My take on the article I was asked to comment on earlier, and previously posted:
This guy isn’t consistent. He isn’t terribly logical either. He says that ridership isn’t the standard by which we should be judging public transportation, yet he later brings up a decline mode share (never discussing absolute numbers of riders) as a criticism of public transportation. He cites declining modeshare, without ever addressing comparative capacities of the various alteratives, and how they changed over time. A quick google search on his name brought up pointed criticisms of his use of data re: paris and his own suspicious behavior (taking money from road advocates and benefiting from bus schemes proposed after rail schemes are defeated). These are put out by admittedly, opposingly biased organizations, but it should make you wonder.
There are several problems with his piece. My biggest criticism is probably that he defines an impossible, valueless goal for public transportation, a total strawman. Claiming that rail users may be drawn from bus riders, carpoolers, or stay-at-homers, he says that traffic drawn off highways is the right measurement, ignoring that highway drivers also substitute into it from other situtationo. He has supportive data, and I would not be surprised if he could provide good support for it, but I suspect he’s picking the data that he likes, and ignoring data that doesn’t appeal to him as much. His document is littered with the corpses of straw men. (Does public transportation take people off the roads? No, but if you think that’s a worthy goal, we could just demolish the highways. I think it’s a lousy goal.)
His suggestions are a mixed bag. Buses do not fail to serve because they are too expensive for most users, so lowering fares is wasteful (in fact, I would suggest raising them). Busways do, usually, make more sense than light rail, but I am highly skeptical of his claims to greater operating efficiency from busways. Highways are congested because there is great demand to reach the destination. But people choose where to live based on where they can get to from there. Furthermore, as minneapolis can certainly attest, a highway in your backyard may make it easier to go other places, but it definitely makes you _want_ to go other places. So, highways can devalue an area. Once you’ve paved over all the cool spots in downtown, it’s true, congestion drops dramatically, but that doesn’t make it an advisable course. His notion of undeground roads is laughable and hypocritical in light of his earlier complaints about value v cost for public transit.
He does have a valid point in that rail has had a low return on investment in most places. But it’s also a market with a very different structure than the automobile, at least in the US.
I really don’t have the knowledge to say whether we’re overinvesting in rail. I suspect that’s the wrong question. I think a better question would be “are we investing sensibly in our transportation infrastructure?” And I think the answer to that is “Not nearly as sensibly as we could be.” But I think the best question is “How can we most sensibly invest in our transportation infrastructure?” And that has very complicated answers. I went to a 4 day conference with over 800 sessions all attempting to make progress on portions of that question.
I would also urge my readers to check out some documents from a transportation engineer at the u of m (or your own local school if you can find one). They are rarely prone to worshipping at the altar of single modes.
David Levinson professor of civil engineering
papers he’s written
His opinion of CA HSR: a proposed mag lev experiment from SF to LA
a syllabus for last year’s transportation policy course. Much can be gleaned from the topics list at the end
Optimal mixes of state and local funding
some merits of building additional road capacity
externalities of air v highway travel
modal expense comparisons between high speed rail, autos, and air travel
Full cost of intercity highway travel
There is, of course, more, but it’s not like any of us will read all those anyway. =)
We’re venturing far outside my expertise here, but… In your knowledge or experience, what can be done to encourage use of public transit?
[also, I think one of your href tags went awry]
So it did, corrected, and thanks.
As for encouraging public transportation, the big problems with it for most people are that it’s slow, it’s not frequent enough, it doesn’t go where people want to go, or it does so indirectly, and it’s dirty/messy/crowded with smelly people.
There are many things that can be done to help with the slow part. Boarding is a huge problem, whether it’s the slow and breakdown-prone handicap accessibility devices, the one-person-at-a-time payment on the bus, or the frequent stops to pick up one or two passengers, they all contribute to significant slow downs for the bus.
Each of these has a solution. Low-floor buses are out there, and help a great deal with accessibility for the handicapped, and improving their speed in boarding. DC has a visual-check bus pass, which is faster than the touch-card payment systems, which is faster than the insert card payment system, which is faster than the pulling change out of the pocket and putting it in. None of these are as fast as the offline payment and parallel access that is standard for railed transport, and can be found in certain bus transit systems (I can’t recall a single case where I’ve seen it, but I’ve certainly heard it discussed before).
The other aspect of speed is pulling a bus out of congestion. This can be done with bus lanes, but that is only helpful where the car traffic is not free flowing.
Frequency, destination choice, and directness of path all relate to the structure of bus routes. Improving all these will require more buses and more drivers, and will be quite expensive, otherwise you’re shuffling values around between the various options. Uncrowding buses also requires more (or larger) buses and more drivers, and/or increases in fares, the sensible way to do this, as many cities have, is to charge higher fares for rush hour.
What is your AIM handle?
sunfallen
Perhaps it’s not wise to generalize about the “value of public transit” in regards to a specific case such as Twin Cities light rail. I suspect the cities with big investments in transit all have different tales to tell. What problems existed before the rail was built? What promises did the government make? What promises did the developers make? How many predictions came true? The answer to “how is our city better with rail?” may not be the same as “did any politicians and/or contractors deliberately deceive or exploit during this process”?