3 ms·
It looks like the study just analyzed the direct employment effects of the construction projects -- how many ditch diggers, bus drivers, etc. would get paycheck
by kbob 17y ago
It looks like the study just analyzed the direct employment effects of the construction projects -- how many ditch diggers, bus drivers, etc. would get paychecks either from the project or from the system the project creates.
The headline numbers, 16,000 job-months for transit, 8,000 job-months for highways (per billion dollars spent), show how small the direct employment is -- 16,000 job-months is about $60 million, or 6% of the investment.
The real question, which is apparently unaddressed, is which transportation infrastructure produces a greater benefit for the regional economy. The economic differences there will likely dwarf the direct effects.
But the Wired article doesn't even go there. There's a statement that transit "allows people to get to work", implying that highways don't, but that's all.
But that's okay. We know cars are evil and transit is good, so there must be numbers out there somewhere to show it.
- gjm11 17y agoI think the point about "allowing people to get to work" is that people with no car (a much larger proportion of the jobless than of the employed, presumably) have more limited employment options, and improving public transit gives them access to more jobs. It seems a pretty good guess to me, at least, that public transit does more to give more people access to more jobs than highways costing the same amount.