With Austin’s light-rail ballot measure going down in flames last November due to its high costs, rail transit advocates have conceded defeat, folded up their tents, and gone home. Ha, ha, just kidding; actually, now they are talking about subways.
Although someone prepared this map of an Austin subway system more as a joke than anything else, it has been used in news reports about proposals to build subways in the Texas capital.
“What do most major popular cities that continue to grow and be vibrant have in common?” asks Tom Meredith, former CEO of Dell Computer, which is headquartered in Austin. His answer? “Subways.”
What’s the solution to Austin’s increasing congestion? asks economist Angelos Angelou. His answer? “Subways.” In other words, if you can’t afford light rail, then build something that (as Texas A&M transportation engineer Curtis Morgan points out) is five times more expensive. That makes economic sense (in Bizarro world).
Meredith and Angelou must be very smart people, but they don’t know much about transportation economics. Subways only work in very high-density cities that have very high concentrations of downtown jobs. It also doesn’t hurt to be a city in which the auto is not yet a dominant form of travel, like New York City in 1904, when Parsons Brinckerhoff built the first major subway in the United States.
At nearly 12,000 people per square mile, the city of Miami is much denser than most American cities. So is Baltimore at 7,600 people per square mile. As the Antiplanner’s faithful ally Wendell Cox has documented, Miami and Baltimore both have nearly 100,000 downtown jobs. But when Baltimore built a subway and Miami built an elevated line in the late 1980s, not only did they both get less than half the riders they expected, their ridership is more like light-rail levels.
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Each attracted about 12,000 weekday riders per route mile in 2012, about the same as light-rail systems in Charlotte, Denver, and Phoenix. By comparison, New York subways carried 52,000 weekday riders per route mile; DC subways carried 32,000; Chicago and Boston heavy-rail lines carried 29,000. All of these cities are much denser than Austin, have more than 200,000 downtown jobs, and all except Washington’s were largely built before the auto became dominant.
Of course, it’s an open question whether subways are really working in Boston, Washington, and these other cities–even New York–since they all lose a ton of money each year and none of the cities can afford to keep them in a state of good repair. While you can argue that New York City couldn’t exist without subways, that isn’t true for any of the other cities, and even in New York, the subways couldn’t exist without the subsidies from tolls paid by auto drivers crossing bridges into Manhattan.
Meanwhile, the city of Austin has about 2,750 residents per square mile and 72,000 downtown workers, only about 5 percent of whom take transit to work. There may be a city somewhere in the world that is a good candidate for a new subway system, but it isn’t Austin.
A lot of the objections to an Austin subway focus on cost. With heavy-rail lines in the FTA’s 2015 New Starts report (some of which are elevateds and therefore a lot less expensive than subways) costing an average of more than $440 million per mile, or about the cost of 20 to 40 miles of four-lane freeway, cost is certainly an issue. This is especially so when you consider that the New York City subways are the only heavy-rail lines in the country that carry significantly more people per mile than typical lane-mile of an urban freeway.
But even if subways cost no more per mile than a freeway lane, they wouldn’t be worth it. First, in a place like Austin they would end up carrying far less than a freeway-lane’s worth of people; Baltimore’s and Miami’s each carry less than half a freeway lane’s worth of people per day. Second, and one reason for low ridership, despite the frequent use of the term “rapid transit,” the American Public Transportation Association admits that the average heavy-rail line goes just 20 mph (see p. 39). Third, except in Manhattan and a few other very high-density areas, self-driving cars and car sharing are going to take away many if not most of the customers from inflexible rail transit systems in a few years.
People who propose subways in places like Austin are displaying their ignorance. While it is wonderful to live in a democracy, it isn’t wonderful to have a system in which ignorant people can vote to take away your money to build stupid projects like government-funded convention centers, hotels, stadiums, and rail-transit lines. That’s why we need to return to first principles such as user pays and using government as a recourse of last resort, not first.
There’s no reason to think the current subway fare is a revenue maximizing one. Especially once the metrocard is replaced (eventually…) with a future payment system that could handle time of day peak hour pricing. Like local roads, a subway station contributes greatly to local property values. Current funding may depend on the bridge and tunnel tolls, but that doesn’t mean the subway system could not exist without them.
That said…In NYC doesn’t the MTA get more money from Queens-Bronx traffic on the Whitestone, Throgs neck, and Triborough bridges, and Brooklyn-Staten Island traffic on the Verrazano narrows bridge (even with the SI resident discount) than it does from Manhattan-(Queens/Bronx/Brooklyn) traffic on the Triborough and Henry Hudson Bridges, and the Brooklyn-Battery and Queens Midtown tunnels? High tolls where transit is relatively poor, no tolls on the East river bridges (Brooklyn,Manhattan, Williamsburg, Queensboro-59th st) to the Manhattan business district where transit is much better.
How do you define route mile that NYC subway carries 52k? NTD lists NYCT as having 487.5 fixed guideway directional route miles, I’m guessing you aren’t using this number.
New four lane freeways through Austin would cost $10-20 million per mile?
@ Antiplanner:
““What do most major popular cities that continue to grow and be vibrant have in common?” asks Tom Meredith, former CEO of Dell Computer, which is headquartered in Austin. His answer? “Subways.”
Meanwhile, the city of Austin has about 2,750 residents per square mile and 72,000 downtown workers, only about 5 percent of whom take transit to work. There may be a city somewhere in the world that is a good candidate for a new subway system, but it isn’t Austin.”
From the referenced article.
“Austin is expected to be 4-million people strong in 20 years. Meredith says we have to find out how to make a subway cost-effective.”
If Austin has a population of 4 million people, that’s different to a smaller city that’s moving towards light rail. Or maybe not.
“Second, and one reason for low ridership, despite the frequent use of the term “rapid transit,” the American Public Transportation Association admits that the average heavy-rail line goes just 20 mph (see p. 39).”
In London, UK, by contrast, the average speed of a car is 12 mph.
“While it is wonderful to live in a democracy, it isn’t wonderful to have a system in which ignorant people can vote to take away your money”
Um. That’s pretty much the definition of democracy.
Two wolves and a sheep deceiving what’s for dinner and all that. The reason the government was set up as a republic, that only property owners could vote, that senators were elected indirectly, the Electoral College, etc.
“Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.” HL Mencken
Austin is expected to be 4-million people strong in 20 years?
It’s current population is under 1 million for the city; under 2 million for the metropolitan area as a whole.
The birth rates of the prime Austin metrosexual residents is quite low so you are hoping for a lot of immigration from either other parts of the country or from Mexico.
Not a valid basis to spend many billions on projects that won’t fund themselves even if the projections are correct.
The Antiplanner sez:
Each attracted about 12,000 weekday riders per route mile in 2012, about the same as light-rail systems in Charlotte, Denver, and Phoenix. By comparison, New York subways carried 52,000 weekday riders per route mile; DC subways carried 32,000; Chicago and Boston heavy-rail lines carried 29,000. All of these cities are much denser than Austin, have more than 200,000 downtown jobs, and all except Washington’s were largely built before the auto became dominant.
I think The Antiplanner is referring to daily passenger miles per route mile, not “riders” per se. If the D.C. Metro carried 32,000 daily riders per route mile, that would be over 6 million daily riders. I also assume he means “one way route miles,” not total two-way system length.
Getting this sort of thing right is essential if various calculations are to be correct. I trust The Antiplanner when he compiles annual NTD data and the recent cost and ridership estimate data for new rail lines. However, with the sort of common errors made above, I still cannot trust The Antiplanner’s interpretations or manipulations of data.
F.Y. in advance, Metrof—-ky.
Why measure “passengers per route mile?” I’ve never heard of that measurement. Doesn’t that make systems with longer routes appear less productive? Why not use the more common measurement of passenger miles?
Or maybe use passenger trips rather than miles?
Have you checked your blood pressure, msetty? I’m afraid that at this rate, you won’t live to see greedy, thieving auto drivers pay back the fifty trillion they stole from passenger rail.
“$440 million per mile, or about the cost of 20 to 40 miles of four-lane freeway,”
https://twitter.com/BenRossTransit/status/557917261626114050
Msetty,
You are right, I meant passenger miles, not riders. But you are wrong, I did mean route miles, not directional route miles. Sorry for the error.
As for Austin becoming a city of 4 million, it will have to be through annexation. It is not going to get to be a lot denser than it is today as there is nothing restricting development outside of its territorial jurisdiction, so most people will continue to live low-density lifestyles.
“It is not going to get to be a lot denser than it is today as there is nothing restricting development outside of its territorial jurisdiction, so most people will continue to live low-density lifestyles.”
Well maybe if they build a trillion bucks of subways, all that high density development will just magically spring up without subsidies or payouts of any kind. A new Manhattan in Texas, of sorts. Oh, sorry, I mean with subsidies and cash payouts. My bad.
Metrosucks: they could build all the subways they want, but if development restrictions remain in place you won’t see any density.
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/austin-seeks-to-rewrite-onerous-development-rule-1/nRpxK/
Wouldn’t the geology of Austin make it especially hard to build a subway? Isn’t it all rocky?
That just means more profits for those corrupt contractors, and more kickbacks to the corrupt politicians.