The Urbanist

Looking for a proper study...

I find articles like this are too obviously pushing a specific viewpoint [1].

They use hard data to come up with 900 passenger vehicles per hour on a single lane at 25mph times an average of 1.6 passengers per vehicle = 1,440 people per hour.

Then they use hard data to come up with 50 buses / lane / hour. But then for the final calculation;

“A 60-foot articulated low-floor bus typically has 65 seats and can carry 55 standees (per manufacturer specification) meaning that we get a throughput of 6,000 people per hour.”

So they do the comparison based on every bus filled to absolute maximum capacity? But their own linked source claims average bus occupancy is 43 making the passenger volume 2,150.

The DOT has a great passage on their site worth quoting in its entirety;

The Bus Lane Paradox

“Bus lanes can provide a strong identity for public transit. They can reduce travel time, but only if they are designed to work properly. A single curbside lane is rarely effective. Designs which are self-enforcing, which accommodate commercial deliveries, and which permit stopped buses to be passed by other buses can be most useful. However, such designs may occupy a significant amount of street space. Where traffic is severely congested, bus lanes can provide the biggest benefit to bus passengers, but it is precisely in these places where it may be difficult to reduce the amount of space available for general traffic— and thereby seem to worsen…

The Chronicle article is worth reading but you can trust me that it points to capital markets and labor shortages as holding back approved projects.

Here is a deeper analysis of the Seattle market with specific housing construction figures.[1] It argues "there is no general housing shortage, that the catastrophic figures above are a product of the Great Recession and the normal lag in construction. Because the market appears to be duly responding to demand, efforts to 'free' the housing market are not as effective as efforts to shape the market toward more just ends."

This is consistent with the causes cited in the SF Chronicle article that hold back approved projects, as well as the SF Business Times(!) article pointing to the 2008 recession as a cause of the labor shortage, cited previously.

[1] https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/11/22/what-housing-shortage/

Thanks for that! The article you link to as "some pretty persuasive criticism of Fischer’s initial model"[1] is also very good.

One highlight:

"These kind of responses miss the simple fact that of the three variables in Fischer’s model, only employment and wages really matter. (The demand-only model achieves an R squared value of .924 and adding the supply variable, housing units, gets us to .940)....Another found that the best model of San Francisco rents needs just one variable: wages (although wages and housing were a close second)."

I think that kind of confirms my gut feeling on first hearing about the problem years ago: the issue is that there is too much money flowing into (a particular sector of) San Francisco.

[1] https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/05/27/rents-in-san-francisco-are-determined-by-demand-new-data-show/

It’s generally unintentional. It’s rarely the case that the collision would have occurred had the driver been in compliance with the law. Road design is often a factor because the biggest thing which makes it a fatality is speed, and we have many roads where the speed limit is supposed to be 20-25mph but the design is like a much faster highway, causing almost everyone to go over the limit and thus have less time to react to anyone unexpected and hit them at higher speeds.

This recent blog post was making the rounds based on Washington state data showing the speeding rate _in school zones_ was over 70%, which I think is what you’d find almost anywhere in the United States:

https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/12/12/drivers-are-speeding-in-wa-school-zones/

According to Seattle.gov, most of the projects are on track with spending and the ones that aren't are the projects that are now uncertain about federal funding to offset costs, higher construction costs, and due to that a few went over budget [1].

You can't blanket apply this to all projects, even the ones in Move Seattle, therefore it's nothing but propaganda from people who don't want to spend anything on public infrastructure or public transit. Jenny Durkan is also quite the liar when it comes to the missing street car link [2].

[1] http://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2018/04/23/the-latest-on-move-seattle/

[2] https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/07/26/mayor-durkan-claims-streetcar-wont-fit-tracks-despite-all-evidence-to-the-contrary/

Neither do I, however WSDOT has not released any details on the project but their renderings indicate they want to widen the freeway to some 10+ lane monstrosity[1]. Meanwhile Cascadia High Speed Rail has ideas about replacing the existing BNSF/Amtrak bridge with a double deck four track + four care lane bridge in addition to the I-5 bridge[2]. This combined makes a ridiculous amount of car lanes and railway tracks, plus a redundant bridge. There must be a better—and cheaper—way to cross this river.

1: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/18/dont-widen-highways-invest-2-billion-in-affordable-housing-instead/#columbia-river-crossing-a-zombie-project-back-from-the-dead

2: https://cascadiahighspeedrail.com/portland-to-seattle/