Human Transit

Is the Tide Turning Against Techno-Libertarian Transport Planning?

Posted on October 6, 2016 in General

My little stoush with Uber over the last few days — observing that its advertising seems to be presenting itself as a threat to all public transit, including rail — went modestly viral, coming close to a pageview record for this seven year old blog. Uber quickly pulled the offending ad.

Again, as I laid out here, if Uber and its ilk — collectively and misleadingly called Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) — successfully draw customers away from high-ridership transit services, rail or bus, the result would be several overlapping disasters for our cities, including massive increases in congestion, emissions, road space demanded by vehicles, and inequality of opportunity.

And of course, there will always be people saying that as long as customers want something they should have it, and the consequences don’t matter. This is how we got all of the environmental problems we deal with today, and many of our problems of inequality.

Meanwhile, the resistance is getting traction. A Boston Consulting Group report, flagged in Citylab, argues that autonomous taxis will destroy the passenger rail industry, including urban subways. Anyone with the slightest sense of geometry can see immediately what a disastrous increase in vehicle trips that would be.

Then, Greg Lindsay, a leading observer and commenter on urban tech, noted this:

When @FTAlphaville is quoting @humantransit approvingly, you know the tide is turning, and turning fast. https://t.co/IetlNGUCtv
— Greg Lindsay (@Greg_Lindsay) October 6, 2016

Alphaville is a blog at the Financial Times, usually a pro-business outfit. But they’re not just quoting me; they’re sounding a serious alarm:

At FT Alphaville we’ve questioned the rationality of glorifying a business model (Transportation Network Companies, ‘TNCs’ like Uber) that undermines decades worth of urban planning work focused on encouraging mass transit options like buses and trains, whilst marginalising petrol-guzzling space-consuming single-occupant cars. It seems backward, to say the least.
But the tech world seems oblivious to the limitations posed by urban geometry, seemingly convinced that app-controlled taxis can overcome the space constraints of London Bridge at 5pm more effectively than non-app controlled taxis. Why this should be the case, however, is never clearly explained.

They also cite this paper by Matthew Daus, outlining the numerous dangers of the current prevailing TNC business model, including environmental dangers as well as issues of equality of opportunity. (See his page 20 of his report for the formal litany.) Here’s the critical bit:

TNCs have grown at a near exponential rate, adding a significant amount of automobiles on the streets of already congested cities. For example, Uber grew from zero (0) drivers in 2012 to 160,000 actively partnered drivers (defined as drivers that have completed more than four trips per month) by the end of 2014 in the United States alone.
As demonstrated in the graph below, the rate of growth has risen rapidly since July 2012:

Uber and its fellow travellers can “grow” like this by continuing to flood dense inner cities with cars, but of course we will run out of space, so that’s not going to continue. The danger is that the attempt to do this will strangle all of our other options, notably public transit, so that once Uber has taken over our streets we’ll have no alternatives, even though they are all sitting in self-made gridlock, shoving cyclists and pedestrians out of the way. This is exactly how cars took over the world, 60-100 years ago.

In other words, this seems to be an issue where only strong government intervention, over the noisy objections of the techno-libertarians, is going to save us.

Of course, there is a free-market solution to this problem, which is to charge for the actual market value of limited urban road space. Once most cars on the road are run by some corporation instead of by individuals, it may be easier to impose the necessary free market forces so that traffic is limited to match the space available. That, in turn, would drive massive demand back to space-efficient modes such as public transit, but only if techno-libertarian public relations campaigns haven’t destroyed those options first, by encouraging apathy about them.

So it’s an interesting time. Maybe the tide really is turning.

Speech Has Consequences, or Why I Called Out Uber Yesterday

Posted on October 4, 2016 in General

Early yesterday, I saw an Uber ad which expressed the company’s intent to attract passengers from high-capacity public transit. The ad is below, and my post in response is here.

uber-ad

In my response I reminded readers of what it would mean to shift large numbers of people from big transit vehicles, like the subway pictured here, to individual Uber cars — in terms of outcomes for cities, society, and the environment.

Within hours I got a Twitter message from a senior person at Uber, asking where I’d seen the ad and then assuring me the ad had been removed. All good.

But readers wondered if I was over-reacting to a mere ad, or if I regretted my post now that the ad had been taken down. No, and here’s why.

Advertising, like political speech, has a long history that we can study and learn from. Precisely because it seems so fleeting and insubstantial, it disarms our skepticism, exploits our desire to be “in” or “cool,” and thus shapes attitudes that will define the world of the future.

This ad also had a context, as part of a torrent of messages — from many parts of the culture including the tech industry — that encourage contempt for public transit, or at least apathy about it, among the relatively fortunate. And when our transit systems are not what our cities need or deserve, that apathy is the main reason why. With that ad, Uber had identified itself as an advocate of that apathy.

The only way to disarm that ad was to take it seriously. Advertising always wants to engage us with a wink and a nod, so that we’ll forgive it for implying things that the company wouldn’t want to defend having said directly. So to confront it, you have to strip off that mask and make clear that you hear what the ad is saying, and what that implies.

It’s like what you have to do to stop any ongoing pattern of abuse. Sooner or later, you have to speak up about something that seems minor in isolation. You have to say: “I know you think this is isn’t a big deal, but in the context of 100 similar things that are being said, it’s doing harm.” You’ll sound like a killjoy, but you’ll sleep better knowing you did what you could.

It worked. Somebody at Uber read my post, saw the problem and fixed it as a matter of urgency. Clearly there are people inside of Uber who want the company to be a more responsible player in urban issues. I look forward to meeting more of these people, and I hope they prevail in defining Uber’s future.

This is the stance that I encourage transit agencies to take toward Uber, Lyft, and similar companies. Negotiate from a position of confidence that demands respect for the things that only high-ridership transit can do. The companies worth working with are those that will be happy to meet you in that space, ready to collaborate to build better, more liberated cities.

Let’s Quit Pretending About Uber

Posted on October 4, 2016 in 2-Keepers

UPDATE: Uber contacted me in response to this post and told me that the advertisement it describes had been taken down. This response was very encouraging. This post remains as part of the record, but if you read it, please also read my follow-up, here.

Can we stop pretending that Uber doesn’t want to destroy our high-capacity transit systems? Because this ad really clears up any doubt, doesn’t it?

uber-ad

So Uber isn’t even just trying to attract customers off of buses. This ad shows that it wants them off the subway too. In this implied vision of the future, most useful transit systems die from elite apathy once the elites are all on Uber. From this we can deduce that Uber’s notion of the ideal city includes:

moving people from big vehicles (transit) into more numerous small ones (Uber), and therefore …
increasing the total volume of vehicle traffic, which is to say, increasing congestion, … which means:
creating a new imperative to wipe out sidewalks, parks, bike lanes so as to make room for all these cars, and also
destroying one of the last few places in the city where a millionaire might sit next to the guy who washes dishes in her favorite restaurant, thus achieving an even more perfect state of rigid class segregation. In this world, a majority who can’t afford Uber has no good transport options and is therefore pushed further away from the sources of opportunity that they could use to improve their lives.

I apologize if I sound like a killjoy, but the logic here is as firm as the logic behind climate change.

When corporations state their intentions this clearly — especially if those intentions line up with universal corporate goals of growth and profitability — we should believe them. We should believe that Uber, given the chance, really would lead us into the dystopia of gridlock and class segregation that this ad implies. And when it comes time for transit agencies to make deals with these organizations, they should know who they’re dealing with.

And yes, when I really need ridesharing (only after checking the transit options first), I prefer Lyft for now, a company that actually seems to respect public transit and wants to complement it rather than destroy it. And I look for the local companies that are doing the same things.

Because every purchase you make is a statement about what kind of world you want, regardless of whether you mean that consciously.

A response from Uber would be welcome, but really, this ad says what it says, doesn’t it?

How Should Transit Agencies Respond to New Mobility Options? An Excellent Report

Posted on October 2, 2016 in General

The rapid growth of private ridesourcing (Lyft, Uber) and microtransit (Bridj, Split) has been a challenge for local governments, including transit agencies. The tech media like to talk about private sector innovation as naturally superior to government, as though government’s sole role is to react. Local governments are harangued to “get ready” or “get out of the way,” as though they are about to be swept by some tsunami of transformation. Yet local government — cities and transit agencies — urgently need to lead in forging a mutually beneficial outcome, drawing out the benefits of the new tools while preventing their potential for harm. I explored these issues, in text and video, here.

A century ago our city leaders were told to get ready for an onslaught of cars. The onslaught overwhelmed them only because they didn’t have the courage and clarity to demand clear thinking about how to manage the new thing’s impact.

In my own transit planning work I’m already hearing people say that now that we have “door to door” service, we no longer need those big-bus transit lines. If you take that step, there’s no longer any reason to plan density around logical corridors, so we might as well sprawl into patterns that will guarantee long-term car dependence. As we gut our transit systems through apathy, what’s left are miserable remnants for the poor who can’t afford an Uber ride, and who are further ghettoized by their exclusion from the new mobilty paradise. And we also increase Vehicle Miles Travelled, which means more congestion and less space in the public realm for other things we value. That, admittedly, is the worst case scenario, but it would be foolish not to think about how to prevent it. And that’s even before we start talking about driverless technology, whose potential benefits and downsides are both even more extreme.

So it was a relief to pick up TransitCenter’s new report, “Private Mobility, Public Interest,”(by Shin-pei Tsay, Zak Accuardi, and Bruce Schaller) and read:

One clear finding is that today’s practice does not support the popular but superficial narrative that emerging mobility providers are on their way to replacing traditional bus service. …

Emerging mobility services … will not replace high-quality, fixed-route transit as the most efficient means of moving people along dense urban corridors, and focusing on emerging mobility services is not a substitute for designing walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods or engaging in pedestrian- and transit-oriented planning.

With that clearly established, the report lays out the many opportunities for collaboration or partnership in providing the best possible mobility for an entire city. The private players can be very helpful on the peak of the rush hour, when the incremental cost of bus service is very high, and also in providing the low-density services that are not cost-effective for full-wage city buses. But that’s why the public sector must recognize its own leverage, and make the most of it

The public sector controls valuable assets, like parking spaces and street right-of-way, that can be used to negotiate for contracted services, access to data, or equitable geographic coverage, for example.

Common weaknesses of the public sector side are also explored:

Agencies need to proactively start to break down barriers to collaboration with emerging mobility providers––barriers like restrictive procurement processes, work rules, or agency traditions––by creating clear pathways to working together.

I recommend the whole report to any local leaders, or advocates, who need help describing what needs to be done to ensure that the new technologies help foster a better city for everyone.

Paris: The Triumph of the Bus Stop

Posted on September 27, 2016 in General, Legibility, Paris

Do you think bus service is never as “permanent” as rail service? Well, it depends on how much infrastructure you build, and how proudly it announces the bus service as an essential part of the cityscape, both as icon and as opportunity.

Each time I visit Paris there’s something new in its public transit, but these new bus stop signs, now standard across the city, are remarkable.

They’re around 4m (12 ft) high, towering over the bus shelter to which they’re attached. At night they are the most prominent informational icons in the streetscape, by an order of magnitude.

Look closer:

Version 2

Every stop has a name, reaffirming your sense of your place in the city. (At night, these are actually the easiest locational signs to read, so they have navigational value extending beyond transit.) For each route, there’s the number, the endpoint (indicating direction of travel) and the number of minutes until the next bus arrives. If you know the network, you don’t even have to look down to know where you are, and when the next bus is coming.

Here’s one in the daytime, when the little realtime displays are harder to catch in a photo.

I don’t have a good pic of the entire shelter, but it has everything you’d expect of a rail stop, including maps of each route, a diagram of the bus network, a diagram of the metro and regional rail network, and timetable and fare information. It also has more extensive realtime information displays, showing the next several buses departing.

On the other hand, it doesn’t have the extraneous things that my architecture and built-environment friends often suggest, such as distinctive architectural designs or “community hub” features like coffee vending or (yes) lending libraries — all of which have been explored. A big city needs lots of bus stops, so the ideas that matter are the ones that scale. In any case, the more you respect your bus system, the more you can celebrate it for what it is, rather than expecting it to entertain us in ways that distract from the liberty it provides.

When I lived in Paris in 1986, the buses and bus shelters were like what most Americans are used to: basic, functional, but sometimes dirty and poorly maintained. It was presumed, back then, that the Metro and regional rail systems were the serious transit, and that the buses didn’t matter much, and the infrastructure reinforced that message.

All that has changed. Buses are so nice that you can scarcely distinguish them from trams (streetcars). Many streets have car-free lanes that buses can use. Now, with these pillars of information, bus stops are even easier to find than metro stations, and almost as easy to navigate.

There are several principles at work here:

The more subways you have, the more surface transit you need. This excellent bus system operates right on top of the world’s densest metro network (in terms of stations/sq km). Almost everyone in Paris is near a metro station, but there are still plenty of markets (short trips, trips along paths not followed by metro) where surface transit is the right tool.
Unless you already have streetcar tracks everywhere, the only surface transit that can cover your whole city, soon, is bus service.
So if you want an effective transit system for everyone, you have to convey that the bus system matters, through network design, branding, and infrastructure.
The order is important. First get the network design right, then develop branding that works with the network design. Finally, conceive infrastructure that serves and celebrates both.

I could quibble with Paris on that last point. As with most bus networks, Paris’s seems to be more complex than it needs to be, though a modest simplification is underway, as you can see by playing the map here* . The signage doesn’t help us distinguish major routes from minor ones. Imagine the extreme transparency that would arise from fusing Paris’s level of bus signage with Barcelona’s commitment to extreme simplicity and legibility in network design.

But the big point is this: Buses can be as liberating and efficient as your city wants them to be. The more efficient and liberating they are, the more they deserve to be celebrated in infrastructure. The bus stop is one of the biggest signals, to everyone in the city, about the community’s attitude toward buses and their customers.

* At this page, you can move the map left or right to see the changes. The current network is on the left, the proposed one on the right. It’s simpler but not that much simpler, and it still doesn’t help you distinguish major routes (high frequency, long duration) from minor ones (lower frequency, short duration).

Are Parking Levies Better than (De)congestion Pricing?

Posted on September 18, 2016 in General

skyline_nottingham_-_geograph-org-uk_-_1577919

Dave Hitchborne http://www.geograph.org.uk/

Nottingham is the first city in the UK to introduce a levy (i.e. tax) on all workplace parking to finance public transit. Stephen Joseph at the UK’s Campaign for Better Transport thinks it’s a better strategy than congestion pricing (or as I have always advocated calling it, decongestion pricing):

Although every city is different, there might be some wider lessons here. One, for the transport economist geeks, might be to stop obsessing with congestion charging. Efficient in economic theory though this might be, Nottingham looked at it and decided that it would be very costly – all those cameras and enforcement – and would not target peak hour traffic jams and single-occupancy car commuting as effectively as the levy would.
The wider lesson from this is that the politics of a levy are different, too. With congestion charging you have to get support from the whole city and potentially its hinterland; and referenda in Manchester and Edinburgh show how difficult that is. With a workplace parking levy, there is a narrower and potentially more politically winnable discussion with businesses and commuters about what a levy could pay for – things that might make journeys to work easier and cut peak hour jams and pollution.

This may indeed be a good strategy at least for smaller cities.

This is not the first parking levy in the world: Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth in Australia all have them in their inner cities, as does Montreal in Canada. Toronto is debating the issue now, while in the UK, Cambridge is considering following Nottingham’s lead.

Guest Post: Transit Oriented Development on a Small Town Scale

Posted on September 15, 2016 in General, Guest Posts

This guest post is by Hugh Mose, a transportation consultant who retired in 2014 after nearly 20 years as the General Manager of CATA, the transit provider in State College, PA (the home of Penn State). CATA transports nearly seven million passengers annually in a service area of less than 100,000 population. For further information, contact Hugh at [email protected] or Eric Bernier, CATA’s Director of Information Services, at [email protected].

While transit oriented development is increasingly common in major urban areas, smaller communities are also working hard to ensure that public transportation can be a viable alternative to the single occupant vehicle. One good example is State College, Pennsylvania, where the Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA) has been particularly successful in securing transit-supportive elements as part of new real estate developments. In State College and its surrounding municipalities, as in most small communities, there are no ordinances requiring new residential or commercial developments to incorporate any particular transit amenities. However, that hasn’t stopped CATA from working diligently for more than two decades to develop an informal support system, one which has produced uncommonly good results.

Why do they do it?

The guiding philosophy at CATA is that the development getting built today is going to be there for 50 years. Lack of sidewalks, light-duty pavements, tight turning radii, and cul-de-sacs rather than through streets are going to be there forever, so nothing is more important than getting things right at the time the development is designed, approved and built.

How do they do it?

Build the relationships. Over the years CATA has built up a network of support within the development review process – consulting engineers, municipal staffs, planning commission members, local elected officials. And, CATA has established a very high level of credibility throughout the community.

Then, commit the resources. CATA and the local planning agency share the cost of a transportation planner whose job it is to review and comment on development plans. Municipalities forward the plans; requests are made, meetings are held with the proponents, accommodations are negotiated.

What do they ask for?

Lighted pathway from apartment buildings directly to bus stop/shelter/pull-off.

Pedestrian pathway from Wal-Mart store to bus stop, totally separated from parking.

Bus pull-off and shelter constructed for CATA by shopping center developer.

A pedestrian network. Nothing is more important than a complete system of direct, accessible and lighted pathways between project buildings, connecting with adjacent sites, and extending to the bus stop(s). After all, every bus rider is a pedestrian (or a bicyclist) before they board and after they alight!

Location, location, location. The key elements that are considered include balancing passenger convenience with operating efficiency, avoiding conflicts with automobiles, integrating transit facilities into other planned amenities, and providing for safe and convenient street crossings.

Developer investments. Developers understand that they need to invest in roadways, parking, streetlights, traffic mitigations, etc. CATA asserts that transit amenities are no different. In addition, CATA offers to assume ongoing facility upkeep and maintenance – which removes a major objection.

Why does it work?

There’s a transit culture. Through successive projects, expectations have been established. The development community has come to understand that, even though there are no ordinances specifically requiring transit amenities, for project approvals to move expeditiously, transit has to be considered.

CATA is reasonable it what it asks for. Because the program has no formal “teeth,” CATA is very willing to compromise, to consider and balance the limitation of the site, and to work with the developer to find a location for transit amenities that, while less than ideal, both parties can live with.

What have they learned?

These are the important takeaways: Be persistent; CATA’s present success is the result of more than twenty years of effort. Be prepared to work hard; the time and effort required is not insignificant. Be reasonable; after all, the program is built entirely on relationships and credibility. Build on past successes; nothing is more persuasive in current negotiations than showing what others have done before. Be resilient; accept that you can’t win them all. And, don’t get discouraged – success will come.

CATA and Centre Regional Planning Agency staff reviewing site plans.

Have you read my book? If so I have a question …

Posted on September 15, 2016 in General

I hope this doesn’t sound like fishing for praise, but a client has asked me to provide some pithy quotations from my book for use in advertising an event. Rather than trying to remember or find them myself, it would be great if people who’ve read the book could share pithy quotations that they remember. That way I don’t have to decide what was pithy, or for that matter memorable.

Leave them in the comments if you think of any! Thanks!

To Kill Fewer People, Rely More on Transit

Posted on September 14, 2016 in General

It may seem an obvious point, but transit is a remarkably safe form of travel, especially compared to the private car. A new report from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) authored by Todd Litman puts some numbers to how higher transit dependence yields a transportation system that kills fewer people.

Public transportation is one of the safest ways to travel. It is ten times safer per mile than traveling by car because it has less than a tenth the per-mile traffic casualty (injury or death) rate as automobile travel. Public transit-oriented communities are five times safer because they have about a fifth the per capita traffic casualty rate as automobile-oriented communities. In addition, crash rates tend to decline as public transit travel increases in a community. Contrary to popular perceptions, public transit travel is significantly safer than automobile travel.
Credible research indicates that many planning practices that improve public transportation and encourage its use also tend to increase traffic safety. However, these benefits are often overlooked: individuals tend to exaggerate public transit risks; planners tend to overlook safety benefits when evaluating public transit improvements; and traffic experts seldom consider pro-transit policies as safety strategies.

It’s worth a peruse. The press release is here, and the full report is here.

A new source for data on US transit

Posted on September 8, 2016 in General

One of our longtime favorite transportation bloggers, Yonah Freemark over at the Transport Politic, has added an excellent new feature to his site: a set of interactive charts detailing key US transportation indicators called the Transport Databook. This does a great job of taking measures that are readily available in public data, though not always easily accessible, and compiling them into simple one stop shop for this kind of information. And the source data is also available in a condensed form that is likely to be easier to use for anyone unfamiliar with the original sources. These charts cover a wide array of transit and transportation trends beyond the familiar ridership, service hours, or VMT stats. For instance:

screen-shot-2016-09-08-at-1-11-45-pm

We’ve already noticed parts of this work fueling a number of Twitter conversations, and hopefully, this site continues as a good resource for people interested in informing themselves about long-term trends in transportation data.

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