Happy Memorial Day. Today, the Antiplanner feels a need to mourn common sense, which seems to have died a few decades ago. In place of common sense, we have plans that amount to little more than fantasies, rent-seeking special interest groups, and an environmental movement ready to defend any amount of subsidies to corporations that claim to be green.
One example of the death of common sense is the stubborn insistence on the part of planning advocates that restricting the supply of land for housing doesn’t increase home prices; that growing prices in regions with restricted supply are solely due to demand. This has most recently been challenged by economist Thomas Sowell and The Economist magazine, but I doubt they changed any minds.
Another example of the death of common sense is the eagerness of public officials to spend phenomenal amounts of money building transit systems that will carry very few people. Houston, for example, has so far spent $587 million on a 3.3-mile light-rail line, which reporters say equals $3,000 an inch–and the line isn’t even yet complete. The first modern light-rail line in America, San Diego’s Blue line (sometimes called the Tijuana Trolley), cost less than $10 million a mile in 1981, equal to about $17 million a mile today, and was of questionable value then. Yet Houston’s line, which costs ten times as much per mile, will be capable of carrying no more people than San Diego’s.
Not to be outdone, Austin planners want to spend $1.4 billion on a 9.5-mile light-rail line that planners project will attract 16,000 to 20,000 riders per day and no more than 2,500 riders during the peak hour. Austin clearly hasn’t learned its lesson from its existing rail line, which went way over budget, opened two years late, and carries far fewer people than projected.
Residents of the Austin urban area currently take more than six million trips per day (p. 60), and the region’s 25-year transportation budget is $28.4 billion (p. 13 of the same document). Thus, Austin’s light-rail plan means spending more than one year’s worth of transportation dollars on a line that will carry less than 0.33 percent of travelers.
Not to worry, says a light-rail advocacy web site: “Since a light rail track can carry up to 20,000 people per hour compared to 2,000 vehicles per hour for one freeway lane, light rail is cost-competitive with freeways on a per passenger-mile basis.” What a load of common-senselessness!
Learn from the best and don’t make the exact female viagra pill same mistakes others have. This premature ejaculation solution is available in different strength of cialis online sales tablets and can be easily taken out on a spoon and swallowed without any difficulty. According to a study reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine had price for levitra cute-n-tiny.com found a link between erectile dysfunction and gum diseases. Extreme generic sildenafil uk high or low blood pressure Kidney or liver disease Lung infection Heart problems Allergy from the ingredients of this drug Some sort of penis deformity issue Special health conditions in which intercourse is not the issue; the actual problem is behind the education of sex which leads to unprotected intercourse.
Let’s start with that 20,000 people per hour: few light-rail systems can safely move more than 20 trains per hour, so that means 1,000 people per train. Since the longest light-rail trains in America have four cars, that means at least 250 people per car. The typical light-rail car has about 70 seats, and most transit agencies claim they can hold 60 to 160 people standing. The Antiplanner has ridden in many standing-room-only transit vehicles and never counted more than about 60 standees, yet even 160 falls short of the 180 required to fit 250 on board.
While rail advocates cite passenger numbers at “crush capacity,” they neglect to mention that those 2,000 vehicles per hour on a freeway lane could be 15-passenger van pools moving 30,000 people per hour. Or the same freeway lane could host more than 1,000 double-decker buses moving 100,000 people per hour.
The other part of the equation that this common-senseless web site neglects to investigate is cost. It smugly says, “People who use mass transit instead of cars spend significantly less of their income on transportation.” Of course, 75 percent of the cost of transit is subsidized, at least in the United States, while only about 4 percent of the cost of driving is subsidized. (Highway subsidies average about $40 billion per year, but Americans spend about a trillion dollars a year on driving.)
Let’s compare Austin’s proposed light-rail line with the MoPac Express Lanes (HOT lanes) that are now under construction. For about $200 million, the Texas Department of Transportation is adding two new lanes to the current six-lane MoPac freeway. The new lanes are expected to carry about 50,000 vehicles a day in 2015, which (at the national average of 1.6 people per car) could mean 80,000 people per day.
So, for one-seventh of the cost, the HOT lanes will produce four times the travel. They will also provide a congestion-free route for transit buses. Moreover, at least some of the cost of the HOT lanes will be recovered in tolls (Texas plans to use those tolls to build more HOT lanes), while none of the construction cost of any light-rail line built since 1980 was covered by transit fares.
Instead of planning a new light-rail line, Austin’s transit agency should support the construction of a HOT-lane network throughout the urban area. That would allow it to run low-cost buses everywhere with little traffic delay. But that would be too commonly sensible.
It would be one thing if the U.S. was flush, but we aren’t. We are nearing $18,000,000,000,000 in debt and yet the feds (Repubicans included) can’t even slow the increase in spending from 8% (four times the inflation rate) to 6% (Three times the inflation rate) as sequester would have done. After having a fit about how increasing spending just three times the inflation rate instead of four times the inflation rate would devistate our military, they (The Republican led congress included) were forced to do a budget that replenished nearly all the spending back to the four times the inflation rate level.
Aside from steering billions of public tax dollars to leftist supporting friends and unions, does light rail really do any of the things it’s supporters proclaim? Excuse me. The steering of billions to leftist suppoters is certainly not proclaimed, but it is the only thing light rail does well as far as I can see.
P.O.Native wrote:
Aside from steering billions of public tax dollars to leftist supporting friends and unions, does light rail really do any of the things it’s supporters proclaim? Excuse me. The steering of billions to leftist suppoters is certainly not proclaimed, but it is the only thing light rail does well as far as I can see.
I am a registered Democrat, and am often considered liberal (though not maybe “leftist”).
I agree with you (and the Antiplanner) that funding of legacy electric street railway projects are a massive waste of federal taxpayer dollars. Their ridership does not justify the cost that they incur to construct and operate them (and they invariably require large operating subsidies from taxpayers).
Having said that, the wasteful spending on rail transit projects is relatively small when compared to Social Security, a massive and very Socialist transfer program from (mostly struggling) wage earners to the elderly, many of whom do not need those dollars.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Let’s compare Austin’s proposed light-rail line with the MoPac Express Lanes (HOT lanes) that are now under construction. For about $200 million, the Texas Department of Transportation is adding two new lanes to the current six-lane MoPac freeway. The new lanes are expected to carry about 50,000 vehicles a day in 2015, which (at the national average of 1.6 people per car) could mean 80,000 people per day.
I do not know the configuration of the lanes – I hope that there is some degree of separation between the managed lanes and the conventional (“free”) lanes.
So, for one-seventh of the cost, the HOT lanes will produce four times the travel. They will also provide a congestion-free route for transit buses. Moreover, at least some of the cost of the HOT lanes will be recovered in tolls (Texas plans to use those tolls to build more HOT lanes), while none of the construction cost of any light-rail line built since 1980 was covered by transit fares.
Funny how that is markedly better than any rail transit line I have ever heard of in the U.S.
Instead of planning a new light-rail line, Austin’s transit agency should support the construction of a HOT-lane network throughout the urban area. That would allow it to run low-cost buses everywhere with little traffic delay. But that would be too commonly sensible.
Agreed. And those buses can run a lot faster on the managed lanes than most rail transit lines.
CPZ – I think Social Security is more of a Ponzi scheme that rescued a lot of older people in the early 20th century and is badly screwing younger people today in a shrinking worker base. It sort of helps poor people today by keeping them relatively not-poor when they get older, but it robs their kids of any inheritance that wealthier people who use 401(k)s and other retirement systems.
I’m not opposed to HOT-lanes on the face of it but but the Mopac HOT lanes are a joke. The HOT lanes are being constructed in the middle of the highway north of town where traffic is not very bad. In the city center where traffice grinds to a hault, the middle of the highway is occupied by the Missouri-Pacific rail line (hence Mopac) so the lanes cannot go there. The right of way in this area is already at the max so the lanes are being narrowed and the shoulder is being eliminated to make way for the new lane. What could go wrong?
I drive from my house in south Austin to my office in north Austin on Mopac almost every day. Our office has seen the writing on the wall. We are moving the base to the south side to avoid what is sure to be a traffic clusterfuck once the construction is completed. That’s the problem with blazing a highway through the most expensive neighborhoods in town. They have the money to fight any eminent domain to increase the size of the highway. How is TxDOT going to vastly increase the capacity of Mopac without increasing the size of the highway??? They’re not. The traffic estimations might not be as outrageous as the light rail projections but it’s bullshit none the less.
p.s. I was wondering when you were going to get to Austin’s “dreamy” transit vision http://projectconnect.com/. As someone who has become very familiar with Austin’s political landscape, I’ll be surprised if 1/10 of this vision is actualized.
Since these light rail lines to save money operate at grade with street crossings, in order to resemble a semblance of “rapid”ness they can only operate every 5 minutes to maintain signal priority. So 12 trains per hour would be a more likely maximum.
Express buses are on segregated right of way so as long as there is space to receive them (like a 250 bus bay in Manhattan) they can operate at high average speeds as often as you want. Since even if a HOT lane has bus stops they are unlikely to be used much being in the middle of a freeway, express buses are likely to have low passenger thoroughput and thus even if full only carry 40 passengers per hour per bus. Since transit agencies are politically unable to charge the higher fares necessary to give express buses a reasonable farebox recovery, they look to light rail replacements as stations every mile will result in much greater passenger replacement.
I applaud Minneapolis for continuing the express bus service between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St Paul, at least during weekdays when it makes the most sense to have it.
Is there anyplace that uses these type of buses for intra-regional travel, such as 80 miles in and back to/ from a major city?
Perhaps they would like to provide an example of a system that even approaches that hourly volume.