[PRCo] Re: will western PA survive?

[Schneider Fred]

Self serving publicity but (and it is a big BUT) some of those Texas  
small cow towns have become huge and with them have some of the most  
monumental traffic jams one can imagine.   I would not be surprised  
by the data.   When people like Roy King tell me it takes two hours  
to get home from Fort Worth at the wrong hour, you simply decide to  
stay in your own neighborhood. If anywhere in this country has made  
it impossible to drive a car because of extreme congestion, count  
Dallas, Houston and Austin among them.

My first introduction to Texas was in 1959 when the Army sent me to  
Fort Hood.   In spite of army rules about staying within 65 miles on  
a class A pass, I traveled over 6000 miles during the five months I  
was there.

I remembered the capital city, Austin, as a small town of 100,000  
people.   I went to church on Easter Sunday, 1959.   I remember the  
night before watching the baggage crew load coffin into the Missouri  
Pacific's Texas Eagle.     Wikipedia corrects me and writes that it  
was 186,545 in 1960.   Today it has 743,000 and they are wrangling  
not cows but over their commuter railroad line.   (The FTA says the  
same cars that are used on the River line in New Jersey cannot be  
mixed with freight trains in Texas.   An industry acquaintance of  
mine who left Houston because the oil barons were making it difficult  
from rail types like him, also left Austin because he was blamed for  
his predecessor buying those cars.

Houston?   I went there one weekend in 1959.   It was a large city  
but not to mind huge.  It was bigger than Pittsburgh then ... about  
900,000 but not really bigger if you added in all the older  
Pittsburgh towns like Wilkensburg and McKees Rocks and Homestead.   
Today Houston has 2.2 million people.   It's bigger than  
Philadelphia.   In order to get into the city in the rush hour they  
have additional toll highways.  You don't bother with them on a  
weekday night but I'm sure they're jammed on Monday morning.    Today  
Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States.   If you  
want to see light rail work to the absolute annoyance of the oil and  
gas lobbies, go there.   Houstonites keep telling their politicians  
(twice in referendums) they want more light rail and the political  
hacks keep saying we know what's best for you, will give you busways  
instead.

Dallas - Fort Worth is one of the largest double cities in the United  
States.   It is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United  
States with 6.1 million people in 12 counties.   When I first visited  
Big D in 1959 it had about 600,000 people (about the same as  
Pittsburgh).   Today the city alone has 1.3 million.   Back then Fort  
Worth had 350,000; today almost 700,000.   But what happened in  
between the two cities is amazing.   Arlington had about 7000 in 1950  
and then GM built an assembly plant there.   Today there are 332,000  
in those empty fields between Dallas and Fort Worth ... out where  
they built the airport in the 1980s to get away from congestion  
around the old Love Field.   I remember Roy King telling me that when  
he moved to Dallas in the 1960s he would drive down his subdivision  
and see an occasional armadillo lumbering across the street.   Now  
the DART light rail cars go miles north of his neighborhood to Plano  
in what was once just farm country that the Texas Electric  
interurbans served.

El Paso is a place no one seems to talk about but it has gone from  
about 275,000 when I first photographed the International Trolley  
line to nearly 600,000 today.   The estimated population of Juarez,  
Mexico is 1.5 million.   Wikipedia claims 60,000 people cross back  
and forth every day ... I wonder how many stay?

And if you want another terribly congested city today.   Back in  
1980s I was in Phoenix with my friend Don Duke from Los Angeles.   He  
said he wanted to get up and be on the road at 8 AM.   I suggested we  
be out by 6 or wait until the traffic let up.   If he planned to wait  
until 7 to get up, he should quietly look out the window at the  
traffic and go back to bed.   He did but I heard him.  I whispered,  
"How's the traffic?"   His response, "I never dreamed it could be  
that bad.   It's just standing still on the expressway."   Since then  
population has doubled again.   Today the Phoenix-Mesa MSA has 4.5  
million people, roughly two-thirds of the entire state.   That should  
give you a clue why they built a starter light rail line that opens  
eight days from now.


On Dec 19, 2008, at 11:21 AM, John Swindler wrote:

>
>
>
> Try this article.  And as usual, I would not bet the farm on the  
> facts listed, but might still be of interest.
>
>
> Texas Drivers' Miles Going Downhill
>
> Michael A. Lindenberger
> The Dallas Morning News
>
> TEXAS - America's long love affair with the automobile has  
> apparently cooled - and the relationship may have been on the rocks  
> long before gas prices began breaking records this year.
>
> All across the country, Americans began driving fewer miles on  
> average as far back as 2005, and they may have crested as early as  
> 2002, according to a national study by the Brookings Institution in  
> Washington.
>
> "As a nation, we may be reaching a saturation point in terms of  
> just how many miles each American driver can tolerate," said Adie  
> Tomer, a co-author of the report and a research analyst with  
> Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program. "We may have actually  
> reached a peak."
>
> Long before gas prices began shooting up in 2008, per capita miles  
> driven in many of the nation's 100 biggest cities had begun  
> slowing, the report says. Drivers logged fewer miles in 2006 than  
> in 2002 in 26 of the 100 cities. Since 2006, the trend has  
> accelerated, according to the report.
> Nowhere has it been more noticeable than in some of Texas' fastest- 
> growing cities, including Dallas, Houston and especially Austin,  
> where per capita miles driven fell 12 percent, the biggest decline  
> among the top 100 metro areas in the country.
>
> Transit one reason
>
> Why the decline? And why especially in Texas, where the romance  
> with automobiles has always seemed especially committed? After all,  
> Houston is the same city that for much of the last year featured  
> billboard advertisements touting the city's idea of mass transit:  
> an extra-large SUV.
>
> But Mr. Tomer suggested that many of the fastest-growing cities in  
> America, including Houston and Dallas, feature rail systems that  
> have only just begun reaching maturity. For residents in those  
> cities, regular rail ridership has become a real possibility for  
> daily commuters.
>
> That's an especially viable explanation in Dallas, where transit  
> ridership spiked over the summer, when gas prices soared, and has  
> yet to subside.
> On Tuesday, DART officials announced another month of growth across  
> its system. Average weekday ridership on its TRE commuter line was  
> up nearly 13 percent compared with November 2007. Average weekday  
> demand for light rail was up 14 percent, the agency said. Total bus  
> ridership declined slightly but only because the month had fewer  
> workdays than a year ago, officials said
>
> "We've found that most of the people who tried using transit ended  
> up staying," DART's Rob Smith said.
>
> Parking lots, he said, remain packed along much of the Red Line,  
> though crowds have come down some from their highs earlier this  
> year. November is always slower than August and September, Mr.  
> Smith said.
>
> The DART system is also growing, with theagency overseeing the most  
> aggressive rail expansion in North America, including the Green  
> Line running to Carrollton by 2009 and the Orange Line, which will  
> eventually run through Irving and reach Dallas/Fort Worth  
> International Airport.
>
> The increased demand for DART service doesn't surprise legal  
> secretary Linda Barnum of East Dallas.
>
> "I've been riding since 1979, but it wasn't until my kids were out  
> of the house, in 2003 or so, and I didn't need to run around to  
> their practices or ball games, that I began to ride full time," she  
> said. "Now I walk down to the corner by 8:10 every morning, and I  
> am dropped off at the front door of my work downtown by 8:40."
>
> She said she loaned her son her car around Halloween and hasn't  
> seen it since. "It's OK. The less I drive, the nicer and happier I  
> am."
>
> Among other factors easy to see in the Dallas area was the speed  
> with which employers moved to the suburbs to be closer to the  
> workforce, a trend represented by Richardson's tech center or Las  
> Colinas' business hub. And a look at Uptown's condominium market,  
> or the growing number of lofts downtown, show that some residents  
> prefer dense living, even in cities like Dallas where suburbs have  
> been king for generations.
>
> But while the early signs of the drift away from driving were first  
> seen in cities like Dallas and Austin, they have since become more  
> widespread, Mr. Tomer said. Big shifts in American demographics  
> have finally neared the end of their cycles, he said. For instance,  
> the number of cars owned by each household, which steadily  
> increased for decades, has tapered.
>
> Too many highways?
>
> Planners in Dallas and other fast-growing cities continue to call  
> for more funding to build more highways. But if Americans are  
> falling out of love with driving, won't they need fewer highways?
>
> The answer is yes, said Mr. Tomer, though he said cities like  
> Houston and Dallas have huge freight transportation needs that will  
> require more highways. But he said just how many more is a matter  
> for reflection, and he urged planners to re-examine whether  
> highways should continue to dominate funding.
>
> "If the first sign of the flu is a sore throat, then we feel like  
> these numbers are the first indication that there is very real  
> potential that we may be building too much highway infrastructure,"  
> he said. "Certainly, in areas like the Port of Houston, and like  
> the city of Dallas, both of which are major freight hubs, there is  
> going to be a need for continued investment. But we do feel that  
> this is a very big neon sign warning cities to reassess what their  
> growth projections are in terms of local driving."
>
> DART RIDERSHIP: Upward trends
> Average weekday trips in November Percentage gain from Nov. '07
> Trinity Railway Express 10,567 12.8
> Light rail 70,690 13.9
> Bus 161,327 2.7
> SOURCE: DART
>
>
>
>
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