Matthew Yglesias » The Transit Implications

Nov 5th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

The Transit Implications

The Overhead Wire rounds up the results of a bunch of transit referenda — mostly positive. Meanwhile, the election outcome itself is, of course, a big win for transit and rail. Obama is much friendly to both than is George W. Bush or John McCain, the House Democratic incumbents who went down to defeat represented rural areas and wouldn’t be good allies on transit issues, whereas new Reps. like Gerry Connolly could be great leaders on transportation and planning topics.

Comments
59

59 Responses to “The Transit Implications”

Bahrad Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
And I’m sure you just forgot, but Amtrak Joe will have just a bit of influence as well…
Mixner Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Meanwhile, the election outcome itself is, of course, a big win for transit and rail. Obama is much friendly to both than is George W. Bush or John McCain

Right. Transit will go from being a tiny component of our national transportation system to slightly less tiny component.

Or maybe not even that. If Obama manages to get the tens of billions of dollars a year in new funding for roads and highways, and new subsidies for car buyers, that he has proposed, he may end up making transit’s share even smaller.
danthelawyer Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I’ve also hear a rumor that Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), longtime bicycling advocate, is being considered for a cabinet post.

Remember, “transit” includes the two-wheeled kind (like how MY gets to work most days, yes?)
jrc Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I’m very pleased that it appears Prop. 1A passed in CA. I was a little worried following the credit crunch and the CA budget issues, but CA High Speed Rail managed to clear an important hurdle.
DMonteith Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Shorter Mixner:

Voltaire was a fool for failing to appreciate the wisdom of Pangloss.
James Gary Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Voltaire was a fool for failing to appreciate the wisdom of Pangloss.

I’m pretty sure that should read, “Candide was a fool for failing to appreciate the wisdom of Pangloss.” If so, nicely put.
Mixner Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Shorter DMonteith:

I don’t have an actual response, but I’ll try to create the impression that I do with a bit of precious obscurantism.
DMonteith Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Shorter Mixner:

Vol-who?
too many steves Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Californians who voted for 1A are not allowed to complain about the budget deficit ever again. Ten billion dollars in bonds (which means it will cost about $20b to repay), and that will pay for half of the system. Maybe. God, it hurts to agree with Mixner, but this proposition sucks.
Mixner Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Maybe. God, it hurts to agree with Mixner, but this proposition sucks.

Don’t worry. The thing will never actually get built. But they’ll probably waste a few billion trying to get it off the ground before it dies completely.
Brah Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Very nice map of the Sonoma/Marin rail line here:

http://www.smarttrain2008.org/explore/map

Keep up the good train coverage!

San Diego got left out this election. Here is the transit situation here. We have a US metro population of 3.2 million, or 5 million including Tijuana.

Bus service is extensive, but overpriced and some very old vehicles

3 modern trolley lines that have good downtown coverage, extend south the Mexican border pedestrian crossing, and east into the suburbs.

Commuter rail service to Orange County and northern San Diego on the Amtrak right of way.

3.5 hours to LA on Amtrak (vs 1.5 to 5 hours driving depending on traffic). About 15 trips daily, $30 each way.

16 hours from SD to SF via Amtrak (vs 90 minutes flying).

A 2.5 hour LA/SF train would therefore cut the SD/SF train commute from 16 hours to 6 hours. This is somewhat competitive to flying even without an upgrade to SD-LA routes.
Adam Villani Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I like how that Sonoma/Marin line hooks up with the ferry to San Francisco. That would be a cool commute.

I’m hyped about Measure R passing in L.A. with 67% of the vote. So much for people in SoCal not being interested in transit.
Mixner Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
I’m hyped about Measure R passing in L.A. with 67% of the vote. So much for people in SoCal not being interested in transit.

Some of them like it in the abstract. Few of them actually use it very much. Mostly the poor ones, who can’t afford a car.
James Robertson Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Meanwhile, people will continue to leave urban areas in large numbers – largely due to things like onerous tax rates. The urban revival Matt pines for won’t be taking place when living 30-50 miles away means paying a ton less in taxes.

And when the bills start coming due for these huge transit systems, it will only get worse. Transit simply isn’t practical unless you have hub and spoke living/working conditions. Regardless of what you think we should have, we don’t have that. And with the tax and regulatory system most urban districts have, the liklihood of new businesses starting or staying in those urban districts is slim.

But hey – keep dreaming. I’m sure Obama will wave a wand, or something.
Tyro Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Meanwhile, people will continue to leave urban areas in large numbers – largely due to things like onerous tax rates.

The funny thing is that Jimmy’s link goes to a story about that rapidly shrinking urban area known as “New York City.”
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 6:49 am
NYC has had a flat population since 1960 – a net rise of about 400,000 since then, given the influx of immigrants, tells you that. In that time, business (including the financial sector) has been fleeing the city.

And NY probably has the best transit system in the US. Take the new train system that California has decided to build. It’ll take years to get it built, given all the NIMBY and environmental suits that will be brought (mostly by political allies of the left, for full irony). The distance between San Francisco and LA is about 350 miles, or almost double the distance between where I live (not far from BWI rail station) and NYC. The Acela takes 2:25 on that route.

Even if the new train is marginally faster, it will have stops (limiting the amount of time it can hit 200 mph) in order to attract more commuters. So it will take 5 hours at least for that trip, possibly 6. The Acela varies between $148 and $215, depending on when you want to go (one way) – so it’s $300-$430 round trip.

That limits the potential audience a lot. Especially when you take a quick look at air travel and notice that it’s a 90 minute flight (padding for security and getting to the airport still makes it a 3 hour window) at a cost of $150 round trip.

Now lets look at car travel, in a gas hogging SUV that gets 15 mpg. 47 gallons of gas round trip, at a cost of, say, $3 a gallon: $141 round trip. Put a passenger in the car, and it gets cheap. Drive a car that gets reasonable mileage, and it gets very cheap. MapQuest tells me that this trip is on the order of 6 hours – which means that the train is no faster (or only irrelevantly so) at a dramatically higher cost.

Who is the target audience for this train again?
DTM Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Actually, the majority of the population growth in the United States is happening in larger urban areas (specifically, about two-thirds of the population growth of the United States between 1990 and 2000 happened in the top 69 urban areas). As a result, the weighted population density of the United States is increasing.

By the way, this is particularly true among the fast-growing cities in the West. See here for a comparison of urban area densities between 1990 and 2000 Censuses, noting the rapid density increases in the urban areas of cities like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Denver, San Jose, Riverside, San Antonio, and Las Vegas:

http://www.demographia.com/db-ua2000compare.htm

Also see here for a list of urban areas ranked by weighted density (a more sophisticated and relevant measure when it comes to the likely demand trends for public transit):

http://austinzoning.typepad.com/austincontrarian/2008/03/weighted-densit.html
DTM Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Here is the ridership study for the California high speed rail project:

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20080128155922_R8a_Ridership.pdf

See also here for a summary of the methodology and results:

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/faqs/ridership.htm
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 8:03 am
DTM – Urban areas != cities. I live in what’s classified as the Baltimore/Washington metro area, but I’m not an urban dweller. There are no mass transit solutions that would help my neighbors (I work out of a home office, so it’s a non-issue for me personally).

Why would my neighbors not be helped? Well, they mostly work in northern Virginia. And not in one concentrated part either; all along the beltway. There’s no easy way for people here to carpool, much less take a train or a bus.

Heck, I used to work regularly in Arlington, VA, right near the Courthouse metro station. It took me an additional hour to take transit each way compared to driving, and it was more expensive on a weekly basis.

As I’ve said before, transit works great if you have a hub and spoke system. We don’t have that in most of the US.

As to that CA study – try simply answering the points I made in my post. Business travelers will mostly take the plane, because it’ll stay cheaper and faster. Non-business travelers will drive, because the train will be way, way too expensive for the average traveler who’s not on an expense account. I’m not sure what target audience that leaves.
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Oh, and here’s another puzzler for the rail fans. Democrats love rail in the abstract, but they never seem to ponder that electrified rail requires electricity. The guy we just elected wants to destroy the coal industry (49% of US electricity), opposes nuclear power, and seems to dwell in a fantasy realm where all power can be generated from wind and solar.

If you really want these kinds of expensive boondoggles, you’re going to have to start living in the real world of power generation.
Tyro Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Business travelers will mostly take the plane, because it’ll stay cheaper and faster.

Business travelers are more likely to make their arrangements on short notice and have a greater need (in comparison) for direct downtown-to-downtown travel. That ends up giving rail many comparable advantages.
serial catowneer Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 8:40 am
God, who am I going to believe, Mixner and James Robertson or my lying eyes?

I would love to live on West 10th again, as I did in 1969. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of housing there now for people making $100 a month. Adjust for inflation, call it a cool $1000 per month, and I’ll bet you couldn’t rent enough space for a folding chair. New Yorkers seem to be ignoring Robertson’s predictions of their imminent demise.

And Mixner, who even cares what you think about transit’s share in national transportation. You would make a great chef, publishing books like Serve A Roast Turkey Made Of Tuna- if you knew how to cook.

I’m thinking that transit was just as much good news for the election as the election is good news for transit. Just recently we saw the future, and a lot of us decided it would be more fun if we didn’t need to own a car.

My cohort was in elementary school when the legislation for the interstates was passed. This was going to solve everything- we’d live in bucolic groves, Detroit would employ highly-paid workers and keep America’s steel mills busy, building the best cars in the world. Endless prosperity, and a lot of damn good sex, would follow.

I know, we were idiots. But hey, we were only nine years old, the price of gas was at the historical low, and bench seats were the baseline.

Well, we’ve seen how that worked out- no steel industry, Detroit in rags rattling a cup for donations, the suburbs as slums, the “freeways” vast semi-parking lots of commuters crawling at ten miles per hour towards their temp jobs, which they are damn glad to still have…yup, some ‘paradise’ that turned out to be.

Like Pacific Islanders worshiping at some wrecked WW II cargo plane, Robertson and Mixner still believe in the cargo cult of the automobile. Prosperity is just around the corner! It’s just a temporary downturn!

We’ll be lucky if that ship sails right past the island, headed for India and China- and luckier still if they look the gift horse in the mouth and reject it. We’ve still got a world to save. This is where you come when you’re through playing games.
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 8:49 am
“I would love to live on West 10th again, as I did in 1969. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of housing there now for people making $100 a month. Adjust for inflation, call it a cool $1000 per month, and I’ll bet you couldn’t rent enough space for a folding chair.”

Kind of destroys the entire point you’re trying to make. NYC isn’t being destroyed; it’s simply not growing, either. It’s undeniable that lots of business has left the city though, and anyone with eyes can see why: tax levels and regulatory stifling.

As to tyro, who says that business travelers will make plans at the last minute – I am a business traveler, and no, it doesn’t work that way. If I want to arrange a trip with less that 2 weeks lead time (for the cheaper tickets), I have to get CFO level approval. If I leave 2 weeks, I can get approval much further down the chain. The place I work is hardly unique that way.

And, if I presented two options for travel between places:

– rail, 5 hours, $500 round trip
– plane, 90 minutes (plus security time), $150 round trip

I can tell you which one will get approved. Here’s a hint: it won’t be the train.
serial catowner Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 8:57 am
James, the “points you made” in your comment about California HSR are just Fig Newtons of your imagination. The market studies, environmental impact statements, and engineering studies have been done. Then they were reviewed by experts from German, French, and Spanish HSR companies. Then hearings were held for anyone to present alternate facts. After about ten years of this the California state legislature passed the enabling acts.

According to the people from Europe who actually make money running HSR, the market will be there. The HSR is, in fact, the cheapest way to deal with the increased need for transportation in the future, and the only way to deal with that need and still meet air pollution limits. The HSR will take market share from commuter flights, and the airport association thinks that’s a good thing because building new runways for commuter flights is a money-loser all the way around.

As for the rest of your paranoid mumblings, relax- it’s not like you actually live in California.
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Europe is different because gas is way, way more expensive there (artificially), and the distances are generally shorter. The points I made were simple; rail is not a good buy compared to either air travel or car travel, and no amount of hand waving (I read the linked study – it does lots of hand waving) will make it different.

Gas prices are unlikely to rise to European levels, because any Congress or President who attempted to do that here would be a very, very short term office holder. No one in political life is really interested in political suicide. Given that, I see no way for high speed rail to be competitive with air and car.

Look at the price of Acela now. Explain to me how this new rail in CA – which has to be built from nothing – will be less expensive. It won’t be.

I like rail. I almost always take it to NYC when I go there on business, because it’s been more convenient than air (possibly different now that JFK has been rail connected to Manhattan). That doesn’t mean that I’m blind to reality, like Matt and you are.
serial catowner Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Gosh, I guess I forgot to mention that NYC in 1969 was a really spooky place. Sometimes in a cool kind of way, like getting on the 14th Street shuttle and realizing you were riding a subway car built in 1914. More often in a scary way, like, this place is a ghost town, and the ghosts don’t look very friendly.

Housing was cheap in the West Village because so many buildings were abandoned and empty. Hell’s Kitchen was scary, Harlem was scarier, Brooklyn Heights was edgy, Prospect Park, derelict. Nope, no ex-presidents living in NYC in 1969!

But James, you just keep believing. I’m sure the federal gravytrain will keep your suburb prosperous, and I’m sure the residents of New York City will keep paying more in taxes to the state and the feds than they receive in benefits. It is the way of the world.
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Actually, the Feds will keep my suburb prosperous, whether you like it or not – most of the people who live here work for the Defense Dept. or other arms of the government, since we are close to Bethesda, Northern VA, and Fort Meade.

Let me know when NYC starts seeing in-migration of corporations, will you? Over the last 30-40 years, it’s been a steady flow out.

Tax competition within the US ensured that, and tax competition globally has taken that trend national. It’s why a manufacturer like Toyota will build a plant in Tennessee or Alabama, but not in Michigan. It’s why there’s so work being taken to places like India and China.

You can pretend that tax competition doesn’t exist, but it does. The migration of the textile industry from the European mainland to the UK to New England to the US south, and finally to Asia is just one easy to follow chain that demonstrates it.
serial catowner Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Kind of awe-inspiring to realize that James Robertson appears to be actually employed. Although I guess that might explain a few *anomalies* we’ve seen recently in big firms.

James, the experts came from Europe to study the facts and figures for the California proposal. They weren’t asked whether HSR worked in Europe, they were asked to apply their experience to the questions about whether the facts and figures in the California proposal were actually realistic.

As for who’s blind to reality, let’s check the scoreboard- California HSR, relies on people employed by profitable HSR companies to vet their plans. James Robertson, relies on people employed by the Reason Foundation to vet the plans.

Case closed.
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:25 am
I’m not in a large firm. I rely on the simple fact that we have an existing high-ish speed rail here on the east coast, and we can look at what it costs. Rather than make wild assumption, we can base the presumed cost of the nigher speed rail on what we see in the real world. You, on the other hand, rely on “experts” who do lots of hand waving – Europe is different, both in geographic space terms, and in the comparative costs of driving. As I explained above, Euro level gas taxes are highly unlikely here, as any Congress that tried for that would find themselves in the minority within 2 years.

I’ll take the real world comparison any time
DTM Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:25 am
James Robertson,

First, Census-defined urban areas aren’t the same as metropolitan areas. Rather, they are only the relatively dense part of metropolitan areas. To give a little example of the difference, consider Phoenix. The entire Phoenix Metropolitan Area covers an area of 16,573 square miles. The Phoenix Urban Area covers only 799 square miles. However, according to the 2000 Census, 2,907,049 people out of the total of 3,251,876 in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area lived in the Phoenix Urban Area. Note this means about 89% of the people in the Metropolitan Area lived in just 4.8% of its territory.

Second, I didn’t claim that public transit could serve every transportation need in every urban area, let alone every metropolitan area. So, anecdotes about you or your neighbors not being good candidates for public transit service are not particularly relevant. Rather, my point is just that with the United States population growth being concentrated in urban areas, and with urban areas as a result increasing in weighted density, it is likely the demand for public transit is increasing as well. Again, though, this is purely in relative terms, so it doesn’t imply that in the near future everyone posting here and everyone they know is going to be taking public transit.

Third, I don’t think it makes sense for you and I to try to reduplicate a ridership study in this conversation. Here is a brief overview of the methodology in question:

“Cambridge Systematics (CS) prepared a detailed (4,667-zone) model of California’s current and future population, employment, household characteristics, highway network, air and rail services, and transit systems following current best practices and methodology. CS conducted over 3,170 state-of-the-art surveys with California travelers about recent trips and their valuations of travel time, cost, and reliability and combined that information with data from 3,700 similar recent surveys from Caltrans, MTC, and the Southern California and Sacramento Association of Governments to help develop specific California-based forecasts of diversion of trips from air, auto, or other rail service to high-speed trains. As is standard, the model predicts future trip making from forecasts of population and employment, and then looks at each future trip by household. The model compares the travel time for each mode (both in the vehicle, and getting to, from, into, and out of stations/airports), the time between departures, the cost of that trip, the number of cars available, the household’s income, how many people are traveling together, the reason for the trip, and a number of other statistically significant indicators, and from this predicts how many trips will be taken on each mode. The accuracy of the model was first checked and improved by using it to forecast current travel in the state, obviously without high-speed trains, just air, auto, and regular trains. The final model was then used to forecast future travel without high-speed trains, and then with high-speed trains, in each case using the expected future trip times, costs and other conditions of travel. A peer review panel of local, national, and international travel model and high-speed train experts reviewed and commented on the modeling assumptions, methodologies, and results during each stage of model development.”

Do you really think you and I can do better? Because I don’t.
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:28 am
DTM – and yet, you still haven’t looked at what actual costs to take this new rail system will look like. Yes, I can do better, because I can compare this train system with actual train systems that exist in the US now. The study makes predictions based on hypothetical conditions; I made the wild assumption of looking at the real world as it exists.

So yeah, I not only can do better; I did.
DTM Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:49 am
James Robertson,

With all due respect, that strikes me as delusional–you really think your ridership analysis is methodologically superior? Note this, for example:

“The model compares the travel time for each mode (both in the vehicle, and getting to, from, into, and out of stations/airports), the time between departures, the cost of that trip, the number of cars available, the household’s income, how many people are traveling together, the reason for the trip, and a number of other statistically significant indicators, and from this predicts how many trips will be taken on each mode.”

So, it is true that I have not personally taken the expected costs of the trips and incorporated that into a ridership model, because I don’t have anything like the knowledge or expertise to do that. But of course the ridership study did exactly that, as one would expect.

Generally, the bottomline is that if you sincerely think that your anecdotal observations and back-of-the-envelope calculations are actually methodologically superior to these sorts of comprehensive ridership studies, than I honestly don’t believe we have anything to talk about. In other words, if you insist on treating these issues in your way, it really just becomes a matter of people like me outvoting people like you. Which is sad, but I don’t see an alternative.
jack lecou Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:52 am
DTM – and yet, you still haven’t looked at what actual costs to take this new rail system will look like. Yes, I can do better, because I can compare this train system with actual train systems that exist in the US now. The study makes predictions based on hypothetical conditions; I made the wild assumption of looking at the real world as it exists.

So yeah, I not only can do better; I did.

Yeah! Because Amtrak’s Choo Choos are exaaactly like HSR in Europe and Asia! A direct comparison is obviously so much more valid than actually modeling out the performance of a modern HSR system. Those idiots in CA should have thought of that!

You tell ‘em, James.
James Robertson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
HSR in California will not be built for less money than Amtrak spent to get the Acela, so expecting it to cost less is an odd way to look at it.

If it does cost less for riders, it will be due to massive subsidies – which means it will still cost a ton, but have that cost masked.

Sure, you can argue that roads are subsidized too, or airports. The difference is, both already exist. HSR in CA doesn’t, and it will be very expensive. And less useful than air travel given the distances involved. And without absurd subsidies, more expensive than driving.
jack lecou Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Sure, you can argue that roads are subsidized too, or airports. The difference is, both already exist. HSR in CA doesn’t, and it will be very expensive. And less useful than air travel given the distances involved. And without absurd subsidies, more expensive than driving.

Except, as you’d know if you’d been paying attention, sufficient roads and runways DO NOT already exist. Travel needs in the southern half of CA are growing rapidly, and the area’s copious freeways and airports are already at capacity.

Building more roads or runways would be far more costly at this point than adding some rail capacity to the mix.
DTM Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 10:23 am
jack lecou,

Indeed. This is more from the summary of the studies:

“To serve the same number of travelers as the high-speed train system, California would have to build nearly 3,000 lane-miles of freeway plus five airport runways and 90 departure gates by 2020 – costing more than twice the high-speed train system and having much greater environmental impacts. What’s more, the proposed high-speed train system will provide lower passenger costs than for travel by automobile or air for the same city-to-city markets.”

In general, one of the greatest sources of benefit to HSR is reducing congestion on alternative modes such as cars and airplanes. That is also one of the reasons it makes sense to subsidize HSR–the beneficiaries include not just the riders, but the users of alternative modes who experience less congestion as a result.
serial catowner Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Well, you have to admire the footwork James displays- he’s taken the old double-shuffle to the level of a Highlands sword-dance.

He starts by claiming that conditions in Europe are different, which of course they are, but the original reference was to experts from Europe examining conditions in California.

Then we have a truly dazzling do-si-do where he compares his experiences on a one-hundred year-old mainline through built-up industrial areas of the NE with his imagined experience on a brand new rail line using the latest technology running through a desert. His imagined experience is not good, because he doesn’t seem to realize the route was chosen to allow the train to run for long stretches without stopping.

Next comes the ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’, where he assures us that the freeways and airports to handle the future traffic have already been built but the train will require massive subsidies.

James, the reason the California DOT signed off on this project is because it’s the cheapest way to build the future capacity that they realize will be needed.

Dazzling footwork, to be sure, but, like the sword-dance, it always ends up in the same place.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 11:19 am
But I thought we needed the improved transit to ship the wingnuts to the re-education camps?
DTM Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 11:26 am
By the way, roping in some ideas floating around in other threads:

I really think this is just going to end up being a victory of the empiricists over the culture-warriors. The methodology behind these studies has gotten better, and the bottomline is that for some of these projects the outcome isn’t particularly close, a result being driven in part by the saturation of investment in other modes of travel. So, all that has really changed is that at the federal level, the culture-warriors won’t be in a position to trump the empiricists, meaning sensible projects will now get appropriate levels of federal funding.
Adam Villani Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Robertson’s “better” methodology is like evaluating the Interstate Highway system by comparing it with a century-old system of gravel farm roads.
Adam Villani Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Sorry, my phrasing was bad there. Not comparing the Interstate system to the gravel farm roads, but evaluating the Interstates by looking at a network of gravel farm roads and figuring that crossing the country on an Interstate would be roughly equivalent to doing the same on the gravel farm roads.
Mixner Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
DTM

Actually, the majority of the population growth in the United States is happening in larger urban areas (specifically, about two-thirds of the population growth of the United States between 1990 and 2000 happened in the top 69 urban areas). As a result, the weighted population density of the United States is increasing. By the way, this is particularly true among the fast-growing cities in the West. See here for a comparison of urban area densities between 1990 and 2000 Censuses, noting the rapid density increases in the urban areas of cities like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Denver, San Jose, Riverside, San Antonio, and Las Vegas: http://www.demographia.com/db-ua2000compare.htm

You are, as always, hopelessly confused. You cannot use data on urban area density to support a claim about weighted density. They’re not the same thing. They’re not even similar.

The long-term national trend has been towards more sprawl and lower density for decade after decade. The same trend has been occurring in Europe. Old, dense cities have been hollowing out for a century. People and jobs are abandoning them for the suburbs. New population centers are low-density and car-oriented.

Here is the ridership study for the California high speed rail project:

Here is the rebuttal of that ludicrous “study”:
http://www.reason.org/ps370.pdf
DTM Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Mixner,

Again, at this point the only thing for us empiricists to do with culture warriors such as yourself is outvote you. Which we are doing.
Mixner Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Again, at this point the only thing for us empiricists to do with culture warriors such as yourself is outvote you. Which we are doing.

To the extent they have any effect at all, your faith-based votes are pissing in the wind, DTM. For every new mile of light rail, there’s ten new miles of road. For every additional mile Americans travel by rail, they travel ten additional miles by road.
DTM Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Mixner,

Fine by me!
Mixner Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Great. More and more transportation in total, with rail comprising a tiny and shrinking share. Glad you’re on board.
jack lecou Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
DTM-

I think you’re right, but hopefully someday we’ll have the technology to do something about the cultural warriors’ insufferable pissiness too…
Jer Says:
November 7th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Mixner: For every additional mile Americans travel by rail, they travel ten additional miles by road….More and more transportation in total, with rail comprising a tiny and shrinking share.

I guess I should stop being surprised at your stunning lack of mathematical skills.
sexshop Says:
November 7th, 2008 at 7:48 am
hope that you keep reporting and following up on this issue. I signed the petition because I can’t think of anything that is more important to the long-term health of our country, our environment, and our economy than a smart transportation policy, and especially
Penis Enlargement Says:
November 15th, 2008 at 5:37 am
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