My latest piece is now online at City Journal. It's a recap of the Indianapolis BRT and Columbus free downtown transit success, as well as a look at Kansas City's contemplation of free transit citywide. Thanks to a commenter here who originally alerted me to KC's plans. Here's an excerpt: Kansas City is considering the complete elimination of transit fares. In major cities, fares commonly pay for a substantial amount of the overall cost of service operations, and trains and buses are often overcrowded. In Kansas City, though, fares cover only … [Read more...]
Downtown Columbus Bus Commuting Surges
Here's another bit of transit good news in the Midwest. The share of workers in downtown Columbus using transit to to comment rose from 5% to somewhere between 10-14% in only about a year. Columbus underground has the story. This ridership surge is a result of the C-Pass program, which provides a free bus pass to downtown workers. I've argued for a while that small cities should have fareless transit. Their farebox recovery is generally very small. Overall ridership is low. And the system is mostly below capacity. What's more, the riders of … [Read more...]
Indy’s Cost Effective Transit Improvement Plan Is a Model for Low Density Cities
My latest piece is online at CityLab. It's a look at the transit improvement plans in Indianapolis as the city's first Bus Rapid Transit line on September 1st. Indy's system is a model for how lower density cities with auto-centric cultures can start making major improvements in their transit offerings in a capital efficient way. (Transport guru Yonah Freemark likewise holds the Indy system in high regard, writing in Streetsblog back in 2017 that it is going to be "like launching a brand new transit system."). Indy is upgrading its system in … [Read more...]
A Blast from the Past in Charlotte and Columbus
I saw a couple of recent reposts containing very interesting material from several decades ago in Charlotte and Columbus. The first is a 25 minute TV special from the 1960s looking at a proposal to issue bonds to fund urban renewal in downtown Charlotte. A few things struck me about this. The first is that despite the video being labeled "Uptown Do or Die" by the local organization that posted it, Charlotte's central business district is consistently referred to in the video as "downtown" not "uptown" as people do today. It's interesting to … [Read more...]
We Need More Family Friendly Cities
My latest piece is now online at the Institute for Family Studies. It's a look at what it would take to make more family friendly cities. Here is an excerpt: In January, Malaysia Goodson was killed when she fell down the stairs at New York’s 7th Avenue subway station while carrying a stroller with her one-year-old daughter in it. The baby girl survived but now faces life without her mother. The 7th Avenue station is one of many in the city without elevators. Only about a quarter of New York City subway stations have elevators. This not … [Read more...]
New York Needs to Think Like a Growth City Again
My latest article is now online in City Journal, and is about the need for New York to start thinking like a growth city again. It's interesting to contrast NYC with the case of Atlanta I recently wrote about. Atlanta has seen decelerating growth indicating it may be nearing maturity. New York long ago transitioned to maturity. But then the city started to experience growth once again, entering, if not its historic boom era growth, at least a much higher demand phase. But it has been unable to respond to the problem. In part I argue that comes … [Read more...]
Atlanta as a Maturing City
My latest piece is now online over at City Journal. It's a look at Atlanta, now bouncing back from a very rough 10-12 year period, but looking increasingly like a city that is maturing rather than a go-go boomtown in its hypergrowth phase. Here's an excerpt: Though still growing rapidly, Atlanta’s fortunes have taken a hit in the new century. From 1980 to 2000, metro Atlanta grew in population by an astonishing 82.3 percent, outdistancing Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston. But in the 18 years since 2000, its population growth rate was only 39.6 … [Read more...]
Population Shifting in the Midwest
My latest post is online at City Journal. I actually wrote it prior to the Indy op-ed I just put up, but for scheduling reasons they came out in the reverse order. This contains some of the background information against which that op-ed was written. It's about the resorting of population that's occurring within US states in the Midwest. Here's an excerpt: America’s transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy resulted in a spatial shift in population, from rural to urban. As the economy continues to adapt from industrial to … [Read more...]
High Performing Midwest Cities Need to Learn How to Attract National Talent
My latest column is online in the Indianapolis Business Journal. Obviously it's about Indianapolis, but similar arguments apply to basically every other basically well-performing Midwest city. They are completely parochial talent sheds and need to attract from further afield. Here's an excerpt: Nashville won 5,000 Amazon jobs despite being smaller and having fewer tech jobs than Indianapolis. One reason is that Nashville draws people from all over the country, while Indianapolis overwhelmingly draws from just Indiana. Metro Indy actually … [Read more...]
Indianapolis Bus Rapid Transit
I was on vacation back in Indiana last week, so what else would I do but arrange to take a ride on Indy's under construction BRT system? I had a positive impression of it and am planning to write up a longer piece about the system and the role of BRT in low-density cities generally. In the meantime, here's a podcast I recorded about the project with Jerome Horne from the city's transit agency. If the audio player doesn't display for you, click over to listen on … [Read more...]
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