Rich and Strange Aeons

Rounding out my series on microtransit and demand-responsive transit (DRT):

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I did a bunch of reading on this yesterday, I think sparked by a NUMTOTS post on yet another microtransit idea. Figured I’d share.

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So, there's induced demand, the observation since the 1930s that widening a congested road to fix congestion never works. It does do something: it increases bandwidth, allowing more drivers to crawl through congestion. But it doesn't increase speed. Because when demand is high, congestion is the only 'price' that discourages drivers from using the road. Lower the price, and more of them show up until it's high again.

People who learn of this sometimes ask how transit factors in, and I've always said, pessimistically, that it's the same: expanding transit allows more people to bypass congestion -- which is good! -- but won't solve the congestion. Any drivers who take the train will be replaced by more drivers. So the only way to reduce congestion is with actual congestion charges, charging people money to use the road and charging more until you have the levels you want.

But, despite my enthusiasms, I'm an American with American experiences, and I now think I was wrong. At least some of the time. You can watch this Not Just Bikes video or read Wikipedia about the Downs-Thomson paradox or read on:

Imagine that we start with congested roads, and add a subway system that is on average *faster* door to door than driving. As the video says, most people aren't mode bigots (I am! I hate being in cars) and will do whatever is faster (or some mix of faster and cheaper). So if driving is 40 minutes and transit is 25 minutes, lots of people will take the subway. And a good subway system doesn't slow down when heavily used, so it'll keep being 25 minutes even if unpleasantly crowded. Drivers leave the road... and *don't* get replaced, until congestion comes down so much that driving takes less than 25 minutes.

That's the "paradox": "the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport." Or by other alternatives, such as bicycling in Amsterdam. If biking were faster than driving, and safe, would you drive most of the time? Probably not. Certainly the Dutch don't. The video guy has said elsewhere that Amsterdam traffic is fairly decent, and this would be why: driving is competing with good bicycling and transit systems, and there's no point to driving to the point that it takes more time than those.

So if you provide good, high-capacity, alternatives to drive, you can reduce congestion!

Now, is this practical? Downs says it's valid in

"regions in which the vast majority of peak-hour commuting is done on rapid transit systems with separate rights of way. Central London is an example, since in 2001 around 85 percent of all morning peak-period commuters into that area used public transport (including 77 percent on separate rights of way) and only 11 percent used private cars. When peak-hour travel equilibrium has been reached between the subway system and the major commuting roads, then the travel time required for any given trip is roughly equal on both modes."

Even for this American, it's hard to imagine such a fast and high capacity transit network. (I was not paying attention to what rush hour driving is like in Osaka.) And it's not like NYC or pre-congestion charge London traffic are/were good, though since NYC transit speeds aren't that high, that might not be a refutation. And of course there are complications: taxis, trucks, and through traffic might contribute traffic that isn't divertible by the alternatives. Conversely, high parking or gas costs could drive people to transit even when slower: what we'd really expect is that people would take the mode that has the lowest cost to them, where the travel cost is a function of time, money, aggravation (overcrowding, weather exposure, being stuck behind a wheel), need to carry things, and maybe more. And as an application of the Law of One Price, people should shuffle between the various modes until the modes have the same average cost.

And this is the problem being an American: we've gone in for cars so much, and scanted the alternative so much, that even with multi-hour rush hours, driving is typically still the fastest and lowest 'cost' mode of getting to work, or anything else. Especially when buses or bicycles get stuck in, or endangered by, cars -- no matter how bad things get, the car is still least bad. This is what killed off streetcars. Subways and bus lanes bypass traffic, as do Dutch (bike paths) or Japanese (wide sidewalks) bicycles.

But as a practical thing... taking a lane of road for bus lanes might actually improve congestion for the cars as well as the buses, by diverting drivers into the buses. If you run enough buses to absorb demand, then the driving speed should come to match the bus rapid transit speed.

2017 article on why subway construction in NYC costs as much as 7x elsewhere. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html

$3.5 billion/track miles vs. $450 million in Paris.

'The workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.”'

'Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.'

'In Paris, which has famously powerful unions, the review found the lower costs were the result of efficient staffing, fierce vendor competition and scant use of consultants.'

25 people employed for an 8 person boring machine.

'Generators and elevators must have their own operators, even though they are automatic.'

Quadruple overtime on weekends, more than $400/hour.

'One part of Local 147’s deal entitles the union to $450,000 for each tunnel-boring machine used. That is to make up for job losses from “technological advancement,” even though the equipment has been standard for decades.'

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/08/how-america-killed-transit/568825/

* 15 minute frequency is where you get a non-linear jump in use... but the US is so horrible the article uses 30 minute maps instead, which still suck.

* "The GM conspiracy" isn't that responsible, streetcars failed even places it didn't go. Cars are the real culprit, congesting the roads, coupled with an American reaction of cutting service to cope, which just made things worse.

"It is not a coincidence that, while almost every interurban and streetcar line in the U.S. failed, nearly every grade-separated subway or elevated system survived."

* We're reminded of the Interstates, with the Feds paying 90% of the cost of a free grid of highways.

* "...also began the ominous pattern of relying on federal funding for capital construction and scarce local dollars for operations and maintenance." So we'll sometimes get new trains like BART or light rail, that then barely run.

* Commuter rail sprouted in the 1980s, partly replacing highway projects that had become unpopular.

* Things could have been different:

"instead of relying on park-and-ride, Toronto chose to also provide frequent bus service to all of its new suburbs."

"When cities like Paris, London, and Berlin eliminated their streetcar networks, they replaced them with comparable bus service."

Seattle added 60,000 downtown jobs while decreasing the use of cars to get to them. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/02/15/seattle-cut-car-commuting-downtown-while-adding-60000-jobs/

Other cities have been revamping their bus networks into higher frequency grids, using the same consultants as Houston.

Columbus: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/05/02/columbus-just-launched-a-completely-redesigned-bus-network/

"100,000 more Columbus residents will be within a five-minute walk of buses that arrive at least every 15 minutes, and 110,000 more jobs will be within a five-minute walk of transit, according to TransitCenter. Total bus service hours on Saturdays will increase 50 percent, and Sunday service will increase 120 percent."

Indianapolis: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/07/11/the-bus-network-redesign-in-indianapolis-will-be-like-launching-a-brand-new-transit-system/

"The new funding will pay to increase bus service by about 70 percent. The share of Indianapolis low-income households within a half-mile of a bus line that comes at least every 15 minutes will rise from 16 percent to 51 percent; the number of jobs near frequent transit routes will double; and all routes will operate seven days a week.

"The most remarkable element of the plan, which is scheduled to be fully implemented by 2019, is the grid of frequent bus service in the city core. The current system relies on bus routes radiating from downtown that don’t come very often, much like transit networks in many American cities that prioritize peak-hour service connecting outer neighborhoods to the jobs in a central business district."

"Currently, there are only three corridors where buses come at least every 15 minutes all day. The new bus grid will establish routes with at least 15-minute frequencies on a dozen corridors across the city"

I've been reading a bunch of kchoze posts the past couple days. This one is on the economics of transit, and transit efficiency.

'if transit is economically inefficient, why are third world cities dominated by transit and not by personal cars? Why do the Japanese pay 10% of their income on transport versus 20% for Americans and Canadians?'

There are some numbers, and discussion of cost per mile vs. cost per trip. But there's one thing which I sort of gut felt that he spells out: transit friendly cities are denser, so they're more walkable as well.

Let me spell that out. In a sprawling car-centric city, up to 100% of trips may be taken by car. Actual numbers are more like 90%. [Caveat: that's share of trips to work, not all trips.] But you'll never see a city that's 90% transit mode share. (Some cities listed do get up to 70% transit, but again, that's commuting to work.) A city that has lots of transit is a city with lots of walking, too, especially if uses are decently mixed.

(I'm sort of imagining a degenerate case where there's no point to walking around one's residential neighborhood, not even for groceries or school or church, and having to catch transit elsewhere...)

So the reasonable target is not getting transit share really high, but car share low, with the slack being taken up by a mix of transit, walking, and bikes.

This has an extra economic effect: in Sprawlville, the cost of cars (roads, parking, cars, gas...) can be spread over almost all trips. Naively, the cost per trip of transit is doing to have a smaller denominator, only 40% of trips rather than 100%, even though the other non-car trips are part of a coherent dense system that must include transit.

One possible categorization of train stations:

* You emerge, and are immediately in a business district or otherwise interesting area. Examples: Central, Harvard, Porter, and Davis Squares on the Boston Red Line, along with Charles/MGH and Quincy Center; Kimball on the Chicago Brown Line; almost any downtown station, at least in a healthy downtown during the workday; Maverick, Orient Heights, and Beachmont on the Boston Blue Line.

* You emerge, in a parking lot or bus station or other thing that involves a fair bit more walking, but at least can see where to go toward something interesting. Examples: Fields Corner on the Boston Red Line, where you're at a long bus stop but can spy businesses; Assembly on the Boston Orange Line, where I think you'll have to walk a block but you can see the TOD from the station; maybe Wellington, where IIRC you have to walk through a big parking garage to the TOD, but there might be signs telling you to go.

* You emerge, and see no reason not to turn around and catch another train somewhere else. Examples: some Jamaica Plain Boston Orange Line stops, where you come out to a bridge surrounded by traffic; some stops on the south branch of Chicago's Blue Line, where the train runs in a freeway median, and you come out onto an overpass, and there's nothing around; Braintree on Boston's Red Line, where after two minutes on a ramp I still hadn't even left the station yet, and couldn't see anything but giant boxy buildings; I suspect Malden Center on Boston Orange, where you're not far from Malden's center but I'm not sure you'd see it; likewise Sullivan Square on Boston Orange, where the most interesting part I know of is hidden over a rise.

Note that can include "there is stuff but you don't see it" and "there's pretty much nothing around, for real."

My definition of decent bus service is "every 10 minutes", frequent enough you can go wait for it, especially if you have to make transfers. *Good* would be every 5, but never mind. When I moved to Boston, I took one look at the bus frequency table on the map and lowered my standards to every 20 minutes, all times outside of late night; even so, only 13 lines out of one or two hundred qualify. MBTA agrees with me that they're important, calling them "high-value" bus lines (unlike all the low-value ones?), though for some reason they include the 116/117, with crap frequency.

They even, I found, have a map:
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handily confirming what I already suspected.

Cambridge has 5 of the 13 lines: the 1 and 77 provide backbone service along Mass Ave, along with connections to Boston or Arlington; the 71 and 73 go to other suburbs like Watertown and Belmont, and the 66 connects through the interesting part of Brookline and back into Boston again. In addition, we of course have the Red Line serving as our backbone, plus the Green Line dipping into Lechmere. Compared to other cities this is amazing service for a suburb -- but then, Cambridge is actually denser than Boston overall, so lots of transit makes sense.

But you know who else is even denser than Cambridge? Somerville. And what high-value service do they have? Nothing. Not a single bus. Trains aren't much better: the Red Line dips into Davis on the west. I'd thought the Orange Line ran up the east side, but technically not a single station is in Somerville -- Sullivan is in Charlestown, Wellington in Medford, and it goes on from there. A new Assembly Square station in Somerville is being worked on, and a Green Line extension to Union Square is supposed to happen some decade now (well, 2018, if it doesn't get postponed *again*) but right now there's nothing serving the bulk of Somerville, the densest city in the state. If you live near one edge of the other you can walk to the Red or Orange lines, but if you want to get across in a timely fashion, tough luck.

Oh, there are some buses going through, but no high-value ones, nothing you'd want to go out and just wait for. As the MBTA doesn't quite come out and say, Somerville is low-value to it.

Why would this be? I can't help noting that Cambridge is rich and with two "high-value" universities, while Somerville is poorer and immigrant-heavy. You'd think that'd mean they could use good transit *more* -- but hey, the MBTA previously tore down the Washington Elevated to Roxbury, promising first a light rail replacement, then BRT, and finally delivering nothing more than a bus with a fancy name and fewer stops. Roxbury, I note, also has Somerville-level density and even deeper poverty -- and to be fair, most of the rest of the "high-value" buses and the Orange Line through part of it. Still, keeping promises of high service to poor areas is obviously not an MBTA priority.

***

The map's odd in other ways. No good buses to Medford, Malden, or Everett (Orange goes to a bit of that, but not much); Everett is a big desert for any good transit, despite being as dense as Boston. Most of Brookline and Newton are unserved (branches of the Green Line do fill some of that in, though apart from the D they're hardly better than buses themselves.) This despite the 32 going way the fuck south... we can also see a gap to the west of that, and in South Boston, though there's some Red and Silver line access to the latter. Granted, most of those areas are notably less dense, so not as obvious candidates as the densest city in the state.

We can also perhaps blame Somerville's government; it's big enough to have its own bus service, unless the MBTA is sucking up all the available federal subsidies. Bloomington Indiana had about as many people and various every-30-minute bus lines; a town with five times the density should be able to have some high-frequency circulators.

By Donald Shoup. I haven't read it, but I've seen some reviews:

High Cost of Free Parking reviews
parking subsidy
http://www.examiner.com/review/the-high-cost-of-free-parking-book-review
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.html

"For instance, after including construction and land costs, he measures
the value of a Los Angeles parking space at over $31,000"
"Yet 99 percent of all automobile trips in the United States end in a
free parking space, rather than a parking space with a market price. In
his book, Professor Shoup estimated that the value of the free-parking
subsidy to cars was at least $127 billion in 2002, and possibly much
more. "

And this one is a 2005 essay by Shoup himself:

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-high-cost-of-free-parking-2630493.php

"Paving an entire state for a parking lot sounds outrageous. But because
there are at least three parking spaces for each of the 230 million
vehicles in the United States, the total space devoted to parking in
America amounts to an area about the size of Connecticut. "

"Studies of cruising in downtowns have found that up to 74 percent of
traffic was searching for parking, and the average time to find a curb
space ranged up to 14 minutes. "

"Most cities require commercial buildings to provide a parking lot
larger than the floor area, and for restaurants the parking lots are
often at least three times the size of the dining area. "