To the Editor, The New York Times

Re: City that Loves Mass Transit Looks to the Sky for More (January 28)

Now The New York Times has been taken in by the Portland transit hype. The “city that loves mass transit” shows it by not using riding very much. Today, the share of workers using transit to get to work is less than before the first light rail line was built. Today, little more than two percent of travel in the Portland area is on transit and 98 percent of motorized travel is by car. That is really not much different than automobile champion Kansas City, where the figure is above 99.5 percent. The kind of cheerleading in this article may warm the hearts of urban elites but only serves to muddle and mislead.

Wendell Cox
Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris
Former Member, Los Angeles County Transportation Commission

Posted by Wendell Cox at 01:05 AM | Permalink

United States private sector union membership continued its more than 50 year decline in 2006. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 7.40 percent of private sector employees were union members in 2006. This is the lowest market share since 1900. The number of private sector union members, 7,981,000, is the lowest since the year before the United States entered World War II (1940).

The 2005 to 2006 market share loss was the largest in more than 20 years (1984 to 1985). The number of private sector union members dropped approximately 275,000 in the last year. Since peaking at 39 percent in 1958, private sector union membership has dropped approximately 8,900,000, while the number of the private sector employees force has risen 64,600,000.

Data:
Union Membership Statistics

Posted by Wendell Cox at 01:15 PM | Permalink

Fifty years of unbroken population loss have ended in the ville de Paris (city of Paris), as INSEE, the French national statistics agency, has estimated growth of 1.4 percent from 1999 to 2005. INSEE estimates the ville de Paris population at 2,154,000, up from 2,125,000 at the 1999 census. The ville de Paris still remains 750,000 (more than one-quarter) below its 1921 peak and nearly 700,000 below the 1954 population.

Nonetheless, suburban growth continued to dominate, capturing 94 percent of the additional population. The share of Paris residents living in the suburbs rose to 81.1 percent, with a population of 9,246,000, up from 8,826,000 in 1999. This continues a long trend of suburbanization. While the ville de Paris lost 696,000 residents from 1954 to 2005, the suburbs added a population of 4,779,000.

Within the ville de Paris, nearly three-quarters of the growth was in the outer arrondissements (13 to 20). Nonetheless, the inner “ancient” arrondissements (1-4) experienced their first growth since the census of 1911. The “ancient” arrondissements have lost approximately 75 percent of their population since 1861.

Data:
Ville de Paris & Suburban Population: 1999-2005
Ville de Paris & Suburban Population: 1999-2005
Ville de Paris Arrondissement Population: 1999-2005

Posted by Wendell Cox at 10:13 AM | Permalink

To the Editor:
Sydney Morning Herald

Re: Cheaper Homes Often Come at a High Price (29 January)

Professor Gurran’s column misses the point completely on housing affordability. The issue is not urban form; it is rather the future of Australia’s young and emerging households. Policies intended to make cities more pleasing to planners are taking years of additional income for households to buy smaller houses on smaller blocks, and for no reason. These higher mortgage costs will mean that less money will be spent in the economy on other goods and services. Urban consolidation’s legacy will be a less affluent Australia. Moreover, economic naiveté only clouds the issue. Developers and home builders are not free to charge more than the competitive price, because that is all the market will bear. Thus, if land prices were brought back to reality, the price of new houses would drop. However, since 1993, the price of land for residential development has risen at a higher rate than any element of the Consumer Price Index, the result of urban consolidation’s land rationing policies. The experience from Sydney to Perth, Portland and London tragically demonstrates that urban consolidation is incompatible with housing affordability.

Sincerely,
Wendell Cox
Co-Author, Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey
Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers
Rue St. Martin
75003 Paris France

Posted by Wendell Cox at 09:10 AM | Permalink

It is an attractive story line --- that Americans are cutting back on their driving and increasingly traveling by transit (“US Motorists Cutting Back a Bit", January 25). But it is misleading nonetheless. Between 2004 and 2005, the latest full year for which there is data, per capita travel by car declined 10 miles in the United States. This infinitesimal decline was not captured by transit, which had a per capita increase of 0.4 miles --- less than the Federal Transit Administration considers to be walking distance to a train station. In fact, however, the small decline in driving was concentrated in rural areas. In urban areas, where transit operates, travel by car increased at more than double the rate of transit.

Wendell Cox
Former Member, Los Angeles County Transportation Commission
Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris
Rue St. Martin
75003 Paris, France

25 January 2007

Posted by Wendell Cox at 10:14 AM | Permalink

One of the all-too-many shibboleths of the anti-suburbanites is that the rise in automobile air pollution has produced a rise in asthma cases. There is, of course, only one problem with this view --- that for 35 years, air pollution has been dropping in the urban areas of the United States and Western Europe. Thus, if there is a connection between the two trends, it has to be that less air pollution causes more asthma. Of course that is not true, but any attempt to blame automobile produced air pollution for the increase in asthma flies in the face of reason.

This specious claim of the anti-suburbanites has made me sensitive to the issue. So, it was with great interest that I read the new “Asthma Capitals” report of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA). This report provides a ranking of 100 United States metropolitan areas using an index of 12 factors. It is a very strange index, combining estimates of the incidence of asthma and “risk factors,” such as school inhaler access laws and poverty rates. It might be argued that these “risk factors” (9 of the 12 factors) contribute to the incidence of asthma, but there is no better measure of the prevalence towards asthma than the actual cases. Only three of the Asthma Capital criteria deal with that.

It would seem that the risk factors should predict the comparative number of incidents. They do not and by a long shot. If, for example, a score of 1 to 3 is given for each of the three incident categories rates, the worst score would be 9 (the rating is simply, worse than average, average and better than average) and the best score would be 0. The results are considerably different than the more complex index system that includes the risk factors

Looking at the list, Atlanta, considered the worst (#1) by AAFA would have a score of 7, not much worse than best (#100) Seattle, which has a score of 6. Perennial urban planning favorite, Portland, ranked in the top quarter by AAFA (#75) actually gets the worst score possible, at 9, along with a number of other areas, along with the urban elite favorites of New York, Boston and Washington. Colorado Springs is rated #95 (6th best) by AAFA, yet would also have the worst possible score in asthma incident factors, at 9, tied with Portland.

So what do the Asthma Capitals ratings tell us? Not much of anything. The best way to compare the relative risk of asthma between metropolitan areas is to identify the percentage of people who have asthma. The Asthma Capitals ratings have a potential to be misleading, given that simply are not an evaluation of the actual asthma rates in urban areas, yet have been interpreted by some in the press to be that. The problem is that the Asthma Capital ratings are largely based upon predictive factors that don’t predict very well at all.

Posted by Wendell Cox at 02:15 AM | Permalink

In Europe and elsewhere, there is all sorts of talk about the presumed necessity of getting people out of their cars and on to public transport. Of course, the big secret is that, for all of its talk, European Union is not ready to do anything to force people out of cars --- and for good reason. It is run by officials who depend upon the votes of those whose cars they would take away.

However, also in Europe and elsewhere, there is this presumption that public transport is available as an alternative to automobile users. Of course, it isn’t unless they have a lot more time for travel, a lot more patience and a willingness to go only those few places that they can get in a reasonable period of time on public transport.

One fundamental problem with public transport is that people have to depend upon government for its provision. In western nations, public transport is heavily subsidized. This means, all things being equal, that public transport service is limited by the amount of money that government makes available (of course, there is an even greater limitation, since most public transport is provided by public monopolies that are themselves far heavier consumers of money than they are producers of service).

The problem that commuters face was well illustrated by a story out of London last week. The Times quoted the head of the railways at the Department for Transport, Mike Mitchell to the effect that commuters should expect to stand on trains for up to 30 minutes during peak periods. His advice? Travel during off peak periods. What a useful suggestion. Mitchell indicated that the government does not have enough money to provide seats for everyone. This is despite the fact that large increases in ridership are projected.

This came as rather unwelcome news to London area commuters, who pay up to £5,000 ($10,000) for an annual ticket. All of this shows how people who rely on government for services like transport are at its mercy. Despite all the promises about improving public transport, service cuts and fare increases are more the norm than improvements.

The great advantage to the automobile is that there is much less of a need to rely upon government. The car does not go on strike. Service is not cancelled on various routes. The frequency of service is not retarded. Not so with public transport. You pay, you stand. Is it any wonder that more than 85 percent of travel in Britain is by car?

Posted by Wendell Cox at 10:45 AM | Permalink

Randal O’Toole has provided a devastating critique of the American Public Transportation Association’s (APTA) report on transit and fuel efficiency.

The APTA report is not only wrong, but it also betrays naïveté in presuming that a household can simply give up a car and replace its travel --- passenger mile for passenger mile --- with travel by transit. It would do the transit funding proponents and their consultants well to try it themselves. They could abandon their own cars and try to replace their automobile travel with transit travel. They would soon be faced with the reality that it cannot be done. There is no transit service that can replace the car, except to some of the larger downtown areas and within a few urban cores. Transit takes too long or it is not even available for the overwhelming number of trips in all urban areas, whether in the United States or Western Europe (where I am on assignment).

Why is transit service not available? Because it cannot be. Automobile competitive transit cannot be provided at a price that can be afforded by any society, except to a few niche markets, principally downtown.

Posted by Wendell Cox at 03:11 AM | Permalink

To the Editor
Seattle Times

Re: Seattle Times Column

Aaron Ostrom and Carla Okigwe could not be more wrong. Growth management is why housing affordability has been destroyed in Seattle. Rationing raises prices, whether gasoline or land for residential development. Seattle-like hyper inflation in housing can only be found in urban areas that have shortages of land for development, principally the result of “smart growth” policies. From Sydney to Portland, Auckland, London and Seattle, the story is the same. Housing affordability is incompatible with growth management as it is being practiced. Where liberal land regulations exist, housing remains affordable. For example, Dallas-Fort Worth is growing more quickly than Seattle and the median house price is approximately $150,000. If the entire nation were to see prices rise to Seattle levels, home ownership rates would descend to 20 percent, from the present nearly 70 percent. This is not just an economic problem, but a social one as well. The evidence has become so overwhelming that even the British, the originators of “sky is falling” urban planning are officially questioning it. It is not the “law of demand” that determines prices; it is the “law of supply and demand.”

Wendell Cox
Principal, Demographia
Co-Author, Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey
http://www.demographia.com/dhi-ix2005q3.pdf
Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris

Posted by Wendell Cox at 01:05 PM | Permalink