A while back, some local design folks wrote (well, drew) an excellent editorial entitled “The Long Squiggly Line That’s Killing Our Transit System”. I bring this back to your attention not only because it’s a good editorial, but because somebody needs to toss a couple billion copies of it at the fine folks down at the Port Authority.

See, they’re currently working on something called the Transit Development Plan, and as part of it, their market analysis has realized that (gasp!) there is not a good match between where the buses run, where people who use buses live, and where people who use buses want to go. There’s town hall meetings, and there’s even a simplistic online survey, but if my prior experience with PAT town halls is any guide, these are mostly going to be people talking about their ACCESS service. ACCESS is critical, but it’s also not the primary economic function of mass transit. PAT needs to hear from the young professionals and other workers who use the regular bus service, and they need to be told how to use what they have in ways that make more sense. That’d be you, since you’re the type who reads Pittsburgh blogs. Get to work!

A thought occurred to me on my way home today. As I sat there in traffic, inching towards the Squirrel Hill tunnels, I was reminded of the fact that due to some sort of crazy technology (which I believe came from CMU), we can listen to the radio and talk on our cell phones uninterrupted when passing through the tunnels.

In contrast, when I occasionally go through the Liberty Tubes, I am met with the crackling radio, which soon fades to white noise until I reach the other side. Guess it makes me think about how lucky I am to travel the Parkway East each day (wait a minute…). And even though I know that my cell phone will still work through the Squirrel Hill tunnel, I was reminded of a time when I used the fact that I was nearing the tunnel’s entrance as an excuse to hang up the phone, just to end the conversation.

Now, I’m not one to talk on my phone as I drive, it distracts me, however as I inch through traffic leading up to the tunnel, I have found myself feeling a bit more secure, and at least able to justify my action to myself the few times I need to make a quick call. But consciously, using such a lame excuse (and I can’t even feign safety, I’m pretty sure I just wanted to end the conversation), I almost feel as if I should have been called out on it, seeing as we have the amazing technology mentioned above.

But who knows, maybe I’m just still amazed at this technological marvel. I also tend to wonder if anyone else has ever used this kind of feigned ignorance to their advantage: thoughts anyone?

Jim Russell posted a link to Dick Longworth’s interview on Chigago Public Radio about his new book called, Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism. Dick seems to be thinking about a lot of the things I have since I came to Pittsburgh more than 4 years ago. The entire center of the country seems to be slipping off the global map and losing it’s vital connections to the world, right at the moment it needs them most.

The world only seems to be flat for those regions that are interested in actively embracing it and doing everything they can to stay actively linked to it.

Jim posted this on Rust Belt Bloggers.

This has to be a quik post, but I have a few thoughts about rail in the future of the “rust belt”.

It’s interesting that Erie ends up as the location for a rust belt blogger summit , because Erie happens to be at the hub a potential boom in the manufacturing of railroad engines,;Pittsburgh is the home of one of the leading maker of rail brakes and I believe, that there is at least one major maker of freight rail equipment in the general region.

This is not a small business and GE, in fact will be hosting their sharholder’s meeting there to spotlight one of it’s fastest growing and most profitable divisions.

“This year, about 200 of these monsters, which contain 225,000 parts and cost up to $4m, will leave GE’s factory to see service in China. The sales prompt John Dineen, the president of the division, to joke that Erie is one of the few areas of the US to have a trade surplus with the world’s most populous country.”

Rail, and water is what made the midwest boom and perhaps it can again.

Business Week had a nice story about the latest trend in urban status symbol–subways. It seems like everyone’s just got to have one and a style war is emerging as cities compete to show off the latest in design and technology. The good thing about this trend is that mass transit systems, unlike stadiums have a very long global history as amazing long term investments since they unlock the value of urban property by enabling higher density land use, which in turn means more property tax dollars.

“The world’s three largest metro manufacturers, Montreal-based Bombardier (BBDB.TO), Alstom, and Munich-based Siemens (SI) report high demand for mass transit, including tramways and light-rail systems that run both under and above ground. The global subway market was worth $9.3 billion in 2005 and is projected to grow at a rate of 2.7% per year until 2015, according to a 2007 study by the European Railway Industry Assn. Subway lines are being built or extended in 20 European cities and five Middle Eastern ones, and dozens of towns are constructing light-rail systems, reports the Brussels-based International Association of Public Transport.”
New lines are being constructed or on the drawing board in cities like Algiers, Parma, Turin, Dublin, Almaty and Dubai and some of this stuff is pretty slick. It’s even a big trend in the oil rich Persian gulf!!

“In the Middle East, congestion caused by economic development spurred the current wave of subway and light-rail construction in cities like Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Algiers. “They were rich, they could buy big cars, and suddenly they realized they could no longer drive these cars because they were stuck in traffic,” says Hans Rat, secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport, which opened a Middle East and North Africa division four years ago. At the same time a new generation of internationally trained leaders emerged, who started to measure their urban development with that of world-class cities. “They became aware these cities poured a lot of money into public transport,”

We had another Propel Pittsburgh meeting last night, finally forming the committees and getting down to the business of discussing ideas and moving towards actually doing something. More on that to come from the Mayor’s office eventually, so I’ll leave it aside for now.

An interesting idea sprang up on the way back home, as I was talking things over with a fellow commissioner who I know from grad school at CMU. He pointed out that we have a fundamental problem with pricing parking, especially downtown and Oakland. At the current price, demand is way over supply in the daytime, but plummets at night (hence the presence of “$5 after 5″ rates).

The idea is this: why not capture that price inefficiency and put it to work for the city? In other words, raise the parking tax back up — but only during normal working hours. At night, let it stay at current rates or cut it further. Charge people for using up a scarce public resource, incentivizing them to carpool and/or use transit. This would also have the nice side effect of boosting transit ridership, helping PAT find its own way out of the hole (maybe even without the drinks tax, though I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting).

It’s getting pretty obvious that street cars are the latest urban transport fad–Atlanta now seems to want one. The problem they have is that since in most cases they mix with the general traffic stream, they only go as fast as it goes. This is the problem that makes buses so unpopular. Without raising the relative costs for private cars these projects are likely to be only modestly sucessful.

It seems that Seattle now has a new street car line. I know almost nothing about this so I won’t comment about the wisdom of this particular line or how well it might fit the cities needs. One thing that seemed very smart was the way it is being funded–partly by a tax on nearby property owners. In the days before the government came in to help it seems like there was a rational connection between the way land was used and transportation infrastructure. That’s because most of this infrastructure was being built by private companies who had a serious interest in making sure that each line could pay for itself. This meant that only areas that had or were going to have dense numbers of people and businesses along the line would get lines. There was a constant incentive by people to match transportation type to needs.

In the case of Seattle, the creation of a street car line is likely to enhance the value of property along it; allowing the construction of bigger taller buildings along the line; reducing amount of space wasted for parking; expensive parking garages; speeding commutes and clearing the air. Since the most positive effects of the line are going to help the owners closest to it, this is a reasonable plan. The story also say’s the project will be partly funded by sales of nearby city properties. We don’t have any of those do we????

I thought I would post a link to an old post I did about how transit is funded in Hong Kong (the non Communist world). The major transit system is run by a private corporation which is one of the worlds most profitable. The bulk of these profits come from the development of land along its transit lines. “It’s likely for example that a North Shore transit link could have paid for itself by allowing high density mixed use development of the area across from downtown. Instead, we have two government funded toilet bowls, an insolvent transit system and a city on the brink of solvency.”

San Fransisco, Is finally looking at more market based parking pricing.

“City officials hope by early next year to start a two-year pilot project that would radically change the way people park in San Francisco - marrying high-tech gadgetry and a free-market philosophy to better manage traffic congestion and to increase collections from meters.

“We’re looking at actually pricing a parking space like housing - let the market dictate the price,” said Sonali Bose, chief financial officer for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

In the idea’s simplest application, people would have to pay more to park where demand for spaces is high.”

The amazing thing is just how radical any attempts to put anything close to market based principles to work seem to most people. It’s not an accident that America’s car culture developed in step with the growth of government. The irony is that so many of the world’s “free market” types live a lifestyle enabled by communist road and parking policies.

Needless, to say–the right first place to look for transit funds should be at on the street parking in the city.