DHE on McRail
Barack Obama is about as big a rail and transit proponent as we’ve seen in presidential politics for decades. How about John McCain? Well, I was interesting to read these quotes from Doug Holtz-Eakin. Here’s what he said about building the Silver Line to Dulles Airport:
The most important thing that Sen. McCain is going to address, as president, is using transportation dollars more wisely. He has also made a clear commitment for having options on the table for rail.
On the Metro funding bill:
Sen. McCain has been busy campaigning and has missed a lot of votes. I don’t think anything special should be read into that one. The Senator recognizes the importance of the transportation sector to both our economy and our lifestyles and what we need going forward is some performance and accountability in our taxpayer dollars that go into infrastructure.
And on infrastructure in general:
There will be more infrastructure investments going forward — it is an imperative — but they have to be done wisely, and that is the top priority.
I suppose this is a reminder of Doug Holtz-Eakin, the widely respected conservative economist. Unfortunately, I don’t think these relatively mild statements really reflect McCain’s record or his positions very well. McCain has never been an advocate for public transit or rail at the federal level, and neither his economic plan nor his climate change plan say anything about expanded rail service. Indeed, he’s been a longtime opponent of Amtrak funding seeing it as a form of government waste. And of course his proposed across-the-board spending freeze would make it impossible to invest in new infrastructure of any kind.
UPDATE: Also, while Holtz-Eakin is right to say that McCain’s skipped a lot of votes, he actually showed up to vote against WMATA funding contrary to what DHE says.
37 Responses to “DHE on McRail”
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October 22nd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Sorry, but Sarah told Congress no thanks on that train to nowhere.
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
how can Holtz-Eakin still be “widely respected” after claiming, seriously, that John McCain had invented the Blackberry? that should be enough to put any economist into permanent ‘running joke’ status…
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
McCain made some rumblings vaguely supporting Fritz Holling’s National Defense Rail Act back in the day. That may be the way to play compromise with a McCain administration; offer up infrastructure projects tarted up in security language.
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“Wisely,” huh? Wow, that’s really informative. “Performance and accountability” really nails down the specifics too. Why exactly does anyone bother treating these utterly empty statements as if they had any meaning at all?
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
McCain agrees with Murtha in Moon, PA
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Barack Obama is about as big a rail and transit proponent as we’ve seen in presidential politics for decades.
Which is to say, Obama is a very, very small proponent of rail and transit. He’s a big proponent of new car technology, though. He wants to throw tens of billions of federal dollars at it.
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I once saw Yglesias in the Acela cafe car but thought it would be weird to say anything to him. I just kind of looked at him goofily.
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
We really don’t need more rail. We need more mass transit.
If we had express bus lanes then we could move a lot more people than Amtrak ever could.
I completely agree that spending a fortune to improve the Boston to Washington corridor would be good for everyone involved.
However, here in Houston, we don’t need a rail link to New Orleans or Dallas. We don’t even need to expand our light rail.
We need to improve bus service so that more people get out of their cars and use the bus. It would free up the road space so traffic could move faster.
I used to commute to midtown by bus. I used to commute to midtown by NJ Transit. I used to take Amtrak to Baltimore. I used to take Amtrak and go from Chicago to San Francisco and back to New York or Boston. I’ve lived in London and Tokyo.
In the US, no matter what we do, most mass transit will take place within 20 miles of Ground Zero. Subways and trains make some sense in New York and a few other places. Buses make sense virtually everywhere else.
We need more frequent bus service and we need to make the buses move faster and we need to improve the image of the bus. If we spend billions on rail then we will neverr improve the transit that is needed for the rest of us.
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:15 pm
We need to improve bus service so that more people get out of their cars and use the bus.
How do you propose to do that? The average load factor of transit buses is under 20%. On average, 8 out of 10 seats on transit buses are empty. If you add more routes, or increase the frequency of service on existing ones, that number is likely to go down, not up.
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Of course it will lower the load factor, Mixner, because as we all know, the number of bus riders in an area is a constant, and never changes in response to things like higher service frequency making the bus a more convenient amenity.
You really are a nutcase, Mixner.
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
neil wilson:
The only way transit will break through in Sunbelt cities is with light rail or, at minimum, express buses with serious infrastructural improvements. But not for the usual reasons.
Conventional buses are the object of derision amongst middle class people all over the country because of their perceived low ethnic/class status.
In places like NYC, SF and Chicago, a tipping point has been reached where it’s socially acceptable to ride the bus (although not as much as light rail or subway).
Houston, Phoenix, whatever, are nowhere near that tipping point and won’t get there until people of high social status get hooked on light rail.
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
On average, 8 out of 10 seats on transit buses are empty.
I need to hang out with more people whose salaries are over $1 million; that way, on average I will be a millionaire too.
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Now we just need to wait for guys like Neil Wilson to get up to speed.
The only thing that ever made buses economically viable was cheap oil. Well, guess what.
As for where we get the “billions” to spend on rail, well, there’s $550 billion in the war budget and about $50 billion per annum “fighting drugs”. So I guess we might start by not spending a trillion dollars on a war that never needed to happen. And don’t whine to me about that trillion already being spent- believe it, there’s another unnecessary war coming soon to a country near you if we don’t stop it.
The McCain campaign is being swept away like a smashed lifeboat in the wave of history, and DHE is just treading water, hoping nobody will remember that the only real maverick left in McCain is the part that opposes the veto-proof majority supporting Amtrak.
The scary part is that a stolen election might put this smashed crew in office, facing a nation that overwhelmingly opposes their wacko agenda. I guess then McCain would have to call on Mixner, who recently proclaimed himself, not just the world expert on transit, but also the world’s greatest Plumber. It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Of course it will lower the load factor, Mixner, because as we all know, the number of bus riders in an area is a constant, and never changes in response to things like higher service frequency making the bus a more convenient amenity.
Higher service frequency means more transit capacity per unit of time. How do you propose to create enough demand to match the increase in seats? If your buses are already running mostly empty, running even more of them is likely to make each bus emptier still.
You really are a nutcase, Mixner.
You belong in a mental institution, Omri
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Houston, Phoenix, whatever, are nowhere near that tipping point and won’t get there until people of high social status get hooked on light rail.
That means never, then. At $20-60 million per mile, it doesn’t seem terribly likely that Houston and Phoenix will be replacing more than a tiny fraction of their hundreds of miles of bus routes with light rail.
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:24 pm
of course McCain is an advocate of spending more on ‘transportation.’ we have always spent many bucks on transportation: highways and bridges especially. huge dollars. what’s needed is a clear statement from him that he supports greater assistance to other-than-commuter-cars-and-delivery-truck-”transportation” that is, mass transit.
and yes, it will take all forms: buses for some routes, light rail other places, subways and Amtrak other places or for other customers, even ferries in some places. it needs tailoring, just like some roads have two lanes, some four, some have traffic lights, some not, some charge tolls—blah blah. there is no one size to fit all.
the 80% figure is because most mass transit systems are operated as a public service, so that even late nights and sparsely populated areas are served. at peak times, most cities report crowding on most lines.
it is admitedly an issue for capital planning, for operational efficiencies, and for service policy, where new dollars would or should be spent. but the 80pct figure should not be read as meaning that the communities with crowding and so on should not get more or better service.
to put it in perspective: many basic public services are provided for peak, not average use. this is one of the reasons governement operations often look ‘less productive’ or less efficient than profitable businesses. That is, we pay police officers to be on patrol, and we actually HOPE they have very little to do. and studies of police work show that the greatest personnel stressor is, in fact, boredom. the same for fire–we gladly pay these workers, and actively hope they never get very busy at all. but when they are really needed, they are really, rilly, needed. but oh, so inefficient! who cares?
it is not a profit-center value system that should be applied. it is a public policy choice. same for buses and trains, light rail, water taxies, and similar.
we, and the planet, cannot afford to fund mass-transit just for ‘average’ use. we need to serve the peak demand to have any hope of drawing rush hour commuters out of their cars.
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:34 pm
the 80% figure is because most mass transit systems are operated as a public service, so that even late nights and sparsely populated areas are served.
Right. That’s why transit is so inefficient and requires such vast subsidies. Most of the fuel is burned hauling around empty seats.
at peak times, most cities report crowding on most lines.
This seems highly unlikely.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
see http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/10/23/mass_transit_america/ for just one survey of the nation’s mass transit situation which says that all across the country transit systems are facing capacity problems, and goes into some detail on just how strained the services are to meet current demand.
most common ideas on transit are terribly outmoded and do not consider, for example, that ROADS and the car and truck are by far the most heavily subsidized mode of transportation in america. per user, or per mile, or passenger mile (the really valid measure in this case), transit is actually under-subsidized compared to what we spend on motor vehicle transit. there is a Highway Trust Fund, for one example, and a National Interstate Highway System, for another, and nothing comparable to either for mass transit.
and if we would only update our analytic tools for the 21st century, and counted in the formulae the carbon cost, the climate impact, per passenger mile, the figures become almost unbelievably out of whack–that is, the cost per passenger mile on transit is greatly lower, the subsidy is comparatively meager, and the carbon balance is WAY over on the side of transit, whether considered per passenger, per $ of subsidy, per $ of customer expense, or on any other reasonable unit.
meanwhile, we have been investing almost nothing in new forms of mass transit, such as maglev trains (which Senator Moynihan was asking us to R and D 15 years ago), while Europe is deploying them. We’ve built nothing like the Chunnel. We haven’t even matched Japan’s Bullet Train speeds that they achieved 25 years ago!
c’mon, we can do better. McCain addresses none of this. THIS is the kind of infrastructure investment, and very green, too, that we need to break the recession and build the economy of the future.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:39 pm
brendan,
seehttp://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/10/23/mass_transit_america/ for just one survey of the nation’s mass transit situation which says that all across the country transit systems are facing capacity problems,
Transit capacity is generally sized at the minimum needed to meet peak demand. That’s why transit vehicles are often full at rush hour during weekdays, but mostly empty at other times of the day, on the weekends and at night. So even a small increase in peak-time demand can strain capacity. That doesn’t alter the fact that the average load factor of transit vehicles is low. And it is the average that determines the overall efficiency of the system, not the peak.
most common ideas on transit are terribly outmoded and do not consider, for example, that ROADS and the car and truck are by far the most heavily subsidized mode of transportation in america. per user, or per mile, or passenger mile (the really valid measure in this case), transit is actually under-subsidized compared to what we spend on motor vehicle transit.
Government data completely contradicts your claim. Highway travel is subsidized at about $5 per thousand passenger-miles. Transit is subsidized at about $400 per thousand passenger-miles.
meanwhile, we have been investing almost nothing in new forms of mass transit, such as maglev trains (which Senator Moynihan was asking us to R and D 15 years ago), while Europe is deploying them.
I’m not aware of a single operational maglev train system anywhere in Europe. If there are any at all, they are only small systems that provide a negligible contribution to the total transportation system.
The basic trend in Europe is the same as in the U.S.: Public transportation is losing market share to private cars. Cars overwhelmingly dominate the ground transportation systems on both continents. I’ve been over this before.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Mixner as usually is consistent like a woodchuck: individually driven cars are good, everything else, bad.
Never mind that
a) we need to support a mix of needs and lifestyles, including those who cannot, or should not, drive
b) adding to the peak capacity of road system is very, very expensive, and public transit can be a cheaper alternative (meaning, it can be cheaper to move 10% of the traffic to public transit and other alternatives that to expand the capacity of a metropolitan road system by 10%).
c) miles of public transit users are quite different than miles of car users. People rarely take buses just “for the heck of it”,
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:03 am
piotr,
a) we need to support a mix of needs and lifestyles, including those who cannot, or should not, drive
We do support a mix of needs and lifestyles.
b) adding to the peak capacity of road system is very, very expensive, and public transit can be a cheaper alternative (meaning, it can be cheaper to move 10% of the traffic to public transit and other alternatives that to expand the capacity of a metropolitan road system by 10%).
It can be, yes. Of course, minimizing monetary cost is not the only thing people value. They also value things like time, comfort, convenience and privacy. That’s why they’ll spend $500 a month to run a car when they could buy a monthly transit pass for $50 instead. So even in cases where transit would be cheaper, that doesn’t mean it would be a realistic alternative to expanding road capacity. There are of course other ways of addressing road congestion too: carpooling, telecommuting, staggered work hours, decentralization, etc. They may also be cheaper or more feasible than adding transit.
c) miles of public transit users are quite different than miles of car users. People rarely take buses just “for the heck of it”,
Incomprehensible.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:38 am
The Dulles access road is about as empty a highway as you’ll find in the eastern time zone. The idea that in addition to bus service to Dulles we need rail is insane. You could get much more frequent transport to Dulles if just a few more buses were added to the 5a route.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:52 am
Actually, Ixnermay has a point here, although he doesn’t really see it or know which way it cuts.
Considering the average use of the roads, we don’t need to build any new ones for decades into the future. For 20 hours of each day traffic flows smoothly, and for at least six hours of each day the roads are almost deserted.
All that we really need to do is to make sure that drivers change their schedules to avoid congestion.
Naturally, this is very hard to do, because the externalized costs of this kind of change are felt very directly. Taking deliveries after midnight means store owners need employees on the clock at a time when there are no customers. Everyone has their own sad story about why starting work at 0300 or 1000 or 1900 will wrench their schedule out of synch.
The externalized costs of building roads, however, are rarely considered or publicized. Start with the lost tax revenues of having a quarter of the land in a city be roads- it’s probably been a while since you saw that figure in your daily paper.
In Puget Sound, though, where I-5 goes through Seattle, the externalized costs have become too great to bear. There simply isn’t enough land to ignore them. So people in Seattle, like people in Houston, Denver, and Salt Lake City, are building rail transit.
Too bad the people of Seattle didn’t realize that those traffic jams are imaginary- they could have saved a bunch of money and kept suburbanizing until the cows had no home. Because, as Ixnermay has so patiently explained to us so many times, we will always build more roads to drive more cars. Like the generals, he’s totally prepared to fight the last war.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:31 am
dialog to mixner:
Once you linked to an article about experiences and preferences of commuters in DC area. One thing was striking: because of experience of traffic jams, very large proportion of drivers was eager to have a better transit system that would take OTHER drivers off the road.
So we are in the situation in which a majority is eager to fund something for the minority. A minority prefers to sit and read or think about something without distractions rather then be stuck in the traffic, even though if it uses more time overall. I would add that allowing alternative options for people who are bad drivers (inebriated, poor eyesight, attention definiency, whatever) benefits the remaining drivers even when the traffic is sparse. Moreover, “majority members” can join the minority part of the time, e.g. when the personal car is being repaired, or when they consume alcohol.
So, while most people find driving their own car most convenient, big proportion is in other situation part of the time, and a considerable minority, most of the time. Hence the question of the optimum mix.
From that point of view, 400 dollar subsidy per mile of public transit use is not horrible, it is merely the private cost of driving, so as a bribe to take other people off the road, still in the reasonable range (e.g if you want to take 20% people off the road, your cost increases from 40c/mile to 48c/mile). Still, it is a sufficiently large number that one should investigate ways of making it smaller.
From that point of view, when the car uses increases in places where the majority of trips are npn-car provides no argument for not increasing the transit use in places where it is very small.
About the miles of private driving versus miles of transit users. Basically, various trips that we can make have different “utility per mile”, and transit takers usually take only the trips with the highest utility. E.g. they do not visit several supermarkets to make their shopping just because you make some marginal optimization in price and quality, or go to a restaurant far away that is a little better, or just take a ride to relax. Well, with monthly pass you could, but it is not all that popular.
—————
Thinking about it, if you want to take some minority of the drivers off the road, another tactic would be to select some random personal characteristic and use police to make the life of the drivers with that characteristic absolutely miserable. Another method would be to force people to carpool. Say, when you are born in a year that shares the digit with the current year, you are not allowed to drive during the rush hours, barring some exceptional circumstances that would be horribly difficult to prove without the aid of a lawyer. This would spread the sacrifice rather evenly. (This scheme could be more Biblical by ordering people to take every seventh year as a sabbatical from driving.)
Be glad that the country is not ruled by Czar Piotr.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:36 am
bjk: train to Dulles is insance, the highway has spare capacity for buses.
It reminds me when I took a bus to Helsinki airport. Fins made alterations to highway ramps, so the bus was taking the ramp off, and on the ramp, very close to the intersected street, there was a bus stop. As a result, these stops were easily accesible from the streets, and were slowing down the bus trip only very little.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
From that point of view, 400 dollar subsidy per mile of public transit use is not horrible, it is merely the private cost of driving, so as a bribe to take other people off the road, still in the reasonable range (e.g if you want to take 20% people off the road, your cost increases from 40c/mile to 48c/mile). Still, it is a sufficiently large number that one should investigate ways of making it smaller.
Huh? The transit subsidy is not “the private cost of driving.” The subsidy is simply an amount of money that has been determined by the political process and the market.
The issue is whether the subsidy is justified. If you think it is, present your argument in support of that claim. Not just a handwave. A clear, evidence-based, quantitative argument to justify spending $400 of public money per thousand passenger-miles of transportation benefit for transit, but only $5 per thousand p-m for highways.
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