Dueling Databases

Outside of New York City, rail transit construction costs in the United States aren’t any higher than the rest of the world, according to a preliminary report from the Eno Transportation Foundation. The report is based on a database of 171 projects in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

In a stark example of high-cost, low-capacity transit, Sound Transit spent well over $500 million per mile building an underground light-rail line from downtown Seattle to the University of Washington. Photo by Joe Goldberg.

Not so fast, says the Transit Costs Project (a part of New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management). This program has compiled a much larger database of 574 projects, and it shows that U.S. costs are twice almost everywhere else in the world.

Three years ago, the New York Times asked why rail transit construction costs in the United States were so much higher than the rest of the world. Others have wondered the same thing. These two projects are attempting to answer the question in detail.

Eno’s database is not only smaller than Marron’s, it includes U.S. projects constructed in the 1990s and even a couple begun in the 1980s. This is a problem because costs have risen far faster than inflation over the decades: light-rail projects averaged about $30 million per mile in the 1980s, rising to $50 million per mile in the 1990s, $100 million per mile in the 2000s, $200 million per mile in the 2010s, and $240 million per mile in 2020. Heavy rail have similarly grown.

Data from older projects biases the averages to well below today’s costs. Eno’s average cost of U.S. projects, including those in New York, is $148 million per mile. The Transit Costs Project database doesn’t include any U.S. projects completed before 2016, and its average cost is $872 million per mile not counting New York and $1.6 billion per mile when New York is included.

According to Eno, tunneling costs in the United States are greater than in the rest of the world, but the cost of surface projects are not. Since the average cost of light-rail projects now being considered or funded by the Federal Transit Administration is more than twice Eno’s average, this is no longer true if it ever was true.

Eno also observed that “light rail is not necessarily cheaper than heavy rail.” Since heavy rail has much higher capacities than light rail, the implication was that cities contemplating light rail might as well build heavy rail. Yet it turns out this isn’t true either: light-rail projects currently being planned or under construction cost an average of about $240 million per mile, while heavy-rail projects are around $1 billion a mile outside of New York City and much more in New York. Eno’s own data show average heavy-rail costs in the U.S., excluding New York City, are three times average light-rail costs.
The value of natural lowest prices viagra find for source anti-inflammatories cannot be overstated. She qualified as a herbalist 30 years best price levitra ago and is a highly experienced medical professional. Effects on general health : It acts as balya and strengthens the cialis canada cheap body. In addition, there are minerals and nutrients that one must ingest in some form to maintain healthy hair are vitamin A, all B vitamins – particularly vitamins B-6 and B-12, folic acid, biotin, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin B3 and glutathione safeguards your body from free radicals and it blocks many of the effects of PAF (platelet aggregation, blood clotting) that have been generic cialis price pdxcommercial.com related.
Eno may be referring to a few light-rail projects, such as those in Seattle, that are almost entirely grade separated, driving up their costs to near heavy-rail prices. The Antiplanner describes these as high-cost, low-capacity transit. However, even if these were built to heavy-rail standards, it is doubtful whether ridership would support the higher capacities.

Both Eno’s and the Transit Cost Project’s numbers agree that New York City costs are much higher than in the rest of the United States and the world. In the Transit Costs database, five projects from New York City averaged $3.6 billion per mile, while eight projects in the rest of the country averaged only $872 million per mile. At $1 billion per mile, U.K. project costs were higher because the database only included London subway projects, thus making them more comparable to New York City projects than to projects in other parts of the country. In both London and New York, the reason for the high costs is tunneling.

Unfortunately, the Transit Costs database distinguishes between tunnels and above ground but not between light and heavy rail. It reports costs of around a billion per mile in a few places such as Singapore, but such projects tend to be 100 percent underground. When comparing subway costs elsewhere with today’s subway or heavy-rail costs in the United States and light rail elsewhere with today’s light-rail costs in the United States, U.S. costs are at least double anywhere else in the world.

Rail advocates will no doubt put a positive spin on either a conclusion that U.S. costs are higher or that they are not. If rail in the U.S. costs much more than elsewhere, they will blame the high costs on local factors and pretend those additional costs don’t count. If rail costs elsewhere are as much as in the U.S., they will argue that, since other countries are spending that much, we should too. Neither argument make sense.

The reality is that U.S. transit agencies are spending more on rail construction because they can: generous federal grants and voters bamboozled by millions of dollars worth of campaign ads allow many agencies to spend almost anything they want on rail, so they don’t bother to do anything that would save money or to even consider whether rail makes sense. But, compared with buses, rail didn’t even make sense at the lower costs of the 1980s and 1990s.

Eno claims that “Many rail projects in the United States are relatively inexpensive.” By this, Eno means relative to New York City subway costs, which are completely insane. The real comparison should be with bus projects that have similar capacities as rail. As the Antiplanner has documented, buses can easily move more people than any light rail using the same amount of land. They can also move as many people as many heavy-rail lines, though they may require more land (which is abundant in the United States). Either way, buses cost far less than rail.

Rail transit only makes sense if it can cost-effectively move more people than buses, and in the United States such cases are rare to non-existent in corridors that don’t already have rail. Most countries build new rail mainly for political reasons including the profits made by contractors, some of which get turned into campaign contributions.

Most rail transit projects in both the United States and the rest of the world are a waste of money. The oft-used justification for rail — that it gives people an alternative to congestion — confers special privileges at high cost on the small percentage of travelers who use the rail lines. It would be far better to put some of the rail money into congestion relief for everyone by improving road networks and capacities, which could then allow faster bus service as well as faster auto driving.