Investigators and officials continue to work at the scene of a rush-hour collision between two Metro transit trains in northeast Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning, June 23, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

At least nine people have died and dozens injured in a crash of two Red Line trains on Washington, DC’s Metro subway, by far the deadliest in the system’s history.  The investigation is still ongoing but operator error is suspected.

WTOP:

“This is a tragedy beyond belief,” Metro General Manager John Catoe said on WTOP. “My heart is heavy with the weight of this grief.”

An inbound Metro train smashed into the back of another at the height of the Monday evening rush hour, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens on the Red Line.

“We are still removing remains from the train,” Catoe says. “This is still a recovery effort.” “Our teams have been working through the night, and we’re trying to make sure we document and collect all of the perishable evidence,” National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman tells WTOP.

WaPo:

Experts familiar with Metro’s operations focused last night on a failure of the signal system and operator error as likely causes of yesterday’s fatal Red Line crash.

These systems were supposed to make yesterday’s crash impossible. Metro was designed with a fail-safe computerized signal system that is supposed to prevent trains from colliding. The agency’s trains are run by onboard computers that control speed and braking. Another electronic system detects the position of trains to maintain a safe distance between them. If they get too close, the computers automatically apply the brakes, stopping the trains.

A system failure occurred in June 2005 but alert train operators averted disaster.  “It was unclear last night whether they ever found a cause” for that incident.

In yesterday’s crash, it appeared that the operator of the train that crashed did not apply the emergency brakes, also known as the “mushroom.” Experts said the train appeared to be traveling fast before impact because the force pushed the first car of the train on top of the train ahead. Witnesses on the train that crashed also reported that the train did not brake before impact.

There was no reason to think that the operator did not spot the train ahead of her yesterday. The weather was clear, and the trains were not in a tunnel.

“It doesn’t look like she hit the brakes,” said a train safety expert, who asked not to be identified because the crash is under investigation. “That’s why you have an operator in the cab. She should have been able to take action. That’s what they’re there for.”

Other possible factors in the crash include a medical emergency that incapacitated the operator or a catastrophic failure of the braking system.

The operator was killed in the accident.

I found out about the accident shortly after it happened via Twitter; a lot of those whose feeds I follow live in DC. I don’t know yet whether anyone I know was on board the trains involved.

Robert Reich points out that, if we make up a new way of counting unemployment, we’ve got a lot of unemployment:

The March employment numbers, out this morning, are bleak: 8.5 percent of Americans officially unemployed, 663,000 more jobs lost. But if you include people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is 9 percent. And if you include people working part time who’d rather be working full time, it’s now up to 15.6 percent. One in every six workers in America is now either unemployed or underemployed.

And, if we count people working full time who’d rather get paid a lot more money, put in fewer hours, and do things that are more fun, it’s now up to 99.9 percent. Virtually one in every one workers in America is now either unemployed or underemployed!

QED:

This is still not the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is a Depression. And the only way out is government spending on a very large scale. We should stop worrying about Wall Street. Worry about American workers. Use money to build up Main Street, and the future capacities of our workforce.

Despite skepticism with how he got there, I’m actually inclined to agree.  Bailing out bad companies is a stupid idea.  Lending a helping hand to people down on their luck, on the other hand, is something I can get behind.

Naturally, however, Reich loses me on implementation:

Energy independence and a non-carbon economy should be the equivalent of a war mobilization.

So, we should declare war on fossil fuels?  Will that go as well as the wars on drugs, crime, and poverty?

Hire Americans to weatherize and insulate homes across the land.

We’re going to have a WPA for caulking windows and blowing in insulation?!  Really?!  Not only would these people presumably be competing with people who currently do that sort of thing for a living but it would surely count as underemployment for the vast number of the recently unemployed.  Wouldn’t we rather, I dunno, get jobs that require some level of skill?

Don’t encourage General Motors or any other auto company to shrink. Use the auto makers’ spare capacity to make busses, new wind turbines, and electric cars (why let the Chinese best us on this?). Enlarge public transit systems.

So, we’re going to spend vast sums of money taking a giant leap back in personal freedom and convenience?  The automobile was a wonderful invention that made our lives radically better.  We’re going to give that up for buses and other forms of public transit?  Yee. Hah.

And while we’re at it, we’re going to thumb our noses at the trade regimes we’ve spent sixty years putting in place, subsidizing a pet industry that the Chinese would otherwise dominate in a free market?

Meanwhile, extend our educational infrastructure. So many young people are out of work that they should be using this time to improve their skills and capacities. Expand community colleges. Enlarge Pell Grants. Extend job-training opportunities to the unemployed, so they can learn new skills while they’re collecting unemployment benefits.

Outside Detroit, which was in its death throes before this crisis got underway, education and training isn’t the problem.  We’re not less educated than we were eighteen months ago. We’ve got Harvard MBAs out on the streets now.  We’re going to, what, send them to learn a trade?  Caulking windows, perhaps?

Finally, accelerate universal health care.

It always comes back to that, no?  It’s the Democratic Party’s version of cutting taxes.  It solves everything, dontcha know?

Matt Yglesias explains why public transit should be free through an analogy:

Say there’s no road between Washington, DC and Frederick, Maryland. You can go from the one place to the other, but it involves going way out of your way even though it could be a pretty quick trip on a direct road. What you need to ask yourself about building such a road is what would it cost and would it be worth it? You don’t build the road expecting to turn a profit. And you shouldn’t really build it expecting tolls to finance it. You should build it because you want to encourage people to drive from DC to Frederick. But if you build the road and it comes to pass that it’s choked with traffic during certain periods of time you don’t respond by making the road wider. Just like with building the road in the first place, you make it wider if you want to increase the number of people driving. If you want to eliminate the congestion problem, then you charge people to drive on the road during the peak times. The transit situation is similar. If you don’t want people to take the Metro from Bethesda to Gallery Place, then you shouldn’t build the Metro. But if you do want people to take the Metro from Bethesda to Gallery Place then you shouldn’t charge them to ride. But if it turns out that your route is too popular at certain times of day, then you want to charge them in order to prevent overcrowding.

But, if the public policy goal is to get the benefits that come from getting people from point A to point B, I’m not sure this makes much sense.

For one thing, trying to prevent overcrowding by raising prices during popular times imposes the burden entirely on the poor.  The Tim Geithners and Tom Daschles of the world will travel when they damned well please but plumbers named Joe have to either fork over a meaningful chunk of their income or waste a lot of time arriving to places, including their workplaces, very early and leaving very late.   (There is, after all, a reason certain times are more popular than others.)

Beyond that, if we want people to drive from Bethesda into DC, then we should make it as convenient to do so as practical.  Indeed, I avoid driving to Bethesda, which is a perfectly nice place, like the plague because it’s not worth the hassle of getting there.  Give me more traffic lanes or faster, more pleasant public transit and I’d adapt accordingly.

UPDATE: Alternatively, we could replace people with ants and solve all the problems.

Photo by Flickr user Sagebrush Photography, used under Creative Commons license.

Megan McArdle has managed, after only five months of effort, to get an automobile registered in the District of Columbia.  Whilst not driving for said period, she managed to crack a mirror and run a red light.

I’m beginning to understand her preference for biking and public transit.

Photo via Flickr user shawnblog under Creative Commons license.

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. Of course, since people obviously prefer to drive, the collective benefits this provides are offset by individual unhappiness.

People are getting more exercise because they’re being forced to walk or ride bikes more. And they’re losing weight! That’s undeniably a good thing, unless you’re in the health care or mortuary business. Then again, there’s a trade-off in time that otherwise would have been devoted to productivity or leisure. And, depending on the weather, you’re likely to show up for work soaked from rain or sweat if you live far enough away that you would be driving if only gas weren’t so expensive.

Fewer car crashes! If you’re not driving, you can’t get into a car crash, right? Of course, a car might hit you while you’re riding your bike.

Shorter commutes and less traffic. The combination of some people moving closer to work and others taking mass transit or biking means that people are spending less time on the road. (Anecdotally, this doesn’t seem to be the case in the DC area.) Of course, this means that people are either paying more for housing or living in less desirable housing. After all, there’s a reason they were living further from work — which almost nobody wants to do, all other things being equal — to begin with.

We’re switching to biofuels. And thereby raising food prices dramatically, which has been devastating for the world’s poor. But we’re working on some other types of biofuels that won’t do that. It’ll take a few decades, though. (Why is this listed as a reason to love $4 gas, again? Apparently, “Four Reasons to Love $4 Gas” weren’t enough.)

Via Matt Yglesias, who wishes the government rather than the oil companies were getting the extra money.

Photo: Cleveland Plain Dealer

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 to public transportation. The answer has been assumed to be very high because Americans supposedly are in love with our cars. Yet now we know there’s a tipping point, and it’s not quite as high as policymakers have guessed. It’s around $4 a gallon. We know that’s the tipping piont because suddenly millions of Americans are switching to buses, trains and subways to go to work.

Rather than bemoaning this remarkable turnaround we should be celebrating it because public transit not only reduces congestion but also reduces the nation’s energy needs and cuts carbon emissions that bring on global warming.

No. This is in the category of “every cloud has a silver lining” rather than a pleasant surprise. Poorer Americans are being stripped of their freedom and leisure time by economic forces outside their control. That’s mostly a bad thing even though there are side benefits.

Reich is right, though, in the main thrust of his essay.

Even though it’s a hundred times more efficient for each of us to stop driving and use trains and buses, there’s not enough money in the public kitty for us to do so.

This is nuts. If officials need more money to cover the extra fuel costs of public transit, they can raise ticket prices a bit without reducing demand; most of us would still find public transit cheaper than driving our cars. But officials shouldn’t stop there. They should add services and expand whole systems — more buses, more trains, more light rail. If they can’t finance this by floating bonds, they should go to Congress and ensure that public transportation is a major part of the next stimulus package.

This is obviously right. Public transit is impractical in much of the country, simply because of population density. But it’s silly that it’s difficult even for many of us who live in major metropolitan areas to use the system.

Story via memeorandum. Photo: Cheat Seeking Missiles

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 first quarter of the year, according to a report released yesterday by the American Public Transportation Association. Americans took 2.6 billion trips on all modes of public transportation, including subways and buses, in the first three months of 2008, a 3.3 percent increase, or almost 85 million more trips than in the same period last year, the report said.

[...]

The U.S. Transportation Department reported last month that in March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles than in March 2007, a decline of 4.3 percent and the first time since 1979 that traffic has dropped from one March to the next.

Next: A government study showing that sales of umbrellas increase during rainy season.

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 to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

[...]

Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.

And there are, as always in America, the issues of race and class. Despite the gentrification that has taken place in some inner cities, and the plunge in national crime rates to levels not seen in decades, it will be hard to shake the longstanding American association of higher-density living with poverty and personal danger.

Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.

Now, as Mark Finkelstein documents, the same statistics which show a plunge in inner city crime rates also show that the Atlanta suburbs are three times less prone to violent crime than the downtown area. So, maybe there’s something to this perception beyond racism and classism.

While it’s undoubtedly the case that public policy decisions have made it easier for people to live in the suburbs, the assumption that everybody really wants to live in big cities and don’t because of zoning rules and whatnot is unfounded. There are actual reasons to prefer the suburbs. Some people actually like to have backyards. Or to be able to sleep without hearing their neighbor’s stereo, police sirens, or the sounds of nightlife.

But it’s true that there are advantages to density, too. The ability to walk to meet friends and go to restaurants, bars, and the corner grocery store is nice. (Although, to be honest, I’m not sure how often I’d walk to the grocery store, anyway. I like the luxury of grabbing, say, a couple cases of water or other heavy items that weren’t on my list. That’s impractical even if one is a 10-15 minute walk from home.)

Dan Savage and Matt Yglesias are right that we can do better at providing good public transportation for those who want it. Duncan Black suggests that we incorporate mass transit into the planning of development corridors to begin with. That all makes sense.

Inevitably, though, these discussions devolve into “and we need to make it more expensive for people to drive, too!” That’s just counterproductive. Our elected leaders aren’t going to go against the interests of their constituents in that way. Nor should they. We should devote our efforts to making mass transit and compact living more attractive rather than making the alternatives worse.

memeorandum

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, it’s simply been a case of shitty, or inadequate, public transit options. If Irvine had had a real system of subways or light rail, I would’ve much preferred taking that to the Spectrum than having my parents drop me off. But I didn’t have the option. When I lived in LA, I would’ve done ANYTHING to avoid the freeways. People who move to DC or New York or Toronto don’t start taking subways because they adopt a new culture on day two. It’s because they suddenly have the option to take subways.

Living in a virtually mass-transit free area, I have to concur. I absolutely hate driving, and would love to have more options.

One of the tragedies of the history of mass transit isn’t just the lack of support it’s received throughout most of the country, but also the fact that many viable, working, well-used systems of mass transit were actually systematically dismantled in the middle of the 20th century. I don’t buy into the GM conspiracy theory, but there were certainly opportunities for governments to step in and preserve the systems — heck, just allotting public right-of-way instead of forcing transit companies to own their own might have saved some of them.

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 in desperate financial straits are only going to use transit if it’s reasonably convenient.”

Damn straight. And that’s as it should be.

There are plenty of reasons to desire as a society that more people use mass transit. But we shouldn’t expect that this will happen out of some sense of altruism. Rather, we should get about the business of figuring out how to make it reasonably desirable, preferably directly rather than by penalizing driving. My instinct is that, aside from people living in a handful of metropolitan areas, it’s just not feasible. But that would still cover a whole lot more people than it does now.

The DC Metro rail system is reasonably clean and safe and I’d use it a lot more than I do now if 1) there were a stop within walking distance of my house, 2) trains ran with sufficient frequency, 3) I were able to get to my destination with reasonable speed and undue fuss. And, yes, I realize goals 1 and 3 are difficult to realize given the existence of non-me ridership.

The generally touted quick fix is some sort of rapid transit bus system which has all manner of advantages over rail. Unfortunately, for reasons that I don’t at all understand, bus systems almost immediately degenerate into lowest common denominator experiences. The DC Metro bus system, certainly, is a relative nightmare as compared to MetroRail.

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 before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it’s because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world’s best talent — including Americans.

Perhaps a more plausible explanation is that Singapore Changi Airport just opened in 1981 whereas JFK has been open since 1948? Or that the former is the shining spotlight of a wealthy city-state whereas the latter is one of three major airports in the New York metropolitan area and one of dozens in relatively close proximity?

Similarly, the Berlin Hauptbahnhof is brand, spanking new, having opened in 2006. Penn Station opened in 1910.

That Singapore and Berlin have newer and more impressive transportation hubs than New York City is almost assuredly not related to savings rates. If we were to build new airports or train stations, we’d certainly not do so with cash on the barrel head; we’d issue bonds.

The problem is that it’s almost impossible to get approval to undertake such massive projects. We’ve got an incredibly decentralized system that creates powerful inertia for the status quo. Local interests would rebel against putting a new airport anywhere near them because of the externalities involved. State, local, and federal authorities would vie with themselves and dozens of private stakeholders as to what share each would assume of the costs. State and federal regulators would put up all manner of obstacles to the project.

What we wind up doing in most cases is piecemeal renovation and expansion of existing facilities. Which, incidentally, has been happening at JFK in phases throughout its existence and, most notably, since 1998. But that approach guarantees that it’ll never be the architectural marvel of a brand new facility built without these constraints.

UPDATE: I should have completed the circle by noting, as Dave Schuler has, that Singapore decidedly lacks those constraints.

Indirect hat tip to John Cole, who focused on an entirely different aspect of Friedman’s column.

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 drivers in the form of free roads is obviously producing highly inefficient outcomes, which is why DC feels like a prison from which it is impossible to escape unless one wants to spend four hours on the Beltway. We clearly need to institute comprehensive road tolls combined with a congestion pricing scheme. Plus, of course, a carbon tax to compensate for the negative externalities drivers are imposing on those of us who use primarily mass transit.

What’s interesting about this is the presumption that people who use mass transit paid for by the taxpayers are somehow more virtuous than those of us who buy our own vehicles, pay to maintain them, and pay all manner of taxes for the privilege. Indeed, this may be the only case where those who rely on government for something feel smugly superior to those who pay their own way.

To be sure, as my original post noted, the roadways are paid for by the taxpayers. While various user fees apply, there’s certainly some aspect of subsidy involved. Then again, that’s obviously true for public transit as well.* [See Update]

The vast majority of those who take subways and public buses to work make that choice, not out of altruism, but because it makes the most sense to them given their situation. Some simply can’t afford the cost of buying and maintaining a car. Most, though, are simply urban dwellers who live their lives within a very small geographic area where parking is very expensive and driving is very slow and inefficient. For most Americans, conversely, it simply makes no sense to rely on public transit. We live outside the handful of cities with excellent rail systems. Land and therefore parking is very cheap. Our home, work, shopping, and recreation are often spread out over long distances.

For young, single people working in New York, Chicago, or Washington, living downtown and relying on public transportation is not only efficient but fun. There’s a densely packed social network, lots of bars and restaurants, and so forth within minutes of you. Marriage, children, and other lifestyle changes tend to bring into sharper focus the downsides of living downtown.

My wife and I both work in different towns. When we bought our house a little over a year ago, neither of us worked in D.C. I was working for myself in a home office, so my commute was a non-factor in the decision. We found a place that was relatively affordable, in a community we liked, within less than fifteen minutes of where she worked. Now that I’m driving to D.C. four times a week, the location is somewhat less ideal but certainly not enough so to warrant moving.

A few of the commenters on Megan’s post and mine note the serenity of the subway ride vice the drive. That’s largely a function of personality, I suppose. While many people can read or zone out with their iPods, I find it very difficult to relax on the Metro, which is loud and crowded and constantly jostling. By contrast, unless traffic is especially horrendous, my drive in and out of D.C. is fairly pleasant. The weather’s been such that I can put the top down and enjoy the sun and wind and I’ve got satellite radio and other amenities to while away the time.

Another strain of comments focused on the “why would you live somewhere where it takes an hour to drive thirteen miles” angle. That, again, is a lifestyle choice. There are jobs that essentially don’t exist outside of a handful of major cities. Indeed, my wife and I now both work in fields that are very national capitol-dependent (she’s in political polling, I’m in the foreign policy business). Doing what we do more or less requires living in the D.C. Metro area.

Some point out, correctly, that by figuring only what I’m paying for gasoline and parking skews the economic calculation in favor of driving, since I’m ignoring the depreciation on my car, maintenance, and so forth. I tend to view those as essentially fixed costs, since I’m going to need a car anyway, but it’s certainly true that that should be factored into the analysis. As the gist of my post made clear, though, time and stress are the far more important variables for me; for those in different financial circumstances, though, it’s an important point.

Life’s ultimately about trade-offs. There are some serious advantages and disadvantages to living downtown in a major metropolitan area, in the suburbs, or in rural areas far from the hustle and bustle. Ultimately, each of us must make those decisions based on our aspirations, means, and opportunities. It strikes me as odd, though, to condemn those who make other choices than the ones that suit us.

UPDATE: Peter Jackson links to some DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics data which shows that, in fact, passenger car drivers actually pay more in user fees per 1000 miles driven than they receive in federal subsidies whereas mass transit gets huge subsidies. Megan argues that the data is misleading and irrelevant.

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 have to worry about parking.

Jim Graham, a D.C. Council member who represents Ward 1, said he was concerned about low-income residents who live in the District and rely on Metrobus. He said he would not support any proposal that increased bus fare. Instead, he said, the fees for parking should go up. He said it was “offensive” that the proposed increase for parking was only 50 cents when the market rate for parking is much higher.

That prompted criticism from suburban board members. “There are poor people in all the jurisdictions who take buses to all the sectors,” said Catherine M. Hudgins, a Fairfax County supervisor who represents Virginia. “There is a perception that the District is the only place that has poor people,” she said.

I’m now commuting into D.C. on a near-weekdaily basis. According to GoogleMaps, the office is 13.5 miles from the house. I can usually drive there in 45-60 minutes during off-peak hours, although it can sometimes take much longer if there’s an accident. I can park in the garage next to my office for the day for $12. Conversely, I can drive 15-20 minutes to a Metro station, pay $4 to park, wait as long as 15 minutes for a train, pay another $2.65 to get two blocks from the office 35-50 minutes later, followed by a 5-10 minute walk to the office.

So, in order to save $2.70 (plus a nominal amount of gasoline), it would cost me 30-75 minutes each day for the round trip, plus the privacy and autonomy I enjoy in my own vehicle. Given that I earn enough that $3 is poor compensation indeed for that much of my time, I drive unless there’s a really good reason not to.

And they’re about to raise the rates for Metro fares and parking, further skewing the calculus in the direction of “drive.”

There seems to be an underlying assumption made by the officials in the report above that public transportation should pay for itself through fees. That’s a rather strange notion when the alternative to suburbanites parking and taking public transit into the District is more people driving and clogging up the roads, which are heavily subsidized by tax dollars.

Unless they figure out a way to create express trains to get people into D.C. from the far suburbs with making 19 stops in between, they’re probably not going to attract people like me to Metro. If, however, they decided to subsidize Metro station parking so that the cost savings of public transit vice driving was more substantial (say, $7 a day instead of $3) they would almost certainly attract far more lower middle class passengers.

That would be good for most all concerned. It would help alleviate traffic and thus cut highway construction and maintenance costs considerably. It would reduce demand for gasoline, helping stabilize prices and giving a great boon to those on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. It would reduce pollution from emissions. Presumably, there would be people harmed as well, such as those in the auto repair business but the aggregate benefits would far outweigh that.

Yet, rather clearly, that’s not how urban planners are thinking.

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 to city. “As more employers move out of cities to be closer to skilled suburban workers, the suburbs now account for the majority of job destinations,” the report noted.

The board, part of the National Academies, has analyzed commuting trends since 1986, largely using Census data. According to the latest analysis, the number of new solo drivers grew by almost 13 million from 1990 to 2000. The number of workers with commutes lasting more than 60 minutes grew by almost 50 percent over that period. And, compared with the previous decade, more Americans are leaving for work between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.

More than 4 million people now work from home, and a growing number of those over age 55 are doing so, the report said, a trend that is expected to continue.

None of this is particularly surprising, really. Aside from traffic getting worse, it’s much harder than it used to be to live close to where one works. Two-income households virtually ensure that at least one partner is a long way from the office. Further, people change jobs much more frequently than in the past, meaning that even if one lived close to the original job they may suddenly be a longer distance from the current one. And, of course, an increasing number of people in urban areas are willing to mover further and further away from work in order to afford larger houses, be in better school districts, or gain the illusion of greater safety for their family.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum wonders, “Why are more people leaving for work before 6 am? The increase seems to be way out of proportion to the average growth in commuting time, which has risen only four minutes in the past 20 years.”

My guess is that much of it is a response to HOV lanes and flex scheduling. In the DC area, at least, several key arteries become carpool lanes at 6:30 am. Also, many employers allow people to come in and leave early or late so that they’re not having to drive during the height of rush hour.