Category Archives: transit

Everyone’s Fault

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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

ragging on privatization

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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.

The journey’s half the fun

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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.

Modest proposals dept.

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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.

Your transit authority cares

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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.

Congestion pricing pilots

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…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.

Funding redux

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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.)

Transit operating profits in HK

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The only public transit agency in the world* which makes a steady profit is the MTR in Hong Kong. To get a handle on Hong Kong’s population density, imagine moving the populations of Chicago, Aurora, and Joliet into Naperville — and, oh, cutting a really deep harbor through the middle.

Urbanized area of Hong Kong Island: 16.1 sq. mi.
Urbanized area of Kowloon peninsula: 18.1 sq. mi.
(Note: the above two areas are separated by one of the world’s busiest harbors, with just six fixed crossings, half of which are run by MTR.)
Population of above urbanized areas, 2005 est.: ~3.28 million
Total urbanized area: 34.2 sq. mi.

Population of Chicago, 2005 est.: 2,842,518
Population of Aurora, Naperville, and Joliet, the next three largest cities in the area (2003-2006, est. and Census): 443,176
Combined population of four largest Chicagoland cities: 3.285 million
Area of Naperville: 35.5 sq. mi.

You can either have profitable transit or suburban sprawl; drivers who say “hike the fares” can’t have your sprawl and eat it, too.

Oh, and 63% of MTR’s profits (and thus the funding for its capital costs, although many of its capital costs are also directly paid for by the government; note the financing sources for the line extensions mentioned at SEC EDGAR) come not from operations, but from real estate development — just like the old streetcar empires of yore.

Speaking of real estate values, nice quote in a Crain’s piece by Brandon Glenn:

“Whatever makes it harder for people to get to their jobs is bad for the city,” said Tom Kirschbraun, managing director of the real estate services company Jones Lang LaSalle Inc… Chicago’s hub-and-spoke transit system gives it a competitive advantage over most other U.S. cities, Mr. Kirschbraun said. “If you start dimming its effectiveness bit by bit, that competitive advantage starts to dwindle bit by bit,” he said.

* Tokyo’s privately owned subway systems are also profitable. I’m not sure about the public systems outside Tokyo.

“Stay on Track”

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4 April editorial in the New York Times:

But any mass-transit renaissance will come to a grinding halt unless a commensurate investment is made in upkeep and expansion. As Libby Sander reported recently in The Times, Chicago’s elevated train system, known as the El, appears to be near a breaking point. The second-largest public transit system in America after New York’s is suffering from rising commute times as the century-old system deteriorates… Once a system begins to break down, it can hurt the quality of life and economic growth of a city.

29 January editorial in Crain’s Chicago Business:

Chicago’s rapid transit system is rolling toward a disastrous tipping point. So far, riders have stuck with the elevated train system as service has gotten worse and worse… At some point, ridership will plummet as commuters abandon the trains for more reliable transportation and businesses depart downtown for more accessible locations. The effect on the city’s economy will be devastating.

Only Mayor Richard M. Daley can save the train system. So far, he’s mostly ignored the deterioration of service as trains swell with downtown office workers commuting from the gentrifying neighborhoods of the North and Northwest sides — a predictable side effect of the middle-class renaissance he worked to hard to foster.

(emphases added) This is the biggest point I’ve wanted to make about transit funding: without transit, downtown Chicago would cease to exist. Without downtown Chicago, Illinois might as well be Iowa or Indiana, some generic slice of rich Midwestern prairie. This isn’t just a city issue.

It might be interesting to calculate some rough figures on this topic: what would happen if 20% of downtown jobs disappeared? or if 20% of CTA riders started driving? The cascading impacts down the line — property values and tax revenue, income tax, sales tax, air pollution, stormwater and heat island impacts from parking — would be astonishing. It’s also not entirely unprecedented: look at, say, Philadelphia, where poor transit was one factor in the decline of a CBD that now accounts for just a third of the region’s office market.

And a curious 29 March entry from the Economist (which has direct experience in congestion pricing):

But there is something odd about the way that many of Chicago’s leaders talk about [transportation] problems. They invariably try to link their suggestions to grand or abstract ideas, such as being a “global city” or winning a bid to host the Olympics. _The simpler need is to get goods and people moving_… The public debate over making drivers pay to use the roads has been as shallow in Chicago as in the rest of America. The argument tends to revolve around whether it makes more sense to use tolls and private enterprise to pay for better roads, or instead to keep charging taxpayers for a system that just limps along. By contrast, not much is said about the role that prices might play in altering the behaviour of both companies and commuters.

There you go: we need price incentives that cut car and truck traffic while raising revenues for rail.

Day tripping

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I’ve lately found some same-day cheap airfares to various U.S. cities, so I’ve experimented with doing day trips by air. (They’re not strict mileage runs since I actually leave the airport, unlike a true MRer.)

So, a few cities where getting from the airport to an interesting part of town doesn’t take a car, more than $2, or more than half an hour:

* Austin: A cheap ride direct to downtown and campus, although I didn’t think it very walkable once off the bus.
* Boston: We’ll see how this goes next week, but I’m going to try the Silver Line instead of the Blue + shuttle, and maybe see how the North End and/or South Boston Piers have changed since the Dig.
* Chicago: From Midway, try the South Loop; from O’Hare, try Wicker Park.
* Los Angeles: A fairly frequent LAX shuttle bus runs to the LAX Transit Center, but don’t bother with LA; instead, explore nearby Venice and Santa Monica with the Big Blue Bus. (The FlyAway to Union Station works well enough, but could take a while.)
* Minneapolis: The train runs to either downtown or the megamall (and Ikea!). To get to Uptown, transfer to a westbound 21 bus at Lake or go downtown (passing the new riverfront area) and take a #6 bus headed down Hennepin, which also swings by Loring Park and the Walker.
* Portland: MAX runs directly to the eminently walkable downtown.
* Queens: The Q33 is a short ride into Jackson Heights from LGA, and from there the #7 goes to Flushing.
* Washington: Perhaps the easiest anywhere: fast and efficient Metrorail stops right at National.
* Two I haven’t tried, but which have rail to the airport: Cleveland and St. Louis.

A sidebar: one-day ski trips on transit. I only know of three ski slopes with 7-day public transit access from a major city, although I’d certainly love to know about others:
* Eldora Mountain near Boulder, Colo.: RTD bus N from the Boulder bus station
* Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver, B.C.: Coast Mountain bus 236 [pdf] from Lonsdale Quay
* Snowbird/Alta, along UTA’s Route 998 out of Salt Lake City. Only two buses a day, though.
* Special mentions go to the Winter Park Ski Train, Amtrak’s Vermonter, and the proposed Québec-Le Massif train although these aren’t transit buses. Many other resorts run private motorcoaches within town or to nearby airports or cities.

Additional special mentions go to Santa Barbara Car-Free, which promotes car-free trips to Santa Barbara, Calif., and CATCO’s Going to the Mountains from Calgary. CATCO’s slogan, courtesy Bill Ford: ‘If you live in a city, you don’t need to own a car.’

Paradise

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Derailment

Originally uploaded by paytonc.

Graffitists in Santa Monica wistfully pine after the Red Cars of yore — an interesting sight, given that the Red Cars stopped in 1961. It’s a sad tale, and one which exerts a strangely tragic pull over Angelenos to this day. (It’s worth mentioning here that, like nearly all transit [and most passenger transportation systems], the Red Car was only ever marginally profitable — land speculation along the ROWs paid for Henry Huntington’s empire.)

Meanwhile, the Chicago machine is suddenly wistfully looking back on the days when it could bulldoze entire neighborhoods. Too bad the freight railroads are actually using that land for something useful, like, um, moving freight; that CREATE remains woefully unfunded; and that there are already two (well, 1.75, but soon to be two) toll beltways around the city’s south and west flanks. Hmm.