Monday, March 20, 2006
[Op-Ed] Va.: Liberate Mass Transit
Jim Bacon of Bacon's Rebellion, "Virginia's op-ed page for the New Economy" has some interesting and provocative ideas about transit in the Commonwealth. Some of his ideas strike me as extremely worthy, one not so hot:
Here are some of Jim's ideas I think are worthy:
Imagine a private company running a bus every morning from, say, Fredericksburg to Crystal City. Instead of 12 rows of seats, imagine there were 10, creating enough room for passengers to flip down a tray, airline style, where they could comfortably rest their laptops. Imagine there were electric sockets where they could plug in so their batteries wouldn’t run out.
It is important to note that there was a service like this - in Virginia's I-95/I-395 corridor, as far back as the early 1970's. The buses did not have the technology that he mentions above, but they were state-of-the-art for their time. Below is a photograph of one of the Shirley Express buses, as they were called (image from the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission):
Imagine that the bus operator charged $20 per round trip, filling up 40 seats per day and yielding $200,000 annually in revenue per bus. Numbers in that ballpark should be sufficient to generate a profit.
Furthermore, the private-sector capability to provide a commuting service exists. A good number of companies already provide charter and tour services.
Blame Virginia’s failure to develop a dynamic commuter-bus industry upon local transit monopolies and taxi franchises ossified by state law and local ordinance. Blame also a failure of imagination. Virginia’s Political Class and its apologists can conceive of only one solution to traffic congestion – bolstering revenues to fund spectacular new road- and rail-building programs.
I think Jim is calling for deregulation of the bus and taxi industries, which seems like a fine idea to me. I have always had a hard time understanding why most local governments that I've seen in the United States rigidly regulate the taxicab industry.
Federal involvement has been particularly damaging. As Gabriel Roth, a transportation scholar with the Cato Institute explained to me, federal regulations drove up labor costs by mandating pay levels, restricting the ability of bus drivers to work in split shifts and making it prohibitively expensive to fire or lay anyone off.
See also US Urban Transport (Transit) Labor Law Puts Employees Above Riders & Taxpayers on The Public Purpose.
The woes of mass transit in Virginia are compounded by the unique inefficiency of the Washington Metro system. Metro combines all the woes of the typical metropolitan bus system with unique pathologies of its own. With an unwieldy governing structure representing the often-divergent interests of Virginia , Maryland and Washington, D.C., contends Roth, Metro “is almost impossible to reform."
Jim should consider what Wendell Cox wrote in the Washington Post in January of 2005, Better Money Management at Metro . . .
Remove barriers to entry.
In the not so hot category is this:
Another factor, rarely discussed in political circles, has been the phenomenon commonly referred to as "suburban sprawl,” a pattern of scattered, disconnected, low density development accompanied by an inattention to creating pedestrian-friendly walkways. As a rule of thumb, people are willing to walk a quarter mile to a bus stop, but little farther.
Alter land use patterns.
Especially in the freeway corridor between Fredericksburg and Washington, D.C., there are numerous park-and-ride lots, which, from my point of view, obviate the need for the land use to compel transit use.
And based on personal experience across the Potomac River from Virginia, I am not at all enthusiastic about residential densification for the sake of increasing transit ridership.
Here are some of Jim's ideas I think are worthy:
Imagine a private company running a bus every morning from, say, Fredericksburg to Crystal City. Instead of 12 rows of seats, imagine there were 10, creating enough room for passengers to flip down a tray, airline style, where they could comfortably rest their laptops. Imagine there were electric sockets where they could plug in so their batteries wouldn’t run out.
It is important to note that there was a service like this - in Virginia's I-95/I-395 corridor, as far back as the early 1970's. The buses did not have the technology that he mentions above, but they were state-of-the-art for their time. Below is a photograph of one of the Shirley Express buses, as they were called (image from the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission):
Imagine that the bus operator charged $20 per round trip, filling up 40 seats per day and yielding $200,000 annually in revenue per bus. Numbers in that ballpark should be sufficient to generate a profit.
Furthermore, the private-sector capability to provide a commuting service exists. A good number of companies already provide charter and tour services.
Blame Virginia’s failure to develop a dynamic commuter-bus industry upon local transit monopolies and taxi franchises ossified by state law and local ordinance. Blame also a failure of imagination. Virginia’s Political Class and its apologists can conceive of only one solution to traffic congestion – bolstering revenues to fund spectacular new road- and rail-building programs.
I think Jim is calling for deregulation of the bus and taxi industries, which seems like a fine idea to me. I have always had a hard time understanding why most local governments that I've seen in the United States rigidly regulate the taxicab industry.
Federal involvement has been particularly damaging. As Gabriel Roth, a transportation scholar with the Cato Institute explained to me, federal regulations drove up labor costs by mandating pay levels, restricting the ability of bus drivers to work in split shifts and making it prohibitively expensive to fire or lay anyone off.
See also US Urban Transport (Transit) Labor Law Puts Employees Above Riders & Taxpayers on The Public Purpose.
The woes of mass transit in Virginia are compounded by the unique inefficiency of the Washington Metro system. Metro combines all the woes of the typical metropolitan bus system with unique pathologies of its own. With an unwieldy governing structure representing the often-divergent interests of Virginia , Maryland and Washington, D.C., contends Roth, Metro “is almost impossible to reform."
Jim should consider what Wendell Cox wrote in the Washington Post in January of 2005, Better Money Management at Metro . . .
Remove barriers to entry.
In the not so hot category is this:
Another factor, rarely discussed in political circles, has been the phenomenon commonly referred to as "suburban sprawl,” a pattern of scattered, disconnected, low density development accompanied by an inattention to creating pedestrian-friendly walkways. As a rule of thumb, people are willing to walk a quarter mile to a bus stop, but little farther.
Alter land use patterns.
Especially in the freeway corridor between Fredericksburg and Washington, D.C., there are numerous park-and-ride lots, which, from my point of view, obviate the need for the land use to compel transit use.
And based on personal experience across the Potomac River from Virginia, I am not at all enthusiastic about residential densification for the sake of increasing transit ridership.
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