The latest news from Hawai’i is that the Honululu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) lied to the city council when it told them the city’s rail project was $500 million to $700 million over budget. It turns out it’s really $910 million over budget. HART was just hoping to cover up $210 million of the deficit by quietly transferring bus money to the rail project.
Meanwhile, as fiscal conservative Larry Hogan is sworn in as governor of Maryland, rail advocates are doing a full–court press about how the state really needs to build the Purple Line, a light-rail line from the mighty city of New Carrollton (population: 12,000) to the city census-defined place of Bethesda (population: 63,000), passing through the census-defined place of Silver Spring (population: 77,000) on the way. The trains are expected to trundle between these suburbs at the breath-taking speed of not-quite 15.5 miles per hour, somehow attracting 69,000 daily riders along the way.
As shown earlier this week, the Maryland Department of Transportation has solid track record of overestimating light- and heavy-rail ridership by at least 100 percent. If it is built, the Purple Line is likely to be no exception. New Jersey’s Hudson-Bergen line, which serves neighborhoods whose population densities are four times greater than those along the Purple Line and regional centers with far more jobs than suburban DC, carried just 44,000 riders per weekday in 2012. The Purple Line is not likely to be less than that.
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Since fewer than 20,000 of the projected daily Purple Line riders would be “new” transit riders, that is, people who weren’t previously riding the bus, any reduction below 49,000 essentially means no new riders. If that’s the case, there would be absolutely no point in building it even if it were free.
But it is hardly free. Given Honolulu’s experience, it seems likely that the whopping, $2.4 billion projected price of the Purple Line is also optimistic. The cost has already grown from about $1.7 billion (after adjusting for inflation) at the time of the draft EIS in 2008. (The final route is midway in cost between the DEIS’s “medium-cost” line, at $1.22 billion, and the “high-cost line,” at $1.62 billion. $1.42 billion in 2008 dollars is about $1.7 billion today.) There’s no reason to think costs will stop growing now.
The Antiplanner keeps coming back to the fact that San Diego built the first modern light-rail line in American in 1981 for $17 million a mile (in today’s dollars). The Purple Line is now projected to be $146 million a mile. That should be enough money to build a ten-lane freeway from New Carrollton to Bethesda (Texas builds four-lane freeways for about $10 million a mile–not lane mile, $10 million for all four lanes), yet the Purple Line will be lucky to carry one-half of a freeway-lane’s worth of passengers. As I said yesterday, not counting those who expect to make money building the rail lines, anyone who supports these schemes must be totally innumerate.
A friend recently moved from Maryland to Texas. Her husband said: “U-Haul rental from Maryland to Texas is $2000, rental from Texas to Maryland is only $500.”
.
Texas better keep building those cheap highways, they’re going to be getting a lot more new residents!
Nobody wants to go from Bethesda to New Carrolton. The ridership would be lower than the lowest AP prediction. Too many people are simply not aware of the scale of our world. Whether it be geopolitical forces, historical trends/patterns, population dynamics, and of course: science. Ultimately, there may not even be anyone that understands the Federal Government’s budget or how much a Trillion dollars is. So when we’re asked if we think the purple line is worth $146 million we can’t process it because we don’t know what one hundred forty six million dollars is. These issues need to be brought down to the individual level.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Meanwhile, as fiscal conservative Larry Hogan is sworn in as governor of Maryland, rail advocates are doing a full-court press about how the state really needs to build the Purple Line, a light-rail line from the mighty city of New Carrollton (population: 12,000) to the city census-defined place of Bethesda (population: 63,000), passing through the census-defined place of Silver Spring (population: 77,000) on the way. The trains are expected to trundle between these suburbs at the breath-taking speed of not-quite 15.5 miles per hour, somehow attracting 69,000 daily riders along the way.
A little more on the Purple Line:
(1) Originally, the state of Maryland offered to build the line between the Metrorail stations at Silver Spring and Bethesda at the same time that the “original” Baltimore Central Light Rail was being planned, engineered, and built in the early 1990’s, and would have used the exact same signal system and light rail vehicles. It would have used an abandoned CSX Transportation freight spur line called the Georgetown Branch, been entirely in Montgomery County and much shorter than what is proposed now, but the Montgomery County Council (true to its finest traditions) wanted to “study” it some more (this being the same county council that studied the now-completed Md. 200 (ICC) toll road off- and on- for better than 40 years).
(2) The state started a study in the mid-1990’s to look at congestion relief measures for the Capital Beltway along its northern section, mostly in Montgomery County as well. The Purple Line grew out of that study, supposedly to provide relief to the users of the Beltway, at least in that section. But the number of forecast new riders would seem to indicate that there will be little (if any) congestion relief, and never mind that the Antiplanner has repeatedly demonstrated that rail transit projects cannot decongest highways anyway.
(3) Purple Line boosters are talking about the wonderful increase in densities (of housing, presumably) that would occur along the line if it is built (since there will be little, if any, parking capacity added at any of the Purple Line stops) and economic development generally (presumably intended to appeal to the new governor who campaigned in favor of more employment in the state). But Maryland has been clinging to the whole “transit means economic development” story for decades, as the Washington region’s job growth has been along freeways in Northern Virginia, rather far from any of the proposed Purple Line stops (apparently those that decide where employment is located do not consult with elected officials and planners in Maryland or with the Smart Growth industry in general – an employer faces less much process and trouble in Virginia securing needed approvals). Then there is the matter of NIMBYism, which has a long tradition in the Maryland suburbs of D.C.
(4) The fine citizens of the Montgomery County municipality of Takoma Park have been vigorously objecting to new (and higher-density) development around the Takoma station on the Washington Metro’s Red Line subway line, even though transit-oriented development (TOD) is supposed to be the cure-all for every problem known to mankind. For those that may not be familiar with D.C.-area geography, the Takoma station is not even in Maryland – it is in the District of Columbia (the Takoma Park objectors to TOD at the Takoma station claim to be all in favor of TOD, as long as it is somewhere else). Now if the solid citizens (and their elected officials) along rail lines object to TOD along a rail line that was opened in 1978 (with much higher passenger-carrying capacity than the Purple Line will ever be capable of), how much objection should be expected along the Purple Line (which will run along the western and northern borders of Takoma Park), as well as in other areas with histories of objecting to highway and transit improvements on NIMBYistic grounds?
(5) Larry Hogan, Jr. won the 2014 election for Maryland’s Governor at least in part because he objected to the enormous cost of the Purple Line and its twin, the similarly expensive Red Line mostly in Baltimore City (and a short stub into Baltimore County). Most of the capital cost of these projects (already beyond $5 billion, before cost overruns) as well as a very large chunk of the operating deficits, were to be paid by highway users through increased motor fuel taxes – many of those highway users living many miles from either line (and keep in mind that Maryland is a relatively small state with only 24 counties and county-equivalent jurisdictions). Those highway users are already propping-up very expensive transit systems in Baltimore and its suburbs as well as in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. The rail parts of those Baltimore and Washington systems are aging (the Baltimore Metro (one line) and the Washington Metro both need to have most of their railcar fleets replaced or overhauled) and will continue to consume huge amounts of taxpayer money (from sources other than transit patrons).
One of strongest arguments the Antiplanner makes against light rail and subways is how they devastate the bus service, both by eliminating popular routes and by siphoning off huge amounts of funding. They also wipe out the inherent flexibility of bus routes and timing to change quickly and over time as the city changes.
Sandy Teal wrote:
One of strongest arguments the Antiplanner makes against light rail and subways is how they devastate the bus service, both by eliminating popular routes and by siphoning off huge amounts of funding. They also wipe out the inherent flexibility of bus routes and timing to change quickly and over time as the city changes.
But (according to rail boosters), the nasty drivers of those cars will not ride a bus, but for some reason they will park their cars (difficult to do along much of the routes of Maryland’s Purple and Red Lines as planned) and ride a choo-choo train.
And of course the trains that juice fiends promote are electric trains, which use “clean electric” power (well, maybe not so clean, at least in the East, where a huge percentage of electricity is produced at coal-fired electric generating stations).
The lack of flexibility and the federal funding behind these rail systems is also seen as an advantage, because state and local governments that build them must continue to run them for decades, even if the patronage is not there.
Baltimore Sun: To appeal to Hogan, Red Line supporters zero in on business support
A friend recently moved from Maryland to Texas. Her husband said: “U-Haul rental from Maryland to Texas is $2000, rental from Texas to Maryland is only $500.”
Texas better keep building those cheap highways, they’re going to be getting a lot more new residents!
Yes. It is more to go from Maryland to Texas than Texas to Maryland probably due to supply and demand. It also has quite a bit to do with time of year and existing inventory.
But yes; Texas is getting a lot more new residents. Who knows if that trend will hold given low oil prices and a potential economic correction.
That Texas highway was through a much less developed area. Do you have a four lane highway project through a comparably built up area in Texas or elsewhere for ten million a mile?
http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=MD#tabs-4
Coal is significant in Maryland, yes. But when rail boosters talk about electric trains being clean they are at least sometimes talking about local pollution. Cars are much cleaner than they used to be, but there are still pollution concerns near busy roads. Incentives to replace old diesel trucks or old furnaces or retrofit them with modern emissions equipment, is probably a more efficient way to reduce air pollution in cities.