Private transportation: no operations subsidy, but at what cost?

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Northwest Airlines, now owned by Delta, from Cliff1066.

On this blog I've tried to draw attention to the expectations and perceptions we have of different forms of transportation, and in particular the lack of scrutiny that airline subsidies get relative to that of train services. They each receive billions of local and federal dollars for infrastructure and for operations (TSA and air traffic control for air, basically all rail employees); airlines are privately owned though, and passenger rail is not, so it gets more negative press when it loses money. But while we may spend less on per-mile subsidies for air travel, we're finding more and more that private transportation has its own costs: steadily decreasing quality in the form of higher fares and more fees, less comfort, and fewer options.

A recent Brookings report highlights Delta Airlines' recent elimination of hub services in Memphis as emblematic of the trend toward consolidation of both airport hub designations and airlines themselves: customers are being left with fewer departure options, their airline choices are increasingly limited, and the flights they do manage to get are nearer full-capacity. Shortly thereafter, another article, by David King and David Levinson at Streets.MN, thoroughly explored the benefits and drawbacks of private networks, like broadband services, and public ones, like the US interstate system.

I include a summary of both because this quote from the latter article unwittingly explains the problems discussed in the Brookings report (emphasis mine):

Generally speaking, the public will over-invest in network size relative to the social optimum and the private sector will under-invest relative to optimum, though it gets very complicated.

Much like the US highway system, we can think of the various connections between airports and hubs as a network, and it's clear that the private airline sector, as it retrenches, is under-investing relative to the social optimum. The purpose of private businesses is not to strive for the social optimum, of course. Its purpose is to make a profit. This is why you see more and more fees, fewer flights with center seats unoccupied, and more concentrated hub services. The airline industry needs to make a profit to continue to exist, and its had a pretty rough time of it over the years:

Red line is airline profits before tax, blue line is profits after tax

In virtually every way--cost, convenience, comfort--air travel has gotten worse over the past decade, even without consideration for the burdensome security regulations imposed upon them in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. But without those changes, without the baggage fees, the full planes, the discontinued routes, airlines simply couldn't afford to operate. It couldn't be any other way than this. Airlines had over-invested in their network, and now we're seeing them pull back. We as taxpayers haven't had to absorb the financial losses of the past decade, but we've paid in poorer quality of service by nearly every metric.

Whether that's a fair price to pay is up for debate. For my part, I feel no particular urge to change it, and it would probably be an insurmountable task even if it were desirable. This is the new normal. Next time you're unhappy with the quality of your flight, it might help to remember that back when flights were more enjoyable the airline was probably losing money on it.

As I've stated in previous posts, I'm not interested in bashing on airlines. I think they're fine, for what they're here to do. What I'm mostly interested in is a recognition of the fantasy-land of aviation we've been living in, where for the past 30 years the industry's average profit margins have been just 1%. We've been flying around at basically zero markup--private businesses don't like that. As the profit margins of North American airlines increase over the next few years (they're around 4% now), we're likely to get a more realistic view of what real private transportation networks look like, and then we can look at things like propositions for privatization of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor from a much more informed, realistic perspective.

News Roundup: June 19, 2013

Feed me your cars! Photo by Alan Durning.

Ugly by Law (Sightline)

Probably my favorite post on the internet this week, Alyse Nelson's photo essay illustrates the type of development that's resulted from the introduction of parking minimums, and it isn't pretty. With a focus on the Pacific Northwest, she compares and contrasts current townhouse, commercial, and "dingbat" apartment buildings with buildings from the pre-parking era and you can't help but feel a sense of loss for what we've given up in exchange for "free", convenient, ubiquitous parking.

Getting Physical (Reconnecting America)

All about how we can use infrastructure to promote higher levels of physical activity and health, this stood out to me as both persuasive and shockingly effective: "A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2011 found that the body mass of residents of Charlotte, North Carolina, who started to ride a light rail line that opened in 2007 fell an average of 1.18 points compared to those who didn’t ride — which translates into a loss of about 6.5 pounds for a 5-foot 5-inch tall person. In addition, these light rail users were 81 percent less likely to become obese over time." Imagine if they included biking and walking with those trips!

New Pentagon Mandate: Make Military Bases Livable, That’s an Order! (Streetsblog)

Tanya Snyder reports that the Pentagon is planning to shift their base development to promote more compact, walkable communities. It's a great move since it will lead to more efficient use of land in an increasingly lean military (hopefully), and will of course decrease auto dependence and encourage better physical fitness for residents, which I hear is a pretty big deal in the armed forces.

“We’re a Highway Department, Not a Bicycle Department” (Streetsblog)

Angie Schmitt brings our attention to a shocking post written at NextSTL: that quote is from a St. Louis County Department of Highways and Traffic spokesperson. It might not be a totally ridiculous thing to say if it were true, but the reality is that there is no bicycle department, no pedestrian department. It's rarely said so explicitly, but this type of sentiment is exactly what leads to urban freeways that tear through neighborhoods, ruining communities, shuttering businesses, and endangering pedestrians and bicyclists. If your only job is to build highways, the welfare of other users of the public right-of-way is irrelevant.

Could someone explain the market failure that protecting car dealerships solves? (Richard's RE&U)

Some states currently make it illegal for auto manufacturers to sell and market their cars directly to consumers, and Tesla has been challenging that system by opening showrooms and not requiring purchases to be made through qualified dealers. Understandably, car dealerships do not like this. And now they're lobbying legislatures to ban the practice or increase restrictions, and they're gaining a lot of ground with supposedly anti-regulation and anti-protectionist GOP politicians.

The Devastating Impact of 30 Years of Sprawl, As Seen From Space (Atlantic Cities)

A crazy look, in gif form, at the march of sprawl for various cities around the world. Texas cities like Dallas and Houston are especially impressive for the amount of wilderness they've eaten away at over the past three decades; likewise with international examples like Shanghai and the cities of the Pearl River Delta.

News Roundup: June 17, 2013

AAA: Hands-Free Devices Don’t Solve Distracted Driving Dangers (Streetsblog)

"Distracted driving killed 3,331 people on American streets in 2011, yet car manufacturers continue to outdo each other to add more infotainment distractions in their vehicles. These systems are expected to increase five-fold by 2018, according to AAA. Carmakers seek to show their commitment to safety by making their distractions – onboard dinner reservation apps and social media, for example – hands-free. But a growing body of research indicates that there is no safe way to combine driving with tasks like dictating email or text messages."

Road Fees Don't Hurt the Poor as Much as You Might Think (Atlantic Cities)

High-occupancy toll lanes--lanes that are usually free for carpoolers but single-occupancy drivers can pay a fee to use--are growing in popularity, and this has some equity advocates concerned. Several groups are arguing that their worries are misguided, however, as most HOT lanes actually improve traffic congestion for all users, not just those who can afford the express lanes; perhaps more convincingly, they also note that HOT lanes don't exist in a vacuum: compared to the most popular and successful means of raising transportation revenue, sales taxes, HOT lanes are actually less regressive and have the added benefit of actually reducing congestion.

Conservative Think Tank: Invest in Transit to Boost Metro Economies (Streetsblog)

The conservative Free Congress Foundation, started by Paul Weyrich (man I hope that's pronounced way-rich), co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, released a report calling for increased investment in transit services. The argument is economic in nature (unsurprisingly), and is welcome news from a conservative party that often seems reflexively anti-transit and anti-urban, even when it contradicts their pro-growth, fiscal responsibility message.

France's Autolib electric car-sharing service is coming to Indianapolis in 2014 (Treehugger)

Paris is well known for its massive Vélib bike share service, with 18,000(!!) bicycles and over 1,000 stations, but apparently there's a pretty big car share service there too, called Autolib. It's got about 1,750 cars, and they're all electric. Who knew, right? Now they're set to expand to the U.S., and their first stop is Indianapolis. Maybe the most interesting fact: they're starting with about 500 vehicles, but are providing a total of 1,200 charging stations. With Tesla installing superchargers at a rapid pace too, the electric vehicle infrastructure in this country is set to expand rapidly over the next several years.

The Cases for (and Against) Public and Private Networks (Streets.MN)

David King and David Levinson discuss the benefits and drawbacks to public (like roads) and private (like cable tv/internet) networks, and how they affect the pace and scale of network growth. In the case of roads, the public sector tends to overprovide, while in the case of private monopolies and oligopolies like Comcast's, the service generally fails to meet total demand. The discussion that ensues is quite interesting, and includes the implications for financing, network design, and exceptions to the rule.

Do remote state capitals produce less effective governments?

Albany's pretty far from NYC, but its state capital building is pretty cool.

Last month, the Atlantic Cities reported on a very interesting study by Harvard researchers linking the distance of state capitals from major population centers to corruption. Generally speaking, the more remote the capital, the more corruption there was in that state (as measured by federal convictions). As ever, correlation is not causation and there are plenty of outliers, but the findings are intriguing nonetheless.

They also got me to thinking: beyond its potential role in facilitating the occasional corrupt act by an individual or small group of individuals, could the isolation of state capitals have an impact on the average quality of all bureaucratic talent? Corruption is obviously a big deal, but usually limited in scope; a systemic under-recruitment of talented, ambitious public employees at the state level could have far more devastating effects in the long term.

To see why our remote capitals might be doing a disservice to good governance, we don't even need to look at government employment. To some extent, publicly- and privately-owned businesses are already responding to the heightened attraction of the "major population centers" those Harvard researchers were referring to: Twitter decided to locate in San Francisco, Google put offices in New York City, Amazon is rapidly expanding operations in the core of Seattle. These are expensive markets, and superficially it might seem like a waste of money, but these major corporations have reached the conclusion that they need to be located in dense, walkable, transit-rich cities if they want to attract the talent they need to continue to be successful. Why should it be any different for state employees?

Of course, there are plenty of highly qualified and capable people that actually prefer to live in the smaller-city/suburban atmosphere. That's fine. In cities like Albany or Olympia or Sacramento, though, you're significantly limited in the type of lifestyle you can lead. It's basically suburban car-dependence or bust. And while there are many millions of people who want exactly that, there are as many or more who don't want anything like it, or at least wouldn't rank it highly if they had complete freedom of choice.

Austin's urban capital building in the background. (source)

Large cities, on the other hand, can provide a place for a much larger group of people with a much broader set of interests. The woman who wants to live downtown and spend her leisure time in coffee shops and bars, and seeing live music and poetry readings is free to do so; the man who wants to spend most of his time in his room blogging and reading (ahem) but values the convenience of a grocery store down the road and work within bicycling distance can get what he wants; those that do want the two-car garage, front and back yards, and relative seclusion of the suburbs can always find it without venturing too far. If you can capture a wider swathe of the population (both demographically and in absolute number) in your commute-shed (if that's a word) then you can pick from a larger pool of applicants for your Auditor's office, Liquor Control Board, Department of Health, and on and on. Some of those applicants wouldn't have been interested if the job had been in a remote town, and some of those will be extremely good at their jobs.

The method by which you might study this question is something I'd be interested in hearing from readers about. How do you measure the impact of a more effective workforce? Per-capita income or population-adjusted GDP seems like an obvious choice, but it's likely that if the distance of capitals has any impact it's on the order of a few percentage points of growth and could easily be swamped by other internal or external factors (like a giant recession, for example). And what's the control group? There are also definitely potential benefits like better institutional design that improves responsiveness to constituent concerns or higher quality web sites (read: http://www.altcew.org/), neither of which would necessarily show up in the state's economy but would improve people's lives nonetheless.

One additional note: I just want to make it clear that I'm not saying our current public officials are underqualified or generally doing a poor job--this isn't a critique on existing bureaucratic efficiency or effectiveness at all. In the spirit of this blog's name, it's simply a recognition that things can always be better, and we should be open to considering anything that might fulfill that mission.

News Roundup: June 14, 2013

Cynicism is consent (Human Transit)

Great post by Jarrett Walker about how cynicism about public transportation amounts to consent for poor service. It's a message that's relevant to just about every aspect of civic life. They money quote: "As with many issues, public transit in America is neglected because of apathy, not opposition. The opponents are not the problem. The apathy of supporters is. And cynicism is a big part of that apathy."

In California Cities, Drivers Want More Bike Lanes. Here’s Why. (Streetsblog)

Even in California, full-time bicyclists, full-time drivers, and everyone in between agrees: more bike lanes are needed, and the the more buffered and separated, the better. The article notes that this isn't an altruistic view for drivers; after all, separated bike lanes provide for a much higher level of predictability between users. Bicyclists are much safer so they're happy, and drivers have a better sense of what to expect from bicyclists so they're happy too.

Strong Demand for Rental Housing Driving Gains in Multifamily Construction (Housing Perspectives)

After a 70% drop in multifamily housing permits and starts between 2005 and 2009, construction on apartments and condos is rapidly approaching previous levels with over 310,000 multifamily housing permits approved in 2012. There are a few interesting charts in the article, including the one reproduced above.

If Drivers Won’t Pay to Bypass Congestion, Why Should Taxpayers? (Streetsblog)

Angie Schmitt writes about the failure of high occupancy/toll ("HOT") lanes to meet expectations in terms of use and revenue, with drivers apparently much less willing to pay to avoid congestion than previous imagined. The original article asks the key question: “Which raises a question: given that drivers may not be all that willing to pay for a quicker trip, does it really make sense for taxpayers to invest so much in trying to give them what they won’t pay for themselves?”

...And last, a call out to anyone who might know where to find this information: There are numbers out there on how much it costs us to subsidize the airline industry per flight, but I'm hoping to find that info broken down by domestic vs. international flights. Help me out!

News Roundup: June 12, 2013

Why urbanism matters (Vibrant Bay Area)

Sometimes it's just nice to get a refresher on why advocating for smart, efficient urbanism is so valuable, and Dave Alden does a great job here of summing up the crucial benefits that dense, walkable development patterns afford us.

The Politics of Dumb Infrastructure (Streets.MN)

Nate Hood describes the ill effects of the politicization of infrastructure spending, in which Democrats are happy to support anything that creates jobs and Republicans are more interested in scoring political points against wasteful spending than actually getting anything done. This has led to a situation where those seeking funding for big projects are more interested in overall cost (the lower the better) than actual return on investment, and we end up with expedient but not-very-useful new infrastructure.

EPA Report: $384B Needed to Improve U.S. Water Infrastructure (Governing)

Forget about roads and transit, a new EPA report concludes that almost $400 billion is needed just to get our drinking water infrastructure up to date. The reason behind it, however, is similar to our roads problem: much of the infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life, and we haven't set aside enough money to maintain and replace it.

Housing Discrimination Still Exists, in Deceptively Subtle Forms (Atlantic Cities)

A HUD-sponsored study by the Urban Institute reveals that while overtly discriminatory housing practices may largely be a thing of the past, discrimination persists in more subtle forms. They find that  even with identical financial profiles, Black, Hispanic, and Asian buyers and renters were shown fewer homes on average. While less pernicious than redlining and other discriminatory practices of a previous era, this still amounts to a relative lack of access and options available to minority renters and homebuyers. Worst of all, the biases leading to these outcomes are unclear, and seem nearly impossible to prevent from a regulatory standpoint.

What's better than breakfast for students? Riding a bike to school (Treehugger)

A Spanish study finds that teen girls who rode their bikes or walked to school performed significantly better on a concentration test than their peers who bused or were driven in a car. And while students who ate breakfast did better than those who did not, the differences between active and non-active students was much greater, indicating that morning activity plays a larger role in student concentration than the much-lauded wholesome breakfast.

34th and Stone: the Burke-Gilman's most dangerous intersection?

The Burke-Gilman trail is an incredible transportation and recreational resource for the city of Seattle. Not only do I (along with hundreds if not thousands of others) use it nearly every day for commuting to work from Ballard, I also credit it with getting me back into riding my bicycle several years ago. Jumping straight into riding the streets of Seattle was daunting after growing up in the suburbs and not getting on a bike since my sixteenth birthday; the Burke-Gilman offered me a safe, comfortable place to regain my skills and ultimately opened up the rest of the city to me and my bike.

With special concern for newer riders, and those who are just new to the Burke-Gilman, I have to draw attention to the very unsafe conditions in Fremont at North 34th St and Stone Way. Anyone who's biked through here is probably familiar with the problem. I was motivated to write this post after seeing a bicyclist come within a few inches of being hit by a taxi today, and while I'm tempted to blame the generally manic and dangerous driving of cab drivers here, the fact is that neither the driver nor the bicyclist really did anything egregiously wrong. To see why, we need to look at the intersection.

First, here's the view headed westbound on the Burke Gilman:

Westbound view. A = Burke-Gilman trail, B = car lane.

I've marked the lanes in question with letters: the space below the "A" between the fence and the dark building is the Burke-Gilman trail, and the space below the "B" is the eastbound car lane. What you can probably gather from this image is that the people going eastbound on the Burke-Gilman (i.e., toward me, traveling down the "A" lane) can't see what's going on in the "B" lane as they approach the crosswalk. 

The following image illustrates the scale of this blind spot even better:

Eastbound view, with crosswalk displaying walk symbol.

For more than 100 feet the bicyclist is unable to see what's going on in the car lane, and vice versa. The problem is actually worse than that, since the car lane is at a higher elevation than the trail up until the building blocks the view, so neither drivers nor bicyclists have any idea what to expect until they get to the crosswalk. And as I highlighted in the above image, the bicyclist is sometimes being told during the length of this blind spot that he or she is cleared to ride through the crosswalk.

Here's what it looks like from the eastbound car lane, at the stop line on 34th St. at Stone Way:

View from eastbound car lane. The trail is behind the Solsticio building, and the presence of bicyclists on both sides of it may further confuse drivers.

The reason this is a problem, of course, is that crosswalk signals tend to say "walk" when the parallel vehicle lanes's traffic lights are green, so cars can and do take right turns through the crosswalk while bicyclists and pedestrians are using it. And although I'm sure it's technically illegal for a car to take a right turn through a crosswalk without taking due care to look for pedestrians and bicyclists, in practice this isn't done very easily; drivers really can't see who might be coming up from behind that Solsticio building without already starting to encroach on the crosswalk. I'm certainly not trying to defend their actions, but this is at least partially the fault of the road design making it very difficult to see potential hazards (i.e., people).

On the flip side, some of the blame goes to bicyclists who don't slow down enough while moving through the crosswalk. (I'm guilty of this.) Even with a walk signal it's a very risky move to roll through a crosswalk at 15 mph or more when cars just a few feet away have a green light to pass through the crosswalk. We can get indignant about the fact that we have the greater right to the space, and we probably should, but that doesn't change the fact that if there's a collision we're the ones getting hurt.

Currently, the crosswalk signal only says "walk" for a portion of the time that the parallel car lanes are green, so in theory bikes and pedestrians get their chance to get through then cars get theirs. In reality this is a very busy, often backed-up road for cars, and if they see what looks like a clear crosswalk during the walk signal period they're usually going to go for it. If it hasn't happened already (and I'd be very surprised if that were the case), it's just a matter of time before someone is hit and possibly seriously injured. And it's especially likely to be a bicyclist who doesn't know to be wary of cars they can't see until the last minute. Something needs to be done.

What should it be? I'm not sure. Because of the amount of traffic on 34th St during rush hours and the lack of a right-turn-only lane it seems unlikely that we'll see any kind of partial limitations on right turns--if they were prevented until the crosswalk signal said "stop" you'd end up with the one driver waiting to turn blocking dozens of cars behind him for half the duration of the green light. I don't honestly care what the solution is as long as it works, but the first idea that comes to mind is to eliminate all right turns from the eastbound lane of 34th St.:

Alternate route for 34th St drivers, along N Northlake Pl.

At worst this would divert drivers a few blocks, and, based on my own anecdotal experience, many of them are headed east of Gas Works park (which starts at the bottom right of the above map) anyway. A possible compromise could be engineered in which drivers can take a right at Stone Way during the car-only phase but must travel through otherwise, but that might be overly complex. 

Regardless of the solution, the city needs to take a look at this and start work on a solution. If the several near-misses I've seen in the past few months are any indication, the status quo is a serious accident waiting to happen.

News Roundup: June 10, 2013

How To Calm The Urban Parking Wars (Slate)

Matt Yglesias notes that one of the most contentious issues with new development is the real or perceived loss of parking for current neighborhood residents, and proposes to solve the problem by granting existing residents parking passes that can then be traded on the open market among all residents, new and old. The theory is that this would placate existing residents by giving them an asset that would actually appreciate as new development brought more drivers into the community.

Report: the FRA makes trains less safe, more expensive (Vibrant Bay Area)

A new report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute highlights the differences between safety regulations in the U.S. and EU, and how despite our more onerous requirements we actually end up with much less safe trains; this is related to something I've written about in the past.

Benefits of the Grid (Great American Grid)

Spun off from a discussion at this year's conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism in Salt Lake City, Paul Knight explores the the impact of highly ordered, rectangular blocks and the benefits derived from them, including: walkability (when blocks are properly sized), navigability, adaptability, and efficient use of space (sustainability, if you will).

The Power Inversion (New York Times)

In an op-ed piece, conservative columnist David Brooks argues that federal influence is waning while municipal and regional government power is on the rise, and that local governments may be better suited to responding to many of the prominent issues of our time, including education and infrastructure funding.

Federal Gas Tax Passes Another Milestone: What Is The Future? (Forbes)

The federal gas tax turned 81 years old this Thursday (June 6), and Kelly Phillips Erb has an interesting history of its introduction, its growth under various administrations, and the reasons and justifications behind those increases.

Canada to adopt U.S. vehicle emissions standards, 80% cleaner than current ones (Treehugger)

Michael Graham Richard reports on Canada's adoption of the United States' EPA tier 3 vehicle emissions standards--which include requirements for lower particulate emissions and sulfur content--highlighting the impact of the new EPA standards beyond just the changes in the U.S. market.

The New Urbanist Renaissance of Downtown Redwood City (CNU Salons)

Dan Zack recounts the rejuvenation of downtrodden, economically depressed Redwood City over the past decade into a vital, growing city. Zack outlines the three phases of redevelopment that took place in the city, and his role in the renaissance as the city's Downtown Development Coordinator and a proponent of New Urbanist principles.

...and today, some activism:

Petitioning U.S. DOT to Recognize That City Streets Should Prioritize Walking (Streetsblog)

Current Federal Highway Administration standards for road design are split, rather crudely, between "rural" and "urban" designations, but urban includes everything from McMansion-filled outer suburbs to thriving, active downtowns. A team of planners (and anyone with a bit of sense) think this is not just silly, but genuinely damaging to the effort to make cities safer and more walkable for their residents. They've created a petition to try to convince the FHA to improve their standards, which can be signed here.

News Roundup: June 06, 2013

Now is the time to be an infrastructure hawk, not a deficit hawk (Washington Post)

Ezra Klein makes the case for delaying deficit reduction in favor of focusing on our infrastructure needs. The reasons have been covered many times in the past several years, but this paragraph really nails it: "This, then, is the difference between spending the next two years investing in infrastructure and spending the next two years sharply reducing the deficit. Both of them need to be done eventually. Delaying either means saddling the future with debts we declined to pay off in the present. But this is a particularly good time to invest in infrastructure and a particularly bad time to cut deep into the deficit. And yet we’re ignoring infrastructure and rapidly reducing the deficit. We’ve got it backwards."

It’s Not Just Nice to Share, It’s the Future (New York Times)

Tina Rosenberg discusses the rapid evolution of the sharing economy, in which the long-time availability of some shared resources, like hotel rooms, DVDs, and gym equipment is expanding to things like cars, bikes, tools, clothes, textbooks, etc. She goes on to catalogue some of the reasons for the shift from ownership to access, including the recession, the sustainability movement, and improvements in technology.

The Most Expensive Housing Markets Are Becoming Even Less Affordable (Atlantic Cities)

Home prices have been rapidly increasing, with a roughly 10% average increase year-over-year across the nation. But while this is good news for many homeowners, the gains are not uniform, and the least affordable markets are the ones experiencing the fastest gains in value while cheaper markets like Houston and Indianapolis are lagging behind the national average, exacerbating already-large disparities between metro areas.

Study: AASHTO Guidelines for Bikes Outdated, Not Based on Research (Mobilizing the Region)

A report by the Harvard School of Public Health reveals that the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), "the go-to resource for transportation engineering guidelines," is using guidelines from as far back as 1972 to inform their bike facilities recommendations, and that they continue to advocate against their use despite their unmitigated success in increasing ridership and improving safety for all road users.

And lastly, a little more fun at the expense of Citi Bike haters:
Why Conservatives Hate Citi Bike So Much, in One Venn Diagram (NY Mag)

Dual court rulings reaffirm Bloomberg taxi service goals, consumers benefit

Taxi service in NYC just got a lot better thanks to a couple of appellate court rulings, clearing the way for an additional 18,000 livery cabs to serve northern Manhattan and the other boroughs, and the use of smart-phone apps to better connect riders to drivers. From the New York Times:

As early as next month, thousands of the newly designated taxis — bearing fresh apple green paint, new roof lights and taximeters — will begin to descend on neighborhoods where yellow cabs rarely visit, addressing an inequity that has existed for decades. [...] 

The ruling, which overturns a lower-court ruling that had stalled the action last year, also clears the way for the city to generate as much as $1 billion by auctioning off 2,000 medallions for wheelchair-accessible yellow taxis; the measure required that 20 percent of the livery vehicles be wheelchair-accessible.

Predictably, the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents taxi fleet owners who benefit financially from caps on the total number of taxi cabs, does not approve. More from the NYT:

And many yellow-taxi operators, disinclined to share street hailing with livery cabs, have challenged the plan since its inception. The Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, a plaintiff in one of the suits, called the decision “a crushing blow to New Yorkers who loathe the brand of end-run politics that created this law.” 

“The court’s finding that somehow hailing livery cabs in the Bronx is a ‘matter of substantial state interest’ — code words that were used to bypass the New York City Council — is alarming,” the group said in a statement. “The ruling kicks open the door for systematic abuses for future executives in cities throughout the state, but particularly in New York City.”

Their arguments refer to how the Bloomberg administration brought their case to the state when the city council shut down their plans to expand taxi service, and it certainly is unfortunate that things had to go that route. But note something very important: there's nothing in the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade's complaint about the impact of these rulings on consumers--all they talk about is "end-run politics" and "open[ing] the door for systematic abuses".

And why is that? Because this is a huge win for consumers and the taxi fleet owners know it. They can't very well say, "Shucks, people in Queens are definitely going to get better service and the drivers are going to be better paid at more consistent rates, but... but... our profits!!!" The fleet owners are the only ones who really benefit from an artificially limited supply of cabs, so doom-saying it is.

The taxi business is one of the most highly (and unnecessarily) regulated and uncompetitive service sectors in the country, and this is introducing a little bit of competition into that system, in New York at least. It's very likely that fleet owners will lose out a bit as a result of these rulings, and perhaps even taxi drivers themselves, who already make far less money than they deserve. I think most people would agree that the benefit to the 8 million people living in NYC and the millions more who vacation or work in the area exceeds the losses of the taxi industry--and if you're concerned about the taxi drivers themselves (as you probably should be), then your real qualm is with the medallion system.

Taxi medallion price appreciation since 2004, from Carpe Diem.