Mercury News Gets It Wrong Again

The San Jose Mercury-News has long been a booster of ridiculously expensive rail transit projects such as Bart to San Jose. This week, it has a five-part series on the woes facing Bay Area transit agencies.

First, it tells us that, thanks to lower gas prices combined with higher transit fares, “commuters are leaving mass transit for their cars.” Maybe that wouldn’t have been a problem if the paper hadn’t encouraged the region to build such a high-cost transit network.

Second, the paper warns that “transit cuts will make Bay Area economic recovery difficult.” Considering that less than 4 percent of San Jose-area commuters took transit to work in 2008, transit cuts won’t be much of a problem for Silicon Valley. They could have a slightly bigger effect on the San Francisco-Oakland area, where 17 percent of commuters use transit to get to work. But if boosters really want to help economic recovery, they should reduce taxes for everyone, not promote high-cost transit for a few.

These first two articles focused mainly on facts. But in the third article, the paper claims that the environment loses when transit ridership declines. “Without a doubt, air quality inventories show that the best way to cut greenhouse gases in the region is by removing cars from the road.” Yes, and without a doubt, poor counties produce less greenhouse gases than rich ones. But that doesn’t mean America’s leaders should try to make us poor. The real question is whether investments in transit are a cost-efficient way of protecting the environment, and as the Antiplanner has already found, the answer is “no.”

Erectile dysfunction is known by viagra sample free http://frankkrauseautomotive.com/cars-for-sale/2005-chevrolet-silverado/ impotence by many people around. Most of the times they remain there without causing much trouble. buy cialis canada cheap brand cialis I was already sitting at the table when she entered the restaurant. In fact, they contribute around two-third of the whole lot. look at this now order generic levitra The fourth segmentpoints out that “those without cars hit hardest by Bay Area transit crisis,” which is pretty much a truism. If the paper really cared about low-income people and others who can’t drive, it would advocate a low-cost transit system that people can afford without relying on roller-coaster tax revenues, not a series of urban monuments testifying to the stupidity of the region.

What’s the solution? The last segment of the series says we need a “culture shift,” raising taxes and changing “the way commuters travel and leaders plan cities.” Like that has worked so well in the past. This has essentially been the San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission‘s plan since 1970 or so. They certainly have higher taxes, but they haven’t changed the way commuters travel. “The current plan hasn’t worked for 40 years, so let’s do more of the same!”

Maybe instead of building expensive, gee-whiz trains, Bay Area transit planners should rely on buses. Running on high-occupancy vehicle or high-occupancy toll lanes, those buses can be as fast or faster than any rail line. That will save billions in capital costs and, if they run on routes that fill up just 40 percent of the bus seats, the operating costs will be lower too.

More important, Bay Area transportation planners should recognize that transit is never going to carry more than about 4 percent of the region’s travel. Instead of spending 60 to 80 percent of the region’s transportation funds on transit systems that nevertheless suffer from funding crises, they should build the transportation system that people will actually use.

As the Antiplanner has said before, the real problem for transit agencies is not a shortage of money, but too much money. This encourages them to waste money on high-cost transit systems. Then they get into trouble when the cost of completing and running those systems proves to be greater than they expected (or pretended). Unfortunately, the Mercury-News would rather live in a fantasy world than in reality.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

6 Responses to Mercury News Gets It Wrong Again

  1. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    The Antiplanner wrote:

    > As the Antiplanner has said before, the real problem for
    > transit agencies is not a shortage of money, but too much
    > money. This encourages them to waste money on high-cost
    > transit systems. Then they get into trouble when the cost
    > of completing and running those systems proves to be greater
    > than they expected (or pretended). Unfortunately,
    > the Mercury-News would rather live in a fantasy world
    > than in reality.

    I must respectfully disagree with you.

    Shortages of money (in particular construction or “capital” funding) to build new rail lines has never caused promoters (elected officials, downtown real estate promoters, planners, unions that represent rail transit operating workers and construction workers) of those lines to miss a beat. Construction may be slowed or “spread out” to future outyears but this does not seem to hinder the enthusiasm for mass transit on steel rails.

    The tried-and-true method is to promise a certain amount of trackage for an announced price, then come back to the funders when “unforseen” construction costs cause the price to rise – sometimes by a factor of as much as 3 or 4.

    I have also noticed that enthusiasm of elected officials at the municipal and county level for rail transit lines frequently seems to vary inversely with the amount of money that the elected officials have to come up with out of their own general funds.

  2. blacquejacqueshellac says:

    “The last segment of the series says we need a “culture shift…”

    New Soviet Man, to the rescue.

    Been tried. Didn’t work.

  3. Dan says:

    it tells us that, thanks to lower gas prices combined with higher transit fares, “commuters are leaving mass transit for their cars.” Maybe that wouldn’t have been a problem if the paper hadn’t encouraged the region to build such a high-cost transit network.

    I took two extended trips there last year, and due to 1 in every 5-6 people not working, thre is much less congestion and traffic. I didn’t need to take BART to avoid the daily insanity. Transit was a necessity before, not a plush pork paradise as Randal tries to sell you.

    DS

  4. JimKarlock says:

    Transit was a necessity before, not a plush pork paradise as Randal tries to sell you.

    Maybe they should have increased road capacity “before” instead.

    Thanks
    JK

  5. the highwayman says:

    Then “libertarians” would complain about government taking away some ones property to widen a highway.

  6. Dan says:

    Whoda thunk this headline would be seen anywhere, if the small-minority spew above is true:

    “Small-minority ideology calls for more Eminent Domain property seizures”

    Sacre bleu!

    DS

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