Tag Archives: infrastructure

The state of public transit in the 100 largest American cities

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The Brookings Institution just released a new report, Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America, examining the mass transit systems in the 100 largest American cities. Here are some of the findings:

Nearly 70 percent of large metropolitan residents live in neighborhoods with access to transit service of some kind…

The typical metropolitan resident can reach about 30 percent of jobs in their metropolitan area via transit in 90 minutes…

About one-quarter of jobs in low- and middle-skill industries are accessible via transit within 90 minutes for the typical metropolitan commuter, compared to one-third of jobs in high-skill industries…

Fifteen of the 20 metro areas that rank highest on a combined score of transit coverage and job access are in the West…

With the primary focus of the report on jobs, there is a lot of interesting data. Here are a few things I noticed in going through the full report:

-Page 3 highlights three trends for metropolitan areas: “metro growth and expansion” with both city and suburban growth during the 2000s, “employment decentralization” (with a figure that only roughly 20% of metropolitan jobs are within 3 miles of the city center), and the “suburbanization of poverty.”

-Page 4 notes some of the problems of mass transit in today’s metropolitan regions: “old hub and spokes” which don’t work as well since “39 percent of work trips are entirely suburban” (a problem in the Chicago region, hence the need for the Star Line), “serving low-density areas” (a problem in many suburban areas and a recurring problem in the western suburbs of Chicago such as Naperville), and “spatial mismatch and the costs of transportation” (the idea that the people who work in certain jobs/industries don’t necessarily live near these jobs).

-Page 13 has an explanation for why they chose a 90-minute one-way commuting threshold in the study. If you change the threshold, the percent of jobs available changes quite a bit: “[A]cross all metro areas, the typical worker can reach about 30 percent of total metropolitan jobs in 90 minutes. At a 60-minute commute threshold, only 13 percent of jobs are accessible for the typical worker. For a 45-minute commute, the share drops to 7 percent.” This seems to be quite a high threshold but as they note, more than half of metropolitan commutes are longer than 45 minutes (according to 2008 American Community Survey data).

-Page 18 has a graph comparing the availability of high/medium/low skill jobs within 90 minutes by city or suburban setting. Interestingly, a higher percentage of jobs accessible from the city were high-skill while a higher percentage of accessible suburban jobs were low-skill.

-Pages 20-21 look at some of the differences between the West, with the most accessible mass transit and higher percentage of accessible jobs, and the South, the region at the other end of the spectrum. The findings about the South are not too surprising as it is known for sprawl but the finding that the West dominates the list of cities (15 of the top 20) is interesting. Does this suggest that these Western cities have made much more concerted efforts to provide mass transit?

If you look at the more specific data for the Chicago region, it appears to be fairly average compared to the other 100 metro areas.

The important step taken toward American interstates on May 7, 1930

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I am a few days behind in celebrating anniversaries in American transportation history but this post from The Infrastructurist highlights an important highway commission that was founded on May 7, 1930:

This past Saturday marked a little-known anniversary in the long-running contest between American highway and train establishments. On May 7, 1930, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to form the United States Motorways Commission, a twelve-person group — two Senators, two Congressmen, and eight presidential appointees — whose job was to consider a proposal for a national road network strikingly similar to the Interstate Highway System that emerged decades later.

The concept of a truly national road system was, at this point in American history, truly novel. The particular idea to be considered by the motorways commission sprang from the mercurial mind of an engineer named Lester Barlow. The Union Highway, as Barlow first called his system, would be a four-track expressway stretching from Boston to San Francisco. It would have fast lanes and slow lanes, access ramps to eliminate grade crossings, a partition between traffic flows to prevent U-turns, special sections devoted to gas stations and food stands — in short, all the definitive markers of expressways as we know them…

All seemed to be going well after the Senate voted to create the motorways commission on May 7, 1930. Then suddenly the legislation ran into problems. The House of Representatives trapped its version of the bill in a committee, and New York lawmakers did the same. Attempts to revive the plan in subsequent sessions, both federal and local, failed again and again, until the idea faded away.

Tilson later revealed to Barlow the real reason for legislative inaction on the proposal for a national highway system: it had been blocked by the mighty railroad lobby, which feared the loss of passengers and freight to road travel. This reason was confirmed to Barlow at a gathering of New Haven Railroad officials in the fall of 1930. As Barlow later recalled, John J. Pelley, then president of the New Haven, told those in attendance that a poor highway system was in the railroad’s best interest, and that it should do whatever it “practically” could to prevent the development of expressways in America.

This is an important story as it sounds like this commission laid the framework for the Federal Interstate system that began in the mid 1950s. As sociologists, historians, and others would tell you, this Federal shift toward highway construction had a profound impact on suburban development after World War II.

It would be interesting to hear more about the gap between this commission and the Federal Interstate Act of 1956. Of course, there was a Depression and a massive war. But during this time period, a number of government agencies started planning and building roads. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was built in this gap and the states of Ohio and Indiana started constructing connections to this Turnpike. In the Chicago region, a number of highways were under construction by the mid 1950s as the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago recognized the need for such roads. Beyond historical circumstances, was it primarily the railroad lobby that held up Federal support of interstate construction prior to 1956? If so, what was the state of the railroad industry in 1956 and was the Federal government actually behind the times in funding the Interstate system?

The current state of Zipcar

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The Infrastructurist provides a quick overview of the current state of Zipcar. Some of the things you should know:

Zipcar went public last week, and how. On its first day of trading, the company raised $174.3 million and finished up 56 percent. All told, Zipcar sold 9.7 million shares of stock at $18 a pop and earned itself a market value of $1.21 billion, according to Bloomberg…

The 11-year-old company currently operates in 14 cities — 12 in the United States, plus Vancouver and London — and 230 college campuses. Its fleet stands at around 8,000 cars, and its membership at 560,000.

Robin Chase, the company’s founder, has been known to say: “Infrastructure is destiny.” The business world is more concerned with whether profits are destiny. So far, for Zipcar, they have not been. Last year the company generated about $186 million in revenue but still posted a net loss of roughly $14 million…

Zipcar’s biggest problem, writes the Wall Street Journal, may be growing competition from traditional car rental companies…

In the end Zipcar’s success may hinge on how transportation evolves in the near future.

This overview is pitched as a look at whether Zipcar is “a good investment.” This would be the business angle: the company has not turned a profit even as it seems like investors are at least somewhat confident that they could make some money down the road.

But there are plenty of other questions to ask (the answers to these questions would have an impact on the business side but are more interesting to me): is this company on to something regarding infrastructure and the use of cars? In recent months, there is some data to suggest Americans want to live in more walkable environments (which could presumably lead to less interest in owning a vehicle). Is this model sustainable even in these cities, let alone less dense cities? It would be interesting to see Zipcar usage data regarding less urban college settings (like the Zipcars at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois – currently, there is a Toyota Matrix and Toyota Prius available on campus) compared to the big cities. Ultimately, is a car-sharing model the end goal or a middle step between gasoline powered vehicles and vehicles of the future that will be powered by something cleaner and cheaper?

Septic tanks and McMansions

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A commentator in southern Maryland discusses how the construction of McMansions in more rural areas is related to septic tanks and social class:

Public sewer might have caught up to the suburbs, but now the suburbs are leapfrogging public sewer. Although it has been slowed by the national housing crisis, the trend has been toward rural ridge tops bristling with “McMansions” like plates on the spine of a stegosaurus. These homes have problems that transcend septic. They generally gobble up land 5 acres at a time, not to mention their associated energy and transportation inefficiencies. It is indeed hard to feel sorry for these developments when cracking down on septic systems.

But at the same time big and rich developments are being scrubbed, it would be a mistake to throw country people out with the wastewater. In rural counties, lawmakers have been merciless in their attacks on anti-septic proposals, which they view as a job killer and an assault on private property rights. One Frederick County, Md., delegate called the proposed Maryland ban the worst bill he’d seen in 25 years.

There is hyperbole involved, naturally, but the danger is that septic bans, if too harsh, could make country life unaffordable for people of limited means. That’s the economics of reduced supply. Land prices in many areas have already made it difficult for people raised in rural locations to stay there. It’s proper that all sources of pollution, including septic systems, be controlled. It’s also proper that country life be protected at. The goal should be inclusive of both ideals.

Sounds like a case of competing interests: being greener (and the story suggests that a quarter of the homes in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have septic tanks leading to a pollution issue) versus keeping more rural homes affordable.

This discussion reminds me of Adam Rome’s book The Bulldozer in the Countryside which addresses the history of septic tanks in suburbia. In the suburban boom after World War II, it was often cheaper for builders to include septic tanks as suburban communities struggled to provide sewers and sewage treatment plants. In my own research into the development of local suburbs, it wasn’t until the early 1960s that communities began to see the importance of sewers and treatment plants. Eventually, many communities found ways to help pass the costs on to developers and builders through sewer hook-up fees but these were originally contentious.

More on people living beneath Las Vegas

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I first ran into a story on people living under Las Vegas in The Sun (UK) two years ago. The most recent edition of Newsweek also briefly discusses this situation as part of a larger article about Las Vegas and the impact Celine Dion has had on the city:

At the south end of the Strip, near the iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, a hidden concrete path leads into a 500-mile warren of wet, trash-strewn drainage pipes that function as an underground shelter for hundreds of the city’s most downtrodden. Several have been laid off from the same well-paid, benefits-packed service jobs that give Vegas its rep as a working-class paradise. The pipes are one of the few places police and hotel security don’t bother to tread, and since the recession, they’ve become increasingly populated, according to Matthew O’Brien, author of a 2007 book about the tunnels, Beneath the Neon.

Life here is spare and dangerous. Aside from floods that can fill the space in minutes, there is ever-present crime. Jody Alger, 48, an unemployed casino waitress, guards her tunnel with a BB gun. Another camp has two makeshift barricades at its entrance; inside, its 32-year-old inhabitant huddles on an old bed with a flashlight strapped to his head. In a nearby tunnel, John Tondee sleeps on a sagging leather couch that he found in a Dumpster. His clothes are in a messy pile, and his entertainment is a guitar with a broken string, which he uses for playing country gospel. “I’m at the point of coming out of here,” he says. “I’ve had enough.” Tondee says he’s a former maintenance worker who lost his job a year ago and couldn’t afford to pay the $675 in rent. “I’ll do whatever it takes to survive,” he says. “I’ll go around and wash windows.” At night, he used to dress in drag and walk down the Strip. But someone came into the tunnel and stole his 16 wigs. Now he has only one head of fake black curls left.

These two paragraphs are meant to set up a comparison between the glitzy and popular Celine Dion shows at Caesar’s Palace and the desperate times some residents are facing.

But from what I can gather, people living underneath a city is not a limited phenomenon perhaps tied to difficult economic times. The space underneath cities can be easier to access than people might realize: this story about Paris suggests all sorts of people end up exploring this area (though many of them are on tours of the Paris Catacombs). And the 1995 book The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City, which I first read for my undergraduate Introduction to Sociology class, is a fascinating look at how a number of people have carved out a life in a space that most would avoid.

Chicago suburbs consider more roundabouts

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The roundabout has had a sort of renaissance in American traffic and road design in recent years. While many Americans might consider roundabouts to be European, there are more being built in the Chicago suburbs:

At least 10 roundabouts have recently been considered or launched in the Chicago area. The intersections consist of a center island surrounded by a one-way lane of traffic where drivers yield to circling cars without the instruction of stop signs or traffic signals.

South Holland in 2008 was one of the first in the area to build a modern roundabout. Another was finished in Lincolnshire in November. Kane County is planning one west of Elgin. Another proposal was recently unveiled for Chicago’s West Lakeview neighborhood, and the Illinois Department of Transportation is looking to convert the despised Cumberland Circle in Des Plaines into a modern roundabout as well.

Because the design forces vehicles to slow down and eliminates left-hand turns, the possibility for multicar accidents is much lower than at a traditional intersection, safety experts say.

In addition to the safety improvements, I recall reading that roundabouts also accommodate more traffic. Instead of having cars stop (at either stop signs or traffic lights), there is more continuous flow.

It is also interesting to read how suburban residents seem afraid of these roundabouts: how does one drive through them? Perhaps suburban drivers all have seen how Clark Griswold (played by Chevy Chase) got stuck in a London roundabout for hours in European Vacation. At least at the beginning, this unfamiliarity may contribute to the reduction of accidents: people have to slow down in order to figure out their next course of action.

In the long run, this is a good reminder that driving habits and behavior are very much conditioned by what we are used to. This reminds of Hans Monderman, the Dutch traffic engineer, who went to great lengths to get drivers to readjust their behavior (and the American way of just adding traffic signs doesn’t help – read about it in Traffic).

(As a side note: speaking from experience with a roundabout in northern Indiana that I drove through for several years, it is pretty easy.)

Manhattan’s grid created 200 years ago

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Manhattan, the center of New York City, is famous for its street grid running throughout the whole island. Read a short celebration of this grid’s 200th anniversary (which was actually March 21) here. Not only is the grid orderly but it cut the island into developable lots and very quickly, land speculation became a favorite pastime.

What current-day people often forget is that this grid was laid out long before New York City had advanced very far north on the island. This map from the New York City Department of City Planning up to 1998 shows that growth was limited to the southern tip of the island for much of the period that the island has had European inhabitants. (The quality of this online map is atrocious – perhaps they really do want people to send in $3.) And if you want a longer-term view, why not go back to 1609 and compare NYC blocks then and now?

Infrastructure, beware the solar flare

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Concern has grown in recent years about how much of our infrastructure, electricity, wireless technology, and more, would be affected by solar flares. National Geographic suggests that if we experience a solar flare like Carrington Event of 1859, we would be in trouble:

[T]the biggest solar storm on record happened in 1859, during a solar maximum about the same size as the one we’re entering, according to NASA.

That storm has been dubbed the Carrington Event, after British astronomer Richard Carrington, who witnessed the megaflare and was the first to realize the link between activity on the sun and geomagnetic disturbances on Earth…

In addition, the geomagnetic disturbances were strong enough that U.S. telegraph operators reported sparks leaping from their equipment—some bad enough to set fires, said Ed Cliver, a space physicist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Bedford, Massachusetts.

In 1859, such reports were mostly curiosities. But if something similar happened today, the world’s high-tech infrastructure could grind to a halt.

“What’s at stake,” the Space Weather Prediction Center’s Bogdan said, “are the advanced technologies that underlie virtually every aspect of our lives.”…

But the big fear is what might happen to the electrical grid, since power surges caused by solar particles could blow out giant transformers. Such transformers can take a long time to replace, especially if hundreds are destroyed at once, said Baker, who is a co-author of a National Research Council report on solar-storm risks…

“Imagine large cities without power for a week, a month, or a year,” Baker said. “The losses could be $1 to $2 trillion, and the effects could be felt for years.”

An event even close in scale to the Carrington Event would quickly remind us of how much we take this infrastructure for granted.

Although I don’t wish for something like this to happen, it would make for a fascinating natural experiment. If there was no electricity for an extended period, how would governments and people respond? Would we end up in scenes reminiscent of Hollywood apocalyptic thrillers or could we survive and make do? Such movies tend to built around the idea that there will be widespread destruction, not the loss of vital electricity. And if everyone is affected, who would lead the way forward?

h/t Instapundit

Federal budget issue: increased fuel effiency, reduced revenues from the gasoline tax

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Amidst discussions about infrastructure and the price of gasoline, Obama’s administration has called for an increase in transportation spending. But where exactly the money will come from to fund this increase is unclear:

[Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood] said Obama is not in favor of raising the gas tax in a “lousy economy.”

The new tax would be necessary, in part, because the gasoline tax used to fund the highway trust fund is collecting less revenue than projected due to increasing fuel efficiency.

The exchange between Sessions and LaHood degenerated into a shouting match, with the Transportation secretary emphasizing that infrastructure can be improved and jobs created while paying down the debt.

This is one negative consequence of increased fuel efficiency: less gasoline will be purchased so without a gas tax increase, revenue from this source falls. This might call for some new ways to derive tax revenue from driving. How about more tolls? Or taxing drivers per mile driven?

Telling graphs about American infrastructure spending

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A number of commentators in recent years have pointed out the relatively small amount of spending on infrastructure by the American government. Here is another take on this, complete with some handy graphs. Additionally, here is some interpretation about government spending on education and technology:

Productivity-enhancing spending, according to Meeker, comes from three main sources: infrastructure, education and research and development investment. We’ve seen infrastructure spending collapse as a share of the budget since the 1960s. What about education and R&D?

In 1970, the U.S. (at the federal, state and local level) spent twice as much on education as health care. Twenty years later, health care closed the gap, and today, total government spending on health care is about 33 percent higher than education spending, which is more or less even with its 1970s levels.

Second, look at technology. R&D spending exploded in the late 1950s and 1960s on the back of government investments in aeronautics and science. Fifty years later, federal R&D has fallen below 1950s levels as a share of GDP, while the private sector has picked up the slack.

So after looking at figures like this, I want to ask what kind of strategies could be utilized to tackle the issue of infrastructure spending, particularly with budget issues looming all over the country?