May 24, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Department of huh?
In the course of lecturing Arnold Schwarzenegger on economics, Michael O'Hare says something I just. don't. understand.
Of course reducing GHG emissions from fuel is only useful if fuel use doesn't increase; indeed, if we don't (along with everything else) drive less and do it in less thirsty vehicles, we will not get on top of global warming. People have to have some other ways to get around than big thirsty individual cars, like bicycles, feet...and buses and trams. Accordingly it was a major wardrobe malfunction of those green garments when the governor's budget came out with a $1.3 billion cut in transit funding. This is a really inexcusable mistake, especially in California, indeed one could fairly say he's on stage with his environmental pants down.I happened to return to Berkeley from San Francisco last night on the BART at 5:30, high rush hour, and there were some seats empty for much of the trip and lots of standing room for all of it: a New Yorker would think he had died and gone to heaven. This means BART is way overpriced, far above marginal cost, even at the busiest time, and one of the most important ways to attack global warming would be to get people into those empty spaces. Transit always has to be heavily subsidized, not because it's a communist plot but because it's a declining-marginal-cost service that can never pay for itself and be efficient at the same time.
Emphasis on both passages mine.
This makes absolutely no sense. The fact that a service is not fully utilised doesn't necessarily mean that it is priced above marginal cost; it might simply mean that there is inadequate demand. There are free trolleys in a number of small cities running empty through the streets. It is quite possible, even likely, that BART is priced above marginal cost, but empty seats are not proof of it. Moreover, in industries where demand is not high enough to cover current costs (i.e., money losing operations such as BART) and where price discrimination between customers is not feasible (again, as with BART), the rule that goods should be priced so that marginal revenue=marginal cost does not hold; if demand is very inelastic, one could well push revenue down near zero.
It might not even improve ridership; the non-monetary costs of taking public transit are considerable, and zoning laws, over which the transit authority has no control, often limit the potential usage quite sharply.
The latter bolded phrase makes even less sense to me. There are plenty of businesses with declining marginal cost structures that make money; indeed, it is thought to be a quite desireable situation, because declining marginal costs present high barriers to entry for competitors. I presume that what he means is businesses with low marginal costs. These are indeed often plagued with problems; but the problems centre around overcapacity and fierce price competition, which cannot fairly be said to characterise the public transit industry.
The reason public transit does not make money is that the non-monetary costs of it are very high. You have to walk at each end, crowd in with unpleasant people, and wait (often in the heat or cold) for your chariot. Like many New Yorkers, I get very impatient at even very small delays, and I recently figured out why; a delay of a minute or two can be transformed into a delay of fifteen minutes or more when you factor in a missed train. Plus, on a systemic level, public transit's speed is inversely proportional to its convenience. The more stops and interconnections a system has, the easier it is to move from any given point A to point B; but the longer it will take you to get there. All these things mitigate against public transit. Since moving to Washington, I--a lifelong New Yorker and mass transit afficionado with an ideological and financial opposition to owning an automobile--have begun seriously considering the acquiring a car.
As long driving is more convenient and comfortable than taking a train, most people will prefer it even at a relatively high price premium. It is notable that the one American city where public transit is the dominant form of transportation is New York, where driving during rush hour is generally much slower than walking or taking the train. But New York has the unique advantage of having grown to its physical limits before widespread automobile usage; and also, of centering around an island that is long and narrow. This made it easy to essentially run the core train system in closely parallel stripes up the entire island, making it very convenient to get almost anywhere in Manhattan quickly. Chicago managed a somewhat similar feat by planting a big lake down one side of the central business district, but even there, cars dominate. I just don't see how you'll pull that trick anywhere else, no matter how much you slash the fares.
Posted by Jane Galt at May 24, 2007 5:58 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>Additionally, O'Hare's single experience may not be representative. Though it's never been my commute I have taken BART between SF and Berkeley multiple times, at about that time of day, and it's often pretty damn crowded. As in, you have to shove to get on. Not as bad as when I was subwaying from Brooklyn to Manhattan, but still obnoxious and suggestive that the same price, at the same time of day, doesn't always mean the same degree of utilization.
Posted by: Shelby on May 24, 2007 7:38 PMIMHO this argument is never presented full, perhaps because it is like the shade of black in an inkblot. Why do we want the flexibilty of a car? Why is it difficult to forecast ridership? Why does the BART or any other thing end up empty[er].
The critical mass is a problem from what I see. If you are in the 50's where everyone [more or less] works 8-5, everyone works in a central, very dense area. Then mass transit is quick and easy. People take the train because it beats driving. You can forecast how many will do that. It works great, as long as nothing changes.
Except for the part where things changed, and they were things that were DESIGNED to relieve the congestion. We thought that congestion was a bad thing, not realizing it was the mass that was needed to keep the MASS in transit.
Time at work has become more flexible, driven first by oppertunists who hate crowds, and businesses that are willing to allow them to get there early or leave late. Or, as we oten find ourselves getting in early AND leaving late. This flex starts to drive changes in the way business is done, and changes in the way life is done. My step-father would have to ask for a whole day off far in advance to attend my afterschool soccer game, and potentially be told no [in the late 70's]. So he simply didn't do it. And he always took the bus from downtown, because there was a bus every 5 minutes at 5-6:30 pm. I can with less than a days' notice take a few hours to go to a kids soccer game, and then come back to work to finish my time. Or come in very early, and leave early to go to a game. The cost of that flex is that there is NO way I can take mass transit. I live 15-20 minutes from work driving, but it would take 1hr20m to take the bus. Because I ALSO do not work downtown.
There simply is not enough mass transit density for them to offer a bus service that comes more often than every 1/2 hour outside of rush hour. During rush hour, it still comes only every 15 minutes, and there are 3 transfers involved.
So the flex in our time, coupled with businesses moving out to the burbs make mass transit like in NYC pretty much undoable in other places. I used to work in the loop in Chicago, and lived in Brookfield, a close to the rail-line burb. The train was so easy, it was magnificent. But, when I interviewed with Sears in Hoffman Estates [Northwest burbs] I had a HUGE 1.5hour each way commute that there was NO transit for. When Sears moved out of the tower, they probably did more damage to transit than any single entity in Chicago. Mass transit feeds from the outlands to a central point very well. Make it distributed points and suddenly many other factors cause it to have problems. Mass transit works when you can use maximization. Otherwise it is too expensive per rider, and the riders hate it because they lose all their flexibility.
One of the answers that is routinely ignored, because it affects a smaller number of people, is to really push telecommute, for people who sit in desks all day. Even if it is to small satellite offices, it can make all deskbound, non-customer facing workers travel far LESS, and THAT will reduce the number of cars on the road.
That of course requires that a certain amount change is made in corporate style, and that the gov't provide a small stick, or carrot. But it has to be integrated. If people don't have to travel to an office, THEN YOU HAVE TO SHUT the office. If it sits there with the lights on, and the AC on, but empty, the savings environmentally will be low.
Bottom line is that people want to do what is convenient, they don't love driving their cars that much. But dealing with 3 bus transfers to get somewhere? That isn't an alternative.
I just think that this is a round robin of demographic trends, that were actually started by the wish to decongest, that have made mass transit questionable, now that we might appreciate it...
So, Megan, you not having a car balances my having one out, in some cosmic 6-degrees of separation sort of way. To improve my green street cred, I hope my riding a bike to work at least twice a week helps... ;)
D
Posted by: D on May 24, 2007 8:08 PMWord to the flex problem. I have a co-worker who lives right by me (3 blocks down), but we have different jobs. He's expected to put in 8 no matter what, I'm expected to be in here as much as possible. Therefore, we don't carpool. Wish it were different, but we're both willing to pay for the difference, even at $3.35/gal.
Posted by: Klug on May 24, 2007 8:25 PMTwo Points:
1. The full costs of driving your car [congestion, pollution, global warming, mid-east adventurism, &cetera] are not baked in. So naturally car use is over-consumed. It's more likely that car driving is under-priced than that mass transit is over-priced.
2. Even if car use was fully priced through a gas tax, wealthier consumers might choose it over mass transit, because, well, they like it better and they can afford it.
No giant mysteries here.
Posted by: JPC on May 24, 2007 8:47 PMJPC,
Assuming this cosmic full price was actually charged, where would the surplus go? Who gets the profit? A government welfare program? I might be for charging this full price you speak of if we then do something smart like eliminate social security and only offer benefits to in a need-based scenario.
Posted by: cdub on May 24, 2007 9:15 PMHaving commuted in both NYC and the District of Comedy, I believe both cities could not survive without mass transit.
When I lived in the DC area and commuted into the district, I drove 30 minutes to a VRE station, took the train to Union Station and then walked to work; total trip, 2 hours each way. However, I could work on the train, whereas the drive was a total waste of time. The train was relaxing and easy. Driving took the same time, give or take, but was a dead loss from a utility standpoint; and, I was exhausted from dodging idiots trying to gain a 1 car length advantage. Also, both DC and NYC make the decision easier by having far fewer places to park than would be required to accommodate all commuters.
I understand the issues of fuel cost, tolls, wear and tear on the vehicle, pollution, etc. However, for a professional earning a 6 figure salary, the value of working on the train rather than working later in the office and getting home even later far exceeds the costs of any of the transportation alternatives.
I will say, however, that spending any time in a NYC subway train at rush hour with your nose in a not-recently washed, not recently deodorized armpit leaves a lot to be desired. As Megan can attest, there are advantages to being tall.
Posted by: Ed Reid on May 24, 2007 9:44 PMIt is notable that the one American city where public transit is the dominant form of transportation is New York, where driving during rush hour is generally much slower than walking or taking the train. But New York has the unique advantage of having grown to its physical limits before widespread automobile usage; and also, of centering around an island that is long and narrow. This made it easy to essentially run the core train system in closely parallel stripes up the entire island, making it very convenient to get almost anywhere in Manhattan quickly.
And even in Manhattan the subway has its drawbacks. It's not of much use for crosstown travel, and the East Side is pretty much limited to the grossly overcrowded Lexington Avenue line.
Posted by: Peter on May 24, 2007 9:56 PM"There are free trolleys in a number of small cities running empty through the streets."
Memphis, Tennessee is a large city, and it has free trolleys that mostly operate in 'passenger-free' mode. The trolley service is mostly for downtown tourists, but they run trolleys over the entire line from early morn to night. Bus service is sparse and slow: only desperate folks without cars ride the bus.
Except for the largest metropolitan areas, mass transit has failed. Most cities should give up on mass transit, improve streets and highways, and offer taxi vouchers to Medicaid and working poor persons. (I would bet that even a liberal voucher program would cost less than building and maintaining mass transit.)
Posted by: Dr. T on May 24, 2007 10:02 PMEven if BART were free, I still wouldn't take it except to go to A's games. The Bay Area is a large chunk of territory that's spread out horizontally much more than vertically, and the amount of that territory actually covered by BART is miniscule. Unless you live or work in San Francisco proper, it's a lot more hassle than it's worth.
Part of the problem is that a huge chunk of the Bay Area -- namely, anyone south of Millbrae, which includes Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and San Jose -- is simply not serviced by BART at all. (You can go partway on BART and partway on Caltrain, though at an additional cost in convenience.) I would expect to see ridership increase somewhat if the San Jose line is ever completed, but I doubt if demand will ever be as high as supply is. Maybe if there's a really big quake.
Posted by: cwp on May 24, 2007 10:11 PMHis point is that, from the point of society as a whole, goods should be priced at marginal cost since an additional unit should be produced if there is someone willing to pay more than it costs. This creates a problem for industries with high fixed costs but low marginal costs in that the socially optimal pricing will not allow a firm to recover its fixed costs. If the firm has a monopoly it may be able to price above marginal cost and be profitable but this is not socially optimal.
Of course the applicability to BART is questionable however there is definitely something strange if the system routinely has spare capacity at times of peak demand, either it is overpriced or overbuilt.
Posted by: James B. Shearer on May 24, 2007 10:23 PMO'Hare is also assuming that lowering prices would divert traffic from cars. This seems very questionable, it might instead attract additional traffic which is counterproductive from a GHG point of view. Someone in my dorm at college could ride for free on airlines because his father was a pilot. He reputedly sometimes took flights just because he wanted to see the movie.
Posted by: James B. Shearer on May 24, 2007 10:29 PMAlso mass transit is not actually that much better than cars from a GHG point of view, generally substantially less than a factor of 2 improvement and sometimes worse.
Posted by: James B. Shearer on May 24, 2007 10:32 PMDC's Metro is jammed during rush hours, yet only carries a miniscule percentage of the city's traffic. Why? The system is too small and limited, and parking at the outlying stations is inadequate. Prices are very high. Every day you can see tens of thousands of cars sitting on the highways, basking in the sun, emitting exhaust. Lousy highway engineering is a big part of that. A trillion dollars for mass transit wouldn't help one iota. I'm so glad to be away from there.
Posted by: ex-DC on May 24, 2007 10:43 PMI think transit can work effectively in some situations where the right of ways don't need to be created. Minneapolis is building a 40 mile commuter line on an existing freight rail line from downtown to the northwest suburbs, roughly parallel to the interstate, which absent the rail line would likely need expansion anyway. For a little over $300 million, it probably is worthwhile to see if it can gain broad appeal. In contrast, about 1 billion was spent on a light rail line, for which rights of way had to be created, that travels about nine miles from the Mall of America, to the airport, and then on to downtown Minneapolis. Ridership has been good, but probably not good enough to justify the expense.
The next proposed step is to build a light rail from downtown Minneapolis, under the University of Minnesota campus via a tunnel, and then to downtown St. Paul. I haven't seen the cost projections, but I'd be surprised if it can be done for less than close to two billion, and it will greatly disrupt, if not ruin, a lot of small businesses in the process. I have a tough time believing it will be worth it, although the U of M is a commuter school with 40,000 students, so there will likely be good ridership.
The next proposed line will be from Minneapolis to the southwest suburbs, about 15-20 miles. I think but most of that right of way exists already on an abandoned freight line, so I'd guess the costs will be more feasable. I guess my penetrating insight is that sometimes it can work o.k., given the right circumstances, but it usually doesn't.
Posted by: Will Allen on May 24, 2007 11:02 PMMegan! militates against, not mitigates!
Substantive responses here (too long for comments)
http://www.samefacts.com/archives/energy_and_environment_/2007/05/more_on_transit_and_urban_planning.php
A big part of the problem for me is that the marginal cost to *me* of using mass transit is huge. When I add the cost-of-my-time for the extended trip into the cost of ridership, it frequently eclipses the marginal cost of using my car. I think this is true for many, many folks who's time has value and who live in places where traffic is bearable. As to being able to get work done while commuting on a mass transit system, I just don't see that happening. First, they are noisy and crowded and thus it's hard to focus. Second, a lot of my work consists of being on calls. Third, the rest of my work requires the internet.
Now mass transit could go a long way towards overcoming this if it would allow me *not* to own a car. Greatest part of the cost for mile for me (and most people I know when they think about it) is the acquisition cost of the care. The problem is that to be able to get rid of my car mass transit would need to be able to get me from any point A I am at to any point B I need to get to at anytime I wish to get there. That's simply not the case in most places.
Fortunately I've found an even more environmentally responsible solution than mass transit: I telecommute.
I second James Shearer. However, I think O'Hare misspoke when he characterized mass transit as a *declining* marginal cost. I think he meant that it's a constant marginal cost business, which implies declining average cost (up to the point of maximum capacity). Otherwise, I think O'Hare is making good economic sense, although I agree with your overall skepticism about the benefits of mass transit.
Posted by: Glen on May 25, 2007 1:19 AMWhy aren't there any trains that accept cars? You could park on the train, be carried a few hundred miles cross country, sleep or read during the ride, and have transport at your destination.
Posted by: Ryan W. on May 25, 2007 2:07 AMJust to demonstrate the cost-of-my-time issue.
Let
S1= average car speed
S2=average speed on rapid transit
d = distance commuted
x = hourly pay
m = cost per mile to drive
So the cost in time of riding transit instead of driving is:
(d/S2 - d/S1)*x = d((S1-S2)/(S1*S2))*x
For break even, this would have to equal the cost of
driving d*m
d*m = d((S1-S2)/(S1*S2))*x
m=x*(S1-S2)/(S1*S2)
Solving for x
x = m*S1*S2/(S1-S2)
if the bus travels on average at 15mpg, and a car at 35mph, and
the cost per mile of operating a car is 50 cents, then
x = $13.12/hour
So logically, if you make more than about $13 per hour, riding the bus makes no sense economically.
Posted by: quadrupole on May 25, 2007 3:46 AM"It's more likely that car driving is under-priced than that mass transit is over-priced." -JPC
You left out the biggest price. Car travel is subsidized by road-building and maintenance. Wider use of public transportation would reduce the need for road expenditures - fewer lanes, smaller load bearing bridges, less frequent repairs etc.
Still, we are stuck with what we have. There is no way we can make mass transit economical by fiat. It's even difficult to set up so that new development is done to accommodate mass transit. While a large-scale development can be done with mass transit in mind, a single small business owner has little incentive to care about mass transit until it hits a critical mass.
Posted by: Njorl on May 25, 2007 8:41 AM"Why aren't there any trains that accept cars?"
There are, or, there is, rather. Amtrak's "Autotrain" is set up on what is probably the only profitable route for such a thing. It takes people and their cars down the east coast to Florida. You have a large number of people leaving from a few densely populated, proximate, localities going on vacation to the same destination. At that destination, a car is very useful. I can't think of another situation that would warrant an autotrain.
Posted by: Njorl on May 25, 2007 8:50 AMI agree with James. I don't think Jane understood the use of "efficient" by Michael. I believe based on her comments Jane thinks efficient means profitable as opposed to a socially optimal use of resources.
"There are plenty of businesses with declining marginal cost structures that make money; indeed, it is thought to be a quite desireable situation, because declining marginal costs present high barriers to entry for competitors."
A desirable situation for the company not necessarily for the public which was Michael's concern.
I did disagree with one of James other comments: "Also mass transit is not actually that much better than cars from a GHG point of view, generally substantially less than a factor of 2 improvement and sometimes worse."
Is that an average calculation or a marginal one? Does one more person on a train really change fuel costs much?
Tom
Posted by: Tom G. on May 25, 2007 9:34 AMMost cities should give up on mass transit, improve streets and highways, and offer taxi vouchers to Medicaid and working poor persons. (I would bet that even a liberal voucher program would cost less than building and maintaining mass transit.)
A few years ago, during a controversy over Connecticut's funding of the Metro-North passenger rail line from Bridgeport to Waterbury, the then-Governor John Rowland pointed out that it would be cheaper for the state to give free on-demand rides in stretch limousines to all the riders.
Posted by: Peter on May 25, 2007 9:59 AMI think the biggest problem behind failure of mass transit is zoning laws, specifically density and use restrictions. Not sure about a lot of cities, but I can say that at least in DC the problem is the ridiculous height limit on downtown construction (nothing can be higher than the base of capitol bldg). This pushes all density outward and makes it virtually impossible to develop an efficient public transit system because the metro and buses need to cover so much area and still may not even get you close to your ultimate destination. Having more and more of the density concentrated in a smaller area (like Manhattan) obviously increases the utility of even a minimal public transit system and reduces the cost of providing the service. Increasing density also allows for a wider variety of uses in a close area, so you can just hop on a subway or bus and once you get to a destination, you can basically walk to wherever you need to go, saving the need for a much more complex transit network to get you to a separate destination for each different thing you want to do in a given day.
Posted by: Woodstock on May 25, 2007 10:00 AM"This creates a problem for industries with high fixed costs but low marginal costs in that the socially optimal pricing will not allow a firm to recover its fixed costs. If the firm has a monopoly it may be able to price above marginal cost and be profitable but this is not socially optimal."
Often, businesses deal with this by making time a premium. The new CPU is priced high for the first consumers, but price drops to just above marginal cost over time. It isn't just socially optimal, it is economicly optimal. It's harder to do that with transit. To some extent, having rush hour rates and off-peak rates do that, but it is coarse.
Posted by: Njorl on May 25, 2007 11:06 AMI assume that the point about marginal cost is that, if you're already sending the train, the marginal cost of filling an empty seat is effectively zero.
Cars are not subsidized in the usual sense because the benefits and the costs are so widespread. In effect, everyone bears the costs and reaps the benefits of our reliance on the internal combustion engine.
In 2003, passenger cars used about 3,549 Btu's per passenger mile. Rail travel (including Amtrak, light, heavy and commuter rail) used about 3,024 Btu's per passenger mile. Rail accounted for 30.3 billion passenger miles so, at 114,000 Btu's per gallon of gasoline, rail travel saved us the equivalent of 91 million gallons of gasoline or a little less than 3% of our total gasoline usage.
If you ignore New York City and Boston, all the other mass transit rail systems in the country are less energy efficient than cars.
Posted by: David Cohen on May 25, 2007 12:14 PMOh, and I went and took a look at BART's 2005 Annual Report (available here in html, and was stunned to see that in 2003-2005, BART's operating loss was greater than its operating revenue. It's fares don't even cover half of the cost of running the system. Even worse, its revenues were up $14 million in 2005 while its operating expenses were up $50 million.
Posted by: David Cohen on May 25, 2007 12:26 PMTom G. asked:
"Is that an average calculation or a marginal one? Does one more person on a train really change fuel costs much?"
It's average cost which is the fair way to do it. Most cars have spare capacity also and could add an additional passenger cheaply. Any substantial shift from cars to mass transit would require more than filling partially empty trains.
Posted by: James B. Shearer on May 25, 2007 1:06 PMCar travel is subsidized by road-building and maintenance. Wider use of public transportation would reduce the need for road expenditures - fewer lanes, smaller load bearing bridges, less frequent repairs etc.
I don't think this works. I'm not a civil or mechanical engineer, but I was forced to play one in some of my college classes. My reckoning is that the design of the road, and the consequent greatest wear-and-tear damage, is going to come from heavy vehicles, and weather. Since we are irreversibly dependent on truck shipping, the roads will continue to be built and maintained where they are needed, regardless of how commuter habits change. And I might add that a bus qualifies as a heavy vehicle, so shifting more passengers to that form of transit may improve air quality, but it doesn't have much impact on the roadbuilding end.
I also don't think the "subsidy" argument works all that well since roads, unlike mass transit, provide some level of equal benefit to everyone for purposes well beyond commuter driving. Also, vehicle owners pay a substantial amount of taxes that non-vehicle owners do not pay, whereas everyone is required to pay taxes toward mass-transit services whether they derive any meaningful benefit from them or not.
Posted by: anony-mouse on May 25, 2007 1:09 PM"whereas everyone is required to pay taxes toward mass-transit services whether they derive any meaningful benefit from them or not."
That would be limited principly to Ludditites and shut-ins.
As someone who drives every day, I can see my benefit from public transportation every time it rains. On those days, some who normally take the bus decide to drive. My commuting time nearly doubles. The mere existance of Public transportation is saving me hundreds of hours of commuting time each year, and many gallons of gas.
Posted by: Njorl on May 25, 2007 1:24 PMO'Hare is right about "mitigate"... but where on earth does he get the notion that the prices regulated monopolies are allowed to charge are fixed at marginal cost?
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek on May 25, 2007 1:30 PMD
Excellent analysis re commuter patterns
Anon-ymouse
Yes re roads and heavy wheel loads.
You are neglecting externalities though. Particularly time cost.
If there isn't public transport, those people drive. And you get Atlanta, where the MARTA doesn't carry much of the commuter traffic, and some of the worst jams in the US.
So driving imposes lots of costs on other people: the cost of accidents, the cost of noise, the cost of air pollution, the time cost.
Probably the answer is fleets of minivans, that you pay a fixed price ticket to commute.
Grant them their own privileged lanes(a kind of super high occupancy vehicle lane) and you could probably have a workable 'mass' transit system for a decentralised urban area.
Basically in the morning, everyone would drive to a local parking lot. The van would then pick them up, and work it's way round 5 to 6 stops to the office park at which they happened to work.
(my analogy would be to the typical airport to hotel van services many cities operate)
The incentive to use the system would be the time saved due to HOV lanes.
I actually *like* taking public transport: I have time to read, and time to look out the window, sleep etc. However that is *very* dependent on whether I am sharing the bus or train with loud Ipods, mobile phone yackers etc.
Interesting piece in the New Yorker a couple of weeks back. Did you know American life satisfaction is inversely correlated to commuting time? The problem being those who commute long distances (ie time) spend less time on leisure, friends and family?
*but*
that effect does *not* appear for those who take public transport (it's much reduced).
The issue being, apparently, 'Bowling Alone'. Those who commute by public transport have more human interaction, and are therefore less isolated, and happier.
Posted by: Valuethinker on May 25, 2007 1:39 PMMy commuting time nearly doubles.
So does mine on rainy days, but that's readily attributable to the fact that the more timid drivers develop a twitchy right foot over the brake pedal and cause logjams.
It probably also depends on where you live. Here in the Denver area, we have bussing and we have a recently expanded light-rail system (pork-barrel, natch). Average benefit to daily drivers, approximately zero if they can't use it -- and comparatively few can because the city and suburbs are mostly suburban. Meanwhile, I-25 bottlenecks across the Denver region during the peak of rush-hour regardless of weather.
Posted by: anony-mouse on May 25, 2007 2:18 PMValue: In saying that 'more human interaction' occurs, you're saying that they have more time for families, etc.?
Posted by: Klug on May 25, 2007 2:34 PMThe issue being, apparently, 'Bowling Alone'. Those who commute by public transport have more human interaction, and are therefore less isolated, and happier.
Apparently, they failed to interview me.
I'm curious how they got a representative sample, and managed to measure "satisfaction" or "happiness" (topics that are absolutely frought with peril in a research setting). Also, what is "commute time"? A generally-open road for two hours is far more pleasant than 45 minutes trapped in congestion.
Posted by: anony-mouse on May 25, 2007 2:35 PMAnony,
I live outside of DC. We have the third heaviest congestion in the country and a well utilized public transit system. It doesn't take much of an influx to slow things down. While the rain would slow my commute anyway (due to just the opposite of nervous braking - we like to play bumper cars when it rains) I see fewer people at bus stops when it rains. From personal experience, I would always drive my wife to the metro when it rained back when she was working. Granted, it is difficult to know how much is an effect of the wet roads, and how much is due to the extra people. One clue to that is Fridays. A lot of government workers (a huge percentage of the local workforce) get alternate Fridays off for working 9 hour days. Friday commutes are a breeze - 35 minutes to go 25 miles - compared to the hour it normally takes.
Now in Denver, if your roads are not that crowded, and your trains are not full, mass transit probably isn't benefitting you that much. It is a very local issue.
Posted by: Njorl on May 25, 2007 2:43 PMValuethinker's "fleet of minivans" concept reminded me of "slugging".
In N. Virginia, the DC bound traffic is awful. People developed the custom of gathering in stripmalls and such to get rides. The drivers got some gas money and the right to drive in the HOV lanes. It was particularly desireable because traffic was bad enough to warrant creation of HOV-3 lanes, requiring at least 3 people in the car. The drawback was the "Bundy" factor. I never heard of a single incident involving "sluggers", but you never know. I bet it was also harder to get home than to get to work too.
Posted by: Njorl on May 25, 2007 2:54 PM"but even there, cars dominate. I just don't see how you'll pull that trick anywhere else"
Cars don't dominate Chicago. Cars dominate the Chicago burbs.
Posted by: mickslam on May 25, 2007 3:59 PMFor example, if you've ever heard of the Chicago loop, its named for the loop of public transportation that surrounds downtown.
"I also don't think the "subsidy" argument works all that well since roads, unlike mass transit, provide some level of equal benefit to everyone for purposes well beyond commuter driving. "
Exactly the same argument can be made for mass transit, once you think about it. for example, the check out the numbers at the CTA website, and translate those numbers to cars, then translate that to roads. Everybody clearly benefits from having that many fewer drivers. Except maybe those who are angry at public transportation supporters for ideological reasons.
Posted by: mickslam on May 25, 2007 4:52 PMJames,
I understand your comment, and I don't know enough to know if peak usage approaches capacity for the BART or not.
If it does not, average is not appropriate until you can show that the demand lift will cause capacity crunches. If it does (as it does in NYC), perhaps differential pricing during the day.
I do not see the connection with the comment on extra capacity within a car, unless you are talking about promoting car-pooling.
Tom
"As someone who drives every day, I can see my benefit from public transportation every time it rains. On those days, some who normally take the bus decide to drive. My commuting time nearly doubles."
This reminds me of a joke. A biologist was doing a study of Grasshoppers. He would place a grasshopper on the desk, command it "JUMP!", and the grasshopper would jump. This happened with all 100 grasshoppers.
He then methodically removed the legs of all the grasshoppers. He repeated the experiments, but this time none of the grasshoppers responded to his command "JUMP!"
He recorded the experiment in his logbook. His conclusion? Grasshoppers ears are located on their knees, for when you remove their legs, they cannot hear.
In other words, the reason your commute doubles when it rains is NOT because mass commuters are driving now.
Posted by: Patrick on May 25, 2007 5:56 PMAs a person who has lived in the Bay Area (Oakland for about six months, San Francisco for 6 1/2 years) and NEVER owned a car, I'm here to say it can be done. Now, granted, when I want to make a run to Trader Joe's, it's nice that both of my roommates have cars, but otherwise, it's ok. MUNI is by no means a model transit operation, but my employer takes out my fast pass before tax and they cover my train commute (I work at Stanford). Additionally, our employer has an incentive system that encourages people to commute to work.
Now, my commute time is fairly long (out the door of my place at 6:30, at my desk at 8 a.m.) but it's pretty painless. I bus to within a 1/2 block of the train station and I take a bullet train to work (7:11 out of S.F./ in Palo Alto at 7:48 on Caltrain). But I'm productive (either by sleeping - ha!- or reading/working during that time and the train is eventually going to be Wi-Fi enabled). Several commuter buses in the Bay Area are already Wi-Fi enabled.
I actually think BART is pretty decent (it's definitely better than MUNI, though not quite Caltrain). My sister lives in the East Bay and it's pretty painless to BART over to see her. I'm taking BART next week to see the Arcade Fire in Berkeley and taking BART to SFO for $6.00 is a hell of a better deal than a $45 cab ride.
In short, even though Bay Area transit can be laughably mismanaged (looks in the direction of MUNI, shrugs shoulders) it's really not ALL that bad (except for waiting for the J Church...brutal).
Posted by: Mike P on May 25, 2007 6:39 PMMike P makes a very interesting observation, that probably applise to the devine Ms. Megan and many others...
do you define where you live and what you do by your way of commuting, or do you define your way of commuting by where you live and what you do? For example what is going to happen to Mike P. if he should decide to settle down with a nice girl, and raise a few kids? Perhaps a like minded partner would stay in reletively the same area, get a prius to go to Trader Joe's and everything happens in a very tight area. Or perhaps Mike finds himself... with a beautiful house... with a beautiful wife... and he asks himself, 'well, how did I get here?' Suddenly where and when trains and automobiles are to be found are no longer the driving force.
Perhaps Megan finds she wants not only kids, but she wants to raise them in a place more like her childhood home. Will she still be able to take the train? IMHO that aspect shouldn't be ignored, by talking about BART and if it's worth anything.
Posted by: D on May 25, 2007 7:40 PMActually, my childhood home was a six room apartment located about 100 feet from a major subway stop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan . . . if I want to live somewhere like that, the biggest issue will be that I can't afford the $1 million price tag.
Posted by: Jane Galt on May 25, 2007 8:01 PMWhat I find so unsurprisng about all this is that when mass transit doesn't work in some places, the tendency is to blame mass transit and ignore places where it works.
My suggestion: study Curitiba, Brazil. It's arguably one of the most livable cities with a population over 1 million that I have ever had the pleasure of visiting and has a mass transit that is used effectively and is cost effective. Recently the trend of using cars has risen more as a status symbol. At peak hour, however, buses arrive every thirty seconds and whisk passengers to their destinations.
It certainly can work.
Posted by: Randy Paul on May 25, 2007 8:04 PMheh, raised in town, eh Megan? So you'd be right there where the action is... gives you an interesting perspective on this whole argument then... where I learned to drive hay trucks at 8, and didn't know from mass transit till 30...
but for that mil, I'd be buying a B&B in the mountains, and worrying sustantially less about commutes. :D
and while I'm wishing, I want a pony...
D
A limited-access highway is, by far, the most efficient mover of people, even if they are distributed one per car, so long as - key point - traffic on said highway runs at or near the posted speed limit because individual vehicles enter and leave the traffic stream at ambient speed. No mass transit technology can ever come close even if every seat is always filled, the track is completely occupied by transit cars and the peak speed reached by the cars is greater than the average speed of highway traffic because of the need for constant stops. Limited access highways do not, in principle, ever need to stop. Mass transit, on the other hand, is an incoherent concept absent intermediate stops. Mass transit, of whatever type, then, must always trade number of stops and distance between stops in ways guaranteed to be sub-optimal for a high percentage of riders or would-be riders no matter how the trade is ultimately made.
Limited-access highways, of course, frequently do stop - or at least run at speeds way below their posted maximums - because having individual humans guide the vehicles is sub-optimal for various reasons, some of them having to do with deeply biological issues of perception and psychology.
The solution is to automate most driving - starting with all driving on limited-access highways - to radically improve their realizeable efficiency. The technology to do this is pretty much in hand - cheap computers, GPS units and near-field object sensors of various kinds - but a suitable network protocol connecting automated roads and vehicles equipped to drive on them has yet to be designed and standardized. Over the next decade or two, I expect this to be done and deployed because it would:
a) save huge quantities of transportation energy.
b) save huge quantities of commute and goods transport time.
c) eliminate the need to continually build new roads or widen existing ones.
d) allow the shutdown of municipal bus services and the dismantling or repurposing of other existing mass transit infrastructures.
e) allow the elimination of tens of thousands of redundant government employees as their transit bureaucracies are closed down.
For all of the above reasons the Left can be expected to furiously resist this idea.
The first three results actually solve significant environmental quality problems and the Left, despite noisy protestations to the contrary, is not really about solving problems, but about whining about them and wielding them as clubs in attempts to compel adherence to their favored statist, centralist approaches to social organization. Trying to remove a favored "social problem" from the perpetually pissed-off Left is likely to prove roughly as straightforward as depriving a rabid pit bull of a porterhouse. As supporting evidence for this thesis I offer the continuing irredentist efforts of the Left to gut welfare reform despite its manifest success as social policy.
The last two results will only unhinge the Left further because they strike directly at what the real agenda of government transport bureaucracies always is - keeping the parking lots full. Just as big city school districts have long since ceased to be mainly about educating children, big city transit districts aren't really about providing cheap convenient transportation. In both cases, the main objective is to provide ever more patronage payroll slots for the politically favored and those attitudinally averse to making an honest living in the market economy.
Oh yes, and to privide more union dues to organs of the institutional Left.
They'll give up their buses and subways when we pry their steering wheels and motor throttles from their cold dead hands.
Posted by: Dick Eagleson on May 25, 2007 11:51 PMCheers to D for deft, on topic use of a Talking Head song in a comment on transportation policy.
with a beautiful house... with a beautiful wife... and he asks himself, 'well, how did I get here?Posted by: TJIT on May 28, 2007 3:37 PM
Dick Eagleson:
I have come around to your point of view that some manner of automated separation of cars on freeways will be the mass transit of the 21st century. I have also come to the view that it won't come about from some Central Planning style sensors in the road, but it will come to be in Libertarian fashion from accessories added to the cars.
The Toyota Avalon has this feature called Adaptive Cruise control. It uses a millimeter-wave radar made by TRW to maintain separation from the car in front. That radar combined with your GPS idea will in time morph into the automated highway.
Posted by: Paul Milenkovic on May 31, 2007 5:58 PM