Fewer New Drivers Licenses-- Is It Good for Passenger Rail?

What might be more relevant is Census data that shows that Americans are abandoning the far suburbs and the ex-urbs and moving to higher density cities and inner suburbs. The trend can't be maintained of course, but for the near term people are moving to the dense urban core. where public transit dominates.

This is an Ezra Klein blog about it. The link to the census data is broken.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/americans-are-fleeing-the-exburbs--but-will-it-last/2012/04/13/gIQANH9cFT_blog.html

This trend is also to be observed here in Germany. The younger folks move back into the cities, where excellent public transport networks offer them the mobility they need at a fraction of the cost of maintaining a car. At about $ 9 to a gallon of gas it is no wonder!

This up and coming generation, at least in the United States, is the first for whom their earliest memories of the automobile will be the child restraint car seat. Consciously or subconsciously the car is viewed, not as an outlet of freedom, but as a mode of unwarranted restraint. This has led to, at best, a more balanced view of the car or, at worst, a negative outlook. $4 per gallon gas at a time of low or no wages further erodes the romance of the waning automobile era.

How does this bode for passenger rail/public transportation? It shall depend on what this new generation demands for transportation. Our country literally depends on transportation to maintain the economy. If no one moves the economy crashes. It is early but it would appear that some businesses are just now awakening to the reality that the status quo is not being universally accepted anymore. This spells economic opportunity for those willing to cater to the post-automobile generation.

Whether the trends noted in the Post article will be long term remains to be seen.  I did not have a car until I was 27, primarily because I lived in New York City and did not need one.  Equally important, I could not afford one.  Eventually I got a car because of the inconvenience, dirtiness, rude passengers, and crime associated with New York City transit. At the time I got my first car I lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

More young people are moving to or near the center city.  This has been especially true in Dallas and Houston. But the percentage is relatively small.

I lived in uptown Dallas from 2004 to 2008.  It is a magnet for young professionals, many of whom work downtown, which is approximately a mile from Uptown.  Almost all of the people in Uptown have a car, and very few of them used public transit to get to work.  Fortunately, I was able to use the McKinney Avenue Trolly to go downtown, but it was not crowded by any stretch of the imagination.

Increased congestion, especially along the I-35 corridor, and the higher cost of owning a car, coupled with a slight increase in the number of people living in or near city centers, will have some impact on the use of transit and perhaps intercity rail in Texas, but it is likely to be minimal.  

In 2008, according to the DOT, approximately 88 per cent of intercity trips in the U.S., being defined as 50 miles or more, were made by car.  In Texas, which by the way is as large as France and nearly as large as Germany, 25 years from now I expect the numbers for intercity trips, as well as transit usage, will not be much different than they are today. What will be different, however, are how cars are owned and powered. They will be more expensive; albeit it better, and people will keep them considerably longer than was the case in the 1960s or even today. Moreover, a substantial portion of the fleet will be hybrids, electrics, and perhaps some new technologies.  

Any movement away from the automobile and its use of oil would not serve the interests of the Koch brothers, the Congress they paid for, and the media outlets and messages they promote.  Therefore, they won't allow any change in current transportation policy.

Until something in that equation changes, there will be no major new money for public transportation.  

Did anyone here see the GAO report on the real reason Gov. Christie killed the new Hudson tunnels?  Was he serving the transportation interests of the young people, or anyone else, in New Jersey? 

Follow the money, people.

The main users of public transit and passenger rail are usually the elderly, of which there are more of

now and for the forseeable future. This will be more of a driving force ( no pun intended ) than a rising

number of young folks.

A. McIntosh

The main users of public transit and passenger rail are usually the elderly, of which there are more of

now and for the forseeable future. This will be more of a driving force ( no pun intended ) than a rising

number of young folks.

I have no idea of where you live, but try riding Metra.  It's not the mostly elderly but working adults between 25-65 who live in suburbs but whose jobs are in downtown Chicago.

NKP guy

Did anyone here see the GAO report on the real reason Gov. Christie killed the new Hudson tunnels?  Was he serving the transportation interests of the young people, or anyone else, in New Jersey?... 

Do you have a link for the GAO report?

Mike,

   I don't have the exact link, but if you Google it, it comes right up.  The story was published in The Wall Street Journal on April 10.  Today's New York Times editorial page has a piece and there's another, I believe in the Op-Ed page.  My advice is to Google the subject; you'll find no shortage of links there.  I'd be interested to know the opinions of others here who take the time to read the articles mentioned above.

   I hope this helps.

Here is the link for the original NY Times article on the cancelled Hudson tunnel:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/nyregion/report-disputes-christies-reason-for-halting-tunnel-project-in-2010.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

Here is the GAO report. There also was this a few days back from Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman (enable cookies before clicking).

But I scratched my head a bit about the Krugman article even though I respect him, because my understanding is that any money Christie rejected for the tunnel would go back to the federal government, and that he couldn't use it for roads. Here is an article from that time. I wonder if he really was able to misappropriate the funds.

Wrong link to the GAO report.

MidlandMike

A study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute shows that fewer young people are obtaining drivers licenses.  It's a trend that has been building for the last three decades.  In 1983 about 7 in 10 of every 17 year old had a license.  By 2008 it was 5 in 10.

I wouldn't read too much significance into this, speculating that a good part of the decrease is attributable to toughening state standards for the licensing of new drivers. Age 17 almost seems like a cutoff in search of a conclusion. I'd be much more interested to know the percentage of license holders at age 19, when most of these kids will be out of the parental home.

In any case, finding much comfort for rail in this is farfetched, in my opinion. 

dakotafred

 

MidlandMike:

 

A study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute shows that fewer young people are obtaining drivers licenses.  It's a trend that has been building for the last three decades.  In 1983 about 7 in 10 of every 17 year old had a license.  By 2008 it was 5 in 10.

 

 

I wouldn't read too much significance into this, speculating that a good part of the decrease is attributable to toughening state standards for the licensing of new drivers. Age 17 almost seems like a cutoff in search of a conclusion. I'd be much more interested to know the percentage of license holders at age 19, when most of these kids will be out of the parental home.

In any case, finding much comfort for rail in this is farfetched, in my opinion. 

The article goes on to say:  

"Among Americans ages 20 to 24 in 1983, nearly 92 percent had driver’s licenses. Twenty-five years later, it was 82 percent."

In other words the number of driverless people in that age group more than doubled over 25 years.  The report shows that each successive generation increasingly has found it less necessary to obtain a drivers license.

I don't think passenger rail will ultimately be saved by political maneuvering or optimizing management, but instead by hopefully many more people buying tickets.

There's a whole lot wrapped up in how we live and travel.  As a nation, we don't walk much and we are fat.  These are apparently related things!   When we do walk, we do it just for exercise.  People will drive to suburban parks just to walk around a walking trail.  People who live in area where they walk  more as part of everyday living think this is a silly thing to do.  "Why would you want to walk around in a circle?"

Here are a couple of articles about it.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/04/16/150586667/americans-do-not-walk-the-walk-and-thats-a-growing-problem

I've walked around in "older" cities such as NYC, London, Dublin, Hamburg, Mainz, Boston, Phila, DC and SF and found some pretty crowed sidewalks.  People are out going places on foot.  You can walk for miles on Peachtree St. in Atlanta right through the middle of the city at rush hour and feel like you're you're hiking on a remote trail.  San Diego and LA are similar.  I am sure that other American cities that have grown up around the automobile are the same way.

San Diego really depends on which streets. Head up to North County SD and there are pedestrians often especially on the 101.

Don:  Good post, but as Supertramp said it so well, "Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical"

The articles on walking were interesting.  I got a chuckle out of the Slate definition "In America a pedestrian is someone who has just parked their car." although I might further narrow the definition to someone who does not use the drive-thru window.

I am not surprised at the general report that younger people are not getting drivers licenses as in the past.  But that is a broad generalization.  The population is more urban and less rural so public transportation is more available...and more likely buses than trains.  This generalization does not say anything about long distance or intercity traveling nor does it say anything about commuter travel.  If more people are moving to urban and more inner city areas, then the need for an automobile is less especially where there is bus and rail mass transit.  Bus, train and air transport is more availble and more easily available through mass transit than before.  Then there is the outright cost of a car....average purchase price of a new car announced today is about  $30,000; add licensing, insurance, maintenance, parking and rising price fuel and soon you have a pretty hefty price tag. So why bother with the huge long term expense when you have public transportation in many forms available or you do have a licesence but find your handfull of time per year you really need a car can be cheaply done at Hertz or other rental agency?  Does this bode well for rail passenger service?  Definitely commuter services are already feeling the new riders.  Amtrak runs trains but can only count a few corridors where they provde a real service; they would need more equipment, more people, more trains, more railroads on board to their concept, along with more of Congress aware of what has to be done financially.  They'll pick up some just because they do run trains...trains already sold out weeks in advance.  Bus and air will pick up some.  And the cement mixer, the gasoline refinery, and the tire rollers will lobby Congress enough that there will still be clogged and potholed highways.  Will things be better in any segments?  Probably the status quo will prevail unless there is a real epiphany in some quarter.

oltmannd

There's a whole lot wrapped up in how we live and travel.  As a nation, we don't walk much and we are fat.  These are apparently related things!   When we do walk, we do it just for exercise.  People will drive to suburban parks just to walk around a walking trail.  People who live in area where they walk  more as part of everyday living think this is a silly thing to do.  "Why would you want to walk around in a circle?"

Here are a couple of articles about it.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/04/16/150586667/americans-do-not-walk-the-walk-and-thats-a-growing-problem

I've walked around in "older" cities such as NYC, London, Dublin, Hamburg, Mainz, Boston, Phila, DC and SF and found some pretty crowed sidewalks.  People are out going places on foot.  You can walk for miles on Peachtree St. in Atlanta right through the middle of the city at rush hour and feel like you're you're hiking on a remote trail.  San Diego and LA are similar.  I am sure that other American cities that have grown up around the automobile are the same way. 

Oh, things may not be as bad as they seem.  In Dallas, where I lived for 33 years before moving to my current digs north of Austin, nearly 5,000 people have moved to the central city.  And many of them can be seen walking, frequently with their dogs, at all hours of the day and night, although not late night for obvious reasons.  Or at least obvious to me.  Another area where one sees a lot of walkers is White Rock Lake, which is just east of downtown. There, especially on the weekends, walkers, runners, cyclists, etc. can be seen by the thousands.  But few people in Dallas or any other Texas city have given up their motorized buggy.  And I don't think that they will.  Not as long as they can afford it.

Amtrak, as well as the state's two commuter rail lines, have seen increased ridership in Texas, and Amtrak's system numbers are up.  Yesterday I rode from Fort Worth to Taylor on the Eagle.  It had a high load factor departing Fort Worth. A significant percentage of the passengers were college students headed for Waco (Baylor), Austin (University of Texas), and San Marcos (Texas State).  My guess is that they were on the train because the cost of gasoline, as well as the overall cost of auto ownership, has made the train a better option for them.  And if we had more trains, I suspect that more people would use them.  However, at the end of the day, I would bet that the first thing most of the students that I saw yesterday day will do upon graduation is head to a car dealership to get a set of motorized wheels.   

Two important observations by you, Sam:

"My guess is that they were on the train because the cost of gasoline, as well as the overall cost of auto ownership, has made the train a better option for them." 

How true...but also being able to sleep and maybe even drink while in transit used to be a big factor for college students use of trains.  And of course, there is the bigger picture that holidays and break times see bookend weeks or weekends of increased train travel as well as as Fridays and Sundays.  As for your other statement,  "And if we had more trains, I suspect that more people would use them." : I would underscore that as one of the important flaws of Amtrak and American undersanding of the word "service".  Providing service is not just running a train or trains but the right number of trains with a frequency and price that makes it a viable choice for the traveler.  Having a train leaving town at any time can be convenient but if there is not a conveniently scheduled train or trains coming back then the first schedule is equally useless.

I can't speak for Texas, but on most college campuses I'm familiar with Owning a car can be a far more expensive proposition than it would be at home. Campus parking is typically expensive and limited as are permits for street parking. College towns, in my experience want to limit cars.