Four Fallacies Relating to Public Transport
In this article written back in 2000, Chris Harris outlines four fallacies that still hold true today
The Competitive Fallacy
The Competitive Fallacy holds that competitive market structures appropriate to conventional products, ranging from baked beans to telecommunications, are appropriate to public transport. In fact, while it is often appropriate to have private operators in charge of parts of the system, the system as a whole must be managed cooperatively and as a public good.
There are three reasons why. First, and most obviously, in any given city, the public transport system is an interconnected organic whole which also interacts with land use. Only a very highly regulated private monopoly operating across all modes, or better, a public planning agency with the power to set and timetable routes and to let contracts on a per-vehicle basis, can do justice to this fact.
Second, while bus operators can be engaged on fairly short-term contracts, investment in rail is much more long-term and fixed in character. Whoever is in charge of the rail system effectively has a monopoly for this reason and is thus in a strong bargaining position with respect to the public authority. So with regard to Auckland rail, the transfer of Tranz Rail track rights to an outside operator may not result in a significantly improved outcome. Unless, that is, the state takes control of investment in order to avoid being locked in to the new provider, in which case we are no longer talking about a competitive outcome!
Third, public transport as a mode does not compete on a level playing field with the car. Car users get their roads "free," tend not to count the cost of their vehicle, and also don't meet the full social and ecological costs of using their vehicle. This is in stark contrast to public transport modes, especially rail, which must cover all costs and explicitly beg a subsidy for those they cannot.
The J-Curve Fallacy
The J-Curve Fallacy holds that car use per unit population is going to keep on increasing indefinitely, and that this is an unchangeable law of nature, much like the expansion of the universe.
Adherents of the J-curve fallacy like to point out that public transport's 40 million or so trips a year in Auckland amount to less than a year's worth of increase in total travel. From this they deduce that public transport is effectively irrelevant, that it delays the next, inevitable motorway by a matter of months.
The "J-curve" refers to a curve more properly known as the power, or exponential-growth curve (2, 4, 8, 16, etc) which always looks like a J.
Another curve, that is also found in nature, is the "S" curve, also known as the sigmoid or logistic curve. In the S-curve, growth is at first slow, then rapid, then slows off again to a steady state, so that the curve looks like an S rotated a bit clockwise.
Most J-curves in nature are, in fact, the left-hand-side of S-curves. Adherents of the J-curve fallacy often consider themselves more hardheaded and "scientific" than the public transport advocate. But in fact they could be charged with practicing only half a science.
In any case, human beings are not blind natural entities. Car use is at least partly the result of public policies, which can be changed. For instance, car use went up a lot when the government abolished school zoning about ten years ago. The average distance children had to travel to school increased, and the bicycle gave way to the car (both there, and back, in the morning, and there, and back, in the afternoon as well).
Car growth as a result of the abolition of school zoning was a result of policy, not nature, human or otherwise. Now that zoning is back in force, car use to ferry children to school may go down. A coordinated policy to reduce car use might achieve even better results. But politicians must first break with the J-Curve Fallacy before they can even think of such a thing.
The Bad Value Fallacy
The Bad Value Fallacy holds that investment in public transport, especially the traditional kind with fixed schedules and routes, is a waste of money compared with investment in other, sexier technologies.
Adherents of the Bad Value Fallacy will point to the $50 million a year that public authorities spend in Auckland to get 40 million public transport trips. Without subsidies, the number would be 20 million, so it can be said that the subsidy is $50 million for 20 million trips. Surely, critics argue, this money would be better spent on dial-a-ride systems and high-tech electronic taxis.
The Bad Value Fallacy can be criticised on at least three counts. First, it is not clear that $50 million a year for the avoidance of 20 million car trips, mostly at peak times, really is bad value.
But, conceding that there is room for improvement, it is not clear why this improvement should be obtained by going away from fixed route-fixed schedule public transport, rather than improving it. This is the second criticism that can be made of the Bad Value Fallacy.
The third criticism that can be made is that Bad Value theorists have a mistaken view of the relationship between traditional public transport and new technology. The relationship is not "either-or," but "both-and."
If the existing fixed-route fixed-schedule system is improved by simplifying and straightening bus routes, so as to increase the opportunity for interconnection and transfer, then dial-a-ride systems and electronic taxis will also be required. Not, however, as a replacement for fixed-route fixed schedule services. But rather, as a complement to them, since the new services will in some cases be further away from people's homes than the existing, windy bus routes.
The Density Fallacy
This last fallacy is one that has been, perversely, encouraged by the emphasis given by some public transport advocates to the issue of density. These advocates have proposed making the city more dense so that public transport is more likely to work.
Adherents of the Density Fallacy point to the high densities of many European cities with good public transport and deduce from this that public transport cannot work in far-flung Australasian and New World cities.
This approach is founded on half-truth. There's no doubt that public transport is easier to make work in a city like Zurich than in a city like Toronto. But the adherents of the Density Fallacy allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. They overlook the fact that public transport manages to carry ten times as many riders in Toronto, per capita, as Auckland, even if it does not carry as many as in Zurich. Instead, they draw a discreet veil over the very distinctive failure of cities like Auckland.
In fact the local application of the Density Fallacy falls down even in its own terms. Auckland is viewed as a city in which public transport is especially unlikely to succeed, on the grounds of a uniquely low density. Density Fallacy adherents hold this view in the face of the fact that much of the Isthmus is of pre-World War II vintage, that is to say, laid out when few people had cars. They hold this view in spite of the fact also that outlying towns like Pakapura are strung like beads along the main trunk railway line.
The development of towns like Papakura is in accordance with the best current thinking on "transit oriented development"; they have this form because they did, in fact, start out as railway towns.
Yet it is held that Auckland is "not dense enough" for public transport to work. One almost wonders whether Great Barrier Island or the cow-paddocks of Clevedon are being weighed onto the scales. Such speculations are of course more satirical than serious. However, the fact remains that there is something especially fallacious about the density fallacy.
Conclusion
Why do these fallacies gain currency? The answer must surely be, that they provide an excuse for not spending money, or otherwise doing anything to upset the status quo. They also provide a perfect excuse for past failures, which are now starting to grow more obvious. They are in this sense all variants of one big fallacy, the "Lost Cause Fallacy" or "Sour Grapes Fallacy," that is, the "Public Transport Won't Work (because we haven't made it work) Fallacy."
Much as a light bulb gets brighter before it blows, that the four fallacies (or one big fallacy) will be more earnestly peddled in the most backward and, perhaps, culpable circles before they finally capitulate to the obvious necessity of an improved public transport system for Auckland. And a drastically improved one at that!