It’s been a little over a week since Nashville voters rejected that city’s light-rail plan, and the pundits are wringing their hands in despair. Many of them have a common set of assumptions:
- Rail transit is the only real transit — buses don’t count — so voters who reject rail are rejecting transit itself;
- Transit relieves congestion, so it is surprising that voters in a congested city would reject spending more on transit;
- Transit is morally superior to driving and both are subsidized, so the fact that subsidies to transit passenger miles are roughly 100 times greater than to highway passenger miles is irrelevant.
Nashville is “gridlocked,” says Wired magazine, so voters should have supported the plan. But no one except out-of-town reporters really believed that spending at least $5.4 billion building 29 miles of light rail would do anything to relieve congestion.
Transit is a “great value” continues Wired, but it frets that “it takes a lot of verbage to explain” why that is so. Wired‘s own explanation is more like double-talk: the “average US taxpayer contributes $1,100 a year to the nation’s driving habit” but transit costs the average American only $125 a year. But only about a third of Americans are taxpayers, and we travel about 100 times as many miles per year by car as we do by mass transit, so the cost of transit per passenger mile, even using Wired‘s questionable numbers (which come from PIRG), is far greater. Where is the great value in that?
Wired suggests that the only viable argument made by the measures opponents was that “trains and buses never pay for themselves,” which the magazine reluctantly admits is “sort of true.” Sort of? Transit can’t cover a fraction of its operating costs, much less any of its capital and maintenance costs. Of curse, the real argument against the Nashville plan was that light rail was a waste of money and wouldn’t do anything to solve the region’s traffic or other problems.
Wired concludes that the “real reason Nashville’s vote failed might have less to do with what was offered and more with how it was framed.” After all, Seattle and Los Angeles conned their voters into supporting big light-rail measures, so it must be the proponents’ fault if they failed in Nashville. That’s supported by an article in the Nashville Scene, which argues that proponents were “too focused on downtown” and that the public relations firm hired to manage the campaign failed to have “effective messaging or outreach to” other parts of the city.
Governing magazine seems to blame the measure’s defeat on the sex scandal that forced Nashville’s mayor, and the city’s major light-rail proponent, to resign weeks before the election. Noting that the replacement mayor has already promised to prepare a new transit plan, the magazine notes that rail measures in other cities “initially lost when they put similar measures to voters, but later came up with plans that got public approval.”
The Austin Business Journal reports that the lesson for rail proponents is “the importance of building a solid base for any proposal.” According to Austin rail advocates, “transit proponents in Nashville didn’t defend the proposal effectively enough,” says the BizJournal.
None of these articles considered the possibility that Nashville voted down this transit plan because it was a stupid idea. Light rail has been obsolete since 1927 when the Twin Coach model 40 bus was the first to be unambiguously less expensive to operate as well as less expensive to buy than streetcars. Today, buses can move more people per hour, faster, more safely, and for far less money than light rail.
Nor did the writers consider that it might be stupid to spend billions on a transit plan (including bus improvements the Nashville plan was expected cost nearly $10 billion and probably would have cost more) at a time when transit ridership is declining nationwide and driverless ride hailing is poised to render most transit obsolete in a few years. We have to get away from the idea that transit is morally superior to driving, when in fact it is slower, less comfortable, less convenient, and costs far more.
In other news, the Broward County Commission formally killed the Wave streetcar project on Tuesday. Although the city of Fort Lauderdale withdrew from the project last week, the county could have tried to go ahead on its own. But commissioners made no effort to do so.
Although they were mainly persuaded by the high bid prices for construction, they may also have been influenced by the recent announcement that ridership on Detroit’s streetcar is falling far short of expectations. Meanwhile, Miami’s “trolley” system — meaning buses built to look like trolley cars — is doing very well. A year ago, the Antiplanner estimated that buying such buses would cost about 1 percent as much as building a streetcar line, and cost less to operate as well, and recommended that Fort Lauderdale consider such buses as an alternative to streetcars. Now maybe it will.
At least some people can see that it doesn’t make sense to spend more than $200 million on a rail project when $2 million worth of buses can accomplish the same thing. Nor does it make sense to spend $5.4 billion on light rail when spending $54 million on buses could do as much or more. Too bad writers at Wired, Governing, the Scene, and Business Journal never bothered to consider this possibility.
The Antiplanner wrote:
[Emphasis added]
Transit is morally superior to driving and both are subsidized, so the fact that subsidies to transit passenger miles are roughly 100 times greater than to highway passenger miles is irrelevant.
This.
And based on my personal observations, more than a few of the moralizers (often of the “do as I say, not as I do” persuasion) are driving their own cars around, even to locations where a trip by transit might be possible (but probably would be more time-consuming).
+1 CP
I’ve actually heard Portland peeps say stuff like, “People shouldn’t be allowed to drive their personal cars whenever and where ever they want.” But the end of the work day, instead of taking a bus, they got in their Subaru and drove home.
Transit is morally superior to driving and both are subsidized, so the fact that subsidies to transit passenger miles are roughly 100 times greater than to highway passenger miles is irrelevant.
How exactly did the media spin it as moral? You don’t ride the light rail to get to the Emergency room, an ambulance or someone rushing you there……….does that.
5.4 Billion that’s 186 Million dollars per mile; 35,000 dollars per foot.
Nashvilles MTA has a modest budget of 81 million dollars. Operating a light rail costs what, depending on it’s size, about 100 million a year.
Table provided by the National transit database shows a much wider range in the cost of operating light rail vehicles ($124.01 – $451.33 per hour) than buses ($84.61 – $163.96), although if we throw out the two outliers in light rail costs (Los Angeles and Dallas), the range is reduced to $124.01 – $292.51. It is unclear why Dallas and Los Angeles light rail costs are so much greater than the other agencies.
Southern California transit agency reported an almost 500% increase in operating costs per mile when they replaced natural gas buses on a route with electric buses. I suspect the electric buses which according to manufacturer afford fewer costs and technical and mechanical problems are simply being run more often. In other words, nearly empty buses running at off-peak hours. That’s why I’ve been an advocate for mini-buses, they’re smaller, cheaper, easier to navigate the nimble roads of cities and microbuses which are really no different than basic automotive technology.
Overall, it is more expensive to operate one light rail vehicle than one bus. Because of this fact, cost-effective use of light rail requires a large passenger demand – a demand that only exists in a few American cities, most of which already have extensive rapid transit systems. So where is Nashville supposed to get this money
This quote pretty much says it all. The objective is not really to identify and explain the project’s merits or why the voting/taxpaying public should see this program as socially desirable, but to build a political base of support for passage. In other words, “success” is defined simply as getting authorization to spend the money and build the projects. With that kind of approach, is it any wonder why 65% of the voters rejected the proposal?
Nashville is gridlocked……………True, but any major grid based metropolitan city is gonna have traffic.
A lot of people say ride sharing only leads to traffic, maybe but remember ridesharing is Carpooling with payment. Uber and Lyft may have questionable finances and poor business management, but deregulating the rules seem more a favor. At the turn of the 20th century anyone with 500 dollars could buy a car, paint the word taxi on it and he was in business for himself. Nashville can solve a lot of it’s traffic problems with relatively simple solutions.
– Improve traffic signal coordination to move more vehicles per hour. Exclude that if it’s already been implemented.
– Deregulate the transit industry and allow people to use their cars to move people outside the scope of taxis, or better yet offer tax incentives for low income residents who use their cars to shuttle people.
– Assuming they have em, convert the neighboring counties HOV lanes to HOV/HOT lanes.
– If you live in the city, then City cars are probably a novel albeit kitsch solution. You can make fun of the SMART car all you want. Granted it’s not the best car for the highway; but in city traffic you’re not going very fast anyway. But Nanostructured carbon composites will be used to produce safe, light, recyclable vehicles. Carbon fiber costs 10-15 dollars per pound which is certainly cheaper than 35-100 dollars just 20 years ago. When carbon fiber gets to be 5 dollars per pound, they’ll make midsize and economy cars out of it.
– Encourage urban cycling, 1,000 cyclers means 1,000 fewer cars
LazyReader wrote:
How exactly did the media spin it as moral? You don’t ride the light rail to get to the Emergency room, an ambulance or someone rushing you there……….does that.
5.4 Billion that’s 186 Million dollars per mile; 35,000 dollars per foot.
Nashvilles MTA has a modest budget of 81 million dollars. Operating a light rail costs what, depending on it’s size, about 100 million a year.
I think most of the regulars here know that I self-identify as a Democrat (we have closed primaries in my state, so partisan registration here is generally a good idea), and a pretty liberal Democrat at that, though with some beliefs that many (as in green and would-be social engineers) in my county do not like and do not agree with.
Lazy, as with too many things involving government, I do not think the numbers matter to a lot of people in the voting booth. Yes, that is mostly unfortunate, and probably leads to the funding of things are underused (a professional friend long ago called this “faith-based transportation planning”).
I see a lot of appeal in rail transit as being an urban (and usually liberal) form of Making our City Great Again or Making our Metropolitan Area Great Again – because in the Good Old Days (in this case being in the years from 1900 to 1930 and again 1941 to 1946), when transit was pretty dominant in terms of modal share (and especially rail transit, even though there were significant rail abandonments starting in the 1930’s).
If the elected officials in charge of governments in the U.S. really wanted to increase the share of transit (used for commuting – I believe the notion of increased transit use for non-work travel is mostly fanciful), they would impose taxes on gasoline, Diesel fuel and electricity used in highway-use vehicles similar to what is levied in places like England (current price of a U.S. gallon of gasoline in Britain is about U.S. $7.70 (that being a number that U.S. drivers would not like)).
I think most readers of The Antiplanner see such pump prices as unlikely in most of the U.S., even though I have heard advocates of transit claim that this will “save” urban U.S. transit.
I don’t think it matters, essentially since the Antiplanner points out gas is 2-3 times in price and taxation what it is in Europe and 79% of passengers miles accumulated annually are by automobile. And pushing gas prices via taxation will probably be the biggest electoral revenge ever. Who’s gonna vote for someone who wants to double or triple what you pay to gas up at the pump. Then again Europeans drive little toaster mobiles that get 50 mpg…………..
@lazyReader, if you want to have some fun run some cost and ridership number for Nashville’s Music City Star. Not a single one of the “why didn’t the vote pass” pieces cited by voters. Maybe it didn’t rate but maybe a lot of people knew about it vaguely and knew that no one used it. Why should they believe anything should change?
Another aspect worth noting with Nashville is that it was mostly Democrats voting against this transit plan.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2018/04/26/nashville-transit-referendum-turnout-early-voting/553710002/
Nashville voters can choose one of three ballots when they go to the polls: a Democratic ballot with a the transit referendum; a Republican ballot with the transit referendum; or only the transit referendum.
Raising many eyebrows: Around 24 percent of all voters have taken the Republican/transit ballot, while another 13 percent have taken the transit referendum-only ballot.
This is noteworthy because there are no Republican candidates running for any local office in Davidson County — but people are choosing it anyway.
Since you guys are driving, you’re not using sidewalks, but I don’t see you guys complaining about sidewalks.
Though, I totally understand that with you teahadi’s your agenda is political and not economic :$
Highwayman,
Why are you bothering to post here at all?
The numbers bandied about here are so statistically ignorant, there is no point in arguing with those whose ideology that has a very rigid religious fetish about motor vehicles.
It is hopeless in arguing with a group that thinks parking, for example, is really “free” just because it is an expense to the private sector led by a “path dependence” enforced by the government for a century. Their ideology shows up when they consider any spending by government in addition to fares to be a “subsidy” when the hundreds of billions per year gifted to the act of driving for “free” parking mainly by the “private sector” is NOT a subsidy by their ideological “standards.” (sic)
Highwayman, please send me an email so we can discuss further how to offset whatever influence The Antiplanner still retains, not at this blog, of course. msetty@publictransit.us