General

The US National Transit Database (NTD) is out for 2008! (Yes, a one year lag counts as fast in this business.)  For those of you who aren’t compulsively drawn to spreadsheets, Cap’n Transit tries to get to the bottom of farebox recovery, the percentage of operating costs paid by fares.

Farebox Recovery Ratio	Agencies
70-200%	Lincoln Tunnel buses, inclined planes, Hudson River ferries, SEPTA [Philadelphia] trolleybuses
40-69%	Big city rail, college town buses
30-39%	Big city bus and light rail
0.1-29%	Small and medium city bus and light rail, plus assorted boondoggles
0	Free services

via capntransit.blogspot.com Continue Reading →

Tory Gattis at New Geography argues that mobile computing products such as the new Apple iPad will be a boon for transit, but not for trains: Continue Reading →

On the phenomenology of crowding and reliability, from Alon Levy:

People’s perception of utilization is always going to be skewed upward. There are always more people to witness crowding than emptiness. If half the trains run at 100% capacity, and half run at 20%, then five sixths of passengers will see 100% crowding rather than 20%; therefore, real utilization will be 60%, while perceived utilization will be 87%.
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Just now, in a LinkedIn Public Transit Professionals thread, someone asked how to describe a “demographic” that has a choice about how to travel, as opposed to “someone whose only mode of transportation other than foot is public transport.”  An engineer came back promptly with the common industry terms, choice rider and captive rider.  The second of those terms has always sent me through the roof.

Dense cities, as we know, have people who have chosen not to own a car, including me. These people may not have the option of driving for a particular trip, but their mode of travel is nevertheless based on their choice, not their “captivity.” Continue Reading →

Federal funding for transit projects will now consider their impacts on overall urban livability and sustainability, not just the cost-per-unit of time savings.

In a dramatic change from existing policy, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today proposed that new funding guidelines for major transit projects be based on livability issues such as economic development opportunities and environmental benefits, in addition to cost and time saved, which are currently the primary criteria.

In remarks at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting, the Secretary announced the Obama Administration’s plans to change how projects are selected to receive federal financial assistance in the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) New Starts and Small Starts programs. As part of this initiative, the FTA will immediately rescind budget restrictions issued by the Bush Administration in March of 2005 that focused primarily on how much a project shortened commute times in comparison to its cost.

Great news, perhaps, but I look forward to seeing how FTA is going to turn something as subjective as livability into a quantifiable measure that can be used to score projects, particularly since the payoffs lie in development that a proposed transit line might be expected to trigger, but that usually isn’t a sure thing at the point when you’re deciding to fund the line.  And of course, travel time does still matter.

Read the complete statement from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood below.

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My New Zealand colleagues Julie Ann Genter and Stuart Donovan have built a great practice doing research on transport and land use policy issues for national and local government.  They are both especially strong on parking policy.  They’ve put together a little video explaining the problems with hidden parking subsidies in an urban context, also featuring Auckland University’s Tim Hazeldine.

The video is based on Donald Shoup’s definitive book, The High Cost of Free Parking.  It obviously talks mostly about Auckland, but the issues it presents are the same in almost any New World city.

Julie Anne Genter also has a paper on the topic here.

Thanks to Joshua Arbury of the Auckland Transport Blog for reminding me about this.

The New Republic’s blog The Avenue notices some good news for US transportation planners and advocates:

Last week, President Obama signed the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act, an amalgam of six separate appropriations bills providing $447 billion to an array of federal departments. A small fraction of this funding is devoted to supporting federal statistical agencies that generate the demographic, economic, and social data that will help metros better understand themselves. …

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This post, which points out that transit can’t be judged on the low ridership of services where ridership isn’t the goal, drew this question from Rob:

I have a question about cities with weak urban cores. I don’t know much about Seattle, but the story that the numbers tell is that the city’s population is currently near its historical high. But what do you do in cities that are losing population, like many in the rust belt? In my hometown, Cleveland, the population is lower than it’s been since 1900. Many urban neighborhoods are no longer the densest areas (there are 3 inner-ring suburbs more dense than the city-proper). What do you think?

As I explained, if Seattle’s King County Metro were pursuing a pure ridership objective, it would cut almost all service in the low-density suburbs and put all those buses in Seattle as higher frequencies on dense corridors.  The principle is the same in any network:

If your goal is ridership, follow patterns of dense development with intense service.

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New York City transit supporters are on fire today as their transit agency, the MTA, announced deep service cuts.  Service cuts are happening all over the US this year, as the economic crisis has cut into most of the local funding streams on which agencies rely.  In many cases, including California and New York, the problems have been compounded by raids on state transit funding streams to help balance state budgets.

There seems to be plenty of blame to go around for New York MTA’s especially dire straits.  The New York Times offers three expert views on their “Room for Debate” forum, though the three don’t seem to be disagreeing.  Two emphasize the need for more secure government funding, while the third points out the need to push back harder on labor costs, and it sounds like they can all be right.  None of them says that service cuts are a good thing. Continue Reading →