Comments NBKBoston has made

Observations of a current bike commuter

I commute by bike.  My daily trip is about two miles each way, and it saves time relative to walking, and money relative to bus fare or driving.  And it's good to stretch the legs a bit.  I also feel better getting some use out of a purchase that otherwise would just be a toy taken out a half dozen times per year.

But you have to recognize, and work within, a bicycle's limits.  You can't take small children to school in a bike very easily, or do heavy shopping, or (as I've found out the hard way) take home the dry cleaning without ruining it.  Assuming payload capacity is not the issue for the solo trip to work, below are a few other critical factors in bike commuting.

DISTANCE.  Biking is probably only appealing for rides between one and four miles each way.  While some bike commuters are hard-core, longer distances would easily put off most of us.  

TERRAIN.  While Lance Armstrong can climb the Pyrenees at speed, I can't.  The commute only works because the ground is relatively flat near me.  In places where this ain't so, I think bicycle commuting stands little chance at all.

CLIMATE.  Biking is acceptable when it's not to hot or cold out, and when it isn't raining or snowing.  Showers and changing rooms can help for warmer days, but for most people there is still some upper limit.  Places with more days of acceptable weather are better bicycle commuting towns.

These three factors can partly explain why biking is much more acceptable in Amsterdam than Boston.  Flat, temperate and compact is a much better bet than somewhat hilly, climatically extreme and compact only if you live near the center.  When the misery index climbs to high, my bike is put away and the bus pass or car keys come out.  But when the weather is good I'm frequently on two wheels.

Finally, even if you have the above three factors in abundance, you need one more thing:

ROADSPACE.  Without bike lanes or grade-separate trails, biking would be too hazardous for most.  I have the benefit of them, but many areas don't, and it's a big investment.  There is a chicken-and-egg problem here.  Why would a city council invest in bike lanes if there is no existing community of bike commuters to demand it and use it?  How do you build a community of bike commuters if no one is willing to take to the roads without safe bike lanes?  Lance Armstrong can help, as can the large community of recreational cyclists who can make it known that they'd use their bikes for commuting and errands more often if it were possible.  If they can point to the fact that the first three factors work in the city's favor, their case becomes more convincing.On A breathless appraisal of Lance's new bicycle mecca and mission posted 1 year, 9 months ago 30 Responses

Ah... the model (count parking costs!)

I enjoyed reading the report and playing with the model -- reminded me a little of playing with SimCity when I was younger.

But there is a flaw in the model which I think undermines some of its key conclusions -- especially the conclusion that enough revenue can be raised through its basket of proposals to replace the mass transit fairbox.

The problem stems from the that the cost-per-ride element in the model did not account for the increased parking costs brought on by the parking reform element of the proposal.  While the written report notes that the model indeed ignores this, the results of the omission are hardly insignificant.

There are two ways the parking reform element increases parking costs on drivers.  The first is that increaseing the per-hour rate, and the number of spaces governed by meters, takes money from motorists and gives it to the government.  This is estimated at $700m/year in the budgeting section of the model, which amounts to roughly $3 per trip, on average, for current traffic volumes -- a bit more if volumes fall on the increased cost.  If you counted this extra cost into the total price per trip (which you haven't), the elasticity of demand says that you'd have fewer trips, lower toll revenues, and less money for the subways.  That's problem one, and it is only of moderate size.

The second way in which the parking reform element affects total trip costs is significantly larger.  With the proposed high hourly cost of meters, and the proposed severe reduction in the number of non-metered spaces, motorists planning on spending more than a few hours in the city will no longer hunt for a free space, and will simply park in a private garage at $30/day or more -- still cheaper than the streets.  By being pushed into garages, even more costs will be borne by motorists, on the whole.  This will drive down demand, but those payments will not go to the government for use on mass transit; the money will go to private parking operators instead.

One way to estimate the impact of this second mechanism is to go to the "price to drive" and "future costs" section of the model and specify that the proportion of drivers who pay market rate for parking (either at the newly-expensive meters or in private garages) will go from the current level of 40% to a post-reform level of, say, 80%.  This adds a total of about $9 to the cost of each trip.  Based on my previous points, we can say that $3 goes to public meters, while $6 goes to private operators.  That increase in price will cut traffic significantly already, and most of that money won't even go to the government.  And we cannot go back and say that the government will actually collect much more than $700m/year, because that figure is based on the number of curbside spots that exist, multiplied by the hourly rate and a relatively high occupancy factor (75%).

After seeing a $9 increase in cost per trip (of which only $3 goes to the government), you are only left with $7 more dollars to toll until you reach the $16 level.  And that doesn't provide the revenue one needs to make transit free.

Basically, you really need to model the parking reform proposal with a lot more detail and seriousness before the rest of the model can be seen to really hold up.  One complexity I see with trying to model parking costs per trip is the possibility of "type shifting."  With increased parking costs, fewer people will drive to Manhattan and park for the day.  But more people than at present might drive for a quick visit and leave without paying for too much parking.  So it may be that the parking reform proposal will not push up per-trip parking costs by quite as much as $9, though at $8/hour for virtually all curbside parking, I don't see it being much lower, unless many trips to Manhattan just become through-trips.  But we need a more fine-grained approach to analyzing trip purpose and duration to really find out.

Or you could abandon the parking proposal, but that would have other effects on the assumptions used in the model -- notably on the last $700m in revenue which puts the free transit idea in the black by about $450m, instead of in the hole by $350m.

The model is a fun toy, but I won't be voting for a $16 congestion charge, radical parking reform, and free subways (as a package) when I move to New York just on its say-so.On Spearheading transit for livable cities at 93 posted 1 year, 9 months ago 4 Responses