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Transit Unions: Victims or Bullies?

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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A Portland transit union leader says his members have been “victimized” by a free-market group that posted their salaries on line. But who is the real victim here: the people collecting the salaries or the people whose taxes pay the salaries even if they never ride transit?

Back in June, a free-market group in New York posted salaries for all government workers in that state, leading the New York Times to calculate that more than 8,000 New York City transit workers earn more than $100,000 a year. Portland’s TriMet has only about 100 employees who are paid more than $100,000. Most are administrators, but at least one is a bus driver and several work in maintenance.

Of course, New York’s MTA has 70,000 employees compared with about 2,600 who work for TriMet. The list of TriMet salaries also lists $18,540 in benefits for most employees, but this does not count unfunded pension liabilities that the agency has incurred for each employee.

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More Election Results

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
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Progressive Railroading lists a few more election results, oriented of course to pro-rail transit. That article in turn links to the Center for Transportation Excellence, a group focused on government “investment” in infrastructure, which claims that the vast majority of transportation measures passed this year (including elections prior to November).

Many of the measures on CTE’s list were road measures (which, if they were funded by sales taxes, the Antiplanner would have opposed). CTE somehow managed to not count the Dane and Kenosha county rail measures that lost. Two of the rail measures that passed were bond measures in Arlington and Fairfax County, Virginia, to support capital improvements (really maintenance) on the DC MetroRail system. Other cities that accept federal funds for rail transit should take note: they will ultimately be responsible for rebuilding the system when it wears out.

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Interpreting the Election Results

By | | News commentary, Regional planning, Transportation
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Tea party supporters do not agree on a lot of issues, but are firm on two things: cutting government spending and protecting property rights. What do the election results mean for the future of land-use and transportation planning?

On one hand, many of the results look promising for supporters of property rights and efficient (user-fee-driven) transportation policies.

  • Wisconsin rail skeptic Scott Walker, who promised to cancel the state’s moderate-speed rail project, soundly trounced the pro-rail incumbent governor.
  • Ohio elected fiscal conservative John Kasich, who is also a rail skeptic, as governor, probably dooming that state’s moderate-speed rail plans.
  • Florida appears to have elected fiscal conservative Rick Scott as governor. He will probably take a hard look at that state’s high-speed rail programs.
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Arithmetic-Challenged Favor High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters
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On Monday, the Washington Post published a devastating critique of high-speed rail written by journalist Robert Samuelson. In fewer than 800 words, Samuelson blows up just about all the arguments put forth in favor of rail. An 8-word summary: costs are too high and benefits too low.

One person who remains unconvinced is the popular innumerate, Matthew Yglesias. Normally I would not personalize an issue by calling attention to someone’s disability, in this case Yglesias’ inability to deal with simple arithmetic. But by describing me as a “car-subsidy shill,” Yglesias shows he is math challenged.

Apparently, if you believe, as I do, that all modes of transportation should be paid for by users, and not by tax subsidies, then you, too, are a “car-subsidy shill.” Here is a simple lesson in arithmetic: if users pay for all of something, then subsidies are zero. That makes me a “zero-subsidy shill.”

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Phoenix Transit Cuts: Caused by Light Rail?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Phoenix’s transit agency, Valley Metro, claims that its new light-rail line is a great success, but the Antiplanner is reserving judgment until we have actual data. In the meantime, news reports indicate that Valley Metro is failing to improve bus service as promised when voters agreed to increase the sales tax to support “roads and rail” in 2004.

Of course, the agency blames the problem on the economy. But, as the Coyote blog points out, this is disingenuous. Nearly half of transit’s share of the sales tax increase goes for light rail, and most of that goes to pay back the loans incurred to build the light rail.

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Dead Again

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
52 Comments

New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie rekilled the Hudson River tunnel project. He had killed it before, a couple of weeks ago, but then promised to reconsider his decision at the request of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Christie did not want to burden New Jersey taxpayers with the cost overruns, now anticipated to be at least $4 billion. Canceling the project means New Jersey has to repay the federal government $350 million spent on planning the project, which seems a bargain by comparison.

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More Money Wasted

By | | News commentary, Transportation
19 Comments

Just in time to influence the November election, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has granted $2.5 billion for high-speed rail to several states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan. Underscoring the political nature of the grants, the announcements were not made by the Federal Railroad Administration, which doesn’t mention them on its web site.

Instead, LaHood phoned major politicians (all Democrats), who then announced the grants to the media. A formal announcement is expected on Thursday. Until then, announcements indicate that:

  • California received $902 million
  • Florida $808 million.
  • Iowa and Illinois received $230 million for a conventional-speed Amtrak line between Iowa City and Chicago.
  • Michigan received $150 million for a high-speed rail line on the vital Dearborn-to-Kalamazoo corridor.
  • Connecticut received $121 million to improve rail speeds between New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield, MA.
  • Virginia received $45 million to plan a high-speed rail line from Washington to Richmond.
  • Minnesota received $40 million to renovate the St. Paul Union Depot.
  • New York received $18 million for rail upgrades in the Syracuse area.

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TIGER II Rips Another Hole in the Federal Budget

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood put your money where his mouth is when he dedicated well over 40 percent of the latest round of “Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery” (TIGER) stimulus funds to streetcars, pedestrianways, and other “livability” projects. The biggest grant was $47.67 million towards a 2.7-mile, $72 million streetcar line in Atlanta.

In all, the grants totaled about $584 million, of which $557 million went for actual construction and $27 million went for planning. Almost 85 percent of the planning money was for some form of a livability program (transit, pedestrianways, “complete streets,” multi-modal stations, etc.), while 40 percent of the construction funds went to livability, 24 percent to highways, and 36 percent to freight projects.

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NJ Governor Cancels Raildoggle

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The big transportation news while the Antiplanner was in Japan was that New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie cancelled a major rail construction project: a planned new tunnel under the Hudson River. Spurred by cost overruns, Christie said “far more than New Jersey taxpayers can afford and the only prudent move is to end this project.” The tunnel was originally projected to cost $5 billion, but the latest estimates are as high as $14 billion.

Soon after the announcement, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood met with Christie to twist his arm “present a number of options” to keep the tunnel project alive. Christie agreed to revisit the decision, though he remains painfully aware that the project is ruinously expensive for New Jersey.

Christie’s decision, assuming it is sustained, raises an intriguing question: what other raildoggles are susceptible to similar cancellation by a single official such as a governor or mayor? This is especially pertinent as many fiscally conservative candidates are likely to take office in January.

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How to Fool Transit Riders

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Recently, FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff told transit managers, “you can entice even diehard rail riders onto a bus, if you call it a ‘special’ bus and just paint it a different color than the rest of the fleet.” Eugene, Oregon’s Lane Transit District (LTD) proved this with its EMX bus-rapid transit line.

When this line was put into operation, the Antiplanner predicted it would be a disaster because LTD had spent way too much money on buses and had built an exclusive bus lane that was so narrow the drivers couldn’t go any faster than on the crowded streets. But the project may have worked out anyway.

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