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Email of the week: A no-voter on Metro Vancouver’s transit referendum

Posted on April 3, 2015 in Advocacy

From John DeFazio.  He's responding to this post, or maybe to this one.  I have not edited for grammar or clarity.

Jarrett,
you write like a scholar, using you master's degrees to cleverly make readers feel sorry for Translink and vote yes, even if they are confused… you know the adage, "bullshit baffle brains", thats what you and your kind are doing… and how much are they paying you Jarrett? 
Nothing.  
there are many other ways that Translink can raise funding for transit and you bloody well know it… alternatively Translink should go public, make it competitive for private companies to run transit for the masses… look at BC Ferries, they run low on cheddar and they raise their rates, simple, you wanna ride, you pay…
 
Here's what professionals know:  Specialized transit services in monopoly positions or isolated intense markets are sometimes profitable.  BC Ferries, which cross water barriers where the only alternative is flying, are a great example.  But the entire transit system for a metro area the size of greater Vancouver is never profitable in a developed-world context, just as roads are not.  That's not why transit exists.  It exists, among other things, to protect the economy from being strangled by traffic congestion.
 
like [Vancouver] Mayor Robinson who makes stupid promises he cant even come close to keeping, and big ones too, you know, the "end homeless" bullshit he's peddling… Robinson wants a freebie from all lowermainlanders in the form of 0.5% tax hike to pay for his Broadway subway that he's been promising for years! Hey, what about if Vancouver raises their own money to do the subway? or lobby the provincial govt for cheddar or lobby the Federal govt for cheddar!! 
 
When the British Columbia government wanted to widen the Port Mann freeway bridge between the cities of Surrey and Coquitlam, they argued it was province-wide interest.  Nobody talked about it as "Surrey's and Coquitlam's bridge."  Likewise, the Broadway subway is physically in Vancouver but that doesn't make it Vancouver's.  If you ever want to be able to get from the northeastern part of the metro area to the airport, for example, you need the Broadway subway, because only with that subway do all the rapid transit lines into Vancouver connect with each other so that people can make suburb-suburb trips. 
 
I defer to locals to explain the cheddar metaphor.  
Im so glad i don't live in Vancouver where Robertson pretends he's the Mayor in…
Whatever supposedly high principles anti-transit campaigns may be espousing, a key motivating force is usually sheer hostility toward the region's densest city, and everything it represents.  If you want to understand why anti-transit campaigns are so fervent, this always seems to be part of the answer.
and who's paying for the yes advertising eh? taxpayers? who else… that's so shameful and in the end will see what a waste of resources this has been… pissing away good money when there is no chance of winning this plebiscite!
Why didn't you talk about Mayor Corrigen eh? remember him? he's opposed to the tax hike with validity…
Longtime readers know that I almost never write about personalities, because this is not about them.  It's about the freedom and opportunity of citizens in the region.
Ive voted NO, every one i know has done the same… the yes campaign hasn't a hope in hell to even come close and you know it Jarrett…
Yes, I'm sure everyone you know agrees with you.  That's how human beings withdraw from reality, by only "knowing" people who agree with them.   Personally, I get bored listening to people who agree with me, which is why I wanted to share John's email.  By the way, I didn't select this email from a whole pile to create a particular effect; it's the only one I've received on the subject, but it's typical of what Metro Vancouver seems to think is a credible opposition.

Vancouver: Yes, you have a cost-effective transit agency!

Posted on March 27, 2015 in Vancouver

A transit referendum underway in Metro Vancouver is asking voters to raise sales taxes to fund a huge range of transit improvements that are inevitably needed in such a dense and densifying region.  Polls are suggesting that one of the most transit-dependent regions in North America is going to vote no.  

There is plenty of room for argument about whether sales taxes are too regressive, or whether transit measures should go to the voters while highway measures are considered essential Provincial spending.  All those debates are happening.   I also suggested, here, some principles for deciding how to vote on transit funding measures in general.

But I want to intervene on one point.  The no campaign has managed to spin a lot of anecdotes to suggest that TransLink is a wildly inefficient or incompetent agency. 

TransLink is a major agency that does many things at once, answers to many masters with conflicting agendas, and certainly makes mistakes.  But the core of any transit agency budget is its operating budget — what it spends to run service and what it achieves in return.   That's the only budget that goes on and on forever, so it dominates the total budget picture.  The numbers confirm that Metro Vancouver is getting excellent value for its transit dollar.  Todd Litman of Victoria Transport Policy Institute recently put these numbers together.  

First, subsidy per passenger-kilometre (one passenger moving one km on transit).  What do regional taxpayers pay to move the massive numbers of people they move every day?  Less than 20 cents per passenger-km, which is right on the Canadian average and far better than what's achieved in the US, Australia, or New Zealand.  

Screen Shot 2015-03-30 at 12.15.35 PM

And what do Metro Vancouver taxpayers get for these 20 cents per ride?  Quite simply, a network that makes the regional economy possible, by allowing economic activity to grow despite the limits of the road network.  

One measure of this is passenger-kilometers per capita.  How much personal transit does Vancouver provide?  How many people can travel, and how far, to access jobs and opportunities without contributing to traffic congestion?

Vanc psgr kms per capita

Metro Vancouver's TransLink is a leader among similar sized regions, matched only by the older metro area of Montreal.  (Toronto does better than TransLink if you look only at the city [TTC in this chart], but the fairer comparison is with the whole metro area [GTHA in this chart], as TransLink covers all of Metro Vancouver.) 

Metro Vancouver has reached a level of transit reliance that is unprecedented for a young North American city.  Only centuries-old northeastern cities come close.   That reliance means that the region can add jobs and housing without adding traffic congestion.  Todd's paper provides some other excellent analysis to put these benefits in perspective, and explains why the sales tax is vastly cheaper than not having a good transit system. 

There are lots of reasons for Canadians to be unhappy about the Transit Referendum, including why it is happening at all.  And there will always be plenty of anecdotes about any agency that does so many different things at once.

But if you're voting no because you think your transit agency is fundamentally wasteful, that's just not true.   

London: Why take Heathrow Express?

Posted on March 26, 2015 in General

HeathrowExpress.svgMy recent visit to London, the first in 19 years, gave me a new appreciation for the dangers of creating express trains to the airport that are useful only to high-paying travelers.

We stayed at Paddington, on the north-west edge of the inner city, because I presumed that the Heathrow Express — nonstop trains between Paddington and Heathrow Airport every 15-30 minutes — would help us handle the awkward moves with luggage.  It worked fine for that, but the fare was obscene (well over GBP 20 each way) and the trains were therefore nearly empty.  I should have suspected this from the logo's resemblance to a luxury car hood ornament. 

This appears to be a classic example of an overspecialized transit service — designed to separate people by fare even though they are all going in the same direction at the same time.  Its based on the assumption that people with money would like to wait longer for a more comfortable service that skips a few stations, rather than use the ordinary Underground line from Heathrow that is far more frequent and runs directly to many more parts of London.  I have similar concerns about overspecialized airport train projects in Toronto, and others proposed elsewhere in the world.  

Quite simply, I'd have been happy to pay half the fare for a train that made a couple of stops, so that a lot more people could get on.  Heathrow Express has achieved a nice sensation of luxury; near-empty trains are always a pleasure, but they also suggest a poor business model.  Heathrow Express will eventually have competition from Crossrail, which will run deeper into London with a few more stops, but which will still be much faster than the old Piccadilly Line from Heathrow.

After all, if people with money refuse to ride the Underground, then why does the Underground contain advertising for first class seats on Emirates?  

IMG_4124

 

 

 

 

job: Ridership Data Technician in Baltimore

Posted on March 19, 2015 in Baltimore, Jobs

Here's an opportunity perfect for someone who is interested in transit data and monitoring. 

Via Baltimore MTA, the region's transit agency:

If you or someone you know likes data collection and analysis on a large scale and wants to put those skills to use in public transit, then there’s a new opportunity in the MTA’s Office of Service Development – The Ridership Data Technician (or RDT).

Full details and to apply: http://tinyurl.com/kg7nop3

MTA’s use of Automated Passenger Counters (APCs) continues to grow. We are just really getting started and are looking for an innovative and tech- and data-savvy person to join our team to take our APC program to the next level – allowing better planning, analysis, scheduling, and reporting for stakeholders inside and outside the agency.

If you’re interested, apply using the link above. Or, feel free to forward to someone you know that might be a good fit.

It sounds like a great position for someone who is familiar with APCs and current methods, and who has ideas about exciting new places to take this type of data. If that's you, or someone you know, it could be worth a look!

How do I find a hotel near good transit? Not (yet) via google!

Posted on March 3, 2015 in Legibility

A recent post discussed Jeff Howard's hotels near transit maps suggested looking at Google Hotel Finder, a utility tucked away within Google Maps that purports to help you find a hotel based on travel time from some location. A user plops a pin on the map, and the tool draws isochrones based on drive, transit, and walk times, which supposedly show you the area of the city where hotels are within that travel time of your destination.

Screen Shot 2015-03-02 at 11.35.06 AM

So far, so good – I put a pin in downtown Portland, and Hotel Finder shows me a big blob in the center of the city that I can get to by transit within 15 minutes. It looks like there will be lots of hotels I can choose where I can quickly take transit into downtown. However, when we look a bit more closely, we can see a big problem with Google's approach.

Screen Shot 2015-03-02 at 11.34.53 AM

In this image, I have moved the pin to a corner near Reed College in Southeast Portland. This is a residential area bordering a low-density industrial district and the campus and fields of a small, exclusive liberal arts college. It is served by just one bus route, the 10-Harold, every 30 minutes. Yet according to Google, from this location, I'm just a short 15-minute trip from outer East Portland, or the inner Eastside Industrial District.

The problem here is that Google is providing an isochrone of transit access that does not consider frequency, i.e waiting time.  They assume that the bus shows up right when you need it..  

Once I'm on the Harold bus, it's true that I might be able to take it from 28th far out into the east side in just 15 minutes. But depending upon when I arrived at the stop, I could wind up spending up to 45 minutes making the trip. If we assume an average wait of 15 minutes, or half the headway, the area shown by Google as within 15 minutes of the pin is actually more like 30 minutes!

Imagine you are a person who is coming to a city for business, and you picked a hotel expecting to be able to travel to your meeting by transit in just 15 minutes. Yet when you walk out to the stop, or check a trip planing app, you find that you will wait longer than that just to catch the next bus! You might be late to your meeting, and the tool you used to pick the hotel would have failed to direct you to accommodations that met your desire to be a short transit trip from work.

A more useful version of Hotel Finder would add waiting time. This would alter the isochrone in response to frequency, and more accurately show the area (and hotels) within a short transit trip of the desired location. 

We are surprised to see this kind of misleading info from the crack team at Google Transit.  In presenting transit travel times that don't consider waiting, they are talking about transit as though it worked just like cars, doing a disservice to everyone who wants to consider transit when the choose a location.

London and Dublin: open to ideas

Posted on March 2, 2015 in Dublin, London

Just as literature graduate students never admit that there are books they haven't read, we urbanist pundits aren't supposed to admit that there are cities we've never been to.  In fact, we're so up to date in our lived experience that there are no great cities we've never been to recently.

Tip: We're all faking it, mostly with Google Earth.

So, to keep up my outsiderish reputation, I'd like to announce that I haven't been to London for 19 years, and I've never been to Dublin at all.  Fortunately, that's changing this month.  I'll be in London March 14-16 and Dublin for a week following that.

What does a transit consultant with North American and Australasian experience do with just a couple of days in London, or with a full week in Dublin?  With whom should he meet?  What experiences must he have?  I have my own ideas, but I love the fact that so many of you know these cities better than I do.  Have at it in the comments!

How do I find a hotel near good transit?

Posted on February 26, 2015 in Atlanta, Legibility, Washington DC

Map_of_hotels_near_washington_dc_metroHere's news you can use, or at least news I can use as an absurdly frequent flyer.  

All of the standard travel shopping sites make it very hard to assess the transit options from a hotel's location.  At most they have distances and sometimes car travel times.  So I often spend too long doing research, and pay too much for a hotel close to my destination when I might easily have stayed further away more cheaply if I knew good transit was there.

This, therefore, is a really good tool.  In the case of Washington DC, it helps you see all the hotels that are close (objectively close, not hotel-marketing-close) to a subway station.  It's the work of Jeff Howard, and he's also done one for Atlanta's MARTA subway.

You can get hints of similar output from Google, very crudely, by pointing Google Maps at a city and then specifying, say, "hotels near a DC Metro station," but Google is easily confused by excessively clear requests, and to Google, "near" means car-near, not transit-near.  Someday, maybe Google will understand "hotel within 400m of a frequent transit stop," or even "hotel within 30 min frequent transit travel time from ___".  But that's clearly a way off, and Google often seems more interested in interpreting vague search requests than replying to clearly stated ones.

In any case, even a competent search engine wouldn't produce Jeff Howard's very useful feedback about hotels.  Click on a station and there's a writeup about each station area, including a map showing the hotel's exact relationship to the station, and links to the hotels themselves, including a reservation widget.  Nice work, Jeff!

 

My interview on National Public Radio

Posted on February 23, 2015 in Houston, Journalism, Press

Last week I was a guest on Here & Now, a nationally syndicated radio program produced by WBUR in Boston, talking with the show's Jeremy Hobson about the recently approved Houston METRO Transit System Reimagining, and how its lessons apply to other American cities.  The segment aired today, and is a nice summary of the project, quickly covering much of the material discussed here, here and here. Take a listen via the embed above, or head over to the Here & Now site to check it out.

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