Is It Time to Go Eyman on the Washington State's Transportation Funding Authority?

King County Metro is headed downhill after tonight's vote. Photo from this video.

Given the impending failure of Proposition 1—the measure meant to save King County Metro from a crippling 17 percent cut—is it now time to reconsider the state's role in transportation funding altogether? The ultimate blame for this failure lies with the state legislature, with it's Republican-led senate, which denied the County the right to adopt more progressive (and more popular) revenue measures. As a result of their failure of leadership, King County had no choice but to propose a regressive, unpopular car tab fee paired with a sales tax increase, and here we are.

This is very much a hare-brained scheme at this point, written more out of sadness and frustration for my home state than any kind of serious intellectual exercise, but perhaps we can take a page out of Tim "I hate government" Eyman's book. People in Washington have been shown in the past to have something of a libertarian streak, so maybe it's time to turn that impulse to a pro-transit purpose and revert transportation funding authority to the county level. Local control! Local control! According to WSDOT, about half of fuel tax funds already go to cities and counties, so why not send them the rest, too?

Not all funding, perhaps, but most of it. The state has a built-out network of interstates and highways, and any additional spending is generally just (extremely expensive) tinkering at the edges. They do rn the state ferry system, which is justifiable and worthy of funding, but most everything else they do could be done by counties. Giving most of that money directly to the counties would probably result in less waste on mega-projects and more thoughtful, high impact expenditures on transit and active transportation resources.

Photo fro kirotv.com.

The initiative, as I imagine it, would ask voters to decide whether all (or most) gas tax revenues should be diverted, after collection, directly to the city/county governments' departments of transportation. It would maintain all existing revenue sources, but divert those related to transportation away from the state. It would also transfer the authority to raise or lower gas taxes to the county level (if this is legal). It might also transfer authority to set other revenue sources for transportation (if this is legal), but I have a feeling this might reduce support for the initiative, as it could scare some people into thinking their local government would go crazy on the revenue proposals.

The main question for me is in the 18th Amendment to the Washington State Constitution, since it's invulnerable to citizen initiative. It says the following:

All fees collected by the State of Washington as license fees for motor vehicles and all excise taxes collected by the State of Washington on the sale, distribution or use of motor vehicle fuel and all other state revenue intended to be used for highway purposes, shall be paid into the state treasury and placed in a special fund to be used exclusively for highway purposes.

That special fund is interesting, but on the face of it I don't see why you couldn't give the cities and counties 90 percent of gas tax revenue if they're already receiving 50 percent. The Amendment also says that funds must be used for highway purposes, so it probably couldn't be used for things like new buses, transit tunnels, or light rail. But this Seattle Transit Blog article notes that "highway purposes" includes the "construction, reconstruction, maintenance, repair, and betterment of public highways, county roads, bridges and city streets," so it sounds like anything from regular maintenance to marking out new bus lanes could be acceptable—even bus stops and real-time arrival signs could be justified under a liberal interpretation of "streets."

This is all just musing at this point, and I'm far from a legal scholar on this or any other issue, so I'm really curious to hear what others think. Is this legally and technically feasible? Even if it is, is it a good idea, or would it just make things worse? Could it have some terrible consequence that I'm not seeing? Would it even pass? What else could be done in lieu of this solution that would improve on the status quo? Let me know what you think in the comments!

On Urban Density: We're Not All Goldilocks, We Don't All Want the Same Porridge

Photo adapted from "Urban Canyon" by Diego Torres Silvestre.

Goldilocks is the story of a selfish young girl who breaks into another family's home, eats their food, and destroys their property. She has a very self-centered perception of what's "just right," and she's perfectly willing to trample on the rights of others in her quest to acquire it. It's fitting, then, that some authors have made reference to Goldilocks when writing about how cities "should" be built. But in their view it's not the little girl who's the monster, it's the Three Bears and their divergent, inharmonious tastes. There's a proper urban density just as surely as there's a proper porridge temperature, and if you don't like it, well, you can go live with the bears.

Here's one take, from the Guardian's recent piece, "Cities need Goldilocks housing density – not too high or low, but just right":

There is no question that high urban densities are important, but the question is how high, and in what form. There is what I have called the Goldilocks density: dense enough to support vibrant main streets with retail and services for local needs, but not too high that people can't take the stairs in a pinch. Dense enough to support bike and transit infrastructure, but not so dense to need subways and huge underground parking garages. Dense enough to build a sense of community, but not so dense as to have everyone slip into anonymity.

Other authors have written similarly prescriptive articles, with titles like "Mid-Rise: Density at a Human Scale," which makes the case that density is important, but that too much density can be harmful. Or "Why I Miss the Suburbs," which consists of a woman who lives in New York City complaining about all the things she misses about the suburbs. Or here's a local Seattle man offering his feelings on micro-housing: "I don't think most people want to live next to a boarding house with itinerant people living in it."

Putting aside the loaded language of that last quote, what each of these share is the belief that there's a "right" way to build cities. In their view there's a balanced amount of development—somewhere between two-story dingbats and 80-story skyscrapers—that will make everyone happy. This mindset is no less destructive than Goldilocks herself, but on a scale far beyond at of a single household's personal property.

Most people probably don't want to live in a city full of skyscrapers, but some surely do. Manhattan is a real place, after all. Not everyone wants to live in a sprawling, suburban neighborhood either. Some people enjoy the anonymity of the big city, others hate it. To state the very obvious, different people are different. They like different foods and different cars, or they don't like cars at all; they have different political ideologies and appreciate different art; and they enjoy different urban environments to different degrees.

No one is forcing these people to be here! Photo by Bon Adrien.

Imposing my values to ensure that only a specific type of urban environment exists robs others of the opportunity to find their own Happy City. Unlike Goldilocks, who breaks some dishware and a chair or two, successful NIMBYs are taking away entire homes from people who would like to live in their city—they remove those potential homes from the market, and they drive up the cost of living for everyone else in the process. There's something to be said for incrementalism, but arbitrary limits to density, excessive parking minimums, and other rigid regulations that define which forms are acceptable (and, more to the point, which are not) cost us dearly: lost productivity, overpriced housing, air pollution, sprawl, poor health and obesity; the list goes on and on.

In cities—places known for accepting and celebrating diversity—it's amazing that we have to fight over what kinds of housing are appropriate and not. If it's safe and clean, and someone wants to live in it, that should resolve 90 percent of the issue. They should have the right to live as they please. Community input should play a role, including on aesthetic matters, but arguments that "I wouldn't want to live there" have no place in the discussion, especially when those homes are maintaining vacancy rates of approximately zero. If no one wants to live there, no one will, and you'll be unlikely to see that type of housing again any time soon.

Do You Know What "Gentrification" Means?

A recent article at the Metro Trends blog, unfortunately, seems to have conflated youth with gentrification, and in the process even managed to confuse the meaning of the word "revitalization."

Their case, essentially, is that cities are attracting young, educated 20-35 year-olds—people from the Millennial generation—but maybe it's not as much as we all like to think. That's debatable, but then they go on to say that what is increasing by a lot is college-educated adults, as if that's some kind of revelation, and evidence that gentrification isn't happening as much as we all think.

It's hard to even explain how confused they are about what gentrification is without reproducing the whole article, so I recommend you take 3 minutes to read it. Because of how they rewrote the article after discovering a flaw in their data, it's hard to tease out their conclusion, but what does seem clear is that they're using in-migration of hipsters and young professionals, "gentrification," and "revitalization" as basically interchangeable terms.

So let's just clear things up. First, some good old Oxford English Dictionary definitions:

Gentrify: To renovate or convert (housing, esp. in an inner-city area) so that it conforms to middle-class taste; to render (an area) middle-class.

Gentry: (1) Rank by birth (usually, high birth; rarely in neutral sense); (2) People of gentle birth and breeding; the class to which they belong; in modern English use spec. the class immediately below the nobility.

To be a member of the gentry, in the archaic use of the word, is to be of high social ranking, but not quite among the elite of society. In the modern sense, to gentrify is to convert an area to a higher economic (and therefore social) class and character. The specific definition refers to a conversion to middle class tastes, but I think it's fair to say that the meaning of the word has evolved to include any such conversion: low to middle class, middle to upper class, whatever.

Notice that this says nothing about a person's age. Gentrification is about wealth and social class, not age. Whether the affluent person moving into San Francisco and displacing long-time, lower-income residents is 25 or 55 years old, that's still gentrification. (And to be clear, the new resident has every right to move where they like, if they can afford to do so -- it's government's responsibility to accommodate enough growth to provide new residents housing while limiting displacement.)

People talk so much about gentrification and Millennials that it seems they've started to mean the same thing to some people, and now even a completely benign word like "revitalization" is being demonized. If nothing else I think this just demonstrates how little people really understand about the connection between housing supply and demand, affordability, and demographics. If we can't even keep our buzz words straight we've got a long way to go toward finding a solution.

Why High-Speed Rail Isn't Less Cost-Effective Than Other Transit Investments (Part Two)

Last week UCLA published a working paper arguing that urban transportation projects were more cost-effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than high-speed rail (HSR). I posted a critique of that paper, focusing first on the benefits side of the ledger, showing that the authors had overstated the user savings of light rail, bus, and bicycle infrastructure projects while HSR's savings may have been undersold. This week, I'm going to look at costs.

I want to start this out by noting that the study's authors, Juan Matute and Mikhail Chester, Ph.D, seem to be focused on making a case for using the state's cap-and-trade revenues for what they view as worthy investments. That's fine, and there should be a debate about how those funds are spent, but the premises of that debate should be accurate. I don't think this working paper meets that requirement in its current form.

LA's Orange Line bus rapid transit and bicycle path, and Gold Line light rail services are all great projects, and we absolutely should invest in more bicycle paths, light rail, bus rapid transit, and pedestrian facilities. The error in the UCLA report is in the belief that these projects are in competition with HSR, which shouldn't be the case.

Now, onto the numbers.

CAPITAL AND OPERATING COSTS

The California High Speed Rail Authority's 2014 Draft Business Plan says the project should cost $54.9 billion in 2013 dollars to build up to Phase 1, which gets us from San Francisco to Los Angeles. If this estimate sounds low, it's because reports on the rail line often use year-of-expenditure numbers, but we're going to use 2013 dollars for capital, revenue, and costs to keep things simple and consistent. (The UCLA authors use this same 2014 draft business plan for their report, by the way.) The following table shows the projects estimated capital cost; the relevant number can be found in the last row of the "Cumulative Capital Cost (Billions 2013$) column:

Projected capital costs.

According to the UCLA study, $54 billion is the total high-speed rail project cost. That's wrong. The authors make the erroneous assumption that HSR will operate at a zero-profit level, apparently using an obscure table from page 55 of the 2014 business plan that shows a net operating cash flow of $165 million. For whatever reason, they seem to have interpreted this number as the total profit of the project for its entire lifecycle. I suspect it actually represents a single year's profit in an early year of the initial operating segment's active service, but it doesn't actually matter because we have much more detailed figures in this very same business plan.

First let's look at operating/maintenance costs and lifecycle costs. Here are the tables that summarize those costs:

Projected operating and maintenance costs.

Projected lifecycle costs.

There are low, medium, and high ridership scenarios, which effect these costs: more riders means higher operations, maintenance, and lifecycle costs (as well as higher revenues, which we'll get to). They only provided the annual O&M costs at five-year intervals, so I summed them up by averaging the costs at adjacent 5-year periods, then multiplying that average cost by 5 for every column except for 2060, which is the final year of the project's lifecycle. Here's an example:

O&M costs under the high ridership scenario are projected to be $403 million in 2025 and $920 million in 2030. Averaging those numbers gives us an annual cost of $661.5 million, for a total of $3.3075 billion over five years from 2025 to 2029. This isn't perfect but it's a close approximation, and revenues are summed in the same way so any error should be canceled out on the revenue side.

Lifecycle costs mostly consist of rolling stock replacement, so costs don't vary too much whether the trains are used frequently or not. They just get old after a while.

Here's a table I made of total operations, maintenance, and lifecycle costs through 2060:

 Scenario O&M Lifecycle Total costs 
 High ridership $34,394 $7,656 $42,050 
 Medium ridership $30,550 $7,029 $37,579 
 Low ridership $27,448 $6,376 $33,824 

REVENUES

Now, if the UCLA authors' assumption is correct, revenues should come out to about the same as costs. That's not the case, as you'll see below.

First, here's another table from the business plan. This one is projected farebox revenues under the three ridership scenarios:

Projected revenues.

This is just farebox revenue, i.e., the revenues from ticket sales. It doesn't include any ancillary income, such as advertising or food and beverage sales. According to the business plan, ancillary income can add anywhere between 2 and 30 percent to revenues above ticket sales. I'm going to assume that ancillary income adds 10 percent to revenues—with opportunities for transit-oriented development and the potential for high-profit services targeted at business travelers, I think this is fairly conservative. 

Revenues with and without this additional income can be found below:

 Scenario Farebox revenue Ancillary income Total revenue 
 High ridership $74,060 $7,406 $81,466 
 Medium ridership $57,886 $5,789 $63,675 
 Low ridership $43,633 $4,363 $47,996 

SUMMING UP

We've got a lot of numbers at this point, so lets put them all together. Here's capital, operating, maintenance, and lifecycle costs, plus revenue, all in the same table:

 Ridership Capital O&M / Lifecycle Revenue Net cost 
 High ridership ($54,900) ($42,050) $81,466 ($15,484) 
 Medium ridership ($54,900) ($37,579) $63,675 ($28,804) 
 Low ridership ($54,900) ($33,824) $47,996 ($40,727) 

o rather than a $54.9 billion total project cost, as the authors assert, the actual cost according to the CA HSR Business Plan projects that costs will range from $15 to $41 billion through 2060. That's still a huge amount of money, but consider the fact that this is a 520-mile mega-project, and that it's very likely that a portion of this project will be funded with federal assistance (not in the next few years, but this is a long-term project and politics shift rapidly) and/or private partnerships. Accounting for federal and private funding sources, it's entirely possible that the project could net a profit for the state of California in the long term, as well as boosting the regional economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions statewide.

A study prepared by Parsons Brinckerhoff (and commissioned by the California High Speed Rail Authority) estimates that 4,200 new lane-miles of highway, 115 new airport gates, and 4 runways would need to be constructed to match the capacity of HSR, all at a cost of over $130 billion. This is bogus, frankly, since I don't think anyone believes we're ever going to construct an extra six lanes of freeway between LA and SF. It's quite clear that the vast majority of that highway capacity would never be built in the absence of HSR, though some of the airport expansion remains a distinct possibility. 

Despite this transparent attempt to justify the cost of high-speed rail, I think reasonable people can agree that some expansion of airports and highways will be necessary over the next 45 years to accommodate additional trips of 200-500 miles—unless we build high-speed rail. Is it so hard to imagine that the cost of highway and airport expansions wouldn't reach into the tens of billions over that time period? I, for one, would rather spend that on an emissions-free, displacement-lite transportation mode.

A vision of LA's Union Station in 2050, from Bustler.

Last, we should consider the timeline under consideration here: 2025-2060. Implicit in this study period is the assumption that once the ball drops and 2060 begins, the whole process starts anew. New rails, new trains, new legal bills, new tunneling, new acquisition costs, new everything. Did New York cave in all its subway tunnels after 35 years of operation and start from scratch? It's silly to take such a short-range view on such a monumental project.

There will certainly be significant replacement costs as infrastructure ages into disrepair, but consider the fact that right-of-way acquisition is expected to cost $12 billion, more than a fifth of HSR's total capital cost. That's something you only pay for once. Stations also won't have to be re-constructed, just renovated over time, which is probably accounted for in operations and maintenance anyway. Even track construction, which accounts for nearly half of the total project cost, will be cheaper the second time around. If tracks don't need to be fully replaced after 35 years of use, the costs will be even lower.

Assuming even the medium ridership scenario, if we extend the timeline of high-speed rail service into the year 2100 we easily achieve profits on operations and capital. And that's exactly the perspective we should be taking on this project—it's a long-term investment in California's future, not a short-term economic recovery effort. This is transportation for the long haul (ho ho!), and over the long haul it can be a money-maker that actually helps the state fund other important infrastructure projects, including urban transportation like light rail, bus service, and bicycle and pedestrian improvements. 

I don't think profitability should be the primary goal of HSR, but when you take into account the opportunities for federal and private funding, reduced highway and airport expansion costs, and a longer operations horizon, California high-speed rail has potential to make a lot of money for the state. That's something that urban transportation projects can't say, but that shouldn't be an argument against those forms of investment. Instead, it should be viewed as an argument for high-speed rail—the sooner it begins operation, the sooner it can start creating a funding stream for our state's various other infrastructure needs.

March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Hawaii and Alaska

March Mapness continues... and is coming to an end! These are the last two maps; all that's left is a map for the whole country.

Here's the car-free commute map for Hawaii and Alaska. This shows the percentage of residents in each census tract who get to work on foot, bike, or transit -- anything that doesn't involve a car.

I'm creating a map for each state and I've already uploaded census tract boundary files for the entire country, so others who are interested can (and should!) make their own maps showing whatever they'd like.

Here's a link to the full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "Hawaii-Alaska," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Honolulu, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri

March Mapness continues.

Here's the car-free commute map for Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri. This shows the percentage of residents in each census tract who get to work on foot, bike, or transit -- anything that doesn't involve a car.

I'm creating a map for each state and I've already uploaded census tract boundary files for the entire country, so others who are interested can (and should!) make their own maps showing whatever they'd like.

Here's a link to the full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "Oklahoma-Iowa-Nebraska-Kansas-Arkansas-Missouri," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Kansas City, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Kentucky and Tennessee

March Mapness continues.

Here's the car-free commute map for Kentucky and Tennessee. This shows the percentage of residents in each census tract who get to work on foot, bike, or transit -- anything that doesn't involve a car.

I'm creating a map for each state and I've already uploaded census tract boundary files for the entire country, so others who are interested can (and should!) make their own maps showing whatever they'd like.

Here's a link to the full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "Kentucky-Tennessee," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Louisville, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana

Unlike my NCAA bracket, March Mapness continues.

Here's the car-free commute map for Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. This shows the percentage of residents in each census tract who get to work on foot, bike, or transit -- anything that doesn't involve a car.

I'll be creating a map for each state and uploading census tract boundary files so that others who are interested can make their own maps showing whatever they'd like. If you'd like your state's map up earlier rather than later, just let me know.

Here's a link to the full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "Georgia-South Carolina-Alabama-Mississippi-Louisiana," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Atlanta, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, and Delaware

March Mapness continues.

Here's the car-free commute map for Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, and Delaware. This shows the percentage of residents in each census tract who get to work on foot, bike, or transit -- anything that doesn't involve a car.

I'll be creating a map for each state and uploading census tract boundary files so that others who are interested can make their own maps showing whatever they'd like. If you'd like your state's map up earlier rather than later, just let me know.

Here's a link to the full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "Virginia-Maryland-Washington DC-Delaware," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Washington DC, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.