Stop Trying to Get Workers Out of Their Cars

"Smart growth" is dumb about commuting.

Robert W. Poole, Jr. from the July 2018 issue - view article in the Digital Edition

• EMAIL
 
• SHARE 
 
• PRINT

If you hate urban sprawl, you're probably familiar with the complaints of the "smart growth" movement: Roadways blight cities. Traffic congestion is the worst. Suburbanization harms the environment. Fortunately, say these smart growthers, there is an alternative: By piling on regulations and reallocating transportation-related tax money, we can "densify" our urban communities, allowing virtually everyone to live in a downtown area and forego driving in favor of walking or biking.

Smart growth proponents have been gaining influence for decades. They've implemented urban growth boundaries (which greatly restrict the development of land outside a defined area), up-zoning (which tries to increase densities in existing neighborhoods by replacing single-family homes with apartments), and "road diets" (which take away traffic lanes to make room for wider sidewalks and bike lanes).

Alas, there are inherent flaws in the "smart growth" approach—beginning with the idea that it makes sense for everyone to live and work in the same small area. In fact, that idea flies in the face of what economists call urban agglomeration.

Urban agglomeration is why there are more jobs in and around big cities. Job seekers have access to a large number of potential employers, which increases each person's likelihood of finding one that can make the best use of her unique talents and skills. The same is true for business owners, who have a much better chance of finding people in a large populous urban area who match their needs.

Transportation turns out to be a key factor in enabling these wealth-increasing transactions. Imagine drawing a circle around the location of your residence, defined by how far you are willing to commute to get to a satisfying job. The larger the radius of that circle, the more potential work opportunities you have. Likewise, a company's prospective-employee pool is defined by the number of people whose circles contain that company's location.

Most people measure that radius in time rather than distance; studies show they are generally unwilling to spend much more than 30 minutes commuting each way on a long-term basis. That means the size of their opportunity circle is critically dependent on how quickly they can get around.

Despite urban sprawl and ever-increasing congestion levels, economists Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson of the University of Southern California have documented, using census data, that average commute times in various metro areas have hardly changed at all over several decades. More recently, Alex Anas of the University of Buffalo modeled what would happen as a result of a projected 24 percent increase in Chicago's metro area population over three decades. He estimated that auto commute times would increase only 3 percent and transit trip times hardly at all. The reason is that people tend to change where they live or work in order to keep their travel times about the same. But this happy result comes about only if the transportation system expands accordingly.

A recent empirical study from the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University likewise found that, on average, the labor market of an urban area (defined as the number of jobs reachable within a one-hour commute) nearly doubles when the workforce of the metro area doubles. The commute time increases by an average of only about 7 percent, however—assuming an efficient region-wide transportation network. To achieve higher economic productivity, they recommend fostering speedier rather than slower commuting; more rather than less commuting; and longer rather than shorter commutes.

These policies would expand the opportunity circles of employers and employees, enabling a more productive urban economy. But these are exactly the opposite of the policy prescriptions of smart growth, which generally seek to confine people's economic activity to a small portion of a larger metro area.

One early manifestation of this was the attempt by urban and transportation planners in the '80s and '90s to promote "jobs-housing balance," where each county of a large metro area has comparable percentages of the region's jobs and of its housing. The rationale was that this would reduce "excessive" commuting by enabling people to find work close to their homes. But urban agglomeration theory makes it clear that that is a recipe for a low-productivity urban economy. Census data show that many suburban areas are now approaching jobs-housing balance on their own, but this does not necessarily reduce commute distances—to get to the jobs they want, many people still travel across boundaries.

A fascinating example is Arlington County, Virginia. Since 2000, the number of jobs and the number of working residents in the county have been approximately equal. But it turns out that only 52 percent of those working residents have jobs in the county. Out of 582,000 resident workers, 280,000 commute to adjacent counties or the District of Columbia. And out of 574,000 jobs in the county, 272,000 are filled by workers from other places.

A less extreme version of smart growth says that we should discourage car travel and shift resources heavily toward transit. People should be encouraged to live in high-density "villages" where they can easily obtain transit service to jobs elsewhere in the metro area. The problem with this vision is the inability of transit to effectively compete with the auto highway system.

Simply put, cars work better for workers. A 2012 Brookings study analyzing data from 371 transit providers in America's largest 100 metro areas found that over three-fourths of all jobs are in neighborhoods with transit service—but only about a quarter of those jobs can be reached by transit within 90 minutes. That's more than three times the national average commute time.

Another study, by Andrew Owen and David Levinson of the University of Minnesota, looked at job access via transit in 46 of the 50 largest metro areas. Their data combined actual in-vehicle time with estimated walking time at either end of the transit trip, to approximate total door-to-door travel time. Only five of the 46 metro areas have even a few percent of their jobs accessible by transit within half an hour. All the others have 1 percent or less. Within 60 minutes door-to-door, the best cities have 15–22 percent of jobs reachable by transit.

Meanwhile, Owen and Levinson found that in 31 of the 51 largest metro areas in 2010, 100 percent of jobs could be reached by car in 30 minutes or less. Within 40 minutes, all the jobs could be reached by car in 39 of the cities. Within an hour, essentially every job in all 51 places could be reached by car. The roadway network is ubiquitous, connecting every possible origin to every destination. The contrast with access via transit—let alone walking or biking—is profound.

Photo Credit: thomas-bethge/iStock

Robert W. Poole Jr., an MIT-trained engineer, is co-founder and director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation, where he has advised numerous federal and state transportation agencies. He is also a member of the Government Accountability Office's National Aviation Studies Advisory Panel and author of Rethinking America's Highways (University of Chicago Press).

Media Contact Reprint Requests

Which are Worse: Train Salesmen or Cheap Car Salesmen?

Although car salesmen get accused of sleazy sales tactics the only ones I've encountered have been the utmost professionals. Train advocates however are a different matter.

Posted by Richard Hall , October 15, 2013 at 06:20 PM

Wanna buy a train?

My respect for car salesman right now is at an all time high having dealt with the highly professional Jim Leavitt of San Rafael and the truly amazing Steve Dolowitz of Petaluma Honda, who sadly passed away at the age of 56 in 2006.  However SMART and its many advocates seem to be adopting the tactics akin to cheap car salesmen. You know the one - it's called the four square system.

The salesman writes down:

1. the price of the car
2. the monthly payment
3. the trade in value
4. the downpayment

Then they work out which of the four elements you care about the most and before you know it the elements you fixated on are great and you're in the finance managers office signing away hundreds more than you needed to as the other elements have been twisted in the dealership's favor.

With SMART it worked like this. It was worked out that we the taxpaying voters of Marin and Sonoma cared deeply about reducing 101 congestion. Also being Marinites we liked the sound of anything that sounded sustainable and green, and what could possibly be greener than a train? Surely that's common sense. Who would ever question it?

Questioning the Unquestionable - is it Really Green?

But this is where the cheap sales-trick falls apart. If you dig deep enough, and it's nicely buried, you can work out the SMART trains' emissions. These are ultimately calculated based on "passenger mpg" and as with mpg the higher the number the better.

SMART is supposed to commence operations in late 2016. The locomotives are meant to have a lifespan of 30 years so this puts the midpoint of operational life at 2031.  Whitehouse legislation mandates that the average fuel economy of new cars in 2025, that's 6 years earlier, will be 54.5mpg (Source: the Whitehouse). Of course we need to adjust this downwards as:

i) It will take time for the existing vehicle fleet to be replaced. But the 2031 locomotive lifespan midpoint is 6 years beyond the Whitehouse mandate
ii) Advertised mpg for cars can be optimistic; the reality as we've all discovered comes in around 20% under (give or take)

So let's discount the average car's advertised mpg by 20%. Actually let's be more severe than that to keep the transit advocates happy - let's discount car advertised mpg by 50% and assume that the train mpg is gospel (for once, what they say is the reality).

A Black Box in your Car?

A black box in your car? Some see a source of tax revenue
The devices would track every mile you drive —possibly including your location — and the government would use the data to draw up a tax bill.




Ryan Morrison is chief executive of True Mileage, a Long Beach company testing devices that can track drivers' mileage. "People will be more willing to do this if you do not track their speed and you do not track their location," he says. (Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times / October 24, 2013)By Evan Halper

October 26, 2013, 7:11 p.m.



WASHINGTON — As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.

And while Congress can't agree on whether to proceed, several states are not waiting. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over. Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.

"This really is a must for our nation. It is not a matter of something we might choose to do," said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is planning for the state to start tracking miles driven by every California motorist by 2025. "There is going to be a change in how we pay these taxes. The technology is there to do it."

The push comes as the country's Highway Trust Fund, financed with taxes Americans pay at the gas pump, is broke. Americans don't buy as much gas as they used to. Cars get many more miles to the gallon. The federal tax itself, 18.4 cents per gallon, hasn't gone up in 20 years. Politicians are loath to raise the tax even one penny when gas prices are high.

"The gas tax is just not sustainable," said Lee Munnich, a transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota. His state recently put tracking devices on 500 cars to test out a pay-by-mile system. "This works out as the most logical alternative over the long term," he said.

Wonks call it a mileage-based user fee. It is no surprise that the idea appeals to urban liberals, as the taxes could be rigged to change driving patterns in ways that could help reduce congestion and greenhouse gases, for example. California planners are looking to the system as they devise strategies to meet the goals laid out in the state's ambitious global warming laws. But Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has said he, too, sees it as the most viable long-term alternative. The free marketeers at the Reason Foundation are also fond of having drivers pay per mile.

"This is not just a tax going into a black hole," said Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at Reason. "People are paying more directly into what they are getting."

The movement is also bolstered by two former U.S. Transportation secretaries, who in a 2011 report urged Congress to move in the pay-per-mile direction.

The U.S. Senate approved a $90-million pilot project last year that would have involved about 10,000 cars. But the House leadership killed the proposal, acting on concerns of rural lawmakers representing constituents whose daily lives often involve logging lots of miles to get to work or into town.

Several states and cities are nonetheless moving ahead on their own. The most eager is Oregon, which is enlisting 5,000 drivers in the country's biggest experiment. Those drivers will soon pay the mileage fees instead of gas taxes to the state. Nevada has already completed a pilot. New York City is looking into one. Illinois is trying it on a limited basis with trucks. And the I-95 Coalition, which includes 17 state transportation departments along the Eastern Seaboard (including Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida), is studying how they could go about implementing the change.

"OMG. A new bridge toll and now a mileage tax?"

The concept is not a universal hit.

In Nevada, where about 50 volunteers' cars were equipped with the devices not long ago, drivers were uneasy about the government being able to monitor their every move.

"Concerns about Big Brother and those sorts of things were a major problem," said Alauddin Khan, who directs strategic and performance management at the Nevada Department of Transportation. "It was not something people wanted."

As the trial got underway, the ACLU of Nevada warned on its website: "It would be fairly easy to turn these devices into full-fledged tracking devices.... There is no need to build an enormous, unwieldy technological infrastructure that will inevitably be expanded to keep records of individuals' everyday comings and goings."

Nevada is among several states now scrambling to find affordable technology that would allow the state to keep track of how many miles a car is being driven, but not exactly where and at what time. If you can do that, Khan said, the public gets more comfortable.

The hunt for that technology has led some state agencies to a small California startup called True Mileage. The firm was not originally in the business of helping states tax drivers. It was seeking to break into an emerging market in auto insurance, in which drivers would pay based on their mileage. But the devices it is testing appeal to highway planners because they don't use GPS and deliver a limited amount of information, uploaded periodically by modem.

"People will be more willing to do this if you do not track their speed and you do not track their location," said Ryan Morrison, chief executive of True Mileage. "There have been some big mistakes in some of these state pilot programs. There are a lot less expensive and less intrusive ways to do this."

In Oregon, planners are experimenting with giving drivers different choices. They can choose a device with or without GPS. Or they can choose not to have a device at all, opting instead to pay a flat fee based on the average number of miles driven by all state residents.

Other places are hoping to sell the concept to a wary public by having the devices do more, not less. In New York City, transportation officials are seeking to develop a taxing device that would also be equipped to pay parking meter fees, provide "pay-as-you-drive" insurance, and create a pool of real-time speed data from other drivers that motorists could use to avoid traffic.

"Motorists would be attracted to participate … because of the value of the benefits it offers to them," says a city planning document.

Some transportation planners, though, wonder if all the talk about paying by the mile is just a giant distraction. At the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area, officials say Congress could very simply deal with the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund by raising gas taxes. An extra one-time or annual levy could be imposed on drivers of hybrids and others whose vehicles don't use much gas, so they pay their fair share.

"There is no need for radical surgery when all you need to do is take an aspirin," said Randy Rentschler, the commission's director of legislation and public affairs. "If we do this, hundreds of millions of drivers will be concerned about their privacy and a host of other things."

VIDE0: Will the SMART train be any more efficient than the VTA?

25 years later, VTA light rail among the nation's worst By Mike Rosenberg mrosenberg@mercurynews.com San Jose Mercury News Posted:

MercuryNews.com

A quarter of a century ago, Santa Clara County's first light-rail train left the station as excited supporters heralded a new wave of state-of-the-art transportation to match the region's burgeoning high-tech industry.
But there was no grand celebration this month as Silicon Valley marked 25 years of light rail.

The near-empty trolleys that often shuttle by at barely faster than jogging speeds serve as a constant reminder that the car is still king in Silicon Valley -- and that the Valley Transportation Authority's trains are among the least successful in the nation by any metric. Today, fewer than 1 percent of the county's residents ride the trains daily, while it costs the rest of the region -- taxpayers at large -- about $10 to subsidize every rider's round trip.

Even light rail's supporters concede the train has not lived up to expectations thus far, but they are optimistic that slow and steady increases in rider counts will continue.

"I believe we are ultimately going to realize the (original) vision," said Kevin Connolly, VTA's transportation planning manager. "But I think what's happened is that it wasn't quite as easy or quick as originally conceived of 30 years ago."

So what exactly has gone wrong, and what needs to change to make the next 25 years a smoother ride for Silicon Valley's trolley line?

Bumpy start

The VTA system, which cost $2 billion to build and $66 million per year to operate, is one of the most inefficient light-rail lines in the nation:

• Compared with the U.S. average, each VTA light-rail vehicle costs 30 percent more to operate and carries 30 percent fewer passengers.

• The cost to carry one passenger round trip, $11.74, is 83 percent more than the U.S. average and the third worst in the nation, ahead of only trains in Pittsburgh and Dallas.

• Taxpayers subsidize 85 percent of the service, the second worst rate in the nation.

The network that officials envisioned in the 1970s and '80s wound up being twice the size, more expensive, less efficient and less popular than first thought.

"It is an unmitigated disaster and a waste of taxpayer money," said VTA critic Tom Rubin, a transportation consultant based in Oakland. "I think the original concept was very seriously flawed."

Still, light-rail supporters argue the trains have put a dent in Silicon Valley's notoriously nasty freeway traffic, providing more than 32,000 one-way trips each day. For perspective, if all those riders drove on Highway 101 in the South Bay, traffic would increase more than 6 percent.

"If we didn't have the current system, we would have terminal gridlock," said the train's godfather, Rod Diridon, a transit advocate who pushed for the network as a county supervisor decades ago.

Reasons are clear

Still, VTA light rail has struggled -- and it's mostly because of the valley's sprawl, transportation experts and agency officials say.

Connolly noted that the South Bay's first light-rail line was built along onion fields, where planners had expected homes and businesses to pop up along the route. That contrasted with the strategy in most other cities, which is to put light rail along existing, dense corridors.

For the most part, the density never materialized in Silicon Valley. As Connolly spoke at VTA headquarters along its main light-rail line on First Street, he noted the orange groves across the street.

"In our case we tried to graft a big-city transit type of mode onto a suburban environment, and it's still kind of a work in progress," Connolly said.

San Francisco's Muni light-rail system, which carries five times as many passengers as VTA, features dense housing and jobs near stations that riders can walk to, avoiding traffic jams and the huge parking costs.
More commuters in the South Bay, on the other hand, stomach awful traffic and record gas prices because the region offers plenty of free parking, and its businesses and homes are spread out. And that's not changing any time soon.

"Changing land-use patterns is something that is hard work and takes a long time and a lot of political will. It happens in an incremental way, property by property," said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR, a Bay Area planning nonprofit.

Riding the rails

Many riders say they use light rail because they don't have any other way to get around -- and they like that it's clean, affordable and consistent.

"It's very convenient for me," said Mark Vindiola, 47, who takes the train from his home in Milpitas to school and work because he doesn't drive. "I'm happy it's there and I want (the service) to continue."

But their main complaint is speed, which is often less than 10 mph in downtown San Jose.

"It just takes a while to get through downtown," said Sabrina Baca, 17, as she sat on the train with 18-year-old Fernando Fernandez and their 7-month-old daughter. Asked why they and most people ride the train, the couple said, in unison: "Because they have to."

Light rail is generally less economically efficient than long-haul heavy train service such as BART or Caltrain, though San Jose's system is especially feeble.

Light-rail agencies in Minneapolis, Houston, Newark, N.J., and Phoenix each run less service than VTA yet carry more passengers than the South Bay's network. Several cities that are much smaller than San Jose -- from St. Louis to Salt Lake City to Portland, Ore. -- also feature light-rail systems with more riders than VTA.

Sacramento -- which also opened its light-rail network in 1987, operates with approximately the same level of service and runs through a similarly sprawled-out region -- carries nearly 40 percent more passengers per day than VTA.

Connolly pointed out that the Sacramento line has a built-in customer base of state workers who take the line, at a 75 percent discount, to their jobs. The closest VTA has to that: San Jose State students, who make up a large chunk of VTA's riders largely because the line carries students to the university for no additional charge, a cost built into their tuition.

Another issue is that San Jose's downtown -- while denser than most parts of Silicon Valley -- is still not the jobs destination seen in the urban cores of other cities. For many riders, it's a place to get through, not to.

Future changes coming?

Acknowledging the need to improve, the VTA is undergoing a $27 million project to make the service more attractive, largely by adding tracks to launch express trains. VTA is also kicking off an efficiency effort to cut service costs 5 percent, which could help land new grants from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area's transportation agency.

Expansions to Los Gatos and East San Jose are also proposed, but those, too, are forecast to attract very few riders and carry large, unfunded capital costs.

"In general, we can't lose sight of the fact that we have to do the basics better," Connolly said. "We have to be faster, we have to connect with better destinations."

Transbay Terminal

The Transbay Transit Center Project (Narrated by Peter Coyote) from Transbay Transit Center on Vimeo.

Transbay project in $300 million hole

'There's not enough money' for transit center project

By Michael Cabanatuan

 

Updated 8:46 am, Thursday, July 25, 2013

The construction cost for the first phase of the transportation hub at First and Mission streets, which will initially serve buses from seven transit agencies and eventually electric trains from Caltrain and high-speed rail, has risen from $1.6 billion to $1.9 billion in the revised budget the authority adopted on July 11. The project's first phase includes demolishing the old Transbay Terminal, building and operating a temporary terminal and building the five-story terminal, including bus decks and ramps, retail spaces, two below-ground rail levels and a rooftop park.

Funding elusive

To cover the hefty cost increase, Heminger said, the authority will use some of the money that had been dedicated to the second phase of the project - the downtown extension that would carry trains from Fourth and King streets to the Transbay center. That portion of the project had never been fully funded, and is a key Bay Area project competing for major federal funding. But the soaring cost of the first phase means it will be an even bigger challenge to find the funding to lay rails to the new transit center.

"There's not enough money to deliver the full project - not before the increases and not after," said Adam Alberti, a spokesman for the authority. "The fact that the cost increased by $300 million means that a bigger hole needs to be plugged."

San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener, a commissioner and Transbay center supporter, said after the meeting that the cost increase was disappointing but not a serious setback for the downtown extension.

'We'll get it done'

"I don't think it will have a meaningful impact," he said. "We have always known that getting the downtown extension done would take a lot of work over a number of years, and this doesn't change that. We'll get it done."

Alberti blamed the cost spike on increased and unanticipated federal security requirements for the transit center, whose prominence will make it a potential target for terrorist attacks. A federal vulnerability analysis identified an additional $56.8 million in detection, communications and protection systems needed for the project.

The resurgent economy and construction industry also contributed, pushing bids on the last major contract - structural steel - 75 to 80 percent over estimates. The authority received a single bid, rejected it and repackaged the work into three separate contracts to attract more bidders. It worked, resulting in lower bids, but they were still $95 million more than budgeted.

Economy strengthens

"It's largely reflective of the fact that the economy, and especially the construction economy, is heating up," Alberti said.

While construction costs are rising, so are land values, and that will help the authority cover the $300 million overrun. To take advantage of the boom, some of the land sales funding the center will be accelerated so that money is available sooner, Alberti said. The authority also hopes to win additional Proposition K transportation sales tax funds in San Francisco, transit center impact fees and grants from the MTC. It also hopes to refinance a federal infrastructure loan.

But if those efforts fail, Heminger said, the authority may ask the commission to borrow toll money. He said the agency would consider that request but is unlikely to give any additional grants to the transit center project. The terminal is expected to open, without the downtown extension, in late 2017.

Design changes

Alberti said the Transbay authority has made design changes to hold the costs down, including replacing the glass covering of the curvaceous center with a perforated metal skin. It's also adjusted estimated costs of future construction contracts upward to reflect the change in the economy.

The authority also hopes to win new state and federal grants. But the biggest hope is that the project is awarded $650 million or more from the federal New Starts program, a competitive grant program that has helped fund major Bay Area transit projects, including the Central Subway, the San Jose BART extension and the BART extension to San Francisco International Airport.

Dick Spotswood: Marin fares well when it comes to commuting by transit or working close to home

Dick Spotswood writes a twice-weekly column on local politics for the Marin Independent Journal. (IJ photo/Robert Tong) 

POSTED: 02/10/15, 10:46 AM PST |

25 COMMENTS

Let’s put two myths to rest. The first is the contention by high-density developers and housing activists that Marin County has the worst record in the Bay Area when it comes to importing workers from surrounding counties. If any counties merit the spotlight, it’s Contra Costa and San Francisco.

The second fable is the alphabet agencies’ optimistic promise that if we spend more on public transit commuters will get out of their cars.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has recently released an analysis of Bay Area transportation patterns. Called “Vital Signs,” the report uses 14 indicators to monitor the Bay Area’s transportation network.

We can dismiss the old slam that Marin has a particularly bad record when it comes to its jobs-housing balance.

The study reports, “Most commuters live and work in the same county, although the counties of Santa Clara and San Francisco do ‘import’ significant numbers of workers.”

MTC indicates that the 66 percent of Marin residents that work and reside in-county is average for the Bay Area. Its ratio is almost the same as Alameda and better than Solano, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties.

Marin enjoys one of the lowest percentages of any county regarding either importing or exporting workers.

Activists castigating Marin for a jobs-housing imbalance fail to compare it with neighboring Bay Area counties. If there’s a pressing gap between the import-export of jobs it’s between Contra Costa, with its relatively lower cost of housing, and booming San Francisco with its plethora of well-paid jobs.

Intra-county commuting is inevitable in a dynamic economy.

“Vital Signs” presents discouraging news for transit advocates. Despite spending big bucks to shift auto traffic to buses, trains and ferries, the percentage of Bay Area residents traveling to work by transit has, if anything, slightly decreased since 1990.

Currently, 77 percent of Bay Area commuters travel by auto and 10 percent by transit. Of the remaining balance, 4 percent walk to their jobs, 6 percent work at home and 3 percent are lumped into “other.”

While the percentage of auto commuting has also slightly declined since 1990, when it stood at 81 percent, transit use remains at 10 percent. The 4 percent decrease in auto trips is attributed to the doubling of those working at home. That category grew from 3 percent to 6 percent.

If there’s an environmentally sensitive travel sector that Marin dominates it’s telecommuting. Mill Valley, Ross, Belvedere, Tiburon, Sausalito and Fairfax find themselves among the top 10 when it comes to working at home electronically.

Bike commuting increased from 1 percent to 2 percent of the regional commute over the past 25 years. Among Bay Area incorporated cities, Fairfax and Sausalito find themselves in the top 10 with 4 percent of residents pedaling to work.

With 7.3 percent of its citizenry opting to walk to work, San Anselmo foot power ties with pedestrian-friendly San Francisco for numbers enjoying a healthful commute.

Marin’s transit ridership is respectable, with 9 percent commuting by buses or ferries. While 32.6 percent of San Franciscans use transit — down from 40 percent in 1990 — Marin’s transit patronage comes in fourth among MTC’s nine counties, just behind Alameda and Contra Costa and ahead of San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma and Napa.

The Marin town with highest transit ridership is Sausalito, where 15.7 percent of its employed residents use buses or its convenient ferries to get to jobs in the city.

Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes on local politics twice weekly in the IJ on Wednesday and Sunday. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.

The Incredible Light Rail commuting solution in LA

A light hearted look at the realities of  light rail as a commuter alternative.   The One Bay Area Plan aims to get people to take mass transit instead of cars.   Higher parking fees,  bridge tolls and "congestion management" fees in downtown San Francisco is meant to discourage single car use.  In addition they are considering installing tracking devices to tax people on the miles driven. 

It is time to pay attention to what  One Bay Area Plan means to you.

Trains are coming and they want land and your taxes.

The Smart train is seizing land via eminent domain but forcing private property owners to pay for their own train crossings.

See this recent TV Report.

Smart Trains use eminent domain but force private property owners to pay for own crossings


The Board of Supervisors have commissioned studies for trolleys to run from Fairfax to San Rafael.  Make no mistake. This is all about building low income housing and getting federal tax dolllars.  The trolley people want to build a network of trolley lines throughout the neighborhoods of Marin.

see www.marintrolleys.org.

It all seems so nice until you consider the real world implications.  The trolley will significantly add to commute times, cause congested traffic and create access problems for thousands of property owners.

We live in the 21st century.  We need to make peace with our time and forget returning to the 19th century way of life.  Many exciting  green transportation alternatives exist that will allow us to get
to our destinations quickly and cheaply.  Wouldn't you rather spend time with your loved ones than on crowded public transportation? 

A Vehicle Mileage Tax Coming Soon to California?

Editor's Note:  The MTC suggested a VMT (vehicle mileage tax) in June 2012 but was promptly denied. Caltrans will now install meters at on/off ramps which may have the same effect.  The motivation is to raise additional revenue and to make transportation more expensive so that people will be encouraged to use public transit.  Look for policies like this in California shortly.

from Atlantic Cities:

In Oregon, Pushing Ahead With Road Use Fees

• Eric Jaffe
• Jan 18, 2013
• 25 Comments

Shutterstock

 

Close

If the gas tax were a fuel gauge, its needle would be quivering pretty close to Empty. As great as hybrid, electric, and fuel-efficient cars are for the environment, each new one to hit the road diminishes gas tax revenue. Even if states increased the tax — which many have refused to do for far too long — its long-term viability as a funding mechanism is doubtful at best.

The most compelling replacement for the gas tax is a vehicle-miles traveled fee. From a funding perspective, a V.M.T. fee would certainly level the playing field: instead of paying road taxes at the pump, drivers would pay based on how much they drive. But for some people, the idea of having the government track their every movement is just too creepy to accept.

The state of Oregon is trying to overcome those privacy concerns by exploring options for being tracked in a mileage program. In a new V.M.T. fee pilot program, still in progress, participants can choose from five mileage reporting plans, ranging in transparency from invisible to opaque.

"We have to somehow, some way, have people tell us how many miles they've driven," says Mary Olson, a commissioner at the state's department of transportation, and also a participant in the latest pilot. "If you want to use technology to do that, you run into privacy issues. Some people are very sensitive about that. Other people like me don't care at all. You can't have one solution. You have to have multiple solutions."
Oregon has been way ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing V.M.T. fees. The state's first concept study, completed in 2007, concluded decisively that "a mileage fee could be implemented to replace the gas tax as the principal revenue source for road funding." Nine in ten participants in that study said they'd support a V.M.T. program moving forward

[PDF].
The new usage charge pilot program, which began in November and runs through the end of this month, involves about 40 volunteers from state government. Participants chose the tracking plan that best fit their privacy tastes and will pay 1.56 cents for each mile driven — receiving a credit for any gas tax paid during the test period. The idea is to make sure each tracking option works in practice.
"What we're trying to accomplish now is really the mechanics of it," says Olson. "The goal today is not to raise more revenue. The goal today is to try to figure out a collection system that is efficient and that we have confidence in and that addresses all the concerns the public has."

The five tracking plans vary in terms of oversight. Two are managed by the Oregon D.O.T., three by a third-party vendor. They also vary in terms of payment: some require setting up an online account tied to credit or debit information, others go the old fashion route of monthly bills payable by check.
The key difference is the tracking system. Two advanced plans track mileage data as well as movement with a G.P.S.; the advantage here is that users aren't charged a fee for driving on private or out-of-state roads — only public roads in Oregon. Two basic plans involve an odometer-type device that collects mileage data but has no G.P.S. to track movement. Users may end up paying a little more, but they're getting privacy in return.

The most primitive plan, for people who want the most privacy, uses no tracking device at all. Users pre-pay a flat fee that assumes a monthly mileage. At some point, say when the car gets official inspections, the odometer is checked and the difference between miles paid and miles driven is reconciled.

Olson has chosen the most advanced plan. She says she plugged a small device into her car's diagnostic port and set up an online account — the whole process took five minutes. She has a pretty typical commute pattern, going five days a week from her home in Oregon City to her office in West Linn.

She says that in December she drove a total of 336.6 miles, according to her online V.M.T. statement, of which 334.4 miles were taxed. Her V.M.T. fee came to $5.21, but she received a gas tax refund of $6.20. That left her account with a credit of 99 cents. To challenge the system, Olson says she used her car's actual odometer to track her mileage on private, non-taxable roads, and that figure squared nicely with the V.M.T. statement.

"The gas tax is a perfect tax. It's not invasive on the person using it and it requires very little effort on the agency that depends on that money for providing services," says Olson. "Trying to replace that is really difficult, because anything you try to do is so much more complicated than just pulling up to the pump and paying for gas."

The usual caveats apply when discussing a system V.M.T. As we pointed out last August, mileage fees don't exactly encourage greener cars. They also may be vulnerable to tampering and create equity problems, especially in corridors that lack transit options. (Some of those concerns can be addressed if a proper portion of the fee goes toward public transportation.)

Despite these cautions, Oregon is preparing to take its system public soon. The state legislature has prepared a bill that would implement a V.M.T. fee on all vehicles getting 55 miles per gallon or better. (The change only applies to car models beginning in 2015, however, and as currently written the law wouldn't go into effect until that year.) Olson says the bill will be introduced sometime in 2013.

"It has to happen," she says of a shift to mileage fees. "Realistically, given the age of the transportation system, and the demands of increasing population, you have to be prepared to raise the necessary funds to provide the citizens with the type of transportation system that they want."
Top image: Minerva Studio/Shutterstock.com. Inset chart courtesy Oregon Department of Transportation

Keywords: Portland, VMT, mileage fee, oregon, gas tax

Eric Jaffe is a contributing writer to The Atlantic Cities and the author of The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America. He lives in New York