America’s transportation system will continue to grind to a halt under Obama’s pick for transportation secretary, Anthony Foxx. Currently mayor of Charlotte, NC, Foxx supports streetcars and other obsolete forms of transit.
It is a measure of the glacial pace of America’s political system that Obama had nearly sixteen months’ notice that current Secretary LaHood planned to step down at the end of Obama’s first term, yet the president required another full three months before finding a replacement. If the administration has anything to say about it, American travelers will move at the same glacial pace: the streetcars that Obama, LaHood, and Foxx want to fund are slower than most people can walk.
Transit advocates often point to Charlotte as an example of a successful low-capacity rail line. With success like this, I’d hate to see a failure: the line cost more than twice the original projection; generates just $3 million in annual fares against more than $20 million in annual operations and maintenance costs; and collects of an average of just 77 cents per ride compared with nearly a dollar for other light-rail lines. Now Charlotte wants to extend the line even though a traffic analysis report predicts that the extension will dramatically increase traffic congestion in the corridor (see pp. 54-56).
