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Hysteresis and urban rail
Past urban rail infrastructure has long-lasting effects on current residential density, auto ownership, and travel behavior according to this document. The study examines how proximity to historic rail from 1865 to the present in Boston influences current density, auto ownership, and commuting modes. It finds that past rail access is strongly correlated with higher current density and lower auto ownership, though has a weaker effect on travel modes. The persistence is likely due to durable housing and transportation networks built around old rail, as well as cultural and policy mechanisms.
Hysteresis and urban rail
- 1. Hysteresis & Urban Rail Theeffects of past urban rail on current residential & travel choices David Block-Schachter October 15, 2012
- 2. 1. Intro 2. History 3. Ideas 4. Hypotheses & mechanisms 5. Methods 6. Evidence Agenda
- 3. History •The tape ofhistory is played uniquely forward (Gould) •Ports & harbors •Factories & housing •Roads & bridges •More buildings •Streetcars •More buildings •And so on Emergence of cities
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- 5. 1776 --> Warof 1812 --> 1830s
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- 7. History •Post roads 1673 New York Springfield Boston (washington street roxbury silver line ) •Turnpikes turn, pike. Middlesex (hampshire st) chartered 1805, free 1846 25 cents per vehicle + 4 cents per man or horse •Bridges tolls to free •Omnibus 1793 stagecoach over west boston bridge •Horsecar 1856 central square across west boston bridge to bowdoin •Steam Rail 1830 Boston & Lowell – later Green Line D branch •Streetcar 1889 electrified in Allston •Subway 1897 ―first‖ •Elevated 1901 last ―major‖ american city Transport history primer
- 9. History Source: Binford
- 10. History Source: Binford
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- 19. History 1925 – Streetcar,Elevated & Subway
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- 21. History 1960 – Heavyand Light Rail
- 22. History 2000 - Heavyand Light Rail
- 23. East Cambridge Bridge,1912 (Detroit Publishing Company)
- 24. Harvard Square, 1912(Detroit Publishing Company)
- 25. History 12 80% x 100000 Growth rate Population 70% 10 60% 8 50% 6 40% 30% 4 20% 2 10% - 0% Fares, frequency, transfers, ubiquity Effective 50% decrease due to inflation & free transfers from system consolidation Concurrent inner ring growth Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Somerville Horsecars v. streetcars
- 26. Ideas •Heterogeneous response •Buffalo •Delorean, iranhostage crisis, soviet union, mtv, mubarak, AIDS •Things accumulate on top of intentions and accidents Predicting the future is hard
- 27. Ideas Historical this vision Qualitative Quantitative predict & model Ahistorical We don’t do it often • Capital is durable • Land Use and transport inter-related
- 28. Ideas This is whyhistory matters Source: HowStuffWorks.com
- 29. Ideas •It is notpossible to predict the next step without knowing the history of the system •Iron ore retains magnetization after magnetic field removed •Urban rail is magnet. Built environment is iron ore Hysteresis Source: HowStuffWorks.com
- 30. Ideas Source: Wikipedia
- 31. Ideas •Self evident: currentoptions determined by past choices In transportation •Durable capital—long-lived residential, industrial, and commercial buildings—is an order of magnitude greater than the public or private investment in transportation infrastructure •Changing the transport path requires significant incremental value. •And there are coordination problems Path dependence
- 32. Hypotheses •Exploring one historicalprocess – the evolution of urban rail from single cars pulled by horses, to those powered by electricity, and eventually multi-car trains running on elevated, surface, and underground tracks •In one city – Boston – over an extended time period – from 1865 to the present •Examine impacts of proximity to rail on residential density and travel (auto ownership, mode choice) •HYP. Urban rail has permanent direct and indirect effects on the geography of density and behavior over exceptionally long time frames, and that these effects outlast the urban rail itself—they are persistent and hysteretic. What is this work about?
- 33. Hypotheses Strong Density Moderate Auto ownership Minimal Mode choice Proximity to past rail influences current behavior
- 34. Hypotheses •Influences present railand bus location •Behavior persists •Built environment: direct or via preferences / attitudes •Culture: family hist., neighbor pressure, pos. externalities, BE •Municipal action: zoning, N/IMBY, political power •AND/OR proxy for omitted and unique Why?
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- 36. Hypotheses •Cumulative causation •Durable capitalbuilt around infrastructure •Useful life, staged development, capitalizing access •Legal and institutional rationales for re-use Hard to make new paths: incremental value Easy to serve existing market Mech: Infrastructure
- 37. Hypotheses Habitual travel choice (Garling) + Transit agency incentive to replicate or add frequency on new mode = Existing riders may not revisit mode choice Reduced effect over time Mech: Behavioral persistence
- 38. Hypotheses Direct. Past rail affects quality of BE (connectivity routes) BUT objective v. perceived (Gim); indicators (Crane, Lee) Changes attributes of residential and travel behavior Indirect. BE as mnemonic device retaining signs and symbols associated with use of rail Influences weighting of existing attributes Mech: Built environment
- 39. Hypotheses Heuristic that simplifiescomplex decision making •Property of BE (unique to places near past rail) •Result of historical travel behavior Perceptions of behavioral control (Ajzen) •Past rail more usage in past •Slow migration + habitual choice more usage today Mech: Culture
- 40. Hypotheses •Planning horizon tooshort by a century •Locating growth and local incentives •Urban ―renewal‖ was even worse than previously thought •Multimodal complements to enlarge growth effects of rail If I’m right
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- 42. Methods HYP: Proximity topast rail influences current behavior MECHANISM: Plausible direct and indirect effects: rail persistence, demographics, BE, culture Behaviort = f ( BEt-1, Demographict-1, RailAccesst-n, RailAccesst , Exogenous) Proximity to. Buffer around routes. Lack of stop, frequency information, consistency between eras Past rail. Horsecars (1865), streetcars (1925), pre-MBTA (1960) Influences. Has a statistically significant effect on Current behavior. Density, auto ownership, mode choice Basics
- 43. Methods Tract level fordensity, auto ownership, mode choice •Spatial error model with adjacency matrix corrects for violation of OLS errors due to misfit to tract facets •Sensitivity testing for matrix, correction Multinomial logit for household auto ownership •v. ordered logit / probit Multinomial logit for individual mode choice •All trips (not just JTW) •Individual panel structure •Origin & destination attributes •Home location (restriction to non-home trips) •Validation of VOT against CTPS published estimates Methods
- 44. Methods Era Speed Fares Reach Competition Urban trends 1865 Horsecar + Variable + - Immigration 1925 Streetcar+ ++ Standard +++ + Expansion 1960 Consolidation +++ + ++ Flight 2000 Expansion +++ + +++ Gentrification 4 eras
- 45. Methods •IPUMS 1860, 1930 •Maps,turned into vectors •Census 1960-2000, UTPP, CTPP Data
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- 48. Evidence • High degree of correlation between access in eras • Not entirely mediated by access in most recent era Findings: infrastructure
- 49. Evidence •The monocentric modelimplies a specific functional form—negative exponential— that results from regressing the natural logarithm of density on distance from the CBD. Access to rail in each period is an additional binary regressor. If the coefficient on rail proximity in past periods is significant and positive, the associated density gradient is taller. Density: theory
- 50. Evidence 20,000 2000 Density (ppl. / sq. mi.) 18,000 16,000 14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Dist to CBD (mi.) Actual w.out 1925 Rail (endogenous network) w.out 1925 Rail (exogenous network) Findings: density
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- 52. Evidence Past rail hasstrong effect on residential density •Robust to controls for historical primacy, amenity levels, street network •Robust to spatial and functional specification •Past and current rail proximity has insulated areas from centrifugal forces since 1960 Persistence of structures, network explain partially, but legacy remains •Omission, cultural, municipal Findings: density
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- 54. Evidence •Decrease in autoownership proximate to rail past and present •Robust to demographic & BE controls, measurement, spatial structure •Supported by household model •Past access to streetcars associated with decrease in auto ownership 1980-2000 (relative to overall trend) •Mechanism substantially preferences, parking availability, network characteristics but significant legacy implies role for culture, municipal action, omission Findings: auto ownership
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- 56. Evidence Individual •Weak effect withoutdemographic controls •No self-selection based on past rail proximity in limited test Tract •No cumulative effect •Evidence of effects historically •Weak evidence of behavioral shift since 1980 Implies •Choice persistence, attitudes and preferences as mechanisms for effect of past rail Findings: mode share
- 57. Evidence (1) Past accessto rail density > auto ownership, but both significant. Mode share not significantly influenced by past access to rail after controlling for current access. (2) Demographic and built environment controls, as well as controls for additional causal mechanisms reduce the measured effect, but do not eliminate it. (3) Density + auto ownership: past rail > current Mode share vice versa Summary
- 58. Evidence •Travel behavior lit:behavior is a function of the current attributes of the person and the environment. •This finds: past existence of rail is an indicator both of some omitted characteristic(s) of the BE unique to those places that once had rail and a cultural inheritance, but the mixture of the two is unknown. vs. literature
- 59. Evidence Use history • Efforts to understand how the history and present of a place may influence its future, for time frames beyond BCA or design charette Where and when to build within cities • Costs of (re)development, neighborhood opposition • Mechanisms for patience over long time frames Planning timeframes and goals • Scenario planning, built environment endowments Cultural interventions • Local policies to support national goals; direct and indirect Why it matters
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Editor's Notes
- #2 150 years past can help exaplin the present
- #10 Revolutionary war – that’s it. 1 bridge to mainland
- #11 Lots more bridgesThey are the hongkong subwaysTolls pay for bridgeAnd land developmentn
- #14 Where is thisWhy is it important?The roas not travelled
- #15 Who can tell me what this is?Didn’t have to be that waySame act that authorized the boston elevated railway company, also authorizedmeigs (its called the meigs act)
- #16 Whats this?Why is it important?No – the same law that required that the elevated run through this tunnnel also Authorized the cambridge tunnelAuthorized the longfellowLaid out the routes of elevatedEstablished the 5 cent fare and free transferAND the boston transit commision built the subway (public money, public construction). Then they leased it to BERUsed Boston rate on bonds, not BERIn exchangeBER built other things (on city and town land)Agreed to fare
- #21 Relate to streetcar suburbsCity expansion.What does inner core look like – when was it builtThis is what it was 100 years ago.But relative comparative tradeoff between hosuing and commuting costs change over time
- #26 4 eras1925 biggest effectsBut don’t ignore growth that occurred in boston before streetcars were introduced.30% growth per decadeAlso clear that after 1910, the inner ring is more less what it will be
- #27 Looking in the right direction?Buffalo light rail – anyone from buffaloConceived as extensive system mid 70sOnly one line ever builtBuffalo hit hard timesRidership bad. Ridership forecasts always bad – why? People want to get builtEffects not whats expectedHess found that effect on property values in fancy neighborhoods positive – in poor neighborhoods was negative30 year time frame- how many of you are over 30?When did the iphone come out?
- #28 Planners: History always tells us what we want to hearModelers: BAU from past to presentSanborn mapsStories from older residentsModelers: straight line. Continuous function from past to present, projected into future
- #30 Rail ensured fixed route service by its capital investment in guideway. The pattern of creating new urban land by increased speed (and decreased time to the Central Business District) continued through rail's eventual electrification, elevation, underground construction, and competition from the autoThe changes in speed, capacity and price of both urban rail and competing modes of transportation over the course of this almost century and half shaped decisions by private and public entities on where to build and rebuild homes, factories, and offices. This dissertation proposes that the lingering effects of those initial forays into urban rail continue to shape the dynamics of density and travel choices. Over time rail technology changed. Some rail stayed. Other lines were moved underground. Some were removed entirely. But the neighborhoods retained the shape of that initial impetus. The layout of the streets, the buildings, and the shops are the hysteretic material that imprint history on the present.
- #32 Yankees / red soxThe story is the built environemnt:Durable capital—long-lived residential, industrial, and commercial buildings—are built around transport infrastructure. This private investment is an order of magnitude greater than the public or private investment in transportation infrastructure (Kothari). Structures are rebuilt (in theory at least) when the difference in value exceeds costs of new construction (Wheaton). But initial construction happens in stages, and there is systematic variation between and among land uses in capitalizing the value of access (ref). As neighborhoods age buildings grow more diverse through infill. Waves of reconstruction are therefore increasingly unlikely. The diversity of use, size, design, etc. means that there are always some buildings whose use value precludes redevelopment. Changing the transport path requires significant incremental value. – Notice only Fred has done it.Even if it would be advantageous to the entire area, the coordination and compensation problem between landowners and government is massive. Zoning changes tend to reduce the allowable density or subject new development to municipal negotiations. this decreases the value, or increases the (time) costs of redevelopment.
- #35 Give it away upfrontThe past helps explain the present more than the present on its own.Behavior that happens less often, and is more embodied in BE = larger effects. Past rail – particularly streetcars - has a very strong relationship to current density – much more than current rail, a relatively strong relationship to auto ownership levels – about the same as current rail access, and at most a minimal relationship to current mode choice, given the intervening 5+ decadesWhat I’m talking about is not some revelation. I’m trying to document and explain something that is relatively obvious. The present did not emerge, fully grown. It had to be nurtured and cared for by the past. It helps explain an omission in the models of travel behavior. Looking directly at these omissions, rather than assuming they are confounding the pure statistical relationship, as engineers do with k-factorsBut do so systematically, as opposed to simply taking inspiration from the past. There is a statistical relationship between past access and present behavior that can be examined.I’m going to spend a few minutes upfront on mechanisms, b/c a statistical relationship is not necessarily a causal relationship.OMISSION – if these mechanisms are not convincing, and for the most part I can rule out but not rule in these mechanisms – they are omissions. Even if they are not the case, that there is a this legacy effect after controlling for plausibly exogenous factors, implies that this historical manifestation of the past in the presence has an influence. These are the hysteretical effects of urban rail.
- #37 Rail effects future rail locations.A mixture of economic, legal, and institutional rationalesOn the economic side, something ,say the middlesex canal gets built. An initial decision is made.Factories, businesses, durable capital making use of the canal is built.Where do you run a turnpike? To access those buildings. Which in turn increases private investment.Where do you run the rail?and what if you want to move the path? You have to destroy the use of the buildings. Which have been built in stages, and redeveloped in stages, and capitalize that access differently. Its not only an economic issue, it’s a coordination problem.And, in the modern era, you have 4f and NEPA, so you can’t willy nilly take properties, or use environmental resources. And governments will tend to build projects with less risk – that are not based on prospective changes, but that serve existing populationsThe result is that where rail was, rail is.
- #38 Behavioral persistence is a function of individual and institutional interactions.Travel behavior is not re-chosen each day. People make decisions, and use shorthand – habit – for future decisions.Given political and ridership maximization when rail is replaced by bus (see how many shuttle buses the MBTA puts out when they have to take the longfellow out of service)At the moment of change may not be a signifcant difference in serviceSo someone who rides the streetcar continues to ride the busOver time, residential location, work location, and the rest of the world changes.And the role of habit becomes less predominantThus, if this is the case, expect to see reduced effect of past rail over time.
- #39 An example can help illustrate the way that the built environment can use past rail to influence current behavior.For example, suppose places with past rail have lots of glass storefronts, associated with pedestrian travel back then, does two thingsDirectly – more pleasant walking environment, more places to shop; more other people walking, which also makes it safer and more pleasantIndirect – reminds you of prior experiences by yourself or family. It embodies that past travelDirect is not so simpleWhat influences vs. what is being described.Latent descriptors; indicators of concepts, not the concepts themselves.IndirectPeople travel.Past experience influence present perceptionsFamily influences your own. Based down through values - preferencesBut also through memories. Which can be triggered by the BE associated.In short the BE’s effects are some combination of real attributes, interacted with norms, perceptions, and people surrounding. Its related to the final mechanism I want to discuss
- #40 Culture – one explanation of how we make sense of the complications. Its a shorthand – a decision making process.It can be passed down through the BE – as an attribute of the BE. Or separately, through one’s family and their experiences. Attributes of places near past rail, whether demographic, environmental, or otherwise, can plausibly influence current behavior through the mechanism of ones own or ones family members. This is the inheritance of habit.But also, its plausibly a product of neighbors behavior. Past rail means more usage in past periods but other people behavior effects your own, and so that high usage in the past means that people who moved in were more likely to cohere in behavior, which effect the next in-migrants, and so onInteract with preferences, and with institutional optimization for ridershipThe uniqueness of places near rail, even if they are no longer unique (the BE is disrupted), can have a culture of differential travel behavior, because of the gradual migration and this culture influenceAJZEN – theory of planned behavior
- #42 Big picture and little picture
- #43 Ive gone over the hypothesis and the plausible mechanismsBehavior is a function of …Because codetermination can result in endogeneity(the left side also causes the right side), everything on the right is lagged by two decades. This is a common approach.Proximity uses a half mile buffer, which is a good proxy for a stop buffer if stops are less than a mile apart, which for past (and most current rail in Boston) they are and wereSKIPNot panelTime as actor (exponential decline), comparable controls for other changes between eras, data availability
- #45 • 1865 marks the height of the horsecar era, before urban rail was electrified. Urban rail in this period was both organized and functioned differently than it would in the future. Operating companies were disparate and competing. The speed improvement over existing transportation technology—wagons and walking—was less marked. Fares were too high to be considered truly mass transit. Despite these differences, the existence of fixed guideways makes this period t=0 ; the first network of intra-urban rail.• The second period, 1925, takes place within an inflection point of the system. Much of the core of the subway and elevateds were in place within the CBD, but electrified streetcars dominated outside the CBD. Operation consolidation and fare standardization were mostly complete, leading to increased adoption by poorer people: the era of mass transportation. System expansion was the norm at this point. With notable exception, few lines were abandoned in the transition from the horsecar. 1925 is also the last point at which mode choice competition from later technologies—bus mass transit or auto private transit—is not significant.• By the third period, 1960, the major elevated and subway lines in the system are complete. Streetcars are all but extinct, replaced by buses and trackless trolleys, or abandoned altogether. Mode choice competition from the auto is significant, especially for the upper half of the income spectrum. This is accompanied by massive and concentrated changes to the built environment; slum tear downs and urban “renewal.” • The interim until the modern period, 2000, is marked by the dominance of the auto for mode choice outside of a small core of transit oriented development. In the urban core it also covers significant counter trends, from the revolt against highway expansion, and the re-emergence of demand for central locations and associated concerns over gentrification. As a result, in Boston (somewhat uniquely among the older urban rail systems in the US) this is also a period of transit system expansion.
- #47 Selected findings.
- #48 Overlay can see coherence between erasBus = streetcar + moreYou can see red line extension is this new thingMovement of orange line – but omission of commuter rail
- #49 Top- high degree of correlation in distance to rail between erasMeasured in terms of blockgroup distance to nearest rail line.Bottom – dependent is distance to rail in 2000Places that are close to rail in 1960 are close to rail in200, and vice versaBut, looking at standardized coefficient, 1960-era doesn’t define currentAnd that there are some leftover effects. Interactions that means that places far from rail in 3 eras, got closer by 2000Move on to behavior
- #51 Simulate without railWith and without street network controlsIf network unique to past rail, then endogenousSee that even if assume street network exogenous from rail,Reduction of 14% with 20 miles, with largest gains (about 50% of actual) at centerEven stronger if endogenous street network with past rail.
- #53 Makes sense the strong effects on residential density – the buildings last and need to be filled (but control for that)So, there is a legacy effect that remainsDidn’t show you the model of change since 1960But, what it shows it that places with past rail have been largely insulated from the urban population decline between 1960 and 2000, after those same controls.Current access has an effect, but past rail’s effects on density are much larger
- #58 2) Even if demographics and the BE are exogenous from past rail (which is unlikely to be the case), past rail measurably influenced subsequent levels of density and auto ownership. 3) Places that were oriented to transit when first developed maintain the signals associated with that orientation over time, just as places built around auto usage put up impediments to retrofitting to transit usage [e.g. Dunham-Jones and Williamson, 2009].
- #60 So rail has these hysterical effects on density and auto ownership. Where it exists, it persists.How areas are developed around rail is an important portion of these effectsIf they are desired for environmental or agglomerative reasons, they are likely to be maximized in areas where the cumulative causation of durable capital is not an inertial force working against it. It is said that Chicago is Manhattan surrounded by Phoenix, that Toronto is Vienna surrounded by Phoenix.If you’ll forgive the pun – these Phoenixes can rise from the ashes, because their post industrial , or at least sparse nature, means that redevelopment is cheap and neighborhood opposition low – those inertial forces do not exist to the same extent.Second, behavior is more complicated than we model it to be. Understanding where we’re going means understanding how we got to the present History, along with a lot of other omitted factors can help improve travel behavior models.Third, planning time frames and quasi-irreversibility mean a focus on effects past planning horizons, and thus use for scenario planningLast, I the cultural mechanism is correct it implies that interventions to affect the perception of BE and travel behavior characteristics can be useful over long time frames.