Anyone who carefully read the environmental impact statement for Maryland’s Purple Line would know that the proposed light-rail trains would be slow, would make congestion in the region worse, and that buses could move as many riders for a lot less money. It wouldn’t have taken much more research to learn that Maryland had a history of badly overestimating ridership and underestimating costs of its rail transit lines and that the ridership projections for this line had been particularly overinflated in order to make it eligible for federal funding.
Of course, most people didn’t read those documents or do the research, and many chose instead to believe the hype. So Maryland gave a $5.8 billion contract to a consortium of companies to build and operate the line. When, predictably, the line ran into delays and cost overruns, the companies withdrew from the project.
This naturally led opponents to urge Maryland to take this opportunity to cancel the project. Even if you believed the unrealistically high ridership estimates made before the contract was signed, the pandemic has probably decimated the market for transit. Continue reading
