Put transit where the people are

is an op-ed by Ed Glaeser, the urban economist, in the Boston Globe.

From the article:

MASS TRANSIT needs mass to work: enough people must live and work near train stations and bus stops. Densely populated Eastern Massachusetts should therefore be a prime location for public transportation. Yet the MBTA faces budget woes and has threatened to close train stops. Despite the difficulties trains face in urban Boston, the Obama administration is pushing a new transportation agenda that promises high-speed rail in unlikely spots like Alabama and Oklahoma.

I do think that there is a problem with Prof. Glaeser's piece in that he equates what we might call national and regional (multi-state) transportation planning with metropolitan transportation planning. We need to have plans and transportation networks at each of these levels. Planning planning for both a revived passenger railroad network and local transit needs shouldn't be an either-or. Financial support needs to be provided for an integrated transportation network that is not dependent on either gasoline or automobiles

From "Second iteration, idealized national network for high speed rail passenger service":

... thinking about transportation networks in five overarching dimensions:

1. International -- connections between countries. (The map above shows a couple connections between the U.S. and Canada, and one connection from San Antonio to Monterrey, Mexico through Laredo.)

2. National -- anchors of a national transportation system, current anchors are the Interstate Highway system, the freight railroad system, and airplane travel. We do not have a national passenger railroad network presently.

3. Regional -- multi-state connections -- for the most part these don't exist for transit, but do for freight railroad, airplane travel, and the Interstate highway system. The Northeast Corridor railroad passenger service offered by Amtrak is an example of such a transit network.

4. Metropolitan -- transit systems like the WMATA subway and bus system, the combined railroad, subway, bus, and waterborne transit services in the NYC or Boston regions.

5. Sub-metropolitan transit systems (in the DC region, locally provided services such as RideOn in Montgomery County Maryland or the Downtown Circulator in DC are examples of services within the subnetwork category of the Metropolitan Transit Network).

For a delineation of the metropolitan transit network and the constituent subnetworks, see "Thinking about the transit network."

But I do agree with his criticism that federal transit funding and transportation funding isn't focused where it would have the most impact, in dense places. From the article:

So far the Obama administration’s transportation spending has gone overwhelmingly to highways in states with plenty of roads relative to people. Per capita federal transportation spending in the 10 densest states, which include Massachusetts, is less than half of spending in the 10 least-dense states. This policy follows an established formula, but it makes little sense. Congestion problems are most severe in the dense areas that get less funding.