Hi friends (and everyone else).
Here are the most notable stories that came across my desk in the past seven days…
Fear of cycling: The Trump regime’s latest fear-mongering and opposition suppression tactic is to have the Department of Homeland Security deem cycling and other everyday activities at protests as a precursor for violent tactics. (Wired)
Free transit follies: The debate over free transit raged this week when a progressive transportation journalist and advocate questioned NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s support of the idea. Is free good if it leads to service cuts? (Slate)
Wrong way deaths: What is wrong with some drivers in the state of Nevada? An effort to pass new legislation has picked up steam after a young girl became the latest of a whopping 150 people to die in freeway collisions resulting from someone driving the wrong way. (NBC Nevada)
A-pillars a problem: With the ever-increasing weight and girth of SUVs and other vehicles, automakers have increased the girth of the front “A” pillars. The aim is to protect occupants in rollover crashes, but they inhibit visibility of those outside cars and the industry is not encouraged to make them any smaller. (Bloomberg)
Bike Happy Hour prescription: Smart doctors are prescribing socializing and cycling as a way to treat a host of health issues, which makes me think that cycling to Bike Happy Hour once a week could be considered a miracle cure. (NPR)
It’s the model, stupid: Portland regional planning is based largely on traffic models, so it’s worth making sure those models are modeling the right things. Many of the models used by planners are outdated and exacerbate the problems we’re trying to solve. (Fast Company)
Service for whom: Another article on the idea that using “level of service” for drivers as a metric for planning road infrastructure is a dangerously outdated and inherently flawed way of decision making. Also, this topic is somewhat outdated too, but if you need a refresher on this concept, start here. (Fast Company)
Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week. The Monday Roundup is a community effort, so please feel free to send us any great stories you come across.
Thanks for reading.
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I don’t ever think a transit system should be free. It costs money to run, and those that ride can pay for some of it. I’ve been a rider for close to 40 years, so yes, I’ve paid my way every time.
What should happen, and it may already, but there should be ways to offer free rides via social service agencies for people that can’t afford to ride. Need to go to a job interview, here’s a ticket. Need to see the dentist, here’s a ticket. Etc.
Basically, during COVID, Trimet was free and we saw how that was part of the reason Trimet ridership is so far down.
Yep, totally agree. Transit works on the same principles as anything else, including driving on highways. If it’s free, it usually means the service is going to be poor, and poorly-maintained, and at the same time too many people will use it. When roads are not tolled, they get more congested and get less maintenance and operations money. When transit is free, it usually means more people ride, but service frequency and maintenance gets cut. Making transit free would only work if it came with a massive increase in the public subsidy provided through taxes, but in practice a cut to fares would lead to a cut in service most of the time. A ton of research has shown that cost is not a barrier to riding transit for most people, even low-income people. The barriers are the low frequency of service, long travel times, transfers often in sketchy places, in some cases not having the right routes to get where you need to go, and feeling unsafe at stops/stations and on vehicles. Transit is very cheap, and there’s already low-income and senior/youth discounts, so cost is not really the thing to focus on. We should make transit better quality, more reliable, more frequent, faster, safer…and we should also toll highways (or other pricing strategies for roads) and level the playing field more between transit and driving.
When roads are not tolled, more people use them, as you said.
That is behavior we want for public transit. Why would we want to discourage it’s use by charging to use it?
The gas tax is, in effect, a road toll (which exempts EVs, obviously). The more you drive the more you pay. It’s slightly less explicit than a toll, but not much, and a heck of a lot easier to implement/collect. And it hits the largest and least efficient vehicles the hardest, which makes me happy.
Personally, I would like to see the gas tax raised regularly, by a pre-scheduled amount. The only downside is that that would provide stable funding to ODOT, which could then continue to build the Rose Quarter project.
This is true in some sense, but only strictly true for highways. For surface streets in cities, the funding picture is less strongly related to the gas tax. While a large portion of funding comes from the state and local gas taxex, other fees and permits make up a significant portion of PBOT’s budget (~$110M or about one third of revenues in FY24). Things like SDCs and other permitting fees essentially offload the cost of roadway maintenance and development to developers and property owners, something which isn’t strictly fair or desirable, since roads and other public rights of way are beneficial to everyone – not just “new people” in new developments. “New people” is intentionally in quotations, since that’s the way it tends to be framed politically, but new developments are also needed to replace dilapidated housing stock, and because household preference for larger living spaces continues to rise.
Anyways, I also think we should raise the gas tax, but only if we do away with the constitutional requirement to spend it on highway/roadway projects.
Are SDCs used for road maintenance? And is it so bad that developers help pay to sustain the systems their projects add stress to? Either way, that doesn’t invalidate my point that a gas tax is essentially a toll or road use fee, countering the claim that “roads are not tolled”. They are.
A toll by any other name is still a toll.
More for capital projects, but the line between capital project and maintenance for roads is sort of fuzzy.
Does a large infill apartment in Portland add stress to the transportation system? In some ways, yes, since many or most residents will have cars and will get around by driving. But if said apartment is in a well-located urban neighborhood, it’s possible that building it would reduce stress on the network by having more opportunities for residents to live close to every day things than they otherwise would have. The actual dynamics driving roadway stress are only somewhat related to the number of units a developer builds. And because developers build more than just “units for new people”, I think the justification for SDCs is relatively weak.
I suppose I misread your initial comment, but gas taxes and tolls do differ in significant ways with respect to suppressing use. A toll (or any fee at the point of use) will basically always have a stronger effect than something like a gas tax, which is a sunk cost by the time you decide to drive. Back on the topic of transit, it’s like comparing the usage patterns of someone who buys a monthly pass versus someone who doesn’t. Even if the cost were the same for each option, the monthly pass encourages you to ride more frequently since you already paid for it.
I think the primary reason for TriMets ridership loss since COVID is just office commute patterns. I don’t think there’s a compelling argument that fare enforcement policy played a role, or at least not a substantial one relative to office commute patterns. Most studies I’ve seen show that higher fares reduce ridership and vise versa
I’m generally of the opinion that the best way for Portland to pursue fare-free policy would be to mail a prepaid hop card to every registered voter in the city. When large employers do this kind of thing, the agency generally gives them a good deal (since not everyone uses it), and if the cost was say $500 a year for the 400k odd registered voters that’s just $20M a year. I’m not sure how this would affect TriMets bottom line, but they took in like $58M in revenue from fares last year so it’d probably be roughly equivalent (I’d believe that Portland residents are around half of revenue). And this way, tourists can still generate some amount of revenue too. I’m not 100% convinced this is a great idea, and I think there is some merit in folks paying their way on transit to some extent but this is how we should approach fare free policy – free at the point of use for locals.
The absolute HORROR of free school#, free meals#, free vaccines#, or even free healthcare#…and free public transit.
The irony of this left-bashing propaganda from urbanists* and regurgitated by
bikeurbanist portland is that Mamdani specifically talked about free transit IN THE CONTEXT OF SERVICE EXPANSION. He also proposed a new tax that would specifically fun tariff subsidy so this entire anto-Mamdani narrative is a good example of the “fear-mongering and opposition suppression tactic” that Maus decried above.# some urbanists are opposed to these as well
*always giving me another reason to view them as political enemies
Of course you are totally over-reaching into my entry on this. I’m just introducing the article. I am a big Mamdani fan and agree w the substance of what you are saying here (I like his free transit ideas generally), but you are so blinded by your bias against me that you falsely confirm the bias by your misreading and assumptions.
For someone who’s so eager to critique and blame others, you might want to start looking at yourself in the mirror to find the reason some of the things you care about are not making as much progress as you’d like.
We have to charge for schools, otherwise we might induce demand and get too many people using it. Including the poor people, who we don’t want using it, and if course the freeloading rich would also get in for free! We must means test free public school!
Yeah, pretty ludicrous.
And then there is that “free” word that gets tossed around almost as much as “fascist”.
Bike Happy Hour Prescription: My doctor here in NC regularly asks all her patients how much they socialize with family, friends, churches, community groups, and so on. I know from the groups I work with, church attendance is way down since the pandemic (as is stated religiosity) as well as volunteerism, but I have noted that numbers and ages of people attending community bike rides and events has risen above pre-pandemic rates. About half of our regular volunteers at our community bike shop (open every Sunday afternoon) are over 50, some even in their 70s.
We periodically have to deal with sullen teenagers in their 70s whose every third word is a swear word. We also have a lot of older volunteers who really did not expect to live beyond 64 who are now dealing with health issues related to past drug (ab)use, alcoholism, homelessness, dealing with their troubled kids and grandkids (and sometimes parents), bad diets, balance issues on bicycles, and garages full of expensive used Shimano and Campy parts that are now utterly worthless even to collectors.
I’m generally tepid to fare-free transit, but I don’t think that Slate piece gives Mamdani’s plans a fair shake.
For starters:
The first part will almost certainly be true for New York, as drivers versus bus riders is a heavily class related issue. But fare free bus operation is faster, and combined with other investments in actual BRT style service (at least on busy Manhattan crosstowns – something Mamdani has campaigned on), bus policy can still reduce greenhouse gas pollution in the long run by making transit better to ride.
This is exceedingly unlikely. Even with the best of the best in bus infrastructure, only the most price conscious riders would shift from the subway to a free bus. Riders in that strata probably already qualify for subsidized fares. I think the most likely result of the entirety of Mamdani’s bus policy is increased subway ridership, as faster buses make transit more competitive on time in general, especially for trips requiring a transfer or bus ride. It’s also worth saying that most MTA buses do not generally duplicate subway service. Take a look at the Bronx, where only one of the major subway lines (Concourse line) has a parallel bus service. Would anyone take the hour plus trip on the BxM4 from Fordham Road to Midtown over the 25 minute B/D subway ride to save $2.90? Would the MTA even run the BxM4 anymore? It’s an extra fare express bus that parallels a subway line, which seems like a stupid thing to do in any situation to me. The larger point here is that free bus policy complements rapid transit by providing better local connections for riders.
This is not the way travel works in practice. People don’t value their time based on their wage. And there are a rounding error of bus trips in NYC that are 40 minutes long – most are either much shorter (part of a subway-based trip) or much longer (covering ground in the subway deserts of the outer boroughs). Someone making $20 an hour and living in NYC proper is almost certainly objectively poor, and would not be in the position to pay $10 a trip for a 30 minute faster ride.
This is a comical take based on the linked source, which states: “Over half of bus lines with headways under 10 minutes are delayed due to bunching, cancelling out the reliable service frequent buses should provide riders”. The issue for bus reliability is dedicated infrastructure and priority – not the number of buses or the scheduled frequency. Also in that link: “MTA failed to implement plans for all-door boarding systemwide, citing concerns over fare evasion.” While the comptroller’s report does not prefer fare free buses, all-door boarding is a key part of faster bus service!
This is such a disingenuous comparison. SEPTA does not have a fare free system, and the political struggle for funding transit in Philly is essentially never going to happen to NYC absent seismic political shifts. The MTA is a state agency already, and is very well funded. SEPTA (not unlike the CTA – also facing a dire financial meltdown) was setup as a “pay as you go” publicly owned system, and will suffer immensely in trying to recover ridership as a result.
There are compelling reasons to have fare free bus service in NYC, and even though I typed out an absurdly long comment saying why it’s a good idea, $600M is a lot to spend. I think a better approach would be to aggressively reduce fares on all modes, prioritizing bus -> subway -> commuter rail, but this is mostly on the MTA to decide on how to manage this. Seeking subsidy from the city to cut fares would potentially be a political winner, and one that would still have benefits for everyday riders while making sure the MTA remains solvent.
This is one of my favorite parts of the Seattle bus system.
Same! It’s just so much better. Nothing more annoying than being on a busy bus where people exit out the front and delay boarding for all the new passengers
This. So much this. After the 14th street bus lanes went in, it was night and day (increase in ridership: 30%. Increase in speed: 24%). The reason for the stagnation in increased bus speed is directly related to Adam’s reticence to install legally-mandated bus lanes.
I believe the city implemented all-doors on the SBS.
I’m not sure where I stand on fares, but I do think it would help to reduce fares and expand separated bus lanes on streets like Utica or Flatbush further south where subway service is non-existent and public transit competes with dollar vans.
Zohran Mamdani is a huge proponent of dedicated bus lanes:
https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3ltpi3hkrtc23
I don’t think eawriste is contesting that, and I certainly am not either. The Slate piece totally misses the mark on that and instead raises a bunch of poorly articulated arguments about why fare free buses are a bad idea
Ha! yeah. Having voted a few times in NY, and having regretted it every time, I’ll just be happy if Cuomo doesn’t get in. Mamdani seems pretty dang alright tho.
My reply was intended to be informational, not argumentative.
David Zipper is right: you can’t make transit free b/c people will basically destroy it. Fares at least allow you to get people off buses and trains, eventually. It’s a the tragedy of the commons, writ large.
Surely we can have free at the point of use transit without people destroying it. I use the library all the time and it’s not ruined by the fact that people don’t have to pay to use it.
You obviously haven’t been keeping up on what’s been happening at the main branch.
I guess not specifically, but I was just down there to print something off and it seemed fine to me
Did you see anybody cooking in one of the back rooms, as I did on my first and so far only visit to remodeled central library?
No, I went in and printed my second proof of address for my Real ID without issue. The lady working the front desk was very helpful too. I have had some meh bathroom experiences (not like dangerous, just smelly) in the past, but I think the central library is generally great from my admittedly few experiences there.
After reading the news about it a bit, I suppose I see what you are getting at, but would strongly challenge that that shooting is related to the library being a place where people can go about their business without having to pay for a direct price. Are public parks ruined by people abusing public space? Sometimes, but not universally, and our solution is not and should not be to charge everyone to enter a city park!
The challenges facing downtown Portland are not related to their being too many places where people can congregate and go about their lives without paying money, and I think it’s absurd to think that our society would function better if we only forced people to spend more money to access public services.
Yes, we let motorists onto most roads for free and they have certainly destroyed those. Wait, what if we charged individual motorists a lot of money to drive their private vehicles, and made public transit free? Maybe we would have less traffic, better public health, and safer streets. WHAT A CONCEPT. I cannot imagine why that has never been done here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
“Wait, what if we charged individual motorists a lot of money to drive their private vehicles, and made public transit free?”
We could do this by raising the gas tax. Conceptually simple, politically very difficult. Cali pays 28 cents more per gallon than we do, and it hasn’t much dampened their enthusiasm for driving.
We have free transit in Corvallis and people haven’t destroyed it. I only ride a few times a year because it’s easier to bike, but other than not running as frequently as I like it generally seems fine.
No holes to be poked here. Sound logic.
People sure love throwing that “fascist” term around like a frisbee.
Using state power to inflict unfair punishment and fear and control. Sorry if it fits the bill.
I’m not disagreeing with you on your sentiment, just curious if you have a longer definition of fascism since your description seems to fit any and all municipalities with a police force?
You know, after thinking about this more and considering these comments, I deleted that sentence from the post. You guys are right that that word should not be thrown around lightly and I was being sloppy by using it here. While I’m concerned about a lot of things Trump admin is doing, I don’t think the US is a fascist country. Yet.
I agree. Teetering on the edge though and it’s important to compare notes from our varied experiences as you have been doing and encouraging others to do on how close we are to slipping over that line into fascism.
Is this going to be some sick version of Zeno’s paradox where we’re teetering on the edge the whole way into fascism? It’s not like there is a bright line separating “real” fascism from “teetering” fascism. It’s happening because we’re in denial that it’s happening.
I certainly hope not. When I wrote that I was thinking of the line between the (unfortunately) normal authoritarianism of a state supported by armed police which allows its citizens prescribed freedoms and what that state becomes when the allowed freedoms are blatantly curtailed.
I agree that there isn’t a bright line and often only by looking back can it be accurately seen when and where that line is crossed. I think the lead up to this has been going on for several administrations as the executive hoards more and more power while the people’s representatives cede their power in their quest for continuous re-election.
The CIA black sites that ran during the “war on terror” were horror enough and a stain on America, but at least were kept politely hidden as they at least knew it was wrong.
I never once thought that the president, supported by congress and the courts would send people from America (regardless of their immigrant status and we don’t know what it is because there is apparently no court proceedings) to some nation suffering from horrible conflict (I believe its South Sudan of all places) that none of those people are from.
Utterly shameful! Disgusting! And as you say we are all okay with it because we are in denial of what it means and apparently no one really wants to take that first step to truly resist what is happening.
Thanks for reconsidering Jonathan. It’s a word that gets used pretty frequently in the wrong context. It’s also been drenched in history rendering it often meaningless like “communism”, for example, so when someone uses these words it depends a lot on what they’re referring to and the background knowledge they have.
Authoritarianism is a better word IMO because it’s not so dependent on people’s political identity. It falls on a spectrum, but a lot of the same types of strategies get used regardless of ideology, e.g., Gaddafi (incorporated socialism) or Pinochet (neo-liberal).
Looking at current and past authoritarian regimes we can see the pattern of behavior or playbook, that reflects where we are in the US, compared to other authoritarian states. It’s much more worthwhile IMO to look at specific components of that playbook relative to say, Russia or Venezuela, and fight each one given what has worked in successful pro-democracy movements of the past.
Authoritarian Playbook:
• Politicizing independent institutions
• Aggrandizing the power of the executive
• Spreading disinformation
• Quashing dissent
• Targeting marginalized communities
• Corrupting elections
• Stoking violence.
Recommendations:
1. Create pro-democracy coalitions before the crisis arrives.
2. Take anti-democratic ideas and promises seriously.
3. Keep a broad pro-democracy movement united against the acute, big-picture autocratic danger.
4. Support Republicans that stand firm for democratic institutions.
5. Rally around non-partisan, independent public servants.
6. Uphold the rule of law and democratic institutions, and always repudiate violence.
7. Protect the first targets, and arrange now to advocate for the most vulnerable.
8. Evaluate security at the community, household, and personal level.
9. Work to protect free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.
10. Continue building the democracy of tomorrow.
This roundup highlights some truly concerning trends, especially the “fear of cycling” tactic and the ongoing issue of dangerous vehicle design (A-pillars!). It feels like we’re constantly fighting against systems that prioritize cars over people and safety. Thanks for keeping us informed on these vital issues.
Re traffic modeling. I don’t think the main problem is how cutting edge the model is. Even the best models will output garbage if the inputs are garbage. The problem is how traffic models are used at the beginning of planning with little to no expectation of modal changes, which will inevitably point planners to expanded road networks. Rather, beginning at the development phase, transportation planners should include the *desired* outcomes of modal use, then use the models to back calculate whether the proposed project(s) will achieve that outcome.
I don’t know if this is what made you think of pointing this out, but I was reminded of this recent City Nerd video on this exact point:
https://youtu.be/NgJ998KHBpc?si=UkESOpuf5AhTQlh_