Tag Archives: transportation

public buses vs. Uber Pool

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This article talks about the idea of shifting from public bus systems to Uber Pool, and comes out against it.

Uber Pool’s cost disadvantage over public transit might disappear if a new pilot program in Boston catches on. This month, Uber announced that it would introduce monthly Uber Pool passes—like transit passes—for just $2 per ride, or less than the MBTA’s $2.25 fare. While these temporary low fares are no doubt a money-losing loss leader, if UberPool fares are anywhere close to the price of public transit it would seem like we’re probably looking at a massive shift from public transit to these sorts of ride-hailing services. And wouldn’t that be a good thing, if it’s both faster and nearly as cheap?

But here’s where the importance space-efficiency comes in. When one person switches from the bus to Uber, two things happen. One is that they get a faster trip almost by definition: A vehicle that makes many stops (the bus) is going to be slower than a vehicle that makes few or no stops (the Uber) unless the bus has some other advantage, like transit lanes that allow it to avoid traffic congestion. And the vast majority of American bus lines are given no such benefit.

The second thing is that they switch from a very space-efficient vehicle, where they probably take up only a few square feet on the road, to a very space-inefficient vehicle, where they take up many, many times more.

It seems to me there is a middle ground here. A technology like Uber Pool, whether in private or public hands, could put the right size vehicles on the right routes at the right times. On some routes at some times, that might be a golf cart, and at others it might be a double decker bus. A system like this could be very flexible and adaptable.  Of course, using our own muscle power for as many trips as possible is also an important part of the equation and if we really want to be sustainable we need to design our towns and lives so that is the best choice for the majority of our daily trips. Communication technology and even virtual reality are another part of the equation because they could allow us to have the personal interaction we need in our work and social lives without physical distance being a factor.

transportation, electricity, and carbon emissions

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It’s interesting that as the U.S. has made the switch to more natural gas and less coal, the carbon emissions of electricity generation and transportation have drawn essentially even, where power plants were the much larger emitter in the past. But you can imagine that if transportation begins to electrify on a significant scale, this distinction will be harder to make.

Are you safer on the crumbling D.C. Metro or on the highway?

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Well, this is kind of embarrassing. On the surface, the D.C. Metro is one of the country’s more modern and efficient transit systems, at least compared to the trains and subways I am used to riding in Philadelphia. And most major U.S. cities don’t have a comprehensive and reliable system like Philadelphia’s, dirty, old, slow, and laden with bad attitude as it is. So it’s embarrassing that not only can we not build the new infrastructure we need to help the economy operate efficiently and grow, we are letting the infrastructure we have fall apart apparently.

Embarrassing though it is, this little ironic piece (which never admits to being irony, and there are actually people online arguing over whether it is real) points out that if safety is really the main concern, to the point that some are suggesting shutting down the D.C. Metro, car and truck travel should also be banned. In fact, shutting down the nation’s most dangerous transit system and forcing people to drive would be statistically certain to kill people.

Since 2009, 14 Metro riders and employees have died in collisions, derailings, and other incidents. On an annual basis, that translates to about 0.48 fatalities per 100,000 weekday riders.*

However, Secretary Foxx noted that this is exceeded by the fatality rate of car crashes in every single American metropolitan area for which data was compiled in a recent report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In San Francisco, 3.75 people died in automobile crashes per 100,000 residents in 2014, a rate 7.8 times higher than the fatality rate on Metro. In Raleigh, NC, the automobile crash fatality rate was 7.50 per 100,000, or about 15.6 times higher than the fatality rate on Metro. And in Dallas, the automobile crash fatality rate was 12.02 per 100,000, or about 25.0 times higher than the fatality rate on Metro.

It’s not acceptable to have people dying due to negligence and preventable accidents, but this does illustrate the double standard where we accept the commonplace violence on our roads and streets as a necessary evil, assuming it is not preventable. We are also just desensitized to it, whereas the occasional transit accident or plane crash is a shock and gets a lot more media coverage paradoxically because it is not that common.

April 2016 in Review

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3 most frightening stories

  • The U.S. government’s dominant ideology of free trade and globalization may have roots in U.S. government propaganda designed to provide hidden subsidies to Japan and Korea, our Cold War allies in Asia. And resulting financial deregulation in the 1990s may have been the beginning of the end for the U.S. empire.
  • A new study says that ice melting in Antarctica could double sea level rise projections in the long term. Meanwhile, in the short term, the drought in Southeast and South Asia is getting more and more severe.
  • Robert Paxton says Trump is pretty much a fascist. Although conditions are different and he doesn’t believe everything the fascists believed. Umberto Eco once said that fascists don’t believe anything, they will say anything and then what they do once in office has nothing to do with what they said.

3 most hopeful stories

  • Brookings has a new report on encouraging innovation in the water sector. A lot of it is just about charging more, and it should be fairly obvious why that is politically controversial even if it is the right thing economically. But the report did have an explanation of decoupling (p. 28) which I found helpful. Decoupling is an answer to the puzzle of how a utility can support conservation without losing its revenue base.
  • The U.S. Department of Energy says the technical potential of solar panels is to supply about 39% of all energy use. And electric cars may be about to come roaring back in a big way.
  • Better management of agricultural soil might be able to play a big role in carbon sequestration.

3 most interesting stories

electric trucks

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Now that it looks like electric cars may burst onto the scene in a big way, Planetizen says maybe trucks will be next.

Trucks are kind of a pet peeve of mine. They’re useful obviously, but they degrade the urban environment a lot through noise, air pollution, safety hazards, and just being in the way. Electric trucks would only solve a couple of these issues, but that would be welcome in my opinion. We just don’t need the big trucks downtown – they could drop goods off at warehouses on the outskirts and let smaller, safer, quieter trucks bring them in. Garbage trucks are particularly irritating – I like the idea of vacuum tubes to collect both sewage and garbage, although people often laugh at me for this idea (which already exists).

subsidizing Uber as an alternative to transit

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A suburb of Orlando plans to subsidize 20% of all Uber rides, and 25% of ones that begin or end at a train station. It kind of makes sense that a small city with no previous investment in transit would choose to do this. There is no capital investment required, so they could just set a budget and stop the program for the year if they exceed it. They seem to think it will also help with road building and maintenance costs. I don’t quite get that – you assume people take trips because they need to get from point A to point B, and changing the economics of what vehicles they choose may not affect overall demand or reduce wear and tear. It might even increase demand if people take trips they would not have previously. It could drastically reduce the amount of space needed for parking, and that space and expense could be repurposed for something else. It could definitely cut down on drunk driving. They mention that it could hurt the poor, but I think all you need there is a hotline with operators who can book calls and arrange payment for people who don’t have an internet connection. It could provide jobs for laid-off taxi dispatchers.

how freight moves

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Here are some statistics on how freight moves in the U.S. Compared to my preconceived notions, trucking is even more dominant compared to rail than I thought. Even pipelines move more than twice the weight of rail. Air is vanishingly small in terms of weight, but used to move higher-value items. It’s not too surprising that the monetary value of everything shipped is projected to grow along with the economy, but it is a little surprising to me that the weight of everything shipped is projected to grow by 40% over the next 30 years. It argues against the idea that we are “dematerializing”, or achieving economic growth without physical growth. Sure, people like Alan Greenspan can make an argument that the weight per dollar is not increasing, but what does that mean exactly when a dollar is a fairly arbitrary human measure of value? Ultimately the tonnage of everything we move, from raw materials and fossil fuels to manufactured goods to waste, is one proxy for ecological footprint, and it doesn’t look like we are going to turn the corner soon. The only way that would change is if we had a closed loop, “circular economy” where the waste becomes raw materials again. Then we could theoretically keep shipping it around the loop faster and faster without increasing our footprint. That is, given enough clean, cheap energy.

Greyhound in the 21st Century

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Here’s an interesting article in The Dallas Morning News on Greyhound’s technology strategy.

The 101-year-old company stands at a nexus these days. Uber, car-sharing services and autonomous vehicles will likely thoroughly rearrange ground transportation over the next decade. And young millennials continue their migration to downtown areas — sometimes without cars…

Now Greyhound sells at least 60 percent of its tickets through mobile digital devices like cellphones and tablets, Leach said. And over the next few years, the company wants to become part of a loose urban-mobility network built around ride-sharing and autonomous vehicles…

Despite their Old World aura, buses are a solid part of the modern transportation industry, and Greyhound is still the largest player, with an estimated 31.2 percent share of the market.

Well, if by “Old World” you mean Europe, they have had an efficient inter-city train system for about 50 years. We don’t have that in the U.S. for at least two reasons. First, because we have an enormous investment in a highway system that benefits the auto, oil and finance industries. That system is not optimal by any stretch of the imagination, but now that we’ve built it, we are stuck maintaining it and it would be extremely difficult to abandon it in favor of a better system like an efficient inter-city train network. There isn’t enough money to do both at the same tie. Second, the current approach is further entrenched by our federal political system which gives disproportionate votes and funds to the empty spaces between cities.

Now, if you’re a bus service, you benefit from that sunk investment in the highway system because you don’t have to pay anything near its true cost. Your customers are paying those costs in taxes and blood, but your prices appear cheap to them. Add in a few perks like wireless and clean comfortable seats, and your service becomes a near optimal way to navigate a very suboptimal transportation system.

January 2016 in Review

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I’m going to try picking the three most frightening posts, three most hopeful posts, and three most interesting posts (that are not particularly frightening or hopeful) from January.

3 most frightening posts

  • Paul Ehrlich is still worried about population. 82% of scientists agree.
  • Thomas Picketty (paraphrased by J. Bradford Delong) says inequality and slow growth are the norm for a capitalist society. Joseph Stiglitz has some politically difficult solutions: “Far-reaching redistribution of income would help, as would deep reform of our financial system – not just to prevent it from imposing harm on the rest of us, but also to get banks and other financial institutions to do what they are supposed to do: match long-term savings to long-term investment needs.”
  • Meanwhile, government for and by big business means the “Deep State” is really in control of the U.S. In our big cities, the enormous and enormously dysfunctional police-court-prison system holds sway over the poor.

3 most hopeful posts

3 most interesting posts

  • There are some arguments in favor of genetically modified food – they have increased yields of some grains, and there is promise they could increase fish yields. 88% of scientists responding to a Pew survey said they think genetically modified food is safe, but only 37% of the U.S. public thinks so. In other biotech news, Obama’s State of the Union announced a new initiative to try to cure cancer. In other food news, red meat is out.
  • Not only is cash becoming obsolete, any physical form of payment at all may become obsolete.
  • The World Economic Forum focused on technology: “The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”