Houston Strategies

Transit in crisis, great train robberies, NIMBYs are killing America, why 15-min cities are flawed, and more

 Just clearing out some backlogged misc items this week:

• WSJ: Public Transit Goes Off the Rails With Fewer Riders, Dwindling Cash, Rising Crime - When riders stop taking subways and buses, it’s harder to keep up service. ‘It’s becoming a vicious cycle.’
• Matthew Yglesias: American transit agencies should prioritize ridership over other goals - It's the only way to get costs under control. Hear, hear METRO! This might sound like "stating the obvious" to the lay reader, but transit agencies get pulled into all sorts of alternative goals from prestige rail and BRT projects to geographic coverage, regardless of whether or not ridership justifies the cost. Hat tip to the anonymous commenter that sent me this.
• Kotkin: The Great Train Robbery:

"Much of the national media, in chorus with urban political and economic leaders, have been pushing these train-focused approaches since the days of Jimmy Carter. The stated aim is usually to move Americans away from their supposedly evil and pernicious love of the private automobile. Americans drive not because they irrationally love cars—although some do—but because it is simply by far the best way to get around. 

We know this because for the most part, train-heavy investments have reaped little in terms of riders and virtually no reduction in auto usage. Indeed, even before the pandemic, transit ridership, despite the creation of new lines, was sagging. Since then transit has continued and accelerated its decline. By the end of 2022, the transit market share had fallen 50%. Today, despite the end of the pandemic, that number has barely moved at all. It is into this fading market share that the current administration and much of the political class now wants to throw its money."

• Speaking of rail follies, I really wanted the private Brightline train from Vegas to outside LA to work, but this piece makes a devastating economic case. Bottom line: travelers will be able to fly from SoCal airports closer to where they live (than the Victorville end-station) for the same price or cheaper, or if they drive it will only take a half-hour longer than the train while saving the train ticket and taxis/Ubers getting around Vegas. Who's going to ride it given those alternatives?
• Fortune: It’s bigger than the housing crisis: An influential economist just blamed NIMBYs for American decline, and Elon Musk agrees.

“The country can no longer afford this form of “shadow subsidy,” Smith argues. If America continues on this path, standing by the “build-nothing” mindset, then the middle class will slip into “genteel poverty” and America will lose its leading position in the global economy, he claimed indirectly, albeit poetically: “Someone else will build the future on the bones of our civilization.”  

He urged America to slash the “thicket of red tape” around development, and it seems the world’s richest man agrees.”

• A takedown of the 15-minute city concept:

"If 15-minute cities were so great, we would still be living in them. But as soon as people got cars, they moved out of them and used their new-found mobility to get better housing, better jobs, and a wider variety of low-cost consumer goods.

Every city in America is a 15-minute city if you take automobiles into account. Thanks to automobiles, the typical U.S. urban resident lives within 15 minutes of more than 100,000 jobs, several different supermarkets that compete hard for their business, one or two shopping malls, parks and other recreation facilities, a variety of health care facilities, friends and relatives, and many other potential destinations and activities. Even the densest cities in the world can’t provide that kind of variety and opportunity within 15 minutes on foot."

Labels: commuter rail, high-speed rail, land-use regulation, Metro, mobility strategies, perspectives, rail, transit

posted by Tory Gattis @ 5:12 PM