{"id":1120,"date":"2005-01-18T23:46:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-19T05:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2005-01-18T23:46:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-19T05:46:00","slug":"my-take-on-the-thing-previously-posted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1120","title":{"rendered":"My take on the thing previously posted"},"content":{"rendered":"

My take on the article<\/a> I was asked to comment on earlier, and previously posted<\/a>: <\/p>\n

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<\/a> criticisms<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.) <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

David Levinson<\/a> professor of civil engineering
\npapers he’s written<\/a>
\nHis opinion of CA HSR<\/a>: a proposed mag lev experiment from SF to LA
\na syllabus<\/a> for last year’s transportation policy course. Much can be gleaned from the topics list at the end
\nOptimal mixes of state and local funding<\/a>
\nsome merits of building additional road capacity<\/a>
\nexternalities of air v highway travel<\/a>
\nmodal expense comparisons<\/a> between high speed rail, autos, and air travel
\nFull cost of intercity highway travel<\/a><\/p>\n

There is, of course, more, but it’s not like any of us will read all those anyway. =)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My take on the article I was asked to comment on earlier, and previously posted:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}