Globally, people rarely use public transportation because of morality; they use it because it is cheap. The reason it’s cheaper to take the bus than to drive in Russia, for example, is not because the government there cares about reducing emissions. It’s because transit utilizes resources more efficiently, and frees up resources to be used on other projects, like war.
The data demonstrates that this rule applies to Americans. When factoring in maintenance, car payments, fuel and insurance, owning and operating a car costs roughly $10,000 per year in the United States on average. Let’s compare a daily commute from the suburb of Kent to Seattle, with driving vs transit. A regional monthly transit pass costs $144 and covers every form of transit: all busses, light rail, commuter rail, water taxis, monorail, everything, plus or minus a dollar here or there for the occasional trip off the beaten path. The result is roughly $1,500 a year versus $10,000 a year. By switching to transit, the average American would give themselves an $8,500 raise.
Motorists may protest and claim their expenses are lower based on careful driving habits and short trips. They are wrong. A commuter from Kent who used their car exclusively to drive 20 miles to work in central Seattle, never paid for parking, made absolutely no other trips, performed absolutely no maintenance, got their car for free, didn’t register their vehicle, never paid for insurance, and avoided all accidents while driving a vehicle with the average mpg of 27.5 would still come out $200 ahead by switching to transit and avoiding the price of fuel alone.
More below the fold.
Because it is ubiquitous across industries, capitalist institutions often blame labor exclusively for cost-push inflation, but there is another culprit nearly as prevalent in keeping the economy chugging along: fuel. Oil prices underpin all transactions, whether directly at the pump or indirectly through logistics costs.
Switching from personal vehicles to public transportation increases the efficiency of human movement by increasing the amount of people moved per unit of fuel. Avoiding the waste associated with driving a car, especially along routes where busses and trains have empty seats, increases the supply of fuel available for material logistics. This increased supply decreases operating costs, in turn decreasing the pressure on firms to raise prices.
Whether large profit-driven corporations will respond by lowering prices is irrelevant, because decreased operating costs allows smaller enterprises, such as co-ops, to lower their own prices to compete more effectively with larger profit-driven institutions. The result is better quality goods available at cheaper prices to consumers looking to spend the $8,500 they’d saved by switching to transit in the first place.
Fuel is not the only commodity which affects inflation: steel, copper, plastic, and electronic components are all essential industrial materials wasted on cars. These same materials can be used to build value-producing and compounding structures: housing, factories, schools, and hospitals. These are but a few opportunity costs sacrificed to car manufacturing. These projects all represent some form of investment—an asset which holds, produces, and/or gains value over time—the fiscal opposite of a car. Not only that, an increased supply of these assets, most notably housing, would decrease demand-pull inflation. In contrast, cars lose the majority of their value upon initial sale.
To borrow capitalist economic ideas: increases in productivity can decrease inflation by decreasing the scarcity of goods and services. Every resource producing to its maximum potential means less waste, less scarcity, and decreased prices. For example, a single desktop or laptop computer utilizes electronics extremely efficiently. In a single day those electronics, if used in a computer, can facilitate instant communication with colleagues, create architectural blueprints for the housing projects mentioned earlier, and play movies or games after those updated plans have been sent off to construction workers. Logistical, labor, and recreational value can all be produced by a single item in a short period of time. Conversely, automotive electronics produce absolutely no value beyond their immediate use. In direct individual material terms: the average American would be financially better off by abandoning their cars in favor of public transportation and using the $8,500 they’d gain to purchase an extremely powerful computer.
As gamblers assume they won’t fall prey to the house’s odds, motorists believe they won’t suffer injury or death in a car wreck. The absolutely dismal safety of private motor vehicles—12,000% deadlier than transit in the United States, using the most conservative estimates—represent an astronomic material waste in lifetimes of labor, not to mention insurance payouts, which exert upward pressure on monthly insurance premiums. Factor in increased road maintenance, medical facility usage, auto repairs, and demand for the materials to manufacture replacement cars, and the wasted resources weighs heavily on inflation.
Oceans of waste could be drained if people chose a safer form of transportation than cars. The marginal increases in automotive safety over time pale in comparison to the impeccable safety record of public transportation in the United States: since 1975, with all the increased safety regulations and manufacturing techniques, cars have become 35% less deadly while remaining 12,000% deadlier than transit. This means driving produces 12,000% more economic waste and 12,000% more demand on scarce resources. Like gamblers venturing back into the casino after extending their credit to pay off previous debts, drivers feed the cycle of pain, suffering, death, and worst of all inflation by choosing to get back on the road after an accident. However, gambling and driving possess one vital difference: switching to transit is easier than fighting addiction.
By choosing public transportation, we help society function more efficiently. We can combat inflation and the climate crisis while increasing our general well-being if we make economically wiser choices. The resources are there, they’re just being wasted.
This doesn’t mention time and uncertainty, which is a lot of why people commuting to Seattle choose a car over transit. It’s not just raw dollars.
Yep… I take Link/transit when it’s fast and efficient. I drive when that is a better choice. It’s not *just* about dollars, it’s about time and convenience.
I think you are missing the point of the article. Government spending effects when transit is a competitive choice. https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/09/17/inflation-and-transportation/#comment-918134/
I’m missing anything… transit choice is not just dollars – it’s time and convenience.
There is a bus stop outside of my apartment building and that bus will go the less than 10 blocks to my local QFC. I can walk down there and wait for the bus to take me to QFC, haul my groceries back to the bus stop and wait, then bus back to my apartment… or I can drive which takes a fraction of the time and I’m not schlepping groceries on the bus.
I drive to the grocery store even though there is a cheaper transit option right there. Why? Cause driving is easier in that situation, and it isn’t close for me. (Especially if it’s winter and raining out.)
I am with Matt when I go grocery shopping.
The #372 is within 2 blocks of where I live and goes by the U Village where I shop at QFC so I could go by bus but I won’t because of the convenience of driving.
If I were to take the bus I would have to carry at least 2 bags from the east side of the U Village to the stop on 25th Ave NE and that includes the final part of going up an incline. Then at my stop I would have to go up a steep hill for 2 blocks to get to my home carrying those grocery backs.
No thank you. It may be less expensive to take the bus but in this case convenience overrides that. And you can run the #372 every 5 minutes but I still won’t take it to do my grocery shopping.
If you invest in transit (https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/09/17/inflation-and-transportation/#comment-918134/) then transit becomes competitive with driving from a time and reliability standpoint.
Indeed. In European cities that didn’t invest in making transit better over the past 70 years, you see the same mess as the USA has.
It’s a good insight that very few people use public transportation due to ideological commitment, but cheap is not why people use public transportation. They use it when it’s more valuable than the alternatives. Price is part of that, but so is travel time, availability (frequency), directness (goes where you want to get to), convenience, comfort and safety. People use transit because it’s rational for them, and if we want to get people to use transit we need to work on making it the rational alternative. Cheaper might help, but not at the expense of overall value.
Absolutely yes.
Those countries in Europe that have a high transit mode share have worked hard at building speed competitive transit, which attracts more riders.
Once the transit mode share becomes high enough, then people are able to make enough noise to demand better safety, comfort, etc.
If it remains the mode only used by the poorest people, then the best that can be hoped for is lip service.
But why did they spend so much money on transit? Why not just give everyone subsidies to drive their car, and spend money on the road? Is it some sort of morality based decision?
No, it is because it is cheaper. That is the whole point of the article. https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/09/17/inflation-and-transportation/#comment-918134/
I think we’re forgetting that in countries outside Europe transit is more popular, especially for the poor.
While in Indonesia many people use motorbikes, the most economical option is to use bus routes which operate with vans and trucks (though Jakarta now has an amazing BRT system which they’ve heavily invested in, this is aimed more at the urban core, which represents some of the wealthiest people in the country). The “grand taxi” system in Morocco and the Dolmus system in Turkey also demonstrate how private cars are utilized as public transit vehicles in order to operate more economically.
Public transit isn’t a luxury good. Good public transit is a luxury good. For most people in the world, transit is simply the only economically viable way to navigate.
Also, about transit in developed and developing countries:
It all comes down to infrastructure choices made by governments. Indonesia, again, has made massive investments in delivering effective transit and rail service throughout its major cities, instead of opting to expand infrastructure for motorbikes, even though I can testify that motorbike culture in that country is as strong as car culture in the US.
Why has the government chosen to do this? Was it because they feel bad about climate? Maybe partly, because Jokowi has been taking massive steps to combat deforestation in the country. However, their government has no qualms with the Freeport gold mine in West Papua as long as they are receiving a share of its profits (meaning that they don’t simply want all the profits to finance Subway expansions in New York), so why do this?
They are making these investments because Indonesia is consuming more oil than it exports, and they want to close their trade deficit. This isn’t a “oh, we’re poor so we can’t use anything else” because there’s a well established culture of cheap efficient private active transport. If everyone in the CA switched to motorbikes, the fuel efficiency savings would be massive, compared to what we use now.
Still, even that wasn’t efficient enough, because Indonesia is a massive country. The fuel efficiency savings of having people switch to public transit make sense for the government from a broader fiscal perspective, regardless of whether the government cares about the climate.
To be fair, operating transit is probably much cheaper in Indonesia than in the U.S. because labor is cheap.
But, the overpoint here is still correct. I believe there have been cases where cities have experimented with simply subsidizing low-income people’s car expenses as an alternative to transit. But, they quickly realized that to get the cost down to to what somebody would spend on transit fares, the per-person subsidy would vastly exceed the cost of running a transit system, which means the same amount of money would serve vastly fewer people, even if the few people that were served would, of course, like it better.
People love to complain about public transit. But, as a solution for how people that can’t afford a car get around, public transit is still far, far superior than a hypothetical government program where the city/state eventually buys you a car and pays for your gas, insurance, and repair bills, but only after making you wait in line for years or decades to get anything, leaving you stuck with no mobility at all in the in the interim. The latter essentially describes situation for people in need of government-subsidized housing (just replace cars with homes), and there is reason why housing is vastly more expensive for the public to provide than transportation.
This. If you factor in how one values their time, it’s easy to see why non-poor people only ride transit when it’s good transit (fast, frequent, direct, etc.).
Even poor people get forced into using a car when they can’t get where they need to on transit. And that’s a bigger issue as the poor have been gentrified out of Seattle to distant car-dependent suburbs, often far from the dispersed jobs they’re competing for. There are not a lot of jobs for the poor in downtown Seattle or Bellevue.
Actually it’s interesting, because studies have shown people are generally more tolerant of long commutes as long as there are infrequent transfers. This is why planning effective routes is so important.
When it comes to valuing time: isn’t time spent reading a book on a bus better spent than giving yourself a stroke by navigating traffic?
Collin,
Do you have any links to the studies which “have shown people are generally more tolerant of long commutes as long as there are infrequent transfers”?
I am asking because one of the common discussion points here is that of long-distance expresses, such as from North Seattle to First Hill, or from Issaquah to downtown, or even the 255 to downtown, and of course more recently the Snohomish County 400-series buses. The typical position from most of the strongest transit advocates on the blog (including two of the moderators) is that they should all be truncated at Link stations in order to reuse the funds to open up other non-commute related trip pairs.
It would be interesting to see whether the studies you alluded to get into the specific of such trade-offs, and what that entails for ridership.
Appreciate your help (and thanks for an interesting article, also!)
The argument that transfers are inherently bad, even independent of time, is a big underpinning for how transit was traditionally planned back in the 1990’s. It lead to lots of ridiculously long routes where the bus would *eventually* get you downtown with one seat, but the trip would actually take longer than transit options today which involve transferring.
The 271 running all the way from Issaquah to the U-district is one legacy example of this – somebody going all the way would get there faster by riding the 554 and transferring to Link. There also used to be a bus, I heard, running all the way from North Bend to downtown Seattle, stopping at every nook and cranny along the way, using the freeway only for the bridges on each side of Mercer Island, where there was no alternative. I believe Mike Orr can provide you with details, including the route number.
However, this is logic that I personally strongly disagree with. Transfers are bad to the extent that transferring takes time and that the time it takes to transfer is not always predictable, but the argument that a 60-minute trip without a transfer is inherently better than a 60-minute trip with a transfer never really made sense to me. When a bus makes lots of twists and turns, as long one-seat rides often do, you can’t “just read a book” without getting motion sickness. And it’s the total travel time that determines when you need to leave to reach a destination at a certain time.
Also, any route optimization around one-seat rides only works for one-seat rides to one particular place, and usually comes at the cost of big increases in travel time to go anywhere else. Lots of one-seat rides also tends to lead to worse frequency, so you end up waiting longer at the bus stop. Again, this was evident of the 1990’s way of thinking, where transit was all about getting to and from downtown Seattle, and it was simply assumed that everybody had a car to go everywhere else; those few that didn’t could put up with a crappy system that took forever to get anywhere not downtown because beggars cannot be choosers.
Going back to the 255…just yesterday, I had something going on at Phinney Ridge and rode the bus there from Kirkland. It was a 3-seat ride both directions, but all three seats ran fairly frequently and, on the way back, I was able to break the trip up with a dinner stop. Of course, a one-seat ride from Kirkland to Phinney Ridge would have made for a faster trip, but I know that asking for such a one-seat ride would be unreasonable. I can say, however, that with the old 255 that went downtown, the trip would have definitely been worse, and probably increased the travel time to close to an hour and a half by adding several miles to trip, plus slow slogs through downtown on the 255 and Belltown on the 5. It would have also shifted the transfer points from relatively safe areas in the U-district, Roosevelt, and Fremont, to 3rd and Pine, one of the most dangerous places to wait for a bus in the entire city.
asdf2,
Thanks for a thoughtful post. However, I would like to reiterate that what I am looking for is not the opinion of people who already post on this blog, which have already been presented at great length, but rather the academic studies which Collin alluded to.
The argument that transfers are inherently bad, even independent of time, is a big underpinning for how transit was traditionally planned back in the 1990’s.
Transfers are inherently bad. I’m too lazy to find the research again, but they have found that there is a transfer penalty, and while it varies, it is always there. Even if it is well timed (and you have minimal waiting) you lose some riders, because they hate transferring.
But waiting is inherently bad as well. So is a slow trip. From a transit network standpoint, this creates a conflict. Jarrett Walker explains this quite well here: https://humantransit.org/2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-for-you-and-good-for-your-city.html. Sometimes there are worse things than transfers.
But it also depends on the type of transfer. The ideal is same platform transfers, with a minimal amount of waiting. These happen all the time with subway systems. Short walks (to frequent trains) are also common. There is little penalty in these cases. The other extreme is something Michelle mentioned the other day (https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/09/12/reasonable-transit-expectations/#comment-917914). If the buses are infrequent, a transfer is miserable.
I know there is a curve with both transfers and frequency. You always add riders when you make transit more frequent, but at some point, you add very few. It just doesn’t make much difference if a train comes every minute, or every two minutes. There is a similar curve with transfers. The longer the wait, the worse it is, but even if the wait is minimal, people still don’t like them. It would not surprise me if there is a “sweet spot” where increasing frequency more than makes up for the transfer.
The 522 is a good example. It used to run from Bothell/Lake City Way to downtown. During rush hour, it combined with Metro buses to run every couple minutes. Now those riders are forced to transfer, and my guess is, this is not popular. But in the middle of the day, the bus used to run every half hour. Now it runs every fifteen minutes. This is a huge change. The train is also frequent, which means the total waiting time is often a lot less. So in this case, I could see people appreciating the extra frequency, even if they don’t like the transfer. But imagine if the bus was very infrequent — say every two hours. Also imagine the train ran every half hour in the middle of the day. If the bus ran every hour it would be a big improvement — but I’m not sure if it would make up for the fact that riders have that transfer. This explains the transit patterns you find in various places. If you have very limited resources, you pretty much give up on transfers, and run buses to the one main destination (typically downtown). If you have more resources, you build a grid, and ask people to make (relatively painless) transfers, even to major destinations. If you have a ton of resources, you overlay that grid with express service that eliminates transfers (since you essentially have service to spare).
Of course this assumes everyone is heading to the same place. In that 522 example, it may be roughly the same for riders heading downtown. But the big advantage is for riders heading other places (Roosevelt, UW, Capitol Hill, etc.). One of the reasons I’m a big advocate for a grid in Seattle is because people are taking transit to many destinations (not just downtown) and we are in that “sweet spot” where frequency is very important.
As to the earlier question, I don’t remember any studies about transfers and length of trip. The transfer penalty is more about the amount of time waiting, as well as what it involved (e. g. a lot of walking, or standing in the rain). I do know that the longer the trip, the less important frequency is. For example, with commuter rail, better frequency leads to more riders, but not as much as improving frequency inside the city does. I also know there are effective limits to how long people will spend commuting. This may be what is happening. It might not be the transfer exactly, but the extra time spent because of the transfer. It is also quite possible that a transfer is just one extra step that people don’t want to take — the straw that breaks the camels back, so to speak.
To be clear — I’m not saying that there isn’t a transfer penalty — I’m just saying that there may be nothing special about long commutes and that transfer penalty.
Thank you, Ross, also, for the detailed comment.
I will reiterate that I am specifically asking Collin for links or references to the studies alluded to, not in opinions of the people on this blog, which have been provided numerous times. I would like to see what other people are saying, and I don’t want that request to get lost behind walls of text. So I will continue to bubble it up to the end of this subthread as often as I need to :)
@Anon
Jumping off point…
I have this paper from a few years ago bookmarked on my phone. You’ll find earlier studies referenced as well.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965856417303117
The long slow milk runs were 1970s thinking, not 1990s. In 1990 the DSTT routes were restructured, and gradually the others were too.
When I was riding Metro from 1979 to 1990 there were these routes:
16: downtown, Seattle Center East, Wallingford, Tangletown, Greenlake, Northgate, early morning runs extended to Haller Lake (145th).
42; downtown, Dearborn Street, MLK, Rainier View, early morning runs extended to Renton.
131, 132: downtown, SODO, Burien, Des Moines.
150: downtown, Southcenter, Kent, Auburn.
174: downtown, SODO, Sea-Tac strip, Des Moines, Federal Way.
210: downtown, Mercer Island, Newport Way (Factoria, Somerset), Issaquah, Fall City, Snoqualmie, North Bend.
226: downtown, Mercer Island (3 stops), Enatai, Bellevue, Crossroads, east of Crossroads, Overlake, Redmond.
235: downtown, Mercer Island (3 stops), Beaux Arts, Bellevue, north Bellevue Way, Kirkland, Rose Hill, Totem Lake.
240: Clyde Hill, Bellevue, Newport Hills, Kennydale, Renton, Riverton Heights, Sea-Tac airport, Burien.
305: downtown, Eastlake (limited stops), Roosevelt, Northgate, North City, Richmond Beach.
307: downtown, Northgate (express), Lake City, Bothell, Woodinville.
The 210 gained a little speed on Mercer Island because it made only one stop instead of three.
Transfers are a continuum and have tradeoffs, and different people value the tradeoffs differently. But more people flock to frequent consolidated routes with somewhat robust speed (E, expresses) than to slow, long, half-hourly or hourly milk runs.
A transfer is reasonable every 20 or 30 minutes or 5 or 10 miles. It’s not reasonable every few minutes when you’ve just sat down and have to get up again almost immediately. A long segment and a short segment is tolerable, but not so much two or three short segments. The wait time should be a small percent of the total trip, not half of it or more. What people hate more than being on transit for a long time is waiting for it for a long time.
Tlsgwm, thank you very much for the link! Looks super interesting.
cheap is not why people use public transportation.
Cheap is why governments build public transportation. That is the point. Building good public transportation is way cheaper — per person — then asking them to drive. At that point, being cheaper is definitely a reason why people ride public transportation. Lots of people take cabs in New York City — roughly 350,000 a day. But about twice as many take buses, and 1.7 million take the subway. Yeah, sometimes the subway is faster than taking a cab, but not that often. So price — both at the micro and macro level — definitely plays a part.
https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/09/17/inflation-and-transportation/#comment-918134/
The article makes an unquestioned assumption that driving a car means burning fuel, an assumption which is increasingly less and less true. For those fortunate enough to charge an electric car at home, each mile costs about 4 cents worth of electricity at current PSE rates. If you charge the car late at night, or have home solar panels, it can be even less. Electric cars also require much less maintenance per mile traveled than their gasoline counterparts. I’ve driven from Kirkland all the way to the North Cascades and back in an electric car, paying about as much in electricity as one round trip bus fare between Kirkland and Seattle.
Of course, the car itself costs a lot of money, as does registration and insurance, so the total cost of ownership is actually much higher than this. But, where cars get you is, there will always be some trips you will need/want to take at some point that are not not feasible on transit (and making it so would be cost prohibitive). Renting cars has very high transaction costs, both in money and time. So, if you need to do it more than very rarely, you end up needing to own the car. Once you own the car, the marginal cost of driving it everywhere, even on trips you don’t actually need the car for is so low, the economic system says there is really no reason not to.
The big exception, of course, is when paid parking is involved. It doesn’t matter how cheap the energy is, of you have to pay for parking, transit is usually cheaper. But, that use case is limited to only a handful of destinations in the center of the city, plus the airport.
We have a LONG way to go before driving a car does not involve burning fuel. EV use is rapidly increasing, but if you crunch the math, you’re walking about roughly 15 years for full fleet replacement if ALL the world’s vehicle production went into EVs and if people stopped driving their older ICE vehicles at the same rate.
That’s true from the perspective of the transportation system as a whole, but from the perspective of an individual, you can choose to switch over to electric much sooner than that if you can find a car you can afford have the inclination.
While it is true that most electric models these days are overpriced luxury toys for rich people, they’re not all like that. And, as time goes on and cars depreciate, used electric cars are going to get cheaper and cheaper, eventually trickling down into the price ranges for people that can’t afford the newer models.
I have a very non-wealthy friend that gets by just fine with a 2019 Chevy Bolt. It doesn’t need to be a luxury car at all.
That said, ≈$20,000 for a car = 400 days of car rental at $50 / day. If doing that 1 day per week it’s 7.7 years.
So if you’re getting by with a majority of your trips by transit, buying a car may not pencil out.
That’s true from the perspective of the transportation system as a whole, but from the perspective of an individual, you can choose to switch over to electric much sooner than that if you can find a car you can afford have the inclination.
So what? That is irrelevant.
Gas is a tiny amount of the cost of driving. It is also how we get a lot of money to fund road maintenance. If people all switch to electric vehicles, the energy has to come from somewhere, and the money for the roads does too. The math might be a tiny bit different, but ultimately it works out in a similar way. As a society, spending money on transit is a much better deal than spending money on automobiles (and their infrastructure).
Even if I could personally afford to switch to an EV right now, the cost of a used car loan at today’s interest rates, getting an electrician to install a charging system at home, (presumably) higher insurance and higher annual car tabs, is way more than the fuel cost to drive my current ICE car into the ground. Which itself is of course way more expensive than if I switched to bus and e-bike for all day to day trips. (Too bad my local bus runs hourly much of the day and safe bike lanes are scarce).
Home charging system: they typically come with a 120 volt use-anywhere charger. Slow, but they work.
A 240 volt 30 amp charger can be bought for $200. This plugs into a clothes dryer outlet.
Adding a second outlet to an existing 240 volt circuit (dryer, range, etc) and just not running both at the same time isn’t that expensive, depending on obstacles.
Car purchase price and car tabs are obviously a bit different. You can find used Chevy Bolts for about $20,000 though, so converting is not a huge financial burden like it was a few years ago.
@glen in Portland,
Despite the fact that most people own at least one car and are utterly dependent on it for everything in day-to-day life, in reality any individual car spends almost all of its time parked. This makes slow charging with 110v actually fairly practical.
Typically an EV owner might get 5 miles of range per hour of charging using 110v. But since the car is actually sitting for most of the day, this represents potentially over 100 miles of additional battery range.
100 miles is more than the typical plug in hybrid battery can hold, and it is about double the typical usage of the average American car. So the battery will never get fully drained in typical operation.
And, as you say, adding a 220v home charger is easy and cheap in most cases.
If you are going to own an EV you really need at least a 240v charger at home, which as Lazarus notes is not expensive to install and will fully charge an EV overnight.
The bigger issue is charging on the road (or in multi-family units). One of Tesla’s main selling points was its network of super-fast chargers that can charge an EV in 20 minutes, at least to 70%. As it sold more and more Tesla’s those waits became longer and longer. Imagine the lines and frustration if filling a car with gas took 20 minutes, both for the owner and those waiting. When it comes to charging, including multi-family units, folks hook up their car to the charger and leave it there overnight.
Now under pressure from the Biden admin. Tesla will open up its charging stations to all EV’s, and EV manufacturers will standardize charging stations and hookups. This is bad for Tesla owners, but Musk made the decision he would rather be JD Rockefeller (gas) than Henry Ford (cars).
The other issue is the battery. EV’s have much shorter ranges in the cold or if towing anything, and America is huge and mostly undense. The issue with buying a used EV is replacing the battery, which slowly declines in range and power, costs around $15,000.
The Wall St. Journal was quite excited yesterday about data that shows EV sales surpassed 1 million vehicles last year, but that is just 7% of all vehicle sales. Until the charging and battery life and strength, including in cold weather, improve, EV’s will remain a niche large city urban car for wealthy folks who want to feel like they are solving global warming.
The lack of home charging at multi-family units – this is indeed a huge issue for mass EV adoption, and something that politicians who promote EVs as a solution to the climate crisis seem to be mostly ignoring. It’s important enough that I don’t think any form of mandated switch to EVs will be feasible until this is solved. Ultimately, the government is just going to have to pay landlords to install home charging for their residents at their properties, as landlords won’t fork over the money to do so on their own; it will not be cheap.
Battery life – this was a big issue with Nissan Leafs, but battery technology has improved a lot since then and some modern EVs have been driven over 150,000 miles and still have 85-90% of their original range. The business of needing to replace the battery every 10 years for $15,000 is largely a myth (at least if your car is not a Nissan Leaf).
Road tripping – Currently, the charging infrastructure is built around the assumption that only a few people driving by per day will be in EVs, while everyone else will be burning gas. At the moment, for example, the public chargers allow roughly as many people to travel between Seattle and Spokane each day as the number of seats on the once-per-day Empire Builder. As we all know, far more people per day drive between Seattle and Spokane than ride the train, which means the current charging capacity just won’t cut it. The same is true on travel corridors all over the country. Fortunately, the Inflation Reduction Act has money to address this. We’ll see how far it goes. That said, most people do not road trip very often, a lot of the road trips people do take happen in the form of flying somewhere and driving a rental car from the airport. There are also a lot of multi-car families who have the option to replace the old of their cars with an EV, while still having the gas car around for a few more years until charging improves.
Winter range loss – this matters far more for city driving than it does for a high driving, which means it’s a big deal for Uber drivers, but probably much less of a concern for skiiers and road trippers than people think it is. For what it’s worth, I have personally driven from Kirkland to both Snoqualmie Pass and Stevens Pass in an EV rated for 250 mile of range – in winter – and got back with plenty of battery leftover, without needing to do any charging during the trip. I also drove the same car to snowshoe Artist Point in March, up at Mt. Baker. This time, I did need to stop to charge on the way back, but only enough to get the rest of the way home, so the entire charging stop took just 10 minutes. Fueling a gas car and using the restroom would have taken easily the same 10 minutes.
Overall, I think there’s a lot of room for EV adoption to increase, simply from the majority of the country that is single family homeowners. Eventually, EVs will hit a wall, once the Democrats who own homes already have them, with Republicans (due to peer pressure) and renters (due to home charging issues) sticking to gas, in the absence of further inducements. But, we’re not anywhere near that point yet.
If everyone converted to EV’s the on the road charging time would need to equal the time it takes to fill a tank of gas or around 3 minutes for a full charge. assuming the number of charging stations that could do that equaled the number of gas pumps — not gas stations — in the U.S.
That day may come but it isn’t here. For multi-family or business charging there needs to be a mechanism that prevents someone hooking up and then leaving their car there for hours even after being fully charged. That is a very touchy issue in CA today, probably because Californians are so entitled.
@DT,
Range and charging are an overblown issue. I have two stories:
1). Was talking to my grad school TA the other day. His daughter bought a RAV4 Prime PHEV. She owned it for 9 months before she had to refill the tank. Didn’t even know where the gas cap was. This despite the fact that she is married, works, has two kids, lives in the city, and only uses 110v charging from a wall outlet (old house). She is like most Americans, daily car use is less that 50 miles per day.
2). My niece just graduated from college. Drives a Tesla Model S that she has had since about age 16. Gets free charging for life since she was an early adopter of Tesla, but rarely uses it. Her college provided free charging, and her driving is also mainly local. Less than 50 miles per day. The only times she actually needs quick charging was in her once a year RT to San Diego where she went to college. But now she doesn’t even have to do that.
Bottom line, EV’s and PHEV’s work for about 99% of most Americans daily needs. I expect my next car to be fully electric too.
> That day may come but it isn’t here. For multi-family or business charging there needs to be a mechanism that prevents someone hooking up and then leaving their car there for hours even after being fully charged. That is a very touchy issue in CA today, probably because Californians are so entitled.
Daniel that already exists. For Tesla chargers if you leave it too long it will start charging you idle fees (though only when there are few spots remaining). I’m not sure about other charging companies, but one could implement the same thing.
“The other issue is the battery. EV’s have much shorter ranges in the cold or if towing anything, and America is huge and mostly undense. The issue with buying a used EV is replacing the battery, which slowly declines in range and power, costs around $15,000.”
Terrain and speed are the big drivers. My friend can get from Portland to Bend on a charge, but it’s a continuous uphill and downhill. She can only get from Portland to Centralia due to the roller coaster nature of I-5, unless she uses the old highway.
She’s had no noticeable decline in range over the past 4 years.
The battery in a Prius owned by a relative hasn’t declined noticeably in the past 11 years, and it is a 2007 model year bought used.
So, properly used (Eg, with a charger with a decent algorithm) the batteries last a fairly long time.
Where does this $15,000 come from? I’ve never seen a price that high.
Electric public transit is more efficient than electric cars.
Around 4 million U.S. citizens are employed in the car and gas industries, and these are mostly high paying middle class jobs you can actually raise a family on. So eliminating cars would have a massive short and long term negative impact on the economy.
Transit spends too much time focusing on cars. EV’s negate the carbon issue. Mileage deductions reduce the cost of cars used for business. Uber solves the paid parking issue. If the price of gas influences inflation reduce the price by lowering taxes on gas, allow more drilling to increase supply and carbon and stop taxing cars for transit.
Begin with a reality: despite according to the article an $8500 annual cost differential between owning a car and using transit 90–95% trips in this region are by car/truck, and ask why that is.
One major factor is many people must drive a car or truck for work. The percentage of folks even in this region who can commute 100% by transit is small, and those are exactly the folks who can WFH.
Safety is such a deal breaker — especially for demographics like women or the elderly who are uncomfortable simply being on a public street at night alone — it is its own separate category. Any advantages PUBLIC transit might have for a trip are irrelevant if safety is even a hint of an issue.
Then you have those with kids. It is just very difficult to raise kids without a car.
So now we are down to a small percentage of Americans —mostly young single men — who can live without a car. As asdf2 notes, once someone owns a car the cost differential becomes very small.
The catch—22 is transit always does better in urban areas (in large part because the cost per boarding in areas like E or S KC are so high you don’t get much transit for each dollar spent) but today urban areas have safety issues again, and WFH has hurt the retail vibrancy of urban cores and their expensive parking when other areas have free parking. Plus the huge Millennial demographic is aging and marrying and moving out of urban areas.
Then in urban areas you have Uber that has all the advantages of driving plus you can drink alcohol and don’t have to worry about parking. For short trips, especially with more than one, Uber is price competitive (and also a huge jobs generator for those without a college degree with no public subsidy).
Once you get out of the urban area in which you can walk to transit you get to transit’s Achilles heel: first/last mile access, which means at least two seats including park and ride. . If first/last mile access begins in a car someone already owns and the destination has free parking transit is not competitive. Period.
A better approach I think is to focus on how transit can better serve the small percentage who will — and can — use it with the amount of public subsidies non-transit users are willing to pay. I get the goal: force or lure more drivers to transit so they vote for or demand more transit spending but today ridership is going down so that won’t work.
“EV’s negate the carbon issue. Mileage deductions reduce the cost of cars used for business. Uber solves the paid parking issue. If the price of gas influences inflation reduce the price by lowering taxes on gas, allow more drilling to increase supply and carbon and stop taxing cars for transit.”
Let’s take it one by one.
“EV’s negate the carbon issue.” Mostly true, since Seattle has a lot of hydropower in its electricity grid. but not 100%.
“Mileage deductions reduce the cost of cars used for business.” True, but it’s only useful if you’re either a gig worker or run your own business. Anyone else, that deduction may as well not exist. An employee cannot claim car mileage as a tax deduction for commuting to work, for example. And, even if you can claim the tax deduction, that only reduces the car costs, it doesn’t eliminate them.
“Uber solves the paid parking issue.” Definitely false. In nearly all cases, a round trip Uber ride costs more than parking does. Even for special events make parking very expensive, Uber will likely be in surge pricing when the event is over, so the ride home will also be very expensive. Of course, you can cut the price of the Uber option in half by taking it only one direction and riding transit the other direction, but that presumes a willingness to ride transit, which you assume is not the case.
“If the price of gas influences inflation reduce the price by lowering taxes on gas” Mostly false. The state gas tax (36 cents/gallon, I think) represents less than 10% of the price of gas. So, even lowering it all the way to zero wouldn’t make much of a dent. What it would do, though, is put a big whole in the state transportation budget unless other taxes go up to plug it. Although, a big hole in WSDOTs budget would mean a lot less freeway widening projects, so maybe that’s something urbanists can get behind after all…
“allow more drilling to increase supply”
This is a big right-wing talking point, but it would have only minimal impact, as the U.S. is full of existing drilling leases that oil companies are not even using.
“and stop taxing cars for transit”
The amount of money that cars are being taxed to fund transit is extraordinarily tiny compared to all the other costs of car ownership. You’re looking at a few hundred dollars a year (decreasing each year as the car depreciates) for sound transit and (I think) $15/year in Seattle for King County Metro, plus the transit portion of the sales tax when the car is purchased ($360 for a $20k car, one-time, but can be avoided by buying the car from a dealer outside the RTA area). When a car payment alone costs several hundred dollars per month, this is kind of chump change. Besides, as has already been litigated, existing Sound Transit bond obligations do not allow its MVET collections to be suspended.
Eliminating cars would have a massive short and long term negative impact on the economy.
Right, and if we cured cancer, lots of doctors would be out of work. You don’t base your economy on preserving jobs, you base it on providing the most benefit for the people in society. As it turns out, doing so actually makes for a stronger economy. Of course you need strong labor unions and good anti-trust laws, but this is just basic macro-economics.
EV’s negate the carbon issue.
That is simply not true. Over the life of the vehicle, EV’s cut CO2 by roughly half (https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-definitely-better-climate-gas-powered-cars). That is a big improvement, but you can get the same benefit by simply driving your car half as much.
Mileage deductions reduce the cost of cars used for business.
So what? Either way someone is paying for it (the taxpayer or the business).
If the price of gas influences inflation reduce the price by lowering taxes on gas, allow more drilling to increase supply and carbon and stop taxing cars for transit.
Wait, what??? You want to increase the amount of CO2 emissions??? Seriously? Just out of curiosity, are you a climate change denier or do you think it is no big deal? Or are you just throwing out random arguments in an attempt to stir up the debate (which is known as “trolling”). Seriously, I would like an answer, please.
Begin with a reality: despite according to the article an $8500 annual cost differential between owning a car and using transit 90–95% trips in this region are by car/truck, and ask why that is.
The answer is obvious: We have invested way too much in our automobile-based infrastructure, and not enough in transit. That is the whole point of this article.
The percentage of folks even in this region who can commute 100% by transit is small
Exactly! Again, that is the point of the article. It shouldn’t be small. If we invested in better transit, it wouldn’t be small. Yet it would cost far less than the amount of money we spend on a society where so many are dependent on their cars.
Then you have those with kids. It is just very difficult to raise kids without a car.
Holy cow, you keep missing the point. It shouldn’t be! It should be easy to raise kids without a car. People do it in cities (with good transit) all around the world.
Safety is such a deal breaker
Apparently it isn’t, since transit is much safer than driving (as the author pointed out).
The catch—22 is transit always does better in urban areas (in large part because the cost per boarding in areas like E or S KC are so high you don’t get much transit for each dollar spent) but today urban areas have safety issues again
Which are largely overblown by the right-wing media. I’m not saying there aren’t safety issues in the city, but overall, cities are still way safer than suburbs, simply because they have fewer automobile accidents. Meanwhile, the roughest parts of the country are suburbs, not cities. Think East Saint Louis, or Ferguson (you probably heard of it, right?).
WFH has hurt the retail vibrancy of urban cores and their expensive parking when other areas have free parking.
The parking only reflects demand. Areas like Ballard (which seem pretty damn vibrant last time I checked) have expensive parking simply because a lot of people want to park there. The areas that have free parking just don’t have as much demand (or the parking is otherwise subsidized).
Plus the huge Millennial demographic is aging and marrying and moving out of urban areas.
Nonsense. People are moving out of urban areas simply because they can’t afford them. At first glance, this makes no sense — it sounds like Yogi Berra (no one goes there anymore, it is too crowded). But what is actually happening is that in many popular cities (like Seattle) long time residents are simply not moving, while lots of other people want to move in. The demographics simply reflect an aging society. The problem is, there is no place to put all of the people that want to live here. You could build a lot more places for people to live, but that would mean changing the zoning, and cities have been reluctant to do that. But if people really didn’t want to live in the city, housing prices would plummet (and they clearly haven’t). This is 2023, not 1971.
Then in urban areas you have Uber that has all the advantages of driving plus you can drink alcohol and don’t have to worry about parking.
You don’t have the economic advantages. That is what this post is all about. Yes, we could subsidize Uber drivers, with cars driving all over the place, delivering people where they want to go. The cost (to society) would be enormous. It wouldn’t work that well, either, since you would have congestion (simply because cars take more space per person than transit). Uber — which is basically just a form of a taxicab — is not a magic solution.
A better approach I think is to focus on how transit can better serve the small percentage who will — and can — use it with the amount of public subsidies non-transit users are willing to pay.
So basically subsidize the hell out of the automobile industry while adding a tiny bit of transit in the few densely populated areas. Congratulations, you have pretty much explained the reason why we are in this mess in the first place. We can’t afford to maintain our existing sprawling infrastructure. Cities around the country have major long term financial problems. Way too many people die on the roads, and way too many people are forced to buy and maintain a car when they can’t afford them. People who want to live in the city are forced to live in the suburbs, even though construction workers (who apparently aren’t as important as automobile workers) are more than willing to build them homes. The only reason they can’t build them homes is because the zoning (originally based on the last vestiges of state-sanctioned racism, now based on classism) won’t allow it.
Meanwhile, most of Europe looks at us and thinks “for having so many smart people, you sure do a lot of stupid things”.
I get the goal: force or lure more drivers to transit so they vote for or demand more transit spending but today ridership is going down so that won’t work.
No, that isn’t the goal. No one is trying to force people into transit. Nor are they trying to “lure” them. No is trying to eliminate the automobile industry either. There is nothing in the article that suggest that — not in the least. Can you at least argue what is actually be proposed here? Stop making things up, and then arguing against them. It is disgusting, and in violation of the comment policy. You have done it more than once. You were called out on it just recently — by a real writer at that — and yet you persist. At some point, you need to just stop.
What the author is proposing is much simpler: Spend money, as a society, to make transit better. Yes, it costs money, but so does operating a car. So does maintaining the roads (which the author barely mentioned). It all adds up. Transitioning will not be easy, but the sooner we transition, the better off we will be.
“Right, and if we cured cancer, lots of doctors would be out of work. You don’t base your economy on preserving jobs, you base it on providing the most benefit for the people in society. As it turns out, doing so actually makes for a stronger economy. Of course you need strong labor unions and good anti-trust laws, but this is just basic macro-economics.”
I take it you are not a politician. Or understand how military vehicles operate. Cars have been around over 100 years. I think the macro-economics are pretty well known by now.
“That is simply not true. Over the life of the vehicle, EV’s cut CO2 by roughly half (https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-definitely-better-climate-gas-powered-cars). That is a big improvement, but you can get the same benefit by simply driving your car half as much.”
Fair enough. The old saying is if you can’t grow it you have to mine for it. Nothing has reduced miles driven like WFH. Nothing that is manufactured is carbon free. It is naive to think so. Especially Link when you look at the carbon in the concrete, reduction of trees, and carbon from the vehicles used to build it. Bike groups claim transit causes global warming, and pedestrians claim bikes cause global warming, although both depend on the concrete.
Or did you think the train cars and buses were built without carbon emissions?
“Wait, what??? You want to increase the amount of CO2 emissions??? Seriously? Just out of curiosity, are you a climate change denier or do you think it is no big deal? Or are you just throwing out random arguments in an attempt to stir up the debate (which is known as “trolling”). Seriously, I would like an answer, please.”
Leading up to the 2022 election Pres. Biden dangerously reduced the strategic petroleum reserve to lower the price of gas for the election (which he has yet to replenish). Recently someone posted inflation was lower in Minneapolis when that was mostly due to declining fuel prices. Very few taxes and costs hit the lower and middle class like fuel, along with food (and did you know most fertilizing is made from petroleum). WA’s new carbon tax adds an additional 45 cents per gallon to the price of gas. https://www.thecentersquare.com/washington/article_5c2733f0-020d-11ed-b7b6-7b5de3a3cd2c.html Of course there is climate change and carbon is a factor. China opens a new coal powered plant every day. Nearly all of our carbon savings since 2006 have come from transitioning from coal to natural gas. It is important to not be Pollyannish on this issue. I don’t think any issue has been co-opted more than global warming.
“The answer is obvious: We have invested way too much in our automobile-based infrastructure, and not enough in transit. That is the whole point of this article.”
That is your point. The point of the article is living without a car can save someone $8500/year. That is why we have elections. If I were a politician and 90-95% of all trips were by car in my region, and every business group wanted more car or freeway infrastructure, I would pay attention. You think Balducci will run her reelection based on transit? Hell, Metro is slashing eastside transit. The good news is WFH reduced that needed road capacity. Of course, it is decimating transit and our urban cores, but that is creative destruction (like your idea to eliminate cars).
Here is the key to creative destruction: it has to make life easier and more convenient for people to be adopted. That isn’t transit.
“The percentage of folks even in this region who can commute 100% by transit is small.”
“Exactly! Again, that is the point of the article. It shouldn’t be small. If we invested in better transit, it wouldn’t be small. Yet it would cost far less than the amount of money we spend on a society where so many are dependent on their cars.”
No, you have this wrong. They don’t commute by car because they CAN’T, not because they don’t want to. They need to carry things like tools to build things like Link. People who could commute by transit (at least to an urban area like Seattle pre-pandemic) did not commute by transit because they liked transit — they hated it, at least commuting and all the execs commuted by car — but because parking was too expensive. Now they WFH, more creative destruction because it has made life so much better for so many.
“Then you have those with kids. It is just very difficult to raise kids without a car.
“Holy cow, you keep missing the point. It shouldn’t be! It should be easy to raise kids without a car. People do it in cities (with good transit) all around the world.”
Pretty damn hard in my experience, certainly in the U.S. to raise kids on transit, and certainly if danger is an issue. The point is so many moved to suburbia for the kids, safety, schools, less urbanism, and many cities like mine effectively have no intra-city transit so every trip begins in a car, and when parking is free at the destination transit loses. The point this blog keeps missing IS YOU ARE ALL MEN, MOSTLY SINGLE, mostly living in areas that at least in this area are called urban.
“The catch—22 is transit always does better in urban areas (in large part because the cost per boarding in areas like E or S KC are so high you don’t get much transit for each dollar spent) but today urban areas have safety issues again.”
“Which are largely overblown by the right-wing media. I’m not saying there aren’t safety issues in the city, but overall, cities are still way safer than suburbs, simply because they have fewer automobile accidents. Meanwhile, the roughest parts of the country are suburbs, not cities. Think East Saint Louis, or Ferguson (you probably heard of it, right?)”.
If you want to downplay the perceptions of others when it comes to safety you will never understand the very small percentage who ride transit in this area. Every single day the Seattle Times or local media have some story about crime in downtown Seattle. Not Laurelhurst, not Blue Ridge, but downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill. Folks today think downtown Seattle is more dangerous than Fallujah. I can’t change that perception, and neither can you. It isn’t like there is anything downtown folks must go to today, and every other area has free parking. Safety or perceptions of safety — there really is no difference when it comes to riding transit — is such a deal breaker that all discussions about transit/cars ends there.
“Then in urban areas you have Uber that has all the advantages of driving plus you can drink alcohol and don’t have to worry about parking.
“You don’t have the economic advantages. That is what this post is all about. Yes, we could subsidize Uber drivers, with cars driving all over the place, delivering people where they want to go. The cost (to society) would be enormous. It wouldn’t work that well, either, since you would have congestion (simply because cars take more space per person than transit). Uber — which is basically just a form of a taxicab — is not a magic solution.”
I don’t know what to tell you. Uber ridership is growing exponentially while transit ridership is declining. Even Metro is experimenting with micro-transit, which probably won’t compete as a government program. Uber isn’t subsidized. That is the whole point. It doesn’t need subsidies. It is more creative destruction.
To paraphrase Hemingway, please, please, please stop mentioning Europe as though all of Europe is the same, the geography is the same, or the mentality is the same in every country, and Europe is only a handful of large urban cities. I lived in Europe for many years. Even urban cities can be undense like Dublin with crummy transit, and it can be cold wet and dark if you are in the north.
If you want to live there for the transit go for it, but there are almost as many cars in Europe as in the U.S. per capital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita
The central point of my post was to look at the percentage of folks who ride transit in this region today, especially post pandemic, ask why, and be realistic about it, not build your entire political philosophy around how other people choose to live. You will never convince them, especially since around .00001% of the regional population reads this blog or The Urbanist or Transit Riders Union or Seattle Subway. They are too busy working or driving their kids around.
My other point is I don’t think it is productive for transit advocates to begin every debate with, if just we could eliminate parking, or ban cars or tax them so the poor can’t own them, or eliminate lanes or force everyone into TDO, we could gain maybe 5-10% ridership on transit when WFH reduced ridership 50% in some areas.
I like Ross’s articles on how Metro could supply better transit service for the same amount of revenue because that is realistic and targets those who can and will ride transit. I understand those who argue transit needs more general fund subsidies (in part to cover lack of fare payment) but also understand there are a lot of competition for that tax revenue, which will likely decline at least in Seattle in the future.
But talking about eliminating or banning cars or roads I think is a waste of time, and pisses off the 90-95% not riding transit who tend to have all the money and political clout. Balducci isn’t going to base one iota of her campaign on transit or transit riders. She targets my wife because that is how you win on the eastside.
I wrote:
“Just out of curiosity, are you a climate change denier or do you think it is no big deal? ”
Your response:
“Leading up to the 2022 election Pres. Biden dangerously reduced the strategic petroleum reserve to lower the price of gas for the election (which he has yet to replenish). …”
You are clearly trolling. You won’t address a simple question, and keep changing the subject. You continue to make claims that aren’t true (e. g. that I don’t understand how military vehicles operate) that are based on lies (that I — or anyone else for that matter — has suggested we get rid of gasoline powered vehicles). Again, stop it. It is disgusting, and irritating. I repeat — it is against the policies of this blog. You have been warned repeatedly about this.
No Ross, I am not a climate denier, and I don’t think climate change is no big deal. Talk about trolling. Someone does not agree with you and they are climate change denier. You apparently think Link was built without carbon emissions, or transit operates without carbon emissions on concrete roads and bridges.
The point about Biden draining the SPR is to highlight how political climate change is, including with you. You regularly trot out climate change or carbon emissions when you think it supports something you want (more transit funding, less driving), but your understanding of it is not very comprehensive, and you tend to be politically naive. Everyone today pimps climate change for their cause, which has jaded so many.
I answered all your “questions”. Although the article was focused on the personal benefits of transit over owning a car you extrapolated that into a societal argument about why transit is better than cars, which is like pissing into the wind.
Again, my central point is look at what percentage ride transit vs. drive in this region today, and ask WHY. I don’t want to read your far-left political screed. Why do 90-95% of pretty rational folks in this region drive for their trips, despite the additional cost to them, and why has transit ridership fallen off a cliff post pandemic.
If the argument is — as ever — government needs to subsidize transit even more, even after the waste of so much of Link and transit ridership decline due to WFHJ, ok, I can understand that argument, but tell me how you plan to do that. But you never address the very high cost of boardings in suburban areas, which means each additional dollar of transit doesn’t go very far. You don’t see Metro pouring more money into East KC to increase ridership post WFH, do you?
We have this debate at least once/year. Every year the percentages of those who drive vs. those who take transit is around the same, except WFH really made a difference. It will be the same next year. And the year after, although Uber is really cutting into driving and transit, and my guess is the future of transit although those who think transit will change society don’t like that idea. Creative destruction is often something we don’t want, at least for transit and urban areas.
Me, I don’t care. Like the author I don’t see the issue or transit as moral. Just folks choosing the best mode of transportation for them. If EV’s are the solution to carbon we will need better batteries and charging, but it looks like folks are working on that. As I noted, switching from goal to natural gas has resulted in the biggest decline in carbon emissions in the U. S. because folks still need to heat their homes and generate electricity.
All I try to ask is that you and others try to UNDERSTAND why they make that decision to drive, rather than telling them they are not moral, or their political philosophy is not far left enough, or they don’t love transit, or earth, or we need to be more like Europe. If you can’t understand how these 90-95% of folks who are as smart as you and probably make a ton more money than you do make that decision you will never move the needle on transit ridership.
You expect them to understand you. Big mistake.
I live with these 90-95%. I am just trying to point out to a sometimes-blind blog about these folks and WHY they make that decision. If you think you can change that WHY, or that decision, ok, although history tells me not to hold my breath, but you have to understand why first and you are hopeless at this, because it has absolutely nothing to do with morality because these folks think transit and drugs on transit and downtown Seattle are immoral.
So stay away from the mortality argument because everyone thinks they are the moral person. That is a loser for transit.
Of course nobody is going to change their habits unless transit is improved.
That’s the whole reason this entire web site exists.
If transit in the USA were as good as it is in First World nations, then our transit use would coincide.
I never quite understood the idea of needing to drive to transit station and then taking that transit into the city. Why would you get out of your car at that point
It makes even less sense now when work commuting isn’t as clearly of a captive market and the market that does remain are less hub and spoke peak oriented
This is why I have qualms with link down I-5. Express buses and community transit buses go down this corridor not because of inherent connections, or route straightness, or proximity to activity centers. They use I-5 because it is normally the quickest and most scrappy option to provide longer distance service on a limited capital budget.
Nothing of this tells us that link was constrained to this same formula. I-5 has the same disadvantages but with higher cost because you cannot use the existing infrastructure for service nearly right away in the same scrappy nature express buses did. In fact if cut and cover was utilized nothing tells us that even a 15th avenue alignment would have been substantially more expensive as it would not have gone through extensive property acquisition process that the I-5 alignment did. 15th avenue is not even the strongest Seattle alignment by a long shot but would have done more for connecting existing walksheds (North city, pine hurst, etc).
Not to say link won’t have connections. Restructure plans call for feeding buses into lake stations and community transit is building a brand new Swift bus route (plus extending the blue line) explicitly for making the connections more seamless. It is just at seemingly no extra cost link could have served urban neighborhoods while still prioritizing most of these bus connections instead of trying to chase after the now quite outdated park and ride model that existing express buses already fill the role of
“Why would you get out of your car at that point” Primarily if parking is hard or expensive at your destination, but also if transit is faster (express buses can bypass congestion points) or cheaper (avoid gas/tolls). Transit ridership correlates with the cost of parking, the speed/reliability of transit, and the cost of gas.
Is TOD more scalable than parking? Sure. But P&R can still be very compelling, particularly the longer the trip because then the transfer penalty is less impactful.
And the frustration of driving in congestion, inability to relax or do anything else during driving, to save the planet.
Link is only along freeways missing neighborhoods north of Northgate, south of Angle Lake, and across the Mercer Island Bridge where it’s unavoidable. Even where Link is on I-5 in South King County, it comes back to an arterial for KDM Station, and Federal Way doesn’t have any much better location.
I think the option that has grown in popularity but not often discussed is drop off and pickup Link riders. Many of the outer BART stations with thousands of spaces each got as many drop offs as they did those who park.
https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/StationProfile2015_HomeOriginOnePagers_rev0629.pdf
Fremont is listed as 33% drop offs. Dublin/Pleasanton is listed at 30% drop offs.
With the advent of smart phones, the ways that people get to transit have changed — yet it’s not fully sunk in. Droppoffs were well below 10% in the past.
It’s a big reason why I think we should reassess both whether we still need more parking and whether we need better drop off areas. There still seems to be a general lack of good station areas to drop off riders and that makes for some unsafe street crossings as cars stop and people jump out in places that aren’t designed for drop offs. Rainier Valley is terrible. Downtown Bellevue will likely get lots of drop offs.
But of course Sat never does a ststion profile report describing how riders get to stations. They instead spend their money on whatever they want because a ridership data driven budget choice is never a factor in anything. Amateur second grade planning using m2D maps is what rules the day!
“Why would you get out of your car at that point” Primarily if parking is hard or expensive at your destination, but also if transit is faster (express buses can bypass congestion points) or cheaper (avoid gas/tolls).
Right, which is why there is some merit to having a big park and ride at the terminus, even the station is close to the freeway. Northgate is a good example. Plenty of people drive from north of there, to avoid congestion or expensive parking.
But the advantages start to disappear as you built more and more stations like that, which is what we are doing. I don’t see anyone driving to the station at Lynnwood, and then taking Link to Mountlake Terrace, the Shoreline stations or Northgate. They will just drive the whole way. Yet so many extensions are based on building those types of stations (very close to the freeway, with big parking lots). Never mind the fact that it is bad idea to spend so much money on big parking lots (instead of feeder bus service). Spending money building station after station very close to the freeway, each with its own giant lot just doesn’t add much value.
I get what Mike is saying. A lot of our stations are not close to the freeway. It is one of our strengths. But a lot of the future stations will be either right next to the freeway, or very close. Either way it hurts because it means that most of the day, you have a good alternative (driving) for a lot of the potential trips. If you are right next to the freeway it is worse, as any potential walkshed is reduced by the freeway itself.
Glenn, we went through a drop off vs. park and ride analysis pre-pandemic for East Link. One factor that influences drop offs is how many live alone in the area. Generally drop offs and pick ups are by spouses. So on MI we tried to maximize drop offs, although WFH has gutted park and ride and drop offs.
The reason we felt drop offs would be high is because pre-pandemic our park and ride was full by 7 am and drop offs were necessary if you were not the early worm or wanted to spend the morning with your kids getting to school. Until the park and rides fill back up, on the eastside at least, feeder buses and drop offs are pretty much irrelevant. Either that peak commuter will work from home, or drive to the park and ride and save the spouse the trip to and from.
oops meant Al.
There are all sorts of reasons why pick up and drop off at transit hubs may be useful, and the parking lot being full is only one of them. One obvious one is households with two people in them, but only one car. Yes, such households do exist.
I also used to think transit was only effective for urban areas for people without children until I lived outside the United States.
To me, cost seems to be a secondary consideration to choosing transit for many. That’s because many people have other options — not only driving but getting a ride by a friend or by Uber or Lyft, bicycling or walking. Or staying home and doing things online. Those are the people that make each trip decision individually and still pay to maintain a car.
For those that do give up owning a car, these other choices are still available. It’s not that having no car does not automatically put someone on transit. They may rent a car for the day for essential errands. Auto ownership is often very location specific to one’s home or work situations that can be cost related but other factors also get involved.
So while it’s a cost saving benefit, the decision appears to not be a simple financial calculation like what size detergent should you buy. There are a host of other individuel factors — time involved when the trip is happening, convenience including physical exertion, weather, personal safety, health condition, need for flexibility and so on.
Money is far from the only decision making factor, but it is a factor. But, with so much of the cost of cars being fixed – meaning that unless you give up the car completely, you still have to pay it, whether you drive any particular trip or not – it can make it difficult for transit to compete for many trips, even on a basis of pure financial cost – ignoring travel time, reliability, and everything else.
This is especially true for short trips or trips where multiple people are involved. Remember that when four people are traveling together, the total round trip cost requires the transit fares to be multiplied by 8, but the cost of driving remains the same as one person driving alone. When the family fare was in effect, it helped a lot in allowing transit to at least be able to compete with the car on pure money when taking the family to some event downtown or at the Seattle center. But, when each person has to pay full fare, people do the math, decide it’s the same price or cheaper to drive and park, so they drive and park.
To me, cost seems to be a secondary consideration to choosing transit for many. That’s because many people have other options — not only driving but getting a ride by a friend or by Uber or Lyft, bicycling or walking
Cost is a key element — you are just focused on only one part of the equation (the individual). Broaden your scope — consider the big picture. https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/09/17/inflation-and-transportation/#comment-918134. Once the government invests properly in public transportation, cost for the individual then becomes a key element. You can always take a cab — that option has always been extremely easy in big cities — but most choose to take transit, simply because it is cheaper.
The relative importance of cost also varies depending on where you are on the income scale. It’s easy to say that cost is irrelevant when you’re making $200k+ per year. But, when you’re income is only $40k, you have to be much more careful about your finances and you cannot afford to just ignore cost.
Many of us have employer sponsored Orca cards too and kids ride free. I’ve always taken public transit to Seattle Center, it’s cheaper (basically free) and faster.
But safety is key. The day some junkie lights up meth while my kids are on the bus with me is the last day I’m taking the bus.
A common error in thinking is fearing the hazard you can see more than the hazard you can’t
A person in a car running a red light is a far greater danger to you than a drug user on a bus. But you don’t see that car until it’s far too late
Donde beat me to it. There were about 30 traffic deaths in Seattle just last year. Has a junkie killed anyone on a Metro bus in Seattle, ever?
The author of this article has obviously never tried to catch a local bus in Tacoma after 7 PM
It is quite possible the author has. What is your point?
That the reason for low transit use in Tacoma has nothing to do with price
Right, but why?
Put it another way — is there some reason why people wouldn’t take transit in Tacoma, if it wasn’t better? If so, then this has everything to do with price. The government isn’t spending enough money on making transit better in Tacoma.
By choosing public transportation, we help society function more efficiently.
It is interesting seeing how people interpret that sentence. I took it as a social critique. If we, as a society build a better transit system, we will all benefit.
Others seemed to interpret it at the individual level. If you do the math, taking transit is just better.
I find it odd that people take that second interpretation without even considering the first. I guess in this day and age, it isn’t too surprising. We are used to information focused on the individual (“30 days to rock hard abs”) while the most important information in a democratic society is based on social change (e. g. “Black Lives Matter”). The point being that it isn’t about an individual suddenly realizing that black lives should matter as much as white lives, but that we, as a society, should make sure that our policies reflect that.
The same thing is true here. We aren’t going to increase transit use by being cheerleaders for it. But putting money into transit (as opposed to automobile infrastructure) is just a better value from a societal standpoint.
Not that I disagree with your overall comment (that building up transit is better for society overall, and thus we should invest in it), but to the narrow question of why most people reading this article interpreted that particular sentence one way or another…
Let me quote the very first sentence of the article again:
“Globally, people rarely use public transportation because of morality; they use it because it is cheap.”
I suspect that most people interpreted it in the context of personal choice rather than morality because the author told us that they are not framing their article around the topic of morality.
I suspect that most people interpreted it in the context of personal choice rather than morality because the author told us that they are not framing their article around the topic of morality.
But I’m not framing it around morality either. No one is. The problem is people are looking at it from an individual standpoint, instead of a larger societal standpoint. That is the difference.
Here is an example: Imagine Seattle had no water service. Many would drill a well. But for many, this wouldn’t work (or would soon fail as the water table shrank). So they pull water out of the lake. The city would charge for that, and people would pay others to deliver water around town. It would cost a lot more. Yet individual decisions (whether or not to drill a well, or which person to pay to deliver water) would all be a matter of cost and convenience. Overall though, it would be way more expensive than what we have — a city run water system. Morality has little to with it — this is an economic issue.
The opening paragraph — the one you referenced — finishes with:
It’s because transit utilizes resources more efficiently
So clearly it is making the case — from an economic standpoint — that investing it transit is a better value. Not from an individual standpoint, but from a societal one.
“The author they”? When did “they” become singular?
I get that you don’t want to say “he” in an ambiguous sentence thereby implicitly assuming that maleness is “the default”, but the author clearly has a “male” name. The author may be biologically female but identify as male. In any case [a pun that] the author has chosen a male name, so call him “he” until he suffixes his pronouns to his byline. He did not do that.
I don’t personally know the author’s gender (TBH, I did not even look at the author’s name) so I default to “they” until I have clear indication of a better option. I think that that is the more “appropriate” choice these days, though if I offended the author with that choice, I do apologize.
As for example of primarily-male names of people who use “they/them” pronouns, I might suggest two, both happening to be people who write on transit issues and are sometimes mentioned here: Alon Levy and Ryan Packer (from the Urbanist).
Do you mean that Levy and Packer always use “they/their/them” when they write about other people or that they use them in reference to themselves? If the first, would either of them therefore write “President Biden….said their preference was …” when reporting on something the President said about some bill he was asked about?
Would YOU write that? It is hideously stilted, but consistent with what you say above.
I find “they” far more usable than the equally numbered character alternative “s/he” that was popular in the early 1990s, during the first effort at making gender neutral pronouns. I’m quite glad to see acceptable grammar usage coincide with where it should have gone 70 years ago, during that gender equality era.
Tom: the latter, they are persons with names predominantly used as male names, who nevertheless use “they/them” for themselves.
I see no problem with the example you gave, though I am relatively certain that the person you are referring to uses male pronouns for themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I get the discomfort with it. I first saw this usage in grad school (my advisor used it consistently and exhaustively) and it felt very jarring to me at the time, too. But now that I’ve used it for over a decade myself, it’s second nature, and feels normal.
The 62 bus routinely skips stops at peak hours due to being overfull. If a bus skips my stop it can stretch my commute to an hour or more. By car it’s reliably 12-15 minutes.
As I get older and have more family commitments it’s getting harder and harder to justify commuting by bus in Seattle. The time cost is becoming too large. Hopefully once my kids are more independent I can switch back to public transit but right now I’m seriously considering switching to commuting by car after riding the bus almost daily for 16 years.
It has nothing to do with direct cost, it’s 100% to do with reliability and indirect cost (time is money).
It has nothing to do with direct cost, it’s 100% to do with reliability and indirect cost (time is money).
But that has everything to do with cost! Run the buses more often, and the problem goes away. Pay the drivers twice as much, and the driver shortage goes away. This is all money related. Is that expensive? Yes. Is it as expensive as driving a car? No.
OK, there are definitely ways in which the transit agency can spend money more efficiently, but money is still a major issue.
Ross, both the above poster and the article are talking about direct cost to a rider. You are talking about a different issue.
A lot of people made similar comments, and are missing the point. I’m going to make a comment here and reference it as way of rebuttal. There are really a few points here, including ones that weren’t quite spelled out:
1) People don’t take transit for moral reasons.
2) People take transit because it is cheaper.
3) It is cheaper to provide decent transit than it is to drive.
4) People take transit based in part on the quality of the transit.
The first two points were covered in the first sentence. The third point was in the last part of the first paragraph, but I think people missed it:
The reason it’s cheaper to take the bus than to drive in Russia, for example, is not because the government there cares about reducing emissions. It’s because transit utilizes resources more efficiently
This is a key part of the essay.
Meanwhile, the fourth point was implied. Of course there are people who find transit so bad that they would rather drive. There are other people who drive, no matter how good the transit is. But even in very wealthy countries, people take transit, if it is good. It makes sense for governments to spend money on making it good for all of these reasons. This is not a discussion about why someone will or won’t take transit — we know that already: https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe. This is about the economic case for a government to invest in transit.
Would you consider 3) to be true in:
1. Seattle
2. Everett
3. Woodinville
4. Snoqualmie
5. Kent
6. Lakewood
7. Sumner
And, as a follow-up, what would the tax structure have to be in order for all the above to be feasible.
This is a genuine question – my sense is that the answer is “it is cheaper in all cases but the amount of money required is fundamentally impossible to collect in at least 5-7 based on how the current transit funding structure is set up, and political difficulties related to changing the taxation structure”. But I’m curious to get your take on it.
I will deviate a little and allude to something another commenter said in the article about Pierce County transit measures failing – that the last one which failed did so by a small enough gap that it is possible to do better. I agree that it is possible to do better, but the bit of me that is a statistician at heart wonders what the probability of doing so is, in practice. My intuition is that it is unfortunately pretty low, and so is the probability of funding transit successfully in order for, say, 70% of the population to manage to live without a vehicle. And I say this as someone who’s not owned a vehicle, ever, and does not drive. It’s disheartening, but I just don’t see it. Restore my optimism :)
“Would you consider 3) to be true in:
1. Seattle
2. Everett
3. Woodinville
4. Snoqualmie
5. Kent
6. Lakewood
7. Sumner
“This is a genuine question – my sense is that the answer is “it is cheaper in all cases but the amount of money required is fundamentally impossible to collect in at least 5-7 based on how the current transit funding structure is set up, and political difficulties related to changing the taxation structure”.
Anonymouse, I can’t help but wonder who the second city is you reference in 5/7. Seattle I get. If the second is Everett I am not sure there is any chance.
““It costs a lot to provide service to all of these places.”
“Weren’t you making the argument that it’s cheaper than private transportation, though? I stand by the question I asked in the other thread – do you think that it is both cheaper and politically feasible to fund, or cheaper but not politically feasible to fund, or not cheaper at all, in this particular scenario (decent cross-county transit between the smaller towns in the foothills).”
One point I made that got glossed over is how much more expensive it is per boarding in non-urban areas. The cost of each boarding in S KC can be 6X as much as in N. Seattle. So you don’t get a lot of transit for the additional money (and Link subarea equity really highlights that), and those areas are poorer to begin with. That is why “equity” is used as a basis for subsidizing transit in these areas at such a high per boarding cost.
A common progressive/conservative tension is progressives argue give us your money and we will spend it better for the “whole”. Conservatives argue so much is wasted at the government level it is better to let an individual keep as much of his income as possible and spend it themselves.
Both are true to some extent, and some government programs are not meant to be “economical”. The problem with transit — at least in this region — is we are spending $152 billion on Link and it is a very hard argument to make:
1. That is inadequate.
2. The use of the funds is well thought out.
3. The funds were used “economically” or efficiently.
Some of the arguments on this thread are really theoretical. Trust the government with tax dollars to provide better transportation than you can individually, even if it costs more. But voters tend to focus on the practical and experiential, and how can any voter think more money for transit will be spent any better or wiser than in the past? That is why I think politically more transit funding is very unlikely to pass, except in N. Seattle.
Sorry, I meant numbers 5-7 (the last three in my list).
As a thought experiment, I have imagined what a transit system would need to look like to make it practical for 70% of suburbanites to live without a vehicle. The good news is that it involves buses running so often, a transfer between lines is no worse than waiting for a traffic light. The bad news is that it would require so much labor to drive all of those buses that a non-trivial portion of the entire area population would need to be hired as bus drivers.
Or course, the real-world cities where 70% of the population gets around by transit and do not own a vehicle do not look like Lakewood or Lynnwood. Rather, you’re talking cities like Tokyo or Hong Kong, or Manhattan island in the U.S. The population is much closer together, making the area cheaper for transit to serve. And the busiest routes are typically served with rail, rather than buses, as it would be impossible to run a bus often enough to provide the necessary capacity.
“the real-world cities where 70% of the population gets around by transit and do not own a vehicle do not look like Lakewood or Lynnwood”
I was hoping someone would say that. The cost of building enough transit to have 70% of the population manage without vehicles is prohibitively high because society, collectively, is not into living in a place where that is feasible. That’s my sense, anyway. Perhaps that will change over time , but I do not believe that even Seattle is willing to go that far with its density increase (nor will it happen overnight or in a few years).
So, in the here and now, cars are a reality. And I do not believe that Ross’s point #3 above is feasible until society changes a lot more than by supporting transit in greater numbers (while not changing anything else). I include myself in this assessment; while I am personally transit-dependent, I also enjoy living in a house with a yard and, having lived in apartments, condos, townhouses, and a SFH, I can honestly say that my own mental health has been improved by living in the last one, even with the sacrifices which that entails when it comes to ease of travel on transit. As long as people feel like that, we will not have 70% car-free living.
Many places with that level of transit use have also put effort into scheduling.
Eg, Switzerland apparently puts entire systems across the country into a supercomputer every year or so to work out the best scheduling, resulting in the least wait times at each transfer point.
Doing this also helps point to important flaws. Eg, a key route that misses a connection to all the other routes by 2 minutes. That section of that route needs work, such as reduced station stop time, bus lanes, traffic signal priority, etc,
In the USA we don’t have that level of sophistication when it comes to dealing with large, complicated multiple variable systems.
“This is about the economic case for a government to invest in transit.”
This is a pretty friendly forum for this argument, because more investment would benefit them personally.
Unfortunately, the folks who make these decisions are not on this blog. So how do you convince the decision makers (politicians, not transit writers) to invest more in transit when ridership is falling, middle class ridership is falling, tax revenue in urban areas will likely decline and like Seattle urban cities will be hit by large operating budget deficits, and we see such waste as ST 3 which for many undercuts the economic argument to invest in transit. Unless the ELSL, WSBLE, and Issaquah Link are an economic case for investing in transit.
I get the argument that transit needs more investment, almost despite ridership declines although that is a counter-intuitive argument for a lot of folks. But it doesn’t help when ST becomes the poster child for government mismanagement, waste and dishonesty in levies.
Conservatives argue individuals make much better and more fiscally sound decision with their money than government does. Yes and no, but at least in this region transit has an uphill battle to convince the huge majority that don’t ride transit (and have no intent of riding it no matter how much is invested) — and didn’t particularly like riding it when they commuted to work — that more investment in transit is needed.
I understand Metro is not ST, but I think a lot of non-transit folks (and even folks on this blog) don’t make this legal distinction when thinking about increasing investment in transit. Even if they did, they would probably just say then use ST money for Metro. If Issaquah Link is the poster child for transit profligacy, then take that money and use it for buses, and if you tell me you can’t don’t ask for more money,
At least with respect to Seattle-only, the majority is already convinced. The most recent transit levy, in November 2020, passed with over 80%.
It is also way to early to look at ridership numbers since the pandemic and argue that transit is done for. The pandemic began just three years ago. What matters long term is trends over decades. Post pandemic ridership hasn’t even stabilized yet – it’s higher in 2023 than it was in 2022, which was higher than it was in 2021. You can look up the numbers on both Metro and Sound Transit and go see for yourself.
Yes, I wish ST could have done a better job of being more honest up front. Part of that is politics – to pass anything, you need the votes of the young people who vote only in presidential election years, which means you’ve got only one shot every 4 years. The powers that be didn’t want to wait until 2020, so they rushed something through for the 2016 ballot. You can also blame the system where have to first vote to fund something, then spend decades refining station locations and fighting nimbys who don’t want anything built at all, and whose sole interest is minimizing construction impacts, and of course, while all the endless debates go on, costs go up. While the system sucks, I’m not sure how much of it is actually Sound Transit’s fault – I think it’s mostly constraints imposed by federal or state law, beyond Sound Transit’s control. I do blame the Sound Transit board for insisting that we need a whole new tunnel under downtown, though.
Seattleites rejected The Commons levy in 1995 by a vote of 53% to 47%. I didn’t live in Seattle but never understood why 53% would vote against a 61 acre urban park running from downtown to SLU that Paul Allen was going to help finance. The same route the park was going to use looks pretty bad today, certainly compared to a 61 acre park bordering a lake.
Which brings me to my point: when was the last time Seattleites voted no on a levy and for what? This fall is a $970 million housing levy that is still less than Move Seattle.
I think it is easier for Seattle alone to pass levies than county or subarea district wide, although those levies must be adding up on the old property tax bill. But with an average AMI of $115,000, and more folks earning $200,000 than $50,000, Seattleites have the money.
I should note The Commons levy was $111 million. For a 61 acre urban park.
I think that this had more to do with not trusting our filthy rich, tech and RE overlords, than not wanting a park. Though I voted for it.
Here it is essential free to ride transit. You are supposed to pay. The law says you are supposed to pay. However, if you don’t pay you will face zero accountability or consequences. That is what happens when your government places criminals above honest people.
Mike, Ross, can you talk to whoever is maintaining the site about giving us a Block button. It’s bad enough wading through Daniel’s smug bloviations, but at least he provides a good resource about the law. This guy is just acne on the body politic.
Any transit rich place in the USA has out of control housing prices and an impossible pathway to home ownership…. so not owning a car might not do a person much good financially. New York City? You don’t need a car there! Good luck finding an affordable place to live however.
I see America as the land of free. Cars play a huge role in freedom of most of this nation. 90% of households own a car and many of “carless” 10% want to own a car. Most Seattle Liberals support the idea of transit… but drive cars anyway. I’m afraid much of bullshit I’ve heard from transit supporters over the years is often classist. It’s all about “saving the earth” by forcing “working class people” into government controlled housing (TOD baby!) and taking away car ownership from them. It’s always somebody else making the sacrifice for the Liberal upperclass, because the Prius driving elite living in those nice houses in Wallingford? They aren’t giving up shit. Ever.
Home ownership and car ownership ARE the American Dream. Only suckers settle for less. I’m not saying not to ride transit, please do, but your hard work should pay for a house and a car for your family. Do not get duped into settling for less.
The only forcing of anyone to do anything are single family housing proponents who force everyone to live in miserable suburban housing where you can’t even visit the neighbors house without driving. Obviously, some people prefer to be self-imprisoned in such places, but many of us would prefer the option of being able to live somewhere with options.
Don’t want to live in transit oriented development? Then don’t live there. The vast majority of residential land in the Puget Sound region is single family housing.
By not building sufficient amounts of alternatives, it is you who are promoting the forcing of others to your mold of how you want them to live.
Glen,
The reason we didn’t build alternatives to single home neighborhoods is because there’s little market support for such places outside of the dozen or so Liberal strongholds (Seattle, Portland, NYC). Carless apartment living just isn’t popular in fly over country.
I lived for years in small house in Tacoma with with between 5 and 2 people. My household had maybe 350 sq ft of living space per person on average over the years. As avid bike riders, walkers and gardeners I think we had a smaller impact on the environment that most.
The problem with the blog is posters look at my little house and want to tear it down and build a 4 plex for more housing “density”. Honestly that wouldn’t move the neighborhood density much (we’d add maybe 2 more people in the 4 plex than living “family style” in the house) and we’d easily double the amount of cars (4 single people living alone in Greater Seattle still means at least 3 cars) Even if I wanted to flip my house into a 4 plex, none of my neighbors would want that and none of those 4 units could really be made affordable.
What I’m reading is the wish for some impossible dreamworld with great transit and subsidized apartments for people living alone….. and only in Seattle. All the places are totally unacceptable…..
“Even if I wanted to flip my house into a 4 plex, none of my neighbors would want that”
They don’t own the property.
“The reason we didn’t build alternatives to single home neighborhoods is because there’s little market support for such places outside of the dozen or so Liberal strongholds”
If you go through any city or suburb, even rural non-liberal places like Ellensburg, there are apartment buildings.
Why should such structures not be built near transit?
Tacomee,
Here’s an easy to watch video from CNBC on suburban sprawl and the impact on infrastructure, municipalities and homeowners.
“Today’s homebuyers are paying for past sprawl by drawing on credit to finance their lifestyles. Meanwhile, the cost of public infrastructure maintenance is weighing on depopulating towns across the country.”
The reason we didn’t build alternatives to single home neighborhoods is because there’s little market support for such places outside of the dozen or so Liberal strongholds (Seattle, Portland, NYC). Carless apartment living just isn’t popular in fly over country.
Right, and the reason why so few people of color have generational wealth is that they just weren’t interested in owning houses. Sorry, but that is complete nonsense. Government policies have a lot to do with all of this. Black people were excluded from buying houses in the nicest neighborhoods. This helps explain the enormous gap in wealth between black and white people in this country. Land of the free my ass.
The same thing is true with other forms of development. Same type of rules, just altered slightly to protect those who now had wealth, without explicitly denying those who aren’t white. To suggest that zoning has nothing to do with development around the country is absurd. Of course it does. It explains why old cities look so different than new ones. Same is true for towns, and even neighborhoods. You can tell which areas were built before and after zoning. Before: https://maps.app.goo.gl/YgPhc6M18pmqHCYL9. After: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Cvhj54PHrsVJQ5vs7. Before: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qvMhUf8pCeDuRg437. After: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aHJRHVE14mD5hy22A.
Here is a great Reddit discussion about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/tmgrm8/rural_dense_towns_in_north_america/. They all say the same thing — there are dense towns in the United States, but they largely developed before the car. While true, they left out one key piece: Zoning. Modern exclusionary zoning and the automobile go hand in hand. While a lot of zoning was originally based more on industrial uses (to keep heavy industry out of residential areas) it really took off with the advancement and investment in automobiles (and the infrastructure). It worked both ways. People could now live quite a ways from their work (or grocery store, doctor, or pretty much anything) but still get around fairly quickly. At the same time, cars became a major nuisance. New stores were required to have parking, because people didn’t want others parking along their street. Stores weren’t even allowed in various neighborhoods, for fear of traffic. It is easy to say “it is what people wanted” but often it was what people with wealth wanted. At best, it was an oppressive majority, telling people they can’t live (or shop, or open a new dentist office, etc.) in a particular neighborhood. At worst it was a minority telling the majority what they can, and can not do. Regardless, it ended up being a huge mistake, as it burdened huge numbers of people with high housing prices and long, expensive trips. It is easy to say “just play the game — buy a house, and then drive as necessary”, but what if you can’t afford to play, or the law literally prevented your parents from playing, making it much harder for you to compete.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Again, it is easy to say that this is all just because of the automobile, and not really zoning. This is why those old towns and cities are dense. Yet look at Japan and Germany. Holy cow, the person who started that Reddit comment thread is from Japan. The allies bombed the hell out of Germany and Japan, and when they rebuilt, they still managed to build dense cities and towns. It isn’t like they don’t have cars or roads (ever heard of the Autobahn). Hell, starting in the 1970s, it was clear that the Japanese (and to a lesser extent the Germans) were building better cars than us. These weren’t built to appeal to the American market, they were built because those countries like cars too. But those cars were largely for the wealthy (and there is still a strong correlation between wealth and car ownership in Europe and Asia). But they don’t build their cities (and towns) as sprawling messes, that require people to drive to do just about anything. It is like the Will Rogers line: We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an automobile. Of course some people are so poor they can’t afford to own a car, making car-dependence worse. There are several reasons for that car dependence (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-04/9-reasons-the-u-s-ended-up-so-much-more-car-dependent-than-europe) but our zoning policies are one that is often overlooked.
This isn’t the free market, but one that is extremely regulated to only provide a certain type of development, and it shouldn’t be that way.
Alonso, depopulating towns are hitting municipal budgets all across the nation, especially large urban cities post pandemic. San Francisco and Seattle and NY are looking at massive operating budget deficits beginning in 2025, and increasing each year thereafter.
Water and sewer infrastructure is the real ticking time bomb for nearly every city as they have been ignored. Naturally past homeowners wanted to leave that expense to future homeowners. At the same time, many areas of suburbia have seen explosive growth in the value of the properties, especially SFH’s. It is hard for example for someone on MI to complain about slightly higher water or sewer infrastructure prices when the home they purchased 20 years ago has increased 400% or more, and that gain is not taxable until realized and resets if one spouse dies and leaves a spouse.
The key to buying a house is to use the tax breaks and wait for appreciation, which historically has always occurred over time. How many people in this region who bought a house 10 years ago have lost money despite higher utility bills? I doubt someone who bought 10 years ago in Clyde Hill or anywhere on the eastside is looking at their utility bills and thinking they got screwed.
In this region the suburbs finance much of King Co.’s sewer infrastructure, including tertiary treatment, and smaller cities buy their water from Seattle or Bellevue subsidizing those systems. The cities including Seattle fund their own local road repair.
Any city no matter how small generally suffers if it loses a significant percentage of the population. Detroit is the classic case. WFH basically removed the work commuter from urban cities which is like losing population, folks who were generally high tax produces and had very low social costs. MI has lost around 600 residents over the last two years and it has been helpful, as has WFH because it solved our town center parking problem which was going to cost the city millions to fix. On the other hand, East Link will result in virtually no benefit to MI over the buses today.
Suburban cities like on the eastside that have not lost population (I don’t think any have) are actually doing better than they have from a tax revenue standpoint in decades because WFH has reallocated sales and B&O tax to the suburbs where it is now allocated, and online retailers must collect and remit sales tax. For example, MI has used this new tax revenue to begin addressing its large backlog of infrastructure projects from new docks at the parks, water lines, street repair, and maybe a new city hall. Someday Seattle will have to get serious about its $3.5 billion unfunded bridge repair and replacement.
Throughout the history of the U.S. one constant is the love and desire for a SFH with a yard. The real issue is affordability. It is fools goal to convince people that really don’t want that dream, especially if history tells them they will likely not lose money on that investment, certainly compared to renting. I am 64 and it is pretty nice to see the end of the mortgage line not too far away.
“The only forcing of anyone to do anything are single family housing proponents who force everyone to live in miserable suburban housing where you can’t even visit the neighbors house without driving. Obviously, some people prefer to be self-imprisoned in such places, but many of us would prefer the option of being able to live somewhere with options.
“Don’t want to live in transit oriented development? Then don’t live there. The vast majority of residential land in the Puget Sound region is single family housing.”
Glenn’s post reminds me of the famous saying, “Writing about jazz is like dancing about architecture”.
1. “where you can’t even visit the neighbors house without driving”. Is Glenn writing about rural America or suburbia? I live on MI. We are suburbia and probably have the strictest regulatory zoning limits in the region for the SFH zone (minimum lot sizes and house to lot area ratios). Our yard setback limits are 7.5′ on each side, and 20/25′ front/rear yard. Is Glenn incapable of walking 7.5 feet? A quarter mile, the gold standard for how far someone is supposed to walk to transit, on both ends, is 1320 feet. I can walk to our town center in a little over 1/4 mile, and virtually all my neighbors in 1320 feet.
Actually, people move to suburbia to get to know their neighbors. Since most own their home they are there for a long time, and you can get to know them and their kids. My neighbor just had his annual neighborhood party. He has lived in his house 40 years. Most of my neighbors have lived in their houses 10-40 years. So I know them and know their kids.
It is transient rental housing in which you never get to know your neighbors.
I lived in rental multi-family housing for years. Never got to know a neighbor, who could be pretty weird. My son lived in two different buildings, one year each, when he moved back to the UW. You don’t make friends in one year (unless you have no friends and are desperate). The last six months of his second year I spent fighting the landlord on exiting the lease because of a truly violent and crazy tenant the landlord said they could not evict under Seattle’s landlord/tenant regulations. I had my son move out early (safety is a deal breaker) and told the landlord to sue me. He didn’t. (The UW was just ranked as the third most dangerous campus area in the U.S.).
2. “Don’t want to live in transit oriented development? Then don’t live there. The vast majority of residential land in the Puget Sound region is single family housing.”
While I agree with this sentiment about choice, it repeats one of the most misunderstood land use concepts on this blog.
Urbanism, real urbanism, requires a very large number of people per block to achieve any kind of housing density, let alone retail facade density. I am not talking about duplexes in a SFH zone, I am talking URBANISM. If you relax those borders you disperse the urbanism, and that is like water in a swimming pool without walls.
The problem in this region is there are just too few people to create any kind of real urbanism, except in tiny pockets. Seattle’s population is around 775,000 and its area is 369 sq kilometers. Show me this great urbanism in Seattle. King Co. is around 2200 sq. MILES and has 2.2 million residents. Look at how anemic the urbanism is in Seattle, let alone all of King Co.
The issue isn’t that there are too many SFH zones, the issue is there is too little real urbanism in the entire county, and in Seattle. There just isn’t the housing or retail density because there isn’t the population. Sure, it is pretty easy to find some nice SFH/suburban areas to live in this area, but nearly impossible to find any kind of decent urbanism, at least urbanism that doesn’t require someone living there to go to U Village or Northgate or Bellevue Square for any decent retail density and vibrancy. Seattle just has crap urbanism, but look at the small population compared to the very large area and the lax zoning that disperses any possible urbanism.
By all means live where you prefer to live, but good luck finding any kind of decent urbanism anywhere in King Co., which is why the few “urban” area is in D3 and D7 because that is where builders like to build multi-family housing, although the retail is crap.
We talk about the price of SFH housing, but rarely talk about the cost of the best urban housing in the region, from D3 to D7 to Kirkland to downtown Bellevue, which is sky high because there is so little of it, and you have to condense the housing and population which generally means greater height which means greater construction costs which means more competition for the meager urbanism in this region.
As probably most on this blog who live in apartments know there are plenty of apartments available for rent (generally 20,000 listed each day for Seattle alone) but the good urban areas are tiny, which is why the prices are so high there, and none on this blog want to move to a DADU or S. Seattle or West Seattle or just about 99% of Seattle and the county because living in multi-family housing in crap urbanism is hell.
“We talk about the price of SFH housing, but rarely talk about the cost of the best urban housing in the region, from D3 to D7 to Kirkland to downtown Bellevue, which is sky high because there is so little of it, and you have to condense the housing and population which generally means greater height which means greater construction costs which means more competition for the meager urbanism in this region.”
Did you just say “the best urban housing in the region” is expensive because there’s so little of it? That’s what I’ve been saying all along. (Although I’d add other multifamily housing in general). You don’t need to raise Bellevue’s and Kirkland’s village heights higher; you just need to expand the villages to larger areas. Like southeast Kirkland and central Bellevue. That’s adjacent to the existing villages so it’s hardly too far away from retail or spreading people too thinly.
What’s spreading people too thinly and too far from retail is West Lake Sammamish Parkway, Sammamish, Newport Hills/Kennydale, Duvall, Woodinville, Maltby, etc.
“Did you just say “the best urban housing in the region” is expensive because there’s so little of it? That’s what I’ve been saying all along. (Although I’d add other multifamily housing in general). You don’t need to raise Bellevue’s and Kirkland’s village heights higher; you just need to expand the villages to larger areas. Like southeast Kirkland and central Bellevue. That’s adjacent to the existing villages so it’s hardly too far away from retail or spreading people too thinly.”
Mike, I think we have different definitions of “urbanism”. You think it is any multi-family housing, anywhere. I think good urbanism requires real population and housing density and real retail facade density. If the zoning doesn’t condense this like coal into a diamond it is hard to get good urbanism.
I didn’t say there was too little multi-family housing in Seattle, especially 100%+ AMI. There is a ton of multi-family housing in Seattle that is terrible urbanism because Seattle has dispersed its retail and multi-family housing, so those areas have very weak retail vibrancy, and almost no retail density.
Any city with only 775,000 residents will have problems with real urbanism, especially in such a large city. Seattle has almost no good urbanism IMO. The best is in D3 and D7 so that is where white, wealthy Seattle urbanists want to live, so it is expensive. Tacomee has a good point: any really good safe, vibrant urbanism is going to be expensive, because it is rare, especially in such a high AMI city as Seattle.
If you “expand” urban or multi-family zones without a corresponding large increase in population you simply dilute and disperse any urbanism and retail vibrancy.
What you think you area creating is actually multi-family housing, not urbanism, which requires much more vibrancy. Without walkable vibrant retail density you can’t have urbanism. It is the retail that determines the quality of urbanism. People don’t visit NY or Paris for the dense housing.
What exactly are the bounderies of D3 and D7? How do we make more of it if you say there’s not enough of it?
https://www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2022-11-02.png shows the previous, and new, electoral district boundaries for Seattle.
I thought Daniel was talking about parts of Kirkland and Bellevue.
“We talk about the price of SFH housing, but rarely talk about the cost of the best urban housing in the region, from D3 to D7 to Kirkland to downtown Bellevue, which is sky high because there is so little of it, and you have to condense the housing and population which generally means greater height which means greater construction costs which means more competition for the meager urbanism in this region.”
If the price is sky high because there’s so little of it, then the answer is to make more of it. This can be adjacent to the original area or in another neighborhood. That’s what I’ve been promoting for years: that if people are crowding into Capitol Hill and Ballard because there’s nothing like them on the Eastside or South King County, then build one or more in the Eastside or South King County. The reason downtown Bellevue and downtown Redmond don’t reach that level is their high parking minimums, wide arterials, non-intimate sidewalk-scapes (the shape/scale of the storefronts, excessive setbacks and dead space) — these push things apart, make them non-human-scaled, and non-inviting.
Or if Bellevue’s and Kirkland’s villages are the best, then make more of them or expand them.
The idea that we’re near the ceiling of the number of village units or retail establishments the population can support is unproven and I doubt it. Likewise, the idea that adding more stores on underbuilt 35th Ave NE or in the residential parts of Bellevue, Kirkland, or Redmond would cause a catastrophic dilution of the residential-retail vibrancy is silly.
The areas where dilution is occurring are the exurbs: Sammamish, Woodinville, etc. Sammamish needs to justify its existence, and given that it does exist, it should probably have more retail for the residents and definitely more walkability.
Mike, once in a while, why don’t you talk about the ways your neighborhood needs to improve and the changes it needs to make. You frequently talk about and criticize suburban towns and neighborhoods, but rarely critique your own.
Pretty sure it was Seattle, since it was framed as something like “FROM D3 and D7 TO Kirkland and Bellevue” (emphasis mine, and I may have got the exact wording wrong but the FROM and TO are there).
Sam’s tongue-in-cheek comment is I think nevertheless reflective of the fundamental debate, which I have tried to mention before: freedom of movement vs. freedom of association. I am in favor of the latter, as long as the costs are well accounted for and charged accordingly (i.e. no socializing of the costs while keeping the profits). This is where I think suburbia often fails. Yes, suburbs in East KC have tons of money, but the costs of the policies they enact are sometimes (not always, but sometimes) borne by others, too. As long as that accounting is done properly, though, I have no problem with rich enclaves like Medina, etc.
Doing the accounting is left as an exercise to the reader :)
> Mike, once in a while, why don’t you talk about the ways your neighborhood needs to improve and the changes it needs to make. You frequently talk about and criticize suburban towns and neighborhoods, but rarely critique your own.
Not sure what specifically Mike has said, but don’t we talk about bus lanes, bike lanes, and upzoning all the time?
Yes, Mike.
You need to practice more self-flagellation, Eastside Cocktail Party conversation is getting boring only having their own perceived horrors of urban living.
New material is needed.
And there was a guy on STB who lived in Sammamish, who lived there because his parents had chosen it, not him, and he wished it had more bus service, and because it didn’t, it limited his mobility. That doesn’t happen in my neighborhood. It’s not like art that’s in the eye of the beholder. It’s objectively better to have a transit option than not to have it. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. But even people who don’t want to, when their car breaks down, they use it. Or when their out-of-town relative is visiting, they use it. Or when their license is revoked or they’re too old to drive, then they use it. Or when their under-16 kid wants to get around independently and develops a taste for transit, then they use it.
Ross Bleakney,
“Right, and the reason why so few people of color have generational wealth is that they just weren’t interested in owning houses. Sorry, but that is complete nonsense. Government policies have a lot to do with all of this. Black people were excluded from buying houses in the nicest neighborhoods. This helps explain the enormous gap in wealth between black and white people in this country. Land of the free my ass.”
First, let me thank your for stating up front the unmatched value of home ownership in building generational wealth. There are some exceptions, but the vast majority of America is in one of two groups, home owners or renters. Home owners are, on a whole, much wealthier and economically more stable than renters.
Let’s talk a little more about “red lining”. In the past Seattle prevented African Americans from buying homes in certain areas. Many of us find that deeply wrong.
What you’re not getting is the new “red lining” in Seattle. There’s no real law about who can buy a house in say, Wallingford, currently, but you have to qualify for $1.5 million mortgage and have $400k in cash. That’s the new “red line” and it is just as effective as the old “red line”. Many of the posters here are victims of this “financial red lining” As an old guy who owns real estate, I can’t imagine getting froze out of a market. It’s deeply unfair.
But “The Money” runs the world, not zoning. The only reason zoning ever changes is that there’s money to be made doing so. From the USSR to Chicago, large social housing projects have been pretty much a flop.
I personally know developers and builders and if you think those guys are going to build affordable housing because the zoning changed, you’re highly mistaken.
It doesn’t have to be affordable. It just has to be housing.
A receding tide lowers all boats. Er… rents.
That allows them to build 8 units in Wallingford instead of 1 McMansion, leaving an affordable house that one of those 8 people might have bought (and razed or upgraded, because they couldn’t find anything in the neighborhood they really wanted to live in – Wallingford) in Lake City untouched. Housing pressure released. Rents don’t sky-rocket. People aren’t starting bidding wars over shitshacks in the less desirable neighborhoods.
Zoning.
Cam Solomon,
I know you think it adds up, on paper, but that’s just not the way real life works.
First, there’s no way to build 8 units on a smaller city lot, unless they’re 4 stories high with parking underneath. That sort of building is never affordable.
Second, to buy the lot, tear down the house, get it permitted and redo the utilities might run 2 to 2.5 million. There’s a “lot cost” of 500k a unit before construction even starts on a 4 plex. That means the project isn’t anything you or I could afford… before it’s even built.
Third, contractors, by nature, don’t build affordable housing. They build for the maximum money, and in Seattle that means working for high income people as much as possible. That means if somebody with a suitcase of cash and gems wants a 5000 sq ft house on the lot, that’s how it rolls.
Fourth, Wallingford doesn’t really have the roads or sewer capacity for bigger multi-unit development, except on streets like 45th. But that might not even matter with 2, 3 or 4 unit projects. So we take a happy family home built for 4-5 people, tear it down and build 4 one bedroom apartments? That adds only a few more people at best….. and doubles the amount of cars parking on the street. Living alone is terrible for the environment and urban planning…. every bit as bad as car ownership. Seattle is overrun with people doing both…. and a lot of them have a lot of money.
Nationally, the problem is that in the last 75 years, homes doubled in size. The idea of living in an apartment by yourself is also a recent development. Wallingford had boarding houses back when it was built. Our ideas of what we need to be happy are deeply out of wack. I say to you personally, fight against this! Look at what your grandparents had and be happy with that.
We’ve went from building 1000 sq ft homes to 2500 sq ft homes and that’s the problem. Not enough units for the total square footage. Most of the building industry in Seattle is busy with 5,000 sq ft builds for rich people.
I lived in a big house in Wallingford with like, 6? (maybe more?) other dudes back in the 80’s. My rent was something like $260 a month? I think the whole house cost $1500 to rent? Right now that house has been totally remodeled and is worth maybe 3 million?
The “urban planners” back in day when Wallingford was built certainly thought single people should live together in boarding houses. Honestly, I don’t think they weren’t wrong. The whole idea that Seattle needs to be rebuilt so single people of moderate income can live alone in one bedroom apartments needs to die off. Who’s going to pay for that?
I think you’re a Tacoma person now…. I’m phasing that city of my life right now, but I still (and always will) love the town. The Eastside and South end are made of up of smaller houses where generations of people lived their lives and raised kids. Try to protect them. Don’t sign off on developers buying out working class families and tearing down their homes for soulless apartments that the native population can’t afford.
The big trap on this blog is people fighting to build more shit (one bedroom apartments) that aren’t really a path to happiness. Honestly, Seattle has to be one of the most unhappy cities in America…. and it’s one the richest! I’m guessing it’s because there’s less hearth and home there every day.
As far as transit…. I want a system to serves the people in the here and now. But I don’t read a lot of that on this blog…. it’s mostly angst about tearing down what’s here now, building something new and spending billions on transit to serve “the future”. I choose to live in the here and now, thank you!
“It doesn’t have to be affordable. It just has to be housing.
“A receding tide lowers all boats. Er… rents.”
That concept is working great in Seattle. Since 2010 Seattle has been on a multi-family construction blitz and construction has kept pace with population growth, and the ratio of housing unit per person was the same in 2020 as in 2010, and rents have not increased since 2010.
What you’re not getting is the new “red lining” in Seattle. There’s no real law about who can buy a house in say, Wallingford, currently, but you have to qualify for $1.5 million mortgage and have $400k in cash. That’s the new “red line” and it is just as effective as the old “red line”. Many of the posters here are victims of this “financial red lining” As an old guy who owns real estate, I can’t imagine getting froze out of a market. It’s deeply unfair.
I agree completely, but how am I not getting it? The rest of my comment is in complete agreement with that idea. So are reports like this: http://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=9611821&GUID=81FE334E-2E8E-4EDE-8CD1-4EB80458233E.
To quote the Seattle Times’ analysis on the report:
As covenants and redlining were outlawed, “local governments expanded the use of exclusionary residential zoning,” designating large swaths of land for single-family houses “that are typically unaffordable to low-income people of color,” the analysis says. “The urban village strategy has not been able to mitigate the displacement of BIPOC residents because it perpetuates a land use and zoning policy that was specifically designed to limit their housing options,” the analysis says, referring to Black, Indigenous and people of color.
While this report is spot on, it only tells half the story. Yes, people of color are being screwed over by zoning. But it isn’t just people of color. It is anyone who isn’t wealthy. They are being screwed in the same manner. The problem is the zoning.
The housing issue today, at least at the state and county level, is displacement.
This becomes trickier as the suburbs become more brown and Seattle does not, which removes a convenient bogeyman. For example, MI today has the same percentage of white residents as Seattle does, and Bellevue is much less white.
It is simply false to claim housing construction has not kept pace with population growth in Seattle since 2010, or the ratio of housing units per person has changed since 2010. What has changed, dramatically, is AMI. More Seattleites today make $200,000/yr INDIVIDUALLY than make $50,000, and many if not most of those making $200,000 have a spouse or partner which further increases their housing budget to astronomical levels. The Times noted last Sunday apartments in Lincoln Sq. that rent for $27,000/MONTH, which on the eastside when penciled out for the eastside (certainly west Bellevue) AMI was still within the federal 30% of gross income guidelines.
In 2020 the state introduced HB 1220. 1220 required counties to study the issue of displacement, and its disparate impacts on Black residents. Unfortunately Seattle’s increasing AMI, increasing population, and new construction replacing older construction, had been displacing Black Seattle residents from their historic Seattle neighborhoods which traditionally had been close to the urban core for decades, the prime areas for gentrification for a new, hip, white urban white-collar worker, who as mostly progressives were (mildly) dismayed that they were the cause that the historic Black residents had to move farther and farther away from the urban core.
Despite Ross’s link, the King Co. County subcommittee found that upzoning SFH zones would not relieve displacement, but would in fact exacerbate it because Black residents tend to live in SFH’s in multi-generational households, today mostly in S. Seattle, which of course is where all the gentrification is migrating to. Upzoning small very expensive SFH residential lots (especially on the eastside) does not create any housing that traditionally Black residents have favored; it just creates more new housing for the same rich white single residents who displaced the Black residents from The Central Dist.
It starts slowly, like with The Central Dist., Georgetown, and Columbia City, but once whites reach a certain percentage of the neighborhood, and crime declines to a certain level, the developers descend like Locusts looking for the oldest and least expensive housing in the neighborhood to convert to new, expensive multi-family (or even SFH) white housing.
Everyone wants a magic bullet. Naturally builders and realtors — like in HB 1110 — claim upzoning very expensive small SFH lots with low regulatory limits will create affordable housing just by itself, although both groups fiercely oppose any affordability mandates on that new housing. Progressives, many of whom have been frozen out of the SFH market, especially if you live alone, due to rising AMI from out of state transplants are angry at the SFH zones. Trumm at The Urbanist for years has been angry at the fact as an intelligent well educated white UW grad he can’t live in Wallingford (like Tacomee I lived there in a house with five guys in the early 1980’s before the neighborhood gentrified).
Long story short is no one has figured out a solution to gentrification, in any city. If AMI is rising, and population, the rich are going to price out the poor, and builders build for the 100%+ AMI market because it is more profitable. Market rate new construction is no help because any new construction has a base cost per sf that makes it unaffordable no matter how sparse the finishings, and of course unlike so many white progressive single Seattleites Black residents tend to not live alone, or in micro-units, because they have family.
When dealing with builders or realtors or developers always, always, always look for the money behind whatever they tell you, which is their job. They have had good luck with naive progressives, many of whom actually think they will be moving to Wallingford once it is upzoned, and don’t really want to live in south Seattle Black neighborhoods, unless gentrified, but by that time places like Columbia City are already unaffordable.
If anyone tells you they have the solution to gentrification in Seattle they are either lying for the money or very, very naive, and blind to history.
“the vast majority of America is in one of two groups, home owners or renters. Home owners are, on a whole, much wealthier and economically more stable than renters.”
And home ownership used to be inexpensive. Howard on Happy Days with a hardware store could buy a house on a single income. Elizabeth Warren’s mother could pay her mortgage on a minimum wage job. Now you have to pay all they gains they got up front just to get a house, before you can get any gains. More people are looking at that and just saying, “No.” The housing market is broken and is unsustainable.
Happy Days was set in Milwaukee in the 1950’s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Days
The median sales price of a home in Milwaukee was $200,000, up 5.3% from a year earlier. https://www.redfin.com/city/35759/WI/Milwaukee/housing-market
“The median household income in Milwaukee, WI in 2021 was $46,637, which was 43.9% less than the median annual income of $67,125 across the entire state of Wisconsin. Compared to the median income of $32,216 in 2000 this represents an increase of 30.9%. The per capita income in 2021 was $26,998, which means an increase of 40.1% compared to 2000 when it was $16,181.
Read more: http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Milwaukee-Wisconsin.html
Maybe if Happy Days had been set in San Francisco in the 1950’s Howard could not have afforded a house. Someone can’t expect to move to a city like Seattle with one of the highest AMI’s not just in the U.S. but in the world and find the same housing costs as in Milwaukee.
As Tacomee notes, more young folks need to look at other cities. Milwaukee by all accounts sounds like a fine place to live, especially if you want a SFH and to raise a family.
“rents have not increased since 2010.”
*^* choke *^* Seattle rents have increased 40-50% since 2010. That’s what all the uproar is about.
In 2005 I moved into a 1920s Summit studio at $550. In 2010 when I moved out it had risen to $750. A similar unit a block down the street was $850. In the 2010s I heard the ones in my building were going for $1600.
In 2010 I moved to a 2004 one-bedroom. It was nominally $1275 but I got it for $1175 as a recession discount. In 2022 it was $1925. Now it’s $1950. This year’s lease was originally $2100 but the landlord offered to reduce the increase to keep a long-term tenant because demand is weak right now like it was in 2010. But a new tenant would be quoted $2100 I’m sure.
So rents went up 40-50% between 2012 and 2019 (just six years!), when inflation was running 2% or less per year. Right now we’re at a low point for increases — at least for units that rose the most in the 2010s — but that may only last a few years before they start marching up 5-10% per year again.
I don’t expect rents to ever rise again as quickly as they did in the 2010s. That was a period of unprecedented job growth that probably can’t be repeated. Amazon has already expanded, and what other company is likely to do the same? Seattle missed the opportunity to zone for an Amazon-sized headquarters in Northgate, so where could such a company go to anyway?
““rents have not increased since 2010.”
“*^* choke *^* Seattle rents have increased 40-50% since 2010. That’s what all the uproar is about.”
It’s called satire Mike. Or like Sheldon do I have to advertise when a comment is meant as satire.
That’s the whole point. Construction has kept pace with population growth since 2010, the ratio of housing units to Seattle residents was the same in 2020 as in 2021, and as you note rents have gone up dramatically.
So it can’t be a different balance between housing and population growth since 2010 because the balance is exactly the same, and inflation during that period was 0-1% (although Seattle did pass a number of property levies).
The difference between 2010 and today is the growth in AMI, and the gulf between high AMI and low AMI in Seattle today, in which more individuals make $200,000/year than make $50,000/year, and that housing disparity is going to be double when the $200,000/year AMI folks start partnering up through marriage or some other union which those kind of AMI folks tend to do.
Then the gulf is $300k to $400k AMI for the couple to put toward housing vs. $50,000 AMI or less for an individual if they live alone.
Milwaukee is looking better all the time.
“Maybe if Happy Days had been set in San Francisco in the 1950’s Howard could not have afforded a house.”
Ordinary families did own houses in San Francisco in the 1950s. My mom’s aunt was one of them. Her father had been in the navy in WWII, and her uncle in the army. Her uncle had been in the army in WWII and bought a house in San Francisco. Her father had been in the navy and bought a house in Vallejo.
Then in the 60s when families moved out of Haight-Ashbury, hippies moved in. Hippies! Who aren’t known for their high-paying jobs.
“Milwaukee is looking better all the time.”
As a midwestern city with better walkable infrastructure and probably transit than the sunbelt cities, and less rapid growth pushing up prices, it has some advantages, as most Rust Belt cities do.
https://www.patricklowell.com/median-san-francisco-home-prices-since-2005/
Here is an interesting snapshot of San Francisco housing prices month by month from 2005 –2018. Not surprisingly prices started to soar around 2010 like in Seattle with the internet companies (although they were pretty high in 2005 considering the AMI in SF at that time, very close to the most expensive in the U.S.).
What I find interesting is the median price of a SFH ($1,517,500) in 2018 is not that much more than a condo ($1,205,000) despite the obvious fact a condo is multi-family. Probably because the condos are downtown. I wonder if the issues in downtown San Francisco have affected condo prices.
Mike Orr,
More and more people can become “losers” in the Seattle housing market…. but so what? The world doesn’t stop turning when a young couple can’t afford a house in Seattle. Really… like what on earth would you want to do to fix this? And bare in mind, that nobody who’s winning in the current system, home owners, builders, banks, REITs and the entire construction industry, will absolutely not lose one penny to help your affordable housing vision.
Believe it or not, I’m a pretty Liberal guy politically. I don’t have much formal education, but I can do Jr. High level math. The problem with many Liberal ideas on fixing things isn’t the basic content, (and I’m guessing we’d agree on that) the problem is the basic Jr. High math of the Liberal solution to problems like housing just don’t add up. If we add up just the people on the current public housing waiting lists in greater Seattle, we’d need something close to 4 billion just to build housing for them. (that number comes from the cocktail napkin calculations from a THA guy and a city councilman after a few drinks at the Top Of Tacoma bar… they’re low and out of date I’d guess by now) And the problem is that’s just the current waiting lists… the real housing crisis is much, much deeper
Sound Transit should be a warning for government intervention on the housing market of greater Seattle. So far we’ve spent billions on a regional transit network it just hasn’t been very successful. Some of if it was poor planning and but most of it is Sound Transit has never been fully funded, projects take waaay too long and inflation sets in. Light rail has taken so long to build that the first parts of it will wear out and need heavy maintenance before the last parts are even built. That’s a big failure loop right there. You think moving the needle on better transit is tough? Moving the needle on affordable housing would be many, many times harder….. the amount of cash and political will is something I can’t even imagine.
Look, we live in world where it’s every person for themselves. My advice to young people is to buy a house. Move if you have too. Because nobody wants to be 65 years old and not have a place to live. Counting on some sort of government lifeline to your housing problems are just crazy. Ask the poor souls on low income housing lists…
tacomee, then “the contractors” need some competition, and that competition should be in the form of workers’ collectives who build affordable housing and who therefore receive assistance from a government tax on contractors activities, to help even the field.
Whoa, “Socialism!”. Yep, but a particularly capitalistic form, because a talented and well self-managed workers’ collective which can underbid the traditional model of “I keep all the cream, you get a fixed wage” will do quite nicely attracting the best workers.
Tom Terrific,
I always stand up for the right for blue collar workers (starting with underpaid bus drivers). The problem is Seattle, and many posters on this board, see blue collar workers as inferior. The solution to the bus driver shortage is often, “self driving buses” and not, “let’s pay drivers more and get better service”. I don’t generally think of college Liberal as allies to the working class. Oh, many Liberals think they are, but classism is often “baked in” at the university level.
The problems with a “workers collective” for construction are, “Who funds it?” and them “Who runs it?” The world is chock full of college educated Lefties who see themselves being in charge of something like this. And Eugene Debs rolls over in his grave. Although I’d volunteer in a New York minute! I love the idea.
A good example of “socialism gone wrong” would be the Jobs 253 program in Tacoma. It started out as a group of business people working with lower income kids with paid internships. Other than the kids, nobody got paid, it was volunteer driven and somewhat successful. Then the social worker grifters and Tacoma Public Schools butted in. There are so many college educated Lefty do-gooders who want a job running a program like this! Never mind that having paid staff and management leaves less resources for the kids…. So Jobs 253 was moved to Tacoma Schools so teachers could have Summer jobs….. I still support the program, but it’s not nearly as effective as it was with just community volunteers and kids.
The same kids in the 253 program could also get a fake ID and walk on to a construction site and get a job learning a trade and making real pay checks. Because of poverty and family instability, many Lincoln kids are adults at 14-15 years old. The last thing these kids need is to wash out of a university with 50k in student debt. Some kind of workers collective would be a great idea for many of them…. if only the Lefties would let it happen.
There was an interesting piece on CNBC this morning about the rising cost of oil, which has just passed $92/barrel.
The first commentator was an economist. He noted the high cost of oil is increasing the cost of gas which is keeping inflation too high for the Fed to lower interest rates which is keeping mortgage rates too high which is keeping folks who want to buy in rental housing which is increasing rents because demand is too high until those who want to buy can afford to buy with lower interest rates and folks with low interest rate mortgages can sell and buy another house.
The second commentator was a political consultant. He noted the price of gas is a very sensitive issue in elections, in part because it hits the middle and lower classes so hard (and affects the price of food due to fertilizer, farm equipment, and transportation), and everyone rich or poor has to stand at the pump watching the price of a tank of gas soar as they fill their car. One of the places they like to conduct polling is at gas stations at Costco’s because those are lower/middle/upper middle class Americans who tend to vote.
He noted Biden won the presidency by 23,000 votes out of 160 million in four swing states, and the 2022 elections for the House and Senate were very close. That is why Biden drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower the price of gas before the 2022 elections. Since he hasn’t replenished the SPR and the price of oil has risen so fast and the federal government is looking at a $1.7 TRILLION deficit this year he won’t be able to release any oil from the SPR in 2024 to lower the price of gas for the election, and his policies have made it very hard for U.S. drillers and refiners to step up supply despite the rise in the cost of a barrel of oil.
So the price of gas could determine who wins the Presidency, Senate and House in 2024.
Do the folks on this blog think a Republican or Democrat President, Senate and/or House would be better for transit, considering most sane people think the deficit has to be lowered by at least $500 billion in 2024 through either tax increases or cuts, or a combination of both.
Be careful about what you wish for, especially if you don’t understand the consequences.
Daniel, the price of oil is high because Russia is forbidden to sell it to free nations, and Ukraine’s contribution to global supply, minor though it is, has been completely wrecked. Sure, Russia is selling to China and other crypto-fascist states at a big loss, and they in turn are not buying as much from their traditional suppliers, but the net result of all the reshuffling is the global production is down about two and a half mbpd in comparison to 2019 rates. Since the world economy has largely returned to trend, that missing 2.5 mpbd hurts
The US is the largest oil producer by a significant margin, and there are tens of thousands of acres of Federally leased land which have never had a well drilled on them, or the wells have been shut in because they produce so little. The Federal government owns NO LAND in the Baakken field of North Dakota and Montana. The Federal government owns NO LAND in the or the Permian Basin. Geoscience has gotten so good now that nearly every well that’s drilled makes pay. If the cowboys in the awl bidness don’t drill somewhere that they can, it’s because they don’t want to waste money.
The oil majors aren’t dumb. Without Russia flooding the market and the Saudis pretty well tapped out for the time being, US frackers are the “swing” producers, and they are saying, “At $90 a barrel I like having a lot of oil in the ground. I really don’t want to compete with myself by pumping more.”
“discount” not “loss”. They’re still making plenty.
> Globally, people rarely use public transportation because of morality; they use it because it is cheap.
It’s true, but I’m not sure focusing on this angle really helps transit in America. A lot of it is more about convenience and the lack of speed/frequency that hurts usage.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/buying-a-used-electric-vehicle
Interesting info. Having a battery fail or degrade is around 3-4X the cost of a new ICE engine. Based on this article. 30% loss of battery range is within the warranty. It isn’t clear how much air conditioning consumes battery power.