Transportation

Commuting in Australia

Wendell Cox — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 01:38:43 -0400

Data from the 2011 censuses indicates that mass transit is gaining market share in all of but one of Australia's major metropolitan areas. The greatest increase as in Perth, at 21% , aided by the new Mandurah rail line to the southern urban fringe. On average, mass transit's market share increased by 10.8% in the five metropolitan areas with more than 1 million population. This increase seems likely to be in response to both mass transit service improvements (such as in Perth) and higher petrol (gasoline) prices. The highest mass transit market share is in Sydney, at 22%, approximately equal to that of Toronto and greater than all major US metropolitan areas except New York (31%). Adelaide has the smallest transit market share, at 9.5%, which is nonetheless 50% above that of Portland, to which Adelaide officials have often looked as a model (Figure 1).

At the same time, there was a personal vehicle (automobiles, motorcycles, taxis and trucks) market share in all 5 metropolitan areas, averaging 2.2% (Table). However, the much larger base of personal vehicle use prevented mass transit from materially reducing the share of the automobile in any of the metropolitan areas.

Work Trip Market Share 2006-2011
Major Metropolitan Areas in Australia
2000	Personal Vehicles	Mass Transit	Bicycle	Walk (Only)	Work at Home	Other
Adelaide	81.2%	9.6%	1.5%	3.1%	3.5%	1.2%
Brisbane	76.5%	13.2%	1.1%	3.5%	4.5%	1.2%
Melbourne	76.7%	13.3%	1.3%	3.4%	4.2%	1.1%
Perth	80.8%	10.0%	1.1%	2.5%	4.1%	1.5%
Sydney	69.0%	20.3%	0.6%	4.7%	4.4%	1.0%
Average	76.8%	13.3%	1.1%	3.5%	4.1%	1.2%
2010
Adelaide	81.1%	9.5%	1.3%	2.8%	3.7%	1.6%
Brisbane	75.1%	14.3%	1.2%	3.5%	4.6%	1.4%
Melbourne	74.5%	15.4%	1.5%	3.3%	4.1%	1.2%
Perth	78.1%	12.1%	1.2%	2.6%	3.9%	2.0%
Sydney	66.9%	22.2%	0.8%	4.6%	4.4%	1.1%
Average	75.2%	14.7%	1.2%	3.4%	4.1%	1.4%

Change in Market Share
Adelaide	-0.1%	-0.6%	-12.2%	-7.4%	4.6%	32.1%
Brisbane	-1.8%	8.3%	10.5%	0.3%	0.5%	14.4%
Melbourne	-2.9%	15.6%	17.2%	-4.4%	-1.0%	10.8%
Perth	-3.3%	21.0%	11.3%	4.0%	-3.9%	30.2%
Sydney	-2.9%	9.4%	30.3%	-3.6%	-0.4%	11.1%
Average	-2.2%	10.8%	11.4%	-2.2%	0.0%	19.7%

Source: Calculated from Australian Bureau of Statistics data

Unlike the United States, where working at home is the fastest growing method of work access (and likely to pass mass transit in this decade), Australia’s working at home share has stayed constant. Working at home is also increasing in Canada.

Mass Transit: About Downtown

In Australia, as in Canada and the United States, mass transit is dominated by commuting to the central business district (downtown). On average, 65% of mass transit commuters had a work trip destination in the urban core, which includes the central business district (downtown). This ranges from a low of 59% in Perth to a high of 73% in Adelaide (Figure 2). This concentration of mass transit destinations in the central business district is epitomized by Sydney, where there was a core share of all trips of nearly 60%. By contrast, in Parramatta, which includes one of the largest suburban business centers, is well served by not only the region's rail system but also by an exclusive busway, the mass transit market share was 15%, one-fourth that of Sydney's core.

In the five large Australian metropolitan areas, nearly 21% of jobs are located in these urban core areas that include the central business district (Figure 3). The difficulty for transit in serving the nearly 80% of work trip destinations outside the urban core lies with far lower employment densities and mass transit travel times not remotely competitive with the automobile (on the assumption that services even available). On average, mass transit carries 200 times as many commuter to each square kilometer of core land area for each commuter carried per square kilometer in the rest of the urban area (urban centre).

It is not surprising that the central business districts dominate mass transit commuting. They are the only locations in virtually any urban area that have a sufficient employment densities and a comprehensive enough radial rapid transit system to provide no-transfer service to a large number of riders.

Australia's Long Work Trip Travel Times

The growth of transit has not reduced travel times but may have boosted it. In fact Australia's workers already are traveling for longer times to work than in nearly all similar- or larger-sized metropolitan areas in Canada and the United States (Figure 4). For example, the average one-way work trip travel time in Melbourne is 36 minutes, which is longer than that of any major metropolitan area in the US or Canada. Sydney's one-way work trip travel time is 34 minutes. This exceeds that of all similarly sized or larger metropolitan areas in the three countries with the exceptions of New York and Washington, which are larger. In Improving the Competitiveness of Metropolitan Areas, I cited Statistics Canada data showing that mass transit work trip travel is much longer than by car and that transferring demand to transit would not improve average travel times.

Both Melbourne and Sydney have slightly longer one-way travel times than larger Toronto, which is also larger, at 33 minutes. The Toronto Board of Trade, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and the Canadian Urban Transit Association have all expressed serious concern about Toronto's long journey to work time, noting that it places is a competitive disadvantage relative to other metropolitan areas.

Melbourne and Sydney also have longer one-way travel times than all of the other 12 US metropolitan areas with more than 4 million population. Perhaps the starkest comparison is with Los Angeles, often cited as having some of the worst traffic congestion in the high income world. Yet, despite having a urban population density higher than that of either Melbourne or Sydney and a far lower transit work trip market share, Los Angeles has a one-way work trip travel time of 28 minutes The secret in Los Angeles, is more dispersed work locations and a more comprehensive freeway system (though major parts of the planned freeway system were not built).

Far starker is the comparison with Dallas-Fort Worth, which has a population density well below that of both Melbourne and Sydney and a much lower transit work trip market share (2%, compared to 22% in Sydney and 15% in Melbourne). Yet, in Dallas-Fort Worth, the average work trip travel time is 26 minutes, a full quarter less than in Melbourne and 8 minutes less than in Sydney.

Where Should Planners "Put" People?

A recent Infrastructure Australia report (The State of Australia's Cities: 2012) cites "Marchetti's Constant," which it characterizes as holding that "people will devote on average 90 minutes a day to travel and no more." (In fact, 90 minutes represents is a full 30 minutes greater than Marchetti indicates: See Note on Marchetti's Constant).

Infrastructure Australia continues "This suggests that improving the efficiency of urban transport systems by putting people in their economically optimal location within a total travel time of 90 minutes may be the key to improving the productivity of cities."

"Putting people" where they have total travel time of 90 minutes seems a pessimistic goal; Sydney’s average daily travel time is now nearing 80 minutes. This justifies policy makers to further increase its already non-competitive work trip travel times. Economic research associates maximizing the number of jobs that can be reached by people in a metropolitan area in a specified time (such as 30 minutes) is critical to improving city productivity (see The Need to Expand Personal Mobility.)

The issue is not where to "put" people, but rather to facilitate more rapid access for commuters throughout the metropolitan area.

Things are Likely to Get Worse

In the end, there is only so much mass transit can do. Already the Australian metropolitan areas have high transit commute market shares to the cores, which leaves only modest room for improvement. At the same time there is little potential for material increases elsewhere in the metropolitan areas. Automobile competitive transit to these locations would be cost prohibitive, perhaps requiring annual expenditures rivaling the total income of the metropolitan area each year for operations, capital costs and debt service (see Megacities and Affluence: Transport and Land Use Considerations).

Australian urban areas are generally underserved by freeways, despite their overwhelming reliance on personal vehicle travel. At the same time, urban consolidation, “smart growth” land use policies are increasing population densities without accommodating the inevitable associated additional personal vehicle demand (see Urban Travel and Urban Population Density). Things could get worse.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.

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Methodology: The analysis is based upon Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data for capital city statistical divisions. The urban core was defined as the following local government areas: Sydney, North Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide. In Brisbane, where the local government area is far larger, the inner Brisbane census division was used. Consistent data is limited to the central business district is not readily available. All trips which include transit as a mode are counted as transit. Workers who did not work on census day or who did not provide information were excluded from the analysis.

Note on "Marchetti's Constant:" Not only does Marchetti find a 60 minute, rather than a 90 minute average, but he also credits Zahavi of the World Bank with the concept, noting that with respect to travel: "The empirical conclusion reached by Zahavi is that all over the world, the mean exposure time for man is around one hour per day.” While there are few references to Marchetti's Constant in the academic literature, it might be more appropriately named "Zahavi's Constant." In a further irony, Professor Peter Newman, a member of the board of Infrastructure Australia, cited 60 minutes (echoing Marchetti), rather than the 90 minute average in describing the "Zahavi/Marchetti Constant" in a Sydney Morning Herald commentary ("Why We're in Reaching Our Limits as a One-Hour City" ).

Photo: Downtown Brisbane (by author)

The Beauty of Urban Planning from the Ground

Wendell Cox — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:38:38 -0500

In a piece called The Beauty of Urban Planning from Space, the Sustainable Cities Collective highlights views from space of uniquely designed street pattern designs in various cities around the world. There are ten examples that illustrate the zenith of urban planning.

As attractive as the street patterns are, they highlight the inevitable inability of designers, or anyone else for that matter, to influence much more than small changes in the overall urban form.

The Incomplete Street Patterns

This point is evident in eight of the 10 urban areas illustrated, where the unique street pattern comprise only part of a much bigger city. The eight are Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Brasilia, Brazil, Washington, DC; New Haven, CT; La Plata, Argentina; Jaipur, India; Adelaide, Australia; and Canberra, Australia.

The best known example may be Washington, DC, where L'Enfant's street pattern served most of the city for more than a century, which is probably a world record for a growing urban area. Yet, today, L'Enfant's design covers less than five percent of the urban area that today has more people than the nation at the time L'Enfant received his position.

In La Plata (See end note on La Plata) the street design comes the closest to covering the whole urban area (Figure 1, from Google Maps). Taking design a bit further, every street is numbered in this city that was planned to be the capital of Argentina's largest province (Buenos Aires, which is separate from the provincial equivalent city of Buenos Aires). Three other of the examples were also new cities planned as capitals, including Brasilia, Canberra and, of course, Washington.

Stagnant Cities

The other two examples are a dying mining town (El Salvador, Chile), which has lost more than two thirds of its population and an Italian medieval fortress town, Palmanova. The latter is more a museum than a dynamic urban area. It is confined to its original area and its population could fit into London's Royal Albert Hall (approximately 5,000).

Belo Horizonte, Brazil

The Belo Horizonte Centro (Note on Belo Horizonte) street pattern is unique. It was part of the inspiration for my Urban Tours by Rental Car website (rentalcartours.net) and a map of Centro was incorporated into the logo (Figure 2).

Figure 2

In Centro, diagonals are superimposed on a conventional north-south/east-west street pattern (Figure 3, from Google Earth). However Centro's street pattern covers less than one percent of the Belo Horizonte urban area, three square miles out of more than 400 (five square kilometers out of 650). Figure 4 shows Centro in red, engulfed by the much larger urban area, outlined in yellow.

The first rental car tour described the Belo Horizonte Centro street pattern:

Belo Horizonte represents both the best and worst in urban planning. The core has, at least from map inspection, a pleasing street layout. In a flair that outdid L’Enfant’s Washington diagonals, Belo Horizonte Centro has a grid of streets on which is superimposed a grid of diagonals. Of course, the resulting eight street intersections make traffic more of a difficulty than with the four that are usual or the grade separations of Brasilia. Centro has a number of wide boulevards, many with green, treed medians and, in the Brazilian style, some with four roadways --- center express lanes and outside local lanes. These “three median” streets, give a pleasing feeling. The overall result is an impression similar to that of Barcelona, and a particularly attractive core that would do most European cities proud.

But, not far from Centro the randomness begins. To the north is the river, and clearly no attempt
was made to continue the pattern beyond that. To the south are hills that would have precluded expansion of the plan. Nor does the pattern extend far to the less challenging east or west

Unscrambling Means and Ends

Street patterns from space provide no indication of urban planning's effectiveness, nor of urban policy of which planning is a part. Planning is a means, not the end of cities.

Over the past two centuries, billions of people have moved to cities. They did not move for the fountains, architecture, or museums (otherwise they would all live in the ville de Paris or Manhattan). In short, urban planning principles of any era have had little impact in the growth of cities.

Urban planning's current "top-down" genre is rather new. Until the British Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 and similar measures, planners contented themselves to design street networks (which the Sustainable Cities Coalition highlights so well) and other necessary infrastructure, such as water and sewer networks. Their handiwork is obvious in the 19th century designed street grid of Manhattan, the straight streets of Phoenix and the modified grid of the Toronto metropolitan area. These are the broad functions emphasized by New York University Professor Shlomo Angel in his Planet of Cities.

Now, urban planning can work against the very justification of cities, the prosperity of its residents.

Successful Cities

The success of urban policy (and urban planning) can be judged by how well the purpose of the city is served – the reason people moved there in the first place. The purpose of the city was well articulated by former World Bank principal planner Alain Bertaud: Large labor markets are the only raison d’être of large cities. Cities are much more about economics than aesthetics. (See end note on Sustainability).

The successful city will facilitate greater affluence – higher discretionary incomes – among its residents.

Regrettably, there are notable failures in this regard. For example, the urban containment policies of smart growth, which ration land and raise the price of housing relative to incomes, have been adopted in cities from Sydney to Toronto and Portland. As a result, residents have less money to spend after taxes and paying for necessities and are less affluent than they would be without such policies. In his introduction to the 9th Annual Demographia Housing Affordability Survey, New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister Bill English pointed out that higher house prices that occur when land is "made artificially scarce by regulation that locks up land for development."

Another problem is evident in excessive traffic congestion and slower travel times. Getting around town quickly contributes to greater economic growth and discretionary incomes. Public policy must facilitate mobility throughout the urban area. The mode --- the means --- is not important, the access is. Transit services are appropriate where time competitive with the automobile, such as to the largest downtowns (See Transit Legacy Cities). However, because of its unparalleled ability to provide rapid mobility throughout the urban area, public policy must also ensure a minimum of traffic congestion and effective access by cars and commercial trucks. The evidence is clear that the higher densities preferred by modern urban planning impede rapid mobility throughout the urban area (see Urban Travel and Urban Population Density).

Finally, by facilitating housing affordability and more free-flowing traffic, the important objective of alleviating poverty is served (an objective that cannot sustainably be served without economic growth)

The Beauty of Urban Planning from the Ground

The "beauty of urban planning" is reliably appreciated from the ground, not from space. The test is how well people live, not what the city looks like. The subject is people, not architecture or urban form (see Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Policy, Planning, Transport and the Dimensions of Sustainability).

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.

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Note on La Plata: La Plata is in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, approximately 35 miles (60 kilometers) south of Centro in Buenos Aires. However, it is a separate urban area because of a comparatively break in the continuous urbanization between La Plata and Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires province is by far the nation's largest provincial level jurisdiction, with a population five times as great as the city of Buenos Aires. Much of the population is concentrated near the city of Buenos Aires, with which it forms one of the world's megacities. The Buenos Aires also has the largest land area and would rank 6th if it were in the United States (nearly as large as New Mexico).

Note on Belo Horizonte: Belo Horizonte is capital of the state of Minas Gerais. Belo Horizonte is Brazil's third largest urban area, after Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with a population of more than 5 million --- approximately the population of the Miami urban area (which stretches from southern Dade County to northern Palm Beach County)

Note on Sustainability: Urban policies that would artificially constrain urban expansion (such as with urban growth boundaries) and discourage automobile travel have often been cited as principal strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, important reports indicate little potential for greenhouse gas reductions from these policies, with the overwhelming share resulting from improved fuel economy. Moreover, recent research in England suggested that such policies should not "automatically be associated with the preferred growth strategy" (see Questioning the Messianic Conception of Smart Growth).

Photo: Belo Horizonte Centro from Nova Lima (by author)

Transit Legacy Cities

Wendell Cox — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:50:08 -0500

Transit's greatest potential to attract drivers from cars is the work trip. But an analysis of US transit work trip destinations indicates that this applies in large part to just a few destinations around the nation. This is much more obvious in looking at destinations than the more typical method of analysis, which looks at the residential locations of commuters. This column is adapted from my new Heritage Foundation Backgrounder "Transit Policy in an Era of the Shrinking Federal Dollar."

Transit Legacy Cities

Transit commuting is heavily concentrated to destinations in just the six core cities (historical core municipalities) of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston and Washington (Backgrounder Chart 9). I call them the "transit legacy cities," because their high transit market shares relate to their development before the automobile became dominant. Because there is such a lack of clarity in the use of terms that apply to cities, it is important to emphasize that the transit legacy cities are municipalities, not the surrounding metropolitan areas or urban areas, where the majority of residents live (Note 1).

The transit legacy cities account for nearly 55 percent of the nation's transit commuters, by work trip destinations, according to the American Community Survey (2008-2010). By contrast, the transit legacy cities have an overall national employment market share barely one-tenth their national transit share (6 percent). Moreover, combined, the transit legacy cities cover a land area little larger than the core city (municipality) of Jacksonville, Florida.

At the same time, the "other side of the coin" is that commuting to other destinations is dominated by the automobile, from the suburbs in metropolitan areas with transit legacy cities, and even more so in the other 45 major metropolitan areas (with more than 1,000,000 population) and the balance of the nation.

Legacy Cities: Transit's Strength

The extent of the concentration in the six transit legacy cities is illustrated in Backgrounder Table 1. In some ways, transit is, first and foremost, really a New York story. More than one-third of all transit work-trip commuting is to destinations in the core city of New York. The dominance is even greater for high-capacity subways/elevated services, a mode in which where New York represents two-thirds of national commuting.

The Key: Large, Concentrated, Well Served Downtowns: The concentration of transit commuting in the six transit legacy cities reflects the factor that is probably more responsible than any other for attracting people from cars to transit. This is a highly concentrated downtown area (central business district, or "CBD") from which a dense network of rapid transit services radiates.

The six transit legacy cities are also home to the six largest CBDs in the nation, where transit's share of commuting is far higher than compared to the rest of the nation. Approximately three quarters of commuters to the sprawling Manhattan CBD in New York (south of 59th Street) commuted by transit in 2000. Less well known is that New York also contains the CBD with the second largest transit work trip destination, downtown Brooklyn (58 percent), which is followed by downtown Chicago (55 percent).

In addition, between nearly 40 percent and more than 50 percent of commuters used transit to the CBDs of Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington. While covering a land area less than one-half the size of Orlando's Walt Disney World, these downtowns accounted for 35 percent of national transit commuting.

Outside the Transit Legacy Cities: Automobile and Work at Home Country

So what about the 94 percent of US commuters who work outside the transit legacy cities? The answer is that the automobile dominates, and transit has been overtaken by working at home. In the suburban areas of metropolitan areas with transit legacy cities, the car carries 18 times as many people to work locations as transit. In the core municipalities of the 45 major metropolitan areas without legacy cities, cars carry 29 times as many commuters as transit, and 51 times as many in the suburbs. Outside the nation's major metropolitan areas, cars carry 82 times as many commuters as transit (Backgrounder Table 1)

Further, outside the transit legacy cities, working at home (including telecommuting) provides access to twenty percent more jobs than transit (Backgrounder Table 3).

An American Love Affair with the Automobile?

The enduring myth of the American love affair with automobile is countered by the huge transit market shares to city downtowns . For example, commuters to Manhattan are five times as likely to use transit as cars. On the other hand, commuters to the edge city of Parsippany, on the I-287 corridor in suburban New Jersey are 50 times as likely to use their cars as transit. Yet both employment centers serve the same labor market. The issue is not preferences, it is rather rational choice. It would be irrational for most people to commute to Manhattan by car, principally because of the traffic congestion and cost, particularly for parking. It would similarly be irrational for most people to commute to Parsippany by transit, because it either could not be done at all, or it would take too long.

Transit's work trip destination market share is an effective measure of its relevance to the market.

And lest anyone should counter that the answer is more money, consider this.

A Cost Not A Revenue Problem

Portland (with a core city that is not a legacy city) has long been held out as a model for improving transit. Yet, after billions of dollars in federal and local tax subsidies, more than 50 times as many people travel to work to suburban locations by car as by transit. More than five times as many work at home as use transit, and working at home costs taxpayers virtually nothing. Yet, despite all these billions, Portland's transit system is in crisis. Tri-Met's Executive Director Neil McFarlane has warned of 70 percent service cuts over 12 years without substantial changes to union contracts.

Transit’s fundamental problem is not insufficient revenue but insufficient cost control. Since 1983, national transit expenditures have risen at an inflation-adjusted rate nine times that of its increase in commuters (Note 2). Even if costs were under control, it would be financially impossible to provide automobile-competitive transit throughout the modern urban area, as Professor Jean-Claude Ziv and I showed in our WCTRS paper (Megacities and Affluence: Transport and Land Use Considerations).

Celebrating Transit

Yet, beyond its inability to convert generous taxpayer subsidies into corresponding ridership increases, transit deserves credit for the large number of people it moves to jobs in the legacy cities. This success should be celebrated although it remains an impossible, prohibitively expensive, dream elsewhere.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

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Note 1: Each of the transit legacy cities has a lower population than the surrounding suburbs. This ranges from nearly 45 percent of the population in the suburbs of the New York metropolitan area to little more than 10 percent in Washington.

Note 2: Within the first 30 days of my time on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, I became convinced that transit's principal problem was cost control (see Toward More Prosperous Cities). This was then and today remains clear from the above-inflationary escalation of unit costs. Regrettably that trend continues today and has seriously impeded transit's ability to increase ridership.

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Photo: Downtown Philadelphia (by author)

How We Should Navigate the Florida Archipelago

Richard Reep — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:38:41 -0500

Leafy, timeless rural routes and monotonous, flat highways have characterized Florida’s network of state roads since the early 20th century. Vacationers in the Sunshine State either stick to the interstates – often a hot, frustrating parking lot – or consign themselves to the stop-and-go, confusing local roads. Future Corridors, the state’s vision of a future, integrated road network, is set to finish its conceptual phase this year, and promises to radically revamp the state’s road system. Since this vision will quickly harden, it deserves a close look by a broad portion of the state’s population to see if it truly addresses the state’s needs or, like so many Florida initiatives (the state’s notorious voting system comes to mind), becomes an ignominious reminder of provincial politics at its worst.

Begun in 2006, Future Corridors contains some progressive, sophisticated thinking. Taking existing corridors and redesigning them to segregate shorter trips, trucks, and transit makes sense and should have happened a long time ago. Such managed use lanes are already popular in California, Texas, and elsewhere. The study also looks at enhancing rail systems for both freight and passenger service.

Florida is already a maze of country roads, rail lines, commercial strips, turnpikes, and interstate highways, with little remote wilderness left. So enhancing, multiplexing, and otherwise modernizing the existing corridors is practical and efficient, and will conserve the state’s inner beauty.

Smoothing out the lumpy traffic flow will also improve the state’s economy. Florida consumes more than twice the goods that it exports in terms of freight, and its tourist-business throughput is more than that of many nations. Its boom/bust economic oscillations, however, mean that road-building comes in fits and spurts, and is not necessarily tied to real-time needs. To get from Gainesville to Jacksonville, for example, you still have to journey upon twisty, peculiar roads built in the 1930s.

Florida’s home-grown turnpike, built in the 1970s to funnel tourism, is impossibly congested in some areas today. As population has swelled, it has changed into a local alternative to traffic-choked arteries for short trips and commutes, as well.

Future Corridors isn’t just about highways, however. Besides its beaches, Florida’s signature characteristic seems to be the ubiquitous, homogenous, low-grade commercial strips that have overtaken our once-quirky roadside culture. Along these main drags, the American narrative can be read in all of its glory: they are the great equalizers, where all institutions are reduced to blue or red logos 300 yards before the turn lane. Decried as the aesthetic horror that they certainly are, these highway markets remain, nonetheless, emblems of the American dream. Anyone with a car can access everything; emporiums are born, flourish, and die. They are transformed quickly and without sentimentality into newer offerings. These strips have transformed much of the state’s coastline into a continuous, multi-stranded conduit of consumption for the masses. The Future Corridors proposal calls for more rural highways in Florida and opens up more land for this kind of development.

Florida’s future, regardless of its new road plan, inevitably will include more of these strips, not fewer; more traffic and highways, not less. Nevertheless, the state’s environmentalists and urban intelligentsia are already forming positions against much of the vision. As the first regions — Tampa-Orlando and Tampa-Jacksonville — are rolled out, 2013 will prove to be a dynamic year of controversy. As state government battles environmental and urbanist boosters, it seems like a California-like trajectory is already set, with some critical concerns sadly cast aside.

Florida currently suffers from “hourglass” transportation planning. On the bottom of the curve, short, regional toll highways and roads are built to enhance local connectivity, but connect only feebly to the rest of the state. On the top, the federal interstate highway system dumps huge quantities of people into the state from the Midwest, the east coast, and the South. In the middle a statewide, home-grown transportation system built to handle this volume has been notably missing.

Competing regions have little incentive to link up with each other. Tampa and St. Petersburg, for example, continue to squabble for small economic advantages, instead of looking at the bigger picture. Meanwhile, the nation’s Department Of Transportation is only mildly interested in state connectivity issues. The gaping hole in statewide transportation planning has never been adequately filled, as any tourist sitting on I-75 in the springtime can attest.

Future Corridors is the latest incarnation of Florida’s long, mostly inept growth management strategy. The Department of Community Affairs, a state-level regulatory bureaucracy, replaced the previous laissez-faire ethos. It survived until 2011. The regulators represented an impediment in a state that is developed largely by outside economic interests, so they were done away with. With a new bubble growing, these interests salivate over future developable land that will be made available by road-building activity. Thus, growth management continues in a sort of feudalistic twilight, where political connectedness replaces the public process with the tacit support of the citizens.

Politicians come and go, so the new process may not continue past the next election. In the meantime, public advocates for the state’s future would do well to advance their own vision of the future, which should include several key ideas.

For starters, the state would benefit from a twenty-first century transportation network that is digitally connected. Planning a trip in Florida is a bit like planning a sailing trip without a weather report. Traffic jams, road construction, and other obstacles seem to crop up without warning, causing trip or meeting delays or even postponements. Delivering real-time digital information to travelers might be out of the cost and logistical range of individual regions, but the state could feasibly invest in a system that updates a driver’s handheld device to help reroute traffic flow and forecast problems ahead.

And no argument about wilderness preservation or road construction carries any weight until the state’s notorious safety issues have been addressed. Whether it is traffic accidents, pedestrian fatalities, or gruesome bicycle clashes, Florida’s roads consistently make the list of the most dangerous roads in the nation. Buried deep in DOT PowerPoints are meek statements about safety, but little has been done. While Florida beckons the world to its door for vacation, its reputation is marred far worse by poor roads than it is by junky, bland, retail, and it must be fixed.

More strategically, however, a road system should reflect the new notion that Florida’s urban clusters constitute a single large megapolis, unified in demography, economics, and culture: the so-called “Florida Archipelago”. Geography is responsible for the weblike settlement pattern, and this geography should be enhanced by a safe and effective transportation system, rather than be treated as an obstacle to be ignored or plowed over with ruthless technology. Corridors should be planned to take advantage of this spread-out nature. Intensifying urban activity where it makes sense, and intelligently intertwining agriculture and wilderness into the planning process, could create a vibrant, robust tropical megapolis.

Finally, the state’s transportation system should help reconcile the growing affordability gap in housing, which is glaring in Florida. A thin line of very high-priced vacation homes hug the coastline, subsidized by people living in less risky locations. This arrangement exacerbates the affordability gap in housing. Meanwhile, rural road networks are often disconnected and poorly maintained. Public transit is ineffective and perennially used as a political plaything, rather than a serious attempt to reduce car dependence for those who would most benefit from it – the low income and the elderly.

Paving over Florida’s interior will close rural areas that remain within the cost of living of the state’s retirees, and it points to a future that will increasingly resemble overpriced, highly regulated California. And with more and more dependence upon toll roads, the state’s transportation system will, if it continues on this trajectory, further separate the haves and the have-nots.

Urban feudalism is the top-down, urban-centric, affluent-class authoritarianism that seems to be overtaking the future of Florida and of America. Historically the state has been able to escape this fate, partly because it has a diversified lower middle class, along with service and construction workers. In the past, the rich came to the state mostly when on vacation. This era appears to be waning, however.

Florida’s working-class population will be squeezed tighter if policies create rising costs that move people further from their jobs. As Florida's new growth strategy, Future Corridors, moves from concept into planning stages, the broadest conversation among citizens and the planners will do the most good in the long run.

Richard Reep is an architect and artist who lives in Winter Park, Florida. His practice has centered around hospitality-driven mixed use, and he has contributed in various capacities to urban mixed-use projects, both nationally and internationally, for the last 25 years.

Photo by Adam Fagen: Roadside Gator in Monroe County, Florida, along the park road to Flamingo, Everglades National Park.

Time to Acknowledge Falling Private Car Use

Phil McDermott — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:38:48 -0500

The prospect of falling car use now needs to be firmly factored into planning for western cities.

That may come as a bit of a surprise in light of the preoccupation with city plans that aim to get people out of their cars, but it is already happening. And it is highly likely to continue regardless of whether or not we promote urban consolidation and expensive transit systems.

But not necessarily lower resource consumption
Of course, as day-to-day travel savings are made by households these can simply result in other forms of consumption, offsetting any resource savings. This should not be surprising. Final demand embodies resources consumed right across the production and distribution chain. Savings from lower transport spending (including commuting) – an intermediate input in the chain – that lead to lower prices translate into increases in discretionary spending (assuming constant or rising incomes).

Hence, the reduction in resource use and pollution sought by subsidising public transport and promoting higher density living may simply be spent on resource-intensive appliances, recreation, entertainment, and inter-city and international travel.

Look to the fringe to look to the future
Putting that inconvenient equation aside, long-term plans for cities should avoid simply projecting past behaviours into the future. Instead, we might look to changes at the margin that signal the issues, discoveries, and events that might determine the long-term outcomes we are interested in.

So let’s look at what’s happening at the margins of car use, focusing for the purpose of illustration on Auckland.

First, travel demand
The New Zealand Travel Survey has been conducted since 2003. The results are published on a two-yearly rolling basis. Using Statistics New Zealand population estimates I have calculated annual “per person” measures for Auckland from 2003 to 2011. There are some sampling issues and qualifications regarding the survey that mean motor cycle and bicycle use statistics for Auckland are not considered reliable enough to use. Even given sampling error, the balance point to some significant and consistent shifts.

For example, total travel (measured as annual kilometres per resident) appears to have peaked around 2007 (Figure 1). In fact, recorded travel declined by 15% over the period. Public transport has done better, down 12% overall but actually increasing 13% between 2007 and 2011.

Figure 1: Aucklanders' Travel by Mode, 2003-2011

More telling, though, has been declining car use. The first column in Table 1 shows changes over the whole period. The second column shows changes between the 2007 travel peak and 2011.

The fall in car dependence since 2007 has been marked among passengers (-23%). Perhaps that means fewer discretionary trips are being taken. This and a 14% decline in driver kilometres and 17% fewer trip legs confirms what the vehicle counts say – cars are being driven significantly less in Auckland (particularly inner Auckland) now than they were five or ten years ago.

	Period 2003-11	Peak 2007-11
Driver
Km	-4%	-14%
Hours	3%	-12%
Trip Legs	1%	-17%
Passenger
Km	-33%	-23%
Hours	-18%	-17%
Trip Legs	-8%	-22%
All Car Users
Km	-16%	-17%
Hours	-5%	-13%
Trip Legs	-3%	-19%

Possible reasons:

1. We know already that an ageing population reduces car use.

2. Public transport is playing a growing but so far minor role (up from 3.7% to 3.9% share of all kilometres travelled). An average 76km per person growth in public transport use since 2007 hardly offsets the 1,810km average contraction in distance travelled by car.

3. Lower real incomes and higher fuel prices play a part. A sharp contraction since 2007 suggests that economic conditions have an impact on motoring far more immediate and influential than trying to reshape the shape the city and how people live in it might.

4. The decentralisation of jobs, recreation and entertainment, professional services, and consumer services – including retailing – mean that people can get more done closer to where they live. Trying to turn this clock back by pushing commercial activity back into the central city and then providing subsidised public transport to access it seems somewhat obtuse in the light of this development.

Second, car purchases

The Ministry of Transport publishes new car registrations (which include imported used cars). It also provides data on the total vehicle fleet since 2000.

Long-term registration statistics are interesting when related to national population data (Figure 2). Apart from a hiccup in 1991 growth in registrations was more or less continuous from 1950 until 2003. Since then there has been a sharp decline. Time will tell whether this is cyclical or signals a long-term shift. It is noteable, though, that 2009, 2010, and 2011 figures fall well below trend.

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Figure 2: Trends in New Car Registrations

This slowdown in new car registrations is reflected in two ways. First, it is reflected in total fleet size, for which data are available from 2000 (Figure 3). This shows that 2007 was a turning point in total numbers, consistent with evidence that driving in Auckland peaked in that year. That’s presumably good for the environment.

Figure 3: New Car Registrations, New Zealand 2000-2011,

Second, with the slow-down in imports, the fleet has begun to age (Figure 4). That’s presumably bad for the environment, as older cars are less efficient and generate more emissions.

Figure 4: New Zealand's Ageing Car Fleet

Third, fleet changes
Fleet composition is changing as growth slows. The average CC rating of newly registered vehicles in 2000 was 2,127. This climbed to 2,191 in 2005, but fell to 2,033 in 2011, an 8% fall in six years.

If this is a sign of things to come an increase in the turnover of vehicles would boost fleet efficiency over the medium term even without taking account of the greater engine efficiencies being delivered and gains among electric and hybrid vehicles

Add to that the prospect supported by these numbers of increasing differentiation among vehicle styles (Figure 5). At one end sits the large weekend recreational vehicle, perhaps falling as a share of new vehicles – or at least being down-sized. At the other is the increasingly popular city runabout or smart car, and in the middle the family sedan, the work horse with an engine size now likely to be well under 2,000cc.

Figure 5: Changes in Engine Size of Newly Registered Vehicles, 2000-2011

So what does this all mean?
There is evidence accumulating to suggest that significant changes are taking place at the margin of transport demand and car dependence. If this is a sign of things to come it raises questions about long-term road expenditure, about dire predictions of road congestion, and about the benefits of adopting expensive land use and transport measures designed to force people out of their cars.

Already, within a more constrained economy, people seem to be making their own decisions to reduce car dependence.

In terms of city planning, it suggests that decentralisation may be more sustainable than the compact city protagonists make out. In this respect, is interesting that motorway traffic counts show that significant reductions in inner city vehicle flows are offset by gains (albeit much smaller) in outer parts of the city – even as measured distance travelled falls.

And Auckland definitely needs to rethink assumptions behind spending plans for major road and rail infrastructure – and confront the risks and costs of getting them wrong.

And, incidentally, it’s about time New Zealand's Ministry for the Environment updated its report card on trends in the environmental impact of vehicle travel – which only goes up to 2007, a year which may prove to be a turning point in long-term travel behaviour.

Phil McDermott is a Director of CityScope Consultants in Auckland, New Zealand, and Adjunct Professor of Regional and Urban Development at Auckland University of Technology. He works in urban, economic and transport development throughout New Zealand and in Australia, Asia, and the Pacific. He was formerly Head of the School of Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University and General Manager of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation in Sydney. This piece originally appeared at is blog: Cities Matter.

Aukland harbour photo by Bigstockphoto.com.

Will Driverless Cars Help us Drive Less?

Jeff Khau — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 00:38:23 -0500

The war on automobiles is real. Backed by a legion of city officials, environmentalists, and new urbanists, the argument to mitigate vehicle has so far been an easy sell – at least in planning circles. Their assumptions echo concerns about the trajectory American cities – the downfall of rural life and open space to name a few. The problem is the trifecta of pollution, congestion, and urban sprawl. Out with cars, they propose – people could ride high-speed transit instead of sitting in traffic.

But technical innovation could make this proposal more like a plea. Google, along with GM, Ford, and Daimler are now designing cars that drive themselves, making private vehicles more efficient, flexible, and thereby more irreplaceable. The US is not alone. Manufacturers in Japan and Germany are coordinating with their national government to launch their autonomous cars within the next decade. IEEE, a group of technology professionals, says that self-driving vehicles would comprise 75 percent of the global traffic stream by 2040.

“Currently, a car spends 96% of its time idle,” says Koushik Dutta of ClockworkMod. He says there’s an unforgiving economic incentive to make sure an airplane is always in use, since they spend almost their entire lifetime in operation. To leave a plane idle is inefficient and unprofitable; similar logic applies to parked car. Some predict the autonomous vehicle technology will decrease this idle time as households begin to link their commutes in one car, rather than one car per person. Sergey Brin, Google’s cofounder, believes the technology, now tangible, will be on the market in five years.

But what precisely is this new technology? As it turns out, much of it is not new; a number of automated features can be found in today’s cars: timed braking during collisions, motion sensors that detect distance between the vehicle and what’s in front of it, and adaptive cruise control. Many of the latest features have applications that use advanced sensors to self-park and prevent drifting to adjacent lanes and self-park.

Unprecedented is the use of a network for vehicles to communicate with one another. A study finds that if vehicles use sensors alone, highway capacity can increase by 43 percent, and if all of the vehicles use both sensors and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, the increase swells to 273 percent. Additionally, networks can facilitate information exchange between vehicles and road infrastructure (V2I). With live data streams, cars will be able to inform one another about oncoming traffic, and perhaps even instinctively reroute the car onto less congested roads.

The move to driverless cars will make the private vehicle much more attractive compared to other modes of travel. This is occurring just as an aging population could lead to reduced driving ; the coming of driverless cars brings them back onto the road. Less reliant on their friends and family as chauffeurs, boomers may happily embrace the ability to travel further and more frequently.

This appeal will extend of course to all generations. The driverless car will offer the current conveniences of the private auto,– such as door-to-door travel, safety, and status – while reducing its level of rick and mental stress. Also, the stigmas of driving are eased; self-driving cars will likely be more eco-friendly, time-efficient, and user-friendly. Once available on the market, driverless technology will change lives by saving lives. Advocates of self-driving cars believe that with less human activity and more automated maneuvering on the road, fewer accidents will occur.

But before autonomous cars can save lives, it must squirm through some political barriers. For one, city officials in large metropolitans are glued to the idea that the best communities exemplify mixed used, high-density, transit-oriented development. Hoping to reverse the still far from over exodus to the suburbs, cities like Los Angeles are banking on public transit to revitalize its inner-urban areas. Though public transit ridership has increased in the last two decades, its market share of ridership has being declining. Metropolitan officials hope that millennials, who tend to be more cognizant of mankind’s carbon footprint, will reverse the trend. It is, however, difficult to imagine why any future generation would enjoy the conveniences of taking transit if a car ride can be just as untroubled. Driverless will make vehicle ownership much more attractive. Public transit will lose its status as an amenity. One of the chief advantages of public transit is the fact that one can ride it stress free without worrying about maneuvering to the destination. With driverless cars, this advantage is superseded.

Congestion may increase because more vehicles will find the frustrations of wading in traffic mitigated. Time in congestion can be replaced with a book, movie, perhaps even a nap. But there’s also the possibility that more households will link their trips using one shared vehicle, decreasing the number of vehicles on the road. Some suggest this may help Americans come to terms with letting go of the private vehicle and, instead, embrace the idea of having one household vehicle, a prevailing trend across the rest of the world.

Transportation planners often promote tolls as revenue sources because building high-occupancy and toll (HOT) lanes. The concept is deemed equitable since it links the payers with the users, begetting a sustainable funding model. Much of the funding for these projects is based on the congestion premium - what people will pay to avoid a crammed highway. This is useful in determining how much to price a toll or high-occupancy lane. But since driverless technology will likely lower this premium, the revenue of these lanes may be overvalued.

With the pieces in place, the journey to driverless cars is vastly feasible. In September 2012, California Governor Jerry Brown enacted a state measure to legalize driverless technology in cars running on public roads; at any given moment, a dozen driverless cars are operating somewhere in California. Currently, each vehicle is manned by two testers and marked by a distinguishable license plate. In the future, the vehicle will only be required to have a one driver. And not too far is the idea of a completely unmanned vehicle, what some call the robocar, which will revolutionize not just our mode of travel but our relationship with time and distance.

Jeff Khau graduated from Chapman University with a degree in business entrepreneurship. Currently, he resides in Los Angeles where he is pursing his dual-masters in urban planning and public policy at the University of Southern California.

Retrofitted driverless Lexus photo by WikiCommons user Steve Jurvetson via Mariordo.

The Drive-It-Yourself Taxi: A Smooth Ride?

Scott Le Vine — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 10:07:02 -0500

Despite a corporate sponsor that paid handsomely for the naming rights, Londoners stubbornly refer to our bikesharing system as ‘Boris Bikes’, in a nod to our colourful Mayor, Boris Johnson. But what will we call our new drive-it-yourself taxis? My suggestion: ‘Boris Cabs’ – and they are now a reality here, thanks to Daimler’s car2go service, if you happen to live in one of three small and separate sections of town. But why did a one-way carsharing system have to limp into London, when more than a dozen other cities have welcomed these arrangements with open arms? In the US, car2go first appeared in Austin, Texas, and since then has moved into Washington, D.C, Miami, Portland Oregon, San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle. It operates in Canada and, on the Continent, in Paris and Amsterdam, among other locations. So why no splashy launch across England's Capital, and no images of a smiling Boris cutting a ribbon?

First, roads in London are balkanised. Our regional transport agency (Transport for London) runs the main arteries, and they provide little on-street parking, the mother’s milk of one-way carsharing. That leaves the local streets in the the domain of the 33 boroughs that are each independent municipalities. Car2go is making a brave attempt to get off the ground here by starting with hundreds of cars (the press release reports 500; in practice,170 are in operation two weeks after the launch) in disconnected sections of town, something it has not resorted to anywhere else. Its standard practice is to strike a city-wide deal with whoever’s in charge of on-street parking, and no single agency fits that bill here. What’s the rush? Well, BMW is hot on their heels with its competing DriveNow system, with staff in London well into the advanced stages of planning.

Second, there is genuine uncertainty about the impacts". Will we take drive-it-yourself cabs to work, and avoid the crush on the Tube? It would be a very different experience than traditional carsharing — London is said to be Zipcar’s second-biggest market after NYC — which doesn’t work for the daily commute. In the Zipcar model (soon to be the 'Zipcar by Avis' model?) you take a car on a round-trip basis and pay by the hour, like filling a parking meter. The novelty of this new generation of drive-yourself cabs lies in their flexibility: as with a taxi meter, you pay by the minute for just the time it takes you to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’, then drop the car off and forget about it.

What does this mean for traffic congestion? CO2 emissions? What about the cute blue-and-white Smart Fortwo-model cars now parked in your neighbourhood – will they mean less parking for private car owners? Not bloody likely. The expectation is that, in time, enough private car owners will switch to using the fleet’s cars, meaning that on balance fewer cars will need to be parked. But try explaining this to car2go’s new neighbours who are not familiar with the subtleties and will be the ones dealing with the growing pains as we feel our way forward.

Transport is a long game, so it will be years until we properly understand the impacts of drive-yourself cabs. My research suggests that likely impacts are:

1) A much larger market than traditional carsharing (about four times as many subscribers)
2) A roughly 4% reduction in personal car ownership
3) About a 1% decrease in car driving vehicle miles travelled (including personal cars, traditional carsharing, and drive-yourself cabs)
4) About a 1% decrease in the number of public transport journeys

We can be reasonably certain that some surprising impacts will be revealed during field trials, and if at some future point London’s authorities are not happy with the knock-on effects there’s nothing to stop us from regulating the industry like any other. But for the moment we don’t understand it well enough to do anything other than let the operators experiment and keep tabs on what’s happening.

We just don’t know what the impacts on traffic levels and CO2 will turn out to be, and, frankly, it’s unfair to – as some suggest – hold the industry to a no-net-traffic/CO2 standard. We don’t do that to Black Cabs or [advance-booking-only] minicabs, or indeed to the automotive or urban transport sectors more broadly. A fairer standard, admittedly more complex to administer, would be to assess whether net value is created after accounting for effects on traffic levels, emissions and more. In other words: get the prices right, just like the economics textbooks say.

The question that needs thinking through is what would transport in London look like if drive-yourself taxi systems went viral and we came to depend on them. What happens, for instance, when instead of 500 of these cabs there are 50,000, and the necessary communication links go down? How would the transport system work if on-road congestion became replaced by virtual queuing to get access to a car? And what about times when the system is under stress, like when a hurricane is approaching, for instance. Is it OK to just flip the switch off on the whole fleet? Who would make this decision, and what guidelines would they follow?

If the history of the car in cities has taught us anything, it is that we need to be humble about our ability to forecast the future. So what is the way forward for Boris Cabs in London? Start with a small fleet and short-duration contracts. Be clear on the objectives and flexible on the implementation. Keep our options open. It will be an interesting ride.

Scott Le Vine, AICP is a research associate in transport systems at Imperial College London and a trustee of the shared-mobility NGO Carplus, which serves as the UK’s carsharing trade body. He authored the recent study Car Rental 2.0: Car club [carsharing] innovations and why they matter.

Flickr photo: Car 2 Go in the 1700 block of Q Street, NW, Washington DC on Easter Sunday, 8 April 2012 by Elvert Barnes Photography

Hong Kong’s Decentralizing Commuting Patterns

Wendell Cox — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:38:37 -0500

Hong Kong is a city of superlatives. Hong Kong has at least twice the population density of any other urban area in the more developed world, at 67,000 per square mile or 25,900 per square kilometer. The Hong Kong skyline is rated the world's best by both emporis.com (a building database) and diserio.com, which use substantially different criteria. This is an honor that could not have been bestowed on any city outside New York for most of the 20th century.

No world city is better suited to mass transit than Hong Kong. Hong Kong may also be the best served --- it has the transit usage levels to prove it. According to Hong Kong 2011 census data, 87 percent of combined transit and car work trip travel in Hong Kong is by transit, though this is a small decline from the 90 percent of 2001. This is the highest transit market share of any high-income world metropolitan area.

Change in Work Access Patterns

Between 2001 and 2011 Hong Kong's employment increased nine percent. Most of these new workers (38 percent), however, did not travel to fixed work locations in Hong Kong. Reflecting continuing decentralization and the impact of information technology, 62 percent of the new workers (1) worked at home, (2) had no fixed place of work or (3) worked outside Hong Kong, especially in Macau and the province of Guangdong, principally in Shenzhen (Figure 1). The 2001 and 2011 census data is summarized in the table below.

HONG KONG WORK ACCESS: METHODS: 2001 AND 2011

	2001	2011	Change	% Change	Share: 2001	Share: 2011
MASS TRANSIT	2,091,552	2,226,818	135,266	6.5%	70.4%	70.1%
Bus & Coach	1,400,770	1,188,897	(211,873)	-15.1%	47.2%	37.4%
Large Bus	1,118,388	938,467	(179,921)	-16.1%	37.7%	29.5%
Minibus (Public Light)	226,646	217,219	(9,427)	-4.2%	7.6%	6.8%
Residential Coach	55,736	33,211	(22,525)	-40.4%	1.9%	1.0%
Rail	690,782	1,037,921	347,139	50.3%	23.3%	32.7%
Metro (Original MTR)	495,128	697,475	202,347	40.9%	16.7%	21.9%
Suburban Rail (Original KCR)	195,654	297,416	101,762	52.0%	6.6%	9.4%
Light Rail	-	43,030	43,030	NA	0.0%	1.4%
CAR & TAXI	232,978	333,192	100,214	43.0%	7.8%	10.5%
WALK	335,859	266,574	(69,285)	-20.6%	11.3%	8.4%
OTHER	123,455	68,509	(54,946)	-44.5%	4.2%	2.2%

TRAVEL TO HK FIXED PLACE OF WORK	2,783,844	2,895,093	111,249	4.0%	93.8%	91.1%

WORK AT HOME	185,367	283,497	98,130	52.9%	6.2%	8.9%

FIXED PLACE OF WORK	2,969,211	3,178,590	209,379	7.1%	100.0%	100.0%

NO FIXED WORK PLACE	188,998	247,916	58,918	31.2%

WORK IN HONG KONG	3,158,209	3,426,506	268,297	8.5%

WORK OUTSIDE HONG KONG	94,497	120,858	26,361	27.9%

WORKING RESIDENTS	3,252,706	3,547,364	294,658	9.1%

EXHIBIT
Travel to Work in Hong Kong	2,783,844	2,895,093	111,249	37.8%
Home, No Fixed Place, Outside HK	468,862	652,271	183,409	62.2%
TOTAL	3,252,706	3,547,364	294,658	100.0%

Source: Hong Kong Census, 2001 & 2011
No Fixed Place of Work: Access method not determined

The Shift from Bus to Rail: Transit's overall share of work trip access was 70.1 percent in 2011 (all methods). This is a slight decline from the 70.4 percent in 2001. Over the last decade, Hong Kong has substantially expanded its urban rail system, including major improvements such as a new tunnel under Hong Kong Harbor and the new West rail line (former Kowloon Canton Railway) to Yuen Long and Tuen Mun. I wrote a supporting commentary in the Apple Daily (Hong Kong's largest newspaper) supporting the rail expansion program in 2000.

The results are apparent in the ridership data. The rail work access market share rose nearly 10 points to 32.7 percent. At the same time, the bus market share dropped nearly 10 points to 37.4 percent. Overall, in a modestly growing labor market, transit added 135,000 new one away work trips.

Car Commuting Up: Cars and taxis experienced a much larger percentage gain, largely as a result of starting from a much smaller base. The car and taxi work trip access market share rose from 7.8 percent to 10.5 percent. Overall, approximately 100,000 more people commuted one way by car to work in 2011 than in 2001. The median incomes of car and taxi commuters are the highest, at more than twice that of rail and bus users.

More Working at Home:Hong Kong's working at home grew the most of any category, rising 53 percent from 185,000 to 283,000 daily. As a result, working at home now accounts for 8.9 percent of work access, compared to 6.2 percent in 2001. Hong Kong's reliance on working at home was greater than that of the United States in the early 2000s. Over the last decade Hong Kong's 53 percent increase in working at home was well above the 41 percent increase in the United States. In Hong Kong, 33 percent of new employment was home-based work between 2001 and 2011. This is greater than in the US, where 20 percent of new jobs involved working at home as the usual mode of access between 2000 and 2010.

The Decline of Walking: Given Hong Kong's intensely high densities, it may come as a surprise that there was a huge loss in walking to work. Nearly 70,000 fewer people walked to work in 2011 than in 2001, as the walking market share dropped 21 percent. In 2011, commuters who walked (and those who used light rail) had the lowest incomes. In 2001, more people walked to work than either travelled by car or work at home. By 2011, fewer people walked to work than travel by car or work at home.

There was also a nearly 55,000 loss in work access by other modes (such as ferries, motorized 2-wheelers and cycling).

Finally, Hong Kong separately categorizes workers without a fixed place of employment and does not obtain information on how they access work. This category experienced an increase of nearly 60,000 from 2001 to 2011.

The Decentralization of Hong Kong's Labor Markets

The distribution of employment changed little over the 10 years, with Hong Kong Island and Kowloon sectors retaining two-thirds of the jobs. These two areas also have more than one-half of the population. Even so, the Hong Kong labor market followed the global pattern of decentralization. More people traveled outside their home areas in 2011 than in 2001. Among resident workers living on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon, there was an 18 percent increase in working outside these home sectors. Further, the increase in people with no fixed place of work reflects greater mobility and labor force decentralization.

Jobs-Housing Balance? Not Much

The high density of jobs and population, its short trip distances, its extraordinary transit system and its high transit market share would seem to make Hong Kong a poster city for the jobs – housing balance ("self containment") that urban planners seem so intent to seek. The data indicates no such thing.

Hong Kong's 18 districts illustrate a comparatively low rate of self containment. Only 21.4 percent of working residents are employed in their home districts, including those who work at home. This is only slightly higher than in highly decentralized suburban Los Angeles County, where 18.5 percent of resident workers are employed in their home municipalities. With far lower population and employment densities and a 50 percent smaller geographical size, the suburban municipalities of Los Angeles County (city of Los Angeles excluded, see Note below) nearly equal the local-area jobs-housing balance of the Hong Kong districts (Figure 4).

This tendency to work away from home districts contributes to Hong Kong's extraordinarily long average commute times. In 2002, the average work trip was 46 minutes, longer than any high-income world metropolitan area except Tokyo. By comparison, Dallas-Fort Worth, with a similar population and a population density less than 1/20th that of Hong Kong, has an average work trip travel time of 26 minutes. Los Angeles, with its world-class traffic congestion has a work trip travel time of 27 minutes, principally because its automobile dominant commuting is much faster than Hong Kong's world class, rail based transit system.

These data, both in Hong Kong and Los Angeles, show that, within a metropolitan area (labor market), people will tend to seek the employment that best meets their needs, just as employers will hire the people best suited to theirs. Within a labor market, this can be anywhere, subject to the preferences of people and employers, not of planners. This is the basis of former World Bank principal planner Alain Bertaud's caution that a city's economic efficiency requires ... avoiding any spatial fragmentation of labor markets.

The Mistake of Trying to Emulate the Unique

It is a mistake to think that urban planning can emulate Hong Kong. Besides its superlatives, Hong Kong did not become so dense as a result of urban planning or the unfettered preferences of people (market forces). Hong Kong's uniqueness is the result of unique geo-political influences. This history forced an unprecedented accommodation of millions in a small space, especially in the third quarter of the 20th century when it stood as a capitalist island in the midst of a Communist sea.

Hong Kong is unique and will be for a long time.

Note: The city Los Angeles has a very high jobs-housing balance (61 percent). However, this is largely due to its huge geographic size (more than 40 times the average suburban jurisdiction).

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

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Photo: West Rail Line, Tin Shui Wai Station bus interchange, Yuen Long (by author)

As Partisan Rancor Rises, States That Back a Loser Will Be Punished

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 09:40:09 -0400

Never mind the big-tent debate talk from both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney about how their respective politics will benefit all Americans. There’s a broader, ugly truth that as the last traces of purple fade from the electoral map, whoever wins will have little reason to take care of much of the country that rejected them.

At least since the dissolving of the “solid South” in the late ’50s and early ’60s, both parties have competed to extend their reach to virtually every region. As recently as 1996, Democrat Bill Clinton could compete in the South, winning several states in the mid-South and even in the heart of Dixie, including Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. President Obama has about as much chance of winning these states this year as Abraham Lincoln did in 1860—giving him little reason to consider them in a second term.

In the Clinton years, powerful Democrats hailed from what we now call red states not only in the South but also in the Great Plains. South Dakota’s Tom Daschle served as both Senate majority and minority leader, and Louisiana’s John Breaux and North Dakota’s Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan were also players.

After his 2008 win, Obama dismissed Republican objections to his stimulus with a two-word rejoinder: “I won.” But it’s become clear since that neither party is willing to accept the other’s claim of a popular mandate for its agenda. And the log jam probably won’t be broken in November—especially if, as seems like the most likely outcome, Obama wins a second term while Republicans hold the House and edge closer to retaking the Senate.

The 2010 Republican landslide was the rare election that radicalized both parties. The new GOP House majority was attained by adding Tea Partiers who have pushed the House—and to a lesser extent the Senate—rightward. At the same time, Democrats lost many of their remaining members who’d held on in Republican-leaning districts, leaving the party with a smaller but more ideologically pure cast of true believers in office.

The right-leaning Blue Dog Democrats who once dominated the party’s ranks in the Plains and the Southeast are virtually extinct (as are Northeastern Republicans). In 2008 there were more than 50 Blue Dogs; the 2010 election sliced their ranks by half. After November there could be fewer than a dozen remaining. More and more Democrats, as Michael Barone has noted, come from overwhelmingly Democratic districts.

A reelected President Obama may well find himself with almost no Plains or Southern Democrats in Congress outside of a few House members in Dixie’s handful of overwhelmingly African-American districts. With little reason to make compromise or common cause with solid red-state Republicans, the administration could leave the denizens of these states to bitterly cling to their guns and religion, while the president expands on his first-term practice of bypassing Congress to legislate by decree on everything from environmental policy to immigration and the implementation of health-care reform.

Already, notes National Journal’s Ron Brownstein, Democrats hold congressional majorities in only three noncoastal states—Iowa, New Mexico, and Vermont. Much of the country inside the coasts may find themselves with little sympathy from or access to a president whose reelection they will have rejected, often by lopsided double-digit margins.

This could impact, in particular, energy policy since American fossil-fuel production is increasingly concentrated on the Plains, the rural Intermountain west and the Texas-Louisiana coast. Virtually all the mineral-rich economies excepting green-dominated California now lies well outside the electoral base of the president and his party. In a second Obama term, these states could well propel the national economy but could have little say on energy policies. Farming and ranching concerns will also have little political leverage with the White House. And traditional social concerns, most deeply felt in the Southern and more rural states, would lose all currency in a second-term administration whose worldview stems from that in big-city-dominated, deep-blue coastal states.

The dissenting states with large fossil-fuel-driven economies—West Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota—would likely go to court to battle regulatory steps that they see as threatening large parts of their economies. In the Great Plains, expect a reprise of the 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion that bedeviled Jimmy Carter, as states fight back against green-oriented Washington regulators cracking down on users of federal land and water.

Of course, if Romney finds a way to win, the coastal states would likely come in for some similarly rough treatment. The former Massachusetts governor has saved his harshest remarks for closed-door private events with big backers, dismissing 47 percent of the electorate as spongers at one such event, and telling backers at another that the Department of Education would become a “heck of a lot smaller” under his presidency and that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which his father led during Richard Nixon’s first term in office, would face substantial cuts and “might not be around later.” The most devastating policy move he shared behind closed doors, though, was telling donors that he might eliminate the deductibility of state and local income and property taxes on federal returns—a move that would amount to a significant tax hike to many people living in high-tax and high-cost-of-living deep-blue states like New York and California.

But since those states are solidly Democratic, Romney has little to lose politically by punishing or alienating their citizens.

Deep-blue business interests could also lose their influence in a Romney administration, particularly if Republicans hold on to their strong majority in the House. The green-energy tax and subsidy farmers that have staked their future on the continued favor of the Democratic Party could find themselves cut off, and transit developers would also take a hit as the vast majority of train and bus riders come from a handful of dense and Democratic states (almost 40 percent of all national riders are in the New York area alone).

But with Romney, the blue states would at least have a kind of patrician insurance, much as Clinton brought Southern sensibilities to the Democrats. The former Massachusetts governor is tied by a cultural and financial umbilical cord to his old comrades in the financial world of New York and Boston, making him less of a threat to the coastal ruling structures than Obama is to those of the interior states or the South.

Whoever takes the White House, the nation’s best hope may be the regional mavericks who defy the trend toward geographical polarization. Democrats such as Sen. Jon Tester in Montana and Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota are running hard against the anti-Obama tide in their states. Should they win, the party’s need to protect their seats would help press the White House to modify the party’s drift to an increasingly leftish social and environmental agenda.

On the Republican side, the need to protect a middle-of-the-road politician like Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown would push other party members into moderating their more extreme positions on social issues and regulation. Republican victories by Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin and Linda McMahon in Connecticut might also help moderate the party by adding to the numbers of “blue states” in the GOP caucus.

For the federal union to work effectively, there has to be a sense that we are all, in different ways, linked to each other and share common interests that mean we’re willing to make compromises to live together. It’s time to bridge our partisan regional divides and avoid an ever more nasty, and divisive war between the states.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and contributing editor to the City Journal in New York. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Beast.

State text map by Bigstock.

The Road Less Understood

Wendell Cox — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 01:38:13 -0400

The Economist confuses ends (objectives) and means in its current number examining the peaking of per capita automobile use in the West in two articles ("The http://www.economist.com/node/21563327" and "Seeing the Back of the Car"). In congratulating metropolitan areas for trying "to change the way people move around," The Economist reminds that Portland (Oregon) has developed light rail and that policy supports transit in Los Angeles. So much for the means, but what about the ends?

In Portland: Transit Loses Ground and a Skeptical Public: Portland, for example, has had anything but stellar performance. Transit has not kept up with growth, having lost 25 percent of its commuting (work trip) share since before the first light rail line was opened in 1986 (Note 1). With five new light rail lines, transit in Portland not only fell short of attracting its previous bus only share of commutes, but also sustained losses greater than the national rate (Figure 1).

The people of the Portland area may not share The Economist's ardor. Just last week, The Oregonian headlined "Clackamas County anti-rail measure passes comfortably; effect could resonate for decades," reporting on a 60-40 vote to require referenda for future rail expenditures. As if that were not enough, a similar measure passed by a similar margin in King City, a municipality in Washington County and Tigard, one of the area's largest municipalities, has placed the matter on the November ballot.

But Portland does have a substantial success missed by The Economist. Working at home is growing rapidly. From 1980 to 2011, working at home (mostly telecommuting) increased by 55,000. This is more than three times the growth in rail transit commuting (17,500). During the last decade, working at home passed transit as a work access mode in Portland, and with virtually no public expenditures (as opposed to the billions for new rail lines). There has been a 375,000 increase in car use by one-way commuters since 1980, and, not surprisingly, a quadrupling of excess travel time in peak period traffic (based upon Texas Transportation Institute data). In the end, Portland built an extensive rail system and the riders have not come. Portland didn't expand its highway system, and they came anyway (National 2010-2011 journey to work data is summarized here.).

In Los Angeles: Long on Rail Lines, Short on Passengers: The Economist rightly points out that Los Angeles has implemented policies to get people out of cars. Indeed, Los Angeles has been the poster child for transit development. In little more than two decades, 11 metro, light rail, and suburban rail lines have been opened. Probably no metropolitan area in the world has opened more miles of new rail service in that period. Matthew Yglesias, writing in Slate was so impressed that he called Los Angeles "America's next great mass transit city."

The results are less convincing. The total daily one-way commutes on the 11 rail lines is only 32,000, smaller than the number of people carried daily on a single lane of the San Diego Freeway (I-405) where it crosses over Wilshire Boulevard. Meanwhile, working at home has risen more than four times that of rail commuting since 1990 (Figure 2). Los Angeles may be better described as “America's next great telecommuting city." However, the auto is still king. From 1990 to 2011, solo automobile commuting increased 340,000, two percentage point gain, three times that of transit.

Younger People: Driving More to Work and Telecommuting More

The Economist also jumps on the "young people forsaking driving" bandwagon, a subject that has attracted the attention of others. But, young people are driving more, at least to work. Since 2000, the increase in driving alone to work by people aged 15 to 24 was nearly 260,000, compared to a 4,000 loss in transit commuting. Working at home was up almost as much as driving, at 200,000. Even so, with the declining size of the younger work force, transit's share was up. From 2000 to 2011, the share of 15-24 year old workers rose from 5.4 percent to 5.8 percent (Figure 3), virtually the same as the overall increase in transit market share of from 4.6 percent to 5.0 percent (Note 2). As with Portland and Los Angeles, the last 11 years saw a much larger increase in working at home, from 3.3 percent to 4.3 percent.

Further, to the extent working at home, social media and online shopping replace the need for driving among younger adults (and everyone), all the better.

The Fantastical Claim: 50,000 Passengers Per Hour

The Economist repeats the specious claim that rail lines can carry 50,000 passengers per hour in each direction. If your world is limited to Paris between Chatelet and Gare de Lyon and the handful of similar places, maybe so. But in most of the rest of the world, it is the stuff of fairy tales.

The 2011 data shows the extent of the illusion. The fantastical rail line carrying 50,000 per hour would carry the equal of all the daily rail commuters in Dallas or Miami in less than 20 minutes. It would take only about five minutes to handle the daily rail transit commuting volume in Minneapolis or Salt Lake City.

Further, some of the new systems have been manifestly unsuccessful in attracting commuters. For example, in Charlotte, there was a strong increase in transit commuting between 2000 and 2011, with transit's market share rising 64 percent. Yet, more than 60 percent of the new commuters were on buses, rather than on light rail, reflecting a long overdue increase in artificially low service levels. In Phoenix, 85 percent of the transit commuting increase was on buses, rather than the light rail line. The fantastical 50,000 per hour line would take only handle this load in about two minutes.

Where Rail Works and Why

None of this is to suggest that rail transit does not have its place. As I pointed out in a Hong Kong Apple Daily commentary, rail transit makes all the sense in the world where appropriate (see: "Hong Kong's Rail Expansion: Avoiding Western Pitfalls"). Appropriate circumstances include huge central business districts with high employment density and radial rail transit service from throughout the metropolitan area. American Community Survey data indicates that just six municipalities (not metropolitan areas) account for 93 percent of the nation's rail commuting destinations. The city of New York, alone is the destination of 65 percent of national rail commuters. Another 28 percent commute to the cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and San Francisco. Within these six cities, the overwhelming share of transit commuting is to the downtowns (central business districts), which, combined, cover a land area less than half the size of Orlando's Disney World.

Why Driving Has Peaked

Alan Pisarski told us in 1999 "(Cars, Women and Minorities: The Democratization of Mobility in America") that the demand for driving would soon peak. Women were driving nearly as much as men and cars were becoming the dominant mode of transport for low income people. Cars already carry the overwhelming majority of low-income commuters. A "love affair with the automobile" mentality misled many who should have known better into believing that people would eventually drive 24 hours per day. In fact, the huge increase in driving to the 2000s was more about democratizing mobility and access, and as the Washington Times recently put it, prosperity (see "A world without cars:
The internal-combustion engine has freed mankind"). If home-based access can take up the slack, it would do more for the environment and people’s lives than all the expensive, largely ineffective rail system imagined by the media and the well-financed rail lobby.

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Note 1: The data in this article is largely taken from the journey to work reports of the US Census (1980, 1990 and 2000) and the American Community Survey (one year data 2011).

Note 2: The overall 5.0 percent transit market share figure may be high. The USDOT National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) indicates that people who commute by transit tend to use other modes (such as automobiles) often. NHTS data indicates that, overall transit accounted for 3.7 percent of commuters and an even lower 2.7% of commuting miles in 2009.

Photo: Harbor Freeway (I-110), Los Angeles (by author)