Who needs Mass Transit?

MDOT's proposal to widen I-75has generated controversy which includes the suggestion that mass transit is the best solution. Opponents of mass transit find data which says only 4% of Americans use rail. Moderates say it's 8%. Proponents claim 12%,  25% in some cities. News reports don't always make clear whether the percentages apply to total population or to commuters. Arguments for and against mass transit haven't changed much over the decades, and the information in my testimony before SEMTA in 1983, below, remains essentially valid except for the outdated reference to computer memory.

High-speed Rail: Chapter 27
Under standards set by the International Union of Railways, the United States has no high-speed trains. Even Amtrak's Northeast Corridor Acela Express (Washington to Boston) falls short, according to a review published in the 2009 Winter issue of Wilson Quarterly. A 100-mile route in Michigan is one of only four routes outside of that Eastern Seaboard route which average more than 79 mph. The problem is not America's inability to build fast trains. The problem is "aging infrastructure . . . locomotives and tracks not equipped with signal systems that prevent collisions."

• America's Acela trains average 67 mph between Boston and New York.

• "South of New York Acela trains operate at a top speed of 125 mph and an average of 77 mph."

• The run between Spain's Madrid and Barcelona operates at a maximum  217 mph and average 146 mph.

• China plans 8,000-miles of high-speed routes. Work on the section between Beijing and Shanghai (think New York to Chicago) has begun. Anticipated top speed: 235 mph. Also see  Who needs mass transit? -- 22 Feb 10

Re Public Transportation
from a Cato Institute paper by Randal O'Toole

• Traffic congestion is deliberately promoted by city planners to discourage driving. "Any effort to eliminate congestion would diminish transit readership."

• Even though highways and streets are crowded, the typical public transit bus for 60 people carries 10.

• If car-pooling makes no sense for most commuters, and it doesn't in decentralized modern life, "How are giant buses and high-capacity trains going to work?"

• Three out of four dwelling units built in Sweden in the late 1960s were multifamily apartments; by 1980, three out of four were single-family homes.

• Americans drive for 82% of all their travel; Europeans for 78%. If dense housing and huge transit subsidies don't work in Europe, how can they  work here?

• 95% of the United States is rural open space. Given that unaffordable housing and congestion hit low-income families the hardest, government efforts to protect open space are a tragic misplacement of priorities that simply exacerbate housing, mobility, and other  serious problems. -- May 2008

Two approaches to Mass Transit
Faced with similar traffic congestion, Denver and Phoenix are looking at opposite solutions. Denver intends to build a few roads, but the city's main thrust will be a double-track light rail.  Phoenix will add a bit of light rail but intends to remain a car city.

Doubters in Denver contend that drivers will ignore light rail and that the hoped for development of hotels, offices, shops, condos along the rail route won't happen -- as it didn't happen in Los Angeles.

Doubters in Phoenix fear the city will become car-choked because it can't come to believe in public transpiration.

Buses, not trains for Metro Detroit?
Detroit News Columnist Thomas Bray, 14 sep 05
"In very dense cities [like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia], subways and light rail make a certain amount of sense. But Detroit's decentralized nature doesn't lend itself to the fixed routes of the train . . . In poor cities like Detroit and New Orleans, many families can't afford an auto. The best means of getting them where they need to go is a decent bus system."

02 Oct 05:Oakland Press
Democrat state Sen. Gilda Jacobs, of Huntington Woods, and Democrat state Sen. Buzz Thomas complain that "naysayers have dredged up and distorted the negatives to make residents afraid of public transportation." Expressing support for DARTA (Detroit Area Regional Transportation Authority), the two politicians maintain that it is not just "another layer of bureaucracy that will raise your taxes." Acknowledging that an improved regional transportation system doesn't "make Detroit the next great international destination," they insist that a 5-county system would benefit everyone.

02 Oct 05:Oakland Press
The Editorial for the day is headed, "If bus service doesn't improve, it might not exist much longer." Focusing its attention on SMART (Southeastern Michigan Area Transporatin Authority), the newspaper suggests more smaller buses to serve more areas, to replace the mostly  empty large buses serving relatively few areas. The editorial expresses concern that municipalities are opting out of SMART.

Testimony before SEMTA Royal Oak Hearing
Oakland Community College . . . 19 July 1983

1. My name is Frank Versagi. I am one of several vice presidents of the Greater Royal Oak Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee of the Royal Oak, Madison Heights, and Berkley Chambers of Commerce. Although what I say here tonight is not the official Chamber position, the thrust of my comments -- obvious personal observations aside -- reflects a Chamber consensus.

2. I take it as proper that the business community should be considered a special interest group. I want to make it clear, however, that elected and appointed government officials, the school board, homeowner associations, labor unions, the League of Women Voters -- all are special interest groups. SEMTA is a special interest group, with its own set of priorities and goals. As such, SEMTA statements are neither more nor less believable that the statements of any other special interest group.

3. In a democracy, proper public action results, not from the elimination or defeat of special interests but from accommodation of their diverse viewpoints.

4. Historically, at least as its actions relate to this current topic of what SEMTA called in 1980 "Prospective Transportation Improvements in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties," SEMTA's public statements have been arbitrary and speculative and inconsistent. As one example, when the 1980 proposal was first presented to Royal Oak, the feasibility study, according to SEMTA engineers, showed it was definitely superior to run the light rail down Washington. A Main Street route was deemed impractical.

After considerable controversy, including the Chamber's finding that SEMTA had made an error in measuring the width of Washington, SEMTA agreed to consider the Main Street Alternative.

5. When the Chamber asked for documentation about ridership projections, we were given SEMTA-SEMCOG generated mathematical models. When we reviewed the Draft Summary Statement, we read that one-sided assumptions about family size and number of households had been used in generating ridership predictions.

Worse, we learned that because the TALUS study had forecast only a 3.6% transit use by 1990, something called PPM curves were fed into the model, resulting in a 7.5% transit use forecast, without -- as far as we could tell -- any new study of the actual market.

6. It is in that context of information coming almost exclusively from a special interest group, SEMTA, that we suggested in 1980 and suggest now that there is no proof that a substantially expanded transportation system is needed. (SEMTA's use of outside consultants is neither more nor less believable than when Dow Chemical's consultants publish findings about toxic wastes.)

7. SEMTA's undated "Popular Summary of Draft Environmental Impact Analysis of Prospective Transportation Improvements" states candidly that "Community rail operations typically serve fairly long suburban-based work trips and may extend up to 60 miles from the downtown area." The Chamber has seen no documentation that there is an area-wide need for such a rail system, which forms the very base for SEMTA's proposals.

8. SEMTA's reaction to findings which suggest that more East-West than North-South commuting occurs among the three counties -- that SEMTA will provide more buses and bus routes -- makes sense only if an enlarged constituency exists. Doe anyone besides SEMTA want more buses? Who? Where is their documentation?

9. Increasingly, the experiences of other cities -- even those with traditionally excellent public transportation systems, including rail -- show that ridership is dropping, not increasing. We have in our files information about this drop in public use of public transportation from cities like Toronto, Chicago, Washington, Duluth, Boston.

10. Concerning the operating and maintenance costs of such systems, the users are paying never more than 70%, usually less. Toronto's Metro, San Francisco's BART, Washington's Metro are all operating in the red.

To answer that society must provide public transportation just as it provides postal service begs the question. It's hard to find someone who doesn't mail or receive letters. It is easy to find people, for they are the overwhelming majority, who don't use public transportation.

Few are questioning the need to keep in place and make more efficient the existing transportation facilities. What is being challenged is that there exists a need for a substantially expanded area-wide system.

11. Even the premise that mass transportation saves energy, compared with the use of the automobile, has been cast in doubt by none other than the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. OTA reported, in 1976, that even offering free fares on suburban mass transit systems would not increase ridership enough to make a substantial impact on overall fuel consumption. The OTA study also showed that the effect on unemployment of mass transit construction would be "modest."

12. Summarizing, we have here a vested interest -- the public sector, essentially -- saying that we need an expanded public transportation system, and SEMTA understandably wants to focus the dialogue on options like what kind of vehicle and along which routes. It's a bit like a computer saleswoman asking whether you want 32K or 48K of memory when you don't NEED a computer, although you may WANT one.

13. The public -- including the business community -- has a right to be shown something other that self-serving mathematical models to justify the need for increased mass transit. Lacking that, SEMTA should fold up its tent and silently steal away.

======

Now, almost 22 years later, I would only add that I didn't challenge the coercive element, the restriction of freedom, which comes with mass transit. Absolutely nothing is better than being able to come and go when one pleases, where one pleases, alone or with companions, in a vehicle of one's choice.  FJV 24 March 2005

Buses, yes; trains, no?
One can understand that Dan Dirks, the general manager of SMART, favors buses, so he is upset when municipalities decide to pull out of his system, in which he claims "Ridership has increased continuously for over two years. More people are riding the bus today than in the past 10-plus years."  Bus-bias or not, Dirks simply states facts when he cites studies which show that "Comprehensive mass transportation works best when large numbers of people live and work in the same corridor. That  simply isn't the case here in southeast Michigan; in southeast Michigan we live and work all over."

If downtown Detroit had an employment base of 150,000 to 200,000 daily workers, "people would be clamoring and demanding more and better public transportation," the SMART manager wrote to the Detroit News, then cited a Brookings Institution finding that the Detroit region has the second greatest dispersion of jobs anywhere in the country, next to the Napa Valley region in California. For more comment about the pluses and minuses of various modes of transportation, see Mass Transit. 28 Apr 2005

Does mass transportation ever pay?
Even multinationally subsidized Eurotunnel, which connects France and Britain, continues to report financial losses. Operators warn that unless they can reschedule debt they will run out of money in 2007. -- 05 May 2005