The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[SoundScan]

11 hours ago, SoundScan said:

Relevant excerpt from the posted link:

 

By analyzing TTI’s data for 70 metro areas over 15 years, STPP determined that metro areas that invested heavily in road capacity expansion fared no better in easing congestion than metro areas that did not. Trends in congestion show that areas that exhibited greater growth in lane capacity spent roughly $22 billion more on road construction than those that didn’t, yet ended up with slightly higher congestion costs per person, wasted fuel, and travel delay. The STPP study shows that on average the cost to relieve the congestion reported by TTI just by building roads could be thousands of dollars per family per year. The metro area with the highest estimated road building cost was Nashville, Tennessee with a price tag of $3,243 per family per year, followed by Austin, Orlando, and Indianapolis.

 

Ouch.

 

 

Just as a follow-up: depending upon how you read the metro demographics, this amounts to road building expenditures between $1.2 and $1.8 billion per year.

[MidTenn1]

Running a few numbers ....

• $5.4 billion for option 1 for 24 years = $225 million/year
• $225 million/year divided among 2 million MSA residents plus 1 million other middle Tennesseans who would benefit and pay for the plan = $75 per person per year
• $75 over 365 days = 21 cents per day per person (costs of option 1)

I cannot calculate the costs of a do nothing option, but it surely costs many, many times more due to

• your waiting in traffic while burning gas and missing appointments
• plus the added increases in the costs of goods and services due to the providers own increased transportation costs.
• depreciation of your vehicle as your spend more time in stop and go traffic

I would pay 21 cents a day a more efficient transportation system.

 

Edited April 6, 2016 by PHofKS

[Guest]

I do appreciate the effort, but this is a spitball as is possible since we are all guessing... It seems to me that a government truly selling mass-transit to its citizens would already have more exacting numbers out for all to see.

So, lets take your set-up and ask some questions....

By what mechanism are you taxing the 2 Mil +1 MIL?

Who comprise the 1MIL (I see the 2MIL is your estimation of our MSA)?

What is the actual number of tax paying adults, generating a minimum income in your model (we can assume that minors and those under a certain income threshold will be exempted)?

There is also the annual operating deficit that will need to be funded.

This is also assuming the cost to build is even close to the cost estimates (we have seen that these are far apart on many occasions).

[Neigeville2]

4 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

..

What is the actual number of tax paying adults, generating a minimum  income in your model (we can assume that minors and those under a certain income threshold will be exempted)?...

Doesn't have to be all adults.  At 21 cents a day, we can make schoolchildren pay a toll for recess every day.

[rookzie]

6 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

I do appreciate the effort, but this is a spitball as is possible since we are all guessing... It seems to me that a government truly selling mass-transit to its citizens would already have more exacting numbers out for all to see.

So, lets take your set-up and ask some questions....

By what mechanism are you taxing the 2 Mil +1 MIL?

Who comprise the 1MIL (I see the 2MIL is your estimation of our MSA)?

What is the actual number of tax paying adults, generating a minimum income in your model (we can assume that minors and those under a certain income threshold will be exempted)?

There is also the annual operating deficit that will need to be funded.

This is also assuming the cost to build is even close to the cost estimates (we have seen that these are far apart on many occasions).

All this, as a detailed packaged analysis in granularity, could be a compelling presentation in making the case, if "mined" and choreographed in a manner intuitively followed and meaningful to a diversity of stakeholder categories. -==-

[MidTenn1]

15 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

I do appreciate the effort, but this is a spitball as is possible since we are all guessing... It seems to me that a government truly selling mass-transit to its citizens would already have more exacting numbers out for all to see.

So, lets take your set-up and ask some questions....

By what mechanism are you taxing the 2 Mil +1 MIL?

Who comprise the 1MIL (I see the 2MIL is your estimation of our MSA)?

What is the actual number of tax paying adults, generating a minimum income in your model (we can assume that minors and those under a certain income threshold will be exempted)?

There is also the annual operating deficit that will need to be funded.

This is also assuming the cost to build is even close to the cost estimates (we have seen that these are far apart on many occasions).

Of course, trying to determine a per capita cost is somewhat guess work. However, the type of analysis I used seems to be used for any number of comparisons regarding the costs of using government services such as education, military, domed football stadiums, etc. My point was to come up with some starting point for evaluating the costs of doing something as compared to doing nothing. As a Traffic Engineer, I used accepted 'user costs' to evaluate cost/benefit ratios for many projects and determine which may result if the most effective use of public dollars. The analysis was not perfect, but it certainly helped create a more consistent and trustworthy list of priorities as compared to the arbitrary whims of political demands. 

As for the '3' million users, the benefits of good roads in this area are enjoyed by a far greater number of people who pay Tennessee taxes than the '2' million somewhat arbitrarily considered to live in the MSA. I think it is a conservative number anyway as everybody pays tax at the gas pump, regardless of their home base.

Evaluating the do-nothing, status quo costs are more difficult. Like I said we would use numbers developed by the national Engineering community such as $20 an hour plus or minus to evaluate the user costs. I didn't use that in my analysis, because I think most people have a strong intuitive idea that they are losing considerable amounts of time and money when they are stuck in traffic.

I welcome any one's analysis using different values and would like to see it. But it is what it is; an attempt to apply some form of objective enumeration to the debate regarding the need and costs of implementing a project the size of the one proposed. 

Thanks for your comments.

[rookzie]

..On another front, Toshkent, Uzbekistan reportedly will close down its urban tram system and will remove the tracks from separated RoW to provide additional road space.  The premise is based on a conclusion and "hope" that expanding the roadways with property recovered from the tram network will reduce traffic congestion.  The network's 50 (+) tram vehicles, between 5 and 9 years of age, are to be sold off and replaced with buses.

Perhaps then middle Tenn. is merely wasting its think-tanks on nothing.  If we simply take it easy, forgo all this talk about light-rail, and abort any plans for a series of dedicated rapid-transit RoWs, our congestion will simply vanish and float away like a magic carpet.

 

"Toshkent Tram Network to Close." Railway Gazette. DVV Media UK Ltd, 30 Mar. 2016. Web. 07 Apr. 2016. http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/urban/single-view/view/toshkent-tram-network-to-close.html.

Edited April 7, 2016 by rookzie

[CenterHill]

8 hours ago, rookzie said:

..On another front, Toshkent, Uzbekistan reportedly will close down its urban tram system and will remove the tracks from separated RoW to provide additional road space.  The premise is based on a conclusion and "hope" that expanding the roadways with property recovered from the tram network will reduce traffic congestion.  The network's 50 (+) tram vehicles, between 5 and 9 years of age, are to be sold off and replaced with buses.

Perhaps then middle Tenn. is merely wasting its think-tanks on nothing.  If we simply take it easy, forgo all this talk about light-rail, and abort any plans for a series of dedicated rapid-transit RoWs, our congestion will simply vanish and float away like a magic carpet.

 

How much do they want for them????

 

[Hey_Hey]

I posted some of my thoughts on how transit may look in the relatively near future (10-15 years).  I had mentioned that I see us eventually moving toward smaller passenger vehicles (maybe 5-15 people) picking up closer to home and dropping off closer to work without having to stop in between.  I also see this being an autonomous service eventually, although it doesn't have to be in the beginning.  

We know that there are dense concentrations of employment in certain area (downtown, Green Hills, Music Row, Maryland Farms, Cool Springs, etc) and clusters of people living in subdivisions in the suburbs. In an average sized subdivision of 250 homes in Brentwood /Mt Juliet/Franklin, there may be 20 people working downtown, 8 people in Green Hills, and 12 people in Maryland Farms, 15 in Cool Springs, and the rest are spread around Nashville. Right now, there is really no way for them to get to their places of employment by public transit.  Even if the most ambitious plan by RTA/MTA is implemented at a cost measured in the billions of dollars, we still have to get people from their subdivision to downtown and then to their place of employment if it isn't downtown. In reality, I don't see someone taking public transit from Brentwood to downtown and then to Green Hills.  I also see a sizable percentage of people not seeing the point of driving to a park and ride and then waiting for a bus or train to pick them up. 

The ideal transit system would show up at your doorstep at the exact time you needed and drop you off at the doorstep of your employer at the exact time needed for a minimal cost. That is the benefit of a car, and that is why people choose their cars.  It's the logical thing to do if you have one.  While that type of a transit system is not possible at the moment, maybe we could get very close in the near future.  

What I think would be possible is if a cluster of homes (subdivisions or neighborhoods) served as the origination for transit and the destinations are the high density employment centers. For example, lets use the Copperfield subdivison on Old Hickory near Nippers Corner.  At 7AM a 10 passenger van (autonomous or not) could pick up 7 or 8 passengers and drop them off at 3rd and Church downtown at 7:30AM.  At 7:15AM a 15 passenger van would pick up 7 people to be dropped off at Maryland Farms and 5 people to be dropped off at Green Hills. At 7:45AM a 15 passenger van picks up 12 people to be dropped off at Cool Spring, and at 8:00AM another 15 passenger van picks up 13 people to drop of in the CBD with a stop in the Gulch along the way. 

I came across a company called Bridj (you know it is a startup with that stupid spelling) that is based out of Boston that is essentially doing just what I described. It is a private service that uses thousands of people's transit needs to map out transit routes when and where they are needed. It requires walking 2-3 blocks on either end of your trip, and it is my understanding that they do make limited stops to pick up additional people as needed.  So far they are operating in Boston, Kansas City, and Washington DC.  Everything is app based (Booking, payment, real time tracking). 

That is definitely something to keep an eye on. Uber and Lyft have been in Nashville for 3 years and have changed the way people live and travel in the city.  Could Bridj or something like it do the same in sub mass transit sector?

[rookzie]

2 hours ago, CenterHill said:

How much do they want for them????

 

They "could" work in the States, but they run on 5-foot-gauge track, wider than standard North American (4 ft - 8-1/2 in) and found mostly in Russia and India and in various Mid-Eastern countries.  In the U.S., the standard gauge (distance between inner surfaces of opposing load-bearing rail-heads) is nearly universal for all railroad and transit lines, the most notable exception being BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), which initially opened in 1972 (I recall it happening on my birthday that year).  BART was engineered as a 5-ft gauge.  This is OK as long as no interchange is ever needed, and new cars have to be piggy-backed to the system from external rail interchange, or be transported by truck.  For most systems not requiring interchange, this issue can be minimal.  Streetcars and LRT and even HRT (subway/elevated) vehicles can roll along the same track in tow, on freight railroads if needed, but this can't apply to the the Uzbek cars.  Also, many other factors such as power requirements and construction and design compliance tend to limit compatibility, unless foreign vendors specifically are contracted to do so, as in the majority of current rail-car manufacture (mostly Asian and Eastern European).  For such a complete infrastructure investment, it would be far more sensible to plan for standard.

[Rockatansky]

Uber, Lyft may patch transit holes, but they can’t do it all for Nashville

http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2016/04/uber-lyft-may-patch-transit-holes-but-they-can-t.html

Edited April 8, 2016 by Rockatansky
formatting

[nashvylle]

can people smarter than me explain what Diane and the Amp crowd is doing now?

http://www.nashvillepost.com/politics/article/20493001/amp-haunting-nashville-from-the-grave

[PruneTracy]

2 hours ago, nashvylle said:

can people smarter than me explain what Diane and the Amp crowd is doing now?

So the purpose of an MPO is to take all of the transportation funding available for an urbanized area (defined by the Census, an area with a population greater than 50,000 people) and plan and coordinate individual projects such that they provide a consistent vision for the area as a whole. This way you don't have adjoining cities and counties making counterproductive decisions. For example, if Brentwood widened Granny White Pike for commuting traffic into Nashville while Metro widened Edmonson Pike instead, both projects would be an ineffective waste of money. The MPO exists to coordinate the projects such that the two municipalities decide on widening the same road.

Here are Tennessee's MPOs:

https://www.tn.gov/assets/entities/tdot/attachments/MPORPOTPO2010.PDF

The point of this bill is to prevent MPOs from apportioning projects based on population and instead based on the various cities and counties within an MPO. So the Nashville Area MPO, for example, couldn't spend most of their money on Nashville (i.e., where the people are), they would have to divide it more or less equally for every town and county from Portland to Mount Pleasant. Now understand, this completely defeats the purpose of having MPOs in the first place, which are intended to service the planning needs of the urbanized area that spurred their creation. In other words, if Nashville doesn't exist, the Nashville Area MPO doesn't exist, so the Nashville Area MPO needs to focus on getting people to and from Nashville. If the Nashville Area MPO is having to spend the same money on a town of 600 as it is a city of 600,000, it's not doing anything that TDOT or the feds wouldn't do at the behest of elected officials. It just becomes another layer of bureaucracy (not that it isn't right now, but at least it has a distinct purpose).

The reps pushing this bill are from Lenoir City and Oak Ridge, both of which are within the Knoxville TPO, so you can see what they're trying to do: get more money for their districts. But this bill is petty, counterproductive, and just plain stupid (that is, par for the course for the state legislature). Honestly it's probably going to send the MPOs back to the feds to try to get their areas cut down, which is further going to defeat their purpose and might backfire on the smaller towns who could get sent back to an RPO. But in any case it's going to make it that much harder to move around in an urban area. If you think traffic is bad now, wait until the little money we do have starts getting spread out even more.

(By the way, the article states that last year's bill "affected only MPOs contained entirely within state lines — making Nashville's the only body impacted and leaving 11 other MPOs largely or completely unaffected". This is incorrect; only Memphis, Clarksville, Chattanooga, Kingsport, and Johnson City have MPOs that cross state lines. Jackson, Nashville, Cleveland, Knoxville, Morristown, and Johnson City all have MPOs entirely within Tennessee. There are also only 11 MPOs in Tennessee, not 12.)

[nashvylle]

Thank you, PruneTracy.

So basically, we are F'd regarding mass transit, thanks to Diane Neal and Lee Beaman. 

 

[PruneTracy]

3 hours ago, nashvylle said:

So basically, we are F'd regarding mass transit, thanks to Diane Neal and Lee Beaman.

Not just mass transit, but any project that could be perceived as providing a benefit to only one area or group.

Let's say Nashville wanted to move forward on widening the inner loop and fixing the downtown interchanges (there are a bunch of projects in the 2040 RTP regarding this effort). Under weighted voting, Nashville holds more sway and can probably push the project through even if some others object. But under one-person-one-vote, a bunch of smaller cities contained in the MPO could shoot it down or hold it hostage until they get improvements for their own areas. That means that representatives for a few thousand people could block projects serving hundreds of thousands of people, or more, notwithstanding the fact that fixing Nashville's inner loop would benefit many people who don't live in Nashville, whether they realize it or not.

As I said, this defeats the purpose of the MPO. TDOT makes a big deal of spreading money out to rural areas, because they have to: they serve the entire state. But the MPO's mission is to support transportation planning in the metro area. It's not intended to redistribute funds from urban areas to rural areas, quite the opposite in fact.

Granted, most of the city officials on the Nashville Area MPO board are pretty cool about supporting the metro area and understand the big picture when projects like the Amp come up. But, it would only take a couple of self-serving buttholes like the types we see frequently on the hill to gum up the works.

[BnaBreaker]

I have never encountered a state legislature that hates their capital city more than Tennessee's legislature does.  It's absolutely outrageous.  I get the impression that many of these people literally want to see Nashville fail.  

[FrankNash]

 The rural Tennessee State Legislators are jealous of Nashville being so successful. Sad really.

[titanhog]

1 hour ago, FrankNash said:

 The rural Tennessee State Legislators are jealous of Nashville being so successful. Sad really.

Memphis REALLY hates us.

[Pyramid Scheme]

If Memphis hates Nashville because of actions that benefit only certain groups of people, they need to do a little self reflection.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, BnaBreaker said:

I have never encountered a state legislature that hates their capital city more than Tennessee's legislature does.  It's absolutely outrageous.  I get the impression that many of these people literally want to see Nashville fail.  

I have some of my own disagreements with our state legislature, but they are the state's legislative body of which Nashville's representatives make up only a small percentage (3 of 33 in the Senate and 9 of 99 in the House).

 

 

Edited April 9, 2016 by Guest

[fieldmarshaldj]

4 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

I have some of my own disagreements with our state legislature, but they are the state's legislative body of which Nashville's representatives make up only a small percentage (3 of 33 in the Senate and 9 of 99 in the House).

And given that there's a supermajority of Republicans, why would they go out of their way to disproportionately spend $$ on a constituency that opposes them by an 10-to-2 margin in elected officials ? Democrats didn't shower love on GOP constituencies during their 140 years in power. When Nashville sends more members of the present majority, they'll get more sympathy. Until such time, they have no room to complain.

[Hey_Hey]

This isn't just a Republican-Democrat thing, however.  Both Williamson and Rutherford Counties will lose our in this process as well. Those are both large counties that will see their influence dwindle.  They also both happen to be largely Republican counties. Counties that really stand to win are small counties like Cheatham, Trousdale, Macon, etc. Williamson and Rutherford, and to a slightly lesser degree Wilson and Sumner, are tied to Davidson County very intimately.  The best thing for those counties is a strong Nashville that is able to update its infrastructure. 

The fact that there are people who are actually proposing a system that could give equal money to Trousdale County and Davidson County is laughable. There's no way to massage that message and keep a straight face while saying it is for the best.

Edited April 9, 2016 by Hey_Hey

[titanhog]

I grew up in a rural county in Arkansas...and I just remember everyone always griping about "all of the money stays in Little Rock"...or "it all goes to Northwest Arkansas" (where Wal Mart, Tyson and the University of Arkansas is located)...and I guarantee they were telling their reps to do all they could to oppose any $$ going to LR or NWA.

I have to believe, with Nashville booming more than any place in the state, the citizens of most of the other counties probably feel they're not getting their fair share.  Most people don't understand that Nashville's growth is not all about the government handing out money to make it grow (only partly with TIF, etc)...they just see "the rich city" and they want their share.

[Hey_Hey]

I grew up in rural Kentucky and heard similar themes with the "Golden Triangle" of Louisville, Lexington, and Northern KY/Cincy.  Of course, the thing that is never mentioned is that cities are net losers in terms of tax flow in and out. 

[rookzie]

In effect, Nashville is not being totally singled out.  Statewide the matter stands to become compounded, if state passes the bill allowing residents of 6 cities to de-annex their communities.

According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal [March 10, 2016]

“The current amended version limits de-annexation to Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Johnson City, Kingsport and, oddly, Cornersville (pop. 1,199) -- places where the amendment says "citizens have experienced the most egregious forms of annexation and have no other reasonable course to redress their grievance than to petition for a vote.
...
...

The de-annexation bill would allow 10 percent of the registered voters of a territory annexed since May 1, 1998, or whose annexation "became operative" after that date, to petition for a de-annexation referendum. The de-annexation would occur if approved by a majority of the area's voters in a referendum. The bill, House Bill 779, failed on the last day of the 2015 legislative session, but its supporters vowed to return with it this year.“

While this appears to target the areas not consolidated in county-city governments, as just discussed in this topic, it nevertheless does seem to ramify to being counterproductive to consortially supported regional mass transit.  State funding allocation for transit projects only will seem to have any chance of being palatable if packaged with funding for other projects.  As far as Nashville is concerned, in anticipation of a diminutive scope in its MPO, it alone might be able to surmount the issue, if it can discover diamond and ruby veins beneath the surface, provided that land is not directly state owned, of course.  Even then, the state stands to pass an ad-hoc law to take full control of that.

Edited April 9, 2016 by rookzie