Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

Alon Levy has a blog! Or: How Florida’s HSR money is being wasted in New York

By

Longtime commenter Alon Levy…has a blog! So far there’s only one post up – a critique of one $295 million “HSR” grant for New York, money that was originally intended for Florida – but it’s a good one, and I recommend everyone add the blog to their feed readers. He gets into the nitty-gritty details of New York City’s rail network, and comes to the following conclusion:

So the $300 million the state applied to has no relevance to either Amtrak or LIRR traffic. The only use is to let Amtrak use the southern tunnel pair to Penn Station without conflicts. Since Amtrak can already use the northern tunnels without any conflict apart from the one mentioned above, it is a pure nice-to-have. It would be good for operational flexibility if the tunnels were at capacity, but they aren’t: total LIRR plus Amtrak traffic into Penn Station peaks at 37 trains between 8 and 9 am, where the capacity of the tunnels is about 50 – and as with Hunterspoint traffic, Penn Station LIRR traffic will go down once East Side Access opens.

I always thought that Obama’s high-speed rail strategy was absurd and any money spent on HSR-only infrastructure would be wasted, so I was at least marginally pleased when Rick Scott gave up Florida’s money and it was sent to the Northeast Corridor. But after reading this, and especially Alon’s suggestion earlier in the post that the money would be better spent on a similar project in Brooklyn that would benefit the MTA’s 3 and 5 trains (see comments), I’m beginning to wonder if spending the money on inter- and not intracity rail is the bigger problem.

While regular intercity service might be more practical than HSR service (which, somehow, the Obama administration still claims is the goal), the fact is that intercity passenger rail is really not very important in the grand scheme of things. The vast majority of people’s time spent on transit and in their cars involves daily commutes and errands, not intercity trips. Furthermore, intercity rail doesn’t offer any opportunities for transit-oriented development (though boosters sometimes try to claim that it does), and in fact often comes bundled with tons of parking.

This may come off as a cliché, but I mean it in complete seriousness: Obama and his HSR boosters are pretty much just copying what they saw on their European vacations. Tourists in Europe often spend a lot of time on intercity trains and relatively little time on subways and trams (after all, they rarely venture outside the urban core), and so they misunderstand intercity rail. It’s not a standalone thing that you can buy and you’ll all of the sudden look like Europe or Japan – it’s the culmination of transportation and land use policies that allow dense development to take place. America doesn’t have that – either on the land use side or the intracity transportation side – so any intercity rail, whether high-speed or regular speed, is going to disappoint.

Comments

  1. To clarify, I’m not suggesting that the money be spent on the 3/5 in Brooklyn – that’s not even intercity rail. I’m giving the 3/5 as an example of why the flat junction between the LIRR to Hunterspoint and Amtrak is not a serious capacity issue and won’t be for the foreseeable future.

  2. To clarify, I’m not suggesting that the money be spent on the 3/5 in Brooklyn – that’s not even intercity rail. I’m giving the 3/5 as an example of why the flat junction between the LIRR to Hunterspoint and Amtrak is not a serious capacity issue and won’t be for the foreseeable future.

  5. Well said, especially the last two sentences which describe the actual situation in America far better than any of the blathering you get from the left (“trains good!”) or the right (“cars better!”). What really irks me about the recent HSR shenanigans is that it’s “light rail” all over again, only on a vastly greater scale. It’s gazillions of dollars being thrown at shiny, new stuff – not to solve any particular problem but to pad resumes, reward supporters, and buy new ones. As long as the feds are still being so generous with other people’s money… we need to be spending it on plugging gaps where there’s already need and shoring up infrastructure where it’s threatening to crumble – not on dreams of “changing behavior”.

  6. Whether HSR potentially makes sense in any part of America is a different question from whether current government grants for it are being spent sensibly/efficiently. The biggest source of inefficiency is of course the outdated FRA regulations, but even aside from those the existing HSR plans involve a lot of dubious and expensive engineering decisions. This project in NYC is an example, as are the issues with California HSR chronicled on http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/ (including ridiculous overbuilding to accommodate a tiny amount of freight traffic, a needlessly congestion-prone design for the approach to the SF Transbay terminal, reluctance to adopt ERTMS, etc).
    At the moment, Americans aren’t getting what they saw on vacations to Europe and Japan; those systems were the product of much better engineering, and in many cases are even profitable enough to pay off their capital costs. If the FRA regulations and maybe some other institutional stupidity were removed (perhaps by competitively-bid design-build contracts?), it seems likely that HSR connecting the dense, transit-rich cities of the northeast corridor, or even those of California, would fare reasonably in a cost-benefit analysis. Sadly incompetence and inefficiency in the planning of such projects seems to be pretty much endemic in the US, and rail advocates are left to fight to mitigate the stupidity enough that the end result is a very expensive better-than-nothing.

  7. “It’s not a standalone thing that you can buy and you’ll all of the
    sudden look like Europe or Japan – it’s the culmination of
    transportation and land use policies that allow dense development to
    take place. America doesn’t have that – either on the land use side or
    the intracity transportation side – so any intercity rail, whether
    high-speed or regular speed, is going to disappoint.”

    Here, here. I find this to be the lynch pin for the misdirection of the federal pitch for HSR (which as a system with an eventual place and purpose I support). The silver bullet theory that proponents attach to the infrastructure is completely backwards–or that there is a silver bullet at all. A successful alternative transit system operates as an ecology of alternatives from biking all the way to intercity travel. Without a balanced combination of components any new HSR project will come up lame and under-utilized.

  8. T Caine, what’s wrong with the following statement: “Because the U.S. does not have a balanced combination of components, our passenger aviation network is lame and underutilized?”

    The U.S. is transit-poor in most cities, but it doesn’t follow that Americans are mobility-poor. In the absence of a robust transit system, people will drive, or increasingly now, walk, bike, take a cab, share a ride …

    In the absence of an option, people will adapt to conditions or find a substitute. I believe this is a basic economic tenet.

    Look at a high-speed rail station like an airport, albeit for shorter trips. If the local transit system is crummy, will you be stuck at the station? You could: 1)Rent a car (Enterprise, Avis, Hertz et al wish to perpetuate themselves as business entities); 2)Take a taxi; 3)Hire a shared-van service (Super Shuttle et al have the vans and the dispatch capability in place; HSR would be an added market for seats they can’t fill to airports); 4)Have a friend/family member pick you up; 5)If staying at a hotel, see if it has complimentary courtesy pickup; 6)Plan your trip around minimal travel (walk to the nearest hotel); 7)Catch an intercity bus; 8)Catch local transport. These are eight options you have if an HSR system were to appear in your city today.

    Options 9 and more come as the economy adapts around the new service. These would include things like bike-sharing, pedicabs or rickshaws, horse-drawn carriages and who knows what else.

  9. Indeed, comparing HSR stations to airports (in California in particular):

    1) Car rental will probably play a somewhat smaller role than at airports, with somewhat higher prices due to the cost of land. But I’m sure the rental companies will be happy to cater to the demand.

    2) Stations are generally much, much closer to the city. Result: taxi trips are shorter, faster and cheaper.

    3) Could be very useful for people coming in from a greater distance, say a suburb of Bakersfield, or Marin County. Not as common as at airports, where most everyone comes in from a distance.

    4) Of course.

    5) Airport hotels are common today. Hotels near HSR stations will benefit for the same reasons, plus they’ll be convenient to downtown and they can be across the street from– or even on top of– the station. Very effective.

    6-8) Walking and local transit are in general much more effective for stations than for airports, for the simple reason that airports are huge and remote which stations are compact and central. The SF and LA stations are already transit hubs. Even in cities which don’t have significant transit options, the station becomes a natural hub which can be built out from.

    It’s true that HSR is only one aspect of a better transportation network. But even so, it could be effective, and taking that step will speed along the other aspects as well.

  10. Baklazhan wrote:

    1) Car rental will probably play a somewhat smaller role than at airports, with somewhat higher prices due to the cost of land. But I’m sure the rental companies will be happy to cater to the demand.

    An HSR service would mean an increase in business for car rental companies whether they like it or not. Yes, there might be cases where car rental offices hate to have extra customers. Locally owned rent-a-cars may be completely booked, and not have the capital to buy new cars or have places to park and service them.

    National chains would have less of a problem, but it might mean hanging on to cars longer. National chains think it is poor self-image to keep higher-mileage cars in the rental pool.

    Also, the national car chains are not voracious land hogs. You know the thing about a company like Enterprise boasting that they’ll come and pick you up? That’s not only done for customer service. It’s an operational necessity. The rental agents help platoon excess vehicle inventory by driving them between offices and to the customer, so the road system serves as a moving parking lot.

    2) Stations are generally much, much closer to the city. Result: taxi trips are shorter, faster and cheaper.

    Longer trips may also benefit. If you are in L.A., for instance, taking a taxi to the airport involves a flat fare. You might pay about $50 for it, but that’s for a cab, not per person. Find three other people to fill a Crown Vic, and the ride becomes $12.50 a person. Just extend the airport flat-fare privilege to rail stations and taxis become more attractive as well.

    3) Could be very useful for people coming in from a greater distance, say a suburb of Bakersfield, or Marin County. Not as common as at airports, where most everyone comes in from a distance.Just like No. 1, this means shared-van services will get extra passengers and extra business. Just treat a train station as a passenger facility-equivalent of an airport and allow vans to access them. (Right now, in California at least, airport vans are regulated so that they can go from anywhere but with only an airport as an origin or destination. They can’t be hired except for charter.)

    6-8) Walking and local transit are in general much more effective for stations than for airports … . Even in cities which don’t have significant transit options, the station becomes a natural hub which can be built out from.

    This is true right now for smaller cities. To take one example, the Amtrak station in Oceanside is one of the busiest on the LOSSAN corridor. Besides being just a few hundred yards from the ocean, Oceanside station gets a huge boost from Camp Pendleton’s military ridership. Besides Amtrak trains, this is also the point where L.A.’s Metrolink and San Diego’s Coaster commuter trains converge. The station is also the Oceanside intercity bus station for Greyhound and Mexican carriers. It is the western terminal for the Sprinter, a mutt light rail-commuter rail system. It is also the western hub for local buses.

    For larger cities, a station does not necessarily have to be served by all transit vehicles. Locals may not always need to make a trip with the HSR station on the way,

Meta