(no subject)

[randomness]

Nate Silver, on a recent Brookings Institution transit study:

I want to point out that just because a study uses objective criteria, that doesn’t make it sensible. In fact, studies that try to rank or rate things seem especially susceptible to slapdash, unthoughtful methodology (here is another example: a study which concludes that Gainesville, Fla., is a more gay-friendly city than San Francisco). If you come up with a result that defies common sense — like Modesto’s having better public transit than New York — then once in a blue moon, you may be on to something: conventional wisdom is fallible. But much, much more often, it’s a sign that you’ve done something wrong, and it’s time to reconsider your assumptions before publishing.

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Of course more jobs and people are within mass-transit range in Modesto -- it has a higher percentage of illegals (who aren't allowed driver's licenses), so housing and employers can't move away from bus lines.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Doesn't mean that the transit system is better, just that more people are trapped near the service lines. Even if the buses don't run very often.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

That's my point, sort of. The metrics the study chose will tend to rate places highly if they have low sprawl. Honolulu will come out well because it's confined by geography. I suspect that Inland Empire California doesn't sprawl because there is a large fraction of the workforce that cannot drive.

On a deeper level, I believe that studying one factor or another doesn't get to the root -- the mass transit, roads, housing, and employment are continuously remodelled, and interact via a number of forces. In systems like that, what you see will be the equilibrium based on all the forces. Often the equilibrium will be determined by only a small number of forces, but it's difficult to guess which ones it will be without enumerating and comparing them all.

In re mass transit issues, all studies seem to ignore a force that I see: People place value in living farther away from other people. How intense this effect is and how universal it is, I haven't seen studied, or even discussed. But it seems to have a strong effect on US land use patterns.