Comments on: Americans Waste 500,000 Years In Traffic Jams (But That’s Good News!)

By: Stuck In The Middle With You | Real Estate Industry Blog

Stuck In The Middle With You | Real Estate Industry Blog — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:14:31 +0000

[...] fact, when aggregated, Americans waste four billion hours stuck in traffic. As a real estate agent, I’m sure most of you can attest to the illogical naming of the [...]

By: Bob Davis

Bob Davis — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:59:55 +0000

Here in Southern California, we have gone from zero miles of rail transit to hundreds (if you add up diesel Metrolink and electric Metro Rail) in less than 20 years. At the Los Angeles County Fair they now have a section for “commuter crafts”–items created while the crafters were speeding along Metrolink rails. Many trains have “regulars”–passengers who form unofficial “clubs” sharing fellowship while the engineer runs the train. The first present-day rail operation, the LA to Long Beach Blue line runs 3-car trains all day long. The Gold line terminal in East Pasadena is usually almost full by 8 AM on weekdays. Somebody (a lot of somebodys!) must be finding riding a train preferable to driving.

By: Tommy

Tommy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:11:50 +0000

You should really look at changing the font choice for your website. I can hardly read the actual article.

By: Ken

Ken — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:54:06 +0000

I agree with Todd. But you have to be careful when arguing that transit use benefits “drivers and society at large.” That way, you make it sound as if transit riders are “taking one for the team.” It reminds me of an old article in the Onion, whose headline read “98% of Americans Support Public Transportation for Others.” Transit use is good for the users as well (and I realize that this point may have been an innocent oversight on your part, as you were more concerned with responding directly to Eric than to providing a broader view of the benefits of transit).

Sure, given good traffic conditions, driving is almost always faster than transit, but you have to consider the quality of life aspect of transit (and at this point I’m now responding to Eric). I realize that in NYC’s case, there’s nothing about the subway that screams “quality of life,” but in places like DC, the subway is squeaky clean, and almost everybody is relaxing cross legged, with a book or paper in hand. It’s just a beautiful way to live. Kick back, relax, no worrying about the asshole that’s tailgating you, or the speed demon that’s trying to burn through a yellow light as you’re trying to make a left turn. And no more combing through the blocks surrounding your destination looking for parking!

It isn’t always about getting there faster, but about relaxing on the way, and arriving at your destination calmer.

-Kenney

By: admin

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:12:20 +0000

Yes, Todd C states it succinctly: “by removing people from roads, economic gains take place for drivers and society at large”

For instance, look at this piece we linked to on Monday–Charles Komanoff figures the total costs to society of driving a car in Manhattan (below 60th St) is $160. This is an extreme case, but it would be great to know what the equivalent figure is for, say, driving a car on DC beltway or 405 in LA.

I’d need to look deeper, but I suspect Komanoff did a more complete job of capturing the real extent of the costs than does the TTI report.

-Jebediah

By: John Laidlaw

John Laidlaw — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:57:10 +0000

Transit - Subways, street-rail and LRT, and busses - have a great deal of use, WHEN they run to and from serious destinations of high congestion, with continuous traffic. Places like government complexes (Shall we say, central Washington?), university campuses, airports and other transport nodes, or heavy concentrations of commercial business - like lower Manhattan are ideal. Dispersed suburbia, where many of us live, is not an ideal ground for transit.
Cycling is a real alternative - under some circumstances. These include a realistic cycling season, preferably all year round, relatively flat grades - well, that applies to many of our cities - and reasonable distances. As a “commuting cyclist” of over fifty years standing, I would suggest that cycle commuting, in general, makes sense if a) distances involved are moderate - i.e.: no more than an hour’s travel in one direction, b) there is little or no demand for additional stops, particularly for passengers, on the way, and c) the bike can be realistically used for more than half the year. (Ten months of winter, and two of tough skidooing make it less attractive, f’rinstance.)
However, given that we still insist on living away from both work and neighbours, on isolating ourselves, that we are still, at heart, a rural society of loners, we’re going to need cars (of some sort), and we will have to accept the congestion and waste of time involved with that for some time to come. I think the end of freeways - and it is desireable, in my opinion - is far from near. I’ll stick to town, and my bike, except for longer pleasure trips.

By: Vin

Vin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:55:07 +0000

Eric:

I think you are looking at this as an either/or proposition. In terms of congestion, transit and cars complement each other. New York, as you probably know, has both high transit usage and the highest average commute in the nation. Now, imagine if you wiped away the subway, the commuter rail, and most of the bus network, and people had to drive to work. Congestion would shoot up, and NYC’s commutes, already long, would be INSANE. It is physically impossible to fit that many cars into Manhattan. Repeat: physically impossible.

Commute time is a poor indicator of the impact of public transit, in the U.S. anyway, because the American cities with decent transit options are all huge. The reason commutes in New York take so much longer than commutes in Wichita is not because of some defect with New York’s subways or the idea of public transit. It’s because New York’s metro area has 20 million people spread out over dozens of counties and Wichita, well, doesn’t. It’s a basic geographical fact that a 25-mile commute will take longer than a 5-mile commute nearly every time. The biggest cities are ALWAYS going to be more congested and ALWAYS going to have longer commutes because they’re the biggest. On a certain level, no number of train lines or highways can fix that.

By: Todd C

Todd C — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:14:50 +0000

Be sure you don’t jump to unstated conclusions, Eric. I agree with the author that increased public transportation use in the United States would contribute to economic savings for drivers due to less time in congestion. You quickly assume that the author implies that transit commute times are shorter, which they aren’t in many cases, and you note this. But, by a significant portion of the population switching to transit, a number of cars are removed from roadways, thereby reducing congestion for those who choose to drive.

You’re right - a number of urgent trips are more likely to happen by car, but this doesn’t mean that transit is exclusively HBW trips.

I think the real question here is: what is the net economic benefit of people switching to transit? Some may argue that the time spent commuting on transit, because it is probably longer than a car commute in the US, would contribute to an economic loss. But, by removing people from roads, economic gains take place for drivers and society at large. I would be willing to bet that there is a great net economic benefit to increasing the number of transit commuters. In other words, any economic loss that takes place from transit use is likely much smaller than the economic gain that is realized from people switching to transit commutes.

By: Eric F

Eric F — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:42:01 +0000

Two points:

1. You say: “In 2007, we saved $13 billion because of public transportation (i.e. less congestion because those people weren’t driving). If more cities had systems that met even the most basic performance standards, it’s not hard to imagine that could be a much, much larger number.”

So mass transit commuting times are shorter than driving times? Could have fooled me, I’d love to see some stats backing that up. A mass transit commute of just a few miles can take an hour or more. This is why people drive rather than endure transit travel even under horrific traffic conditions. There are arteries in NYC that are clogged at all hours. You can get on the GW bridge and see hour long delays even before 6 a.m. NY drivers know this and are well aware of the availability of transirt. But even the transit-savy population of NYC knows that there are many circumstances under which a trip must happen by car or not at all. In other words, the assumption that replacing a car trip with a transit trip likely slows travel, rather than speeds it up. This is why you don’t rush your friend to the hospital via subway or send a FedEx package across the county via a freight train.

2. You say: Many measures of American life have probably topped forever–vehicle miles traveled being an obvious one, but also things like retail space and car sales.

This I think is the notion that we are becoming Europeanized. And I think that’s right. However, look at 10 year trends in Europe. Is transit use growing as a mode there relative to vehicle use, or is the opposite happening? If we are heading to a European lifestyle, does that actually mean increased transit use? I think the hard data will surprise you.

By: SamJ

SamJ — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:39:28 +0000

“shitstorm”

Awesome editorial comment!

By: admin

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:25:58 +0000

“Plunged” was toying with overstatement. But I recall that St L city’s population fell every year from 1950 to 2007. Am I incorrect? It did fall rather steeply from 1990 to 2000.

-JR

By: admin

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:18:38 +0000

Dumb mistake. Fixed, and apologies.

By: NikolasM

NikolasM — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:19:53 +0000

175 million years is 175MM * 365 * 24 = 1.533 Trillion hours. You are off by a factor of 383.5…

As Dallas points out, 4 billion hours is 4B/(24*365)= 456,621 years, still a lot, but much much less than 175 million years.

By: Dallas

Dallas — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:02:01 +0000

“4 billion hours of our time. The latter figure works out to 175 million years”

Uh. My math might be wrong, but I don’t think it does…

http://www06.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4+billion+hours+to+years

By: joshua

joshua — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:12:42 +0000

St. Louis population plunged? Who the hell wrote this….obviously someone who is not very informed. St. Louis City has actually stabilized in the past few years and the region has never stopped growing or shrinked. Its a slow growth region, but when people say stuff like “Then again, congestion in St Louis is down by a third between 1997 and 2007 as population has plunged.” It is just uninformed and downright bad irresponsible journalism.