How urban is urban?

Self-driving cars have 'levels'. How about a set for urban detached housing?

• L3 Urban: when Monopoly-style aggregation of parcels makes sense, because it's cheaper to buy your neighbors house and expand than to tear down your own house and build a bigger one.
• L4 being when you buy an existing house, tear it down, and build a new bigger house in its place.
• L2 being when you still have enough property to add another extension onto your house.
• L1 being...the first house built on the lot.
• L5 is London-style 'iceberg' houses when 80% of the house is underground, because you can't get planning permission to build anything bigger than the house you just tore down
• L6 is when you start building tunnels between Iceberg houses. 

This assumes that the only thing you can build is a single family house, for 50%+ of urbanized land, that's probably true.

Against TNCs as transit 2

“Preferably, long distance trips should be transported by fixed route mass transit as much as possible so that system efficiency can be optimized.  On-demand service can focus on short trips that may require higher flexibility.”

Normally, that would be inefficient, as buses can typically hand the short-distance trips at low marginal cost—the bus is already going that way, and seats are plentiful. But with COVID...bus capacity has a whole new meaning.

I remain deeply skeptical that TNCs can handle even the short-distance trips. TNC service is costly: every vehicle requires a driver, every service mile requires an additional .67 non-service ‘dead-head’. Studies say drivers make less than minimum wage, after vehicle depreciation, so much lower wage-costs than CDL trained bus drivers. However, there is probably a fixed # of people who are willing to drive for TNCs, at least on any regular basis, as it’s effectively a minimum wage gig.

It might work, simply thanks to the network effect—more riders, more OD pairs, more ‘dynamic carpooling’, less dead-head miles,  but likely still inferior to regular buses in terms of cost per rider. Which implies less transit service per dollar, and with fixed dollars, less transit service over-all.

It also creates a future hazard—people get used to having subsidized TNC rides, funded by money not being used while buses are out of service. But when demand for buses pick up, the demand for TNC is not going to fall. Then transit agencies would have internal competition for resources between their bus/TNC ‘divisions’ for rider subsidy. Making the reasonable assumption that TNC’s are worse on a per-rider cost basis, more resources devoted to TNC means less devoted to more efficient buses.

Against TNCs

It seems reasonable to disaggregate trips by trip-type, and serve them with different vehicles, but that simply requires the duplication of services to serve the same route. Given that transit service costs are mostly labor, that means a dramatic increase in labor costs.

Further, TNC service is great, but it’s costly: every service mile requires an additional .67 non-service ‘dead-head’. Public-subsidy taxis are probably more efficient than most paratransit, simply thanks to the network effect—more riders, more OD pairs, more ‘dynamic carpooling’, but likely still inferior to regular buses in terms of cost per rider.

 

Undeniably, COVID has changed things. There is now a very real need to reduce crowding, and prevent people from sharing the same air. That can be achieved by limiting the # of people per vehicle (effectively turning 40’ buses into 15 passenger vans) but that lowers the efficiency per vehicle.

Until we reach the point were we have CAV transit vehicles (breaking the link between service and labor costs), ‘massification’ of persons into a single vehicle is going to be the most cost-effective strategy for transit.

I think often of what happened at UTA—COVID causes a ridership crash, so UTA cut service on most routes. But they maintained a few routes, but added buses/hour to reduce crowding and facilitate social distancing. That attracted more riders, so UTA had to add more buses, such that the routes now have more ridership during COVID than before it.

So many tiny cities are trying to fix themselves

Cities mature. Just more slowly than people. But American cities have distinct life-style stages.

• The pre-urban exurb fetal stage.
• Development of raw land (suburbanization)
• Birth (Incorporation)
• Growth cycle, with impact fees funding infrastructure. 
• First maturity, when all the farms are gone, and development impact fees stop.
• Advent of commerce, as cities realize they desperately need tax revenue. 
• Mid-life, maintaining roads and balanced budgets
• Over-the hill - streets showing wear and tear, retail starting to vacate.

Then there is an inflection point: collapse to a new low-welfare equilibrium, or spark a second wave of growth and development.Sadly, the Dark Side is easier: keep taxes low, fund local roads through special exactions referenda. 

Property values stay solid, but the mix of land value and structure value making up that valuation changes radically, and all the increase is in the land....

Anyway. At some point, all the cities realize their 'downtowns' they relied on for their commercial tax base are junk, the revenue base has collapsed, and they face a whole storm of new financial needs as the now 30+ year old infrastructure (funded with development impact fees) now needs replacing. 

Wholesale replacement is out of the question--the tax costs would be enormous. So cities delay and defer. Road quality declines, public services decline, property values fall, owners shift to renters, average city incomes fall...the path to slum-hood beckons. 

When I hear of  city in this plight, I ask myself: Are these actual historic towns, with brick downtowns, or are these post-70’s suburbs with depreciated strip-mall downtowns? Are these things for sprawl repair?

In either case, the solution is pretty simple: Build housing, at a density commensurate with land values, meaning a 90/10 mix of apartments to condos. Rising pop. increase local demand for goods and services, causing redevelopment and infill. Cities must facilitate this through up-zoning, form-based codes, reduced parking requirements, and mixed use zoning. 

But the places with brick-downtowns have some physical assets to start with, while the strip-mall places just have undeveloped appreciated land.