March 2011 Archives

Recently published:

Huang, Arthur and David Levinson (2011) Why retailers cluster: an agent model of location choice on supply chains volume 38(1) pages 82 - 94. [download from Environment and Planning b website]

Abstract. This paper investigates the emergence of retail clusters on supply chains comprised of suppliers, retailers, and consumers. An agent-based model is employed to study retail location choice in a market of homogeneous goods and a market of complementary goods. On a circle comprised of discrete locales, retailers play a noncooperative game by choosing locales to maximize profits which are impacted by their distance to consumers and to suppliers. Our findings disclose that in a market of homogeneous products symmetric distributions of retail clusters arise out of competition between individual retailers; average cluster density and cluster size change dynamically as retailers enter the market. In a market of two complementary goods, multiple equilibria of retail distributions are found to be common; a single cluster of retailers has the highest probability to emerge. Overall, our results show that retail clusters emerge from the balance between retailers' proximity to their customers, their competitors, their complements, and their suppliers.

The software underlying this paper, CLUSTER, has just been made available on the STREET website, so you are free to test and reproduce the results yourself. The software is free and open source, so feel free to modify, please let us know if you do anything.

An illustration of the clustering of similar retail activities:

Hank Scorpio: Uh, hi, Homer. What can I do for you?
Homer: Sir, I need to know where I can get some business hammocks.
Hank Scorpio: Hammocks? My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that? Hammocks! Homer, there's four places. There's the Hammock Hut, that's on third.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Hank Scorpio: There's Hammocks-R-Us, that's on third too. You got Put-Your-Butt-There.
Homer: Mm-Hmm.
Hank Scorpio: That's on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot... Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the hammock complex on third.
Homer: Oh, the hammock district!
Hank Scorpio: That's right.

"The Simpsons" You Only Move Twice (1996) - Memorable quotes (speaking of James Bond films, Hank Scorpio looks a lot like Jimbo Wales)

I was curious how Hybrid Electric Vehicles were doing, I had seen some data a few years ago showing the share of HEVs rocketing upward, to the point we could expect a large share of HEVs (or EVs) in the US fleet in a few years (perhaps a majority of new vehicles). However 2010 was a down year not only for sales (which given the overall economy is not surprising), but also share of sales (which given the drop in fuel prices from 2008, and perhaps the state of the economy, is not surprising, but perhaps troublesome). Sales are still dominated by the Toyota Prius.

All technologies have their ups and downs, deployment is seldom perfectly smooth (though it looks quite smooth in retrospect).

Data are from US EIA and EPA
Worksheets available at www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/data/
And
Heavenrich (2010). Light-Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 through 2010. Appendix D. U.S. EPA: Washington DC. www.epa.gov/otaq/fetrends.htm

Center for Transit Oriented Development released a study for FTA this month Rails to Real Estate which identifies development that is near new transit lines including Hiawatha in Minneapolis, Southeast Corridor in Denver and Blue Line in Charlotte.

My sense is they are attributing a lot of development to Hiawatha that occurred in downtown Minneapolis more or less independent of Hiawatha. While we cannot strictly speaking run two worlds, one with and one without Hiawatha, the development of real estate in the Mill District or the North Loop e.g. is not really attributable to the LRT. To say the line experienced a "tremendous amount of growth" is really quite misleading. The area experienced some growth, and a line happened to be built during that time.

The authors later admit "While the light rail was not a major factor stimulating development in these two downtowns, improved access to downtown entertainment and cultural amenities were an important factor making nearby station areas newly connected to the downtown attractive places for development."

If there were depopulation along the line or a loss of jobs in Minneapolis, the authors would not have said "the line" lost population or employment. Correlation is not causation.

The projects along Hiawatha Avenue are more convincing cases, though there are many fewer of them, and some of them involved public subsidy.

Over spring break, I started watching the James Bond films in chronological order, from the excellent early Connery films, including in my opinion the best of the early films From Russia with Love, through the series nadir with George Lazenby (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and the god-awful Diamonds are Forever with Sean Connery just phoning it in. (This was prompted by listening to The Talk Show podcast, which made me feel pop-culturally inadequate for not having seen the oeuvre.)

I have just finished watching Moonraker, putting me half-way through the series. Moonraker was actually the first Bond film I saw in the theater when I was 12 or 13, and I think the first film I went to with friends and without adult supervision.

Though we saw the new Casino Royale a few years ago in London, I had not seen the old Bond films in many years, the last time was at Ken Jennings (gratuitous namedrop) apartment in Utah in the late 1990s, when I am pretty sure we watched Goldfinger and maybe the The Spy Who Loved Me (though I think I fell asleep during that).

From Russia With Love is so far the best because for a variety of reasons. Foremost, it is the most realistic, it requires the least suspension of disbelief. There are no giant spacecraft eating smaller spacecraft. There are no giant ships eating smaller submarines. There are no monorails. The world is not going to get thrust into a global thermo-nuclear war. No one is trying to blackmail the United Nations for One Meelllion Dollars.

What is interesting about the films though in general, if you overcome the silliness in many of the films is the fantastic cinematography, and the focus on the various places 007 travels. Istanbul is beautiful in the movie, and having seen it 32 years afterwards myself, is clearly recognizable as that place. Similarly Dr. No in Kingston, You Only Live Twice in Hong Kong, or even Diamonds are Forever in a relatively young, but already quite formed in its gaudiness Las Vegas.

Goldfinger features, like so many Bond films, female pilots. (The ratio of female pilots in Bond films outweighs their share in the general pilot population). These pilots show up at "Baltimore", which is filmed on location at Friendship Airport (later BWI). Like the many airport through the series, it is much smaller, and somehow more glamorous, than airports today. We can see the change in aviation by viewing the airport scenes in the early years. Air travel was relatively rare, certainly expensive, and in the end an elite activity.

Goldfinger also features Bond and his sidekick Felix Leiter outside Col. Sanders restaurant somewhere outside Fort Knox. This is well before Kentucky Fried Chicken reached its ubiquity (or even before it was sold at Gino's in Baltimore). You can see the sprawling highway landscape, some 40 years into the automobile era, but before its ultimate dominance.

The vehicles used in the Bond films tell many stories of transportation. While mostly driving cool vehicles, in Diamonds are Forever Bond uses some sort of All Terrain Vehicle, in The Man with the Golden Gun, he is driving an AMC Hornet stolen from an AMC dealership in Bangkok. (come on, was there really an AMC dealership in Bangkok?), both not cool.

In The Spy Who Loved Me, he rides an early Skidoo, made in Minnesota by Arctic Enterprises, about which the coolness factor perhaps is still in doubt.

Other vehicles, ranging from spacecraft to Triumph's do better on the coolness scale.

The supervillains always have lairs. Within their enormous lairs (apparently undetected by authorities) there are hundreds or thousands of jump-suited workers (Recruited how? Are they graduates of Supervillain Community College with an Associate's Degree in Henchmenry? Did Yaphet Kotto give the commencement address?) who transport themselves about on a monorail. And it is always a monorail: You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, Live and Let Die ()

Video from SBS on China's Ghost Cities

The interesting thing is that even in "communist" China, urban population growth is a self-reinforcing belief system system. If people believe that other people/firms will move there, they too will move there. If they believe it will fail, they won't and it fails. Changing expectations is critical for success. The commitment game is crucial here, and hence there is an important role for urban entrepreneurs or prophets or boosters who sell cities.

Urban construction in China however is lacking a price feedback signal, since it is being funded by the communist government. "It is said there are around 64 million empty apartment in China" clearly these are mislocated with respect to demand.

See also about Ordos

This is news, the state of North Carolina says it is now using benefits and costs to determine what projects should get built. It seems more of a cost-effectiveness ranking system rather than pure monetization, but it has the merits of being transparent in principle.

The Asheville Citizen-Times writes: Asheville's I-26 Connector project deemed high-cost, low benefit

But, state Board of Transportation member Wanda Proffitt said at a meeting to hear comments on the state's long-range transportation plan, at least those projects that do get built will be at the top of the list because objective criteria indicate they should be.

The Department of Transportation is now ranking proposed projects according to numerical factors like expected travel time saved, measures of congestion and accident rates.

"What we have done is take the old-time politics out of how we spend transportation dollars. Now we're doing it based on data and the priorities" of local transportation planning organizations, she said.

Only about 20 people attended the meeting, held to hear comments on DOT's proposed 2011-20 Transportation Improvement Program.

Half or more of that number were either DOT or local government officials who came to hear what other people had to say at the meeting for people in a seven-county area that includes Buncombe County.

The comments on the article were skeptical.

T4America, a pro-transportation advocacy group, is releasing a new report today on the sorry state of US bridges.
The Fix We're In For: The State of Our Nation's Bridges

The Minnesota report is available for download

The results are well known, and worth repeating, many bridges are structurally deficient. The average bridge is over 42 years old. There are insufficient funds being spent on repair/replacement/rehabilitation. Unless something is done, this will only get worse (entropy and all), bridges do not repair themselves.

Fix It First remains the battle cry.

The Star Tribune writes about: Making a rural comeback: The old gravel road

Finally some realism and responsibility about resurfacing rural roads:

With maintenance costs included, engineers have often used a rule of thumb that a road needs 150 to 200 cars a day, or the equivalent in heavy-weight traffic, to be worth paving.

...

To tear up a thinly paved road and add some new gravel, Ridenour said, costs his county about $5,000 a mile. Resurfacing can run about $100,000.
...

"I'd rather have concrete, but it's just so expensive," [Tony Monat] said. "And really, why should everybody in the rest of the county help pay for my hard surface road?"  

From The Pioneer Press: Maplewood to study organized trash collection plan

"This takes away my right to hire or fire whatever company I choose to do business with," Chris Green, a Maplewood resident, told council members.

"This is being run as if Hitler was running (it)," said Fran Grant, another resident. "I think as taxpayers we should have a right to ... spend our money the way we want to."

Several other speakers said an organized trash collection system would strip them of their personal freedom, limit free enterprise, affect small businesses and affect the quality of their trash service. A handful also spoke in favor of an organized trash collection system.

The city began looking into the issue most recently about a year ago after Maplewood's Environmental and Natural Resource Commission identified it as a top priority in 2009, according to Shann Finwall, environmental planner for Maplewood. Through its initial study, Finwall said, Maplewood learned an organized trash system could end up saving money for residents because of the city's ability to buy the services of private trash haulers in bulk.

In addition, Finwall said organized hauling would mean fewer garbage trucks on city streets, which could be better for road maintenance and reduce pollution. She added that a state statute required the city to pass Monday's resolution before it could further study the reach of those potential benefits or learn more about any possible downsides.

There is always a trade-off between centralization and decentralization. That some people make it a religious argument always puzzles me. If it is more efficient to have one large trash can in the kitchen than 20 small ones, then I will have one large one. If it is more efficient to have one can in the kitchen than to keep it outside with the final trash, that too is a savings, where I can combine (and thus reduce) my trips to the dumpster. That is an economy of scale (the increased distance in my within-kitchen travel is outweighed (or not) by my lowered collection costs when the trash is finally taken outside). In that case, I receive the benefits and costs of either alternative, so I internalize any potential externalities. The answer is empirical, not religious, not improved by proving Godwin's Law.

Perhaps the residents do not trust their community to do the analysis, but that is a different problem.

I believe however, as I said in my recent post on recycling You have to keep them separated
that the balance needs to include both individual and public costs, and including one to the exclusion of the other is likely to be inefficient overall.

Via DK: The Globe and Mail asks:
How do the transit systems of the world really compare?

Transportation for America has published a table: Dangerous By Design: Most Dangerous Large Metro Areas for Pedestrians

Interestingly of the 52 largest US metros, the Twin Cities was the safest for Pedestrians, with only 0.54 Deaths per 100,000 residents, despite 2.4% walking to work. Orlando, Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville topped the list as most dangerous.

Probably not coincidentally, Minneapolis-St.Paul-Bloomington ranks 6th in the US on funds spent on federal bike/ped $ per person (though I suspect it is skewed toward bikes compared to their number), at $2.61.

A History of the World in 100 Seconds from Gareth Lloyd on Vimeo.

Many wikipedia articles have coordinates. Many have references to historic events. Me (@godawful) and Tom Martin (@heychinaski) cross referenced the two to create a dynamic visualization of Wikipedia's view of world history. Watch as empires fall, wars break out and continents are discovered.

This won "Best Visualization" at Matt Patterson's History Hackday in January, 2011. To make it, we parsed an xml dump of all wikipedia articles (30Gb) and pulled out 424,000 articles with coordinates and 35,000 references to events. Cross referencing these produced 15,500 events with locations. Then we mapped them over time.

More information and datasets: ragtag.info/​2011/​feb/​2/​history-world-100-seconds/​

From NPR Blackouts That Could Continue For Years

... The problem is these rolling blackouts could continue for many months -- even years.

"This is a real problem for those factories which need uninterrupted supplies," says professor Tatsuo Hatta, president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. He says the situation might cause some companies to move.

"It's clear that from their viewpoint they'd better move their plant to the western part of Japan where electricity is plenty."

It might seem much easier to send the surplus power from one side of Japan to the other to ease the blackouts. But that's harder than you might think, Hatta says.

"One major problem is that the east and west of Japan have different electric cycles and the capacity of the connectors are very much limited," he says.

That's partly an accident of history. Eastern Japan followed the German model and has a 50-cycle electrical power grid. The western part of Japan used the American model and has a 60-cycle grid. Transferring power from one grid to another requires a very expensive facility. And there are only three connections between eastern and western Japan. [ed. note wikipedia says 4] That bottleneck means the power transfer is just a trickle, even during this national emergency. Creating more capacity would take years. ...

Somewhere along the way, you would have thought, they would have standardized on one frequency or another (e.g. after World War II), but standards have strong lock-in, even in a defeated country. Apparently in the US, Southern California Edison did not convert to 60 Hz (from 50 Hz) until 1948.

Choosing a single standard increases economies of scale, has network effects, and improves redundancy (unless the standard itself fails for some reason).

From the Economist Battery technology: Highly charged

Promising technology for fast-charging batteries, one of the barriers that must be overcome for fleet electrification.

... "The battery-maker's dilemma is that the recharging rate depends on the area of contact between electrolyte and electrode. A thin, sandwich-like arrangement, in which cathode, electrolyte and anode are close together, can thus be discharged and recharged rapidly. However, this speed comes at a price. The amount of energy a battery can store depends on the volume of its electrodes, so a thin battery does not last long. What is needed is a way to increase contact area without sacrificing volume. And that is what Dr Braun has found. Moreover, his solution looks suitable for mass production.

His starting material, as he describes in a paper in Nature Nanotechnology, is made of closely packed polystyrene spheres about a millionth of a metre in diameter. This is an arrangement similar to that found in opal (except that in opal the spheres are made of silica) and the result is, indeed, opalescent.

The next stage is to fill the gaps between the spheres with nickel. This is done by electrodeposition--like nickel-plating a piece of steel. After that, the material is heated, to melt the polystyrene. This leaves a sponge made of metallic nickel. The connections between the spherical gaps in the sponge are then enlarged, using a technique called electropolishing to dissolve the surface layer of the metal. This creates an electrically conductive framework suitable for smothering with materials normally used to make cathodes.
...
The result is a huge area of contact between the nickel (which conducts electrons to and from the battery), the cathode (which conducts ions to and from the electrolyte to compensate for the movement of those electrons), and the electrolyte (through which the ions are moving between cathode and anode)--but without a significant loss of cathode volume. Just, in other words, what the doctor ordered.

The consequence, according to Dr Braun, is a charging rate ten to 100 times higher than that of a normal, commercial battery (in one instance, the researchers created a lithium-ion battery that could be 90% recharged in two minutes), at a probable increase in production cost, once the process is properly industrialised, of 20-30%. And that rate might be improved still further if similar techniques were applied to the anode--a task that Dr Braun is now working on."
...

From Ramez Naam writing in SciAm Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore's law apply to solar cells?

Solar may be cheaper than conventional electricity by 2018. This will do many things, (de-carbonization of electricity, etc.), but it will also help electrification of the fleet.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy has watched solar photovoltaic price trends since 1980. They've seen the price per Watt of solar modules (not counting installation) drop from $22 dollars in 1980 down to under $3 today.

Is this really an exponential curve? And is it continuing to drop at the same rate, or is it leveling off in recent years? To know if a process is exponential, we plot it on a log scale.

And indeed, it follows a nearly straight line on a log scale. Some years the price changes more than others. Averaged over 30 years, the trend is for an annual 7 percent reduction in the dollars per watt of solar photovoltaic cells. While in the earlier part of this decade prices flattened for a few years, the sharp decline in 2009 made up for that and put the price reduction back on track. Data from 2010 (not included above) shows at least a 30 percent further price reduction, putting solar prices ahead of this trend.

What's driving these changes? There are two factors. First, solar cell manufacturers are learning - much as computer chip manufacturers keep learning - how to reduce the cost to fabricate solar.

Second, the efficiency of solar cells - the fraction of the sun's energy that strikes them that they capture - is continually improving. In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today.

What do these trends mean for the future? If the 7 percent decline in costs continues (and 2010 and 2011 both look likely to beat that number), then in 20 years the cost per watt of PV cells will be just over 50 cents.

Indications are that the projections above are actually too conservative. First Solar corporation has announced internal production costs (though not consumer prices) of 75 cents per watt, and expects to hit 50 cents per watt in production cost in 2016. If they hit their estimates, they'll be beating the trend above by a considerable margin.

BeyondDC reports on
The first bus transit in human history

The National Building Museum tweeted this morning "Mathematician Blaise Pascal organized the first public bus line in 1662."

Neat! But awfully vague. I went looking for more details, and found them in a 2008 article from Wired, which explains:

"The system started with seven horse-drawn vehicles running along regular routes. Each coach could carry six or eight passengers. Some sources specify three routes; others say there were six, and that one of them was a circular route.

The Carosses à Cinq Sous, or Five-Penny Coaches, were popular at first, but the novelty soon wore off. The system proved an idea ahead of its time. France was still a feudal society, with the Sun King at its apex. Nobility and gentry were allowed to ride the coaches, but not soldiers and peasants. The bus routes were out of business by 1675.

Regular bus service didn't return to Paris until the early 19th century. Stagecoaches running short routes also began service around that time in London and New York City."

So there you have it: Urban bus service in Paris 250 years before anybody thought to try it elsewhere. I wonder if the routes are mapped anywhere, or if that information is lost to history.

Minneapolis advises I must separate my recycling, and leaves a yellow "nastygram" on my trashcan if I do something wrong.

For recycling alone, I need to track 9 categories of waste flows (see table at bottom). If each requires 2 square feet, that is 18 square feet of real estate per household in space devoted to temporarily storing recyclables. This 18 square feet might be slightly off, but measurements in my house put it as about right.

At $100 per square foot (typical of real estate), $1800 of space per house must be devoted to storing recycling. At 168,352 housing units in Minneapolis (2000) , this is $303,033,600 of space devoted to storing recyclables.

Minneapolis says:

Why Must I Separate All My Recycling?

 

Sorted recycling generates the biggest revenue. Revenue from recycling provides money for:

• Large item pickup
• The voucher program
• Clean City programs
• Ongoing operating costs

If the City of Minneapolis used singlestream recycling (all recycling in one bin, as some areas do), the higher cost of processing these materials would result in lower revenue, and possible cuts in other waste services.

The question is, is the Net Present Value of the future stream of lower revenue anywhere near $300 million? I don't think so. A simpler recycling program for users would allow more of my house to be devoted to things other than storing recycling (on the theory that I sort at time of disposal, rather than separate to prepare the trash for transshipment after already premixing). It might also increase compliance.

Recycling is a good thing. I hear Minneapolis is considering singlestream recycling.. This is an especially good thing. Now if they could go to weekly instead of fortnightly, we might be making real progress.

Material and Energy Flow management at the household is quite complicated. I counted the following Inflows:

• Water
• Mail
• Electricity
• Natural Gas
• People
• Food
• Other goods

And Outflows:

• Electricity
• Returned on AC
• Wastewater
• Stormwater
• Compost
• Boxtops for Education
• Unseparated, Unrecylcable Trash (which ideally would be close to zero)
• Recycling:
• Paper
• Aluminum
• Glass
• Plastics
• Batteries
• Garden waste (branches, grass clippings)


• Recycling the city does not do:




• Plastic bags from grocery stores


• Lightbulbs


• Waste Electronics


• Water filters


• Toner cartridges


• Bulk goods


• Reuse




• Old Clothes


• Bulk goods




• Mail


• People

And I am sure both lists are missing things. Perhaps if we had competitive trash services, private firms would figure out the optimal mix of mixing and separation.

The following table is provided for easy reference.

All recycling must be placed in separate paper bags, as follows:

The Star Tribune reports on a recent local "scare forecast" (notice the "scare quotes") that local agencies have put out about how traffic will get remorselessly worse. Rush hour traffic: Get ready to crawl. I get quoted saying it won't be so bad.

Clearly MnDOT won't be spending as much on new construction, but there is no evidence individuals will travel as much, in the peak, in 20 years, as they do now, (peak travel , etc.) The claim is the region is growing, which might be true, but I suspect optimism here (as we approach a fifth full month with snow on the ground).

If congestion gets worse, you would expect people to adapt. Cars will be better (and hopefully autonomous), increasing capacity (both in terms of closer spacing and narrower lanes). Roads will be priced, decreasing peak demand. Telecommunications technology will get better, finally enabling travel-substitution for a large share of the population.

If we do nothing different, things will be worse. Knowing that, why would we do nothing different?

Map of How Manhattan's Grid Grew, from NY Times (get it while it's free) ...

Interactive Map

article

The grid certified by the city's street commissioners on March 22, 1811, spurred development by establishing seven miles of regular, predictable street access. It also laid the groundwork for nearly 2,000 acres of landfill that would be added to the island over the next two centuries. The commissioners concluded that New York "is to be composed principally of the habitations of men, and that straight-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in."

Senators John Kerry and Kay Bailey Hutchison unveiled the:
BUILD Act last week

The BUILD Act is a bold solution that establishes an American Infrastructure Financing Authority (AIFA) - a type of infrastructure bank - to complement our existing infrastructure funding. This institution, which would provide loans and loan guarantees, would be both fiscally responsible and robust enough to address America's needs. AIFA is independent of the political process. It would fund the most important and most economically viable projects across the country, our states, and our communities. AIFA is also fiscally responsible. While AIFA will receive initial funding from the government, after that it must become self-sustaining. AIFA closely follows the Export-Import Bank model, which has helped to boost American exports and has been profitable overall to the government since 1991. Finally, AIFA relies on the private sector. It can never provide more than 50 percent of a project's costs, and in many cases would provide much less, just enough to bring in private investment.

This sounds good, much better than other infrastructure banks, sort of like the one we proposed. The key bit is that the bank is self-sustaining and profitable. There are details that one could quibble with, little things like scope and where the money comes from, as well as the rural subsidy, but those are less important than then main point, the loans have to be repaid rather than are simply grants.

The figure shows the "Hierarchy of Infrastructure Needs". It offers a useful organizational tool for considering the priorities of transport investment. Borrowing from Abraham Maslow, it suggests that the first priority, at the base of the hierarchy, is Infrastructure Preservation. Without existing infrastructure being maintained, everything else falls apart. Given current financing challenges, existing infrastructure is deteriorating. Fortunately, through investment this problem can be reversed. The first part of the proposal Fix it First, Expand It Second, Reward It Third: A New Strategy for America's Highways by Matt Kahn and myself seeks to rectify this problem.

At the second level of the hierarchy is Safety. If people do not feel safe, they will not travel by that mode. We see this in urban transit, aviation, and in adverse weather. Over 30,000 Americans die in road crashes annually, a vast improvement over previous years. Still, that is far too many, and one of the highest unaddressed costs of transportation. People overestimate their safety by car (and underestimate it by other modes), perhaps because they feel in control. Most safety progress will occur due to vehicle improvements and changes in driver behavior, (and ideally taking the driver out of the loop) but safety can be enhanced through select infrastructure improvement projects.

At the third level of the hierarchy we place Environment. This includes air, water, land, noise, and the challenge of climate change. Environmental costs are externalities, that is, they are not largely borne by those who cause them. Projects that can reduce these social costs will generally be underfunded by the private sector or public agencies without some specific support. This is and subsequent elements are addressed in the later parts of the proposal "Expand it Second, Reward It Third".

Fourth on the hierarchy we locate Accessibility, the ability to reach valued destinations. This is the primary purpose of transportation: why travel but to get somewhere? Accessibility is a product of two complementary forces: land use - where things are located, and mobility - how fast I can move on the network. Transportation projects directly affect mobility, and indirectly affect land use (generally over a longer period of time). Transportation, like many technologies, is subject both to network effects (the more transportation there is, the more places I can reach, the more valuable transportation is, the more transportation is provided), and diminishing returns (once everywhere is connected, new connections are less valuable than old connections). Different modes in different places are in different stages. Enabling current users to go faster (save time), and farther (get better services) in the same time are both valuable contributions of transportation systems. Some projects offer no incremental benefits along these dimensions but offer higher quality in terms of the comfort of travel (think of a crowded subway at rush hour versus being able to find a seat).

Finally, new transportation enables Land and Economic Development, building at higher densities, reallocation of activities, and the ability to decentralize. These benefits are the most speculative, as transportation, while necessary, alone is insufficient to induce developers to create places. Promoters often cite economic development as a reason for transportation investment by the public sector. We suggest that if promoters believe in their project, they, not the government, should be liable for the risk that project fails to perform as expected, just as they would reap the benefits if it were successful.

These are five dimensions of what to achieve using new transport investment, and the qualitative importance of each. While there are trade-offs, putting each dimension into equivalent monetary terms is difficult and contentious. Therefore, perhaps these goals should be addressed individually.

Two "Nobel" Prize winning economists have suggested some rules about managing economic policy:

1) Jan Tinbergen's rule: Achieving a multiple number of independent policy targets requires an equal number of policy instruments.
2) Robert Mundell's rule: Each policy instrument should be assigned to a policy target on which it has greatest relative effect.
source

"Fix It First, Expand It Second, Reward It Third" achieves these goals better than the status quo policies.

I get quoted on MPR: With less money for roads, experts say pothole season could be worst yet
by Dan Olson

... University of Minnesota civil engineering professor David Levinson has a long-term suggestion for addressing the pothole problem.

"We haven't invented anything that will eliminate potholes, but we can certainly reduce their number if we build roads better," Levinson said.

Levinson said, for example, it would cost nearly 25 percent more to build stronger county highways. But with money in short supply, it's an unlikely alternative.

One way to raise more money is to ask roadway users, especially owners of heavy trucks, to pay more. The big rigs already pay a lot of roadway use taxes and are only a small percent of overall traffic volume.

But Levinson and other road experts say research shows they do a disproportionate amount of damage to the roads.

"An eighteen wheeler can do 1,600 times as much damage to [the] road as a single passenger car would do over the same stretch," Levinson said.

Putting more axles and tires on the biggest trucks, Levinson said, would spread out their weight, but would be expensive and would use more energy because of increased friction.

Levinson said another partial fix for preventing pothole formation would have snow plows raise their blades an inch or so.

"When the plows touch the pavement and the pavement is cracked or uneven they often pull up chunks of pavement leading to an additional source of pothole," he said.

The problem with this idea, Levinson said, is Minnesota drivers like snow free roads so they can drive faster, rather than roads with an inch of snow on top forcing them to slow down.
...

On the point about good roads vs. poor roads, see our Cost/Benefit Study: Spring Load Restrictions

On the point about trucks doing more damage than cars see Pavement Interactive: Equivalent Single Axle Load

On the last point, see also Finland Special: Snow As Traffic Calming Device

From Metafilter: London's Unfinished Ringways [and Railways]

Unfinished London's long awaited second episode is a wonderful DIY documentary about London's failed 'Ringways' road-building project, made and presented by Jay Foreman. The first episode, about a branch of London's underground that was never built, is also excellent (and much more fun that you might expect).

Matt Yglesias has an interesting post Cities and Cities where he almost connects the dots. But its hard because his model of the city is Washington DC.

But I think that it's important to try to be clear about what we mean by the word "city." In an economic context, the most relevant concept is often that of a "metropolitan area"--a socially and economically integrated set of places that cross municipal boundaries. That's different from "city," a central municipality as opposed to a "suburb" which is a municipality that's near a central municipality. And that's also different from "city" in the sense of a walkable urban neighborhood as opposed to a "suburban" auto dependent neighborhood. Washington DC the metropolitan area is one of the richest in America, but Washington DC the municipality is merely above average. The Washington DC metro area also includes a large minority of transit-oriented walkable urban neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods are in the Washington DC municipality but some of them are in Arlington County, VA or Montgomery County, MD and some of the neighborhoods in the DC municipality are very auto-oriented and suburban and feel.

When someone talks about the economic value of cities that person (especially if he's Ed Glaeser) could be plausibly talking about the economic value of metropolitan areas, in which case subsidization of rural and micropolitan places clearly is relevant. Alternatively, that person (especially if he's Christopher Leinberger) could be plausibly talking about the economic value of walkable urban neighborhoods, in which case subsidization of rural and micropolitan places doesn't seem relevant to me. Meanwhile, if I'm complaining about structural problems in city governance then I'm probably talking about municipalities, which is a whole different thing. I would put this all together by saying that metropolitan areas (mostly composed of people living in suburban neighborhoods in suburban municipalities) benefit from the existence of a strong urban core (composed of people living in walkable urbanist neighborhoods, most of them presumably in the central city municipality) which is more likely to happen if you have a functional municipal political system (in the central city municipality). That's because if one particular suburban jurisdiction starts to be malgoverned, firms and households that want to be located in suburban neighborhoods can fairly easily relocate to a different-but-similar suburban neighborhoods in a different suburban jurisdiction. But in most cases, a firm or household that wants to be in a urban neighborhood often can't just leave the central municipality for a different jurisdiction, it would have to go to a whole different metropolitan area.

There are two key elements that would help him connect the dots. The first is the idea that people vote with their feet (a la the Tiebout Hypothesis) which he alludes to but doesn't name. The second is that we need competition in urban municipalities, like say, The Twin Cities, which enable people who need to be urban to live in one of two urban cores, and to choose one which has the best mix of taxes and services.

The problem is that the urban cores are monopoly governments in most metropolitan areas (and in areas that once had competition (e.g. New York) annexation combined them. The issue is the merits of competition in inducing innovation, reducing costs, increasing monitoring, benchmarking, etc. vs. the merits of economies of scale (so New York City might be more efficiently governed if Manhattan and Brooklyn are under one umbrella (or Westminster and the City of London, or Minneapolis and St. Anthony, etc.). This is an empirical question, I don't believe there is a universal answer, it is very context-dependent (the context depending on technology, politics, etc.).

Ring Roads of the World

A nice info-graphic comparing metropolitan beltways .

One of my favorite UK transportation blogs Diamond Geezer does a take down of leaflet racks: Can't find what you're looking for? provided by the normally sensible (by US standards) Transport for London.

The leaflet racks in London Underground ticket halls used to have blank backgrounds.

Now they have information panels.

Can't find what you're looking for?

That's probably because the second row of information is hidden by
a) the leaflets
b) the rack

Congratulations to the panel's designer, who failed to realise that leaflet racks hold leaflets.

And a round of applause for whoever approved the new design to be rolled out across the entire network, despite it being unfit for purpose.

GettingAroundMPLS leaves the confines of the city and visits the suburb of Roseville where a proposed interchange has been designed (to solve a congestion problem) despite falling traffic levels for the past decade: EXTRA! EXTRA! MONEY WASTED ON EXTRAVAGANT HIGHWAY PROJECT!

That post contains a very nice critique of what's wrong with current highway construction decision-making processes.

John Baez (a mathematician) posts about Network Theory and the contributions math might make.


- dml

From Brookings: Driving's Back Up ... Or Is It?

More support for peak travel (at least peak per capita travel).

Recent data from the Federal Highway Administration shows that driving patterns, measured by Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), are back to their highest level since 2007. That's true. Unlike Western Europe and parts of Asia, the U.S. is a growing country. We've added over 29 million people since 2000, and 7 million people since 2007 alone. So one would expect driving to increase, too. What is interesting to note is that combining the growth in VMT and population shows a per capita driving rate that is not growing and, in fact, is pretty much at the same level as it was in 2000. See the chart below.

From Anil Bawa-Cavia and Urbagram, The Oyster Flowprint. Oyster is the London transit payment system. The movie shows the flows on the system across the day.

This Oyster flowprint visualises trips made using London's RFID transport card on the London Underground on a typical weekday. Each trail is an individual passenger making a trip, tapping their card at an origin and destination. The actual routes taken are inferred using a simple shortest path algorithm. The animation uses a 5% sample of passengers on the network made available as a Transport for London Data Feed.

Activity on the network is charted along the bottom of the graphic. The double-humped dynamics typical of commuting are evident, and these constitute the characteristic signature of the living city. Twice a day the flowprint expands and contracts, sending its tendrils deep into North London; the diurnal 'pulse' of the city in action.

Synchronisation of travel during the morning rush hour, with a steep ramp in activity peaking at 8:40AM, is much greater than during the afternoon, which sees a much broader peak in activity, with people leaving work at a range of times. The afternoon rush hour doesn't subside until after 7pm, evidence perhaps of Londoner's love of an after-work pint.

Oyster Flowprint from Anil Bawa-Cavia on Vimeo.

From WBAL (h/t Greater Greater Washington) Group Pushes For Light Rail Station Shutdown: MTA Says It's Working With Police To Address Crime Concerns

I am not sure if this is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It surely seems this should be a solvable problem. It also seems the LRT did not inspire any redevelopment, given the adjoining land uses.

BALTIMORE -- A group of Linthicum residents is pushing for the shutdown of the light rail station there, citing an attempted murder at the station about three weeks ago.
Local police are working with the Maryland Transit Administration to address safety concerns, but Cosentino said the station just doesn't work.
"The community has its concerns, and we want to be good neighbors."
- MTA's Terry Owens
"There's no parking, it's not well-lit at all," he said. "It's basically in a gulley, for the lack of a better word."
The MTA said it is looking at alternatives, but offers a different view of crime at the station itself.
"Our data suggests that we don't have any real problems at all at the Linthicum station," said spokesman Terry Owens. "But that's beside the point. The community has its concerns, and we want to be good neighbors.
"We want to do whatever we can to work with the community to address their concerns."
Cosentino said he and his supporters don't plan to drop their stance against the station.
"We mean business," he said. "We don't want this thing to die down."
Residents suggest that the nearby stop in North Linthicum is safer, saying that it's better lit and has plenty of parking.

View Larger Map

Criminals use tow trucks to steal cars

From Bruce Schneier


- dml

Slugging: The Peoples Transit

A nice article about slugging from Miller-McCune


- dml

Chris Briem put together this cool visualization (50 MB PDF) showing the Size of Governments in the US, where the number of employees is proportional to the font width. Explained here. I only wish it were searchable.

This might be useful to look at as a Cartogram. But I don't know if cartograms can handle hierarchical and overlapping jurisdictions (Minneapolis School District is in Minneapolis is in Hennepin is in Minnesota).

I don't know why I didn't see this earlier, World Streets proposes a Street Code

The idea is works is that legal responsibility for any accident on street, sidewalk or public space, is automatically assigned to the heavier faster vehicle. This means that the driver who hits a cyclist has to prove his innocence, as opposed to today where the cyclist must prove the driver's guilt (not always very easy to do).

I suppose there is a conflict if the heavier vehicle is not necessarily faster, or if you get the irrational (drunk) pedestrian or cyclist, but it seems a good heuristic that will give those who impose the greatest unsafety externality the incentive to yield.

Note that all vehicles are expected to yield to trains, because trains can't brake quickly (and they were there before cars in general), despite the fact that trains were heavier.

Donald Norman talks about
New elevator design

- dml

From the NY Times Boss series: Paul Yarossi of HNTB, Born to Be an Engineer

"Civil engineers generally do their job well when no one knows they're there."

John Calimente of re:place magazine writes about The Colourful Buses of Seoul

This is great:

In 2004 the Seoul Metropolitan Government completely overhauled their Ilban, or city bus system. Instead of replacing the buses themselves, though, they went with a different approach that consisted of 5 key changes:

1) Bus routes were simplified

2) Four bus categories were created, each with a different colour scheme (red, blue, yellow, and green);

3) Route numbers were changed so that they explained both the origin and destination of the route, based on a district numbering system;

4) A flat-fare system was implemented and integrated with the subway system;

5) Real-time communication systems were installed so that transit riders could check arrival times by cell phone.

The colouring scheme goes a long way towards helping riders know exactly where their bus is going. It's very simple. Blue buses travel long distances on major arterial roads, serving more than 2 districts, and run in median bus lanes when they get close to the centre of the city (this video shows a blue bus entering a separated median lane). Green buses operate as feeder buses to the 8 lines on the subway system and are run by private companies. Red buses are express routes with limited stops connecting major suburban towns to the central city. And yellow buses are circular routes that travel between the major destinations in the central city. Blue and red buses are the same price, while the red (suburban) buses cost more and the local yellow buses less.
But the addition of a route numbering system that actually has explicit meaning is something every transit system should adopt. First they divided Seoul into 8 numbered zones, starting at 0 in the downtown core and giving the surrounding zones numbers 1 through 7.

Then they used these zones as part of the route numbers. Blue buses have three-digit route numbers. The first number indicates the origin zone and the second number the destination zone, with the last number the bus ID number. So if you encounter bus #048, for example, you know it travels from downtown (zone 0) to zone 4. Red buses put a 9 in front to indicate that these are suburban routes, while yellow buses have only two numbers, since they stay within the same zone.

Paul Krugman (who famously models transportation as an iceberg (and he got his "Nobel" prize in economics for his work in spatial economics and trade theory, showing how aspatial the field is in general), writes about: Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.

There are several problems with this image. First it assumes you are already at the train station waiting to board, as opposed to somewhere randomly in the region. Remember most people do not work or live downtown (even in New York City). Second it ignores the third mode of the title (automobiles). A redrawn figure, which is standard in transportation economics or geography, is shown below. [Similar graphs apply to freight, just change it to Trucks, Trains, and Ships]. The question is whether there is a range between d1 and d2, that is, does rail actually dominate both autos and planes over any region. In terms of travel time it probably does, and looking only at operating cost, it might. In terms of overall cost, including the fixed cost of construction of a new HSR line, it probably does not under current cost structures. The size of this range, if it exists, is, however, empirical, and subject to change with costs and technologies.

Infrastructurist picks up on Fix-it-First [the article also notes that traffic was up 20.5 billion miles (total VMT) from the previous year (about 0.67%), it should be noted that this is less than the population growth in the US (about 1%)].

So does Crossroads Blog Smart Growth Round-Up: Livable Cities and Transportation.

It is the idea of the week at National Association of Bond Lawyers: Idea of the Week: Washington Think Tanks Focus on Public and Infrastructure Finance

Cities are positive feedback loops in space. Cities exist only because it is more important for people and organizations to be near each other than far from each other.

There has been recent chatter (Ryan Avent again) about agglomeration making cities wealthier, and only if densities were higher would more agglomeration benefits be achieved.

Certainly evidence shows cities with greater density produce greater "wealth". Glaeser argues it is about the speed of the spread of ideas, in addition to the classical reasons about transportation costs for people and goods. However cause and effect are not clear. I will pose a contrary hypothesis:

Cities with firms that are more agglomeration-benefitting produce higher densities; cities with firms that are less agglomeration-benefitting produce lower densities.

In other words, density is the effect of agglomeration economies, rather than the cause of agglomeration benefits.

The agglomeration-benefits of an industry change over time, and are more important when an industry is young, and in the growth phase than when it is old, mature, and locked-in.

This hypothesis imples, e.g., increasing densities in Phoenix will not suddenly make Phoenix more productive because the firms in Phoenix don't benefit much from the additional clustering (and disbenefit from the negative externalities of density such as crowding, pollution, congestion, and the higher costs of services and land that accompany high density). A city like New York or London, in which the Finance Industry (among others) locates, or Washington in which the Government Industry locates, benefits more significantly from the daily walking distance, face-to-face interactions possible by agglomeration. However even in those capital cities there may be limits to agglomeration such that the marginal benefits of an additional person or job may not outweigh the marginal cost.

Since there can only be one national capital per nation, and perhaps one financial capital per nation, the opportunities for creating financial mega-cities of the order of New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc. are limited, just as there can only be one effective political capital; second order cities will not magically become first order just by increasing their density.

To take a case I am familiar with, Minneapolis, downtown has not seen much new commercial growth in over a decade, though there has been a significant (though regionally relatively small) increase in residential density. Minneapolis might be termed a provincial capital. It has a large hinterland, a Federal Reserve Bank, many regional and national bank operations (Wells Fargo, US Bank, etc.), and a large number of headquarters of large firms (regionally especially, though many are not downtown, Target, Best Buy, General Mills, 3M, Medtronic, etc.), as well as emerging clusters in a few economic sectors.

In Downtown there are plenty of vacant lots (i.e. parking lots) for development to occur, and no real constraints on new office (or residential) construction downtown. Clearly the private benefits of building downtown are not as great to the firms making location decisions as locating that new building in suburban areas. Unlike New York, the zoning downtown is not a binding constraint. In brief, the private share that firm will attain from agglomeration benefits of the CBD do not outweigh the costs, (including the opportunity cost of building in some other locale). Those suburban places too have some (weaker) agglomeration benefits, but those may be sufficient. The location within a metro-area still produces benefits (which are weaker than the CBD benefits on daily walking distance face-to-face metric, but still enable daily or weekly driving distance face-to-face), such as shared labor pools, and all that.

If there are agglomeration benefits of locating downtown, they are not sufficient that the local firms (acting through local government) bribe these non-CBD locating firms to move downtown to enable those spillovers. Only a few cases where the spillovers are believed strong result in sufficient side payments (bribes, tax increment financing, etc.) (the Minnesota Twins and the Target HQ building come to mind).

The Twin Cities has some tax-based sharing, so may differ from other regions in the local willingness to bribe, but it also suggests that if agglomeration benefits exist for the marginal new business choosing a location, they are relatively weak. The mental model of agglomeration producing huge benefits if only density limits (as in New York and Washington) were lifted may not apply in many other cities.

updated March 5 with Case 0

Ryan Avent (among others) comments on Ed Glaeser's piece on Skyscrapers: Density and Skyscrapers and seems to support allowing more high density development in cities, which are restricted by local government regulation.

The issue that does not really come out (though is mentioned in the comments) is the problem of zoning vs. externalities. The reasons for the lower zoning densities are many, but the rationale is externalities (and the desire to move nuisance law from courts to regulation to avoid the large transaction costs and uncertainties of the judicial system). If you increase density, as the neighbors know, you increase local externalities which they bear (through longer travel times, etc.).

Since no one owns the right to uncongested roads, developers (and planners who support them in their quest for the highest and best use) think they can just offload these costs to local neighborhood streets and it is okay. But what they do is take time from other people by increasing congestion. The neighbors think (presumably by custom, status quo, or some other logic) that they have the right to prevent these externalities, and they do so with restrictive zoning. Zoning regulates negative externalities that are not currently governed by Pigou or Coase.

Neither side is right, the problem at its core is undefined property rights and untolled roads. It is just two sides of selfishness: greedy developers vs. greedy NIMBYs.

I had a similar conversation with Jonathan Levine at the November Regional Science Conference. He asked if a developer could come and build a high-rise in an existing single-family residential area. I replied "good luck", suggesting the NIMBY's hold the cards. I also suggested this was a relatively rare case, which I think is because the zoning largely reflects the market in most places. I.e. there is not much market for high rise housing in largely single-family neighborhoods. There are of course edge cases. Systematically, there are three four cases when a developer is considering building somewhere:

(0) The zoning is not binding. In this case the zoning exceeds market demand, but there are negative externalities to development which the neighbors want to avoid.

(1) The zoning is not binding. In this case the zoning exceeds market demand, but the negative externalities are small.

(2) The zoning is binding, but the developer through either request or lobbying (perhaps at some monetary expense) gets an area rezoned. The lobbying allows political decision-makers to collect rents from restrictive zoning, or neighbors to achieve side-payments. These side-payments compensate the community for the negative externalities that will be received upon a change in the status quo. The political rents are a problem for the political system and how we finance campaigns or administer bribery laws.

(3) The zoning remains binding, but the land is not rezoned because the developer's payments were, or would be, insufficient to persuade the opponents or decision-makers.

Case 0 is a problem for the community, which must now pay the developer not to develop. We see this when communities purchase development rights (e.g. agricultural reserve areas). Here the Coasian right to develop resides with the developer One can see difficulties with Case 0 scenarios. Developers can threaten to develop, and get paid not to develop, even though they were not serious. Bluffing is very easy. Hence the desire for communities to control the development rights through restrictive zoning. Residents must act through government because of the asymmetry and coordination costs, 1000 neighbors all harmed slightly do not have the ability or incentive individually to give a side payment to a developer not to develop at all (or as much), because some residents will want to free-ride on the side payments of others. Only through the government or government-like organization can this be achieved.

Case 1 is not a problem for developers or the community, and the development proceeds without hitch.

Case 2 costs the developers money, but in the end if they choose to build, it still must generate above "normal profits", otherwise it would be better for the developer to keep their money in a bank account. This results in a transfer of money, but is at least neutral and probably win-win.

Case 3 might result in some social loss (especially if there are, in fact, economies of agglomeration), but what is happening is that the loss perceived by the opponents outweighs the benefits perceived by the developer. There may be of course miscalculations about the opponents willingness to pay or willingness to accept, but in the end the potential gains did not outweigh the potential losses, and the project may not have been as good as claimed.

Whether the zoning reflects the wishes of developers or neighbors depends on context, and as density increases, we would expect the neighbors to become relatively more powerful, if only because the negative externalities of development become apparent to more and more people.

As I implied above, there is not a moral right in retaining the status quo, but from a Coasian perspective, zoning creates the property right in a given level of externalities which rezoning proposes to change. There should still be an approximately efficient outcome in the end, if not for political rent-seeking.

It's just too cute: Animals on the Underground

Money Magazine has one of those lists: Best Jobs in America 2010

In terms of Quality of Life, Transportation Engineer ranks #2, with 69% who say their job is low stress. It also ranks 15th in job growth, with a 10-year growth of 24%. Not quite in the highest paid group, but high enough I suppose, especially given the low stress. Low stress is a feature of very long timeframes. The Emergency Room Physician (very highly paid) deals in reaction times of seconds, ours are in years.

Another from the Pioneer Press, which was quite good today, I might add, I think it has become a better paper than the Star Tribune: Rethinking University Avenue before the trains roll discusses rezoning University in advance of the Central Corridor LRT.

"Change is hard. ... A guy started his question to me last night, 'University Avenue can't be all housing and coffee shops.' "

While I think upzoning University is a good idea given the virtual certainty of the LRT investment, there is clearly skepticism about the planners ideas. Perhaps the excessive use of renderings of upper middle class white people sipping Lattes on a retail street has come home to roost.

Nice Ride gets $1.78 million for expansion of bike sharing system From the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal.

This is apparently for a capital expansion, but as noted before, the system is quite expensive to operate, and requires more labor than buses on a per ride basis.

More to the point, this 4.5 million in capital (let's say the capital lasts 4.5 years, or 1 million per year annualized)) is for a system that served 100,000 riders last year, and probably will continue at a similar level. This implies a capital subsidy of $10 per ride (not as expensive as NorthStar, but not cheap either). Obviously if they double use, this halves the capital subsidy, but it is not cheap. Just sayin'.

From the Pioneer Press: Can't find a parking spot? Get a hybrid ... or a baby:
New types of restricted slots are popping up in local parking lots, but not everyone's a fan.

This (at least the "fuel efficient cars" part is occurring because of LEED, which I have railed about before.

Buildings are not 'energy efficient' if they are surrounded by parking and require driving to get there, even if that parking privileges certain travelers, even if those cars are "fuel efficient". Fuel efficiency should be its own reward. The enforcement hassle (is the car listed with some fuel efficiency list which no one knows and is not current?) make the whole thing a ridiculous game. This is not quite as bad as giving hybrids preference in HOV lanes, but almost as silly.

I didn't realize Michelle Bachmann represents Wisconsin too, how regionalist of her ... Betty McCollum promises to fight Michele Bachmann's bridge (from CityPages)