The MT Position

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit editor

I knew that operating costs were a problem for transit authorities, but I don’t think I had an idea of how bad it has gotten out there. Rather than just a dip in funding as we await the passage of the next funding bill, we may be looking at the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to funding shortages.

Transportation for America released a report recently that looked at transit agencies in the United States and how they are handling a surge in ridership coupled with the funding crunch. Quite simply, they’re raising fares. All of them are.

According to the report nearly 90 percent of transit agencies have raised fares in the last year and 10 of the 25 largest agencies have raised fares by more than 13 percent. Almost every one of those agencies also had cutbacks in service in the same time frame. And here’s the thing they don’t mention, it’s not nearly enough.

So we have more ridership than ever, a chance to show for the first time that public transportation works, is a preferable transit choice and isn’t just “transporting air” (as I’ve heard too many times). And how do we meet that challenge? By slashing service and raising fares.

If that’s not the ultimate Catch 22, I don’t know what is.

Are we really giving riders a choice or just the illusion of choice? Sure, you can park your environmentally unfriendly and expensive car, but when we get too many of you to make that choice, we’re going to charge you more and go less places.

Transit agencies are too often charged with not being businesses. “They need to be run like a business.” “If you ran a business like that you deserve to fail.” “Put the private sector in charge and see how they do.”

But it’s not that simple. Transit isn’t a business, it’s a service. It gives the illusion of being a business, but it isn’t. And because of this illusion people think transit needs to make a profit — like a business — or at least break even.

Since when have our highways turned a profit? How can we expect that of our public transportation?

Simply, public transportation is being starved. It is led by great people doing great things with what meager funding they scratch together and work a lot harder at what they do because they either love the business or know if they fail they will fail everyone who uses their services.

Transit’s benefit is much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s about time it got funded for that benefit and not based on some formula totaled to equal its sum.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit editor

We’re a nation of rationalizers and justifiers. It’s an unfortunate state, but when it comes right down to it we’ll do whatever it takes to prove our point, even if that means searching for the one person who may agree with us. And this time I think the media really is to blame.

The Mass Transit offices are outside Milwaukee, Wis., deep in the heart of Packers’ country. So this week when Brett Favre announced he was going to be a Minnesota Viking the collective fandom in the Badger State threw up its arms in disgust. What I love the most about this situation is every past Packer and Viking coming out of the woodwork to give their two cents on the situation. And why is that? So fans can justify their feelings on it.

Sadly transit is in the same position. Transit opponents will call on every expert they can find to get that one guy who can justify their claims. Think bus rapid transit is a bad idea for your local system? I bet I can find a study somewhere that proves that BRT won’t work in your climate/environment/region/demographic/you-name-it region. Rail has it even worse.

What are two of the biggest hits rail takes almost every time a system is proposed? Cost and permanency. Transit opponents love to throw out how rail costs so many millions of dollars a mile. It’s a great statistic to scare people with. You never hear that with roads.

The recent upgrade to the Marquette Interchange here in Milwaukee is touted as costing less than $810 million, which is less than the $1 billion it was predicted to cost. The planners designed it with congestion in mind, allowing for expansion down the road. But how long will that take?  Compare this to the planned Milwaukee to Madison rail line. This 110-mile line is projected to cost less than $520 million dollars. A whole new form of transit for almost half the cost of a single interchange.

Oh I can hear the transit detractors coming out of the woodwork already pointing out how important the Marquette Interchange is to not only the region but the entire state and so on. Really? Tell that to the guy in La Crosse how important that is compared to a rail line that could connect them on a line between the Twin Cities and Chicago.

Transit again has to justify itself (I just did). When I started with Mass Transit I loved how each agency was different from the previous one I visited. The uniqueness of these agencies makes each of them special. But the more agencies I travel to, the more I have to shake my head as I see the same issues crop up again and again and again.

Transit goes “from not in my backyard” to “when can I have mine” faster than you can blink in almost every agency I’ve seen. Ridership numbers skyrocket with new system openings and yet we can’t seem to find a way to pay for operating costs.

What transit needs to understand is that while we’re trying to justify why transit works, the guys on the other side of the issue are trying to justify keeping things the way they’ve always been. It’s a fight of justifying an idea versus an ingrained way of life, and that’s always going to be a tough sell.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit editor

Congestion pricing was the buzz word for a while in transit. London uses it to great success and Mayor Bloomberg wanted it for the Big Apple, but he couldn’t get it past the legislature. As with most concepts like this, congestion pricing only works if the public adopts it. And for New York, the public has already figured out the best way to move cheaply into the central business district (CBD) – MTA.

I read an article this week saying more people are taking shared-ride options (vans, trains) than taxis and limos to the airports in and around New York City. This can easily be chalked up to the economy cutting into the public willingness to pay associated costs of taking taxis and limos to airports, but there is more at play here. Public transportation has always been held to a different standard than other demand response services like taxis and limos — they have to stick to a schedule.

Sure, you can gauge the time to get downtown from the airport in any city, but you are at the whim of streetlights, traffic and most importantly, your driver when you get in a taxi or limo. Public transit on the other hand has to be places at certain times. Looking at a timetable, it’s not just about finding out when and where your bus or train is going to be for you to catch it, it’s also about seeing where (and more importantly when) it is going to be at your destination.

What’s one of the most famous political adages? You need to make sure the trains run on time.

Now consider this blog I ran across while looking for information on congestion. It’s interesting that, “from 8:00AM to 8:59 AM on an average Fall day in 2007 the NYC Subway carried 388,802 passengers into the CBD on 370 trains over 22 tracks. In other words, a train carrying 1,050 people crossed into the CBD every 6 seconds.”

People have already chosen their form of congestion pricing and it’s public transportation. Consider the impact of taking those people off the trains and putting them into cars as the blog does. Gridlock doesn’t do the concept justice.

Congestion pricing is intended to convince people to take other means of transportation rather than using cars and trucks during high traffic periods, but in the end shouldn’t we just improve our transit systems instead?

It’s another age old adage at work — the carrot works better than the stick.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

Every industry has its ups and downs and transit is no stranger to that. Every time there is a strike or an accident transit seems to get the light shined on it from the media. This week, while quieter than most, had its share of unsightly stories with transit as the focus.

First we have David Lazarus’ column in the L.A. Times. After spending a couple weeks in Japan Lazarus returned to the United States and lamented the “truly pitiful status” of our transit system in comparison. Now, it’s easy to dismiss Lazarus as someone looking at transit through rose-colored glasses, but he makes some salient points.

As Lazarus states, “it won’t be enough to just lay down lots of track and hope people will leap aboard trains and subways. You also have to discourage the use of cars — which most Americans won’t stand for — and make our cities considerably less comfortable.”

As he says, good luck with that. Right now there is no public will to move to a better transit system. And really, for most people, why should there be? They can get into a car and travel anywhere at any time with anyone — or no one for that matter.

After reading Lazarus’ column, I ran across this story where the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommitte on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development, Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said transit couldn’t exist without public subsidies.

Great. Not only is transit trying to take people’s cars, it has to rely on the government to stay in business. That’s some great PR for the transit industry. I can already hear the boondogglers coming out of the woodwork now with their statements about how transit should be run like a business and nobody uses it anyway and why doesn’t the government put the money for transit into roads instead.

The final nail in this week’s bad news coffin came courtesy of GDOT. Just when transit was starting to get a little traction with the national media and decent public sentiment, the Georgia Department of Transportation bungles its programs to such a degree that the federal government decides to freeze its transit grants.

Now transit is trying to push people out of their cars, needs government subsidies to survive and when they get those subsidies, they mismanage them so much the feds pull them anyway.

Like I said, not a good week for the transit industry. Of course, by now most transit industry professionals I know would be lining up to knock down these charges like dominoes:

1. Transit is trying to offer drivers a more desirable option, not forcing them to stop driving.

2. Transit isn’t a private business and shouldn’t be compared with them. It is as much a public utility as parks and highways and should be treated as such.

3. Contrary to popular opinion, one bad apple doesn’t spoil the bunch.

Transit works. But the image of transit needs to evolve past the idea of the fixed-route city bus. The United States is a different beast than Europe or Asia, on many levels, and with transit it simply cannot be held up to copying the standards there.

Like everything else in the United States, transit needs to adopt that melting pot mentality and take the best parts of European and Asian systems, distill them down and hammer out what gestalt works best for what we have. And from the looks at recent ridership numbers — despite news stories to the contrary — what we have is pretty good and getting better all the time.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!