Who Deserves A Bailout? The MTA.

Especially with the gains in ridership they've been having in the last several years...

NYTimes - New York City Grew, but Traffic Didn’t


(c) NY Times

Apparently, in the last "boom" period that NYC's had, transit actually increased its ridership at greater rates than vehicle traffic. Which is pretty awesome; in Lower Manhattan, vehicle traffic actually decreased, as people abandoned taxis and cars for buses and the subway.

Of course, now that it's showing such rapid growth, now is when the MTA's under threat of having to reduce service drastically, if not given new life by the folks up in Albany (which they probably will be).

Who needs a better example of the communalistic relationship between quality of life and transit service than New York? Especially Manhattan; it's the place that everyone wants to live (making generalizations of course)! As crime went down, many more people wanted to ride the subway, as well as the implementation of the MetroCard, allowing for smoother transfers.

At the same time, it might be hard to find direct lessons to learn from NYC, as the average density is much higher than anywhere in the rest of the nation, and many people might not want their city to become the same. But this density and level of transit service will definitely give New York an edge in the looming world of Peak Oil.

No Driving!

I had a thought today after going on an "instructed" drive today (I finally got my learner's permit). Being new at this and all, I was rightfully slightly stressed out...

If one had access to a nice light rail/urban rail transit system, especially one that meshed with a good inter-city rail system, you wouldn't have to undergo the daily stress that is driving a car, especially in cities.

Wouldn't relieving that stress increase your quality of life? Especially if you still had the option to drive?

And with the expensive gas prices nowadays, wouldn't it be better if we drove less (guaranteed to quickly decrease demand) instead of drilling more (who knows if this will really affect global prices at all, ever?), but then again, here we're going into serious matters of human psychology; it's always easier to demand that someone else change something far away than change something that would usually just inconvenience you.

In My Schedule

Hope to talk to Jeff Arndt, a researcher at the Texas Transportation Institute, on Monday, and seek his input into light rail and quality of life effects.

Also, I'll see if he knows of any updated info from DART...

Economic Impact of Light Rail - Dallas, Texas

Light rail, whenever mentioned as a potential transit scheme, is usually mentioned as a tool of economic revitalization and/or development; densification as well. Held up as one of the prime examples is Dallas' DART system, which has seen several Transit-oriented Development districts. The largest and most widely known of these is Mockingbird Station.

After contacting the American Public Transit Authority, I obtained several copies of various light rail studies, including one, The Initial Economic Impacts of the DART LRT System, which analyzes the economic impact of LRT, and is very helpful in identifying confounding factors in analysis of LRT system effects, including highways, decentralization, relocation costs, changing economic structure, and local public policies.

The study found, using property values data, that in 11 of the 15 areas surrounding DART LRT stations, property values increased between 1994 and 1998, and that the jump in total valuations around DART stations was 25% higher than in control neighborhoods in other parts of the DFW metroplex. Along with this, when looking at land values, average appreciation around DART station was twice non-DART neighborhoods.

Therefore, one can see, at least in one aspect of "quality of life", LRT has a quantitative positive impact on its surroundings.

Quality of Life and Light Rail

Trying to find a relationship between "quality of life" and light rail transit development, one must first define the term "quality of life" in respect to transit. The Economist's Quality-of-life Index measures Health, Family Life, Community Life, Material Well-being, Political Stability, Climate, Job Security, Political Freedom, and Gender Equality, most of which are not aspects that one would expect to be affected by the advent of a light rail transit system.

Instead, for my uses, "quality of life" is more importantly determined by more definitively "transit-oriented" factors. Factors such as affected mobility, real estate values, change in transit times, and attracting development. These factors, given quantitative value, can be entered into a "quality of life" matrix, which, factoring in the relative values of each, could give one a "quality of life" score for several different light rail systems, along with comparative bus transit systems, and freeway-only systems.