Is there any transit construction project that is so expensive that a transit agency will say, “Let’s not do this”? The Antiplanner has argued that the answer is “no”; instead, the only question agencies ask is, “Where are we going to get the money to do this?” Evidence for this view has recently come to light in San Francisco and Baltimore.
Architect’s model of the planned San Francisco transit center. Note the bottom level has commuter trains on the outer tracks and high-speed trains on the center tracks even though the prospects of high-speed rail ever reaching San Francisco are dimming every day.
Last January, I observed that the price of a 1.3-mile commuter-rail extension that San Francisco was planning had increased from $5.0 billion to $6.7 billion, or more than $5 billion a mile. I pointed out that there were several viable alternatives to spending what would be a record amount of money per mile on a transit project, including replacing the trains with buses or terminating the trains at a different location just seven minutes away. Now comes the news that the cost of the project has increased again to $8.25 billion, or more than $6.3 billion a mile.
The terminal and $8.25 billion tunnel to it are supposed to host both commuter trains and California’s high-speed trains. But those trains won’t be going at high speeds in the tunnel as sharp corners will prohibit any speeds much above bus speeds on the surface. Yet, to satisfy someone’s ego, San Francisco believes it has to have the trains reach the planned station.
At the other end of the country, rail contractors are salivating at the prospect of building a new light-rail route in Baltimore called the Red Line. Never mind that transit ridership declined after construction of existing light-rail lines. Ridership isn’t the goal; spending money is.
Transit advocates are undaunted by the increase in the cost of Maryland’s Purple Line, outside of Washington DC, from $2 billion to more than $9 billion. In fact, that is seen as a plus. In a beautiful demonstration of transit entitlement, a recent editorial in the Baltimore Sun observes that, after wasting so much money in southern Maryland, Baltimore deserves to have its own wasteful project.
“The two projects don’t have to cost the same,” the newspaper modestly observes. But it directs the state to reject any low-cost alternatives to rail, such as bus-rapid transit. “It’s simply wrong to shortchange” Baltimore by deciding to spend less on a project that could work better than rail.
One of the huge advantages of buses over rail is that, if a bus breaks down, other buses can drive around it, but if a train breaks down, the entire rail line is disrupted. This was demonstrated last week by Honolulu’s overpriced rail line. When one train broke down, the city had to provide a bus for passengers to get by the affected station.
Don’t feel bad for the riders, however. Even though the breakdown took place during rush hour, there was no one on the train that broke down and probably not very many people on the trains halted due to the breakdown. Despite low ridership since the first stage of the rail project was completed, the city is continuing to spend billions to complete a project that was never needed in the first place.
“several viable alternatives to spending what would be a record amount of money per mile on a transit project”
For the record, it’s now at 8.2 billion.
Yes for 8.2 Billion dollars…. You could buy 15,000 Rolls Royce’s and ferry the unwashed masses thru San Francisco in Style….Or for Half the money, A fleet of Lincoln Aviator Plug in Hybrids, 50,000 fleet; and other half money, enough gas for it’s entire life expectancy For Billions and billions miles of driving, there’s a plug in Hybrid after all.
https://www.lincoln.com/hybrid-electric-vehicles/
Both of these boondoggles were rubber stamped by some FTA employee making 6-figures who also could have said, “Let’s not do this”, but didn’t.
Who’s culpable, the transit agency that asks or the fed agency that gives?
Also in news.
San Francisco has totally extirpated ENTIRE homeless population. Gotten rid of the tent cities, taken trash out.
Steam cleaned streets and sidewalks.
All to make city clean for foreign dignitaries, namely Chinese president Winnie the Pooh for his visit with Biden. Festered by Shit in transit stations clogging up escalators. Needle strewn sidewalks, feces laden bags in the street corners, hookers and men literally shooting up drugs in public in most tourist friendly areas of town….
Cleaning up 4 years of depravity only Took a matter of days, This proves they could have always fixed the issue or at least help fix it…they just DIDN’T WANT to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcSavryHo2A&lc=
We’ve seen that movie …
“Tower City Center is a large mixed-use facility in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio, on its Public Square. The facility is composed of a number of interconnected office buildings, including Terminal Tower, the Skylight Park mixed-use shopping center, Jack Cleveland Casino, Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, Chase Financial Plaza, and Tower City station, the main hub of Cleveland’s four RTA Rapid Transit lines.
…
“The building complex was originally commissioned by the Van Sweringen brothers, prominent local railroad moguls and real estate developers. The center of the complex was Cleveland Union Terminal (CUT), a terminal for all trains coming into Cleveland via the various railroad lines in a concept similar to Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_City_Center
The complete sad history at the link.
We lived in a downtown Cleveland apartment for two years and in that time took the “Rapid Transit” to the airport once. It required a 10 block hike (or taxi ride) to the downtown terminal and a long inside walk with our bags to the “rapid”. We now live in a suburb and Uber to the airport.
If rail is so important to developers, as some urbanists claim, why did Salesforce never push to build it’s tower next to the existing downtown commuter station? Or at least on an existing trolley line?
The problem with rail is just like Hyperloop, ALL the technology is in the infrastructure. thats a huge problem when service, new technology emerges or worse if the government lets the infrastructure rot.
Since the technology is in the infrastructure and the infrastructure has an expected lifespan…Its impossible to routinely upgrade.
Buses, the technology is in the vehicle….
Henry Porter,
The real culprit is not the FTA but Congress, which has made it clear that it doesn’t want the FTA to filter out projects based on their cost or cost-effectiveness. As long as the projects funded reach a wide range of states, especially those that are represented by powerful Democrats, Congress considers cost effectiveness to be irrelevant.
As revealed in a study co-authored by the Antiplanner in 2015, “having a Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has given states ‘bonuses’ in transit funding of $120 million to $160 million per year.” Not a single member of the House of Representatives whose district received transit capital grants in the last five years has complained that those grants were not cost-effective, and very few before that.
The FTA is essentially required to fund these projects even if they don’t agree with them. One example was the DC Silver Line, which was opposed by WMATA and the FTA but was funded anyway at the demand of Virginia’s congressional delegation.
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The FTA is essentially required to fund these projects even if they don’t agree with them. One example was the DC Silver Line, which was opposed by WMATA and the FTA but was funded anyway at the demand of Virginia’s congressional delegation.
” ~ anti-planner