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Quotations relating to traffic and transportation:
A word from the FTA: “Many commenters reiterated their concern that the Project will not relieve highway congestion in Honolulu. FTA agrees, but the purpose of the Project is to provide an alternative to the use of congested highways for many travelers. This alternative to the use of highways is especially important for households that cannot afford an automobile for every person in the household who travels for work or for other reasons.” In fact, projections suggest that traffic conditions will be worse in 2030 under any circumstances [studied in the EIS]. The Alternatives Analysis supports this statement as does the analysis of transportation impacts in the Final EIS. The comparison that is key to the Project is that rail will improve conditions compared to what they would be if the Project is not built.”
"In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved." Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. August 12, 2013, p; A15. Wall Street Journal. The all time quote about rail supporters from Houston's Mayor Lanier: Here's what Mayor Harris wrote in the city's Progress Report #3 somewhere around 2000: "At the same time, previous proposals for a grade-separated rail transit system in Honolulu deeply divided the community and would have required massive capital investments. It is increasingly clear that our best path to better mobility on Oahu is to improve our highway infrastructure as much as we can and build on our very successful bus service to improve and expand public transit. With cutting edge technologies and innovative operational systems, we can make big improvements at an affordable cost."
Adam Smith. 1776: "The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in
executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway, which
is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applause not only flatter
his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But execute a great number of
little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance,
or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in
short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business
which appears in every respect too mean and paultry to merit the attention of
so great a magistrate. Under
such an administration, therefore, such works are almost always entirely
neglected."
Councilmember Gary Okino in a February 2006 letter to constituents, "City and State officials are working to make fixed rail in Honolulu a reality. Building a rail system will not eliminate today's traffic congestion, but it will provide a convenient and effective alternative for those wishing to bypass highway gridlock in the future. READ MORE
From Alan Pisarski, author of Commuting in America: "If your transportation goals can be met by everyone staying home you have the wrong goals!"
Transportation Secretary Mineta said in a recent press release, “The real solution is not reducing traffic to fit capacity,” Mineta said. “We must expand capacity to handle the growing traffic.” It is really a shame that this advice he is offering about air transportation, he does not offer for surface transportation — certainly the principle is exactly the same. That is, supply = demand when the price is free to follow market forces. READ MORE
Parsons Brinckerhoff: “The light rail transit alternative was dropped because subsequent analyses revealed that Bus/Rapid Transit using electric-powered vehicles could accomplish virtually all of the objectives of light rail transit at substantially less cost.” MIS/Draft EIS of the Honolulu Bus/Rapid Transit Program, August 2000. pp. 2-2 to 2-4. Prepared by Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas.
October 14, 2007, the Seattle Times came out in strong opposition to Proposition 1, the region's major transportation proposal. Of rail transit the paper editorialized that it, "spends huge amounts of money to make congestion worsen at a slightly lesser rate. Seattle may deny this, but the surest way to reduce congestion on roads is to build more lanes. So says a report issued by State Auditor Brian Sontag last week, and so says human experience. New roads help." "Much more could be done with bus service, particularly if high-occupancy lanes are kept flowing by the smart use of tolls. Light rail replaces buses, and at a much higher cost per rider. Rail soaks up money buses might have used. Rail funnels transit. Buses extend it. And most rail riders will be people who were already riding the bus." And of Transit Oriented Development, the editorial continues, "The farsighted ones say light rail is about changing the way we live. It is about increasing density, levering us into apartments around rail stations. If we live next to rail, we will drive less and help save the Earth. It is a fetching, utopian vision, but it is not so easy to change the way Americans live." "Consider Portland. That city opened its first light-rail line two decades ago, and has built several of them, all of which replaced bus lines. Overall, Greater Portland is no less car-dependent than Seattle. Its congestion has gotten worse, just as it has here. Many Portlanders are proud of light rail, but the last three times new light-rail plans have been on the ballot in the Portland area, the people rejected them. "Maybe they learned something." Today's Seattle Times editorial is a very important event. To our knowledge it is the first time a major U.S. daily has opposed a rail transit line. For those of us who have spent the last 20 years waiting for the major dailies to wake up to rail transit's problems, it is a very gratifying moment. READ MORE "We wish we had never started the whole thing. Fixed rail is not the answer to the transportation needs of our city. We should stop all this insanity that has gone on these past years." — Richard Riordan, mayor of Los Angeles, on the public radio program, "Which Way LA?," June 1998. "(This) comparison of person moving capacities for various Gabriel Roth: "Most U.S. road systems are like relics of the former Soviet Union: socialist enterprises run by well-intentioned planners with no regard to the pricing and investment criteria that allocate goods and services in free societies. Moscow citizens got relief from food lines by abolishing socialism. The market economy could similarly liberate road users from excessive congestion. If we recognize “road space” as a scarce resource, charge market prices for this resource, and use the revenues to stimulate investment in new capacity—such as additional lanes or new technologies to speed traffic past bottlenecks—congestion could be reduced." http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2056 Alternatives"Commuters choose among available transport modes mostly on the basis of comparative money
costs and time costs of the total commute trip, door-to-door. Other
attributes, such as comfort and
privacy, are trivial as compared with expenditures of dollars and minutes. Commuters charge up the time spent in waiting
for and getting into a vehicle at
several times the rate they apply to travel inside a moving vehicle. This means that the closer a vehicle comes to
both a commuter's house and workplace, the more
likely he is to use that vehicle rather than some other. It also means that the fewer the number of
transfers between vehicles, the better" Alternatives"I'm
convinced that the single most important
cause of BART's shortcomings was the failure to realize that it's the door-to-door, no-wait, no-transfer features of the automobile
that make up the choice for most
travelers; not its high speed, not its privacy, not its comfort, not its status; that public transit system
which is most capable of collecting commuters near their homes and delivering
them near their jobs without waits and without transfers has the highest odds
of competing with the car. At this time
in history, that system is some sort of variant on the bus. At great cost, the Bay Area is learning that
it is not a feeder bus linked to a mainline track system. I'm
inclined to conclude that a high quality bus service, supplemented by a
high-quality paratransit service would have the best odds of accomplishing what
we in the Bay Area were seeking to accomplish back in the '60s. Alternatives"Since a bus handles about 40 people in the space of
about 2.5 automobiles, the existence or
nonexistence of rival rail facilities is not a major
consideration in traffic congestion." Alternatives"So it is important
that an alternative mass urban transport
system be capable of serving small numbers of persons having the same
combinations of origins,
destinations, and schedules. It has to
be capable of collecting them virtually at their doors,
on time, and then transporting them
form wherever they are directly to
wherever they want to go. That is to
say, it must be capable of providing random access, just the way the telephone
network connects everywhere to
everywhere -- directly and on demand.
Those are the very attributes that make automobiles attractive. They must also become the attributes of
public transit systems. It public
transit is to compete with private cars, it must do so on the car's own terms.
That means, among other things, that future public transit must employ
small vehicles that are able to carry those small groups of travelers who share
the combinations of origins,
destinations, and schedules. Autos"Ordinary people seldom ranged any distance from home;
if they did, they had to go by some form
of public conveyance, provided it was available,or
they walked. This is where the automobile had been an instrument of social
revolution, first in the Autos"(The automobiles) gift of mobility itself — not
mobility as a dollar-spreading device or
a mechanical substitute for personal
movement, but as direct enhancement of life, as an enlargement of life's boundaries and opportunities...It
is nothing less than the unshackling of the age-old bonds of locality; it is
the grant of geographic choice and economic freedom on a hitherto unimagined
scale." Autos"The automobile itself is so exasperatingly convenient
that it drives the transportation
inventors almost mad trying to
devise competitive substitutes." Autos"Yet, although the common man was the principal
beneficiary of the automotive revolution, this was not a case of the poor man coming to enjoy a luxury formerly limited to the rich. The rich themselves had
never enjoyed anything like this before." AutosThe auto came "...to free the common man from the
limits of his geography." BART"BART also seems to have accelerated residential
development in certain outlying areas previously perceived as beyond commuting
distance to BART"In the original
BART plan, it was anticipated that fare-box revenues would cover all operating
expenses and the capital costs of the rolling stock (the rest of the capital
was to be paid through property taxes). In practice, fare-box revenues covered
only one-third of the operating expenses and made no contribution to capital
costs." Busway Alternatives"(This) comparison of person moving capacities for various Busway Alternatives"...(busways) permit the operation of high-volume,
reliable service at a cost far less than new rail construction...what might be
an undesirable two-transfer ride on rail system (auto to rail to
walk/bus/subway) could be a no-or
one-transfer ride on a bus/HOV system." Busway Alternatives"A number of busways, bus priority
lanes and contraflow bus lanes have attracted and carry tremendous amounts of
traffic. The Busway Alternatives"The Commuting"There is growing evidence from time-valuation studies
and consumer surveys that most Congestion
"Regardless of how good a mass transit system is
developed for Energy"In view of the limited energy conservation potential
of rail rapid transit and the enormous
capital costs of such systems, expenditure of federal funds on these systems for purposes of energy conservation appears to be
misguided and possibly even counterproductive." Energy"Of all the commonly held notions about energy
efficiency, probably the most misguided are those concerning rapid rail
transit. The findings of this study indicate that, under typical conditions,
new rapid rail systems actually waste energy rather than save it." Environmental Concerns."[The Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact
Statement] does not comply with the State of Environmental Concerns."[The Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact
Statement] inadequately describes the significant impact of the visual
resources of the various stations and important
view planes. The station descriptions
should be further elaborated and
photographic or computer generated
montages should be provided for the
significant views surrounding each station." Federal Approvals"...somebody expressed yesterday...that the federal
government...won't approve bad work, suspicious work,
or shoddy work. Well, let me assure you that the federal
government does it repeatedly. Very few
times has the federal government turned anybody down...Don't take their stamp of approval as an indication
that the work is worth going by, because they don't have to live with it. You do. Free Enterprise"...incorporate private services into the City's...transportation
network where conventional mass
transit does not adequately accommodate riders'
needs. The private transportation sector
is large, popular, and growing. It
should be viewed as a valuable resource and not as an unwelcome intruder to be
eliminated." Financial Concerns"...transit costs have increased faster than either
farebox revenue or the rate of
inflation throughout the two decades of government involvement...This performance is typical of the performance
of other noncompetitive transportation
modes, such as the railroads, when government regulation protected them from
economic competition. In such
environments, the normal disciplines
of the economic marketplace do not exist since increasing costs can either be
assumed by government subsidies or
passed on to the consumer in the form
of higher fares." Financial Concerns"In the field of Public Economics...the use of economic
multipliers has been largely discredited because although they count secondary
benefits, they do not count secondary costs.
Peat Marwick's use of
input/output analysis to estimate multipliers is wholly unacceptable to public
economists. If there are any multiplier
benefits, they are very small. Benefits
are very unlikely to exceed costs." Financial Concerns"So if I can switch now to the subject of costs, I want
to say...that consultants generally do a darn poor
job of estimating the cost of rapid transit systems...But...if you look at
the...Baltimore system, the Atlanta
system, the costs aren't being
exceeded any more. We know how to control them. Forecasting Ridership"Daily patronage forecasts...14-mile
fixed guideway system with feeder...
1995 ... 473,000...What can be said about these forecasts?...they're very conservative." Forecasting Ridership"Inevitably, a long-term forecast
has a high probable error
attached. No single-figure forecast in reasonable. Al forecasts
should be expressed as a range of prospects; and they should be explicit about
the odds of their being wrong...I must confess that, having been personally
responsible for creating some of
them in the early BART-design days, I speak to you with some familiarity and
very considerable humility. In turn,
having lived through the high optimism of the BART system during its early
design to its currently disappointing shortfalls
from its forecasts, I commend a
skeptical mind-set to all of you: forecasts
are not facts about the future." Forecasting Ridership"People who design these systems come to believe in
them as they rightfully should. They sort of invest themselves in the them. Typically they're
engineers who like to build things. I
think that's a very important characteristic to bear in mind." Forecasting Ridership"The second reason we overpredicted BART usage is that
we did not account for the fact that
people really dislike walking for more than ten minutes...We predicted 12 times as many
people would take BART by walking to BART than actually did...Less than 1
percent of the workers chose to go
to work by BART by walking to BART. Forecasting Ridership"We have little faith in the projected ridership and
cost figures." Free enterprise"...incorporate private services into the City's...transportation
network where conventional mass
transit does not adequately accommodate riders'
needs. The private transportation sector
is large, popular, and growing. It
should be viewed as a valuable resource and not as an unwelcome intruder to be
eliminated." Free enterprise"...incorporate private services into the City's...transportation
network where conventional mass
transit does not adequately accommodate riders'
needs. The private transportation sector
is large, popular, and growing. It
should be viewed as a valuable resource and not as an unwelcome intruder to be
eliminated." Free Enterprise"...UMTA is obligated to ensure that local decision makers fully and fairly consider the private sectors capacity to provide needed transportation services. Private providers should be given opportunity to present their views concerning the development of local transportation plans and programs and to offer their own service proposals for consideration." The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. June 1987. Free Enterprise"Deregulation and supportive public policies are essential toward stimulating a new commercial transit market...Deregulation would allow shared-ride taxis, private shuttle vans, jitneys, and commuter buses to compete for parts of the transit market now largely monopolized by public bus operators. While controls over safety, driver qualifications, and operating policies will always be necessary, there is no compelling reason why market entry, price, and vehicle occupancy restrictions should be placed on taxi, paratransit, and private bus operators. Such regulations impose an inefficient uniformity on the market and remove the incentive to innovate and respond to changing market conditions. Fare and service-quality restrictions lead to homogenous services. They also lead to uniform prices that do not vary by time, parts of city,or radio-dispatch versus cruising services), thus limiting cost recovery. Past experiences with taxi deregulation in San Diego, Oakland, Seattle and Portland show that customers are usually rewarded with more travel options and improved services (shorter average waits, new and better maintained vehicles), at roughly the same fares as before. Deregulation's potential for spawning a rich mix of different types of urban transportation services is especially promising. Studies consistently show that commuters are far more sensitive to the quality of transportation services than price or anything else--that is, they are most likely to switch modes when given dramatic changes in travel times or comfort levels. Factors such as reliability of schedules, assurances of a seat, transfer time, and availability of temperature control have proven to be key determinants of what modes travelers choose. A loosely regulated urban transportation sector offers the best chance of attracting the kinds of high-quality services that can successfully compete with the private automobile, especially for the inter-suburban commutes." Robert R. Cervero, UC Berkeley. Fostering Commercial
Transit: Alternatives in Greater Free Enterprise"It is UMTA policy that when new service needs are developed,or services are significantly restructured, consideration should be given to whether private carriers could provide such service in a manner which is consistent with local objectives and without public subsidy. Moreover, existing transit services should be periodically reviewed to determine if they can be provided more efficiently by the private sector. Public officials should examine possible adjustments in local regulation or existing service requirements in order to permit private carriers to perform service without subsidy in the free market." The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. June 1987. Free Enterprise"Laws and rules governing urban transportation have been built up, layer by layer, to the point where they represent serious obstacles to innovation. A Byzantine network of local, regional, and state authorities has evolved for administering and enforcing these regulations. Excessive bureaucracy has meant reduced efficiency and effectiveness and has also precluded any kind of integrated, coordinated commercial transit and paratransit sector from emerging. At both the local and state levels, present-day controls should be repealed to allow freer market entry." Cervero, Robert R. UC Berkeley. Fostering Commercial Transit: Alternatives in Greater Free Enterprise"Less than 20 years ago, in most countries... transportation...was among the most socialized industries in the world....The need for flexible, responsive transportation systems in the new competitive environment forced change that has resulted in a shift to the private sector and to more market-responsive institutions." Free Enterprise"The major
obstacles impeding private provision of transit are...the commingling of authority to set local transportation
objectives and responsibility to provide transit services. The other is the monopoly tradition...The
principal obstacle to more
competition in the provision of mass transit services is the fusion of policy
making and service provision into a single area wide agency...Much remains to
be done in removing these and related obstacles. The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. June 1987. Free Enterprise"The term' urban mass transportation'...is transportation by bus,or rail,or other conveyance, either publicly or privately owned, which provides to the public general or special service...on a regular and continuing basis." Urban Mass Transportation Administration. The Status of the Nation's Local Mass Transportation: Performance and Conditions - Report to Congress. June 1988. Free Enterprise"The virtual universal buy-out of private transit operators was complete by the early 1970's, financed largely by UMTA grants, which simply reinforced the monopoly structure. From an economic standpoint, the same risks of bloated costs, technological obsolescence market insensitivity, and inflexibility exist regardless of whether an enterprise is a private monopoly or a public monopoly. In both cases the public lacks a benchmark for comparing costs or quality of service. A monopoly operator is protected from the pressures of a competitive marketplace that can normally be expected to assure maximum efficiency, productivity, and innovation. The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. June 1987. Free Enterprise"UMTA does not consider it acceptable for localities to foreclose opportunities for private enterprise by simply pointing to local barriers to their involvement in federally assisted local transportation programs. In general, a simple reference in the public record to public agency labor agreements or a local policy that calls for direct operation of all mass transportation providers, would not satisfy the private enterprise requirements of the Act." The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. June 1987. Free Enterprise."...transit operating costs have increased faster than either farebox revenue or the rate of inflation throughout the two decades of government involvement...This performance is typical of the performance of other non-competitive transportation modes, such as the railroads, when government regulations protected them from economic competition. In such environments, the normal disciplines of the economic marketplace do not exist since increasing costs can either be assumed by government subsidies or passed on to the consumer in the form of higher fares." Free Enterprise."Effective management of our urban transportation systems -- upon which the effectiveness of public transit depends -- requires the presence of local political will to apply market principles throughout transportation systems, across all modes." Public Transportation
in the Free Enterprise."It is Federal transportation policy to bring the principles of market competition to bear in public transportation and enlist the private sector in solving urban transportation problems Moving Free Enterprise."One of the greatest opportunities for improving transportation efficiency and service in the future lies in allowing market forces to work, minimizing government intervention, and increasing flexibility for the private sector." Moving Free Enterprise."There are...many State and local barriers to private participation in transportation projects. It is Federal policy to minimize legal and regulatory barriers to private participation in...transportation...services ...[and to] continue efforts to increase private sector involvement in mass transit operations..." Moving Future of Transit"Increasing numbers of local officials are questioning the logic of traditional transportation arrangements...What has triggered this re-appraisal are not just local fiscal stringencies and reduced Federal dollars, but a growing sense that the market for conventional transit service is progressively diminishing." Dr. C. Kenneth Orski, Corporation for
Urban Mobility. Address to the Governor's
Conference on Videotex, Transportation
and Energy Conservation. Gridlock"Generally, traffic congestion is somewhat self-regulating. Motorists alter their routes to avoid known bottlenecks, schedule discretionary trips to avoid congested periods of the day, switch to transit for downtown work trips and even relocate homes, jobs and other activities to maintain a tolerable travel time." Public Transportation
in the Jitneys"In a country constantly extolling the virtue of free enterprise, is surprising how often we prevent entrepreneurs from operating, and this trend is quite noticeable in city transit." Farmer, Richard N. Whatever happened to the Jitney? Traffic Quarterly, Vol. XIX. 1965. Jitneys"It must be emphasized that it is far easier to try the jitney system than to do research on possible results." Farmer, Richard N. Whatever happened to the Jitney? Traffic Quarterly, Vol. XIX. 1965. Jitneys"We tend at times to think too big in this urban passenger area." Farmer, Richard N. Whatever Happened to the Jitney? Traffic Quarterly, Vol. XIX. 1965. JitneysLast night's public hearing packed the court room to the doors...dominated by (jitney) bus patrons who rushed to the defense of the (jitney) company praising that service, the courtesy of the drivers and insisting upon (its) right to do business as a rival to the long established (streetcars). Those who spoke included Charles Maeschke, a civilian employee at Pearl Harbor,; Ernest L. Graves of the Mutual Telephone Company; Joseph Capsan, an electrician; Peter Church, Dr. James Kondo, Mrs. Elizabeth N. Mann, A.H. Wong, Charles Borad, Salvador Vidal and Merlin McGraw, a teacher at McKinley high school. The foregoing stated that Rosé service was needed not only for competition, but because of late running and better service on routes the HR did not parallel. Mass Transit"Mass transit is defined as transportation by bus,or rail,or other conveyance, either publicly or privately owned, which provides to the public general or special service...on a regular and continuing basis." Mass Transit"Some form
of mass transit will have to be developed to meet transportation
demands created by limited accommodation of the automobile. The system that is finally adopted should be
one which will lend itself readily to incremental planning. Grand schemes, such as BART, should be
considered suspect from an economic point of view. The BART system, which was supposed to be
finished in 1971 for one billion
dollars and be self-supporting, is
still not completed, will cost in the neighborhood
of two or more
billion dollars, and already has been acknowledged as an economic failure. Recently, a sales tax had to be levied on the
residents served by BART to bail it out of financial difficulty. There is every reason to believe that the tax
will be needed indefinitely in order
to continue its operation. Given the
history of cost overruns with such
systems, Interdepartmental Transportation
Control Commission, Office of the Governor,
State of Misc."The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons." David Butler. Misc."The mono-rail promises to work
wonders in the near future. It is now proposed to adopt it between Misc.P. 82. Caesar attributed one victory to the subterfuges he was able to make his enemy believe because of, "the general tendency of mankind to wishful thinking." Julius Caesar. The Conquest of Misc."A chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage." Herbert Hoover Misc."A fool who persists in his foolishness will become wise." William Blake. Misc."After doing this duty for some days they grew careless, as generally happens when a routine is continued for any length of time." Julius Caesar. The Conquest of Misc."He believed in the primacy of doubt not as a blemish upon our ability to know but as the essence of knowing. The alternative to uncertainty is authority, against which science had fought for centuries." James Gleick. GENIUS - The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. Pantheon Books. 1992. Misc."Most Americans prefer traveling in private vehicles, usually alone, because such travel provides convenience, comfort, privacy, and speed far superior to that of public transit. Anthony Downs. Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion. The Brookings Institution. 1992. Misc."Most Americans prefer traveling in private vehicles, usually alone, because such travel provides convenience, comfort, privacy, and speed far superior to that of public transit. Downs, Anthony. Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion. The Brookings Institution. 1992. Misc."Passengers commuting between the suburbs and the downtown area are usually more sensitive to service quality than to fares because their trips are long and because they generally have high incomes." John R. Meyer and Jose Gomez-Ibanez. Autos, Transit and
Cities. Misc."Policies that target transit subsidies more effectively may prove politically unattractive, however, partly because they conflict with the motivation to spread benefits widely among constituents." John R. Meyer and Jose Gomez-Ibanez. Autos, Transit and
Cities. Misc."Political skill...the ability of foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen." Sir Winston Churchill. Quoted in The Cynic's Lexicon. 1965. Misc."The man who's packed into a subway, jostled in the street, crowded into an elevator, and forced to work all day in a bull pen or in a small office without auditory or visual privacy is going to be very stressed at the end of his day. He needs places that provide relief from constant over stimulation of his nervous system. Stress from overcrowding is cumulative and people can tolerate more crowding early in the day than later; note the increased bad temper during the evening rush hour as compared with the morning melee. Certainly one factor in people's desire to commute by car is the need for privacy and relief from crowding (except, often, from other cars); it may be the only time of the day when nobody can intrude. Misc."The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway, which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applause not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But execute a great number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance,or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paultry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate. Under such an administration, therefore, such works are almost always entirely neglected." Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Liberty Fund 1981 (originally published in 1776). P. 729. Misc."To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most." A. Bloch. Murphy's Law Book Two ( Misc."What foolery lurks latent in the breasts of very sensible people." Nathaniel Hawthorne. Misc.”...these Gauls, whom any trifling success made so vainglorious, were just as easily frightened by the slightest reverse." Julius Caesar. The Conquest of Misc."They were men who had no wish to combine with a Benjamin Franklin. Misc.Taken by surprise, Caesar's forces rallied and won which he attributed to, "two things - first, the knowledge and experience of the soldiers, whose training in earlier battles enabled them to decide for themselves what needed doing without waiting to be told; secondly, the order which Caesar had issued to all his generals, not to leave the work, but to stay each with his own legion until the camp fortifications were completed. As the enemy was so close and advancing so swiftly, the general did not wait for further orders but on their own responsibility took the measures they thought proper." Julius Caesar. The Conquest of Miscellaneous"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." Voltaire. quoted in The Cynic's Lexicon. 1925.??? Paratransit"...about one-fifth of workers take carpools or vanpools to work, making this form of shared transport the preferred national alternative to the drive-alone commute." New Directions for the Nation's Public Works. Congressional Budget Office. September 1988. Paratransit"...paratransit services such as subscription buses (public and private) and other forms of ridesharing will help to reduce peak-hour demands for road space." The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. September 1984. Paratransit"...whatever the number of car-commuters that a rail system will attract, two to four times that number could be expected to use paratransit serving the same areas." Kevin J. Flannelly, Malcolm S. McLeod, Jr., Laura Flannelly, & Robert W. Behnke. A Comparison of Commuters' Interest in Using Different Modes of Transportation. Transportation Research Record (in press). Paper given at Transportation Research Board in January 1991. Paratransit"Designated recipients of federal transit block grants at the local level should be non-operating agencies, in order to separate transit policy making from transit operations and ensure objective decisions about who should be the service providers." Fragile Foundations: A Report
on Paratransit"Experience has shown that the success of vanpooling is clearly related to the extent and nature of support given by leaders of the community in the public and private sectors." Van-Go Paratransit"For central city riders in small cities and for residents of suburban areas where increases in both work and non-work travel is likely, the trip densities are such that the cost per ride for conventional transit is substantially larger than the fare which can reasonably be charged. New approaches to providing for these markets--probably with a greater reliance on ridesharing and other paratransit modes--may be appropriate." The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. September 1984. Paratransit"In some cities, paratransit services such as subscription buses (public and private) and other forms of ridesharing will help to reduce peak-hour demands for road space--especially for suburb to (downtown) work travel--and permit continued expansion of the central business district. Using such services to accommodate longer work trips would allow the public transit agency to use its limited resources to better service the demand generated by central city residents." The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. September 1984. Paratransit"Paratransit alternatives can be implemented much more quickly than construction of roads or other systems, are much less expensive and have the potential for a great or greater effect." Promoting and Implementing Paratransit on Paratransit"Private vanpools and carpools carry about four times the traffic of public transit." New Directions for the Nation's Public Works. Congressional Budget Office. September 1988. Paratransit"The convenience, flexibility and affordability of private automobiles, van and trucks have fostered richly diverse suburban transportation destinations -- so dispersed that they cannot be served economically by conventional mass transit except under special circumstances." Paratransit"The cost data...suggests that any opportunity to privatize segments of peak period conventional transit service... would produce significant cost and subsidy savings." The Status of the Nation's Local Public Transportation: Conditions and Performance. Report of the Secretary of Transportation to Congress. September 1984. Paratransit"The nearly 500 vanpools on the I-395 [Shirley Highway]
HOV lanes -- about 10% of the commuters in the corridor -- represents the best market penetration of
vanpools in the nation. In addition,
approximately 18% of all central business district (CBD) bound work trips from Lew W. Pratsch, President, Virginia Vanpool Association. 4th National HOV Facilities Conference. TRB Transportation Research Circular #366. December 1990. Paratransit"Vanpools are the cheapest form of public transportation. They are also the most fuel-efficient, and hence less polluting than buses." New Directions for the Nation's Public Works. Congressional Budget Office. September 1988. Parking"...eliminating free parking is the single most important variable in getting people to switch to ridesharing or transit." Richard W. Willson & Donald C. Dr. Shoup, Graduate Parking"...over two and a half times as many commuters ride transit to work if their employers do not subsidize parking." Richard W. Willson & Donald C. Dr. Shoup, Graduate Parking"...the availability of inexpensive parking is the most important inducement to commuting by singly occupied automobiles. Conversely, higher priced parking encourages the use of high-occupancy vehicles. This is especially true in downtown areas where parking costs tend to be highest, and where public transit and ridesharing programs are most likely to be available. Subsidizing employee parking lowers vehicle occupancies, reduces the use of transit, carpools and vanpools, and thus increases congestion and delay in the journey to work. In many cases, companies spend a great deal of money promoting ridesharing among their workers, at the same time discouraging ridesharing by offering them free or reduced rate parking." Maria Mehranian, Martin Wachs, Donald Dr. Shoup, and Richard Platkin. Parking Cost and Mode Choices Among Downtown Workers - A Case Study. Parking"...the offer of employer-paid parking in downtown Richard W. Willson & Donald C. Dr. Shoup, Graduate Parking"...when commuters pay for their own parking, 24 percent fewer of them drive to work alone." Richard W. Willson & Donald C. Dr. Shoup, Graduate Parking"Of the [ Parking Subsidies and Commuter Mode Choice: Assessing the
Evidence. Prepared for Parking"Our research has clearly demonstrated that the cost of parking, previously hidden from many commuters by parking subsidies, profoundly influences commuters' mode choices. The available option of cash in lieu of a parking subsidy would be a strong incentive to rideshare, ride transit, bicycle,or walk to work." Richard W. Willson & Donald C. Dr. Shoup, Graduate Parking"Supershuttle considers the parking rate the primary price determinant in its business, where it is the price leader." Ferguson, Tim. The Way to the Airport Might Be a Shortcut to Work. Wall St. Journal. February 27, 1990. p. A25. Parking"When parking becomes fully valued, and not highly
subsidized, when all this comes together in some future year, I think you'll start to see, as you see in Rouse, Mitchell, President, Supershuttle, Inc. quoted in The Way to the Airport Might Be a Shortcut to Work. Wall St. Journal. February 27, 1990. p. A25. ParkingStudies have shown that eliminating free parking is the
single most important variable in
getting people to switch to ridesharing or
transit. For
example, a study by the Southern California
Rapid Transit District in 1987 entitled "Parking Subsidization and Travel
Mode Choice" found that charging for
parking that was previously free decreased by 44 per cent the percentage of
commuters who drove alone in Public Transportation
in the Parking."...local government policies often indirectly lead to subsidized employee parking. Local zoning codes almost always require the provision of ample parking...However, once the parking is in place, sometimes at a cost of $10,000 a space in structured parking, it will be priced to ensure its use...This means that...the parking will be priced...at a level below the full cost of providing the parking...Developers pass the cost of constructing parking on to tenants who see it as increased rent. However, employees provided with free parking make their decision to drive or ride transit not on the basis of the true economic cost of each, but rather on the price paid by the employee...it is not surprising that most commuter choose to drive alone to work..." Public Transportation
in the Parking."...subsidization of public transportation by itself is relatively ineffective in improving vehicle occupancy rates -- largely because of the perceived inconvenience of public transit and carpools, low occupancy auto travel subsidized by fee or low-cost parking, and the absence of highway pricing that correlates to the cost of highway use." Public Transportation
in the Parking."Free Parking as a Transportation Problem (Shoup and Pickrell - US DOT 1980) [predicted] that 20 percent fewer employees would drive alone to work when they pay to park than when the employer provides free parking." Parking Subsidies and Commuter Mode Choice: Assessing the
Evidence. Prepared for Poor, Elderly& Handicapped
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