This past week, Houstonians learned from the local media of a series of high profile departures, or of people who are looking for jobs elsewhere, to escape from the twilight of Mayor Bill White's administration.
One, somewhat lower profile figure who apparently has recently left City employment was one, Ray Chong, who was Deputy of Traffic and Transportation in the City public works department. The Wizard knows that in addition to Mr. Chong's overseeing of various studies that he was one of Bill White's point men in the Ashby High Rise issue.
But it is about what was perhaps the last of Mr. Chong's studies that is the subject of this post. Smart Growth and planning proponent David Crossley notes that Mr. Chong made a presentation where he asserted that the average commute time in the Houston area in the year 2035 will be three hours!
That's right gentle readers, the City of Houston's recently departed Traffic director stated that Houstonians will face 3 hour commutes in a mere 26 years time. Of course, Mr. Chong and company made a presentation with a mobility study (or should we call it an immobility study?) to back up that assertion, but that still doesn't erase the basic assertion.
Now, if one thinks rather deeply about such an issue, one comes to realize that there is an enormous amount at stake for millions of Houston area residents when a high level City bureaucrat makes such a statement.
The current Houston area 2035 plan envisions spending some $77 billion in public funds over the next quarter of a century on road related projects and transit. However, Mr. Chong stated that he and his team incorporated all of those projects into his studies and still came to the conclusion that Houstonians will be wasting three hours of their day in a quarter of a century commuting back and forth to work. In other words, Houstonians and their public officials will be spending upwards of three billion dollars per year, every year, for the next 26 years, but despite that enormous sum of public monies being spent, Houstonians one way traffic commute will skyrocket from 26 minutes in 2005 - 2010 time frame to 90 minutes in 2035! That, gentle readers, is a very powerful statement - in a matter of one generation, Houston's transportation system will effectively get overwhelmed and collapse, despite spending tens of billions of dollars on transportation related projects and issues. That is a statement that many influential Houstonians, like members of the Greater Houston Partnership or just about any local elected official - including the Mayor, would not like to see made public.
If you take the report seriously, then the report states that the amount of roads of all classifications within City of Houston limits will rise roughly only 10 percent, while the job base will rise from 1.5 million to 2.1 million, a nearly 40 percent rise. Mr. Chong's report also projects that City population rising from 2.1 million to 2.7 million. On the face of it, Mr. Chong's prognostications may seem to be true. It points to a future of Houston neglecting to do enough to keep up its transportation network with the demands that the future populace will place on it. That however, is on the face. The Wizard knows that such a sky is falling type catastrophe is not going to occur.
First of all, one has to take in the magnitude of what Mr. Chong is asserting. Yes, it is true that urbanized areas that have higher populations do exhibit higher work travel times and greater traffic congestion, but the Wizard has traveled far in this world and has seen a lot of cities. Two years ago, I spent 9 weeks in London, a city whose metropolitan area has roughly twice as many residents as Houston does, in a smaller geographical area (and hence with a population density several times higher than that of Houston), with demonstrably narrower roads and much higher reliance on slower public transportation. The result? London has an average commute time of 42 - 51 minutes. This study states that in outer London, the commute time, where cars dominate, is 30 minutes, while in inner areas of London where public transportation dominates, the commute times are roughly 55 minutes. Meanwhile, in the 2005 U.S. census study cited above, New York and Chicago have commute times of 38 minutes and 33 minutes respectively.
The point being made here, if I may be so blunt, is that what Mr. Chong is saying is garbage. It overlooks that real estate developers and landlords, as well as employers and employees, all make decisions as to where to locate. Very few people will tolerate making a 3 hour daily commute, much less a 2 hour commute, and they will adapt accordingly, often by deciding to leave a little earlier or later to get to their jobs. The average length of a commute by car is roughly 7.5 miles, while a commute by public transportation is about 5 miles. Mr. Chong is then saying that traffic flows throughout the entire area will drop to an average of about 5 miles per hour for vehicle traffic!. This is nonsense.
Instead, a far, far more likely scenario of what will unfold in the future is that the Houston area will probably continue on its current pattern of slow densification combined with some suburbanization. Such a pattern would go a long way to mitigating most of the catastrophic horrors envisioned in this mobility study. I could foresee my 20 minute morning commute and my 25-30 evening minute commute lengthening by 5-10 minutes in a worst case scenario, but even if it did then all that would do is prompt me to either move closer to work, or to switch jobs.
One item that Mr. Chong's story may be more to the mark on is the assertion that public transportation's share of commuting trips will drop from 3.8 percent to 3.3 percent. One big story that has not been reported by the media concerning recent controversies surrounding eminent domain issues and cost estimates behind Metro's North and Southeast corridors is that in its FY 2010 report to Congress, the FTA is stating that spending $897 million on the North Corridor rail alignment is going to result in a mere 7,500 new riders being attracted to using transit (see page 221 of the report). The Southeast Corridor rail alignment is projected to cost $911 million and is expected to attract a mere 4,500 new riders to transit (see page 227 of the FTA report). Yes gentle readers, you read that correctly. The FTA is telling Congress that it is recommending helping Metro spend $1.8 billion to attract 12,000 new riders to rail transit, a figure that works out to spending $150,000 to attract a new rider to transit. Meanwhile, my yet to be completed FY 2008 - FY 2009 ridership numbers are indicating that Metro lost 10-20 percent of its ridership over the past year. If we continue to pursue such policies, then it is quite plausible that Houston's transit agency will end up bankrupting itself merely to substitute rail transit for bus transit, but not gaining any meaningful market share of transportation trips or doing anything to alleviate traffic congestion. Indeed according to Metro's federal enviornmental impact statements, the agency intends to cut off road lanes available to vehicle traffic along most of the routes where it wants to run rail.
With that aside, reports like this mobility study remind me of how ridiculous it is to write studies and plans that portend to see 30 years or more into the future, something that has been cemented into modern day American metropolitan urban planning, when we will have no idea of what the full picture of future conditions will be like. The reader should be reminded that the London Underground's first rail lines were built in the late 19th century to as a response to extremely heavy traffic congestion along roads in London that were causing traffic flows to slow down to the point where a wagon of vegetables would spoil because it was taking an entire day for a wagon driver to cross the length of the city. Hence, there is a good argument to be made that it is far better to make transportation spending decisions on a case by case basis, based on observations of heavy and rising traffic congestion, and on a shorter time scale of perhaps 10 years, than it is based on some grand vision of what you think the far future is going to be like.
A final disclaimer and something to think about: The Wizard will be of retirement age in 2035 and most likely won't be doing too much daily travel anyway! :)
Wizard
I haven't produced an Oracle for several months now. I have to admit that I've been slacking off on the job lately. But I'm now refreshed and have experienced a new vision.
My vision for August 2004 is that the United States will win 40 gold medals in the 2004 Olympic games and 94 overall medals.
Recently, the Economist magazine carried an article where a pair of economists studied medal awards which were won by country. What they discovered was the rather commonsense observation which many people might have about winning medals does in fact hold true. Those observations include that there are positive correlations between country populations, country wealth, and medals won. Ergo, one might expect countries like China, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and so on, to win more medals than the Zimbabwe's, Sudan's, and so forth. The economists also note that the medal counts have become more widely distributed over time, indicating increased competition between countries for medals. Indeed, I will carry on with this subject in my next epistle...
One question many visitors and acquaintances have been asking me is this: "Mighty Wizard, there is one thing we REALLY want to know! What we want to know is who is going to win the United States Presidential election in November 2004? Will it be George W. Bush or John Kerry?"
Well gentle readers, it has taken considerable mental effort and will power for me to see an answer to this. The Palantir has been VERY CLOUDY when I gaze into it and ask this most important of questions. However, glimpses of the future have started coming through.
And so what does The Mighty Wizard say about who will win the U.S. Presidential election in November 2004? The answer is that George W. Bush will be re - elected as President of the United States.
Over the next few days, analysis on my prediction will be forthcoming. Stay tuned.
Sorry about not posting up every day last week. I've had my mind full of other matters. It's funny how I had all these plans for what I was going to try to accomplish this weekend, but didn't get around to completing them.
Anyway, it's time for February's Oracle. I was supposed to publish it on February 15, but my visions were cloudy. They are now clear:
I am predicting that New Line Cinema's rendition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King WILL WIN the Academy Award for Best Picture, and that New Zealand Director Peter Jackson WILL WIN the award for Best Director. My feelings about this subject are that these two awards will be given as a nod from the Academy for the cumulative effort of the entire project as a whole.
I often attend a Tolkien enthusiast group which meets once per month. At last month's gathering, this subject was one of hot debate. One girl strongly held forth that the Academy has never given out an Academy Award for Best Picture or Best Director for a film that was either a science fiction or fantasy genre film. The Academy would give out awards to such films for such lesser honors as Best Costumes or Best Special Effects, but never for Best Picture. The Academy is eternally biased against such films and it will NEVER do so, or so goes the thought. If it did, then it would have to accept that future science fiction or fantasy films would have to be included as potential contenders for future Academy Awards.
After having given the matter some thought, my own opinion on the matter is that there have only been a handful of classic science fiction or fantasy genre films that could even have been considered contenders for highest honors. One obvious contender would have been the original Star Wars, released in 1977. The 1978 Best Picture honors went Woody Allen's Annie Hall. Now tell me this: Who outside of Woody Allen fans or film buffs, have seen Annie Hall? Now count how many people have seen Star Wars?
Star Wars was not only a landmark film in that it changed - forever - how films were made (spawning plenty of cheap imitators in its wake), but it was so awe inspiring that it left an indelible impact on an entire generation of people in the Western world. Without a doubt, the original Star Wars is one of the greatest movies ever made, easily right up there with Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, The Graduate, Patton, Rocky, and others.
As a side note, I looked up on an Academy history page:
http://www.ofpmovies.com/awards/winners.htm
and found that in the classic year 1939, Gone with the Wind swept most of the awards. Thomas Mitchell got best Supporting Actor for Stagecoach, but The Wizard of Oz was left out entirely.
When I think of other sci - fi / fantasy genre films, there are no other contenders I can think of that I would nominate as Best Picture material. 2001 - A Space Oydessy is a bit strange for many people's taste, though Kubrick's vision was extraordinary. Star Trek IV was a great film which did well at the box office, but I don't think it was Best Picture material. On the other hand of course, there is the quasi - historical 2001 Best Picture winner, The Gladiator, which I thought was a very good film.
There are many in Hollywood that are both impressed with Jackson's work, but at the same time there is a ton of jealousy about LOTR. There is no doubt in my mind that there is jealousy in Hollywood about how all of the other studios executives blew it in passing over filming rights to the project. There are directors who think they could have done a better job than Jackson in directing it. There are actors and actresses who think they would have made a better Aragorn or Eowyn than either Viggo Mortensen or Miranda Otto did. There are special effects outfits that think they could have done a better job than WETA in producing the special effects, and so forth.
Well too bad!
By the way, it seems that my Oracles for January 2004 will both come true. My Super Bowl prediction came true, and it appears that John Kerry will be the Democratic nominee to run against President Bush in November 2004.
Also notable was that in June 2003, I predicted that President Bush's prescription drug benefit handout for Medicare recipients would exceed the initial estimates of $400 billion in its first ten years. This past month, the Bush Administration admitted that the plan will cost at least $530 billion in its first 10 years, a 35 percent markup! What was amazing to me was not that the plan would cost more than the public was told, it was that the Bushies admitted this ONLY ONE MONTH into the legislation's existence!
Until next month...