The Chapel Hill free busses work really well, to the point that when I went even 8 miles away to places where the busses cost money, it was a culture shock. I think the keys are:
The ridership is all broke college students, so there isn't much of a broke:poorly behaved correlation. This isn't evidence that such a correlation exists elsewhere, just that it's not in chapel hill.
The majority of rides take place on short, frequent, and packed routes between classes and housing. Taking time for everyone to beep a pass while getting on would actually make the commute meaningfully longer
The majority of cost of the system is in long, sparsely ridden busses that make living without a car comfortable and feasible. There is a disconnect between where revenue would come from with fares, and where the expenses are that make the system work.
The town is absolutely, brutally strapped for parking. This is basically a good thing on a grand scale, but also obviously heinously annoying day to day. It also means that the town is currently getting a good deal paying for free busses instead of having to build parking decks and wider roads, instead of this benefit living in some hypothetical beautiful future.
I'm writing a post about whether we'll have a Dyson Swarm reach Earth's current energy generation level before CA High-Speed Rail is complete. It seems plausible, if incompetence and nimbys delay CAHSR by a few years past ASI but space-based construction starts right after ASI.
This is one reason I am typically eager to proceed with rail lines and other mass transit, even when the direct case does not seem to justify the cost. You have to start somewhere. If for example we do hook up a point in Los Angeles to Las Vegas via a new high speed rail line, then there is hope that this provides impetus to go further, also most of the gains are impossible to capture. So given a private group is remotely considering doing it, we should be ecstatic.
Since writing Beware unfinished bridges I've come across what I think is a better model: S-curves. The idea is that:
Using this language, I think what you're saying is that in the context of transportation infrastructure, you're typically eager to proceed along in the introduction phase because doing so makes it more likely that we then invest even more, enough to reach that coveted growth phase. Or something like that.
I'm not sure what to think here. At least in the context of bike infrastructure, I'm skeptical.
I've been involved with some urbanism and biking communities recently and I think it's largely accepted that in North America, connectivity is pretty poor. I don't think that movements along the introduction phase have gotten us meaningfully close to the growth phase. Surveys show huge gaps between how much people want to bike and how much they actually bike, so I think we're definitely still in the introduction phase. And in Portland OR where I live, the city has a goal for 25% of all trips to be taken by bicycle by 2030. Right now we're at 6-7%. Given the upcoming projects and pace of development, I don't think anyone thinks the 2030 goal is at all realistic.
I'm not very knowledgeable about mass transit. Maybe in that context your expectation is more likely to play out. I feel skeptical though.
On average, road speeds went up by a whopping 16%!
But here’s something interesting:
Speeds on highways went up 13%, arterial road speeds went up by 10%, and local road speeds increased by 8%.
None of that’s 16%, and that’s important: This means congestion pricing sped roads up, but also sorted people to faster roads.
In response to having to pay a toll, people not only got off the road, they also made wiser choices about the types of roads they used!
This doesn't necessarily imply an improvement. If people switched to higher-speed but longer-distance roads, then total trip times could be similar (or more or less).
Traffic and transit are finally getting a roundup all their own.
I’ll start out with various victory laps on the awesomeness that is New York City Congestion pricing, which should hopefully now be a settled matter, then do a survey of everything else.
New York City Congestion Pricing Redux
We spent years fighting to get congestion pricing passed in New York City.
Once it was in place, everyone saw that it worked. The city was a better place, almost everyone was better off, and also we got bonus tax revenue. And this is only the bare minimum viable product, we could do so much better.
We had a big debate over whether congestion pricing is good until it was implemented. At this point, with traffic speeds downton up 15% and business visits improving, it is very clear this was exactly the huge win Econ 101 predicts.
The thread continues, and the news only improves from there.
Even honking complaints are down 69%. Nice.
The comments somehow consistently still fill with people saying how horrible everything must be and how we can’t trust any of the data, no way this can be happening, it must somehow be a huge disaster. We ignoring these silly wabbits.
Every NYC mayoral candidate supported congestion pricing. There’s a reason.
If business is actively up, what more is there to say?
The only real enemy left is Donald Trump, who is determined to wage war to kill congestion pricing, presumably because he hates Manhattan and wants us to suffer, or perhaps because of his belief that Trade Bad. But he’s the President, and he’s commanding the Department of Transportation to go to war over this, and there’s a decent chance they will win and make all our lives substantially worse.
Because Trump does not like that New York has this nice thing, and is trying to kill it.
The good news there is that it seems the good guys are winning for now.
The wording on the surveys here are weird since they asked whether ‘Trump should permit this to continue.’ What business of Trump’s is New York doing congestion pricing? But the results are telling, especially in relative terms. The results here are now months old, and the more people are exposed to congestion pricing and see the results, the more they approve of it.
In particular, those who drive into the central business district several times a week (also known as ‘those who pay the fee’) support congestion pricing 66%-32%, and those who do it a few times a month support 51%-47%, and Manhattan residents (who take the cabs that also pay fees although modestly less than they should) support 57%-36%, but support statewide remains in the red, 27%-47%.
The only way you are worse off is if your hourly for being in traffic is low, so either you have to pay a toll without getting value in return (if you pay the $9) or not take the trip (if the trip wasn’t that valuable to you). In the second case, system is functioning as designed. What Reis is doing is totally the system working as designed. The first case is slightly unfortunate redistribution, but this was never supposed to be a Pareto improvement. If you wanted to do some (very small) progressive redistribution to fully compensate, that would be super doable.
Traffic in some areas outside NYC’s congestion pricing zone may have gotten slightly worse, as opposed to the bridges and tunnels where things are much improved. Meanwhile the buses are packed and moving much faster. Sounds like we need more robust congestion pricing.
Here’s a fun bonus:
The declines here are absolute numbers, not per trip, so per trip the drop is bigger.
I presume those numbers are too big to purely be congestion pricing, and the cops obviously matter, but so does ridership, both quantity and quality. Critical mass of people on mass transit makes you much safer, in addition to justifying better service. It’s basically great until the point where you don’t get a seat. Then it’s no big deal until when you start to be nervous about getting on and off. That sucks, but I continue to find that to be mostly a peak of rush hour 4-5-6 line problem.
As for many other complaints, this seems definitive?
Foot traffic is what matters for business, not car traffic. The false alarms were all ‘foot traffic is way down.’ If that went the other way, we’re golden.
New York City Light Rail
Having this line available would shorten travel times in a lot of non-obvious ways, since it lets you more easily transpose between train lines. If this is buildable and could run the whole way in 32 minutes it is an obviously excellent pick.
There would also be a lot of value in extending the Second Avenue Subway properly, especially to take pressure off the Lexington (456) line, but that looks like it is simply not doable logistically at any sane price.
Fare Evasion (1)
New York City bus fare evasion rates are up to 48%. Under the new mayor I wouldn’t be surprised to see it a lot closer to 100% and I expect to have zero motivation to pay his administration for a bus ride. I see two options.
Why wouldn’t option two work? The MTA has indeed declared, ‘no more free bus rides for fare evaders,’ using a similar strategy, and somehow people are arguing it won’t work? The only argument why not I can think of is unwillingness to scale it?
Once again, I ask, how is sitting there writing $100 tickets unprofitable, and enforcement ‘a way to lose money’? Is collection of tickets so bad that you cannot pay the hourly cost for a police officer to write the tickets, even if you discount the incentive effects? I find this beyond absurd.
And seriously, the ‘civil rights advocates’ are giving such causes a bad name. If you want the bus to be free and pay with other taxes instead, advocate for that, and I’ll potentially support you although recent findings have tampered my enthusiasm for that solution. Don’t tell us not to enforce the law.
There is no third alternative. Half of people not paying is approaching the tipping point where no one pays. Indeed, there would soon be active pressure not to pay, as paying slows down boarding.
Fare Evasion (2)
It is remarkable how well enforcement works, and how well it then reduces crime.
In other places, they’re not even trying.
Free Transit
On first principles, free mass transit (such as the free buses recently promised to NYC) seem like an obviously good idea. You want people using them, you want people wanting to move around more, transaction costs are high and money is fungible.
But conventional wisdom says not so fast. Tallinn is the most often claimed example of mass transit being made free and it not helping, and several comments illustrated why all of this can get complicated by selection effects.
The core question is, are the fares actually stopping people who you want to ride?
My personal experiences say yes to some extent, especially when you’re considering a zero marginal cost alternative like walking, or when the annoyance of paying the fare enters play, and when you are young. It matters some, especially at lower incomes.
Having fully free buses also means that children who don’t have money can get home.
But ultimately, everyone who studies this or looks at their own experience seems to agrees this a relatively minor concern. How often and how reliably the bus or subway comes, how fast it goes, how comfortable and crowded it is, and how safe you feel are all more important factors. And without the money from the fares, yes money is fungible but the political economy involved means funding will likely decline.
In addition, the people who will ride a lot more for free than for a small price are exactly the people others do not want to ride alongside. We have the experiments that show that cracking down on fare evasion greatly reduces crime and generally makes transit more pleasant, which generates positive feedback loops.
So sadly, I have learned my lesson. I no longer in favor of mass transit being free, although I do think that heavy encouragement of buying monthly passes is good so that marginal cost drops to zero. Ideally this could be attached to tax filing?
I do also still think free is superior to technically not free if that is unenforced.
The Last Train
San Francisco restaurants often close before 10pm, one reason is that workers have to commute and the BART stops at midnight. I am absolutely baffled, as a New Yorker, that they don’t run trains after that. The NYC mind cannot comprehend.
Smooth Operator
Quietly, the MTA union convinced the state legislature to mandate two train operators per train. Hopefully Hochul does not sign this outright theft.
Mass Transit And Health
The study seems to have tracked a cohort over time, avoiding most selection effects. It seems like an extreme result, but if true then presumably it more than pays for itself.
Also a reminder to never ever get on a motorcycle if you have any choice in the matter.
Ah California High Speed Rail
California high speed rail connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco is a great idea.
Or it would be, if you were able to actually lay the track. There’s the rub.
Yes, the complaints are all about the terrible execution, but also that seems sufficiently terrible to sink all this? The part where they take in a lot of money and then do not build HSR seems like a fatal flaw.
Amtrak
Mayor Pete had a ticket to ride in all the wrong places, but at least he’s in the game.
This is of course a deeply stupid map. Why do we want a second line from Minneapolis to Seattle, when you can take the existing one to Portland and then ride to Seattle? Why do we put a high speed rail line from Charlotte to Atlanta, and Dallas to Houston, and not upgrade the Acela line?
Whereas here’s how people having a normal one do it.
The High Speed Rail We Actually Need Is Acela
The lack of focus on Acela in the previous plan, in particular, is completely insane. The United States has one area where high speed rail would actually be a great big deal, where all the passengers and people are, that is economically super valuable. That is the eastern line between Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Improving that line to be true high speed rail would be an absolute game changer. We could then discuss extending that effort elsewhere. Instead, it gets completely ignored. And no, I don’t want to hear about permitting issues, you’re the government. Fix It.
Compared to that, all the other high speed rail proposals are chump change, and they don’t fit together into anything cohesive, and also we don’t seem to be able to actually build them. I’m sufficiently gung ho that I think they’re still good ideas if we can actually make them exist, and once you have some good pairwise connections you can look to expand from there, but that seems to be a tall order.
Well, maybe. But what if this was actually feasible?
This project seems obviously worthwhile even at $117 billion if it would actually happen. At $17 billion it is absurdly great and yes the region should be happy to fund, or for a private company to fund since I agree it sounds profitable. If I had an extra $20 billion lying around I would be seriously plotting this out and seeing if various states and the White House would sufficiently play ball.
The cost is that this kills off the Northeast Regional, which cuts some stations off from intercity rail. I think Matthew Yglesias is right that this is a worthwhile trade, but I worry that it is politically a very big problem for such a project. I’d be willing to (inefficiently) give back some of the gains here to fix that in one of various ways.
The Other High Speed Rail Project
Caltrain
It’s good when people ride your trains. Or is it?
Bike Lanes
Marc Fisher tells us that Bike Lanes Are Not About Bikes, because there are not many bikes. He claims it is instead about intentionally shrinking the roads to discourage driving. I find this remarkably plausible.
Airports
Privatization via private equity that comes along with new investment improves airports in terms of number of airlines, number of flights, profitability and user experience. They do not find evidence that going around privatizing all airports on principle would work. The model here is that some airports would give good returns on investment, and selling those outright to those willing to make the investments works out, and works far better than merely selling control rights.
Jones Act Bonus Episodes
Young debater goes 19-1 arguing for Jones Act repeal, including 7-0 across the nation and at the national championship, their favorite part is watching judges laugh at the absurdities. Which feels like cheating – if you win your debates purely because your position is correct, that doesn’t seem fair.
Without the Jones Act we could use ferries on the Great Lakes, with 60 million people living on their coastlines.
Brian Potter asks whether US ports need more automation. Surprisingly he does not consider this a rhetorical question. Especially strange is saying union rules make it hard to take advantage of automation, rather than union rules being the reason to do automation so that you can reduce reliance on the union. Mostly he seems to be saying ‘automation is far from the only problem to solve,’ and sure, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t automate. And I have no doubt if automation currently isn’t good enough that automation would then start to pay much bigger dividends within a few years, as AI advances flow through to automated terminals.
By contrast, Cremieux estimates gains from automation are enormous, and recommends simply paying off the Longshoreman’s Association to permit this.
It seems Cremieux is taking ‘automation makes the ports run faster’ as a given. I find it very hard to argue with this, after the things I’ve read about how manual ports work, and the failure of our ports to run 24/7 – obviously an automated port need never close, but most of ours do.
If you read Trump’s explanation of why he is opposing port automation, it’s literally zero-sum thinking that ‘these foreign companies should hire our American workers’ without asking the question of whether this makes the ports run better or worse. This is a man who scribbles ‘trade is bad’ on reports and thinks tariffs are good.
California closed a refinery and had to import fuel, so Because Jones Act it had to import the fuel across the Pacific, shipping within America is too expensive. Similarly, Puerto Rico gets its LNG from Spain, while our mainland exports LNG to Spain.
A cost comparison:
Sad: Even Joe Biden considered coming out for Jones Act repeal, but the president ‘personally didn’t want to do anything that was anti-union.’ Sigh.
In Brief
They’re building a private rail line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It’s a short line, but what about a private line between Las Vegas Airport and the Las Vegas Strip? We’re still waiting.
We are also doing it by changing the name, Oakland Airport to potentially be changed to San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport. San Francisco has threatened to sue, because this sounds suspiciously like someone might build something or engage in a real world physical world action. We can’t have that. Actually, their reason is that ‘they own the trademark’ and that SFO is one of the busiest airports in the world. Well, yes, so they should welcome there being more flights to OAK instead to free up space?
I notice that I keep not considering the possibility of flying into or out of OAK instead of SFO when visiting from New York, despite this not being obviously worse. I never check, because there is no easy code for ‘OAK or SFO’ when booking, which we need. You should be able to say ‘SFB’ or something, the way you can say ‘NYC’ and get JFK, LaGuardia and Newark.
Whereas one thing we are not doing is building or expanding airports where they would be most valuable. Brian Potter asks why, and provides the answers you would expect. Airports are huge. Airports and airplanes are noisy. No one wants them around, and environmental groups oppose them as well, including (he doesn’t say this but it is obvious) because such people simply do not want planes to be flying at all. So this is the final boss of obstruction, the result of which is that where we most need airports there is no hope of ever building a new one.
I defy this data, still, wow that’s weird.
I mean, no? Or at least, this is not causal. There is no way that the bike lane is boosting sales by a 46%. There are not enough bikes for that, this makes no sense. I have to assume that the street in question happens to be doing well, unless this is (and it would not shock me, shall we say) a massive data or calculation error.
California High Speed Rail subsidized the Bakersfield to Merced portion of track first, despite this being obviously not economically valuable, because the area had… bad air pollution? Because the Federal subsidies were so completely everything-bageled that this was the only way to unlock them. So there goes over $30 billion dollars. Meanwhile, going from Los Angeles to San Francisco would cost another $100 billion. I am down for even a remarkably expensive version of this project, because I think such efforts are transformational, and can then be extended. But also I have no faith that if we gave them $100 billion they would give us an operational high speed rail line.
The Brightline, by contrast, is a new privately constructed railway in Florida, by all accounts quite efficient and lovely, and doubtless providing a lot of surplus.
Michael Dnes tells the story of the M25 in London, for which there are no alternatives. No alternatives can be built, because the United Kingdom is a vetocracy where building roads is impossible. They decided not to widen the M25 because it would draw even more traffic there, creating more problems, but that means no solutions at all.
Remember when from 1840 to 1850, private Britons cumulatively invested 40% of British GDP into the country’s first rail network?
Beware Unfinished Bridges points out that often people will only buy a full set of complementary goods. Putting in a bike lane will only be helpful if it is sufficient to induce bike rides that use the lane, so doing this for half of someone’s commute likely provides as much value as a bridge halfway across a river.
The other thing building half a bridge does is provide strong incentive to finish the bridge, or to adjust where things are.
Whenever one builds capacity, especially infrastructure, it likely opens up the possibility of building more capacity of various types, as well as ways to adjust. This can then trigger a cascade. If you only built things that were profitable on the margin without any such additional building or adjustments, you would often miss most of the value and severely underbuild.
This is one reason I am typically eager to proceed with rail lines and other mass transit, even when the direct case does not seem to justify the cost. You have to start somewhere. If for example we do hook up a point in Los Angeles to Las Vegas via a new high speed rail line, then there is hope that this provides impetus to go further, also most of the gains are impossible to capture. So given a private group is remotely considering doing it, we should be ecstatic.