Tag Archives: rail transit

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has killed the LaGuardia AirTrain, a ridiculously expensive people mover that had been supported by her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. “I don’t feel obligated to accept what I have inherited,” Hochul said, noting that there were lower-cost alternatives that had been ignored by Cuomo and rejected by the Port Authority.

This bridge has become a symbol of Portland, but it really should be read as a symbol of the Portland light-rail mafia‘s willingness to spend $1.5 billion on a new light-rail line that added no net new riders to the region’s transit system, which carried fewer riders the year after it opened than the year before. Photo by Steve Morgan.

Of course, those lower-cost alternatives are still going to cost a lot of money, and spending that money is problematic in an age when many people are no longer comfortable in crowded conditions. As noted here earlier this month, New York City offices have some of the highest vacancy rates in decades, and even offices that are still under lease may be nearly empty as the number of people entering those offices is down by more than 70 percent. Downtown groups have released similarly dire reports for Seattle and Washington, DC, among other cities. Continue reading →

When we last looked at the Honolulu rail project, less than a month ago, the projected cost had risen from $5 billion (when the city decided to build it) to $11.3 billion and the date it was expected to open had been delayed by more than 11 years. It’s gotten even worse since then.

Wheels that are too narrow will slip off tracks at joints like these, known as “frogs.” Photo by Meggar.

The latest problem is that the railcar wheels are too narrow for the tracks. To negotiate “frogs,” the places on switches where tracks cross, the wheels need to be a half-inch wider. Continue reading →

The city of Honolulu has now officially admitted that completing its misbegotten rail transit project will cost more than $10 billion and that it won’t be done until 2033. When first proposed back in 2006, it was supposed to cost less than $3 billion and when construction began in 2013 it was supposed to begin operations early this year.

Although it will be completely elevated, leading the Federal Transit Administration to classify it as heavy rail, the trains Honolulu has purchased will only have the capacity of light rail. It is costing more per urban resident than any rail line in the world, yet it won’t be able to carry as many people per hour as a bus-rapid transit line.

Meanwhile, Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD), which has suffered its own cost-overruns, is enthused about the idea of spending $2.5 billion for a 45-mph Front Range train from Ft. Collins to Pueblo. RTD’s own FasTracks rail project ended up costing more than twice as much as was promised to voters, forcing RTD to at least delay construction on a proposed line to Longmont.

When that line was at the stage that Front Range rail is at now, RTD estimated that it would cost $211 million. By 2008, the cost had risen to more than $700 million and the line was expected to carry so few riders that taxpayers would end up paying $60 a ride. Continue reading →

Writing in the September Trains magazine, which isn’t available on line, transit advocate Malcolm Kenton argues that rail transit agencies can thrive in a pandemic and post-pandemic world by shifting strategies. But he doesn’t mean shifting business strategies to attract more riders; he means shifting propaganda strategies to attract more tax dollars.

“Transit advocates will need to tell a different story that de-emphasizes ridership as the key measure of success and focuses less on attracting higher-income riders,” he says. “Instead, the pandemic reveals how dependent we all are on effective transit even if we never set foot on a train or bus, and even if trains or buses carry much less than their capacities.” Continue reading →

Positive-train control is an exercise in futility. Almost 900 people were killed in railroad accidents in 2018, and positive-train control wouldn’t have saved more than, perhaps, ten of them. Yet Congress imposed this multi-billion-dollar cost on the nation’s railroads.

Now the Federal Railroad Administration says that all but eight railroads are in compliance with the law. What does it say that five of those eight are government owned? The Alaska Railroad, New Jersey Transit, New Mexico’s Rail Runner, Chicago’s Metra, and TEXRail all “are at risk of not fully implementing a PTC system” by the latest deadline, which is the end of this year.

The passengers that railroads carry lots are exactly the people that the law was written to protect. Congress wrote the law in response to a 2008 collision between a Los Angeles Metrolink passenger train and a freight train that killed 25 people. Continue reading →

Since 1992, federal taxpayers have helped fund construction of urban rail transit lines through a program called New Starts. This program is due to expire in 2020, and tomorrow, the Highways and Transit Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing on whether or not to renew it.

No doubt most of the witnesses at the hearing will be transit agency officials bragging about how their expensive projects have created jobs and generated economic development. But a close look at the projects built with this fund reveals that New Starts has done more damage to American cities than any other federal program since the urban renewal projects of the 1950s. Here are eight reasons why Congress should not renew the program.

1. New Starts encourages cities to waste money. The more expensive the project, the more money New Starts provides, so transit agencies plan increasingly expensive projects to get “their share” of the money. As a result, average light-rail construction costs have exploded from under $17 million per mile (in today’s dollars) in 1981 to more than $220 million a mile today. Continue reading →