Michigan transportation officials are relearning the lessons that transit advocates overstate claims for transit improvements and then backpedal when those promises fail to happen. For example, a bus-rapid transit project in Grand Rapids was supposed to economically transform the corridor it serves and carry 7,400 riders per weekday in its first year.
In fact, it carried just 2,200 riders per weekday and the only transformation in the corridor is the empty park-and-ride station parking lots and increased congestion from dedicating traffic lanes to buses that were once open to all vehicles. The transit agency, meanwhile, revised its ridership projection downward to 5,000 trips per weekday and, when it didn’t meet that, claimed it is still “happy” with the results.
Similarly, ridership on Detroit’s streetcar line, called the QLine, was supposed to be 5,000 to 8,000 trips per weekday. In fact, it was just 4,300 trips when it was free, dropping to 2,700 trips after they began charging fares.
It would be nice to think that at least one Michigan city has learned from the failure of these types of projects elsewhere. Lansing was going to spend $133 million on a bus-rapid transit line but cancelled the project. Unfortunately, it didn’t cancel it because of the failure of the Grand Rapids project but because the Trump administration refused to fund it. One Lansing transit agency board member said “Donald Trump did us a favor” but cutting funding, but if the federal money had been there, you can be sure the transit agency would have taken it.
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The people mover’s “effectiveness was limited by the city’s failure to build out its transit system,” argues CityLab, thus proving that no matter how many billions of dollars we spend on transit failures, transit supporters will claim it isn’t enough.
“Our young people are really looking at mass transit more and more,” Michigan’s governor proclaimed when ground was broken for the Grand Rapids BRT line. That’s just one more piece of hype officials should be skeptical about. By the time the governor said this, ridership in Grand Rapids had already begun to decline, and from 2014 through 2018 has dropped 16 percent. It’s also dropped by 11 percent in Lansing, 6 percent in Detroit, and 14 percent in Detroit suburbs. The people mover has lost 9 percent since 2014. Ann Arbor ridership grew by 6 percent, not because young people love to ride transit but because it increased bus service by a whopping 45 percent.
Transit apologists blame Michigan for having a “car culture.” But Michigan doesn’t have any more of a car culture than any other state or, for that matter, any other developed country. It simply has people who are smart enough to figure out that the cost, convenience, and comfort of automobiles make them superior to transit even after transit gets 75 percent of its costs subsidized by taxpayers.
The Michigan Green party blames Flint’s water problems on Michigan’s car culture. It seems that if something goes wrong, blame something you don’t like. Logic be damned.
The Antiplanner wrote:
For example, a bus-rapid transit project in Grand Rapids was supposed to economically transform the corridor it serves and carry 7,400 riders per weekday in its first year.
In fact, it carried just 2,200 riders per weekday and the only transformation in the corridor is the empty park-and-ride station parking lots and increased congestion from dedicating traffic lanes to buses that were once open to all vehicles.
A few thoughts:
1. At least BRT does not have the catastrophic (as in high) price tag associated with things that run on steel rails (or does it? – my non-systematic observations imply a much lower construction price for BRT when compared to rail). The lower price is not a sufficient reason in and of itself for BRT, but it is a significant advantage over rail – and before any rail project is approved, BRT should be examined in some detail (and I understand that more than a few railfans really hate BRT).
2. Before traffic lanes are dedicated to bus service (which are usually not a very good idea, in part because enforcing the bus lanes has proven difficult in some places), the planning process should require that pricing of all lanes to achieve free-flow traffic (for buses and everyone else) should be evaluated.
“no matter how many billions of dollars we spend on transit failures, transit supporters will claim it isn’t enough.”
You’ve summed up liberal ideology in a nutshell…No matter how much resources or money you commit or retract it’ll never be enough to meet their expectations. They’re never satisfied….and pour money into it even if the program is a failure
The Michigan Green party blames Flint’s water problems on Michigan’s car culture.
How does that argument work?
Are we to believe that that if Detroit had “built out” its transit system (whatever that means) that it somehow would not be hemorrhaging people and jobs? As Detroit is learning with the Q Line, a shiny new train set does little if there is nobody there to use it.
@MJ, as these goes you have to jump through several hoops and – more importantly – ignore the obvious short comings of the Green Party’s thesis. Their claim is that cars are to blame because all the salt that is put on the roads that gets into the water that makes it more corrosive. If if one takes such a claim as true, somehow thousands of municipal water systems in northern states are in the situation and did not fail like Flint.
https://migreenparty.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/car-culture-poisons-flint/