More Hidden Auto Biases: Street Assessment Edition

Last week the Minneapolis StarTribune reported on Edina, Minnesota's new street assessment policy. The assessment: 

"requires property owners to pay the entire cost of road reconstruction.
Starting with projects that got underway this year, homeowners will get 15 years instead of 10 to pay for projects in their property taxes. Interest rates charged by the city will be cut in half, and the payment formula will be standardized so homeowners pay the same principal amount each year.
Together, those changes approved Monday by the City Council would save someone with a $10,000 street assessment about $730. Annual payments would drop from $1,375 over 10 years to $868 over 15 years."

So far, so good. But here is what Edina did to placate homeowners:

"The city also will assume the costs of sidewalks, trails and lighting associated with projects, paying for those improvements with new franchise fees paid by utilities. Depending on the project, that could save residents money."

 The problem here is what value do sidewalks and streets have for homeowners and the city? I think Edina is getting the association wrong, and the homeowners should pay to maintain the sidewalks and the city should have responsibility for the streets. New York requires property owners to maintain sidewalks because of threats of lawsuits. Many cities are being sued under the ADA because sidewalks are impassable. The city has little incentive to maintain sidewalks, and in many cases cities will fail to do so. Here is a paper by Donald Shoup that suggests one way to maintain sidewalks.

Beyond maintenance, requiring homeowners to maintain streets over sidewalks is a bias toward cars over pedestrians (and cyclists and kids and other who might use these suburban sidewalks).

Joe Urban makes related points over at Streets.mn here.

"The Great Parking Spot Switcheroo" Should Be Encouraged

Transportation Alternatives has a brief news item in their new Reclaim magazine highlighting what they call "the great parking spot switcheroo." Here is a link to the latest issue and the news item (scroll down). Here is what they say:

Local business owners, Transportation Alternatives volunteers and the City DOT have been working to convert car parking spots into bike parking spaces at select sites around the city. Thanks to an innovative program called “Street Racks,” motor vehicle parking spaces in front of particularly popular cycling destinations are being transformed into bike parking facilities capable of storing upwards of eight two-wheelers. You can try out these new bike parking places in front of Mud Coffee in the East Village and Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope. More are coming to Kinfolk Studios in Williamsburg, the corner of Court and Pacific in Cobble Hill and, if a group of neighborhood activists and the owners of Queens Kickshaw have their way, the corner of Steinway and Broadway in Astoria too.

Here is a link to the city's webpage that explains the program. The way it works is a partner (usually a business but this is not clear) petitions to convert a car parking space into a bike parking space. This is good! The partner is responsible for clearing snow and trash, and can add planters if they wish. While I think this is progress, I have two points:
1) the city should maintain the bike spaces just as they do all auto spaces. Placing the onus on partners to clean spaces just because they are bike spaces shows clear favor toward autos. Why should bikes be held to a greater standard of private responsibility?
2) New York City is admirably allowing businesses to take over curb parking for non-auto uses. Here is a report from 2011 that explains the effects of restaurant seating in curb spaces. The competition for curb spaces in parts of the city suggests that planners and business need to be thinking more broadly about what curb spaces are worth. Their value as spaces for cars is low, but parking spaces are extremely valuable for goods movement, food trucks, bicycle parking (which is a major headache in many parts of the city), emergency services, restaurant seating, etc. Perhaps one way to manage the conflicts that arise is to let businesses and residents manage all of the parking spaces locally. Even the latest RFQ from the city to enter a contract for management of all of the city's parking meters only considers that one company will run the whole show. Why not let curb parking be a flexible (or "programmable" in planner's lingo) land use that is controlled by the building or block? Dense urban areas need these types of flexible spaces more than they need cheap parking for cars, not to mention dudes like this guy. You can't make the argument that cities have been managing curbs spaces successfully under centralized control. Very local control may prove a better option. It is at least worth considering.

Taxi Links August 14, 2012

What do taxicabs say about a city? Witold Rybczynski suggests that the quality of taxis is indicative of a city's success and proposes a "taxi index" for ranking cities. Robinson Meyer at the Atlantic Cities makes a similar point and argues cities should have distinct taxis. While there are advantages for individual cities to brand themselves with distinct taxis, I think there are also benefits for travelers when they recognize similar services in multiple cities. For instance, yellow is a popular color for taxis in all US cities (though there are other colors) and people recognize yellow cars as taxis. This is an advantage for taxi service even though yellow taxis are just copying New York's color scheme.

The "Data Evangelist" for Uber compares neighborhoods the company serves in this piece.*

This was a couple weeks ago, but Jalopniik had a great Q&A with a New York cabbie.

Marketplace has a story about smart phone apps that help hail taxis. More here and here. ZapKab seems to have a good publicist. These apps mostly focus on the NYC market, but I suspect they will be more useful in other markets and in the boroughs of NYC other than Manhattan.

Samsung has filed a patent on a service that lets passengers put out an SOS call to alert police when their driver in dangerous.** Perhaps Apple already is working on this.


*I hate the title "Data Evangelist." If you are evangelical you do not need data, and you certainly don't conduct robust research because being an evangelist suggests you want to convert other people to your view, nevermind the evidence. Just call yourself the Director of Research or something.

**This is a stupid patent. Good idea, dumb patent.

Protect Florida from Driverless Cars and Toll Roads, Says the Committee to Protect Florida

Jeff Brandes is a Republican running for state senator in Florida. He also wants to use driverless cars to kill old people using walkers and supports road tolls to pay for infrastructure. I learned this from the attack ad below that highlights some of Brandes' work as a state Representative.

Call for Papers: Spatial and Land Use Implications of Taxis, Jitneys, Paratransit and Flexible Transportation

The Journal of Transportation and Land Use (JTLU) has issued a Call for Papers on the Spatial and Land Use Implications of Taxis, Jitneys, Paratransit and Flexible Transportation. I will be serving as volume editor for the issue and encourage those doing research in these areas to submit a paper. JTLU is an open access, peer reviewed journal.
Here is the link, and here is more information:

Call for Papers: Call for Papers: Spatial and Land Use Implications of Taxis, Jitneys, Paratransit and Flexible Transportation

JTLU Call for Papers: Spatial and Land Use Implications of Taxis, Jitneys, Paratransit and Flexible Transportation Volume Editor: David King ( dk2475 AT columbia.edu ; Columbia University) The Journal of Transportation and Land Use seeks original research papers that explore issues associated with taxi service, jitneys and other flexible or informal transit systems in cities throughout the world. Ideal papers for this special issue will explore how these transport services influence existing transport networks and urban form, affect travel behavior or negotiate contested urban spaces. Taxicabs, jitneys, low-cost bus services and other paratransit services represent unique, flexible transit services in cities throughout the world, and recent scholarship has explored regulatory, economic and labor characteristics of these services. Areas that have received less attention include how these services influence travel behavior, complement or compete with conventional transit, and the role of land uses for service provision. GPS and consumer data also provides new opportunities for spatial analysis of driver and passenger trip characteristics at a level of detail previously impossible. Researchers working in any area of taxicabs, jitneys, flexible or informal transit, both intracity and intercity, are encouraged to consider submitting a paper. Specific Areas of Interest Include: • Competition among for-hire vehicles at the curb, including taxis, jitneys, intercity buses and jitneys • The effect for-hire vehicles have on demand for parking • Paratransit operations and opportunities • For-hire vehicles as feeder systems for fixed route transit • Locational issues with taxi garages, dispatch sites and other facilities • Land use considerations with for-hire services (stadia, airports, theater districts, etc.) • Spatial dispersion of taxi, jitney and other services • Models and simulation of taxi, jitney and other services • Case studies of novel policies involving for-hire vehicle services, such as use of taxis as paratransit • Travel behavior and mode choice research • Social equity issues with regard to service areas • Urban design characteristics of for-hire vehicle services • GPS and consumer data used for planning and regulatory purposes • Spatial analysis of taxicab, jitney or flexible transit services

How Many are a Flock? Evidence from Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Daily News reports that San Fernando Valley residents are "flocking" to the new Expo rail line. Here is the story. (LA Observed picked up the story here.) Here is the opening paragraph:

The dozen riders aboard the Expo Line train car early Wednesday morning used the quiet morning commute in different ways: fiddling with phones, playing video games, or reading a book. All were strangers, but a handful on the train were neighbors, of sorts.

Are a dozen riders a "flock"?  The Daily News thinks so. Here is the third paragraph:

Turns out, San Fernando Valley commuters are flocking to the new Expo Line.

Here is a photo of the flock:

 Not to pick on the Daily News, but that is a photo of one dude on an empty train. That's not exactly photographic evidence that the service is popular with anyone, yet alone Valley residents.

Here is the photo from the LA Observed story:

I know that lots of people ride transit in Los Angeles, even if some trains might underperform a bit. I don't think transit in LA is done any favors by featuring pictures of empty stations and trains as part of stories that LA transit is really popular. Where are the people?

Today's Taxi News: July 12, 2012

The New York Daily News picked up on some new research by Matt Daus, Jon Peters and me where we looked at NYC yellow cabs taking fares in New Jersey. Here is the story. From the article:

Yellow cab drivers make hundreds of thousands of pickups and dropoffs in the Garden State each year — even though though their services are needed in the five boroughs — an analysis of GPS data revealed.
The numbers crunching by a team of experts found that yellow cabs annually make more than 360,000 trips that start in New Jersey. And nearly 160,000 trips begin and end in Hudson County alone, the researchers told the Daily News.
“New York City taxis are doing a better job serving the needs of Hudson County than Staten Island, or southeast Brooklyn or eastern Queens,” said Jonathan Peters, a finance professor at the College of Staten Island.
Peters, former city Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairman Matthew Daus and David King, an assistant professor at Columbia University, analyzed GPS data for 3 million randomly selected taxi trips. They used it to figure out how much business hacks were doing on the other side of the Hudson in one’s year time.

James Fallows rounds up the reporting on Uber's successful regulatory challenge in Washington, D.C. at this link.

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission voted to raise taxi fares by 17 percent starting in September. This should be good for drivers. Not only will they get higher wages and tips, but six cents from each taxi ride will go into a healthcare fund for drivers. Hopefully we can estimate the elasticity of demand for certain types of rides from this natural experiment.

In Vancouver, TransLink announced that it will maintain a taxi voucher program for disabled people. From the story:

Admitting that TransLink failed to fully understand how disabled people use its services, the agency’s board chair announced Wednesday it is reversing a decision to eliminate a program that provided taxi discount coupons for them.
“I regret any angst we have caused for people. That was never the intent,” said Nancy Olewiler. The board chair formally announced the TaxiSaver program would continue for people who can’t use the region’s regular transit system or its specialized HandyDart buses for all rides.
“But even some of the folks employed in the program didn’t understand all the ways it was used.”

I will add that we know very little about how users use taxis and other for-hire services. Taxis are a great opportunity to improve access and mobility for many who now rely on paratransit services, many of which are poor quality (due to scheduling problems) and most of which are unnecessarily expensive.

CNN reports on the Parisian taxi market and the potential to expand the fleet to create jobs:

Back in 1937, Paris capped the number of taxi permits at 14,000. Now, 75 years later, a bigger and vastly richer Paris receives some 27 million tourist visits per year -- and the number of cabs has edged up less than 14%, to 15,900. Result: In wind and rain and baking sun, Parisians must stand in long lines at taxi stands for cabs that never come.

In 2007, the new government of Nicolas Sarkozy proposed to supplement the existing fleet. It would license 6,500 new cars in Paris, 23,500 in the rest of France. The proposal triggered a strike that shut down the city for a day -- and frightened Sarkozy into surrender.
Five years later, it's as difficult to find a cab in Paris as ever. (Paris has about 2,000 more cab licenses than New York, which has a much bigger population, but New York has a vast fleet of cars for hire to supplement medallion cabs -- and except for the luxury market, car services are illegal in Paris.)

On the list of world problems, the difficulties of Paris taxi riders may seem to rank low.
Think again.
Almost 3 million French people are now out of work, the severest unemployment in 12 years. Millions more have quit the workforce altogether, subsisting on disability pensions or other social benefits.
Prolonged mass unemployment in Europe has triggered a global debate about the euro currency, and rightly so. Yet it's also true that every day, people in Europe are denied work by dumb laws that prevent willing customers from hiring them.
Adding 30,000 new taxi licenses in France would mean more than 90,000 daily taxi shifts: In other words, upwards of 90,000 new jobs.