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TRAINS: A travel choice Americans want

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Flag Stops: Doing the Math

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The latest news and views round-up.

  • The office of Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) has obtained a preliminary draft of Amtrak’s Congressionally-mandated study [PDF] of the possibility of restoring the Pioneer between Salt Lake City and Seattle. It presents a very conservative ridership estimate—even lower than actual ridership was when the train last ran in 1992—and says the new equipment and track upgrades required would take at least four years once the company gets the go-ahead from Congress.

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  • A land developer from Maine went to Ohio to spread the word about the wonders that new passenger trains can work for local economies. He touted the fact that every dollar his home state put in to initiating and operating the Downeaster has brought about $70 in additional construction investment, creating 18,000 new jobs. He thinks Ohio’s 3-C corridor could do the same.

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  • A Washington Post review of Green Metropolis by David Owen, which has just been added to the NARP Bookstore on Amazon.com, emphasizes Owen’s strongest point about the consequences of overreliance on the automobile: “The real problem with cars is not that they don’t get enough miles to the gallon, it’s that they make it too easy for people to spread out, encouraging forms of development that are inherently wasteful and damaging.” This is something NARP has been pointing out for years, even when doing so puts us in the minority of green-minded groups.

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  • Phoenix’s 9-month-old light rail line is converting skeptics—and bucking the national trend—by carrying almost 7,000 more daily riders than projected, the vast majority being leisure riders, reports the New York Times. In most cities, 60 percent or more of transit users are commuters, but only 29% of Phoenix light rail riders take it to work and back. It goes to show how well transit can work, even in a metropolis that is practically the epitome of sprawl.

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  • A Philadelphia Inquirer article paints a not-so-pretty picture of the condition of Amtrak-owned infrastructure, which the company revealed only after government watchdogs threatened to file suit. Several bridges on the Northeast and Keystone corridors have been rated “poor” by Amtrak’s own inspectors, showing such overt signs of decay as corroded beams, holes, and trees growing through cracks. The these pieces of the physical plant remain neglected, the more it’s going to cost, in terms of safety as well as dollars.

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  • Amtrak adds a new city to its list of destinations this week with the reopening of Icicle Station in Leavenworth, Washington, which will be served daily by the Empire Builder’s Seattle section.

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  • LCL: A preprogrammed “Balanced Transportation Analyzer” (Excel file) gives you the chance to play policymaker and come up with a plan to ease congestion in the Big Apple. * * * Thomas Friedman says US lawmakers don’t have the guts to raise the gas tax. * * * A video high-speed rail wish from a future rail advocacy leader. * * * A slight setback for Tar Heel travelers: a new Raleigh-Charlotte train will come, but not until early next year. * * * There’s one industrialized country the United States appears to be a few steps ahead of on high-speed rail: our neighbor to the north.

    • —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: amtrak, bridges, cars, costs, development, downeaster, economy, empire builder, green metropolis, infrastructure, lawsuit, light rail, maine, ohio, passenger trains, phoenix, pioneer, restoration, sprawl, study, transit, washington state,

    Coming Together for Smarter Development

    Wednesday, October 14, 2009

    Expert panelists call attention to the burgeoning demand for homes that are convenient to transit and the challenges to making such housing widely available and affordable.

    The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Public Policy Institute, the National Housing Trust and Reconnecting America held a panel discussion at Washington’s Union Station on September 30 on integrating affordable housing with better transportation for more livable communities. It is good to see that people in the various professions that relate to housing, transportation and the design of cities are coming together to address these issues in a coordinated way.

    The qualities that make homes near transit lines desirable also drive up their prices, so the need for affordable housing accessible to transit is critical. As you get farther from the center of a city, housing gets less expensive, but transportation costs grow at a higher rate than the cost of a home drops. The opposite occurs as you get closer in. Residents of outlying suburbs who depend on their cars spend an average of 25% of their household income on getting around vs. 9% for those living in walkable neighborhoods with good transit connections. If transportation costs were considered as a factor in the affordability of housing, the whole equation would change in favor of denser, less car-dependent neighborhoods.

    Nationwide, only 20% of housing units lie within half a mile of a bus or train stop, but in many larger cities, that figure is over 60%—even in places like Houston, Salt Lake City and Denver. Transit-oriented development doesn’t necessarily mean high-rise apartment buildings. It can also include townhomes and small single-family homes that are close together and laid out well enough to encourage walking.

    Availability of affordable, pedestrian-friendly housing means greater independence for older adults who cannot/don’t want to/should not drive and whose personal mobility is limited. Those 65 and older make up over half of the residents of affordable housing units in the US; by 2050, senior citizens are expected to comprise 20% of the American population, up from 12% today.

    A major obstacle to transit-friendly, affordable housing is market pressure to turn the existing housing stock into higher-priced condos and townhomes. Currently, there is much more demand for transit-oriented housing than there is supply. Properties in transit-oriented developments are holding their value despite the recession, and are some are seeing values increase. Codes and zoning laws often make infill development, mixed-use buildings, and repurposing of existing buildings difficult. Add to that the pervasive lack of integration of transportation and land-use planning, and you get a sense of the breadth of the challenge facing policymakers.

    Rodney Harrell, Strategic Planning Advisor with the AARP Public Policy Institute, noted the irony of transit service cuts even as federal capital funding has grown. In response to this, Congressional leaders’ plans for the next surface transportation authorization include the reestablishment of federal operating assistance to keep the buses and trains that were bought primarily with federal dollars running. Keeping transit accessible and attractive to the entire public also means addressing safety issues and physical obstacles that make it difficult to get to train stations and bus stops, as well as providing better information (including the use of advanced technology) about how often trains and buses run, where they go and what connections are available.

    Despite the enormity of the challenge, a sense of progress emerged in the conference room. The Obama Administration was given high marks for its attention to these matters. The rapidly changing American demographic and urgent need for solutions to the energy and climate crises make the transition of the American lifestyle back to one based on more cohesive communities and more reliance on public transportation, particularly rail, all but inevitable.

    —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: aarp, access, bus, communities, development, housing, pedestrian, quality of life, rail, reconnecting america, tod, train, transit,

    Flag Stops: Emerging Trends

    Thursday, November 12, 2009

    Real-estate experts acknowledge a shift is afoot, Amtrak raises expectations, and even more advances on the other side of the Atlantic.

  • The well-regarded annual Emerging Trends in Real Estate report for 2010, after a survey of over 900 industry experts, determined that outer-fringe suburban developments “have no staying power” and that all the smart money is being invested in transit oriented development and housing that is convenient to non-auto transportation, job centers and 24-hour amenities—showing once again that the kind of lifestyle that is most in demand can only be sustained by a strong passenger train network.
  • An Amtrak spokesman tells the Train Riders Association of California (TRAC) that Amtrak will make a “dramatic and bold” announcement on new equipment purchases in January, reports NARP Council member Jim Loomis. We should expect nothing less.
  • European countries are leaping even farther ahead of the US on the passenger rail front, writes Arthur Frommer in the Cape Cod Times. New high-speed lines are being built from Amsterdam to Brussels, Florence to Bologna (Italy), and Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Frommer also highlights changing demographics that contradict the low-U.S.-population-density argument, and plugs NARP’s vision for America’s future mobility. Meanwhile, British cities are organizing a push for escalated high-speed rail development.

  • The Transport Politic sizes up the implications of the results of last Tuesday’s elections in New Jersey, Virginia, Cincinnati, Chicago’s Indiana suburbs, Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, New York City and Seattle on rail and transit interests.

  • Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood talks up rail at a major transportation policy symposium, saying “this Administration will not leave the future of railroads in this country to chance,” adding that he wants passenger and freight trains to be just as relevant to the US economy in the future as they were in the 1800s.
  • Once again, Ryan Avent says it well: “If you think there’s no substitute for the automobile, then the decline of the auto industry looks like running headlong off a cliff. But in reality, there is something just fine on the other side of the transition: a world in which people drive less and don’t mind it.”

  • The Midwest High Speed Rail Blog highlights two ways that passenger railroads are, and should be, generating more interest in train travel: by transporting popular sports teams and taking advantage of movie tie-ins.

  • A head-to-head comparison between living in Almeria, Spain (a country where trains have the lion’s share of the intercity air-rail market), and Milwaukee: in the former you see people out and about; in the latter you see an overabundance of “access roads, parking lots, highways and bridges.”
  • LCL: Light rail may be on its way to Monterey County, connecting it with regional rail in the San Francisco Bay area. * * * Take a ride in the cab of a Eurostar high-speed train from Paris to London, in 12 parts on YouTube. * * * Speakers at Wisconsin’s “Freight Rail Day” offer lobbying advice.

    • —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: amtrak, development, equipment, europe, future, high-speed rail, housing, marketing, passenger rail, population density, procurement, ray lahood, real estate, ryan avent, smart growth, suburbs, survey, transit-oriented, trends,

    Transportation: A Public Health Issue

    Wednesday, May 19, 2010

    If America switched to a non auto-centric transportation system, as much as $402 billion in healthcare costs, not to mention many lives, could be saved. This according to a just-released overview [PDF] of recent studies done by the American Public Health Association. Most Americans are familiar with the tragedy and suffering that occur daily in automobile accidents—making driving far more dangerous statistically than any other motorized travel mode—as well as the negative health effects of our sedentary lifestyles, partly a result of so many neighborhoods being inconducive to walking and biking. Yet researchers have only begun to quantify, in dollar amounts, how much these problems cost America.

    It is worth remembering that intercity passenger trains don’t just provide a safer and more enjoyable way to get from city to city; they also catalyze the development of walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, improving public health both by giving people exercise and by reducing air pollution.

    This graphic from the report encapsulates the concept well:

    —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: development, exercise, healthcare, livability, neighborhoods, obesity, passenger trains, public health, smart growth, streets, transportation,

    Louisiana Moves Forward

    Thursday, July 08, 2010

    After his efforts to thwart progress towards establishing passenger train service between Louisiana’s capital (Baton Rouge) and its largest city (New Orleans) were met with resistance from citizens, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R)—known for his criticism of government spending—took a major positive step by signing a law that will create the Louisiana Interstate Rail Compact and authorize cities and parishes (i.e. counties) within the state to form their own compacts to develop passenger rail. These compacts will be able to oversee the design, construction, operation and maintenance of train services, and will have the power to float bonds and raise revenues, subject to the approval of the voters in the affected jurisdictions.

    In the law’s language [PDF] is the state legislature’s finding that “The development, improvement, expansion, and maintenance of an efficient, safe, and well-maintained system of railways, transitways, and other transportation facilities that promote mobility are essential to Louisiana’s economic health and are intended to act as a system that provides a basis for business and industry to compete cost effectively on a regional, national, and global scale in order to provide a high quality of life for the people of this state.”

    NARP applauds Governor Jindal and the legislature—thanks to the leadership of Rep. Michael Jackson (I-Baton Rouge)—for putting in place the framework for ongoing investment in increasing Louisianians’ mobility choices and thereby improving the state and region’s quality of life. If you live in Louisiana, please take a moment to send the Governor a note of your approval and encouragement.

    —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: bobby jindal, development, louisiana, michael jackson, passenger trains, rail compact, train expansion, transportation choices,

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