Transit funding structures

by

Found a report at the World Bank site written by Prointec Inocsa Stereocarto for the Madrid transit agency comparing operations integration and funding sources for several major transit agencies. I was mostly looking for just how lavishly France funds the Paris Metro, and found ample evidence: the French government kicked in $800M to run the Parisian transit system in 1997, and that local employers paid nearly $1.7 billion in payroll taxes (and discounted passes) to finance system operations. The riders paid just 25.7% of the RATP’s total cost, with taxpayers picking up the rest: 31% from the 2% payroll tax, 17% from the feds, and the rest from payments and traffic fines from the local governments.

Compare that to 53% farebox recovery for CTA, with just $700M in regional subsidy (plus a 25% match and reduced fare reimbursements from the state, totaling <$250M) for all of RTA, for instance — to serve a metro area of similar scope, although half as densely populated, and therefore much more expensive to serve with transit.

Update 17 July 2006, from a Fiscal Policy Institute (Word file) document:
MTA (NYC) finances roughly break down to 70% system generated (about 55% fares, 15% advertising and tolls), 25% dedicated taxes, and 10% transfers from other governments (including $250M from NYC). The six dedicated taxes include corporate income, petroleum importation, vehicle registration fees, 0.25% on real estate transfers and mortgage recordings, and 0.25% on retail sales. The taxes were introduced in the early 1980s, with a nexus focusing taxation on “two groups who derive significant benefit from an effective mass transit system: (1) the business community and property owners,” who benefit from better access, higher density, higher property values, and better business productivity from a broader labor pool, and (2) drivers, “since an efficient mass transit system relieves congestion and enhances their mobility.” Transit also improves the environment, facilitates economic activity and expands the tax base, and supports jobs elsewhere in the state: “public spending on mass transit has by far the highest economic multiplier among all industries in New York State”; $1 billion spent yields $3.4B in total economic output, 37,500 jobs and $1.8B in payroll. (Sadly, this is unsourced.)

CTA fare hike

by

Crain’s Greg Hinz reports that the CTA’s 2006 budget includes a mild cash fare increase, furthering the two-tiered fare system (and apparently adding more tiers) separating smart cards, transit cards, and cash:

Those who pay in cash would have to fork over $2 a ride, up from $1.75 now. But only 20% of CTA users now pay in cash, with the others using the pre-paid Chicago Card or daily, weekly or monthly passes.

Removing the paper transfer cards would undoubtedly save cash. The differential pricing for bus and rail for those using Transit Cards will undoubtedly cause additional confusion. But overall, the net effect will be to speed operations: discouraging payment with nickels and dimes saves everyone time and money, and it’s time the prices reflect that.

CTA can both improve ridership and address the equity concern raised here by vastly increasing the availability of daily and weekly passes, and prepaid Transit Cards. Sell them at every corner store, every train station, and every bus driver. (Wouldn’t take much: just have them dispense $5 day passes as they now dispense transfers.) NYC added day passes to all MetroCard vending machines, with a “positive impact”:http://www.schallerconsult.com/pub/metrocrd.htm on the bottom line:

Evidently, passes attracted not just those already making enough trips to save money with a pass, but also attracted customers just below the break-even threshold (13 trips for the 7-day pass and 11 trips for the 30-day pass). These customers have taken advantage of passes to boost their ridership past the break-even point-making transit cheaper for them while increasing NYC Transit revenues. Some transit riders also report that pass usage cut into their taxi ridership, an unsurprising development since pass users’ incremental transit trips are free.

“A pass will allow much greater mobility for transit riders and that’s great news for our economy. It also means less traffic congestion, a saner city and cleaner air,” said [Straphangers Campaign’s Gene] Russianoff in “1997”:http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.railroad/browse_thread/thread/256de9efe5008e53/d50515e5c1f643f0%23d50515e5c1f643f0?sa=X&oi=groupsr&start=0&num=3

The weekly passes were (reportedly) especially popular among low-income workers who can’t front the cost of a monthly pass; at $20/week or $75/month, it’s almost a wash, anyways. “Surveys in NYC”:http://www.straphangers.org/discount.pdf (p. 17) indicate that over a fourth of lower-income riders there used 7-day passes, vs. less than 10% of high-income riders, and that 60% of low-income riders cited cost as a deterrent to buying a 30-day pass. Low-income riders are also more likely to be “unbanked,” thus creating a deterrent to using the credit-card-linked Chicago Card Plus.

I’m not sure what stands in the way of stores other than Jewel/Osco and currency exchanges offering the cards for sale. If CTA doesn’t want to deal with the complications of running a wholesale business, then outsource it (maybe to the folks who put Lotto machines on every corner in poor parts of town). If it’s an exclusivity agreement, then that’s stupid: any upfront premium would be more than offset by higher sales.

(Thanks to Adam Kerman for the idea about passes.)

Mass demobilization

by

Lawrence Kaplan wrote in September about the wasted opportunity to re-engage civil society in the wake of 9/11:

(_emphasis_ added)

As the famous World War II poster put it, _Remember Pearl Harbor: work — fight — sacrifice!!_ And Americans did. Legions volunteered to join the military (and millions more were drafted), while, on the home front, millions of others labored directly in support of the war effort. They did so, in part, because their president asked them to… “You see those bombers in the sky,” the Irving Berlin tune went, “Rockefeller helped build them and so did I. _I paid my income tax today_.”

Ironically… FDR felt “let down” by the American people. In 1943, the president complained that too many Americans were “laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices.” What would he make of the present era? The circumstances that required mass mobilization during World War II are, of course, not the circumstances the United States confronts today. In Bush’s telling, however, the war on terrorism requires something closer to _mass demobilization_.

Meanwhile, it turns out that TV gets trashier as civic engagement declines. Not that I know many people who watch TV, but it’s no wonder that I don’t know anyone who watches trash: they’re all either at home or bowling alone.

During the ’90s, the DDB Needham Life Style survey, which tracks viewer preferences alongside civic habits, showed that viewers who imbibed the trashiest fare were the least likely to be engaged in their communities, while those who watched the news were the most involved… True, Americans have been indulging in wartime escapism ever since the proliferation of carnivals during the Civil War. But “Fear Factor” isn’t escapism. It’s the hallmark of a society that feels it has nothing from which to escape.

I finally dug this out of my list of things to post after piping up at a recent community meeting. Others tended to blame apathy on demographics: give us more families with children who stick around and fewer renters, and supposedly everything will be better. Yet the couples building those problematically huge McMansions — my favorite example: the couple “thinking about” having children who demanded 5,500 sq ft with a penthouse hot-tub cabana — have children and own single-family houses, and yet are less invested in the neighborhood than some young renters. (I was easily the only one in the room under 30, and certainly the only non-White.) Even if PTA soccer moms invaded the neighborhood, they wouldn’t solve the problem: their primary complaint is always over-extension. With “affordable” houses going for $1M, it’s no wonder that both parents have 60-hour weeks down at the firm.

Fighting apathy requires a fundamentally different approach to politics. What exactly that is, I’m not entirely sure yet, but I’d sure be interested in examples.

Food porn

by

Interesting trendlet: “photoblogging your meals”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/foodporn/clusters, aka “flickr food porn.” One particularly tasty looking example: Eating Taipei, a food odyssey in Taiwan.

Speaking of which, I’m apparently booked for LA, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Tokyo in December. Sounds fun, but a bit disappointed that it won’t include “Shanghai”:http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/travel/09shanghai.html?pagewanted=2&incamp=article_popular.

On the title: while reading “Debbie Does Salad” in the current (and excellent) “Harper’s”:http://harpers.org/MostRecentCover.html, I couldn’t help but think of my parents at home and their two-hours-a-day dose of FoodTV. And yet what TV isn’t porn-ified these days, filled with subtle yannic and phallic shapes, moist and squishy sounds, filth sanitized and airbrushed to perfection, with dreamy actors breathing into one another’s ears?

New politics needed to face global warming

by

Bill McKibben writes in the current American Prospect on global warming:

Europe and Japan have been able to begin grappling with climate change because they retain a different conception of public life. They don’t need houses as large as ours because their cities are in some sense an extension of people’s living rooms. They can cope with public transportation because they haven’t spread as far into distant and disconnected suburbs. In this light, it makes sense that Portland and New York and San Francisco have emerged as the centers of American activism. Those cities still have some public life. But suburban Atlanta? In case you’re wondering if such airy speculation makes a concrete difference, consider that western Europeans use, on average, 50-percent less fossil fuel than Americans. _Not because their lives are poorer, and not because they have some magical technology; because they think a little differently about life_… (emphasis added)

No, the political force that finally manages to take this issue on is the political force that also understands and helps to nurture the deep-rooted and unsatisfied American desire for real community, for real connection between people. The force that dares to actually say out loud that “more” is no longer making us happier, that the need for security and for connection is now more important.

But you could also make a decent argument that this issue is one of the doors into a new and more interesting politics. A politics that is about living the good life instead of acquiring more things. A politics that is about guaranteeing one another medical care and retirement security and a planet to inhabit. Those tasks all seem beyond the every-man-for-himself ethos of post-Reagan America; they rely on some emergent solidarity. Exactly how it will emerge and who will embody it are not yet clear, but physics and chemistry seem to require it.

Global warming is that rare (well, I hope so), overwhelming, all-encompassing, big-picture threat which could ultimately force a new politics of solidarity onto humanity — and, as McKibben points out, it’s just that solidarity which has been sorely lacking in American politics. Climate could also become the defining issue of my generation: “the baby boomers”:http://hubbert.mines.edu/news/Udall-Andrews_99-1.pdf (scroll to page 6) got us into this mess, with more than _half_ of the world’s total oil reserves consumed during their lifetimes. That leaves their children to either (a) clean up the mess in a reasonable manner or (b) further delay the inevitable end of profligacy, merely ensuring that it’ll only get worse.

Gas price rebuttal

by

Reposted from the Flickr: Gas Pump Sticker Shock message board. I think I was fairly reasonable and civil, considering that we were supposed to be discussing a series of photos of people flicking off gas pumps in a weak-kneed attempt to blow off steam.

—-

I believe that gas prices are too LOW. If it takes $4/gallon gas (or $100/barrel oil) to get Americans to consider alternatives to oil addiction, then bring it on.

Apparently, even “BusinessWeek columnists”:tinyurl.com/dbqkk agree.

Many people living in urban areas already have great transit alternatives. 40% of the trips that Americans make are less than two miles long–a great distance for walking or cycling. New technology makes sharing trips or replacing trips much easier, whether telecommuting, finding someone to carpool with, or shopping online (thus sharing delivery trucks, instead of everyone driving their own deliveries).

If you’re really mad about gas prices, you could do something really radical: never buy gas, ever again. Oh wait, I did that already.

—-

I am very much for real, and I really have never bought gas, ever. Maybe other people shouldn’t be lazy, or at least maybe they shouldn’t complain loudly when they have to pay the price for their laziness.

I don’t get ten bags of groceries at a time. Buying smaller quantities more often means fresher food. Even when buying for parties, I can carry it easily with a bicycle trailer or a small cart, or have it delivered. (I don’t know what you buy from Best Buy, but most of my electronic stuff is small.) And most of the time, people aren’t traveling very far with loads of stuff. They’re just lazy, as you say, and so they drive.

I, and other non-drivers like me (about one in four Americans), DO make a difference. Imagine if the 300,000 families in Chicago without cars suddenly bought cars tomorrow: imagine how much higher gas prices would be, how much worse traffic or parking or pollution would be. You should be thanking, not belittling.

—-

Artesia, you’re right that the higher costs eventually get passed down; for instance, taxi and air fares have increased. However, someone who drives has to pay both higher air fare and higher gas prices; I only have to pay the former. Gas taxes here in Chicago rank among the highest local taxes in the country, at around 30c/gallon, but residents of, say, the Netherlands pay gas taxes of over $4/gallon. Since they’ve paid those taxes for a long time, though, the entire economy uses gas more efficiently. Food is grown and processed closer to cities, things are sent by boat or rail instead of truck, etc. So, the market prices for food and other necessities end up being no higher than here. Transit operators do end up paying more for fuel, but fuel is only 3% of my local transit system’s budget.

It’s not an optimal situation for anyone, really, since even I’d prefer that higher prices be offset by better transportation alternatives or for rebates to lower-income consumers. However, let’s hope that today’s high prices will provide a strong impetus to begin using gas more economically, so that we’re not caught in a similarly bad situation during future oil-supply crunches–which, by all indications, will happen more frequently.

Serge, your fatalistic attitude towards pollution is neither encouraging nor correct. We’ve successfully cut pollution: for instance, the Clean Air Act cut carbon monoxide pollution by 90% and sulfur dioxide by 60%, while CFCs have almost disappeared in 10 years since the Montreal Protocol. Many large (and quite wealthy) cities like Vancouver, Copenhagen, Singapore, Zurich, Melbourne, and London have used proactive policies to reduce car traffic and increase transit ridership, walking, and cycling, sometimes dramatically: walking has increased 60% in Melbourne and 50% in Vancouver. Here in the USA, our economy became 33% more energy efficient between 1970-97, and higher prices will accelerate that trend.

Note that I said “many people living in urban areas” — 75% of Americans live in urban areas. I agree that it’s tougher on people living in rural areas. Countries with higher gas prices usually have fewer people living on farmsteads and more living in villages, where there are some alternatives to driving. Farm equipment also gets exempted from gas taxes in most places, which makes a big difference in other countries where taxes are 50-70% of the cost of gas.

The key is to use transportation appropriately: instead of driving half a mile, as many people in cities and suburbs do, maybe we city folks should consider alternatives. That way, we can make sure there’s more scarce gas available for those who truly need it.

Edit: One economist calculates that a program combining a $2/gallon tax and a “gas guzzler buyback” (to ease the transition to higher prices) would save two million barrels of oil each day in the first year. By contrast, Hurricane Katrina knocked out production of 0.86 million barrels of oils a day. Smarter energy policies today will help us when future crises hit.

Kansas City’s suburban demographic split

by

In What’s the Matter With Kansas?, “Tom Frank”:http://www.tcfrank.com/essays.html puzzles for a moment over why Johnson County, Kansas — the “Cupcake Land” of mostly prosperous western suburbs of Kansas City, far and away the wealthiest county in Kansas (it being the only metropolitan county) is split between libertarian moderates in the east (closer to KC) and reactionary conservatives in the western exurbs. The two groups create an uneasy alliance that returns Republicans to office time and again, relying on the votes and the fervor of the Cons to further the Mods’ capitalist aims, even though the Mods are sometimes troubled by the culture-war rhetoric that gets the Cons hopping. The puzzle is that the two camps live side by side and appear demographically similar in many ways, including occupation and income.

One distinction here lies in each group’s habitus; the two camps do live in different cultural milieus and relate to the wider economy and society in different ways. The “Claritas PRIZM NE”:http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=30&SubID=&pageName=Segment%2BLook-up consumer segmentation system draws a line through Johnson County separating metropolitan “suburban” consumers in the east and non-metropolitan “edge/second city” consumers in the west. The most common clusters in two Johnson County towns:

|Mission Hills, 66208|Lenexa, 66220|
|01. Upper Crust|09. Big Fish, Small Pond|
|03. Movers & Shakers|11. God’s Country|
|08. Executive Suites|23. Greenbelt Sports|
|21. Gray Power|28. Traditional Times|
|30. Suburban Sprawl|45. Blue Highways|

The numbers refer to overall SES, ranked 1-66. Not only are the Mission Hills clusters notably more upscale, but their tastes are far “bluer.” Executive Suites, “a haven for white-collar professionals drawn to comfortable homes and apartments,” watches “Will & Grace” and drives BMWs; similarly wealthy Big Fish, Small Pond reads _Southern Living_. Gray Power goes to museums; Greenbelt Sports watches pro wrestling on pay-per-view. Suburban Sprawl drives Nissans; Traditional Times drives Buicks.

The distinction reminds me of “Chris’ point at LCL”:http://leftcenterleft.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/whats_the_matte.html about those in the major metros who’ve bought into the metropolitan status game and those who haven’t; in this case, the “Plen-T-Plaint” that Frank refers to comprises the latter’s litany of resentful, rebellious grievances against the largely self-imposed cultural hegemony of the former. Of course, all Americans play some sort of status game — as evidenced by the mere presence of the clusters — but the primary axis of urbanity remains the primary division.

(Finally published; started in January 2005, after I finished the book.)

Beautiful transit

by

Subways need not be boring or dreary! Someone’s compiled a gallery of 40 exceptionally well designed subways from around the world, several of which are from the Soviet bloc and feature the high-finish “palaces for the people” look. Interesting shots: futurism in Kiev (you’d think the engineering-obsessed Soviets would go more for that look), clean lines throughout Spain, delicate concrete arches in Tashkent, and huge stations in Lille — the VAL trains (identical to those used at O’Hare) must seem tiny by comparison.

Zaha on New Urbanism

by

From a Miami New Times interview with Alfreo Triff:

*Alfredo Triff*: There are those who defend a more traditionalist program. I’m thinking of New Urbanism. What’s your take on it?

*Zaha Hadid*: I try to avoid decrees, so don’t have one single idea about urban planning. Spaces don’t have to be necessarily traditional in the sense of squares. We can always reinvent the idea of civic space. Some of the New Urbanism [sic] ideas are interesting. My problem is when a program becomes dogmatic and develops into something too conservative. New Urbanism has this idea of mixed-use, small streets, and accessibility. It can work well in some places, but it may not work in others. There’s no tabula rasa that works all over. The problem is when this program is realized as a gated community [apparently in reference to Aqua Allison Island].

To her credit, she apparently has moved past the fallacious understanding of NU as neoclassical architecture, but I’d still be curious to know about the contexts that require inaccessible sprawl. Certain auto-oriented land uses (malls, warehouses) might, but expensive energy might render those uses obsolete.

20-something pricing

by

Fall has rolled around and there’s no sign of the three-year-old 18/29 subscription for 18-29 year olds at the CSO. The former deal: when single ticket sales began in the autumn, 18-29 year olds could get preferential pricing ($18-$29, about 60% off single ticket prices) on edge-of-main-floor or terrace seats for when creating a choose-your-own subscription from a selection of concerts (lower selling, usually due to modern music on the program). Three catches: a subscription minimum of three concerts, no typical subscriber benefits, and age validation when picking up the tickets. Still, it was a great deal and seemed to work; I spent about the same in 2004 as in 2003, but went to twice as many concerts. Dozens of young people seemed to be using the option, based on eyeball surveys comparing the “allowed” seating areas with the regular subscribers. Yet it was apparently phased out in favor of the 6:30 “evening rush” concerts.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Symphony sounds almost apologetic about raising the price of “tsoundcheck” youth tickets from $10 to $12. More than 20,000 members have signed up for tsoundcheck. And the “City Opera”:http://www.nycopera.com/productions/big/index.aspx in New York has a “Big Deal” membership option which discounts two-weeks-in-advance tickets to $30 apiece after a $50 ($75 for two) annual membership fee. The integrated marketing program also includes specially designed mailers, prominently featuring lusty young singers cradling one another and super-pithy program descriptions:

bq. “Famous singer seeks help rescuing her anarchist boyfriend from a corrupt police chief. Will consider murder if push comes to shove.”

State taxation fundamentally broken

by

Governing magazine’s 2003 Government Performance Project begins with an overview of the structural problems of state tax systems:

The vast majority of state tax systems are inadequate for the task of funding a 21st-century government.

Most of those tax systems are also unfair. They break the golden rule of tax equity: collect the lowest possible rates on the widest possible base of taxpayers.

In addition, at a time when states are desperate to collect every dime they’re owed, many are short-changing their tax-collection departments, cutting revenue agency budgets with a heavy hand…

“It’s the old classic,” says Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”