It’s called public transit

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The “catty reference”:https://westnorth.com/2004/08/01/whatd-i-say/ to the Las Vegas Monorail earlier had to do with an idle libertarian comment I saw about it: that it was proof that the free market could build transit. In fact, though, it’s proof that the free market is incapable of building adequate transit _networks_. Private actors, in their zeal to efficiently cut out free loaders, will overlook major traffic generators while (especially in the absence of eminent domain) choosing paths which make little sense from a systems standpoint.

One example might be the PATH walkway system under central Toronto. As Emily Bowers writes in Spacing,

For all its commercialized shelter from the frigid winters and smoggy summers, the PATH has taken a somewhat bumpy road into existence, through years of conflicted city councils and profit-driven downtown corporations. There have been plenty of collisions of interest in a space that is privately controlled, but exists to serve the convenience of thousands of members of the general public.

One of the biggest problems has been signage. For years, buildings posted their own signs that guided pedestrians to services within their own buildings, but didn’t give any clue how to get to the rest of the system.

So the city took control of developing PATH-wide signage. Some city councilors wanted signs to be blatant, calling for street signs like the type seen high aboveground. But many owners of the PATH loudly objected, saying street signs might fool people into thinking the PATH was public space.

Moreover, proprietors weren’t eager to direct consumers out of their building and away from their shops and services. It seemed keeping people lost in the underground made good corporate sense.

Another example of an inadequate network: the “Mid Levels Escalator”:http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/travel/sophisticated/07ST-HONG.html in Hong Kong, which has spurred wondrous development alongside it but as a result has become more of a shopping excursion, with frequent stops for chances to shop, than a functional transportation node.

The Las Vegas (and Disney World) monorails are in fact owned by the private sector. However, I don’t think that these highly unique settings are adequate precedents for turning over the business of mass transit to the private sector. Note particularly:

“But beyond that, officials say the system will need about 15 million passengers a year buying the $3 one-way ticket to break even.” And that’s for a four mile long line!

The frickin’ Brown Line el, which rivals only the Lexington Avenue subway in overcrowding, carries a mere 13.6 million passengers a year. Both NYC Transit and CTA are dead broke, and capacity enhancements to each (Ravenswood platform extensions and the Second Avenue subway) are stuck if they don’t receive major new federal subsidies in TEA3.

The streetcar systems of US cities, and the rapid transit in Hong Kong and Tokyo, only turn(ed) profits because of property speculation along the lines. Once all the land was developed, and once mass automobility broke the systems’ monopoly on land speculation, the systems started going broke. Transit has negative marginal profitability; its profits depend on its ability to “capture the value”:http://www.vtpi.org/smith.htm of ancillary development (i.e., positive externalities) that result from its construction and use: in particular, great urbanism and the profitable economic concentration of cities.

The same goes for Las Vegas: it only goes to the casinos that paid for it. It will have little real impact on the nightmarish traffic congestion along Las Vegas Boulevard — it does not serve the platoons of cars arriving via I-15, the boatloads of low-wage employees arriving for their shifts from far-flung housing tracts,(1) or the countless joyriders. The monorail does not address the fundamentally broken pattern of land use (not to mention the broken social dynamics)(2) in deregulated Las Vegas, nor do the casinos’ altogether minor attempts to address the monstrous traffic (the monorail, the elevated walkways, the mere presence of sidewalks) ultimately prove anything about the Enlightened Self Interest of the Invisible Hand — except perhaps that it’s always too little, too late. Gambling options closer to home and the end of the (government subsidized) cheap water, cheap land, and cheap oil that have fed Las Vegas for decades may eventually pull the plug on the juggernaut of its growth.

The business of moving people, with their impossible demands for creature comforts, is simply not profitable; witness the perpetual bankruptcy of the airline business,(2) of Amtrak, of Greyhound, of every city bus system in history, heck, even of the Cunard Line. Sure, tiny segments of passenger travel may be profitable: namely, high-priced business travel and sightseeing circuits. Similarly, privately run road networks, like the toll highways around Orlando, in South Orange County, and around Toronto or Northern Virginia, may appear to be profitable but don’t take into account the negative externalities of pollution, sprawl, and the wasted time of having thousands of drivers drive themselves — or the public cost of building and maintaining the extensive network of “feeder roads” that bring drivers to the tollways. On the other hand, having to pay bus or train drivers for eight-hour shifts (not just the four peak hours of rush hour) make the labor costs of running transit almost prohibitive — except for lines in 24-hour cities which can generate consistently high demand at all hours.

Essentially, I would argue that transit provides benefits to too many people but costs to too few. Auto transport imposes broad costs on society, but pretty much solely benefits those inside the car.

# These social dynamics may not ever be of interest to the market, but thoughtful consideration of social equity is necessary in a democracy.
# The airline industry has, at best, broken even over its entire history — subtract the mainline carriers’ $billion losses from the discount carriers’ $million earnings and they’re still gushing red ink right now — not to mention the broader subsidies to airlines: the airline bailout, defense subsidies that prop up Boeing’s and Airbus’ R&D department, “free” airspace, externalized air pollution costs, the military apparatus that secures cheap kerosene, etc.

Go where the big spenders are

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Looking to save energy? Better look to where the typical household consumes the most of it: the garage.

Ted Fishman, in an otherwise uneventful rah-rah piece on hypercars in the Times Magazine, points out:

The power required to run a midsize car on the road today is about 30 times what is needed to run an average house with every light and appliance on… Amory Lovins, the chief executive of Rocky Mountain Institute… “If all the cars and light trucks on the road had fuel cells on them, they could make 6 to 12 times the amount of generating capacity that all the power companies now own.”

Field’s to Macy’s

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It’s official: Federated will kill the ancient, revered Marshall Field’s nameplate and replace it with the hated Macy’s. Of course I cut up my Field’s credit card and sent a shard of it to Federated headquarters out of sheer pique (and my own rather extreme sentimentality about place), but in the short and long term today’s announcements don’t even make great business sense.

What I posted to Chicagoist‘s comments:

Sure, a stronger brand identity nationwide is generally good for business. What’s curious about this is that Marshall Field’s probably has higher name recognition in the USA than, say, Lord & Taylor — which was spared because it doesn’t quite fit into Federated’s business strategy. L&T isn’t even that special to Manhattanites, unlike Bloomie’s, Saks, and Bergdorf, but somehow it survives?

Whoever buys Lord & Taylor (“exploring strategic options” means “on the block”) would be smart to negotiate the Field’s name as part of their deal. It’s not like Federated has any more use for it, unless they want to keep a department at State Street trafficking in Field’s memorabilia.

[Federated CEO Terry] Lundgren has specifically mentioned State Street as a showpiece in several interviews I’ve seen this year. He admits that Field’s trades at a higher level than Macy’s East, but said something about how Macy’s West in SF and Seattle is similar. (I’ll look up the cites at home.) Apparently, he thinks that he can have the best of both worlds: a national brand name that means different things to different cities. But to realize $500M in “cost synergies,” which the shareholders want, he’ll have to cut back on those less-profitable lines (like, oh, those special things carried only at flagships) and on service. I agree that Macy’s stands for nothing but dark stores and middlebrow selection, dominated by those high-margin but cheesy private labels that investors love.

The marketing push at Field’s in recent years has centered around highlighting State Street as a distinctly Chicago institution and as something special, restoring its faded allure. Federated’s own research indicates that people’s fond memories of Marshall Field’s are all about the State Street grand dame — one of retailing’s greatest momuments — and not their local branch stores. Yet Lundgren won’t promise that the recent (and fantastic) improvements at State Street will stay, only that the bottom line still rules above all else; as he told the Tribune, “Of the coming changes to the historic State Street flagship, Lundgren said, ‘I just know it needs to do better.’ ” This directly contradicts recent (2003-2005) statements by Field’s executives that sales at the chain overall, and State Street in particular, had upticked after many years of stagnation.

That polish behind State Street plays into a broader trend by cosmopolitan consumers to seek local alternatives, or at least local spins, on global trends. Dumbing down the entire chain to a nationwide, thousand-store Macy’s name not only reduces the chain to a commodity level that it will share with Wal*Mart, but also squanders the considerable goodwill that Field’s has engendered over the years: the splendor of State Street, true to Marshall Field’s plans, created a true genius loci. The architecture wasn’t value engineered and yet was magnanimously opened to all. It offered a modern temple of cosmopolitanism and grandeur to the emerging middle classes of the world’s preeminent Modern city. Arguably, in a pluralist city of many denominations, the one religion everyone could agree on was consumerism; Field’s played a key role in changing millions from mere workers to consumers, and the building provided an appropriate place of worship. The resulting emotional connection to shoppers built a powerful brand.

From the Tribune:

“Chicagoans and folks in the central United States tend to be more brand loyal,” said Burt Flickinger, managing director for Strategic Resource Group in New York. “While Field’s was a broken business, it was not unfixable. Federated has taken a broken business and made it a much more broken business.”

Another retail consultant said Field’s could be fashioned into an upscale brand.

“Retailing has been skewed to the low end and the high end. Marshall Field’s would be a powerful high-end brand. Why would you bring it down to the mushy middle?” asked Al Ries, author of the “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding.”

“This is particularly bad,” he said. “I’d rather have a name that no one has heard of with potential rather than a name like Macy’s that everyone has heard of but has no potential. People know about it, but it will never be perceived as a high-end brand.”

Indeed, the “lost years” at Field’s aside, the brand has significant national cachet since it served its upmarket clientele well for decades. Macy’s has always catered to the mid market.

David Greising has a useful perspective, also in the Trib:

If this all sounds a bit emotional, well, it is. And emotion is what Lundgren and the legions of MBAs that argued for this deal missed when they decided that the Field’s name must go. They relied, instead, on logic and experience.

Trouble is, it’s hard to view Field’s recent history and not get a bit emotional or, as some might indelicately put it, get mad. People get mad because Field’s demise was not an act of nature, it was a result of neglect.

But the hurt is more than just some parochial paroxysm. “Chicago properly should resist this national homogenization to the extent it can,” O’Connor said. “But this is beyond our control, really.”

Field’s is a name that mattered, so Field’s hurts more than the rest.

In the end, a retailer is nothing but a pile of inventory, some lease papers, some employment contracts, and a brand — its “goodwill,” its “emotional bond with consumers”:http://keepitfields.org/testimonials.htm. Emotion _does_ matter in the world of retailing, and Federated doesn’t seem to understand that. Their surveys only asked the up-or-down questions, comparing two incomparable commodities: the long-neglected Field’s and the better-tended, much larger Macy’s. No attempt was made to truly understand the brand’s intrinsic value.

Meanwhile, some (like the mayor) are shrugging and saying, “well, they’re not cutting jobs.” Of course no jobs will be cut locally; there’s no Federated-May overlap here, except for Lord & Taylor. Jobs will be cut everywhere else because there’s substantial overlap. Either way, no jobs would have been cut here, so that simply should not factor into the equation.

Rationing driving

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Now that it’s our Presidentially anointed, patriotic duty not to drive, I’ll do my part by cutting my driving to, well, zero.

Danny Hakim and Jeremy Peters in the NYT:

Drivers can only bend so far, however. “People can’t change where they live,” said Richard Porter, an economics professor at the University of Michigan. “They can’t change where they work, and there aren’t any clear substitutes to gas.”

Well, in the short term perhaps not, but in the long term perhaps people will change where they live — refashioning communities to reduce the need for driving. Imagine that! In the meantime, maybe now that “driving less” is a national policy, how about radically refashioning all the federal policies that encourage wasteful driving? Five to start:
# Many key federal facilities are sited with an anti-urban bias, from defense installations with needless “security” setbacks to post offices with gonzo parking lots.
# The feds pay 90% of capital costs for highways but 50% or less for transit.
# Transit commuters can receive only $75 in transit costs pretax, versus parking spaces worth up to $120 — and walkers or cyclists get no preferential tax treatment.
# The nation’s truckers get federally managed highway maintenance, but their competitors on the railroads must pay their own way.
# Affordable housing tax credits typically favor larger projects (e.g., mortgage revenue bonds require a minimum of 100 units on one site) and end up favoring larger, suburban sites.

Jaywalking fines run into resistance

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The Trib reports on cons and pros:

Gerald Roper, president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, said that the problems experienced by cabs, delivery trucks and other business-related vehicles will only get worse downtown if there aren’t consequences for jaywalking. “I watch tourists who obey the signs,” Roper said. “I just think it is people who are in the city all the time who are used to violating because they know the corners, they know the cops.”

Ald. Thomas Allen (38th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, said cracking down on some of the city’s worst drivers would be a better use of resources than targeting pedestrians. He also questioned the efficiency of having traffic aides leave their posts to chase jaywalkers and then write them tickets. Instead of concentrating on easing downtown congestion, he said, the city should be sending more help to the neighborhoods. “Give me some of those traffic aides,” he said. “I could give half a dozen locations where we could use them out here. We have people driving to work who need to get to work, too.” If the jaywalking crackdown makes it to the council for a vote, “I don’t think it would be received very well,” Allen said.

Roper, despite his co-chairmanship of “Business Leaders for Transportation”:http://www.metroplanning.org/businessleaders doesn’t seem to understand that businesses choose downtown Chicago not because it’s the easiest city in America to drive in, but because it’s a pleasant environment to _walk around_ in. That walkability means easy, convenient access to nice restaurants, plush gyms, luxurious apartments, and oh, trainfuls of competent worker bees.

Hilkevitch adds:

The city’s proposal focuses on reducing traffic congestion downtown by ticketing those pesky pedestrians who jaywalk in the middle of blocks or cross the street at corners against traffic signals. The city apparently sees such actions not as no-no’s, but as crimes against a humanity of street-clogging, pollution-belching automobilists… Aldermen immediately blasted the plan as short-sighted, unworkable and, uh, plain stupid. If Velasquez is so desperate about what to do about congestion, he should get to work on building a pedestrian component into Chicago’s traffic program… “I thought the last 40 years taught us that making the city faster for cars only made it more unpleasant for people,” Chicagoan Carl Wasielewski wrote to Getting Around. “But a great metropolis like Chicago still insists on looking more like Houston than Paris.” CTA riders and Metra commuters outnumber Loop drivers. If there is a need to let a handful of cars turn right at an intersection where 100 or more pedestrians are trying to cross a busy downtown street, the city should start with better training for its 303 traffic control aides.

Paper hat guy

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Scotty Iseri has a “random acts of kindness and senseless beauty” hobby: he makes paper hats and passes them out on the train. As someone on Craigslist says, “I like it. It’s nice to be given something even if it is a paper hat. And it’s nice to have a thought that follows you the rest of the day and simply brightens it.”

America’s lost technological edge

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Ford’s plans to ramp up hybrid production using Toyota’s technology points to the broader problem of America losing technological prowess in clean energy.

Ford’s challenge mirrors that in a number of other industries in which Japanese manufacturers have opened up a big lead on their U.S. rivals in the use of alternative energies.
Japan’s solar-panel makers, for instance, currently control half the global market — once dominated by U.S. and European companies. Sharp Corp., a top flat-panel TV maker, has built a $1 billion-a-year business in solar technology with double-digit growth.

Sharp’s biggest U.S. markets include New Jersey and California, which have incentive programs for alternative-fuel sources. Federal Express Corp. last month turned the switch on an Oakland, Calif., processing hub that has 5,700 solar panels covering a facility of 81,000 square feet, supplying 25% to 30% of the facility’s electricity.

Separately, Toshiba Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Fujitsu Ltd. plan to launch laptops, cellphones and MP3 players in the next few years that run on fuel cells, which make electricity from hydrogen combined with oxygen from the air, with water as exhaust. U.S. technology firms such as Motorola Corp. have been researching the technology too, but are further behind the commercialization curve.

For now, the market for fuel-efficient technologies, while growing, remains small. _But the initial Japanese success in developing such products, combined with the difficulty of bringing them to market, is beginning to stir concern among U.S. competitors as some analysts warn that fossil fuels such as oil will be costly for the foreseeable future._

“The Japanese are particularly good at focusing on promising technologies and commercializing them,” said David C. Victor, director of Stanford University’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development. While there are many innovative U.S. companies, he said, the Japanese have a proven knack for “managing innovation,” and “integrating innovation into the manufacturing process.”

Analysts said Japan’s current edge in the alternative-fuel arena in part comes from making a virtue of necessity. The country has few domestic sources of oil and natural gas, prompting Japanese manufacturers to explore alternative technologies years before the recent surge in oil prices. Toyota, for instance, introduced its first hybrid in 1997.

More important, perhaps, are generous subsidies and other support from the government, which has long worried about the country’s dependence on imported oil. Buyers of solar panels, for example, have received more than $1 billion in subsidies from the Japanese government during the past decade.

By no means does Japan’s lead extend to all alternative technologies. General Electric Co., for example, has won plaudits from environmentalists for its turbines that create power from wind, a promising innovation that hasn’t caught on widely in Japan. The Japanese are lagging behind, too, in areas such as biomass, a potentially significant energy source in which organic waste is burned to create steam that turns a turbine.

What’s more, not all alternative technologies may pan out. “It’s clear the hybrid vehicle could well be a platform for innovation in automobiles,” said Mr. Victor of Stanford. But with fuel cells or solar panels, he says, “it isn’t yet clear these are winners.”

Japan Inc.’s strategy of “picking winners” may not ultimately produce the best results, but I’m sure it’ll work better than America Inc.’s strategy of keeping its head in the sand and prioritizing the illusion of cheap, abundant oil above all else.

Pedestrians still #1 impediment to traffic!

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Great news for drivers! In a prelude to a future when the entire Loop will be paved over in order to facilitate through traffic — after all, the Loop is only a place to drive through, not a place for people to do silly, inconsequential things like work or play or shop — the city’s boneheaded crossing guards will now write tickets for pedestrians, but not drivers! Because by golly, traffic congestion isn’t caused by too many cars, it’s caused by too many pedestrians!

Chicago may follow a trail blazed by Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Houston in an effort to even a playing field now tipped too heavily in favor of pedestrians, according to Andrew Velasquez, executive director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications… All it takes is one pedestrian to cross against the ‘Do Not Cross’ light to defeat the whole purpose. Vehicles can’t turn, even when they have the right-turn light.’

Vehicles can’t turn??? What a travesty! The Trib makes this clearer: “Bond denied that, saying the aims are to reduce vehicle congestion and improve traffic flow.” Quite obviously, vehicle congestion and poor traffic flow have nothing to do with the vastly increased numbers of cars. No, it’s because of the pedestrians.

The bad news: not even $12.8 million spent on overpasses at Flamingo & Las Vegas Blvd. can keep those pesky pedestrians out of the way. Oh wait: this car jumped the curb and plowed into a crowd. Well, it was STILL the pedestrians’ fault, I’m sure.

Changes behind the scenes

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Minor but important changes here: the blogroll is back, although lacking in some refinements and still missing many of the old internal links. In time…

The archive now looks more extensive because it is now officially complete: almost four years of blogging! After two hours of wrenching with code, I managed to import almost 200 blog entries from the dim mists of antiquity, pre-MT (i.e., 2001-2003). Didn’t have categories or titles back then, so most of them (except ones I’ve revisited) lack both — but they’re now searchable, in the calendar archive, and filed under the category “musty stacks.” Due to odd line break behavior, I’ve noticed a few broken links; if you see one, leave a comment and I’ll fix it.

Olden days’ infrastructure

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Olden days’ infrastructure

Originally uploaded by paytonc.

Around a bend on the Chicago river stands this gleaming white palazzo: an exclusive boat club, with a high-ceilinged ballroom and a broad marble terrace, compleat with obelisk-studded balustrade for laughing ladies to langorously lean against during swanky cocktail soirees? No. Its use becomes quite evident upon closer, uh, examination: a sewage pumping station. Once upon a time, Americans cared enough about their public realm — about civic art — to endow even the humblest of shit pumps with architectural grandeur.

(A slightly closer look reveals extensive graffiti under those arches, *on* the giant sewage pipes. Kids these days.)