A Perfect Storm for Public Transportation in the United States?

The Good

The last two years have been an exciting time if you are an advocate of public transportation in the United States. Among other things, we have seen a major spike in gasoline prices, and although they seem to have stabilized somewhat have pushed people away from their personal automobiles and towards alternate means of transportation in record numbers. Case in point: Amtrak saw a 14% increase in ridership between July 2007 and July 2008. The poor economy has eroded some that increase, but ridership is still higher than it was at this point in 2007. It's also important to keep in mind that this is with a smaller system than Amtrak has ever had along with stagnant funding. Check out the master list vs. what service is in place today.

Ridership on public transit is up. Way up. In 2008, transit ridership was the highest since 1956! That's big. That's 52 years of highway dominance, out the window in one year.

Additionally, the winner of the 2008 Presidential campaign brought even greater hope by promising to invest in our long neglected transportation system along with our national infrastructure. This promise was highlighted by the symbolic train ride that the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect took from Philadelphia to the inauguration in Washington, D.C.

Things sure are good in the transportation world aren't they? Not so fast. Some big issues in America right now are forming together with the record success of transit to form a perfect storm of sorts that threatens to hamstring transportation development in this country, if not set cause a massive setback.

The Bad

While transit use is up, which is great, funding remains flat. Check out an article here in the Post gazette that touches on the issue. Local transit authorities are faced with increased demands on their infrastructure and calls for service expansion all while dealing with the same funding levels that they dealt with 5 years ago. In some cases, because of the hard economic times funding has even been cut, again, while ridership increased. The system is broken, that's not news. The Gas Tax hasn't increased in 16 years and the Highway Trust fund is broke. You can't get better transit if you don't have the money to pay for it.

The Ugly

The healthcare debate, among others swirling around Washington seem to have caused enough strife to further the notion that our current funding strategy will suffice for another 18 months. The Post Gazette covers it here . It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the funding system doesn't work now, it will continue to not work for another 18 months. Things will stay about the way they are now. Ridership looks to stay high, and funding will be inadequate which will cause further cutbacks and potential fare increases.

Hope isn't completely lost for a new funding package before the September 30 deadline of the current deal, but an 18 month delay could cause a permanent halt to a funding overhaul and renewed emphasis on transit.

The political tides seem to be shifting. The tremendous support that the Obama administration and their policies enjoyed may be at least wavering. The Senate Committee charged with appropriating the initial $4 billion dollars of HSR funds decided only to appropriate $1.8 billion. While this is not the end of the discussion, the figures initially discussed are already being paired down. This does not bode well for future HSR funding. The same can be said of transit funding. If support for HSR is still high and the money is being cut, imagine what happens when the support dies down, or gas prices come down.

I don't want to be a Negative Nancy here, but in my mind, we as a nation are at a crossroads. The demand for transit is there (and hopefully will continue to rise). What is missing is political will. If we put transportation in the back seat and don't fund it now and fund it properly, our best case scenario is we will have what we have now. Aging infrastructure, too many roads, and not enough alternate forms of transportation. That's the BEST case scenario.

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

I read an interesting opinion piece over the weekend about tolls vs. a gas tax as funding sources for "transportation". Check it out here.

I am assuming that by transportation the writer means solely highways because he doesn't really refer to any alternate forms of transportation. Between the author and the commentors, there a lot of misguided arguments. You get everything from the idea that increasing the gas tax alone will help, to the very common misconception among the pro-highway set that, other than vehicle cost/repair/maintenance (including filling up at the pumps) driving is and should always be free.

The events of mid 2008 have shown, in my mind that relying on a gas tax to fund transportation is not a solid bet. As gas prices increased independently of the tax, people drove less, to the tune of 12.9 billion miles. This caused the revenues of the tax to decrease by nearly $71 million. Tolling, I think has worked well, and should be expanded. Pennsylvanians need to know that driving is not free, and tolling provides the perfect method of explanation to the public at large. Ok… you can't toll everything, but I sure wish you could, and it certainly seem more stable than a gas tax. During 2008, the revenue from tolls increased despite the fact that nationally, vehicle miles driven decreased. (The increase was NOT from a fare increase either: the toll revenue increase occurred because the amount of vehicle miles traveled was higher in 2008 than 2007). There are mileage tax plans out there, but I don't even know if I like big brother having the potential of knowing where I am all the time, let alone what Cletus in central Pennsylvania will think of the idea.

I don't have the answer to taxing highway or road usage and the point of this post wasn't to propose an answer. At the risk of generalizing, this submission and the subsequent comments just go to show how ignorant people really are. There is a general misunderstanding of how roads and transit are funded; people still have this concept that "I pay for transit that I don't use and it's therefore a waste but don't have to pay for roads I don't use, and that makes roads more economical".

Another thing to take away is people's general dislike of transportation agencies. The Turnpike Commission gets a bad rap, but unlike PENNDOT was profitable until Act 44 required a $750 million contribution that put their numbers into the tank. There's a reason that Ed Rendell wanted to Toll I-80, it works on I-76.

Check out the Turnpike Commission's webpage here which goes into the details on their finances.

On Gas, Commuting , and Pure Truth

I don't plan on posting anything too earth shattering today, but there seems to be several articles/posts that are all intertwined and I think worth drawing attention to.

Apparently, a group of businessmen have gone to Washington D.C. (Mr. Smith style) to lobby for an increase in the gas tax, so we can get back to repairing our infrastructure and (most importantly) get back to building new highways to meet our "21st Century" transportation needs. While I agree cheap gas is bad, I do not think that raising gas prices to further our wasteful infrastructure habits is good. Perhaps it's even worse than cheap gas.

Trains For America talks about what if gas was $20 dollars a gallon, and how that would be bad. I think the price of gas does need to be higher, or people will not seek alternative means of transportation, however, a commenter brings up a good counter-point that along with those prices will come increases in raw material/construction costs which may make large capital projects (like HSR) cost prohibitive. I guess my short answer would be to find a price that makes people want to seek alternate forms of transportation but not so high that it would affect transit projects negatively.

Finally, I read a post over at The Radical Middle was truly a treat to read. Sometimes someone makes a point so clearly, and so succinctly, that you are both impressed and envious. Impressed at the clarity and simplicity, and envious that you would be challenged to write the same thing in a manner approaching its common sense and brevity. Enough schmoozing, here's the link. I'd try and recap and analyze what is written, but I wouldn't do it justice.

So Long Steel City Flyer

In bad transit news, the Steel City Flyer, a relatively new, and high end bus service between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg is going kaput.

Apparently, American selfishness still outweighs all other concerns:

"Workers don't do math the same way as their employers, he (Henry Posner) explained. Someone sent to work in Harrisburg could be reimbursed by their employers for up to 55 cents a mile for driving their own cars. They perceived they'd be giving up money (more than $200 for a round trip), though they'd save their employers money by riding the bus at $138.00. That was a subtlety he
hadn't considered when the Flyer began its runs, Mr. Posner said."

This illustrates pretty well where people's priorities are. We (Americans) care about transit and reducing our car dependence only when we stand to lose money by driving. So many times people who do not use transit use arguments such as transit/transportation is not "convenient" for them, or it is not timely enough (i.e. it takes alot longer to get somewhere riding a train, bus etc. than it does to ride in their own car). Here you have (had) a service that was competitive, was timely, and allowed people to commute, work, and return home in the same day. It still was not enough of a draw to stay afloat.

This brings up some important questions:

#1. Is there really that large of a market for air/train/bus service between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg?
#2. Was U.S. Airway's commuter air service that successful? (What was the "ridership" on the daily flights? Did they merely maintain the service because Pittsburgh was in fact a hub?)
#3. How high would gas prices have to be for people to really consider ditching their cars in large numbers when traveling between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg? (The same question could be asked about Cleveland, or Columbus)
#4. Is this failure an indictment of non-automobile transportation between regional destinations?
#5. Were there mitigating factors to this failure that make you think there is a viable transportation solution?
#6. Do you agree that alot (not all) of Americans are utterly selfish?

I'm not going to answer these questions. I want to know what you think.

Talk amongst yourselves

Gas Creep

Don't pull your F650 out of storage just yet! An article from the most reputable new source in the world talks about how, despite the bad economy gas prices have had a solid recovery (for OPEC that is). Additionally, the future is looking bright as well (for OPEC). The USEIA(United States Energy Information Administration) has reported that it expects the prices to continue to increase as the economy gets back on its feet. The price per barrel is expected to reach $130 by 2030.

This is good for transit, bad for suburbia. I was worried that all the new hubbub about transit which took place around this time last year might be a shorter fad than slap bracelets or Zubaz (unless you live in Pittsburgh). Now however, it seems that my fears were nothing more than that.

After all the optimism in the U.S. when everyone was paying $2.00 a gallon and damn happy about it, it now seems that the recent spike in gas prices will continue for the foreseeable future. I don't need to sit here and tell you why getting your climate wrecking sprawl creating fossil fuel from an international cartel is bad.

Instead I will celebrate! Hopefully, this means that interest in transit will not wain. I say the sky's the limit, I can't wait for the day when we pay $5.00 a gallon! That would be the day when we would really see an honest effort put forth by the government and private industry to beef up our transit infrastructure and increase access to transit.

Careful America, Your Ignorance is Showing

Let me start off by giving a little background on this post. I was talking to my mother a few days ago, and during a lull in conversation (believe me, there are more than one of those in a given conversation, but that is a topic for a blog about little things that annoy me about my mom) she brought up the fact that gas is "way down" to about $3.15 a gallon.

That comment just set me off. How blind can you really be? In my mind this drop in gas prices is temporary and won't return us anywhere near what prices were before this latest price hike began. All this temporary drop is doing is lulling Americans back into a false sense of security, so they stop all that crazy talk about "hybrid cars" and "public transportation". Once Americans are fat and happy again, paying $2.50 for a gallon of gas, and thanking the oil companies for it, all they will do is raise it to a new exorbitant price. Then, once Americans start rattling the cage over gas prices, they will lower prices again, not to the point they were formerly at, but just low enough to shut everyone up.

I checked on the Department of Energy site and looked up historical trends of gas prices. It seems that every year is a record high year over the past 8 or so years. Additionally, I found that after gas prices spike, they'll go down somewhat. That may last for a few months, but every single time, the prices manage to recover and reach a new high. I don't see that changing any time soon.

Now, I love my mom, that goes without saying, but it distresses me that she is so ignorant to the facts. I then made the mental leap, that her opinion is surely not an isolated one. I heard a report on the radio, that since gas had fallen below $3.50 a gallon, there was already a spike in SUV sales. I can't verify for sure whether this is true or not, but that's the beauty of not having to verify the accuracy of my sources.

Am I the only that wants to beat my head against a wall upon hearing "spike in SUV sales"?

This brings me to my point, well actually both of my points.

#1. Wake up mom, and wake up America. You, me, all of us are getting screwed, and saying "thank you sir, may I have another". I guess as long as everyone can watch their flat screen in HD at home, no one cares about the ever rising cost of gas, and what our dependence on fossil fuels is doing.

#2. Gas ain't going down any time soon, and the earth ain't getting any cooler. I have been impressed by the recent push for public transportation, but I am worried that now that gas has gone "way down" and my mom and a lot of Americans seem willing to settle for that, I'm worried that the push will lose all its momentum, and it will take $5 or $6 a gallon to get it moving again.

We need to continue the push (especially in Pittsburgh) for better transit now, before the luster wears off, and before everyone (especially the politicians) are lulled back into a false sense of security.