How Much Has New Rail Transit Cost?

How much money have American cities spent building “new” rail transit lines? A 2005 paper published by the Brookings Institution attempted to answer this question, but the numbers were only sketchy for some systems such as San Francisco BART and Washington Metrorail. Other systems were left out entirely, as were, of course, any lines built since 2005.

Using a variety of other sources, the Antiplanner estimates that the United States has spent more than $90 billion in 2009 dollars on new rail transit lines opened since 1970. This includes the BART system, which opened in 1972 but was under construction before 1970. This does not include the Cleveland Red Line, the only post-war rail transit line built before 1970 (unless you count the Seattle Monorail, which also isn’t included). It also does not include additions made to Boston, Chicago, and other rail transit systems that existed before 1970, or the Las Vegas monorail, which was built with private funds. Finally, it does not include money spent on lines that have not yet opened, such as the Norfolk light-rail route.

In a previous post, I estimated that the Washington Metrorail system cost about $17.6 billion (not counting a recent extension to Largo). But this is only a rough estimate because it is hard to get data showing how much money has been spent each year. Since inflation has halved the value of the dollar since 1982, it is important to know the annual spending so that dollars in various years can be converted to constant dollars. Most estimates of construction costs use “year of expenditure” data, which is like adding pounds, euros, and yen and counting the total as dollars.

These people can opt for soft table of the production, viagra on line order these soft tab are blue in color, looks attractive and compel you. But it was later observed that it had great “side effect” in producing viagra 50 mg next page erections. When a person does not face firm erections, it is then when he becomes a victim of impotence or erectile dysfunction then buy sex pills for men that are over 60 years of age and there’s no need for its regencygrandenursing.com on line viagra treatment. Many sexual transmitted diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea have connection with tablets viagra online feculent sexual intercourse. The National Transit Database reports transit agency capital expenditures by mode. But the available data go back only to 1992. In addition, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) counts rehabilitation and replacement costs as capital expenditures. So the data show both the costs of new construction and the costs of maintaining existing lines. At least these data are useful for new lines built by agencies since 1992 that had no other rail lines before then.

For transit agencies that had rail before 1992 but built more since then, another source of information is the FTA’s New Starts annual reports. These indicate the total projected cost of new rail lines funded by FTA grants. The actual total costs may be slightly more than the final projections, but at least these numbers don’t include maintenance of older lines.

For lines not covered by the above references, the Antiplanner relied on a variety of other sources, including a few academic articles, newspaper reports, and the transit agencies themselves. All of these sources are given, with links where possible, in the Antiplanner’s paper, which covers people movers, commuter rail, heavy rail, light rail, and streetcars.

Rail lines take several years to build, and the New Starts data report year-of-expenditure costs. The Antiplanner conservatively assumes that the average expenditure was made the year before the line opened. When converting to 2009 dollars, assuming an earlier year would result in a higher cost. Other than this imprecision, I feel confident about the estimates for almost all of the rail lines except the Washington Metro and BART systems, most of whose costs I have only in one lump sum even though they were built over many years.

Tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

About The Antiplanner

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

8 Responses to How Much Has New Rail Transit Cost?

  1. Mike says:

    Not to be a broken record or anything, but if all rail systems were built by private entities, their cost would be none of anyone’s concern except investors. Just as simplicity naturally wins in science, so too will simplicity naturally win in economics… but fierce opposition will continue to trumpet from those whose meal tickets are vested in keeping things complex and obscure.

  2. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    At the start of construction of Washington’s Metrorail system, the capital cost was estimated by its managers as being $2.55 billion.

  3. John Dewey says:

    Randal,

    Does your $90 billion estimate include only the capital spent to build the rail lines? Or would it also include any operating losses?

  4. solibs says:

    Sorry, what’s the point in this exercise? Are we trying to determine a cost breakdown by mode?

  5. John Dewey,

    The $90 is only capital costs — planning, design, and construction — not maintenance or operations.

    solibs,

    The point is that sometimes we need to know capital costs, such as to calculate the total cost per trip. Most reports of capital costs do not adjust for inflation to present-day dollars. This one does as far as possible with the information available.

  6. John Dewey says:

    Thanks for the reply.

    It might be difficult to add in the operating losses for a rail system such as my local DART light rail. Some debt service expenses are related to capital spending. Admin expenses for rail, bus, and HOV lanes are not likely segregated. But I did see an estimate somewhere that DART light rail fares only cover 10% of operating expenses.

  7. MJ says:

    But I did see an estimate somewhere that DART light rail fares only cover 10% of operating expenses.

    The number for 2008, the most recent year that NTD data are available, is 15.5%. It’s probably lower now, due to higher unemployment levels. The corresponding figures for DART’s bus and commuter rail systems are 13 and 8.1%, respectively.

  8. chipdouglas says:

    You can’t put a price on “world-class” (except for the $90 billion).

    World-class” (read: we want to be Europeans) and “it works!” (for which no standards are provided) are the two constant refrains from government rail fanatics, for whom no amount of money is too much since the state is the rightful owner of all wealth anyway.

Leave a Reply