

To Create Jobs, Build Public Transit, Not Highways - prat
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/01/jobs-for-main-street-act/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

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maxklein
In the U.S.A, public transit is not feasable. I was in Texas a while back -
compared to Europe, things are just way too far apart to make trains or
subways feasable.

I also lived in China for a while, and in China you mostly travel by bus. And
it is my experience that the Bus is very inconvenient transportation
mechanism.

If it does not make sense to build a local train transportation network, then
build the highways, because the people will use cars.

~~~
elblanco
This is the perpetual problem of public transit in the U.S. If you build
something, say a metro system. It has to be sprawling, with large parking
areas at the outlying stations. And then significant infrastructure upgrades
to handle the traffic to/from the station parking decks.

See, <http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/>

The D.C. metro system for example, is about as wide across geographically as
the Seoul Subway (in other words, its service area is very similar). But its
daily ridership is something like 1/10th the amount (800k vs 8million). On the
long arms of the system, adding more stations won't necessarily increase the
ridership because the population density of those areas is too low, a station
in one of these outlying areas with parking decks might only see a couple
thousand riders a day. At any rate, in most cases it's actually faster,
cheaper and more convenient to drive all the way to your destination than to
drive through rush hour to a station, fight for the limited parking then take
the metro in.

"Just move further into the city then!" Is a sentiment I've heard quite a bit.
But D.C. is not able to handle much more growth in density. By law no building
can be higher than the Washington Monument, and even if that law were to be
relaxed, it's unlikely to spur lots of tall, high density residential
apartment buildings because there is a major airport right next door. So
outlying areas like Silver Spring, MD and Arlington, VA end up with lots of
high density growth. But at exorbitant pricing. Apartments 10 miles apart, in
a relatively low density area like Northern Virginia or Southern Maryland can
be as much as 3x the rental price of each other. Housing can be even worse.

While the East Coast of the U.S. is generally low density, it's almost _all_
owned by someone. Lots and lots and lots of suburbs. Nearly any additions to a
mass transit system requires heavy handed uses of eminent domain laws, which
are always unpopular.

All of this to encourage people to ride mass transit.

But from the rider's perspective the equation makes no sense:

\- Parking is expensive at the outlying stations, and even worse closer in

\- Fare is expensive, I'm always surprised at how cheap mass transit is in
other countries

\- Added up, a single trip on a U.S. mass transit system can cost 2-3x the
cost in gas and wear and tear on your vehicle.

\- Many systems are relatively unreliable, the New York system is pretty good,
and tends to route around problems pretty well, but later systems like D.C.s
suffer from daily breakdowns, and single tracks, so a breakdown in one part of
the system literally brings the entire system to a screeching halt. Resulting
in hour long delays getting home.

\- A trip on mass transit usually takes longer than just driving anyways, and
in more crowded less pleasant conditions

\- American cities tend to not be terribly walkable once you do get dumped off
of a mass transit system. With few exceptions, like New York City, or Most of
D.C. and Boston, walking in a typical American city is walking with a death
wish. Crossing highways and major arteries full of high-speed traffic, few
sidewalks, few pedestrian rights-of-way and on and on.

\- Buses are also generally unpleasant, usually populated by people with vast,
on-display, personal problems like drug addiction, homelessness, mental health
problems, etc. Mostly because people without these problems have cars and
simply drive.

Expanding on this basic idea for local mass transit, rail also stands a
similarly poor chance. Outside of the Middle and Northern East Coast, rail is
generally poor, and transit times are incredibly long. New York to Chicago for
example is basically a 1-day trip by rail (overnight). But only a 3 hour
flight. And those are relatively close cities by American Standards. By
European standards that's further than London to Munich!

New York to Miami, on the same Coast, is a 31 hour trip by rail! But _only_ 20
hours by car and 3 hours by plane. Which would you take?

New York to LA, across the continent takes several _days_. That's like taking
a rail trip from Barcelona to Minsk.

The solution to the problem is thus usually phrased as "just throw down some
more rail lines and start counting the jobs". Even more realistic people
consider that, in an idealized world that would cost billions. But really,
with the eminent domain considerations, massive restructuring of cities, de-
suburbanization, rerouting of existing lines to be more efficient, easy
transit to and from the system, parking, etc. we are more likely talking
trillions of dollars.

So instead we get more limited visions like

\- 1 more line on the D.C. metro over the next 20 years

\- and [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/18/map-of-potential-
hi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/18/map-of-potential-high-
spe_n_167804.html)

Which, while really fantastic, and a great start, won't affect the vast
majority of the country.

~~~
DanielStraight
I think the best point here is that American cities are not walkable. We tend
to prefer long main roads with lots of business off of them to central areas
where all important businesses are in walking distance. Main squares are more
conducive to public transit than main avenues, because once you get there, you
can walk. This is, in my mind, one of the hardest problems to solve for
American public transit.

The expense and environment I think would both almost solve themselves if
public transit became more common. If it were the main way to travel, then the
distribution of people on buses would match the overall distribution of
people.

~~~
elblanco
I agree, that's the main barrier. A subway line might cost a few billion, but
reorganizing a major urban area to be walkable takes decades.

Part of it is that most American cities are very new in comparison to their
European and Asian counterparts.

London, Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Kyoto, Seoul, etc. all have Ancient, Roman
and/or Medieval cores which by default are designed for walk-ability. The
modern cities are by and large extensions of those cores. The only American
cities that have similar levels of walk-ability are ones that were founded and
largely settled before the car like New York, Philadelphia, D.C. -- basically
mid and north atlantic cities. Otherwise you simply can't walk by design.

Fixing that requires essentially rebuilding an entire city, which really isn't
going to happen anytime soon. Imagine rebuilding something like say, L.A., at
~500 sq miles of broken sprawling urbanity, to be mass-transit ready.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
> reorganizing a major urban area to be walkable takes decades

It seems to take about 15 to 20 years. The dense walkable urban areas in
Northern Virginia and Maryland grew up around the metro system in that time
frame.

Large areas don't actually need to be reorganized, just refurbished. Many
cities including philadelphia, baltimore, and DC to some extent have loads of
developed space that's just low rent and crime ridden. Just put back in the
streetcars that were ripped out in the 60s, fix-up the buildings, and price
out the gangsters from living there. That's basically the story of NYC's
rehabilitation in the 90s, except they didn't need streetcars.

~~~
elblanco
I think that your point about places like Philly and Baltimore being easy to
rehabilitate in 15-20 years makes sense. But there are still large areas along
the D.C. orange and red lines that are virtually unwalkable without putting
your life in danger. For example, I used to live what would have been a 15-20
minute walk to the Vienna station on the D.C. Orange line, but to get there,
most of the trip was next to fast roads, with no sidewalks, and a trip over
two overpasses. I made that trip twice before giving up (and after almost
getting hit by a handful of cars both times).

There are parts on the blue line that are pseudo-walkable once you get off the
system, but places like Franconia-Springfield are death traps.

I do agree though that even those areas are better than they were when those
stations were built. However, outside of a very limited "walkable" area of a
couple of blocks in the best cases (like Dunn Loring or the Two Falls Church
stations), you'd be hard pressed to live anywhere but immediately next to the
station and not drive.

I really think that it's because most of the D.C. area grew up post-automobile
and is designed as a vast urban sprawl. Things that might have a positive
influence, like new lines on the system, have taken 30 years to get started on
(Silver Line).

I'm however, happy to see new developments along that line, where those
lessons have been learned and they are basically rebuilding parts of the urban
infrastructure to make it more downtown, like Tyson's Corner and Reston.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
Everything in from East Falls Church on the orange line is walkable. It was
car dealerships and gas stations 25 years ago. Silver spring on in on the red
line is walkable.

My point about DC was more that the district itself has tons of ghetto that
could easily be re-gentrified. The middle class left the row-houses in the 60s
in many cities, they turned to ghetto, but this is not necessarily a permanent
state of affairs.

To repeat, this is basically what has happened in NYC. The former ghetto
inhabitants are now driving up the crime rate in northern Pennsylvania and
other areas.

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yummyfajitas
The article gives the exact reason it is not being spent on public transit:
_Second, all those buses, trains and subways need people to operate them and
maintain the infrastructure._

The stimulus is based on moral hazard. States spend federal money on projects
that they don't feel are worth spending their own money on. Spending on mass
transit would force states to spend more of their own money on projects they
feel are not worth it.

~~~
sparky
I don't follow your first point, would you mind breaking it down? Governments
are scared of a lot of things, but swelling their own ranks by creating more
civil service jobs usually isn't one of them, is it?

There is definitely some serious game theory afoot; states have a perverse
incentive to not spend on important things, lest they not receive federal
money to cover those things. It is similar to the perverse incentive in large
companies and government to spend one's entire budget at all costs, lest you
get allocated less next time.

~~~
dantheman
The big problem is that most cities, states, and the US are bankrupt. The
amount of money they are in debt is ridiculous and way out of proportion to
the services they provide and the taxes that they can collect. For instance
the city of cambridge, MA has over 1.2 Billion dollars of debt/unfunded
liabilities for 70,000 people.

[http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/30/cambridge-massachusetts-
ope...](http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/30/cambridge-massachusetts-opeb-
pensions-ratings-opinions-contributors-peter-schweich.html)

~~~
ajross
I have an idea: how about we give them a big chunk of money? :)

Seriously, this point doesn't work. No state is going to turn down a transit
project, certainly not because of the operating costs (most of which _are_
funded in these kinds of bills -- it's not a one-time check). And in any case,
in most urban environments transit is required to pay its own operating costs.
Where do you think that bus fare goes anyway?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Fares often pay only a fraction of the cost of mass transit. For example, my
local light rail costs about $8/ride. The fare is only $1.90.

(Sorry, the source is the dead tree version of one of my local rags.)

~~~
ajross
Right, because it's including construction and infrastructure costs (the
things being subsidized!) in the "net cost" of the ride. The actual operating
expenses are almost precisely borne by the fare structure, and in fact many
cities have laws to this effect _prohibiting_ them from funding things like
salaries for transit companies.

------
kbob
It looks like the study just analyzed the direct employment effects of the
construction projects -- how many ditch diggers, bus drivers, etc. would get
paychecks either from the project or from the system the project creates.

The headline numbers, 16,000 job-months for transit, 8,000 job-months for
highways (per billion dollars spent), show how small the direct employment is
-- 16,000 job-months is about $60 million, or 6% of the investment.

The real question, which is apparently unaddressed, is which transportation
infrastructure produces a greater benefit for the regional economy. The
economic differences there will likely dwarf the direct effects.

But the Wired article doesn't even go there. There's a statement that transit
"allows people to get to work", implying that highways don't, but that's all.

But that's okay. We know cars are evil and transit is good, so there must be
numbers out there somewhere to show it.

~~~
gjm11
I think the point about "allowing people to get to work" is that people with
no car (a much larger proportion of the jobless than of the employed,
presumably) have more limited employment options, and improving public transit
gives them access to more jobs. It seems a pretty good guess to me, at least,
that public transit does more to give more people access to more jobs than
highways costing the same amount.

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solutionyogi
The basic premise, the government can create jobs out of thin air, is flawed.
Rest is gravy.

~~~
kbob
Jobs are created out of debt, not thin air. The gov't does indeed have the
ability to create more debt and more jobs.

We're betting that the stimulus' net effect on the economy is more growth than
the debt's interest, so it'll be more productive to borrow, spend, and repay
than not to.

You'll note that the private sector does this all the time. Student loans are
a perfect example: create a professor's job today for a higher salary
tomorrow.

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iterationx
Building transit doesn't fix the trade imbalance.

~~~
trevelyan
Actually, as long as the US is importing oil it does in part.

~~~
iterationx
We need to export more goods, not import.

~~~
jsankey
Or import less. If the transit was more energy efficient, or just less reliant
on oil, it could have some impact.

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patrickgzill
Monorail, monorail!

