Everyone knows that transit is so morally superior to driving that we aren’t supposed to ask about how much it costs. Pay no attention to the fact that the next light-rail line Portland wants to build will cost nearly $3 billion; planners don’t mention the cost in their presentation of the proposal.
Nor are we supposed to ask whether anyone is actually riding transit. When Portland’s last light-rail line, which cost $1.5 billion, opened a few years ago, transit ridership declined. But that’s no reason to question the next line.
Now we have some new questions are we aren’t supposed to ask. A bill signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday has exempted transit projects from detailed environmental review, meaning we no longer get to find out that the rail project that’s supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will actually increase them. Not surprisingly, the bill was written by state Senator Scott Wiener, who also wants to force single-family neighborhoods to accept high-density transit-oriented developments in their midst.
When President Trump proposes to reduce the red tape required by the National Environmental Policy Act, environmental groups accusing him of “trying to gut the law” and attempting to “weaken” environmental protection measures. But when Newsom and Wiener did exactly the same thing for transit projects, they are hailed as heroes.
Wiener called his bill a “big win in the fight against climate change.” That’s a great myth; too bad it is a lie. Almost every rail transit project I’ve ever seen did far more harm to the environment than any benefits it produced.
- The energy and greenhouse gas emissions required to build it were many tens of times greater than the annual savings projected from getting a few bus riders and auto drivers to ride transit — and those projections usually turned out to be overestimated anyway.
- If you care about land use, you can move far more people on buses and even automobiles in the space required to move a few thousand people per hour on light rail.
- The congestion caused by streetcars, light rail, and commuter trains operating in and crossing streets is far greater than the congestion relieved by getting a few cars off the road.
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Though hardly anyone but me ever reads them, all of these facts are clearly documented in the environmental reports written for transit projects. But thanks to Newsom and Wiener, we will no longer have to be confronted with these facts when states, cities, and transit agencies propose to blow a few more billion dollars on some new transit project.
“Everyone knows that transit is so morally superior to driving that we aren’t supposed to ask about how much it costs. ”
In the middle of this anti-transit-fest, I guess Antiplanner hasn’t yet asked the obvious question:
If Antiplanner wants road-pricing, this will force some car drivers to move to transit. Is that what he wants, or not?
Who exactly are these car drivers who will be “forced” to move to transit? We have NEVER seen ANY market surveys that identify exactly who these riders are, their incomes, ages, or where they go – why not? Why don’t transit agencies know EXACTLY who is using their service? The private sector identifies their target audience, age, income bracket, profession, and Transit only generalizes who they believe should ride. Why is that?
It’s obvious throughout the Pandemic, at least here in Portland, that transit advocates have believed that those who are considered “essential” workers were ALWAYS the ones targeted to be forced to ride transit, yet it doesn’t serve them, or their schedules, and it never has – which is why thy for the most part don’t ride transit – they choose to drive their own car instead.
Francis King-
Of course, tolls will discourage people from using highway to some extent. However, transportation demand is generally quite inelastic with respect to cost and quality of service is extremely important. If tolls result in better service they could easily result in more ridership. Looking for highway tolls to save mass transit is futile.
We lived in a fancy West-Coast community with mid-rise buildings walking distance to expensive grocery stores, mid-high end shopping and dining dropped just to side of single-family-home neighborhoods.
The entire area was outrageously expensive, but crime was nearly non-existent. Nearly…
We were very close to public transportation and often people would take the train to commit thefts and (rarely) assaults/robberies in our neighborhood.
In preliminary findings for a report to be released later this year, the ASCE calls the future of the transit sector “bleak,” with a current backlog of $176 billion in investments, considering vehicles, tracks, and equipment that are already past their useful lives.
And Bart is still planning a 10 billion dollar subway fiasco into San Jose, CA despite ridership being down 80%.