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“ten best” rankings: the #1 way to confuse and disempower

Posted on May 2, 2011 in Advocacy, Journalism

When an article promises to reveal the "ten best" transit systems or colleges or corporations, why do we care?   Why do we even think such a list could be meaningful?

Well, how would you react if a major news magazine published definitive research on the "ten best fruits"?

Imagine it.  The timeless standards (apple, orange, grape) are in the #3-5 positions.  This confirms just enough of our long-standing assumptions to give the ranking system credibility.  But the fast-surging pomegranate is now #1, the bratty little blueberry is #2, and more scandalous, some long-trusted fruits have crashed out of the top 10.  Where did the banana (#21) go wrong?  800px-Kiwi_(Actinidia_chinensis)_1_Luc_Viatour_edit

The list would also contain some entries meant to surprise you.  You're supposed to think: "Wow, the mushy little kiwifruit is now one of the ten best fruits?  When did that happen?  I'd better buy this magazine and get the details!  Maybe the kiwifruit deserves another look!"

No, that would be silly, because almost anyone can see that "best fruit" is a meaningless term.  You could do a list of the most popular fruits, the sweetest fruits, the most sustainably cultivated fruits, the best fruits for various kinds of nutrition, or the most important fruits for the Solomon Islands economy.  But a list of the "ten best fruits" would be nonsense.  We each have many different demands of a fruit, but those demands aren't all important in the same way at the same time.  Most of us couldn't even form our own absolute definition of "best fruit," let alone try to get anyone to agree with it.  In fact, we woudn't even try.  The whole idea is obviously silly.

So why do we look twice at a list of top ten US transit systems?  Why would a major magazine think we would care?

Well, the fruit analogy suggests that when it come to transit systems (or colleges) people either (a) assume that everyone's idea of a "good" transit system is the same or (b) just don't want to think about what they want from their transit system.

As in any business, journalists may think they're responding to their readers' desires, but they're also helping to forge those desires.

If ten-best lists are about something that's reasonably factual ("ten most reliable transit systems," "ten safest transit systems", "top ten in ridership per capita") then they can be useful.  They can encourage excellence and help people reward that excellence with ridership and investment.

But when you tell your readers that certain transit systems are the "best," and don't explain your criteria very well, you signal that everyone must have the same sense of what's good.  That encourages people to go into transit debates as bullies, assuming that if a transit agency doesn't deliver on their notion of the good, the agency must be incompetent or failing, so the only valid response is abuse.  It encourages people not to notice that "failing to do what I want" is often a result of "doing what someone else wants."

In short, it encourages people to think like three-year-old children, for whom "my needs" are rich and glorious and self-evident to any reasonable person while "other people's needs" are vague and tedious abstractions.  That, in turn, forces officials to act like parents managing their childrens' tantrums.  And then we're offended when those officials can seem paternalistic?

Photo: Luc Viator, from Wikipedia

was that u.s. news 10-best-transit cities list based on anything?

Posted on April 30, 2011 in Journalism, Portland

In the last post, I noted a ranking of the "10 best US cities for transit" in U.S. News and World Report back in February, and some incoherence in how the ranking was explained.  Since then, I've become even more disturbed by the rankings.

It turns out that Michael Andersen of Portland Afoot had done some research, or attempted to:

I was pretty interested in this, in part because Portland's TriMet is, understandably, promoting the ranking heavily. I thought it was great news and wanted to include more details in our magazine.

So I called [Danielle] Kurtzleben, the reporter who'd compiled it, to ask about her data sources and methodology. After five emails/tweets/phone calls over several weeks, I finally got her on the phone, at which point she said she couldn't remember exactly how she'd figured the data, except that it came from APTA and the NTD and that it was "very simple." I asked if she could email me the spreadsheet; she referred me to her editor, who said, bewilderingly, that U.S. News policy is to not share the data it gathers.

So I tried to retrace Kurtzleben's steps. Here's the result; my summary is at the bottom of that page. I pulled the data apart six ways from Sunday, based on the somewhat sketchy description in her article, but couldn't come up with any scenario that ranked anybody above New York City, whose ridership and funding ranks dwarf all others.

Her three metrics were total spending per capita, boarding-rides per capita and safety incidents per boarding-ride. It's not clear what types of "safety incident" counted or how many years of them she analyzed; how she weighted the three metrics into a single ranking. I also suspect she may not have noticed or considered that population data in the APTA handbook is based on population figures from 2000 — the only place to get apples-to-apples population figures is the ACS [American Community Survey], which she didn't mention using. But even after I ran several variations using the 2000 figures I couldn't duplicate her findings.

Another possibility is that she could have failed to fully account for all the spending and ridership at metro areas that have multiple transit agencies; Portland's relative lack of overlapping suburban agencies would help explain its good ranking. Or she might have calculated population by city rather than metro area.

At any rate, I think I made a good-faith effort to explain these numbers and couldn't.

My one-sentence summary: This article cited out-of-date population figures and was calculated with a methodology that U.S. News refused to explain, based on figures that U.S. News refused to share.

This is a little distressing, especially for a study that's being widely cited by the transit agencies in question.  If you know anyone who might be able to confirm that the rankings are based on, well, something, or anyone else who's tried to do a similar analysis, please send them a link.

Bravo to Michael for expending all this effort in the search of reality.  I don't know if he's right, but he certainly deserves an answer.

More on this topic here!

best u.s. cities for transit?

Posted on April 30, 2011 in Journalism, Portland, Technophilia

US News and World Report claims to have identified the 10 best US cities for public transit:

1. Portland, OR

2. Salt Lake City

3. New York

4. Boston

5. Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

6. San Francisco

7. Los Angeles

8. Honolulu

9 (tie). Denver

9 (tie). Austin

All fine cities.  The methodology:

The rankings take into account per capita spending on public transportation, number of safety incidents per million trips, and the number of trips taken per capita.

But then there was this:

Analysis of data from the Federal Transit Administration and APTA shows which cities are among the best in the country for public transportation. All of these cities' systems have unique features that set them apart. Portland's public transit provides riders with a variety of travel options, including buses, light rail, commuter rail, streetcars, and an aerial tram.

Aargh!  Diversity of technologies says nothing whatever about travel options!  And if Portlanders really did have the options of a bus, a light rail train, a commuter rail train, a streetcar, and an aerial tram all competing for the same trip, that would be a pretty silly network, wouldn't it?

UPDATE:  Followup post is here!

watching our words: congestion charge or price or (shudder) tax

Posted on March 17, 2011 in Auckland, Congestion Pricing, Journalism, Language, Words, Unhelpful

There seems to be a flurry of new interest in congestion pricing, partly under the pressure of tight budgets almost everywhere.  But journalists can muddy the waters by describing congestion pricing as either exploitative or punitive.

Last month, I was invited to contribute to a Sydney Morning Herald thinkpiece on the subject.  My contribution, the second of four pieces here, emphasises that congestion pricing is not about paying for congestion, it's about paying to avoid congestion.  The core point:

Suppose you announce that you'll give away free concert tickets to the first 500 people in a queue. You'll get a queue of 500 people. These people are paying time to save money.

Other people will just buy a ticket and avoid the queue. They're choosing to pay money to save time.

Today, we require all motorists to wait in the queue. When stuck in congestion, we are paying for the road space in time rather than in money.

Shouldn't we have a choice about this? Why are we required to save money, a renewable resource, by spending time, the least renewable resource of all?

Unfortunately, the Sydney Morning Herald framed the whole piece with the question, "Should motorists pay for the congestion they cause?"    The implication is that congestion pricing is punitive, that some citizens believe that other citizens should be punished for their behavior.  The question seems designed to sow misunderstanding and inflame rage.  To their credit, none of the four expert responses — even the one from the auto club opposing the congestion charge — really took this bait.

So there's a problem with the terms congestion charge and congestion price.  The terms sound like "paying for congestion," when the truth is the opposite, we're being invited to choose whether to spend money to avoid congestion.  A more accurate term would be congestion avoidance price or even better, congestion avoidance option.  But those are too many words. 

Should we call it a decongestion price? 

Real congestion pricing is about giving free and responsible adults a set of options that reflect the real-world geometry of cities.  The core geometry problem is this:

  • Cities are, by definition, places where lots of people are close together.
  • Cities are therefore, by defintion, places with relatively little space per person.
  • Your car takes 50-100 times as much space as your body does.
  • Therefore, people in cars consume vastly more of the scarce resource, urban space, than the same people without their cars — for example, as pedestrians or public transit riders. 
  • When people choose whether to drive, they're choosing how much scarce urban space to consume.
  • If urban space is to be used like any other scarce resource, its price needs to be deregulated so that it is used efficiently. 

Congestion pricing is a form of deregulation.  It is the most libertarian concept imaginable.

There's another way to mess this up, and that's the term "congestion tax."  Here's the New Zealand Herald: 

Aucklanders may be levied to drive through increasingly congested streets in the absence of Government funding of the region's "strategic aspirations".

A paper released by Local Government Minister Rodney Hide before Auckland's first spatial plan due out in 11 days suggests raising revenue by charging motorists to drive around the Super City at peak times.

Hide makes clear that this isn't a congestion price intended to reduce congestion.  It's just another tax, intended to raise revenue.  So just to be clear: If it's congestion pricing, there are public transit (and bike-ped, and casual carpool) alternatives that enable people to get where they're going.  The congestion price cordons on the CBDs of London and Singapore work because there's abundant public transit to those places, so relatively few people absolutely have to drive into them.  The San Francisco Bay Bridge tolls have a congestion-pricing value because there's both abundant transit and casual carpool options for avoiding them. 

If, on the other hand, you're in a place where there's no reasonable alternative to driving — such as large parts of Auckland — then anything  that suppresses driving will suppress travel, and that means it will suppress economic activity.  And if you're just taxing economic activity, then this is really no different from sales taxes, Goods and Services Taxes (GST), or income taxes. By taxing economic activity, you're suppressing something that government and society should be encouraging.  That's not a libertarian idea; quite the opposite.

quote of the week: beyond “david vs. goliath”

Posted on February 14, 2011 in Advocacy, Journalism

Cap'n Transit on the journalist's temptation to write "David vs Goliath" stories:

Behind an apparent David and Goliath story of Outraged Residents confronting the Heartless Bureaucrats may be a much uglier story. The Outraged Residents may actually be a few wealthy or upper-middle-class people protecting their privilege and convenience at the expense of the convenience – or often the safety and well-being – of much larger numbers of less fortunate people, and the Heartless Bureaucrats may actually be engaged in an emotionally draining struggle to protect these less fortunate people.

I expanded on this difficult issue here.  Cap'n Transit frames this specifically as a class issue, but it doesn't have to be.  In many cases the Heartless Bureaucrats are just balancing the needs of a number of conflicting parties, who would all rather yell about "the government" than do the hard work of talking and listening to each other.

deadly journalism alert: “planners say” tunnels cost money

Posted on January 6, 2011 in Advocacy, Journalism, San Francisco

James Fallows of the Atlantic has been pushing back on the habit of journalists to resist all statements of objective fact:

In today's political environment, when so many simple facts are disputed, journalists can feel abashed about stating plainly what is true. With an anticipatory cringe about the angry letters they will receive or the hostile blog posts that will appear, they instead cover themselves by writing, "according to most scientists, the sun rises in the east, although critics say…."

How does this play out in transit journalism?  Very, very often, journalists present a transit expert stating a fact and someone else expressing a desire, as though this were a "he said, she said" disagreement.  For example, here's Mike Rosenberg of Bay Area News Group, about the routing of California High Speed Rail through the suburb of Burlingame just south of San Francisco.

Burlingame officials want their entire stretch of planned high-speed rail track buried underground …  State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks, which locals fear would tower 30 feet in the air, produce more noise and create a physical divide.

Note the tension of the two stem verbs.  "Burlingame officials want" and "state planners say."  It's set up to sound like "he said, she said." 

But these two sentences don't describe a disagreement at all.  Burlingame city officials are stating a desire, to have the line underground, to which state rail planners are responding with information about consequences, namely that undergrounding would be more expensive.   That's not a disagreement; that's staff doing its job.

The disagreement is actually about who should pay for the undergounding that Burlingame wants.  The state says that if a city wants high speed rail to go underground, it should pay the difference.  The article quotes Burlingame mayor Terry Nagel's response:

Nagel said Burlingame could spend the city's entire $33 million annual budget on funding the tracks and barely make a dent in the price tag.

"It's not even a possibility," Nagel said Wednesday.

Note that mayor understands that building the line underground through his city will cost more than building the line on the surface.  In fact, he's clear that it will cost massively more, more than his entire city budget.  The cost is not in dispute.  So why did we need "state planners say" in this sentence?

State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks …

All other things being equal, underground construction is more expensive than surface.  This is a fact about the universe, readily found in any transport engineering textbook, so it's misleading to describe it as a claim or allegation. 

Even if the journalist were thinking like a divorce lawyer, for whom there may be no verifiable reality outside of the fevered imaginations of the two parties, he still could have said that "all parties agree that undergrounding costs much, much more than surface."  The journalist knows this, because he has quoted the Mayor of Burlingame displaying a complete grasp of that fact, even though the fact is inconvenient for his side.

So let's read that whole passage again:

Burlingame officials want their entire stretch of planned high-speed rail track buried underground …  State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks, which locals fear would tower 30 feet in the air, produce more noise and create a physical divide.

Look again the three main verbs:  want – say – fear.  Emotion – alleged fact – emotion.  And both emotions are on the same side!  It's as predictable as the structure of a pop song.  The people of Burlingame get their emotions recorded twice, while in opposition we hear only a fact about cost, presented as though it were the voice of some oppressor, crushing these honest folks who are trying to defend their homes.

Journalists!  If you want to help people form coherent views that bear some relation to realty, ask yourself these questions:

  • What facts are agreed on by all parties to the dispute, and by experts in the field?  State those as facts.
  • If facts are not agreed to by all parties, are they agreed to by people expert in the subject?  If so, say "experts generally agree that …"  This can still be wimpy, like "experts agree that the sun rises in the east," but even that is vastly more accurate than "state planners say …"
  • Are there widely shared values motivating both sides?  If so, make them visible.  You may or may not agree that High Speed Rail is a good policy, but its motivating purpose is not to torture the people of Burlingame.  Drop in a standard sentence about the larger economic and environmental purposes High Speed Rail advocates claim the line will serve.  We know what values the burghers of Burlingame are defending — "home" — but what values are those on other side defending, and might these also matter to the reader?
  • Are there strong emotions on both sides?  If so, describe them.  In this case, don't just quote "state planners," who are professionally compelled to be balanced and judicious.   Quote a committed and informed High Speed Rail advocate making a stronger, more vivid statement about the actions of cities like Burlingame, and the cumulative burden they place on getting a line built.  In today's world of expert blogs, you don't even need to pick up the phone; just quote Robert Cruikshank off his California High Speed Rail Blog, for example …

[Burlingame expects] the rest of the state to essentially subsidize their property values. I cannot emphasize enough how absurd and out-of-touch that view is. At a time when property values have crashed hard in other parts of the state, why on earth would anyone in Riverside or Stockton or San Diego or East LA believe that Burlingame property owners deserve state aid to maintain their land values?

Bottom line:  If your story sounds like passionate people are in conflict with soulless bean-counting bureaucrats, you probably don't understand your story yet.  You may in fact have a story about venal, conniving bureaucrats, or about frightened or lazy bureaucrats blowing smoke, but the rules above will help you figure out if that's the case.  You may also have a story about expert public servants doing their jobs, and if you want any honest and dedicated experts to be willing to work in those jobs, you owe it to them to consider that possibility.

I would welcome some push-back from professional journalists on this.  (Email link is under my photo in the next column to the right.)   Please forward a link to any journalists in your life!   Me, I'm just a consumer of the product, and often not a very happy one. 

Thanksgiving English Quiz: Grammar in The New York Times

Posted on November 25, 2010 in Amusing, Journalism

Can this sentence, from the New York Times article on the DeLay conviction, be read as anything other than evidence of the collapse of journalism, and hence of language, and hence of civilization?

To be guilty of money laundering, the prosecution had to show the money had been obtained through an illegal activity before it was laundered.

They succeeded in showing that, so I guess that means the prosecution is guilty of money laundering.

This is the frigging NYTimes!  Are there no editors sharp-eyed enough to change “To be guilty of …” to “To prove …” ?  Predicates need subjects!  Otherwise they run wild and incriminate innocent people.

Update: Commenter GD provides the necessary transit angle on this story:

William Safire is rotating in his grave. The question now is how to harness that energy and power rail transit with it 😉

Happy Thanksgiving to American readers.  If you had to fly in the USA yesterday, I hope it was stimulating.

The Horrors of “Transferring” in 1974, and a Happier Future

Posted on November 16, 2010 in Connections, Transfers, Fares, Journalism, Legibility, Oakland, Vancouver

Connections, or transfers as North Americans depressingly call them, are the foundation of a simple, frequent transit network that’s there whenever you need it.  I laid out the basic argument here, but in brief, a transit system that tries to run direct service from everywhere else (so that nobody has to make a connection) ends up as a confusing tangle of hundreds of overlapping lines, few of which are frequent enough to rely on or simple enough to remember.  Continue Reading →

Beyond “On-Time Performance”

Posted on October 25, 2010 in 3-newbasic, Journalism, On-Time Performance, San Francisco

A San Francisco reporter emailed me yesterday with this question, regarding the city’s main transit system, Muni:

As you know, Muni set a goal in 1999 when the [San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency] board was formed, to have a 85 percent on-time performance standard. That was voted on in 1999 (Prop. E). Since then … the agency has yet to the meet goal or even gotten close to it. The highest it’s been was 75 percent a few months ago.  … I wanted to ask if you if there is any danger for Muni to be so focused on this one standard? Are performance metrics evolving and why are they evolving? What else should Muni to be looking at as far as improving reliability?

Continue Reading →

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