5 Reasons to Love $4 Gas

The gang at Foreign Policy wants you to know that, "Sure, it’s ruining the global economy and making everyone miserable, but there’s an underappreciated upside to the high price of oil." They'd have to be awfully good to offset ruining the economy and making everyone miserable, no? Well, here they are: Slightly more people may be taking mass transit. ...

Forced Public Transit

Robert Reich, who admits that he used to commute by car rather than public transit because "I've never been able to organize myself around their schedules," is delighted that people are now being forced to do what he wouldn't by high gas prices. For years, policymakers have wondered just how high gas prices would have to go before drivers switch ...

Public Transit Up, Driving Down as Gas Prices Increase

Proving that basic economic concepts like elasticity of demand and substitution of goods are not outmoded, the American public is responding to increases in gas prices by driving less and taking public transit more. Soaring gas prices are pushing more Americans to take public transit, with streetcars, trolleys and other light rail experiencing a 10.3 percent increase in ridership for the ...

Mass Transit: Why Can’t Atlanta be More Like Berlin?

Paul Krugman recently visited Berlin and had an epiphany: It's different than Atlanta. To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping. It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have ...

It’s Nice to Have the Option

Ezra Klein points out that, at least in the context of mass transit, if you build it, they will come.Driving is often a drag. Given a viable alternative, I'll happily choose the competitor. There's this tendency to ascribe Americans' low use of public transit to some sort of cultural preference, as if it's been a choice. But in many cases, ...

Public Transit Realities

Matt Yglesias reviews Sim City 4 and laments the fact that "the game is curiously optimistic about middle class people's willingness to ride a bus to a subway station then take a subway then get on another bus and take that to work. Maybe when gas costs $20 a gallon, but in the real world I think people who aren't ...

America’s Outdated Infrastructure

Thomas Friedman laments that said state of America's transportation infrastructure. A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have ...

Commuting Ressentiment

My recent post on the D.C. public transit fee debate generated an unusual amount of commentary for a weekend post. Judging by the tone of some of the discussion, there's clearly an emotional component to the discussion of which I was only vaguely aware. Megan McArdle agreed with my analysis of the economic incentives and remarked, The massive subsidy provided to ...

Public Transit Debate Pits City Against Suburbs

A squabble about D.C. area public transportation fees highlights some interesting issues. [D]uring a three-hour special session that highlighted the competing interests of the District and its suburban neighbors, board members traded accusations about which riders would be hurt most by the latest proposal: suburban subway riders who pay to park, or city residents who mostly take the bus and don't ...

Commutes Getting Longer

A scientific panel reports that Americans are commuting further than ever before. More and more commuters are leaving home earlier, traveling farther and driving alone, says an analysis of commuting trends reported Monday. The "Commuting in America" study by the Transportation Research Board also found that more commuters are traveling from suburb to suburb — rather than the traditional commute from suburb ...