Durham: Forward into the Past

Duke University has until tomorrow to agree to donate land to the Durham light-rail project, or the project may die. As a result, project supporters have been trotting out advocates who claim that light rail will benefit the community.

Interestingly, none of those benefits have anything to do with transportation. In particular, some leaders of the black community think that light rail will help revitalize their neighborhoods. In fact, at best it will do nothing for those neighborhoods; more likely, it will lead to subsidized gentrification pushing black residents out.

Ironically, the neighborhood they hope to benefit is one that was previously damaged by past urban-renewal projects. Somehow, it hasn’t occurred to the black leaders that the local government’s plan to tear down existing homes and building expensive transit-oriented developments will be more likely to harm than help the current residents of the neighborhood.

Opponents have also weighed in. One claims that other North Carolina communities have improved bus service and gotten immediate results, while Durham has been so focused on light rail — which won’t begin operating until 2028 at the earliest — that it has neglected its bus system. To be fair, every transit agency in the region is losing riders, but at least the ones focused on buses aren’t wasting billions of dollars.

Billions is what the 17.7-mile line is expected to cost, and those costs have more than doubled in five years. In 2012, the line was expected to cost $1.2 billion, or around $70 million a mile. By 2014, it was up to $1.8 billion, or just over $100 million a mile. By 2017, costs had climbed to $2.5 billion, or more than $140 million a mile. The Federal Transit Administration hasn’t signed a full-funding grant agreement yet, but it has frozen the amount it will cover to be no more than half of that $2.5 billion, meaning it won’t pay for any additional overruns.
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To cover its share, Durham is proposing to get a 45-year loan, which will add $890 million in interest charges to the cost. As one critic pointed out, the local share of costs total to $4,750 per resident of the two counties the rail line will cross, yet only a tiny share of those residents will ever ride it.

Since light-rail infrastructure only lasts about 30 before needing to be almost completely replaced, Durham will be on the hook for billions in rehab costs long before it is done paying for the original construction. That’s like getting a 30-year loan on an automobile that you expect to completely wear out in 20 years. Moreover, even if you don’t believe driverless cars will have taken all riders from transit by 2028, they seem almost certain to do so well before 2064.

A former light-rail supporter has abandoned the project due to its high costs and to the increased congestion it will cause by disrupting downtown Durham traffic patterns. To minimize the disruption, transit advocates have suggested building a tunnel, which would add at least another $81 million to the project cost (and probably much more).

Typically, politicians consider the cost to be a benefit. “We invest in infrastructure,” said a county commissioner. “It will be the biggest infrastructure project in the history of North Carolina.” Someone needs to tell her that “infrastructure” is not a race to see who can waste the most taxpayers’ money on obsolete technologies.