Transit $60 Million in the Hole? Build a Monorail!

In case anyone believes that transit advocates haven’t completely lost their grip on reality, take a look at Memphis. The new CEO of the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) has “discovered” a $60 million deficit in the agency’s budget that “prior leadership was unaware of.”

Memphis’s transit agency can’t afford to keep its streetcars running and has a $60 million deficit, so naturally people want to build a monorail or light-rail system. Photo by Charles Phillips.

How can you not be aware of a $60 million deficit? According to the new CEO, before she took the job, “MATA’s executive leaders did not have access to the company’s detailed financials.” Why not? How could anyone claim to be a leader and not demand access to financial information for the entity they were supposedly leading?

The deficit may be related to the fact that two of Memphis’ three streetcar lines have been out of service for a decade. In 2014, two streetcars caught fire and MATA suspended service until it could rehabilitate the system. In 2018, one line was restored to service but the other two remain inoperable. I bet it has something to do with a lack of money for this expensive and obsolete mode of transit.

The Memphis city council is making a completely rational response to this situation by contemplating a monorail for the city. No kidding — MATA can’t keep the streetcars running but people think the solution is to spend billions building a monorail. Memphis is known as the Music City and you can almost hear them play the Simpson’s monorail song.

“It would benefit our downtown,” claimed monorail advocate Lyle Lanley Patrick Price, because people “could hop on a monorail or light rail system and be anywhere in the city in just a few minutes and not have to worry if they have a car.” Dallas, Denver, Portland, and many other U.S. cities have spent billions building light rail yet not a single one of them has made it possible for people to take rail to “anywhere in the city in just a few minutes.” Before the pandemic, less than 3 percent of Memphis-area jobs were in downtown, so building rail to “benefit downtown” makes even less sense.

Monorail and light rail are ideas whose time passed long ago. Transit itself is pretty obsolete: only about half a percent of workers in the city of Memphis, and less than a third of a percent in the Memphis urban area, took transit to work in 2022. MATA should close its deficit by reducing service on lightly used lines, find a way to get tourists to pay for running its streetcars, and discourage people from fantasizing about fancy monorails and other rail transit that makes no sense in modern cities.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

13 Responses to Transit $60 Million in the Hole? Build a Monorail!

  1. Cyrus992 says:

    Interesting points.

    You admitted that arterials/collector routes are wasteful and inefficient too.

  2. LazyReader says:

    With a population of 621,000 and a downtown populace of 26,000 Memphis is Too small convey mass transit with dedicated infrastructure.

    “could hop on a monorail or light rail system and be anywhere in the city in just a few minutes and not have to worry if they have a car.”

    So plan to have a transit stop everywhere?
    Memphis streetcar sure is a beauty. But begs the question why it needs rail when better option is to get rid it’s steel wheels replace it with rubber tires and run it as a trolley bus setup.

  3. IC_deLight says:

    “How could anyone claim to be a leader and not demand access to financial information for the entity they were supposedly leading?”
    Easy – their view of their job is to promote transit not to run a business. It’s not an ordinary business – its revenues come from taxpayers. Costs, losses, meh. The taxpayers have to fund it.

  4. janehavisham says:

    ” It’s not an ordinary business – its revenues come from taxpayers. Costs, losses, meh. The taxpayers have to fund it.”

    So like roads?

    • Henry Porter says:

      “So like roads?”

      No, not like roads. Roads are funded mostly (not entirely but mostly) with taxes paid by road tax payers, i. e., road users. Transit, on the other hand, is funded mostly (almost entirely) with taxes paid by general taxpayers, i. e., not transit users.

  5. janehavisham says:

    Netherlands squandered all of their taxpayer money on bike lanes that almost no one uses:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8

    as a result, they have the worst roads in the European Union:

    https://x.com/NickLovesSpain/status/1793630527100215608

    • LazyReader says:

      Germany some best roads
      German fuel taxes: 2 dollars a gallon.
      I’m all for US states raising their fuel taxes a tad, when Gas prices go down due supply quantity; taxes should rise a bit to compensate for revenue.

  6. John Daly says:

    Did anyone in Memphis say a monorail sounded more like a Shelbyville kind of idea?

  7. LazyReader says:

    If benefits of urban population density are so great for transit; why does NYC’ MTA need a 15 dollar “congestion fee” to help alleviate financial woes of one worlds busiest subway systems. Why isn’t the congestion fee 2.90 like the subway fare?
    Automobile users are superior drivers to the economy, while politicians make excuse for fare evasion?

    The NYC congestion fee is a cash grab despite what others say.

    Politics
    1: take hundreds lane miles useful roads/streets out of commission to become pedestrian parks/layabout spaces.
    2: thus divert thousands drivers onto existing roads making worse traffic
    3: Now, charge drivers a fee for the traffic they “cause”
    4: All to Bailout subway with Multi-billion dollar deficit

  8. LazyReader says:

    … Its like Shooting people in the leg, then saying , My brother has a cane shop down the street.

  9. janehavisham says:

    “Germany some best roads”

    They are #10, behind Croatia and Spain and many others. Sort of like LazyReader’s English.

  10. janehavisham says:

    Proving once again that America is probably the safest country in the world per billion miles driven:

    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-25/traffic-deaths-surpass-homicides-in-los-angeles

    • LazyReader says:

      California gave million migrants driver licenses thou most cant read English or road signs in their own language.
      -Non-whites make up more HALF all traffic infractions

      – Cities decriminalized jaywalking in name bereft for People of Color who were “unfairly” targeted by police
      Everything is “Race”
      all laws in last 20 years have been aimed in name of so called “racial equity”.

      The result? More pedestrian and traffic fatalities.

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