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Portland is a PR machine for light rail & streetcar

Here are Some Facts About Portland Oregon          

“It must always be remembered how cost-effectiveness works in the public sector: the cost IS the benefit.” - author unknown




Some Federal Data Links

From: http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=798

25th  December  2008


2007 Highway Statistics


The Federal Highway Administration has started to publish its 2007 Highway Statistics. These include a couple of tables that contain lots of useful data about urban areas, but the tables are annoyingly difficult to work with.


The tables are HM-71, which lists miles of road and daily vehicle miles traveled for various kinds of roads in each of more 458 urban areas; and HM-72, which lists other important characteristics for each of those urban areas.


I have two problems with the FHwA’s Excel files. First, it puts the 458 urban areas on nine different sheets, or about 50 urban areas per sheet. So I make a new file that puts them all on one sheet. Second, for those urban areas that are in multiple states, it breaks down the data by state. This can be useful, but if you are trying to get totals, averages, or do other calculations, you effectively double-count those areas. So I delete the state-by-state breakdowns.


The result are modified tables HM-71 (Local)and HM-72 (local). If you find these modified tables useful, they are my Christmas gift to you. Perhaps not as big a gift as my Thanksgiving gift, but that’s the way the holiday cookie crumbles.

From: http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=620

27th  November  2008

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National Transit Data for 2007


As a Thanksgiving gift to all my faithful allies and loyal opponents, the Antiplanner has summarized the recently posted National Transit Data for 2007 into one file. The original data are contained in about 21 different files, many of which are hard to read because you have to cross-reference to other files.


The 1.6 MB spreadsheet (Local) I’ve posted is in three parts. The first 1438 rows include data for every mode (light rail, bus, etc.) offered by every transit agency in the country (or at least every one that reports to the FTA). The data are also sorted into “DO,” meaning directly operated by the transit agency, and “PT,” meaning contracted out to private companies.


Rows 1442 through 1456 summarize the data by mode: cable car, commuter rail, and so forth. Some of the data (employee hours and BTUs) are only available for directly operated systems, so rows 1459 through 1473 summarize the DO data only by mode.


Rows 1477 through 1828 summarize the data by urbanized area.


Columns represent:


A – Agency ID number

B – Mode abbreviation (see rows 1442 through 1456 for translation)

C – DO or PT

D – Transit agency name

E – City and state (agency headquarters)

F – The number of the urbanized area primarily served by the agency

G – Transit trips in 2007

H – Passenger miles

I – Vehicle revenue miles

J – Fare revenues

K – Capital costs

L – Operating costs

M – Employee hours

N – BTUs of energy

O – Number of vehicles in the active fleet

P – Number of seats in those vehicles

Q – Standing room in those vehicles

R – Directional route miles (rail only – a route mile is usually two directional route miles)


All of the above columns are straight from the data base (except BTUs which I calculated from the kilowatt hours, gallons of fuel, etc. using standard conversion factors). The rest are calculated:


S – Average trip length (passenger miles per trip)

T – Average vehicle occupancy (passenger miles per vehicle revenue mile)

U – Average vehicle capacity (seats and standing room divided by number of vehicles)

V – Operating cost per passenger mile

W – Operating cost per trip

X – Employee hours per thousands of passenger miles

Y – BTUs per passenger mile


In the urbanized area rows, columns X and Y may be low in any areas that contract out some of their transit because the hours and BTUs of directly operated transit will be divided by the passenger miles of all transit. I’ll try to fix this in future editions of this spreadsheet.


For now, have a safe and happy holiday.


This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under