Setting aside my own wishes for the Astrodome, and just looking at the plan recently presented by the HCSCC to Commissioners Court, there is a very simple fix that will make saving the Astrodome *much* more likely.
Current Plan
Net cost estimated to be $523m after tax credits.
MAJOR PROBLEM = getting voters to approve a half-billion dollar bond issue (!)
Better Plan
Tear down an obsolete Reliant Arena and fold whatever functions a new one would have into a renovated Astrodome. It’s not like the Astrodome doesn’t have enough space. Heck, it could probably do just about everything they wanted to do in it originally and still have room for everything they want to do in a new Arena. We lose a building nobody cares about and preserve a building everybody wants to save at probably less than half the price of the current proposal (something voters might actually approve).
A big win-win, yes? If you agree, please contact your County Commissioner asap and let them know. They’re meeting to make some decisions on this plan very soon – possibly this week.
This post originally appeared at Houston Strategies.
If you’re looking for some good news in the U.S. economy, you might want to head to the warm, energy rich Gulf Coast. You wouldn’t be alone in making that move; over the past decade the “Third Coast”—extending from south Texas to the Gulf of Mexico—enjoyed 12% job growth, or about twice the national average.
This is remarkable given that the region was socked with several devastating hurricanes, including Katrina in 2005. New Orleans’ population, for instance, is still well below its pre-Katrina level, although now gaining steadily.
New Orleans also demonstrates the possibilities. Film production is way up, and the city appears to be emerging as a magnet for video game, commercials, and special effects firms.
Some of the biggest advances are further along the periphery from New Orleans, often somewhat closer to Baton Rouge. Nucor is constructing a massive new steel mill in Convent, located in St. James Parish about an hour away from New Orleans. Local chemical and oil refinery firms are also expanding and investing in new equipment.
Yet it’s Houston’s star that is shining brightest. Over the past decade, when the country actually slightly lost jobs, the Houston-Sugarland-Baytown region expanded its employment by over 15%. Since 1990, the number of jobs has risen by 46%, more than twice the national average. Over a period of ten years, the region’s population has soared 26%, the most of any of the country’s largest metro areas, and again better than twice the national norm. Migrants are coming not only from other countries, but from much of the rest of the U.S., particularly the industrial Midwest, Northeast, and California.
Optimism among businesspeople on the Third Coast is infectious, as can be seen in the expanding footprint of the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest such facility. Much of the money for this amazing complex comes from a similar boom in oil and gas.
If there’s a negative tone anywhere, it’s about politics. Concerns over continued federal obstacles to responsible expansions in oil and gas production are widespread. There’s a real concern that this year’s elections will lead to a slowdown in orders and future expansion. Let’s hope not.
This piece first appeared at the National Chamber Foundation Blog.
Last week was the 7th anniversary of my blog, Houston Strategies. After 947 posts (cream of the crop here), almost half a million visitors, and thousands of comments in an epic dialogue about Houston, I thought this would be a good time stand back, look at the big picture, and ask "What should be next for Houston?" while linking back to some of the gems from that archive.
First, let’s look at where we are currently. Our foundation is in great shape. Houston has started the 21st-century with a set of rankings and amenities 99% of the planet’s cities would kill for: a vibrant core with several hundred thousand jobs; a profitable and growing set of major industry clusters (Energy, the Texas Medical Center, the Port); the second-most Fortune 500 headquarters in the country; top-notch museums, festivals, theater, arts and cultural organizations; major league sports and stadiums; a revitalized downtown; astonishing affordability (especially housing); a culture of openness, friendliness, opportunity, and charity (reinforced by Katrina); the most diverse major city in America; a young and growing population (fastest in the country); progressiveness; entrepreneurial energy and optimism; efficient and business-friendly local government; regional unity; a smorgasbord of tasty and inexpensive international restaurants; and tremendous mobility infrastructure (including the freeway and transit networks, railroads, the port, and a set of truly world-class hub airports).
To those I’d add:
With all that, it’s really easy to get complacent. In fact, in some ways I think we might be coasting a bit now. But coasting is definitely not how we got here. Big initiatives are a proud tradition here: dredging the original port, founding the Texas Medical Center, establishing the Johnson Space Center, and being the first in the world to build a gigantic, futuristic, multi-purpose domed stadium – just to name a few examples. But what should be next? Where should the world’s Energy Capital put its energy, so to speak?
I was recently inspired by the Urbanophile’s post on Indianapolis’ 40-year economic development and tourism strategy built around sports. Starting with nothing but the Indy 500 they’ve built a string of wins all the way up to hosting one of the most successful Super Bowls ever last month. We need that same sort of sustained, long-term strategy that goes beyond specific projects to a theme we can weave into everything we do over the decades ahead. We need to take the energy boom we’re currently enjoying and invest it to secure our long-term prosperity no matter how technology shifts in the future (most especially energy technology).
In an unpredictable world, the only safe bet is a talent base that can adapt. With the Texas Medical Center, we concentrated health care talent in a district that has grown and adapted into the largest medical concentration in the world with an array of world class facilities. We’ve done the same on an even larger scale with energy and engineering talent. The next step is to take that strategy and generalize it to focus on being the global capital of applied STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Math) talent. We need to mobilize the city around a common purpose of building this human infrastructure. We need to embed it into our education, tourism, cultural and economic development strategies. It’s just a perfect fit for Houston on so many levels:
In particular, I think we should focus on applied STEM – systems-based problem solving (engineering) over pure knowledge (where we are at a competitive disadvantage with many university clusters around the country). Facilitating man’s progress through innovative problem solving.
Part of this strategy includes tourism, articulated in more detail here. We need the big tourism experience of other world class cities, and STEM is a unique niche we can build around, with a primary focus on families, schools, and STEM-related conferences. We already have some of the assets in place – JSC and Space Center Houston, the Natural Science Museum, the Health Museum, the Children’s Museum, Moody Gardens – and others with more potential, like the Texas Medical Center. But we need that signature attraction: the world’s largest institute/museum of technology. Not just a history-focused museum, but an institute actively involved in the community with a strong focus on the future. Local kids should spend frequent school days and summer camps there on fun and inspiring STEM activities. It could provide educational STEM experiences both online and on-site, helping to attract talented global youth to Houston for amazing experiences that draw them back later for college or after graduation. It should have the world’s largest hackerspace. It should be an inspiring space that attracts global academic and professional STEM-related conferences (building on the OTC) – groups trying to solve big problems and contribute to humanity’s progress (imagine a Davos or G8 of STEM…). Each conference could leave behind a new exhibit on its subject area, building the collections over time. And since it has the event space, we might as well open it up to festivals to expose more of our community to that same inspiration.
The natural place for such an institute is clearly the Astrodome, our historic icon looking for a second life. We should embrace the Astrodome as Houston’s architectural icon like Paris does the Eiffel Tower, New York does the Statue of Liberty or Empire State Building, Rome does the Vatican or Coliseum, and San Francisco does the Golden Gate bridge. It can find a second life as our inspiring cathedral to man’s technological progress (along with some fun mixed in – Robot Rodeo anyone?). Most importantly, it has around a million square feet of space. Here’s how it compares to other top museums:
But unlike every other museum in the world where exhibits are carved up into a series of halls, almost all of them could be visible in a giant 360-degree panorama while standing on the floor of the Astrodome. How amazing would that space be?
The cost, you ask? Easily in the hundreds of millions. But if LA can come up with $1.2 billion to build the Getty Museum, I have no doubt that Houston can muster the needed resources. It’s a tiny fraction of the wealth of Houston’s 14 philanthropic billionaires, much less the broader base of wealth in this booming city. We can come together to make this happen before the Astrodome’s 50th birthday in 2015, and it can put us on a path to greatness for our bicentennial in 2036 that Houston’s and Texas’ founding fathers could never have imagined.
We, the citizens of Houston, aren’t the types to get complacent and rest on our laurels. That’s not the legacy previous generations left us. It’s time to step forward and tackle our next great challenge. Are you in?
Tory Gattis is a Social Systems Architect, consultant and entrepreneur with a genuine love of his hometown Houston and its people. He covers a wide range of Houston topics at Houston Strategies – including transportation, transit, quality-of-life, city identity, and development and land-use regulations – and have published numerous Houston Chronicle op-eds on these topics.
In an election year, politics dominates the news, but economics continue to shape people’s lives. Looking ahead to 2012 and beyond, it is clear that the United States is essentially made up of many economies, each with distinctly different short- and long-term prospects. We have highlighted the five regions that are most poised to flourish and help boost the national economy.
Our list assumes that we will be living in a post-stimulus environment. Even if President Obama is re-elected, it will largely be the result of the unattractive nature of his opposition as opposed to his economic policies. And given it is unlikely the Democrats will regain the House — and they could still lose the Senate — we are unlikely to see anything like the massive spending associated with Obama’s first two years in office.
Clearly the stimulus helped prop up certain regions, such as New York City, Washington and various university towns, which benefited from the financial bailout, lax fiscal discipline and grants to research institutions. But in the foreseeable future, fundamental economic competitiveness will be more important. Global market forces will prove more decisive than grand academic visions.
With that in mind, here are our five regions to watch in 2012.
1. The Energy Belt. Even if Europe falls into recession, demand from China and other developing countries, as well as threats from Iran to cut off the Persian Gulf, will keep energy prices high. While this is bad news for millions of consumers, it could be a great boon to a host of energy-rich regions, particularly in Texas, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Montana, Louisiana and Wyoming. New technologies that allow for greater production require higher prices than more conventional methods — roughly $70 a barrel — and most experts expect prices to stay above $100 for the next year.
Goldman Sachs recently predicted that the U.S. will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2017. The bounty is so great that the key energy-producing states have consistently out-performed the national average in terms of job and income growth. Houston, the nation’s energy capital, has enjoyed the fastest growth in per-capita income in the past decade. No reason to expect this to slow down much this year.
Energy growth, notes Bill Gilmer, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, also sparks “upstream” expansion in a host of other industries, such as chemicals and plastics. Massive new expansions to serve the industry are being planned not only in Texas and Louisiana but in former rust belt states, including now gas-rich Ohio. The big exception is oil-rich California, which seems determined to keep its fossil fuels — and the growth they could drive — out of mind and underground.
2. The Agricultural Heartland. You don’t have to have oil or gas to enjoy a strong economy. Omaha, Neb., is not in the energy belt, but its strong agriculture-based economy keeps its unemployment rate well under 5%. Demand from developing countries — especially China, which is expected to supplant Canada as our No. 1 agricultural market — should boost the nation’s farm income to a record $341 billion.
Most of the increased product demand lies in commodities like soybeans, corn, barley, rice and cotton. Contrary to the assumptions of East Coast magazines such as The Atlantic, which paint a picture of a devastated and dumb rural America, places like Iowa are doing very well indeed and are likely to continue doing so. Urban economies like Des Moines are also benefiting and expanding into finance and other non-farm related activities. The once massive out-migration from the region has slowed to something like a balance, with increasingly strong in-migration from places like Illinois and California.
3. The New Foundry. The revival of Great Lakes manufacturing is one of the heartening stories of the past year, but the biggest beneficiaries of American manufacturing’s revival will likely be in the Southeast and along the Texas corridor connected to Mexico. Future big growth will not come from bailed-out General Motors or Chrysler, with their legacy costs and still-struggling quality issues, but from foreign makers — Japanese, German and increasingly Korean — that build highly rated, energy-efficient vehicles. These countries are not just investing in cars; they also have placed steel mills and aerospace facilities in the rising south-facing foundry.
Foreign companies have good reasons to look to an expanded U.S. base: aging domestic markets, diminishing workforces and a growing concern over China’s tendency to steal technology and favor state-owned firms. This shift from domestic production has been building for years, in large part due to familiar reasons of less unionization and lower business costs. Of the ten foreign auto assembly plants opened or announced between 1997 and 2008, eight were in Southern right-to-work states. As the recovery has taken hold, new expansions are being announced. In 2011 Toyota opened a new plant in the tiny hamlet of Blue Springs, Miss., just 17 miles from Elvis’ hometown of Tupelo, while Mercedes-Benz announced $350 million to add capacity to its plant just outside of Tuscaloosa.
4. The Technosphere. Silicon Valley, as well as the Boston area, has thrived under the stimulus, and worldwide demand for technology products will continue to spark some growth in those areas. Over the past year, San Jose-Silicon Valley, Boston and Seattle all stood in the top five in job creation among the country’s 32 largest metro areas. The coming IPO for Facebook and other Valley companies may heighten the tech sector’s already smug sense of well-being.
Unfortunately for the rest of California, and even more blue-collar Bay Area communities like San Jose and Oakland, high costs and an unfavorable regulatory environment will keep this bubble geographically constrained. Historic patterns, particularly over the past decade, suggest that as the core tech companies expand, they are likely to head to business-friendly places such as Salt Lake City, Raleigh and Columbus, Ohio, which have picked up both tech companies and educated migrants from California.
5. The Pacific Northwest. This is one blue region in the country with excellent prospects. For one thing, both Washington and Oregon enjoy considerable in-migration, in sharp contrast to New York, California and Illinois. They also have a more varied economy than Silicon Valley, with strong companies connected to retail (Amazon, Costco and Starbucks), aerospace (Boeing) and software (Microsoft).
The Seattle region, home to all these companies, is the real standout. It ranked first on our recent list of technology regions and third in industrial manufacturing, a trend likely to continue as Boeing expands production of its new 787 Dreamliner. The business climate and the housing costs are somewhat challenging, but more favorable than in California. The Bay Area and Los Angeles continue to send large numbers of migrants to the Puget Sound region. Over the long term, the area also benefits from possessing ample cheap renewable energy (mostly hydro) and water, which are both in short supply elsewhere.
These scenarios, of course, could be changed by either world events — such as an unexpected crash in the Chinese economy — or a stunning Democratic sweep in 2012 that would occasion another round of Obamaian stimulus and ever more heavy-handed regulation. Yet barring such developments, expect the back to basics economy to continue enriching these regions best positioned to take advantage of it.
This piece also appeared at Forbes.com.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and contributing editor to the City Journal in New York. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.
For a generation American manufacturing has been widely seen as a “declining sport.” Yet its demise has been largely overplayed. Despite the many jobs this sector has lost in the past generation, manufacturing remains remarkably resilient, with a global market share similar to that of the 1970s.
More recently, the U.S. industrial base has been on a powerful upswing, with employment climbing steadily since 2009. Boosted by productivity gains and higher costs in competitors, including China, U.S. manufacturing exports have grown at their fastest rate since the late 1980s. In 2011 American manufacturing continued to expand, while Germany, Japan and Brazil all weakened in this vital sector.
To determine the best cities for manufacturing my colleague Mark Schill at Praxis Strategy Group measured the 51 largest regions in the country in terms of how they expanded their “heavy metal” sector — think automobiles, farm and energy equipment, aircraft, metal work and machine shops. We averaged absolute growth rate and momentum in 148 heavy metal manufacturing industries over ten-, five-, two-, and one-year time frames.
Our top ranked area, Houston, is one of only four regions that enjoyed net job growth in manufacturing in the past 10 years. This year its heavy manufacturing sector expanded by almost 5%. Houston’s industrial growth is no fluke; over the past year its overall job growth has been about the best among all the nation’s major metros.
Houston’s industrial success owes much to the city’s massive port and booming energy sector, says Bill Gilmer, senior economist at the Federal Reserve office of Dallas. “Houston is about energy — it’s about fabricated metals and machinery,” he says. “It’s oil service supply and petrochemicals. It’s all paced by a high price of oil and new technology that makes it more accessible.”
This shift towards domestic energy augurs well for a huge and economically beneficial shift in America’s longer term economic prospects, he points out. Cheap natural gas, for example, makes petrochemical production in America more competitive than anyone could have imagined a decade ago. Linkages with Mexico in terms of energy as well as autos has made Texas — which is also home to No. 4 ranked San Antonio and No. 15 ranked Dallas — the nation’s primary export super-power, with current shipment 15% to 20% above pre-crisis levels.
The energy and industry connection also can be seen in No. 10 Oklahoma City, where heavy industry has been booming through much of the recession due to its strong fossil fuel industry. This synergy between energy and manufacturing could also spread to other regions, including many not associated with large fossil fuel deposits New finds in the Utica shale in Ohio, for example, could be worth as much as $500 billion; one energy executive called it “the biggest thing to hit Ohio since the plow.”
These gas finds may help ignite the heavy metal revival. As coal-fired plants become more expensive to operate due to concerns over greenhouse gas emissions, the region will have a new, cleaner and potentially less expensive power source.
Already the boom in natural gas has sparked a considerable industrial rebound in parts of eastern Ohio including the building of a new $650 million steel plant for gas pipes in the Youngstown area. Karen Wright, whose Ariel Corporation sells compressors used in gas plants, has added more than 300 positions in the past two years. “There’s a huge amount of drilling throughout the Midwest,” Wright says. “This is a game changer.”
But the industrial rebound is not only about energy. Another critical factor is rising wages in East Asia, including China. Increasingly, American-based manufacturing is in a favored position as a lower-cost producer. Concerns over “knock offs” and lack of patent protection in China may also spark a growing “Made in the USA” trend.
The shift back to U.S. production may be a great sign for many regions. Our No. 3 ranked area, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, is picking up heavy metal jobs associated with the aerospace industry. A growing focus on domestic production for Boeing’s new aircraft could bring even more prosperity to the high-flying region, which also ranked No. 1 on our recent technology industry growth ranking.
If new industrial growth is just another piece of good news in the Pacific Northwest, it’s manna from heaven to the long suffering industrial heartland heavily concentrated in the Great Lakes region, which includes much of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois , Wisconsin and Minnesota. Long reviled as the “rust belt” this area now leads in the industrial rebound with over 100,000 new manufacturing jobs in just the past year.
Particularly well positioned is No. 2 ranked Milwaukee, which is home to a wide array of specialized manufacturing firms ranging from machine tools to energy. Over the past year alone the region added almost 3900 heavy metal jobs and has consistently led other Great Lakes communities in job creation.
But Milwaukee is not the only rust belt rebound town. The greater Detroit area, No. 6 on our list, actually added the most heavy metal jobs — more than 12,000 — than any region of the country. The area’s ranking, however, was dragged down by its legacy; greater Detroit still has lost almost 130,000 positions in the past decade.
The heavy metal revival has a long way to go. And we cannot expect it to produce the same kinds of jobs produced in the last century. For example, the new jobs will be more highly skilled; even as the share of the workforce employed in manufacturing has dropped from 20% to roughly half that, high skilled jobs in industry have soared 37%, according to a New York fed study.
Regions seeking strong industrial growth will have to focus more and more on training more skilled workers. Even after years of declining employment and surplus numbers of graduates in the arts and law, manufacturers in heavy industry are running short on skilled workers. Industry expert David Cole predicts there could be demand for 100,000 new workers by 2013. According to Deloitte Touche, 83% of all manufacturers suffer a moderate or severe shortage of skilled production workers.
The resurgence of heavy metal should lead regions, and the federal government, to consider shifting their emphasis toward productive, skilled based training and away from a single-minded focus on the BA or graduate degree. Few regions suffer a shortage of art history or English graduates. This more practical emphasis is particularly critical for the Midwest, which is home to four of the ten highest-ranked industrial engineering schools in the nation.
Even more important: training workers for the assembly lines of tomorrow. These jobs, notes Ariel’s Karen Wright, will require not BA degrees but high degrees of math and mechanical skills that can be apply to expanding companies like hers.
As we enter a new economic era, regions should look beyond the current obsession with “creative” and “information” industries. Instead, they should focus on a resurgent industrial economy — which then can provide a customer base for advertising, graphics and software companies — as a primary driver of economic growth. Turn down those soulful Adele tracks: Heavy metal is back.
| The Top Regions for Heavy Metal | ||
| Manufacturing Job Growth | ||
|
Score consists of 10, 5, 2, and 1 year job growth rate and job momentum and 2011 industry concentration. |
||
| Rank | MSA Name | Score |
| 1 | Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX | 68.5 |
| 2 | Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI | 65.6 |
| 3 | Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 64.7 |
| 4 | San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX | 60.7 |
| 5 | Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC | 60.4 |
| 6 | Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI | 58.2 |
| 7 | Kansas City, MO-KS | 56.3 |
| 8 | Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT | 56.1 |
| 9 | Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA | 54.4 |
| 10 | Oklahoma City, OK | 53.3 |
| 11 | Pittsburgh, PA | 53.2 |
| 12 | Salt Lake City, UT | 52.6 |
| 13 | Richmond, VA | 52.0 |
| 14 | Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA | 51.8 |
| 15 | Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 51.5 |
| 16 | Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN | 51.3 |
| 17 | Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH | 51.3 |
| 18 | San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA | 50.5 |
| 19 | Raleigh-Cary, NC | 50.1 |
| 20 | San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 48.7 |
| 21 | Birmingham-Hoover, AL | 48.0 |
| 22 | Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 47.9 |
| 23 | Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA | 47.6 |
| 24 | Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN | 47.3 |
| 25 | Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX | 47.2 |
| 26 | St. Louis, MO-IL | 46.8 |
| 27 | Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | 46.7 |
| 28 | Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC | 46.2 |
| 29 | Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO | 45.7 |
| 30 | Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH | 44.9 |
| 31 | Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI | 44.6 |
| 32 | Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 44.0 |
| 33 | Memphis, TN-MS-AR | 43.9 |
| 34 | Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 42.9 |
| 35 | Indianapolis-Carmel, IN | 42.9 |
| 36 | Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA | 42.9 |
| 37 | Rochester, NY | 42.3 |
| 38 | Columbus, OH | 42.2 |
| 39 | Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ | 41.9 |
| 40 | Jacksonville, FL | 41.1 |
| 41 | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA | 40.2 |
| 42 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL | 40.1 |
| 43 | Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN | 39.8 |
| 44 | Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 39.1 |
| 45 | Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY | 38.7 |
| 46 | Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 37.9 |
| 47 | New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA | 35.7 |
| 48 | Baltimore-Towson, MD | 34.3 |
| 49 | Las Vegas-Paradise, NV | 31.0 |
| 50 | New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA | 30.1 |
| 51 | San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 24.5 |
| Analysis includes job data from 148 six-digit NAICS industry sectors covering Primary Metal Manufacturing (NAICS 331), Fabricated Metal Manufacturing (332), Machinery Manufacturing (333) and Transportation Equipment Manufacturing (336). | ||
| Data Source: EMSI Complete Employment, 2011.4 | ||
This piece first appeared at Forbes.com.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and contributing editor to the City Journal in New York. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.
Mark Schill of Praxis Strategy Group perfomed the economic analysis for this piece.
Photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com.
As we indicated in the last article, solo automobile commuting reached an all time record in the United States in 2010, increasing by 7.8 million commuters. At the same time, huge losses were sustained by carpooling, while the largest gain was in working at home, which includes telecommuting. Transit and bicycling also added commuters. This continues many of the basic trends toward more personalized employment access that we have seen since 1960.
Solo Automobile Commuting: Among the nation’s 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1 million population, 38 experienced increases in solo automobile commuting between 2000 and 2010. More than 80% of commuting is by solo automobile in 25 of the 51 largest metropolitan areas, with the highest rates being in Birmingham, Detroit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Kansas City. Another 28 metropolitan areas have single automobile commute shares of between 70% and 80%, with Boston, Washington and San Francisco between 60% and 70%. As would be expected, the lowest solo automobile commute share was in New York at 51%.
Car Pools: The national data also showed a nearly 2.4 million loss in carpool use. The losses were pervasive, occurring in all 51 metropolitan areas. Riverside-San Bernardino had the highest carpool market share at just under 15%, while all other major metropolitan areas were below 12%. Car pools have been losing market share for decades.
Work at Home (Includes Telecommuting): In what we have previously labeled as The Decade of the Telecommute, the nation experienced a 1.7 million increase in working at home over the past decade. The market share gains in working at home were as pervasive as the losses in carpooling, with all 51 metropolitan areas registering increases. Austin had the strongest work-at-home market share, at 7.3%, followed by Portland at 6.5%, San Francisco and Denver at 6.2%, Phoenix at 6.0%, with San Diego, Raleigh and Atlanta above 5.5%. Overall, working at home exceeded transit commuting in 37 major metropolitan areas out of 51 in 2010, up from 27 in 2000. Three metropolitan areas had work at home market shares of less than 3%, including Memphis, New Orleans and last place Buffalo.
Transit: As noted before, transit enjoyed its first 10 year gain since journey to work data was first collected by the Census Bureau 50 years ago. Overall, transit added 900,000 daily commuters, roughly half that for telecommuters. Transit’s market share increased in 25 of the top 51 metropolitan areas. It is also notable that in a number of the metropolitan areas with the largest expenditures for new rail systems, there were either losses or commuting gains were concentrated in the more flexible bus services.
New York: As so often has been the case, transit was largely a "New York story." More than one half of the new transit commuters were in the New York metropolitan area, more than 450,000 of the 900,000 increase. New York boasts by far the most extensive transit system in the nation, which serves the second largest central business district in the world and by far the nation’s most important. In 2000, New York had a transit work trip market share of 27.4%. By 2010, New York’s transit work trip market share had risen to 30.7%, more than double that of any other metropolitan area. More than 70% of the new transit commuters in the New York area were on its subway (Metro), suburban rail and light rail systems.
San Francisco: San Francisco retained its position as the second strongest transit metropolitan area, with a 14.6% work trip market share in 2010. This is up from 13.8% in 2000.
Washington: Washington was the third strongest transit commuting market, with a 14.0% work trip market share in 2010. This modest increase from 13.4% nonetheless produced the second largest ridership increase in the nation, at more than 130,000. This reflects the strength of Washington’s job market over the decade. Rail ridership accounted for 53% of this increase, while buses accounted for the other 47%.
Boston and Chicago: Boston passed Chicago to become the fourth strongest transit market, at 11.8% in 2010. This is an increase from 11.2% in 2000. Chicago ranked fifth at 11.2%, a small reduction from the 11.3% in 2000.
Los Angeles: Los Angeles had the third largest increase in transit commuting, adding 60,000 daily transit commuters. Approximately 75% of these new commuters were attracted by the region’s extensive bus system as opposed to its very expensive but limited rail system. This increase placed Los Angeles in a virtual tie with Portland, with a work trip market share of 6.2%.
Portland: Portland continued to experience its now 30 year transit market share erosion, despite having added three new light rail lines between 2000 and 2010. Portland’s transit work trip market share fell to 6.2% from 6.3% and now trails the work at home and telecommute market share of 6.5%.
Seattle:Seattle added 29,000 new transit commuters for the fourth strongest growth in the nation. Approximately 75% of the new commuters were on the metropolitan area’s bus system.
Atlanta: Atlanta, which is home to the third largest postwar Metro system in the nation (MARTA) gained nearly 9000 new transit commuters, all of them on the bus, while losing more than 3000 rail commuters.
Miami:Miami added 16,000 new transit commuters, though more than 90% were attracted to the bus system, rather than the rail services.
Rail and Bus in Texas: Other metropolitan areas with new and expanded rail systems did not fare as well. In Dallas-Fort Worth, the light rail system was more than doubled in length, yet there was a reduction of more than 3000 daily transit commuters. The transit work trip market share in Dallas-Fort Worth dropped from 1.8% to 1.4%, approximately one quarter lower than that of any other major metropolitan area with a new light rail or Metro system. Houston, which built its first light rail line during the period, lost nearly 3000 daily transit commuters, with its transit work trip market share dropping by nearly one-third, from 3.2% to 2.3%. By contrast, the third largest metropolitan area in Texas, San Antonio, lost no commuters from its bus only transit system.
Other New Rail Metropolitan Areas: Other metropolitan areas with new rail systems experienced modest ridership increases, with 60 to 70 percent of the increase on the bus systems in Charlotte, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Phoenix. Salt Lake City experienced a small decline in transit commuting.
Below 1 Percent: Four metropolitan areas had transit work trip market shares of less than 1%, including Indianapolis, Raleigh, Birmingham and last place Oklahoma City, with a market share of 0.4%.
Bicycles: It was also a good decade for bicycle commuting, with the national increase of nearly 250,000. The bicycle commuting market share rose in 45 of the 51 largest metropolitan areas. Portland had the highest bicycle market share at 2.2%, with three other metropolitan areas at 1.5% or above, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose. The lowest bicycle commuting market shares were in San Antonio, Cincinnati, Birmingham and Memphis, all at 0.1 percent.
Walking: There was little change in walking among the nations major metropolitan areas. The largest shares were in New York (5.9%) and Boston (5.4%), with the smallest shares in Raleigh (1.1%), Orlando (1.1%) and Birmingham (1.0%).
Drifting Away from Shared Commuting: In some ways, the 2000s were different than previous decades, especially with the reversals in bicycle commuting and transit. However, overall, shared ride commuting (transit and car pools) lost share due to the precipitous decline in car pooling. Longer term share increase trends also continued in single-occupant automobile commuting and working at home. The bottom line: personal employment access (personal mobility plus working at home) continues to carve away at the smallish share still held by shared commuting.
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Data: The 2000 and 2010 commuting market shares by mode are shown in Tables 1 and 2 (2010 metropolitan area boundaries).
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| Table 1 | |||||||
| Work Trip Market Share: 2000 | |||||||
| Metropolitan Areas Over 1,000,000 Population in 2010 | |||||||
| Metropolitan Area | Car, Truck or Van: Alone | Car/Van Pool | Transit | Bicycle | Walk | Other | Work at Home (Includes Telecommute) |
| Atlanta | 77.0% | 13.7% | 3.4% | 0.1% | 1.3% | 1.1% | 3.5% |
| Austin | 76.5% | 13.7% | 2.5% | 0.6% | 2.1% | 1.1% | 3.6% |
| Baltimore | 75.5% | 11.5% | 5.9% | 0.2% | 2.9% | 0.9% | 3.2% |
| Birmingham | 83.3% | 12.0% | 0.7% | 0.1% | 1.2% | 0.7% | 2.1% |
| Boston | 71.1% | 8.6% | 11.2% | 0.5% | 4.6% | 0.8% | 3.3% |
| Buffalo | 81.7% | 9.4% | 3.3% | 0.2% | 2.7% | 0.5% | 2.1% |
| Charlotte | 80.7% | 12.8% | 1.4% | 0.1% | 1.2% | 0.8% | 2.9% |
| Chicago | 70.4% | 11.0% | 11.3% | 0.3% | 3.1% | 1.0% | 2.9% |
| Cincinnati | 81.3% | 10.1% | 2.8% | 0.1% | 2.3% | 0.6% | 2.7% |
| Cleveland | 81.3% | 8.8% | 4.1% | 0.2% | 2.2% | 0.6% | 2.7% |
| Columbus | 82.1% | 9.7% | 2.1% | 0.2% | 2.3% | 0.6% | 3.0% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | 78.7% | 13.9% | 1.8% | 0.1% | 1.5% | 1.0% | 3.0% |
| Denver | 76.0% | 11.7% | 4.4% | 0.4% | 2.1% | 0.8% | 4.6% |
| Detroit | 84.7% | 9.2% | 1.7% | 0.1% | 1.4% | 0.6% | 2.2% |
| Hartford | 82.6% | 8.7% | 2.8% | 0.2% | 2.5% | 0.6% | 2.6% |
| Houston | 77.0% | 14.3% | 3.2% | 0.3% | 1.6% | 1.1% | 2.5% |
| Indianapolis | 82.8% | 10.4% | 1.3% | 0.2% | 1.7% | 0.7% | 3.0% |
| Jacksonville | 80.3% | 12.6% | 1.3% | 0.5% | 1.7% | 1.4% | 2.3% |
| Kansas City | 82.6% | 10.6% | 1.2% | 0.1% | 1.4% | 0.7% | 3.5% |
| Las Vegas | 74.6% | 14.7% | 4.4% | 0.5% | 2.3% | 1.3% | 2.3% |
| Los Angeles | 71.9% | 14.6% | 5.6% | 0.7% | 2.7% | 1.0% | 3.5% |
| Louisville | 81.8% | 11.2% | 2.0% | 0.2% | 1.7% | 0.7% | 2.5% |
| Memphis | 80.7% | 13.3% | 1.6% | 0.1% | 1.3% | 0.9% | 2.2% |
| Miami-West Palm Beach | 77.3% | 13.1% | 3.2% | 0.5% | 1.7% | 1.2% | 3.1% |
| Milwaukee | 79.7% | 9.9% | 4.2% | 0.2% | 2.9% | 0.6% | 2.6% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul | 78.3% | 10.0% | 4.4% | 0.4% | 2.4% | 0.6% | 3.8% |
| Nashville | 80.5% | 13.1% | 0.8% | 0.1% | 1.5% | 0.8% | 3.2% |
| New Orleans | 72.9% | 14.6% | 5.4% | 0.6% | 2.7% | 1.3% | 2.4% |
| New York | 52.7% | 9.3% | 27.4% | 0.3% | 6.0% | 1.5% | 2.9% |
| Oklahoma City | 81.6% | 12.1% | 0.5% | 0.2% | 1.7% | 1.0% | 2.9% |
| Orlando | 80.6% | 12.1% | 1.6% | 0.4% | 1.3% | 1.1% | 2.9% |
| Philadelphia | 73.1% | 10.2% | 8.9% | 0.3% | 3.9% | 0.7% | 2.9% |
| Phoenix | 74.6% | 15.3% | 1.9% | 0.9% | 2.1% | 1.4% | 3.7% |
| Pittsburgh | 77.5% | 9.8% | 5.9% | 0.1% | 3.6% | 0.6% | 2.5% |
| Portland | 73.1% | 11.5% | 6.3% | 0.8% | 2.9% | 0.8% | 4.6% |
| Providence | 80.7% | 10.5% | 2.4% | 0.2% | 3.3% | 0.8% | 2.2% |
| Raleigh | 80.8% | 12.1% | 0.9% | 0.2% | 1.6% | 1.0% | 3.5% |
| Richmond | 81.7% | 10.9% | 1.9% | 0.2% | 1.8% | 0.8% | 2.7% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino | 73.5% | 17.6% | 1.6% | 0.5% | 2.2% | 1.2% | 3.5% |
| Rochester | 81.7% | 9.1% | 2.0% | 0.2% | 3.5% | 0.6% | 2.9% |
| Sacramento | 75.3% | 13.5% | 2.7% | 1.4% | 2.2% | 0.9% | 4.0% |
| Salt Lake City | 76.0% | 13.4% | 3.3% | 0.5% | 2.1% | 0.7% | 4.0% |
| San Antonio | 76.2% | 14.9% | 2.7% | 0.1% | 2.4% | 1.2% | 2.6% |
| San Diego | 73.9% | 13.0% | 3.3% | 0.6% | 3.4% | 1.4% | 4.4% |
| San Francisco-Oakland | 62.8% | 12.7% | 13.8% | 1.1% | 3.9% | 1.3% | 4.3% |
| San Jose | 77.2% | 12.4% | 3.4% | 1.2% | 1.8% | 0.9% | 3.1% |
| Seattle | 71.6% | 12.7% | 7.0% | 0.6% | 3.1% | 0.8% | 4.2% |
| St. Louis | 82.5% | 10.0% | 2.2% | 0.1% | 1.7% | 0.6% | 2.9% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg | 79.7% | 12.4% | 1.3% | 0.6% | 1.7% | 1.2% | 3.1% |
| Virginia Beach-Norfolk | 78.8% | 12.1% | 1.7% | 0.3% | 2.7% | 1.6% | 2.7% |
| Washington | 67.5% | 13.4% | 11.2% | 0.3% | 3.0% | 0.9% | 3.7% |
| Top 51 Metropolitan Areas | 73.2% | 11.8% | 7.5% | 0.4% | 2.9% | 1.0% | 3.2% |
| Calculated from Census Bureau data | |||||||
| Metropolitan areas as defined in 2010 | |||||||
| Table 2 | |||||||
| Work Trip Market Share: 2010 | |||||||
| Metropolitan Areas Over 1,000,000 Population in 2010 | |||||||
| Car, Truck or Van: Alone | Car/Van Pool | Transit | Bicycle | Walk | Other | Work at Home (Includes Telecommute) | |
| Atlanta | 77.6% | 10.3% | 3.4% | 0.2% | 1.3% | 1.5% | 5.8% |
| Austin | 75.6% | 10.5% | 2.3% | 0.6% | 1.9% | 1.8% | 7.3% |
| Baltimore | 76.5% | 9.6% | 6.0% | 0.2% | 2.6% | 1.0% | 4.1% |
| Birmingham | 84.8% | 10.0% | 0.6% | 0.1% | 1.0% | 0.5% | 3.1% |
| Boston | 69.5% | 7.5% | 11.8% | 0.7% | 5.4% | 0.8% | 4.4% |
| Buffalo | 82.0% | 7.5% | 3.8% | 0.3% | 3.0% | 1.1% | 2.3% |
| Charlotte | 80.6% | 10.0% | 2.0% | 0.2% | 1.5% | 0.6% | 5.1% |
| Chicago | 71.0% | 8.5% | 11.2% | 0.6% | 3.1% | 1.0% | 4.5% |
| Cincinnati | 84.1% | 7.9% | 2.1% | 0.1% | 2.0% | 0.4% | 3.4% |
| Cleveland | 82.3% | 7.2% | 3.6% | 0.3% | 2.2% | 0.7% | 3.7% |
| Columbus | 82.4% | 8.0% | 1.7% | 0.5% | 2.3% | 0.6% | 4.6% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | 81.3% | 10.1% | 1.4% | 0.2% | 1.2% | 1.4% | 4.6% |
| Denver | 76.3% | 9.6% | 4.1% | 0.8% | 1.9% | 1.1% | 6.2% |
| Detroit | 84.6% | 8.5% | 1.5% | 0.2% | 1.4% | 0.8% | 3.0% |
| Hartford | 81.5% | 7.9% | 3.1% | 0.3% | 3.0% | 1.0% | 3.2% |
| Houston | 79.4% | 11.5% | 2.3% | 0.3% | 1.4% | 1.7% | 3.4% |
| Indianapolis | 83.9% | 8.2% | 0.9% | 0.3% | 1.5% | 0.8% | 4.3% |
| Jacksonville | 82.5% | 8.9% | 1.0% | 0.5% | 1.4% | 1.2% | 4.5% |
| Kansas City | 83.7% | 8.5% | 1.2% | 0.2% | 1.4% | 0.9% | 4.1% |
| Las Vegas | 78.9% | 10.5% | 3.8% | 0.6% | 1.6% | 1.3% | 3.3% |
| Los Angeles | 73.5% | 10.7% | 6.2% | 0.9% | 2.6% | 1.2% | 5.0% |
| Louisville | 83.5% | 9.2% | 1.9% | 0.2% | 1.3% | 0.9% | 3.1% |
| Memphis | 83.6% | 10.3% | 1.0% | 0.1% | 1.5% | 0.9% | 2.7% |
| Miami-West Palm Beach | 78.8% | 9.4% | 3.5% | 0.6% | 2.0% | 1.4% | 4.4% |
| Milwaukee | 80.1% | 9.3% | 3.4% | 0.5% | 2.6% | 0.7% | 3.4% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul | 78.3% | 7.9% | 4.8% | 0.7% | 2.4% | 0.9% | 4.9% |
| Nashville | 81.3% | 10.7% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 1.2% | 1.0% | 4.6% |
| New Orleans | 78.1% | 11.0% | 3.2% | 0.7% | 2.6% | 1.9% | 2.5% |
| New York | 50.5% | 6.8% | 30.7% | 0.5% | 5.9% | 1.6% | 3.9% |
| Oklahoma City | 82.7% | 10.6% | 0.5% | 0.3% | 1.6% | 1.0% | 3.4% |
| Orlando | 82.1% | 9.2% | 1.6% | 0.3% | 1.1% | 1.4% | 4.4% |
| Philadelphia | 73.9% | 8.0% | 9.6% | 0.5% | 3.5% | 0.8% | 3.8% |
| Phoenix | 76.7% | 11.8% | 2.0% | 0.6% | 1.5% | 1.5% | 6.0% |
| Pittsburgh | 77.0% | 8.9% | 5.6% | 0.3% | 3.7% | 0.9% | 3.5% |
| Portland | 72.1% | 8.8% | 6.2% | 2.2% | 3.3% | 0.9% | 6.5% |
| Providence | 81.3% | 8.3% | 2.6% | 0.5% | 3.2% | 0.9% | 3.2% |
| Raleigh | 82.0% | 8.7% | 0.9% | 0.3% | 1.1% | 1.1% | 5.9% |
| Richmond | 81.2% | 10.1% | 1.8% | 0.4% | 1.2% | 0.7% | 4.6% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino | 76.1% | 14.8% | 1.7% | 0.4% | 1.8% | 1.4% | 3.8% |
| Rochester | 82.6% | 7.1% | 1.8% | 0.4% | 3.9% | 0.7% | 3.6% |
| Sacramento | 75.6% | 11.2% | 2.9% | 1.7% | 1.9% | 1.1% | 5.5% |
| Salt Lake City | 77.7% | 11.3% | 2.9% | 0.8% | 2.3% | 1.0% | 4.0% |
| San Antonio | 79.5% | 11.5% | 2.1% | 0.1% | 2.0% | 1.4% | 3.3% |
| San Diego | 76.2% | 10.1% | 3.3% | 0.8% | 2.8% | 1.0% | 5.9% |
| San Francisco-Oakland | 61.5% | 10.6% | 14.6% | 1.7% | 4.2% | 1.2% | 6.2% |
| San Jose | 77.5% | 10.3% | 2.9% | 1.6% | 1.8% | 0.9% | 5.1% |
| Seattle | 70.5% | 10.2% | 8.2% | 1.1% | 3.5% | 1.0% | 5.5% |
| St. Louis | 83.0% | 7.7% | 2.6% | 0.2% | 1.9% | 0.8% | 3.7% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg | 80.3% | 9.5% | 1.6% | 0.8% | 1.4% | 1.4% | 5.0% |
| Virginia Beach-Norfolk | 80.9% | 9.4% | 1.8% | 0.5% | 3.3% | 0.9% | 3.1% |
| Washington | 65.6% | 10.6% | 14.0% | 0.5% | 3.5% | 1.0% | 4.9% |
| Top 51 Metropolitan Areas | 73.7% | 9.4% | 7.9% | 0.6% | 2.8% | 1.2% | 4.4% |
| Calculated from Census Bureau data | |||||||
| Metropolitan areas as defined in 2010 | |||||||
Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”
Photo: Manhattan (New York), with the Woolworth Building in the distance (by author)
Despite the success of the Main St. line, I’ve been concerned for a long time now that the next set of rail lines will essentially bankrupt Metro while providing minimal benefit (except for possibly the Universities line, which has moderate benefits, but may not get built anytime soon because of the money drain of the other lines being built first). Now the Coalition On Sustainable Transportation (COST) has come out with the numbers from other cities (especially Dallas) that don’t bode well for Houston at all. Some key excerpts (I know it’s a lot, but there are some really good points in here):
For example: Dallas will pay increasing debt service for many years and has 30 plus year bonds and commercial paper for its almost $4 billion of debt. Their debt service is considered annual operating costs in the chart below, because: By the time current bonds are paid, the rail system will be at the end of its service life and will need replacement through the creation of a new round of bonds, continuing this high bond expense for as long as the system operates. While other Texas cities have not yet reached this Dallas level of bond debt and expense, Houston is rapidly moving in the same direction and Austin’s planning is pointing in this direction. Currently Dallas’s debt service is about 3 times Houston’s and almost 40 times Austin’s.
…
One may look at the data in the table above in many ways, but, none of the conclusions seem to be positive for rail transit. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin are all among the top 20 fastest growing major cities in the nation. However, the three cities with various levels of rail transit, Dallas, Houston and Austin, all have declining transit ridership trends and have fewer absolute transit riders today than they had a dozen years ago. They have spent billions to implement and promote transit with a heavy focus on rail transit.
…
These data highlight a number of broader Texas Metro Area negative transit trends:
1. Metro areas with more rail transit have significantly higher costs and higher taxpayer subsidies per ride.
2. Metro areas with more rail transit have fewer total transit boardings per capita.
3. Metro areas with higher densities have fewer transit riders (boardings) per capita.
4. Dallas has the largest population and greatest population density but the least cost effective transit system: Higher cost per ride (boarding) and fewer boardings per capita.
5. Increasing the proportion of a region’s transit funds being spent on rail transit leads to less cost effective overall transit and degraded transit for the majority of transit riders who still ride busses.
Some Major Texas City Metro Areas comparisons/observations regarding transit data:
1. Dallas-Ft. Worth Metro’s population is more than 3 times San Antonio’s and Dallas’ annual transit operating expense is 4.4 times San Antonio’s but Dallas has only 1.6 times the transit ridership of San Antonio.
2. Dallas-Ft. Worth Metro’s population is 3.8 times that of Austin and Dallas’ annual transit operating expense is 3.7 times the transit expense of Austin but Dallas-Ft. Worth has only 1.9 times Austin’s ridership.
3. Dallas has the most invested, more than $4 billion, in light rail and it has the highest cost per transit ride at 2.8 times San Antonio’s costs and almost 2 times Austin’s. Dallas has the least boardings per capita, about one-half of San Antonio and Austin.
4. San Antonio’s bus only transit system has 1.2 times Austin’s ridership but only 82% of Austin’s annual operating expense.
5. San Antonio’s ‘cost per transit rider’ is about one-third of Dallas-Ft. Worth’s and San Antonio has 2 times as many transit riders per capita as Dallas-Ft Worth.
6. Dallas’ 2011 net debt service (principal and interest) budget of $153 million is greater than San Antonio’s total 2011 budgeted operating costs of $141.3 million and almost as much as Austin’s $168.2 million.
…
It is no surprise that Dallas has hit a transit financial wall causing it to pause and curtail, at least temporarily, further light rail expansion. It seems, the more light rail Dallas implements, the more inefficient and expensive its transit becomes. This is an often occurring trend when regions implement rail transit and is a serious problem trend now developing in Houston and Austin. The result is overall degradation of transit service as exorbitantly expensive rail transit and resulting debt absorb increasingly higher percentages of transit funds. This, in turn, results in increasing transit fares and reductions in bus service which have disproportionately negative quality-of-life impacts on lower income citizens. Almost everyone forgets that the majority of transit riders still ride busses even after such massive investments in rail transit such as in Dallas or in Portland, the Mecca of train transit, where well over one-half of the transit rides are on busses. More importantly, this wasteful spending on ineffective trains ‘bleeds dry’ taxpayer funds which could be used to make positive contributions in serving communities’ many, higher priority needs for all citizens. (like express commuter bus services from all neighborhoods to all job centers, as I’ve been advocating)
…
Much experience has shown that once a cycle of high cost rail transit is implemented, the agency becomes heavily burdened with debt for a very long time. It is highly probable that the very high debt service (principle and interest) will become a permanent and major part of the transit agency’s annual operating costs. When one issue of bonds is paid down, it becomes time for another round of debt to replace aging equipment. This, in turn results in very poor cost effectiveness and degradation of the overall transit system as it serves fewer riders at higher costs. This high debt can never be paid-off without major increases in local taxes. Transit agencies cannot responsibly project and achieve enough ridership to make rail transit cost-effective. This has even less credibility in light of the national declining trend in the use of transit and the fact that the use of transit in Texas’ major metro areas has a declining trend over the past dozen years. As Dallas and other major cities have experienced, this results in a spiraling decline in transit performance and effectiveness, degradation of mobility for low income citizens and, often, cutbacks in other higher priority city services. This results in reducing overall quality-of-life.
Is this the future we really want for Houston? Because it’s not too late to stop it now, but it will be too late very, very soon, and then we will be stuck with the same harsh reality as Dallas for decades to come…
This post first appeared at Houston Strategies
Black population changes in various cities have been one of the few pieces of the latest Census to receive significant media coverage. The New York Times, for example, noted that many blacks have returned to the South nationally and particularly from New York City. The overall narrative has been one of a “reverse Great Migration.” But while many northern cities did see anemic growth or even losses in black population, and many southern cities saw their black population surge, the real story actually extends well beyond the notion of a monolithic return to the South.
The map below, showing total growth in Black Only population from 2000 to 2010, indeed shows that northern and west coast cities had low or even negative growth while various southern cities boomed.
Here is a list of the top ten metro areas (among those with more than a million total people) for black population growth:
And here are the bottom ten (among those with more than one million people):
Of course, looking at total population numbers can mislead. Some cities grew slowly or lost people as a whole while others boomed. With Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta all adding over a million people each, it’s no surprise these regions added lots of blacks. Working and middle class African-Americans likely shared many of the same motivations to move to these cities – such as lower housing prices – as Americans of other ethnicities. In that light, a look at change in black population share (the percentage of the population that is black) provides additional perspective:
Here we see not a single-minded return to the South, but a complex mixture of shrinking and growing regions in various parts of the country. This includes some surprising places, like Minneapolis-St. Paul, which was one of the top ten metros in the country for total black population growth, and also saw its black population share grow strongly. Now the Twin Cities, along with Columbus, Ohio, another strong performer, are two of the top destination for African immigrants from Somalia and elsewhere, which doubtless accounts for part of that strong growth. But anecdotal reports indicate that they are also benefitting from Chicago’s expanding black diaspora, along with places like Indianapolis and various Downstate metros.
Atlanta, well known as America’s premier metro area for blacks, continued to dominate the charts. Not only far and away the leader in adding raw numbers of blacks, the African-American share also grew share strongly too. Charlotte is also clearly emerging as another key black population hub, ranking #6 in America for total black population growth, which is impressive for a smaller city, and adding nearly two percentage points in black population share. It grew its black population much faster than other fast growing small cities like Raleigh or Nashville, and added share at more than three times as fast.
By contrast, Houston, which grew total black population significantly, had a much lower share gain. Austin, one of America’s fastest growing metros, added only 28,000 blacks and actually lost black population share. And Washington, DC, despite being a traditional black population and cultural hub, also lost black population share regionally as gentrification in the District resulted in its loss of its black majority for the first time in decades, according to the Brookings Institution.
So even among rapidly growing metro areas in the South, the appeal to black population is selective, favoring places like Atlanta, Charlotte, Florida cities, and even slower growing cities along the length of the Mississippi River like Memphis. Even some cities in the North are retaining their allure to blacks as well. Less favored or even out of favor are metros like DC, Dallas, and Houston as well as cities such as Charleston and Savannah along the southeast coast.
Slow or negative black population growth is particularly concentrated in traditional tier one “global cities”, as well as those facing economic or other hardship like Detroit, Cleveland, and immediate post-Katrina New Orleans.
The latter may be understandable – whites have been leaving these regions as well – but the former is quite troubling. The global city model, focused on high end and creative services, is supposedly the bright and shining savior of American urbanism. Indeed, it’s hard to find a city that doesn’t have some aspect of that as a core plank in its civic strategy. Yet the cities that have been most focused at promoting this notion – such as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago – are generally those disproportionately driving blacks away. The reasons for this aren’t clear, but the high and increasing cost of living in those places seems like one logical explanation.
Here’s a more detailed look at the percentage growth in Black Only population in some tier one global type metros:
New York barely broke even on black population, while Chicago, LA, and the Bay Area all actually lost black residents, a stunning reversal from their past as black magnets. However, Boston, not a traditional black population hub, grew its black population strongly on a percentage basis, as did Miami and DC, though as noted before, the share change in DC was negative. Here is that metric for the same metros:
With the notable exceptions of Boston and Miami – and Philadelphia, seldom ranked highly as a global city but still a traditional large northern metropolis – most global city regions appear to be increasingly inhospitable to Blacks. Thus their model of success, whatever its appeal to some, at a basic level simply lacks inclusiveness. This shows its clear limits as an overall model for America’s urban centers as a whole.
Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile. Data analysis, maps, and charts in this piece were prepared with Telestrian.
Alert reader Jessie sent me this article about Houston ranking "very low" on a "resilience capacity index". For real. I was dumbfounded too. And now I’m going to post out-of-character and get a little snippy…
Let’s skip right past the parade of articles and data showing Houston and Texas weathering the great recession better than just about everywhere else in the country. It’s so strong Rick Perry might win the Republican presidential nomination based on it. That alone should make them question their entire methodology. Go back to the dot-com and Enron crashes, and you’ll find the same minimal impact. Sounds like we’re pretty resilient to me.
Then there’s their explicit declaration that it represents the ability of a city to weather the shock of a major storm or flood. I’ll point to both Tropical Storm Allison and Hurricane Ike. Both were devastating – yet we bounced back relatively quickly from each one. You might note on their map that New Orleans ranks higher than Houston, yet Hurricane Katrina knocked New Orleans on its back for years. Maybe they need to add a "levees upkeep" variable to the index?
Let’s look at some of the problematic variables that make up the index:
My cynical side thinks that, since the University of Buffalo put this out, they intentionally chose variables that made Buffalo look good, even though it’s one of the most stagnant metro economies in the country.
All in all one of the worst designed indexes I’ve ever seen – and there are some doozies out there.
OK, I feel better. End venting (and snippyness).
Read more from Tory at HoustonStrategies.com.
PWC ranked Houston #11 *in the world* for business, life, and innovation – a really amazingly high ranking when you think about it. Here’s what they said:
Best : #2 in cost of owning business space, entrepreneurial environment and life satisfaction, #3 in commute time and cost of living
Worst : Last in foreign job-creating investment and international tourists
Details: Houstonians love Houston. So do US business owners. The rest of the world … not so much. With lax zoning laws and plentiful space, Houston’s low cost of living and doing business is a dream for American businesses and middle class workers, but the rest of the world pretends as though the city doesn’t exist. The city has fewer international tourists than any other comparable global city.
That sparked an interesting debate started over at HAIF on how to improve Houston’s tourism, especially for foreign visitors. This has always been a tough issue for Houston. We just don’t get tourism proportionate to our global economic standing, and out-of-sight is out-of-mind. But what would a realistic strategy possibly be?
See what I mean? People choose vacation locations for specific reasons, and the winners are pretty damn dominant. We’re stuck as a local/regional “big city” tourism destination like Chicago is for the midwest and Atlanta is for the southeast, with our share of great museums, restaurants, shopping, and a few attractions – but not enough to pull people from across the country – much less the world – to vacation here. Our one niche exception – something with some global pull – has been NASA JSC and Space Center Houston, but who knows what the future is there.
Here’s a long-shot proposal I made a few years ago on my blog, one that would build on the NASA niche:
Finally, Houston needs to upgrade its tourism experience. All great, world-class cities offer a compelling tourism experience, even if only for a short trip. Even with NASA, the Galleria, and solid museum and theater districts, this has been one of Houston’s most glaring weaknesses, and one that has kept us off the radar for educated, well-traveled professionals. Again, the light rail network and some vibrant pedestrian districts will help greatly, but we really need one powerful, anchor “mega-attraction” that will actually draw people to Houston for at least a long weekend. One niche where I think Houston could be distinctive would be the world’s largest engineering and technology museum – something along the lines of DC’s National Air & Space Museum, Munich’s Deutsches Museum, and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. It could even be one of the Smithsonian’s network of National Museums, which have started to move out beyond Washington DC (Design in NYC, Industrial History planned for Pittsburgh). Think of it as Houston’s version of Paris’ Louvre or London’s British Museum. The combination with Space Center Houston could create a national draw, not to mention a wonderful source of educational and career inspiration for our youth. As far as sites, 109 acres just became available at the end of the light rail line with the closing of Astroworld – not to mention the old Astrodome – both easily accessible to downtown and Reliant Park conventioneers. Any well-heeled philanthropists out there?
Done on a large enough scale, I could see it attracting not just the usual tourists, but multi-day student group field trips from all over like Space Camp does in Huntsville or the Smithsonian complex in DC – inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers. It should not just focus on history, but articulate the great engineering and technology challenges we face going forward. It would be a big, bold, expensive gamble – but could be just the ticket to move us up to the next level in tourism and international recognition.