Trip Report: KC Transit

My recent trip to Kansas City involved a conference at a hotel which doesn’t have regular bus service, but can be reached by KCATA’s Metroflex. It’s a route-deviation service; you call 24 hours ahead and they drop you off at any point within the area served by the particular route. Unfortunately the Megabus terminal at 3rd and Grand is a distance from the 10th & Main Metroflex hub, but two or three KCATA routes make the connection even until fairly late at night.

Going to the conference hotel worked pretty well and I was dropped off right at the hotel entrance. Returning, the bus didn’t show on time, I called and was told that there was no record of my request but fortunately the bus was nearby and would be diverted. True enough, except that it drove around the hotel and didn’t come to the entrance. I ran after it, with luggage, managed to flag it down. Turns out that the small buses go to the hotel, but the big buses have to stay on the public street. I suppose locals learn to deal with this, just as Chicagoans learn that some of the announcements on the ‘L’ are incorrect because the operator pushed the wrong button, or the right button the wrong number of times, or was required to push the button even if it makes no sense.

Connecting back from Metroflex to Megabus, I got a brief ride on their version of BRT, known as MAX. Actually I had some trouble finding the Max stop, but downtown KC has lots of friendly homeless people and one of them showed me the way. The Max bus itself is something I’ve never seen, with low-floor bowling-alley seating on the right side and forward-facing seats on a raised platform on the left side of the bus.

KCATA doesn’t publish a system map, nor do they display one on their web site, but they were happy to mail me a more or less complete set of hardcopy schedules. Each schedule contains a map for that route, so it was possible to piece together how to get where I needed to go.

Trip Report: St. Louis MetroLink

On my way home from Kansas City I stopped overnight in St. Louis, mainly because MetroLink has built two extensions since I was last there. Stayed at the Drury Hotel near Union Station, very nice conversion of the old railroad YMCA. All hotels in downtown St. Louis seem expensive, but at least this one is a very comfortable place with helpful staff, a fine breakfast, and good usable Internet computer in the lobby.

Metrolink is really nice as a railfan experience and as a transit service. On my trips trains were always fast, always pretty much on time, rode well, never excessively crowded. One shortcoming is the noise level, which isn’t much less than Chicago’s ‘L’. The high level of “security,” mainly Securitas contract guards, made me very uncomfortable. Securitas staff even handled the one fare-check that I experienced, so I suppose they are able to issue fines or summonses. There were also some uniformed Metro “public safety” staff.

Everybody was very friendly, except one Securitas guy who decided that I could not take a picture of a Union Pacific train while standing on a MetroLink platform.

It is curious that MetroLink has a long extension into Illinois, all the way to Scott Air Force Base. Much of this distance is thru rural areas, there’s apparently not much ridership, presumably there’s a political story to why it was built. But going there is great as a railfan experience, 55 mph thru woods and over creeks, few stations to interrupt the pace.

Took a walk thru downtown St. Louis. There doesn’t seem to be much commerce there anymore, just a lot of old buildings being converted to residential, and some government offices. MetroLink does go to Clayton, a major suburban office center, where there is a public washroom at the bus terminal. To a Chicagoan, this is an impressive amenity.

Trip Report: Megabus

Took Megabus to Kansas City last week (July 8). Buses now load at the curb on Canal just south of Union Station, an open sidewalk with no weather protection. Megabus does have an agent who checks tickets in advance so buses can load relatively fast. We took off about 15 minutes late, bus about 70% full, everything fine. Just before St. Louis, the A/C failed. Driver dropped us off at Union Station and drove away, assuring us that the bus would return with a relief driver. About 30 minutes later that actually happened. On to Kansas City, we paused at a truck stop to try to fix the AC but the only result was to put us an hour behind schedule. On arrival in KC, there was a crowd waiting to board for an immediate departure back to St. Louis.

Returning July 13, we had one of the new Van Hool double deckers. Pretty nice bus in many respects, but the seats are a bit cramped. Also, there are no overhead luggage racks on either level, just the baggage compartment behind the passenger area. And it seemed we had a bit of trouble maintaining speed up hills. But at least the AC worked fine. The bus was perhaps 60% full. I got off at St. Louis, where quite a crowd was waiting to board for Chicago.

I could have taken Amtrak for almost the same fare, but chose Megabus because Amtrak’s StL-KC trains have such a poor on-time record. As it happens, a colleague who took Amtrak said they were only a little late.

Funding transit from TIF’s

A new paper(pdf) by Andrew Heidel proposes using TIF money to fund development of new stations along existing CTA rail lines. He identifies a number of potential sites, implements a simple method of ranking them based mainly on past TIF growth and ridership potential.

GAO on Funding Infrastructure

No great surprises in the new Gov’t Accountability Office report on: PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE  Challenges and Investment Options for the Nation’s Infrastructure.  (Summary, full report).  Roads, bridges, dams, railroads, airports etc are decaying and not keeping up with “demand,” and existing funding methods are proving inadequate.   Is there a cheaper way to meet the needs? The report does not say.  Is it worth spending what it costs to update the facilities? Not discussed. And perhaps most importantly, is there a way that the owners of land benefiting from infrastructure improvements could be made to pay for them?  Well, one sentence recognizes some approximation of the possibility:

A variety of taxes have been and could be used to fund the nation’s infrastructure, including excise, sales, property, and income taxes. (p. 15)

That’s all.

Cab medallion prices continue to rise

Fifteen months ago, I noted that Chicago taxi medallions were selling for about $77,000.  Now, per the May ‘08 issue of Chicago Dispatcher,  the median price increased in April (based on data thru April 22) to $125,000.  That’s a 62% increase in 14 months– with no increase in fares (altho a gas surcharge which was allowed subsequently doubtless was anticipated).

Of course the medallion owners, as such, contribute nothing to the provision of transportation, but they do impose a cost on passengers and/or drivers.  Limiting the number of cabs doesn’t increase the earnings of drivers.

News search engines; transit and traffic too

Last night I decided to avoid Red Line delays by taking route 147 north instead.  Everything was pretty fine until we approached Loyola.  All traffic was diverted in both directions.  Cars were going west (to where?).  Buses were just sitting there.  Although there seems to be plenty of room to u-turn and reroute to Clark Street, apparently cta wasn’t able to do this. Or maybe Clark was too congested.

I got off the stopped bus, walked up to the blockage, the entire street was closed off with yellow tape, tho sidewalks were open.  No indication of what happened, so I went upstairs to the red line (which was performing its own delays, but restored service after a few minutes).  So why was the street blocked?

This afternoon I used news.google and news.yahoo to answer that question.  Searching for “sheridan” and “loyola”, google was unable to come up with anything relevant, while yahoo linked to four articles (well, actually four copies of two articles) which explained that pedestrian had been killed crossing the street.   (Even googling for the name of the victim yielded nothing.) Which doesn’t explain why buses could not have been allowed thru while the investigation was conducted.

Bus Rapid Transit and Land Values

Network effects seem to be the main impact of bus rapid transit on land values, at least according to a Lincoln-supported study of Bogota, Colombia.  The analysis suggests that an extension of BRT service in 2003 may have had little impact on land prices in the area of the extension, but greatly increased land costs in an area which was already served by BRT previously.   The explanation could be a network effect– as the area served by BRT expands, the value of access to the system also expands.  A 15%- 20% increase in “property” value was found.   Obviously if one were looking only at land value, the percentage would be higher. Also, the data source was asking prices rather than actual transactions.

The study is described here (free registration required, or use bugmenot) , and a more detailed working paper is here (ditto).  The basic finding is that, yes, you can expect to fund transit from a land value tax, and it can be appropriate to use systemwide funding sources to pay for extensions.

I would have said that there is no “bus rapid transit” service in Chicago, but I can’t refute the wikipedia claim that the McCormick Place Busway is BRT.  For regular transit passengers here, however, there are no bus routes which are isolated for any distance from automobiles and other traffic.

Legitimate academic to study transit funding

Lincoln Institute reports that they have granted a fellowship for work on Sustaining Mass Transit through Land Value Taxation: A Case Study of Chicago. Lincoln requires registration (free) to read the article that says the project will focus on the South Chicago USX site but will also “estimate the impact of transit accessibility on land values in the Chicago metropolitan area.” MIT Graduate student Shan Jiang will work with Prof. P. Christopher Zegras on the project.

From what I can find, Zegras has done quite a bit of work on transport funding, mainly in Latin America, and doesn’t seem to have any particular interest in land value. Although I have already estimated that RTA-funded rail transit alone generates something over $1.3 billion land rent annually, Zegras will have greater financial and technical resources and should be able to develop a better estimate. We shall see.

Transit funding will cost >80,000 jobs

That’s the estimate I came up with in the revised and quite enhanced version of HGS Research Note 5a. I’m using parameters estimated several years ago in a study of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Maybe the actual number here would be a lot more; I wish someone would do the analysis. This loss is expected to occur by 2014; further losses would follow.

If RTA really needs the funding, I estimate we could do it with a land tax that would cost the typical homeowner maybe $40/year, with renters essentially paying nothing. For $290/year, the homeowner could do away with all transit taxes, and fares too. No jobs would be lost; some would be gained.

By comparison, Chicago Metropolis 2020, in their surprisingly thoughtful study Time is Money, estimate that fully funding all the transit spending that RTA wants, plus some “smart growth” changes in land use arrangements, would add 22,307 jobs by 2020. They do not discuss how the funds would be obtained, although the study does note that a doubling of gasoline prices– which might be achieved thru taxation– would have great benefits for transit use.