurt as if other modes experienced similar capacity reductions.

Sure, people will adapt to bus route elimination (reducing trips, taking alternate routes and modes), but they’d adapt to a freeway shutdown, too.

(And to answer some conspiracy theories about which routes were to be cut, even high-ridership routes were cut if they roughly parallel other services. Rush-hour shuttles — regardless of how packed — are not very cost-effective, as they require additional equipment and employees at peak hours when the service is already stretched to its limits. And CTA’s legal mandate doesn’t require it to cover Evanston.)

I might try to dig up some numbers on how much money the “casino capital bill” plans to waste on largely unused Downstate roads — compared to the number of people who will be affected by shutting down transit services. From the Sun-Times’ Wednesday editorial:

Lawmakers have proposed just $425 million for mass transit for the entire state, and that’s dependent on getting casinos. Even under the proposed plan, we’re spending only $1 on transit for every $11 we spend on roads. Three years ago, it was $1 out of every $3.

Somehow Springfield doesn’t grasp that mass transit moves Chicago’s economy, and Chicago’s economy drives the state. Our leaders shouldn’t wait for the buses and trains to stop running before they pay attention.

* A local AVO of 1.2 is suggested by 2001 CATS observations of 1.1 to 1.25 AVO in a study of vehicles entering I-94. ADTs and truck ADTs from IDOT. Metra ridership from 2007 budget book. Other cities’ transit ridership from APTA 2Q 2007 report. Golden Gate Bridge is twice average daily toll counts from 2005, from MTC.

A wrap-up of items from my latest week away:

* Paul Merrion in Crain’s points out that “intense opposition to [refinery] expansion plans following BP America Inc.’s scuttled proposal to dump more waste in Lake Michigan… raise the prospect of even higher prices at the pump if pollution-control technology makes refinery expansion unfeasible.” Well, duh (and that’s a good thing, IMO), but I wonder if all those drivers signing petitions against BP’s expansion realized that they, too, are part of the problem. Probably not, of course.

* Greg Hinz pre-emptively rued this week of fiscal crisis:

the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) will unveil a proposed 2008 budget that, unlike prior versions, almost certainly will be the real Doomsday thing… Mayor Richard M. Daley on Wednesday will unveil his own heaping helping of woes: service cuts and tax hikes that insiders have warned may include a stunning $100-million hike in the property tax… the Cook County Board considers an increase of 2% in the county’s sales tax proposed by county President Todd Stroger… as Springfield squabbles over a proposed property-tax hike that threatens to hit city homeowners with what County Assessor Jim Houlihan says would be an average 40% increase on bills due later this year… “It’s an all-out race to see who can raise taxes higher, faster than others in the race,” says Gerald Roper, president and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.

My favorite: city water and sewer rates will go up by $65 million. This, in a city that (this never fails to astonish people elsewhere) has no water meters. That’s right, I of the paused showers and ultra-efficient dishwasher (hey, Californian parents will do that to you) pay the same rate as someone who runs the sprinkler 24/7. Maybe the infamously corrupt water department might consider adding meters, and charging people per use — instead of regressively raising rates across the board?

* Sadly, two fascinating trial balloons that went up last week amidst the tax-hike frenzy got shot down really fast. A tax on parking spaces, apparently floated by the governor (and discussed here last year), appears to have disappeared into the muck. A city gas tax hike, and parking-meter increase, disappeared between last week’s rumors and this week’s proposal. Not that Fran Spielman didn’t get a chance to get a great quote about it:

Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said she’s all for doubling the gas tax, but only if the Chicago Transit Authority gets the money. “I don’t think we’re going to get the help we need from Springfield. (CTA funding is) a critical issue for me, and I don’t see anybody paying attention,” she said.

* Andrea Johnson in LiveScience reports on an aerial survey by Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University that found three surface parking spaces for each licensed driver around Purdue. Not quite the seven I’ve seen quoted elsewhere (where’d that come from?), but then again this didn’t count residential garages, on-street parking, or structures of any sort. However, the fact that such a survey was possible

* I scribbled this down about Interbike in Las Vegas, over on Flyertalk:

I’m (hardly) old enough to remember CABDA, the last of the regional bicycle trade shows (and right next to the UA hub at ORD!). Eurobike Portland sounded interesting while talk of that lasted, and with the industry’s recent growth perhaps a competitor could’ve survived.

My employer treats our convention as an honor bestowed upon cities that meet our standards, since our attendees expect to learn from the cities they visit. APBP, Thunderhead, and other bike groups do the same. Granted, I see everything through the lens of the built environment, but wouldn’t it be cool if bike dealers could walk out of the convention center and see… people bicycling, thanks to good facilities and a healthy local bike culture? Maybe then they’d start to get excited about the changes possible in the communities outside their own shops — a great way to build overall demand and sales.

* A photo of me by Hayley Graham accompanied this Chicago Journal article about the Pilsen Park(ing) Day action.

* Counterintuitive: facing losses in 2005, CalTrain (which has a unique combination of an hourly pay structure and nearly equally balanced loads) worked its way out of a deficit by expanding service, particularly faster express trains. Fewer stops = more runs with the same crews. A virtuous-cycle, revenue-growth approach to budgeting, rather than the vicious-cycle, cost-cutting approach — they’d be easier if only transit captured more of the value it created, of course.

* NYC’s public-service bike safety ads carry the simplest, stupidest, but most necessary message possible: Look.

* I typically dislike freeway-median transit — it inhibits the potential for pedestrian friendly, transit oriented development, since the stations are necessarily embedded amidst stinky cars — but I could get behind Mark Oberholzer’s idea:

integrating turbines into the barriers between highway lanes that would harness the wind generated by passing cars to create energy. “Opposing streams of traffic create really incredible potential in terms of a guaranteed wind source,” Oberholzer says… “The technical problems of tying into the grid and managing the flow made me think of putting the power to a different use,” he says. “I’m pretty excited about integrating a subway or light-rail train right where the barrier is. I love the idea of siphoning off electricity generated by private transportation to run public transportation.”

Francine Knowles at the Sun-Times writes (kinda) about the angle I’ve been pushing: transit cuts will devastate downtown’s accessibility, and thus its economy.

If the stalemate isn’t satisfactorily resolved quickly, employers and workers will be hurt, warns Jerry Roper, president and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.

“A lot of people are going to suffer,” he said…

If the changes do go through, low-income workers would be hard hit, contends Aaron Gellman, professor at Northwestern University’s Transportation Center. If the cuts and fare increases are short-lived, workers will make temporary adjustments and find alternative routes, he said. But if they become permanent, that could restrict the supply of workers in certain locations, he said. Employers might be compelled to help subsidize workers transportation costs, he said.

More employers could consider relocating to the suburbs, said John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Telecommuting probably would expand, he said.

I’ve gathered that Challenger is rather well respected in the HR field.

* New photos here and on the way. Wicker Park Critical Mass and my recent trip out west, for instance.

* I’ve spent far too much time lately rebutting right-wing arguments against transit funding on various blogs. Most of those responses have been crossposted (for my own reference, which is the primary reason why I have this blog) as comments under various earlier posts tagged “transit.” (Another good rebuttal: MPC’s in Friday’s Trib. However, one bus really = about 34 cars; 43 passengers per hour on CTA buses divided by 1.25 per car. An even better one: the Sun-Times’ editorial, pointing out that the tax increase amounts to $33 a year for Cook residents.)

You want to talk “backdoor fare increase”? The Economy League study of SEPTA that I’ve mentioned, examining substantial [but smaller!] cuts proposed, found that riders would pay $2.20 in higher fares, longer waits, and more driving for every $1 that government “saves” by cutting SEPTA. To pay that much via the “backdoor fare hike,” you’d have to charge up $880 in bills every day.

One common theme has been “privatize the damn thing,” as the public has little confidence in CTA’s ability to manage its current system, much less invest to renew it. However, words of caution from the libertarian-leaning City Journal’s Nicole Gelinas:

While the private sector has a role to play in building, upgrading, and maintaining public infrastructure, it can never assume the public sector’s ultimate responsibility—financial and otherwise.

* I’ve also spent a lot of time on the phone with reporters lately. Published articles to date: Mark Lawton from the Booster on WPCM; Matthew Hendrickson from the Chicago Journal on WPCM; Nara Schoenberg from the Tribune on CCM. (Even though I didn’t get quoted in the last one, it was by far the best of the interviews: well over an hour on topics ranging from political theory to winter riding. She’d never heard so many people say “it changed my life.” One line: “the utopian eco-cyclists who pioneered the party/protest/prank in this city point to numerous achievements.”)

Forthcoming (with photos!): Chicago Tribune on car-free living, and Sierra Magazine on eco-jobs.

* Apparently, the whole Dutch-bike trend is really taking off among Manhattan models, a rather influential crowd I don’t pay much mind to. Gillian Reagan reporting in the NY Observer, quoting George Bliss of the Hub Station:

“[Lela Rose ha]s really inspired me, and now I’m focusing on the tricycle child carrier as a product for upscale women in SoHo. … That’s the niche, professionals and models because, you know, if you go to a cocktail party, you’ve got to have something to talk about. ‘Green? What’s green? Oh, bicycling!’

Ms. Rose’s paean to her bike: “it sounds ridiculous, but I don’t go anywhere anymore without bringing the bike, because to me it’s like my car. At a minimum, it’s the best way to get around. It’s for the environment. It’s great for health reasons. For me it’s just a great way to get a better peace of mind. I could go on and on about the benefits of bike riding.”

(Disclosure: I once rented a bike from George — a 50-lb. single-speed with a coaster brake — at his prior location at SoHo’s west edge.)

* MTC recently held a workshop on Smart Parking on “parking policies to support smart growth, focusing on providing strategies for interested local jurisdictions”; the presentations are online.

* A 2004 report on TDM strategies from FHWA has many interesting case studies focusing on special events and large employers.

* Socialized car insurance in B.C. (PDF from VTPI) offers the province a unique way to fine-tune the costs of driving — which might be why B.C. was among the first places to experiment with eco feebates. Another VTPI paper (page 10) demonstrates how increasing fuel economy standards could actually increase the social costs of driving by encouraging more of it.

* Dallas has a streetcar. How did I not know that?

* Here’s an interesting approach: Louisville, Colo. tested a proposed zoning designation by running six examples of ground-related multifamily housing around Denver past the code. Interestingly, all of them exhibit the kind of quasi-Dutch modernism that I saw a lot of around there: blocky massing, bright colors.

Fran Spielman reports at the Sun-Times about a new hybrid vehicle commitment by the city: “The 300 new Toyota Prius, Camry and Highlander hybrids will replace old Ford Crown Victorias driven by city inspectors and other non-safety employees.”

From FuelEconomy.gov:
2000 Ford Crown Victoria (gasoline): 10.2 tons/year CO2
2007 Toyota Highlander Hybrid 2WD: 7.1 tons/year CO2
2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid: 5.4 tons/year CO2
2007 Toyota Prius: 4.0 tons/year CO2
Assume that 100 of each Toyota will be purchased. (I think they’ll use this as an excuse to buy up to the Highlander SUVs, though, as a Prius is way smaller than a FCV.) Average of the Toyotas: 5.5 tons/year CO2.

Savings over 300 cars: 1,410 tons/year CO2
Forcing 100,000 riders off CTA: 29,500+++ tons/year CO2

AAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH.

In other news, it looks like a bike share program will happen “very soon”; however, a March RFP asked for the costs for 500, 1000, and 1500 bikes — not far beyond the 750 bikes envisioned by Adshel. From Libération: “Daley a indiqué que la ville de Chicago envisageait d’installer «très prochainement» un système de location de vélos en libre-service…”

posted at Capitol Fax Blog

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CTA’s fares have been going up — in fact, since the 1984 RTA Act, much faster than either the rate of inflation or the cost of driving! That’s because Chicago sales tax revenue have trailed inflation (much less expense growth) since 1984, and the budget’s got to balance somehow. Oh yeah, and operating costs have declined over 10% in real dollars since 1984.

Just because the cost of gas is going up does not magically mean that the cost of transit service should increase at the same rate. Indeed, what you pay to drive is not at all indicative of the real cost of driving. Cars, collectively, are the #1 source of air pollution in our region — but even though asthma hospitalization rates along the Dan Ryan are four times higher than the national average, gas taxes don’t pay for the (also bankrupt) Cook County Hospital. Nor do your gas taxes pay to keep our troops guarding their oil, rebuilding taller levees to protect New Orleans against rising seas, or for funeral costs when children get killed in hit-and-runs. Nope, even we non-drivers pay those costs of your driving.

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In fact, some calculations: according to AAA’s annual cost-per-mile estimates, the real cost of driving has dropped 9.9% since 1997 (adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile, as of next week, cash CTA fares will have increased 59.6%. (Not counting the 63% increase, the increase has been 17.6%.) We riders are already paying far more than our share.

#

Sources:
* AAA, “Your Driving Costs 2007“
* CTA, “President’s Report on CTA’s Fares and Proposal for the FY2004 Budget“
* CTA, “Revised CTA Fare Structure Effective September 16, 2007“
* Motor Trend Auto News, “Despite Higher Gas Prices, 2005 Driving Costs Nearly Unchanged From 2004” (historical cost estimates from AAA)
* Westegg.com inflation calculator (to inflate to 2006 dollars) and BLS CPI projection (to inflate to 2007 dollars)

- Leon Wieseltier at TNR offers today’s neologism: pluto-porn. No, not a Disney ripoff, but obsequious coverage of the fantastically wealthy.

- Here’s a new approach to TDM: free beer, a free bicycle, and public adulation, just for handing over your car keys. Too bad this touring festival’s only out West this year. [New Belgium Brewing - Follow Your Folly]

- Oh, a man can dream. Paul Nussbaum’s report on Pennsylvania’s transit bailout, from the 19 July Inky:

Promising an end to the annual brinkmanship over SEPTA funding, Gov. Rendell yesterday signed a landmark transportation law to provide an average of almost $1 billion more a year for transit and highways over the next 10 years.

Surrounded by smiling legislators who a week earlier were at each others’ throats, Rendell signed the transportation bill in the warm confines of 69th Street Terminal in Upper Darby as evening commuters rushed past…

The law will provide $300 million in new funding for mass transit and $450 million in new money for highways and bridges this fiscal year, with the total rising to $1.07 billion by 2016.

The money will come from future toll increases on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, anticipated new tolls on Interstate 80, and 4.4 percent of the revenue from the state sales tax…

State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.), the House Appropriations Committee chairman who vowed to block the state budget until mass transit was provided for, said yesterday: “I don’t know why this had to be so hard.”

“I’ve been fighting for this for decades,” said Evans, who said the measure would provide many new jobs, both directly and indirectly.

Not sure if SEPTA’s elimination of transfers (now in litigation) is an attempt to sell more passes or what.

- Carbon trading in Illinois could raise $2B a year for state government. [Redefining Progress: Climate Action Plan for Illinois]

- Flooded subways and tornadoes shut down NYC: a taste of headlines to come? [Environmental Defense] Not quite as dire as the forecast for the West, though: less snow, less water, more flooding, more drought and fires: boats stranded at dry marinas, ski towns engulfed by flame, cracked and dusty lettuce fields, cities browned out during heat waves. [Clear the Air] Fake headlines from the future describing localized effects of global warming could be a useful way to teach people about the issue — even here in the country’s sea-proof yet water-rich inland metropolis. [Prairie Home Companion]

- Last week’s Crain’s included an interesting package on four retail-starved new neighborhoods downtown: West Loop, South Loop, Streeterville, and (interestingly) University Village. [ChicagoBusiness]

- Gregg Easterbrook in an LA Times op-ed about his horsepower argument:

Please don’t counter that “no one can tell me what I can drive.” The Constitution says you’ve got a right to own a gun and to read a newspaper. Firearms and [speech] are the only categories of possessions given protected status by the Constitution; courts consistently rule that vehicles on public roads can be regulated for public purposes such as safety.

Dennis Byrne recently published an opinion piece in the Trib asking why taxpayers pay half of transit’s costs (but not half of drivers’ costs), and thus saying that fare increases are in order. Here’s a really long reply.

In the course of writing this, I found that Sweden’s carbon tax amounts to $1.61 per gallon of gas — far higher than the ~$0.49 in tax per gallon levied in Chicago (ostensibly to pay for roads). And now that I look at it, I should’ve used the “free rider” term to describe positive externalities — and used the example of how non-drivers subsidize parking at supermarkets, since the store just wouldn’t exist without those other customers. Oh well. A few more edits are in [brackets].

Simply looking at the line item figures for transit and driving does not provide an adequate accounting of the costs that we, as a society, will end up paying.

All economic actions have “externalities,” which are costs or benefits that are outside the direct transaction. For instance, let’s say that I run a paper mill next door to your house, and dump the sludge into a stream that runs downhill into your yard. The noise, smell, and sludge don’t bother me [or my customers], since I profit, but they will cost you dearly.

It turns out that driving is an activity which has low internal costs (once you own a car, gas is practically the only marginal cost) and very high external costs — whereas transit has high internal costs [principally labor] but even higher external benefits. Even worse for transit, its external benefits are very widely diffused, while driving directly and obviously benefits the driver.

For example, direct proximity to transit typically improves property values much more so than access to a road; this is especially the case in downtown Chicago, and you could even say that access to railroads is what built Chicago in the first place. Yet all that property value created by the railroads largely did not accrue to the railroads — it benefited third parties. Similarly, properties in the Loop (which generate untold billions in property, sales, income, payroll, and other taxes) wouldn’t be generating nearly as much economic activity in the absence of transit; after all, that’s how half the people get there. In fact, that’s why most of America’s streetcars were built by property speculators, and why the world’s only profitable subway system (in Hong Kong) is a subsidiary of a huge property corporation.

In the past, Dennis, you’ve doubted whether downtown Chicago is an anachronism. I’ll tell you that it’s not. Even as old face-to-face standbys like the trading pits disappear, industries remain concentrated downtown due to what are called “agglomeration economies.” More than half of the region’s office space is downtown, and that proportion is actually increasing — as it is in Washington and New York City, the nation’s two other “fortress downtowns.” More importantly, offices rent for 30% more downtown, and apparently firms think it’s worth the premium. In fact, transit is the big reason behind that: three-fourths of downtown executives surveyed in 2002 cited access to transit (and, more importantly, the huge labor pool it moves) as the biggest factor in their location.

Like participation in the arts, use of parks, or attendance at public schools, transit is a public service that all of us benefit from even if we do not consume the service. In particular, transit makes the compact urban form of downtown and of many neighborhoods possible — you could not re-create a great walking neighborhood like Lakeview or Wicker Park with adequate parking for every visitor, since the parking lots would push everything out of walking distance. Without transit, and without the compact urban form that transit generates (both downtown and in the neighborhoods), Chicago really has little to recommend it over Atlanta or Indianapolis or Phoenix. I don’t even usually commute by transit, but I appreciate that the endlessly fascinating city that’s right at my doorstep is made possible by transit. In LA, where my family lives, there are also two baseball teams, an opera house, and great restaurants — but they might as well not exist, since it takes hours of hand-to-hand combat on the freeways to get to any of them. That’s not so in Chicago, thanks to transit.

On the other hand, driving is an activity that benefits pretty much only the driver while imposing considerable costs on the rest of society. Every additional car on the road costs every car behind it time, and that adds up. Surely, as a transportation reporter, you’ve heard of the Texas Transportation Institute’s annual Urban Mobility Report. Well, those guys calculate that transit in the Chicago region saves every single rush-hour driver 22 hours of traffic jams a year — that’s time worth nearly $1.6 billion a year, just in productivity savings to rush-hour drivers! (As you might know, that figure is nearly twice the RTA’s annual taxpayer subsidy.)

Others have attempted to calculate the full external costs of driving to Americans, and to the Chicago region in particular. (Cars impose higher external costs in cities than in the countryside.) A 1995 study looking just at the rather direct fiscal costs of roads to local governments found that Chicago-area governments spent one-third more on roads than they received in taxes and fees from road users. A number of studies have attempted to quantify a number of fuzzier costs to the public purse, like health care (to treat crash victims or asthma sufferers like me), securing oil supplies from the Middle East and elsewhere, and environmental degradation (half of all tailpipe emissions worldwide come from American cars). Six different studies from the 1990s — before, I might note, we had a set price for carbon dioxide [and before our recent Iraq escapade!] — estimate that each car costs society anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 a year, over and above what the owner pays to operate it. On a per-gallon basis, those estimates range from $3 to $7 per gallon in social costs. So yes, in fact, we taxpayers do“pay half a motorist’s costs when he drives to work or goes shopping.”

So, there you go: one economic argument for why we “subsidize transit.”

Oh yeah, and NYC Transit and Metrorail cover more of their costs from the farebox because their boundaries are more tightly drawn — neither of them operate money-losing suburban buses.

Wonkette’s Anonymous Lobbyist, though not an ISTEA junkie like yours truly, kind of nails it on the head:

The current transportation funding mechanism is called SAFETEA-LU, which stands for “Safe Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users,” but the “Lu” is actually former Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young’s wife’s name, so he made his staff come up with a fucking acronym that used that because that’s how stupid and parochial transportation policy is… everyone gets to more or less keep ignoring our crumbling current infrastructure in favor of new roads (which are way more popular with constituents, since they don’t tie up traffic as much as that nasty roadwork). So, everyone won, sorta, and everyone lost, like usual.

In fact, a smart guy* presented a paper at TRB this year called “SAFETEA-LU Earmarks in Minnesota, a Rural Advantage: Minnesota’s Other Growing Pork Industry.” Among his conclusions: “the earmarking process is optimized for political stability, and not for public utility… earmarks are inefficient allocators of resources, in that they… do not explicitly consider long-range national transportation, social, economic, and environmental objectives.”

The paper goes into detail over Oberstar’s earmarks; one which I like is the Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot Program, a $25M fund for bicycling and walking projects around the Twin Cities. (It mostly funded new bike lanes around Mpls in its first year.)

Not that the I-35W’s bridge “50 score… structurally deficient” means anything, really. A bridge scoring in the single digits on the same scale — Hillsborough Street over the CSX tracks, about a mile west of the Capitol — was part of my routine in Raleigh years ago. The last time someone was carried away from CCM in an ambulance was apparently from a fall on the 31st bridge over the IC tracks, which rates a 22; the famously awfully paved Chicago Ave bridge over the river gets an 11; and, perhaps most shockingly, Congress’s bridge over the river (as it emerges from under the Old PO) rates 2. Yes, two, on a 1-100 scale (apparently, Illinois uses 100, other states 120.)

* Michael Smart from UCLA, ha ha

posted at Knowledge Problem: Wanted: Economic Analysis of Urban Rail Transportation (five months’ belated thanks to Derek for the heads-up; a follow-on to Funding Redux’s diss on privatization)

Privatization [of CTA] would hardly be a panacea; one of two companies hired in a privatization of the London Underground recently entered receivership, and taxpayers could be held responsible for its tremendous cost overruns. Our local “traction kings” hardly fared better: Insull made his fortune from energy, not the “L”; Yerkes profited off subterfuge and subdivisions, not the streetcars. In fact, both used securities fraud to cover the steep losses they faced on transit operations, which is why both were run out of town on the rails.

Those men faced no real competition, as their empires predated today’s heavily subsidized and regulated freeways, parking, sprawl, etc. By the end of Insull’s reign, the railroad industry had become the most regulated public utility in American history, wearing far heavier regulatory yokes than those which the cable, phone, and electric companies “toil” under these days.

This little history lesson hardly disproves that contracting out operations might reduce costs — particularly when public bureaucracies have ossified and become unresponsive to change — but do use caution before bandying about “PPP” without understanding its ramifications. One could even look back at the same Yerkes/Insull history and draw the conclusion that urban transit is a natural monopoly (thus enabling free transfers, for instance) and inherently requires local government involvement, or one might draw the conclusion that Illinois politics vis-a-vis transit have forever been poisoned by collusion and power-broking at the public’s expense.

In any case, I have it on good authority that a great many MBA-diseased minds (not least Rob Huberman, Chicago GSB ‘00 and Carole Brown, Northwestern KSM ‘89) are being put to work on the CTA’s problems now. This may not have quite the results that we bargained for.

Transit: it’s just a way to get there. Many transportation projects become infrastructure driven, building rail for its own sake. In Charlotte, though, the leaders recognize that transit is only half the equation. What’s really needed is a different way of living, one that transit is an integral part of — and viewing transit as an isolated solution won’t get you there.

Debra Campbell, planning director for the city of Charlotte, interviewed by Zach Patton in Governing magazine:

Transit is a means; it’s not the end. The end is high-quality development and a way for us to promote better development to make sure we’re better stewards of our community and the environment.

It’s also about giving lifestyle choices. Charlotte had gotten to the point where there was really only one lifestyle: suburban half-acre lots. We will never ever do away with our suburban cul-de-sac communities. They’ll always be a choice for our residents…

We never, ever, ever said transit was going to be a panacea. It’s just about providing a choice. A big part of that was bringing in the transit folks, the engineers, the planners and the developers to talk to the public, so it wasn’t just seen as a transit project.

That monoculture of suburban half-acre lots will ultimately drive many more people away from Sunbelt cities — I’m certainly not the only one.

Wow, and I thought I was militant:

But I have a suggestion that would raise money for the city, reduce vehicular traffic in the Loop and not require a huge collection apparatus.

Every week we could have a pedestrian lottery. Those of us who are always on foot could send a ten-dollar check to City Hall. On Sunday night, one of our alderpersons would don a blindfold and pick a lucky pedestrian.

The winner would get no money. That would go to the City, the Park District, the CTA, whatever.

Instead of cash, though, the winning pedestrian would get a Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol and a license to kill (like James Bond).

For one week he or she could prowl our Loop streets looking for the most flagrant violators of pedestrian rights and blast away a no questions, no jail time, just a loud Ka-Pow and the guys from Streets and San would show up to haul away the mess.

Public transportation would never be more appealing.

Jack Zimmerman, one of the downtown Chicago Journal’s columnists, had that modest proposal for cutting traffic and improving pedestrian safety downtown.

And here’s a little gem about how there’s no romance to driving, at least not around here:

If I wanted interesting driving, I’d buy one of those nifty little Ferraris, some genuine kid driving gloves and pick up a skinny-ankled woman named Marcella who would sit beside me and look gorgeous as I tooled around the Italian Alps.

But this is Illinois, Land of Lincoln, a state full of flat land, straight roads and thick ankles. Marcella doesn’t live here.

I will say that even [despite having never learned to drive] I have experienced lovely moments in cars, mostly involving, yes, small cars hugging curves along winding roads in the countryside (and sometimes someone sitting beside me, looking gorgeous). That’s the romantic ideal of “driving as freedom,” not the grinding daily reality of bumper-to-bumper — but yet the caged masses soldier on. Sigh.

WMATA, DC’s regional transit agency, uses a rather impressive array of community outreach tools that increase transparency about the system’s workings and governance. Among them:
- LunchTalk live online chats with system officials
- a Riders Advisory Council that meets monthly
- webcast meetings, not only of the board but also of upper level staff
- a separate Elderly & Disabled advisory committee that meets monthly about paratransit and accessibility

MBTA not only has an independent governing board, but that board sponsors TransitWorks, an independent group (funded by TMAs, it appears) which administers surveys and a “mystery shopper” program.

Out in LA, Global Inheritance — which has carved a niche for itself by supporting environmental initiatives like recycling and ridesharing at youth-oriented music and sports events, recently held a Public Display Of Affection concert and exhibit at Union Station, “to show public transportation in Los Angeles a little love.” Admission? One inbound MTA ticket.

…move forward without Chicago, of course. Over $1B in federal funding will be allocated to five cities nationwide to launch or expand congestion pricing projects under the Urban Partnerships Program. One of those five will probably be NYC; Ray Rivera in the Times writes that “Ms. Peters heaped lavish praise on the mayor’s [cordon toll] plan, calling it brave, bold and long overdue.” (The NY Academy of Sciences has a terrific briefing on the London congestion charge and Bloomberg’s proposal.) So yes, the feds are heaping money on cities so that they can access a new/expanded revenue stream of tolls. This is absolutely a no-brainer.

Denver’s proposal would extend I-25’s existing HOT lanes up US36/Boulder Pike and use the revenue to expedite BRT improvements to RTD’s existing B route; this expands on a concept introduced to local commuters with HOT express lanes on I-25.

Of course, the Kennedy Expressway has a nearly identical situation to I-25; simply adding a few I-PASS transponders and cameras would reduce congestion and generate millions of dollars in revenue for Blue Line repairs. (CMAP’s ultimate proposal included $100M in Blue Line repairs ["upgraded to eliminate slow zones caused by deteriorating infrastructure... {it} has experienced a degradation in service in recent years"], but only increases tolls on the ISTHA and Skyway portions of I-90 without adding new tolls on the Kennedy or Dan Ryan despite the existence of significant congestion and barrier separated facilities. Similarly, it references raising Chicago’s existing paid off-street parking tax, but not anything about street parking prices. Buried on the last page is a reference to a $1.6M bike rental station, too; I’ll have to find out more about that.)

“We’re asking cities to try something different, innovative and daring when it comes to fighting traffic,” said Secretary Peters.

“Different, innovative and daring” — nope, not Chicago.

FWIW, other cities’ proposal documents:
The Twin Cities would expand an existing network of HOT lanes using shoulder lanes, significantly accelerate implementation of proposed suburban BRT corridors, and explore parking pricing.

In the Bay Area, several existing HOT pilot schemes, the 511 system, and parking re-pricing in San Francisco and Berkeley.

Modified version of Chicagoist comment.

I realize that I’m shouting to the breeze, but man, most of you folks don’t know much about how we pay for transit. Some common themes, and answers:

What? Why do we already pay too much for awful service?

Your fares pay about half the cost of running CTA service. Taxpayers (local sales tax) cover the rest. And the fact is, the cost of operations is increasing three times faster than tax revenue. When your cost of living goes up while your salary stays flat, you gotta make cuts.

Yeah, the trains and buses and slow, unreliable, and dirty. You know why? Because every year that we’ve played this budget crisis game, CTA has ended up spending money allocated for cleaning/repairs on daily operations instead. Basic maintenance has been put off for years, and it’s starting to show, big time.

The trains elsewhere are great, and they make money!

No mass transit agency in the world makes sufficient profit on operations to cover the cost of capital improvements. Those glorious transit systems elsewhere rely on generous tax subsidies: the Parisian transit authority gets FIVE TIMES more in tax subsidies than its equivalent here. Pick up the papers in NYC, LA, SF, DC, Boston, Philly, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Cleveland, Columbus, Atlanta, wherever: those transit agencies are also running out of money. Perhaps not as fast as ours, but nonetheless. (Philly’s SEPTA, in fact, is about to vote on what they also call “the doomsday budget,” unless the state bails them out. However, their governor and mayor have made saving transit their #1 priority, unlike here, where Blago and Richie lust after a vast new welfare state and a literally-colossal construction boondoggle.)

Let’s look at the one fully “privatized” passenger transportation industry in the USA: commercial airlines. Anyone who thinks that the airlines provide exquisite service at reasonable prices, please raise your hands. I thought not. And yet even this marvel of private-sector efficiency can’t turn a profit: in its first century, the airline industry earned $18 billion in profits — when it wasn’t chalking up $32 billion in losses. Airlines are so consistently awash in red ink that no less than Warren Buffett rued, “if I’d been at Kitty Hawk in 1903 when Orville Wright took off, I would have been farsighted enough, and public-spirited enough — I’d owe this to future capitalists — to shoot him down.”

Privatize! Fire the bums! Sell more ads!

We tried private operations of the CTA. Didn’t work; all those companies went bankrupt way back in 1947, which is how we got the CTA in the first place. Oh, and CTA can’t just pull a United Airlines and kill its pensions and benefits; that’s illegal. As for waste and graft, we the taxpayers already paid for a a giant audit of CTA, RTA, Metra, and Pace, courtesy of the state Auditor General. Finding: “the needs are real, the problems are real.” By almost any standard, our transit agencies are managing money pretty well. Yes, pensions in particular need a great big fix, but they’re so underfunded that one can hardly blame them for bankrupting CTA. Oh, and shuttering CTA headquarters tomorrow* wouldn’t even come close to filling this budget hole.

(In fact, I was recently in S.F., where a local newspaper ran a graph showing Chicago’s administrative overhead costs as far lower than LA’s or SF’s — and comparable to NYC, which theoretically would benefit from vast economies of scale.)

* Annual occupancy costs at the new HQ are lower than they were in the rented Mart space; the building was built with federal capital funds — see below — and CTA, as a state-chartered public agency, doesn’t pay property taxes on buildings it owns but does in rented space.

Advertising is not a major revenue source for transit agencies. Even auctioning off naming rights wouldn’t do much; a failed deal to rename a prime downtown station in Boston yielded just $160K a year. At that price, even renaming every Loop station would cover just 2% of CTA’s budget gap.

The Feds/Olympics will make everything better. Why all the fancy new construction?

Yes, the Feds pay half of construction (”capital”) costs for (a few) big new shiny things like Brown Line reconstruction, but they don’t pay anything for daily operations or maintenance. This is kind of like Mom paying for new clothes once Junior’s outgrown them, but refusing to pay to wash or mend the ones Jr. already has. No wonder he’s wearing flashy new shoes over hole-y socks.

You think the Feds will bail us out in 2016? Fat chance. Again, they only pay part of the construction costs; Salt Lake City, Vancouver, and other Olympic cities still had to hike local taxes big time to fund transit operations and construction. Oh, and CTA kind of needs money now, not in nine years — remember, the whole system grinds to a halt in October if no action is taken.

Cut off-peak service, don’t raise rush hour fares!

Bus and train drivers, like most of us, work full-time, eight-hour shifts. Hiring people just for rush hour is nearly impossible — would you work a split shift, 6 AM to 7 PM, without getting paid for 10 AM to 4 PM? Since the drivers are already paid to be there during rush hour, no additional drivers need to be hired for off-peak service. So, off-peak service is cheaper for CTA to provide. (Incidentally, day pass riders ride more off-peak, hence the day pass discount.)

That’s it! I’m gonna get a car!

Yeah, you and a hundred thousand other people, too. You think traffic’s bad, and parking and gas expensive? Just you wait.

Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. Whine. (Repeat ad nauseam.)

Shut up and do something already. Visit SaveChicagolandTransit.com, read up, and take action. (Note: I am not materially affiliated with that site or with any transit agency.)