New Geography

Tag: Transportation

  • Paris Mayor Sides with Cars

    Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë has spent much of his first term in implementing measures to restrict car use. Delanoë took many lanes of road traffic away from cars and turned them into exclusive bus and taxi lanes. This had virtually no effect on public transport use, according to University of Paris researchers who also found as a result that traffic congestion worsened, greenhouse gas emissions increased and overall cost to the Paris economy of more than $1 billion annually.

    Now the Mayor is establishing a car hire program that will make electric cars available throughout the ville de Paris at electric charging stations. Initially 4,000 cars will be involved in the “Autolib” program. London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced plans for a similar program. These are healthy developments and a further reflection that preferred lifestyles can continue, while still reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Generating Gasoline From CO2 Emissions

    For some time it has been assumed that reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will require a shift to cars that do not use petroleum and to power plants that do not use coal, because of the emissions from these sources. All of this may be a false alarm.

    Two recent articles indicate that there may be no need to reduce petroleum use in cars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The first story from USA Today describes a new process for producing gasoline from CO2. If implemented, this could materially reduce GHG emissions from coal fired electricity plants – a principal source of GHG emissions in the United States and in many other nations, including China and India. Another story in The New York Times, indicates the potential of technology that could capture CO2 emissions from cars, to be later refined into gasoline. All of this is further evidence that technology is the answer with respect to reducing GHG emissions.

  • Reviving the City of Aspiration: A Study of the Challenges Facing New York City’s Middle Class

    For much of its history, New York City has thrived as a place that both sustained a large middle class and elevated countless people from poorer backgrounds into the ranks of the middle class. The city was never cheap and parts of Manhattan always remained out of reach, but working people of modest means—from forklift operators and bus drivers to paralegals and museum guides—could enjoy realistic hopes of home ownership and a measure of economic security as they raised their families across the other four boroughs. At the same time, New York long has been the city for strivers—not just the kind associated with the highest echelons of Wall Street, but new immigrants, individuals with little education but big dreams, and aspiring professionals in fields from journalism and law to art and advertising.

    In recent years, however, major changes have greatly diminished the city’s ability to both retain and create a sizable middle class. Even as the inflow of new arrivals to New York has surged to levels not seen since the 1920s, the cost of living has spiraled beyond the reach of many middle class individuals and, particularly, families. Increasingly, only those at the upper end of the middle class, who are affluent enough to afford not only the sharply higher housing prices in every corner of the city but also the steep costs of child care and private schools, can afford to stay—and even among this group, many feel stretched to the limits of their resources. Equally disturbing, even in good times, the city’s economy seems less and less capable of producing jobs that pay enough to support a middle class lifestyle in New York’s high-cost environment.

    The current economic crisis, which has arrested and even somewhat reversed the skyrocketing price of housing, might offer short-term opportunities to some in the market for homes. But the mortgage meltdown and its aftermath will not change the underlying dynamic: over the past three decades, a wide gap has opened between the means of most New Yorkers and the costs of living in the city. We have seen this dynamic play out even during the last 15 years, as the local economy thrived and crime rates plummeted. Despite these advances, large numbers of middle class New Yorkers have been leaving the city for other locales, while many more of those who have stayed seem permanently stuck among the ranks of the working poor, with little apparent hope of upward mobility. This is a serious challenge for New York in both good times and bad. A recent survey found the city to be the worst urban area in the nation for the average citizen to build wealth. For the first time in its storied history, the Big Apple is in jeopardy of permanently losing its status as the great American city of aspiration.

    This report takes an in-depth look at the challenges facing New York City’s middle class. More than a year in the works, the report draws upon an extensive economic and demographic analysis, a historical review, focus groups conducted in every borough and over 100 individual interviews with academics, economists and a wide range of individuals on the ground in the five boroughs. These include homeowners, labor leaders, small business owners, real estate brokers, housing developers, immigrant advocates, and officials from nearly two dozen community boards.

    Throughout the course of our research, the vast majority of New Yorkers—for the most part fierce defenders of the city—were alarmingly pessimistic about the current and future prospects of the local middle class. “What middle class?” was the quip we heard repeatedly after telling people about our study.

    But for all the valid concerns of those we spoke with, our conclusion is that a strong middle class remains in New York, and that there are considerable grounds for optimism about its future. In 2007, the city recorded the second highest total of building permits issued since it started keeping track in 1965, with Brooklyn and Queens hitting records—a clear sign that large numbers of people want to live in these long-time middle class havens. Home ownership rates in the city reached their highest levels ever in 2007, another testament to the city’s desirability—even if a not insignificant share of the recent housing purchases were driven by unfair and deceptive predatory lending practices. And in many communities, there have been long waiting lists for day care centers and private schools. While the economic crisis is already leading to sharp spikes in foreclosures, a precipitous decline in housing sales and, most troubling, a massive number of layoffs, it should not reverse the sense of many middle class families that New York now offers a safe environment to raise their kids—a key factor in the decision to stay in the city rather than decamp for the suburbs.

    “The perception of New York among young people is so phenomenal,” says Alan Bell, a partner with the Hudson Companies, a real estate development company that has built housing from the East Village to the Rockaways. “It used to be that automatically you’d get married and had kids and you were out to Montclair, New Jersey or Westchester. Now they want to stay. The question is how they stay since it’s so expensive.”

    Set against this picture of progress, however, are some alarming trends. Most of the people interviewed for this report told us of middle class friends, relatives or colleagues who had recently given up on the city. “I work with a lot of people who moved to Philadelphia and commute each day,” says Chris Daly, a media director at Macy’s who now lives with his wife and three kids in Tottenville, Staten Island but plans to move to New Jersey. “It’s the cost of living. You’re going to see more people moving to Philadelphia, the Poconos and commuting.”

    Unless we find ways to reverse some of the trends detailed in this report, the New York of the 21st century will continue to develop into a city that is made up increasingly of the rich, the poor, immigrant newcomers and a largely nomadic population of younger people who exit once they enter their 30s and begin establishing families. Although such a population might sustain the current “luxury city”—as Mayor Michael Bloomberg famously described New York—it betrays the city’s aspirational heritage. Further, a New York largely denuded of its middle class will find it nearly impossible to sustain a diversified economy, the importance of which is clearer than ever in light of the current finance-led recession.

    As a final consideration, a large and thriving middle class has always provided the ballast that a great city requires. Throughout modern history, such cities at their height—for example, Venice in the 15th century and Amsterdam in the 17th—have nurtured a large and growing middle class. But no city has had a greater history as a middle class incubator than New York. As the legendary urbanist and long time New York resident Jane Jacobs once noted: “A metropolitan economy, if working well, is constantly transforming many poor people into middle class people, many illiterates into skilled people, many greenhorns into competent citizens… Cities don’t lure the middle class. They create it.”

    Although some may suggest that this is a role New York can no longer play, we believe it is one that the city needs to address if it is to remain a truly great city.

    Released by Center for an Urban Future, this report was written by Jonathan Bowles, Joel Kotkin and David Giles. It was edited by David Jason Fischer and Tara Colton, and designed by Damian Voerg. Mark Schill, an associate with Praxis Strategy Group, provided demographic and economic data analysis for this project. Additional research by Zina Klapper of www.newgeography.com as well as Roy Abir, Ben Blackwood, Nancy Campbell, Pam Corbett, Anne Gleason, Katherine Hand, Kyle Hatzes, May Hui, Farah Rahaman, Qianqi Shen, Linda Torricelli and Miguel Yanez-Barnuevo.

  • Obama’s Friends: Enemies of the American Dream?

    President Barack Obama has rightly spoken positively about the American Dream, how it is becoming more expensive and how it needs to be reclaimed. But to do this, he may have to disregard many of those who have been among his strongest supporters and the dense urban centers which have been his strongest bastion of support.

    Indeed, the American Dream has been achieved by countless millions of households, though many have been left out of this expansion that began following World War II. Home ownership has risen from little above 40 percent to nearly 70 percent. Automobile ownership has become nearly universal, making it possible for urban areas to grown to unprecedented size. The Brookings Institution, the Progressive Policy Institute and others have published studies showing that people in low income households are far more likely to find and hold employment if they have access to cars.

    All of this has been associated with a democratization of prosperity that has never before occurred. Per capita income is now 3.5 times its 1950 level in the United States (see 1929-2007 inflation adjusted data).

    Yet, the American Dream is under serious threat – and this predates today’s faltering economy. A key component lies in the machinations of an urban policy and planning elite contemptuous of the comfortable lifestyles achieved by so many Americans. Instead they propose creating an environment in which households would have to pay more for their houses and spend more of their lives traveling from one place to another.

    Most of those who wish to create this situation come from the political left and consider themselves to be “friends of Obama.” They have achieved positions of power in some urban areas, such as throughout California, Portland, Seattle and a host of other areas. As early as 2007 some saw Obama as the dream candidate – what one called “a smart growth President”.

    This elite group starts by demonizing the very foundations of America’s inclusive prosperity. Having declared “urban sprawl” a scourge, they seek to stop further development on the urban fringe and want virtually all development to be within already developed urban footprints. These and other overly stringent regulations have served to strangle urban land markets, forcing land prices and housing prices higher, in those region where they have been imposed.

    Over fifteen years ago William Fischell at Dartmouth University demonstrated that California’s overly restrictive land use policies had made that state more expensive than elsewhere. Since 2000, with the wider availability of mortgage credit, the new demand drove prices to double or triple historic norms in areas with restrictive regulation. Price reductions have lowered prices, but they are still well above historic norms. This means that fewer households still are able to own their own homes in areas with restrictive land use regulations. Once normal prosperity is restored, the higher house prices of the restrictive land use areas can be expected to resume their increase relative to the rest of the nation.

    This is a problem for some regions now. But many planners are enthusiastic about Obama in part because he is thought to be sympathetic to recreating these conditions throughout the entire country.

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    The automobile plays the role of the Great Satan in this morality play. The goal of many ‘progressive’ urbanists is to force people into transit and stop road building. Transit, of course, has its place. There is no better way to get to your job south of 59th Street in Manhattan, to Chicago’s Loop or to a few other of the nation’s largest downtown areas. But the stark reality is that transit can not substitute for the automobile for the overwhelming majority of trips, except for these niche markets. Further, failing to expand highways to keep up with traffic growth increases traffic congestion (and air pollution) and reduces economic productivity (read: “increases poverty”).

    Higher costs for home ownership and slower commutes to work – and they will be slower because transit commutes average twice as long as automobile – impose significant burdens on people. Fewer people will have houses and fewer will have jobs. Forcing a single parent to take longer to navigate from home to the day care center to the job, whether by transit or by car, makes life more difficult – and for no rational reason. It is the equivalent of forcing people to work harder for nothing.

    Of course, this way of thinking has been around some parts of the country for decades. The new drive to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has extended its reach. The typical formulation now is that in order to reduce GHG emissions, Americans need to be crowded into dense urban areas and give up our cars.

    ###

    In reality, nothing of the kind is required. “Green” houses are being developed that can make it possible to substantially reduce GHG emissions while Americans continue their favored suburban life styles (the lifestyles, by the way, also favored by Europeans and Japanese). Hybrid and other advanced car and fuel technologies can make it possible for the personal transportation sector to achieve massive long term GHG reductions. The answer is regulating emissions, rather than people.

    But the planning and urbanist lobbies may not fundamentally be driven by the perceived need to reduce GHGs. They would rather regulate people, just as was the case well before climate change was even on the political agenda.

    Of course, the planners don’t see their strategies as nightmarish. They have worked them all out theoretically in their heads. The problem is that the theory is not and cannot be translated into reality. There is no more comfortable place to live in the world for people – particularly those past their youthful and single years – than the American suburb. There are no metropolitan areas of similar size in the world where people spend less time traveling to and from work than in America. Take Hong Kong, which is by far the world’s most dense large first-world urban area. No other metropolitan area of its size should have such theoretically short trips, because everything is so close together. Yet, average travel time to work is almost double that of Dallas-Fort Worth, with a similar population. Indeed, even in “gridlocked” Los Angeles, so often ridiculed for its automobile-oriented “sprawl,” work trip travel times average nearly 40 minutes less per day than in that ultimate of urbanization, Hong Kong. That adds up to about a week’s worth of extra commuting time each year.

    Rather than trying to constrict the dream, President Obama should work on ways to expand it. This will not be easy. Today, less than 50 percent of African-American and Latino households own their own homes. At the same time, Anglo home ownership is about 75 percent. No program to extend the American Dream can be based on policies that unnecessarily increase the price of housing.

    For the new President, there is a clear choice. He can cast his lot with those whose strategies would extinguish the aspirations of millions of Americans, or he could make it easier for more households in the nation to achieve the American Dream.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. He was born in Los Angeles and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley. He is the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • How Much do they Really Drive in Houston?

    Our friend Tory Gattis pointed out yesterday at Houston Strategies that conventional wisdom (and the US DoT Federal Highway Administration) are wrong. Quoting a recent report by New Geography contributor Wendell Cox:

    In fact, this data is incorrect. The FHWA 2006 data indicates that the Houston urban area has a population of 2,801,000. According to the United States Bureau of the Census, the population of the Houston urban area was 4,353,000 in 2006…. Actually Houston’s driving is about average: If the urban area population is corrected to agree with the Bureau of the Census data, per capita driving in the Houston area is slightly below the national average for large urban areas. Houston would rank 19th out of 38 urban areas, with daily per capita driving of 23.2 miles, compared to the national average of 23.9 miles.

    Even if you’re not interested in Houston or that potential gaffe, check out Wendell’s report for a table of per capita vehicle miles driven for 38 urbanized areas over 1,000,000 population.

  • How Detroit Lost the Millennials, and Maybe the Rest of Us, Too

    The current debate over whether to save our domestic auto industry has revealed some starkly different views about the future of manufacturing in America among economists, elected officials, and corporate executives. There are many disagreements about solutions to the Big Three’s current financial difficulties, but the more fundamental debate lies in whether the industry should be bent to the will of the government’s environmental priorities or if it should serve only the needs of the companies’ customers and their shareholders.

    But there’s something more at stake: the long-term credibility of Detroit among the rising generation of Millennials. These young people, after all, are the future consumers for the auto industry and winning them – or at least a significant portion of them – over is critical to the industry’s long-term prospects in the marketplace and in the halls of Congress.

    The enormous investments the federal government has been making in private enterprises, including the auto industry, will test the ability of private sector executives to meet the expectations of this very civically minded generation. Sadly, so far, it’s a test many business leaders seem likely to fail.

    In the case of the American auto industry, this failure has deep roots. Over the past few decades the leaders of the Big Three repeatedly have failed to move their industry in new directions, even when the opportunity to do so has plainly been put before them.

    Attempts to nudge Detroit into producing more fuel-efficient vehicles have been going on since the 1973-4 Arab Oil embargo, which led Congress to establish Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFÉ) standards for cars and light trucks. The target was for cars to meet an average of 27.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 1985. On Earth Day, 1992, Bill Clinton proposed to raise that standard even further to 45 mpg after he was elected President.

    When Al Gore was asked to join the ticket, auto industry executives, terrified at the prospect that the man who had called for the abolition of the internal combustion engine might become Vice President, implored the leadership of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) to meet with the candidates and bring them to their senses. The lobbying effort worked. Under pressure from Owen Beiber, then UAW president, and Steve Yokich, who was his designated successor, and the powerful Democratic Congressman from Dearborn, Michigan, John Dingell, Clinton agreed to delay the adoption of higher CAFÉ standards until it could be proven that such goals were attainable.

    This formulation opened the door for what came to be known as the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles or PNGV. Reluctantly supported by the Big Three, PNGV provided approximately a quarter of a billion dollars in government research funds to demonstrate the feasibility of producing a midsize sedan that could get 80 mpg. Often called “the moon shot of the 90s,” each car company was to make a prototype of such a vehicle by the politically convenient year of 2000 and begin mass production by 2004, another presidential election year.

    After a few years of technological research, reviewed by the independent National Research Council (NRC), the partnership settled on the combination of a hybrid gasoline and electric powered propulsion system as the most promising approach. But by 1997, the car companies were resisting development of even a prototype for such a vehicle.

    Vice President Gore, who had been in charge of the PNGV program since its inception, decided to meet with the Big Three CEOs to make sure they did not forget their past commitments. The answer from Detroit was emphatic: profits were coming from SUVs and heavy-duty trucks, not cars. Gore suggested they deploy a 60 mpg hybrid passenger sedan in 2002 rather than waiting for an 80 mpg version in 2004. Ford’s Peter Pestillo and his UAW ally, Steve Yokich, quickly replied, “no way.” Pestillo maintained, “we need much more time than that to make them cost competitive.” Gore could have, but didn’t, embarrass his host by pointing out that Toyota’s Prius was already delivering 55 mpg.

    Not all executives were blind to the challenge. General Motors’ Vice-Chairman, Harry Pearce had been the driving force behind GM’s ill-fated EV1 electric car experiment. Despite a bout with leukemia that took him out of consideration for CEO of the company, he and his allies within GM exerted powerful influence on the company’s CEO, Jack Smith. He also won over an influential ally at Ford, the Chairman of its Board of Directors, William Clay “Bill” Ford, Jr., great grandson of the company’s founder.

    At the Detroit Auto Show in January, 1999 Bill Ford personally introduced a new line of electric cars, under the brand name, THINK. Even though Honda and GM had abandoned the concept of an all electric vehicle by then, Ford said he thought there was still a niche market for such a car. Tellingly, Jac Nasser, Ford’s newly installed CEO, demonstrated his attitude toward these ideas by treating the visiting Secretary of Transportation, Rodney Slater, to a personal trip in a new Jaguar Roadster with the highest horsepower and worst gasoline mileage of any car at the show.

    Right after that display of internal differences at Ford, Harry Pearce personally presided over the public introduction of General Motors’ PNGV hybrid prototype car, which delivered 80 mpg fuel efficiency, while seating a family of five comfortably. He then surprised everyone by revealing GM’s real vision of the future – a hydrogen fuel cell powered car called the “Precept” that got 108 mpg in its initial EPA tests. He grandly predicted that such cars would be on the road by 2010.

    Clearly the industry was at a critical fork in the road. At a 2000 meeting at the Detroit airport, almost exactly one year to the day since their last meeting, Vice President Gore suggested to auto company executives that developing these products could enhance both the industry’s image and each company’s individual brands. Gore reminded his listeners, “It’s not just the substance of the issue you need to consider. You also need to think about the symbolism of the decision. Putting SUVs into the PNGV project would change the public’s perception of where you are going in the future.”

    Jac Nasser wanted to know if such a commitment would change the dialogue between the industry and government. Gore suggested he would put his personal reputation behind such an agreement, which would garner the auto industry a great deal of positive press and appeal to the growing ranks of environmentally minded consumers.

    But when it came time to put their reputation on the line, the auto executives blinked. The CEOs were not ready to commit to any specific production goals. This less-than-clarion call for a green automotive industry future made it only to page B4 of the Wall Street Journal the next day and was otherwise ignored by the rest of the public that the participants were hoping to impress.

    Today, only Ford, the one American auto company not to ask for a bailout in 2008, is ready to offer a car that meets the original Clinton target. In showrooms in 2009, its Fusion Hybrid five-passenger sedan uses the hybrid technologies first explored in the PNGV to get 45 mpg in city driving, more on the highway, and costs about $30,000. As a result, Ford is in a much better position today to weather the whirlwind of change in consumer tastes and financial markets, even without the support of the federal government.

    Unfortunately for America, General Motors, the largest of the Big Three, went in almost the opposite direction. Rick Wagoner, who became General Motors’ CEO in June 2000, chose to pursue an SUV-centered strategy that won big profits for a brief period. Since then, however, GM stock has plunged 95%, from $60 per share to roughly $3 in late 2008. General Motors, which lost $70 billion since 2005, has seen its market share cut in half. Having failed to embrace a public partnership with a sympathetic government, Wagoner was forced to beg for a federal bailout with onerous conditions. Seven years after the fateful auto summit with Al Gore, when asked what decision he most regretted, Wagoner told Motor Trend magazine, “ending the EV1 electric car program and not putting the right resources into PNGV. It didn’t affect profitability but it did affect image.” [emphasis added]

    Had the auto industry taken Gore’s lead a decade ago and built a positive image among the very environmentally conscious Millennial Generation, it might have built a constituency to support the government’s bailout. Instead, the companies’ brands, particularly GM’s, have taken such a beating that the President-elect recently reminded the car companies that “the American people’s patience is wearing thin.” In contrast to young Baby Boomers buying songs by the Beach Boys celebrating the Motor City’s products, the country seems ready to drive their “Chevy to the levee” and tell the company “the levee is dry.”

    But that is not the right answer. Millennials bring not only an acute environmental consciousness to the country’s political debate, but a desire for pragmatic solutions to the nation’s problems that promote economic equality and opportunity. To secure Millenials’ support, however, the domestic automobile industry needs to be seen as a contributor in ending America’s dependence on foreign oil and improving our environment. Not only would such an approach assure the industry’s future profitability, it would also remake its image in a way that will appeal to both their future customers and the politicians they support.

    Morley Winograd, co-author with Michael D. Hais of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics (Rutgers University Press: 2008), served as Senior Policy Advisor to Vice President Gore where he witnessed the events described in this article. He and Mike Hais are also fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute.

  • The Importance of Productivity in National Transportation Policy

    For years, transit funding advocates have claimed that national policy favors highways over transit. Consistent with that view, Congressman James Oberstar, chairman of the powerful House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wants to change the funding mix. He is looking for 40 percent of the transportation funding from the proposed stimulus package to be spent on transit, which is a substantial increase from present levels.

    This raises two important questions: The first question is that of “equity” – “what would be the appropriate level to spend on transit?” The second question relates to “productivity” – “what would be the effect of spending more on transit?”

    Equity: Equity consists of spending an amount that is proportionate to need or use. Thus, an equitable distribution would have the federal transportation spending reflect the shares that highways and transit carry of surface travel (highways plus transit). The most commonly used metric is passenger miles. Even with the recent, well publicized increases in transit ridership, transit’s share of surface travel is less than 1 percent. Non-transit highway modes, principally the automobile, account for 99 percent of travel.

    So if equity were a principal objective, transit would justify less than 1 percent of federal surface transportation expenditures. Right now, transit does much better than that, accounting for 21 percent of federal surface transportation funded expenditures in 2006. This is what passes for equity in Washington – spending more than 20 percent of the money on something that represents less than one percent of the output. Transit receives 27 times as much funding per passenger mile as highways. It is no wonder that the nation’s urban areas have experienced huge increases in traffic congestion, or that there’s increasing concern about the state of the nation’s highway bridges, the most recent of which occurred in Minneapolis, not far from Congressman Oberstar’s district.

    In addition, a substantial amount of federal highway user fees (principally the federal gasoline tax) are used to support transit. These revenues, which are only a part of the federal transit funding program, amounted to nearly $5 billion in 2006. Perhaps most amazingly, the federal government spends 15 times as much in highway user fees per transit passenger mile than it does on highways. Relationships such as these do not even vaguely resemble equity.

    Moreover, truckers would rightly argue against using passenger miles as the only measure of equity. Trucks, which also pay federal user fees, account for moving nearly 30 percent of the nation’s freight. Transit moves none. Taking money that would be used to expand and maintain the nation’s highways will lead to more traffic congestion and slower truck operations – which also boosts pollution and energy use. This also means higher product prices.

    Productivity: For a quarter of a century, federal funding has favored transit. A principal justification was the assumption that more money for transit would get people out of their cars. It hasn’t happened. Transit’s share of urban travel has declined more than 35 percent in the quarter century since highway user fee funding began. State and local governments have added even more money. Overall spending on transit has doubled (inflation adjusted) since 1982. Ridership is up only one third. This means that the nation’s riders and taxpayers have received just $0.33 in new value for each $1.00 they have paid. This is in stark contrast to the performance of commercial passenger and freight modes, which have generally improved their financial performance over the same period.

    It’s clear spending more on transit does not attract material numbers of people out of cars. Major metropolitan area plans are biased toward transit but to little overall effect. At least seven metropolitan areas are spending more than 100 times more on transit per passenger mile than highways and none is spending less than 25 times.

    The net effect of all this bias has barely influenced travel trends at all. Since 1982, per capita driving has increased 40 percent in the United States. Moreover, the increases in transit ridership (related to history’s highest gasoline prices) have been modest relative to overall travel demand. Transit captured little (3 percent) of the decline in automobile use, even in urban areas. Most of the decline appears to be a result of other factors like people working at home or simply choosing to drive less. It is notable that none of the transit-favoring metropolitan area plans even projects substantial longer term reductions in the share of travel by car.

    The reason for this is simple. Transit is about downtown. The nation’s largest downtown areas, such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, contain huge concentrations of employment that can be well served by rapid transit modes. Yet relatively few Americans either live or work downtown. More than 90 percent of trips are to other areas where transit takes, on average, twice as long to make a trip – if there is even service available. Few people are in the market for longer trip times.

    These policy distortions are not merely “anti-highway.” They are rather anti-productivity. This means they encourage greater poverty, because whatever retards productivity tends to increase levels of poverty. It would not be in the national interest for people to choose to take twice as much of their time traveling. By definition, wasting time retards productivity and international competitiveness. These are hardly the kinds of objectives appropriate for a nation facing perhaps its greatest financial challenges since the Great Depression.

    For years, national transportation policy has been grounded in hopeless fantasy about refashioning our metropolitan areas back to late 19th Century misconceptions. It’s time to turn the corner and start fashioning a transportation strategy – including more flexible forms of transit – that make sense in our contemporary metropolis.

    Resources:

    Urban Transport Statistics: United States: A Compendium
    http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-usa2007ann.pdf

    Regional Plan Spending on Highways and Transit
    http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-rplantransit.pdf

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. He was born in Los Angeles and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley. He is the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • Railcars as Economic Indicators

    With the nation locked in the firm grips of recession, one indicator of our country’s import demand and manufacturing capacity is being stockpiled in Montana. Just south of Great Falls, along the Missouri River, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway Co. is stockpiling flatbed container cars – a lot of flatbed cars. By some accounts, there are about 1,500 railcars, or 1.5 percent of the North American flatbed fleet and roughly 5 percent of the BNSF fleet, parked between Great Falls and Helena suggesting that Americans are buying and importing less from foreign manufacturers and manufacturing less for foreign consumption. If and when they are brought back into rotation will depend on freight demand – driven by American consumption.

  • Make Sure All That Infrastructure Spending Is Well Supported

    It’s the new buzzword: infrastructure.

    President-elect Barack Obama has promised billions in infrastructure spending as part of a public works program bigger than any since the interstate highway system was built in the 1950s. Though it was greeted with hosannas, his proposal is only tapping into a clamor for such spending that’s been rising ever since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 and a major bridge collapsed in Minneapolis last year. With the economy now officially in recession, the rage for new brick and mortar is reaching a fever pitch.

    But before we commit hundreds of billions to new construction projects, we should focus on just what kind of infrastructure investment we should – and shouldn’t – be making. More important, we should think beyond temporary stimulus and make-work jobs and about investments that will propel the economy well into this century.

    After all, it’s not that we stopped spending on infrastructure over the past decade. It’s that mostly, we haven’t spent on the right things.

    New York City, for example, has wasted billions on its bloated bureaucracy and on constructing new sports stadiums and other ephemera deemed necessary to maintain Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “luxury city.” Meanwhile, many of its subway and rail lines have deteriorated. Over the decades, brownouts and blackouts, caused in part by underinvestment in energy infrastructure, have become common during periods of high energy use in the summer.

    Similarly, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has extolled the Golden State as “the cutting-edge state . . . a model not just for 21st-century American society but the world.” Yet California’s once envied water-delivery systems, roadways, airports and schools are in serious disrepair. Many even more hard-pressed communities – Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans – have similarly wasted limited treasure on spectacular new convention centers, sports arenas, arts and entertainment facilities and hotels while allowing schools, roads, ports and other critical sinews of economic life to fray.

    Convention centers and other tourist attractions create reasonably high-paying construction jobs in the short term, but over time, they create an economy dominated by lower-wage service jobs. Take New Orleans. It was once one of the nation’s great industrial and commercial centers. But then the city turned its back for decades on its diverse economic base and invested not in levees, port development and basic infrastructure but in the arts, culture and tourism. The tourism and convention business surged, but the result was a low-wage economy. Nearly 40 percent of New Orleans households, or twice the national average, earned less than $20,000 a year in 2000.

    Other places have followed a similar trajectory of folly, heavily subsidizing luxury condominiums, restaurants and other amenities to help lure the so-called creative class. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s 2003 plan to turn her state around focused on creating “cool cities” aimed at attracting hip, educated workers to Detroit and other failing urban centers. Instead of sparking an economic revival, Granholm has presided over a mass exodus of younger workers who can’t find jobs in her state.

    Perhaps no place epitomizes misplaced priorities better than Pittsburgh. Widely hailed in the media as a poster child for the urban “renaissance,” Pittsburgh has suffered a precipitous decline in population: Its 310,000 residents are less than half its 1950 peak. It now shares with parts of the former East Germany the gloomy demographic of having more residents die each year than are born.

    Like other cities, Pittsburgh has sought to revive itself with billions in new stadiums, arenas and cultural facilities. Meanwhile, its roads and bridges are in a constant state of disrepair. Most recently, the city embarked on a scheme to create a 1.2-mile, $435 million transit tunnel under the Allegheny River to connect downtown’s heavily subsidized towers with taxpayer-funded pro sports stadiums and a new casino. This “tunnel to nowhere,” derided by a local columnist as the nation’s “premier transit boondoggle,” will no doubt be the sort of thing many states and localities will seek federal infrastructure funds for, justifying them on the basis of both short-term economic stimulus and some kind of “green” agenda.

    Although some new spending on efforts such as developing alternative fuels could improve efficiencies, many “green” projects seem destined to devolve into little more than expensive boondoggles. A recent program passed by the Los Angeles City Council, for example, calls on the city-owned utility’s ratepayers to subsidize installing solar panels on office buildings. This plan, heavily promoted by labor lobbyists, mandates that the project be carried out by the Department of Water and Power, whose employees are among the most well-paid public workers in the nation. By some estimates, it would raise the price of electricity by as much as 8 percent. But it will do nothing to slow the continued flight of industrial and other employment from Los Angeles or its suburbs.

    A “red-green” tilt to infrastructure programs – essentially marrying the labor and environmental lobbies – also seems sure to raise spending on public mass-transit projects. Some transit or rail spending can, of course, promote efficiency and productivity. A significant incentive to increase rail freight, for example, could boost productivity in the critical manufacturing, agriculture and energy industries because rail can generally carry far more goods on less fuel than long-haul trucking.

    Spending on upkeep of transit systems in older centralized cities such as New York, Washington and Chicago also seems logical. But with few exceptions – the heavily traveled corridor between downtown Houston and the Texas Medical Center, for instance – ridership on most new rail systems outside the traditional cities has remained paltry, accounting for barely 1 or 2 percent of all commuters. Such projects are almost absurdly expensive on a per-capita basis; the Allegheny Institute, a Pennsylvania think tank that pursues free-market solutions to local questions, estimates that the cost to the taxpayer of each trip through the new Pittsburgh tunnel could be as much as $15.

    Infrastructure investment requires a strong litmus test. Where the cash goes should be determined chiefly on the basis of how the spending will enhance the nation’s productive capacity and raise incomes across the board. This also means looking beyond traditional brick and mortar investments to critical skills shortages. Businesspeople nationwide complain repeatedly of a chronic shortage of skilled blue-collar workers and technicians. More than 80 percent of 800 U.S. manufacturing firms surveyed in 2005 reported “a shortage of qualified workers overall.” Nine in 10 firms said that they faced a “moderate-to-severe shortfall” in qualified technicians.

    In sharp contrast to sports stadiums and convention centers, programs in skills training for U.S.-based industries such as aerospace, energy, machine tools and agricultural equipment tend to create high-wage jobs, which have expanded over the past decade even as the overall number of industrial positions has declined. Many industrial companies are increasingly desperate for skilled workers and often consider locating wherever they can be found. These companies also produce many jobs that, though not located on the factory floor, are critical to the nation’s competitive edge. For example, the Manufacturing Institute estimates that manufacturers employ one-fourth of all scientists and 40 percent of engineers.

    A forward-looking infrastructure program would also target places that would most benefit from new roads, bridges, ports and other critical facilities, including underperforming regions such as the Great Plains, Appalachia and rural Pennsylvania, as well as the depressed Great Lakes area. These areas offer cheaper labor and housing, prime locations and access to natural resources. Making them more accessible to markets and more energy efficient could replicate the great New Deal success in modernizing much of the South and West.

    Perhaps most critical, we need to look at how to combine new physical investments with new initiatives in skills training, incubating small companies and promoting better ties with local universities and research facilities. This “infrasystems” approach has been implemented successfully in places as diverse as North Dakota’s Red River Valley, the area around Wenatchee, Wash., and in various Southern locales such as Charleston and Savannah.

    The call for more spending on infrastructure represents a unique opportunity to rebuild our productive economy and create long-term middle-class jobs. But if the effects are going to last, the trick is to concentrate on the basics and forget the flashy, feel-good kinds of projects that have characterized many “infrastructure” investments in recent years.

    This article originally appeared at Washington Post.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • How About a Rural Stimulus?

    In Pennsylvania, public and private funds mainly are directed into areas where people live and where people vote. As a result urban Pennsylvania has significant advantages over rural communities in securing public funds and private investment.

    Although rural Pennsylvania comprises a significant percentage of Pennsylvania’s geography it contains a very low percentage of the overall population and its political clout is dwindling. According to Trends in Rural Pennsylvania March/April 2003 overview of the state’s population, urban counties outnumber the population of rural by a ratio of more than 3 to 1.

    Politically rural and small town Pennsylvania once wielded considerable power. The “T” which ran up the center of Pennsylvania and east to west across the northern tier of the state was key to Republican victories statewide. In recent elections, it has been the southeastern region that has dominated politics. It has reached the point where it can be safely stated that no candidate can win statewide in Pennsylvania without carrying at least one of the five southeastern counties.

    All this puts rural Pennsylvania at a distinct disadvantage, particularly in terms of basic infrastructure. Rural Pennsylvania has 57,065 miles of highway compared to 62,577 in urban counties. Local governments receive only about 10 percent of state revenues from the Motor License Fund and the rest is funded by local taxes.

    In rural Pennsylvania, because miles of roadway responsibility are funded by a smaller tax base per mile, the choice is between higher taxes or ignoring the problem. More and more, residents in small, rural communities are driving on outdated highways and over creaky bridges. In many ways, highway infrastructure is moving backwards in time as bridges close or become weight restricted isolating rural communities.

    Mass transit is another issue in the divide. Pennsylvania has 46 fixed transit systems. Twenty-four serve small urban areas and another twenty service rural communities. This said the two systems that serve the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, SEPTA and PAAT, receive roughly 90 percent of all transit monies in the state.

    Transit receives about $900 in annual state subsidies. These funds come from a wide-variety of sources and are distributed under a myriad of conditions most of which the rural systems cannot meet. The result is the budgets of rural systems must rely more on passenger receipts and local subsidies than the much larger systems.

    In 2007, as part of an effort to find more funds for roads, bridges and transit, Act 44 was passed. Under this legislation Interstate 80 would be tolled. This superhighway runs through rural Pennsylvania. In blunt terms, the politics played out that rural Pennsylvania was being tolled to fund transit in Philadelphia. The only reason I-80 has not been tolled yet has been because the U.S. Department of Transportation rejected Pennsylvania’s proposal.

    There are other dramatic differences between the two Pennsylvanias in terms of basis infrastructure. Census data show that 36 percent of people in rural Pennsylvania get their drinking water from wells or some other sources. There are 5,697 active drinking water systems in rural Pennsylvania of which 70 percent are owned by investors or individuals according to n Trends in Rural Pennsylvania May/June 2004. Most of the sewer and other basic water systems are antiquated. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ that rural Pennsylvania needs $5.26 billion invested over the next 20 years in drinking water infrastructure and more than $6 billion over the same period to update sewage.

    Yet when Pennsylvania speaks about the upcoming stimulus, the primary voices are urban, epitomized by Governor Ed Rendell, a former Mayor of Philadelphia and fervent urbanist. We can expect that he will be working hard for more stimulus in the big cities, including for such things as the $800 million expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center which is now under way.(link to piece on this) Once again demographics and politics could be working against rural and small town communities where projects are on a much smaller scale, but equally important to the welfare of areas of rural Pennsylvania.

    Like many similar places around the country, rural Pennsylvania has many assets that would benefit from new infrastructure. It is an area of tremendous natural beauty and bountiful recreational opportunities. Most of these areas have good school systems and are safe areas to live. They could contribute to the nation’s economic recovery and provide an alternative for many urban residents who want improved quality of life or are thinking about retiring to an area that is less expensive. The problem is we have to get our own state officials, and the Obama administration to start paying attention.

    Dennis M. Powell is president and CEO of Massey Powell an issues management consulting company located in Plymouth Meeting, PA.