Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) says that a light-rail line that was supposed to cost $988 million will actually cost $1.88 billion. The first phase of the “orange” line to Irving, Texas, was supposed to be completed in 2011, but due to “unforeseen” increases in costs, DART will delay that by at least a year. Eventually, the line is supposed to reach DFW Airport, but that depends on whether DART can scrape up enough money to pay for it.
Click on map to view or download a larger version PDF (308KB).
DART blames those evil Indians and Chinese, who are not only taking our jobs and decorating our children’s toys with lead paint, they are consuming the steel and concrete we need by building highways. Don’t they know the age of the automobile is over and they should be building light rail instead? In any case, DART claims its experts could not have predicted this and so shouldn’t be blamed. Of course, that is exactly why transit agencies shouldn’t plan rail construction projects — they can’t predict the real costs and so almost always end up over budget.
Dallas, for example, built a line to Plano (the “red line”) that was originally supposed to cost $347 million. By the year 2000, two years before it opened, the estimated cost had increased to $517 million. I can’t find the final cost, but even if it was a little less than $517 million, it was a lot more than $347 million.
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Some say the only smart thing about the Dallas light-rail system is that they built the line through downtown under ground. Though this cost a lot of money, it kept the light-rail from adding to congestion and avoided the wham-bam tram accidents generated by the Houston light rail. Not content with having done anything right, DART is now studying a downtown streetcar system.
No doubt when DART completes the orange and green lines, it will claim they were completed on time and on budget. As near as I can tell, every light-rail line in the country has been built on time and on budget, if not under budget — at least, according to the transit agencies that built them.
According to Portland’s TriMet, for example, the eastside light-rail line was built “on time and under budget,”, while the westside light-rail line was “on time and on budget.” More objective observers say the eastside line went 55 percent over its projected cost while the westside line cost a mere 72 percent more than its projected cost.
Is there anything that transit agencies and rail advocates say about light rail that isn’t a lie? They call it high-capacity transit and it isn’t. They claim they build them on budget and they don’t. They claim rail reduces congestion, and it increases it. They claim light rail catalyzes economic development, when all it does is catalyze more subsidies to development.
Light rail is really just one big, fat lie.
According to Portland’s TriMet, for example, the eastside light-rail line was built “on time and under budget,â€Â, while the westside light-rail line was “on time and on budget.†More objective observers say the eastside line went 55 percent over its projected cost while the westside line cost a mere 72 percent more than its projected cost.
JK:
Trimet lies.
See:
http://www.DebunkingPortland.com/Transit/WestOnTimeOnBudget.htm
http://www.DebunkingPortland.com/Transit/EastOnTimeOnBudget.htm
Thanks
JK
Randal, your concerns about being over budget are justified to a certain degree, but I fail to see how light rail systems, or at least DART, is not high-capacity, increases congestion, or does not aid economic development.
I grew up in Dallas and started riding the rails almost as soon as they opened. When they first opened a lot of the rail cars were not very well occupied, but after a couple of years existence and the construction of more stations near existing housing and commercial corridors, the trains eventually filled. The last few times I’ve been home the trains have been packed solid with every seat taken and several people standing, especially during rush hour. The only time you can get on them when they’re not at least half full seems to be after 8:00 PM and on weekends (when they actually have reduced schedules). All of these trains, which probably hold close to 100/car (and 2-4 cars per train during rush hour), running every five to ten minutes in both directions, are full during 6:00 AM-10:00 AM and the 3:00 PM-7:00 PM rush hours. If they were not on a train, I doubt they would be on public transit at all because buses cover ground much slower than rail (at least with the direct routes to downtown that DART built). That would mean they’d be in cars, contributing to congestion. I’m sure there are a few projects that have been given tax breaks along the rail lines, but there’s been a lot more, proportionally, built or revitalized along them because it makes good business sense once the trains were being filled.
An another note, something you rarely mention is transit systems’ energy efficiency and significantly lower pollution rates than auto traffic. Now I can understand the argument about whether the energy efficiency is worth the cost. However, as oil production comes closer to peaking, it will be. Also, the lower pollution levels of mostly-electric powered light rail does wonders. Even for those who don’t buy global warming, who wants more gray skies on pleasant summer afternoons? Keeping several thousands of people out of cars during rush hours makes the sky at least a touch bluer than it would be otherwise, not to mention the added benefits for residents health (I’m asthmatic).
If you look at MPLStown’s Hiawatha line, I’ll bet you’ll find something similar. I haven’t looked into it much in terms of $$$ and timing but I suspect there is a good amount of padding going on. They’ve burned themselves in the past and so they’ve gone for good PR and found easier numbers to meet (or at least try). Look at the ridership projections. In the late 1990s boosters were claiming the Hiawatha line would have the ridership numbers it’s experiencing today. Then suddenly around 1999 they dropped the projections to less than 20k / day. Why the huge drop? They never explained why it was. My two-bits is they realized the numbers weren’t going to make much of a difference in securing the project and that if they had a lower number to start with it would be easier to meet.
And how do they meet these numbers? As far as I know Metro Transit in MPLS claims they send someone on 1/4 of their trains (not cars; trains) and count heads. Not very accurate or verifiable is it? RTD in Denver has cars that count riders. But again it’s only something like 1 in 4 cars. And they’ve openly stated they’ve been moving those cars around to try to get counts.
I realize that a lot of short term construction projects don’t do this but it baffles me as to why projects that are going to be going on for 5, 10, 20 years aren’t investing in options to mitigate risks in changes, especially upward ones, in construction materials.
The last few times I’ve been home the trains have been packed solid with every seat taken and several people standing, especially during rush hour. The only time you can get on them when they’re not at least half full seems to be after 8:00 PM and on weekends
Denver too.
DS
Antiplanner,
This story has been front page news in Dallas for the past week. Unfortunately here in Houston, our own paper of note, The Houston Chronicle, is rabidly pro-rail and hasn’t kept a complete lid on the story, thereby keeping the populace down here in ignorant bliss of the political firestorm which has erupted in our rival city up I-45. I found out about the Dallas Orange Line story through a fellow transportation nerd.
Texas State Representative Linda Harper-Brown has sent an official letter to DART President Gary Thomas, saying that there has been a complete loss of confidence in the agency and is calling for a State audit of DART. As usual, DART is trying to massage the story with press releases – give us more money, we can do this, don’t worry, it will set back plans some years but we can get the job done, blah blah blah. Of course the agency isn’t saying that they should start cancelling lines altogether, but they haven’t ruled it out either. That would interfere with the all important, but useless transit agency empire building.
Even more disastrous are the projected ridership numbers, which can be found in a November 2005 study:
http://tinyurl.com/3aguku
There are supposed to be 7 stations on this line. According to the study (see pages 28 and 31 of the study), 5 of the stations are supposed to draw less than 1,000 passengers. Spending $1.8 – $1.9 billion to build a rail line which has 5 of 7 stations projecting to have 1,000 or fewer passengers is absolutely bananas!
Wait, I should reconsider that statement. It really does take a lot of planning to spend that kind of money on something that will prove to be so worthless.
TexanOkie:
When considering the environmental benefits of electric rail, remember where the electricity comes from:
http://www.texasep.org/html/nrg/nrg_5nr2.html
Coal is the primary electricity generating source in Texas and the U.S. While there are obvious environmental benefits to urban areas from sustituting remote power generation for personal auto use, just remember the detriment is borne in the communities where coal is mined.
I do not wish to minimize the your health concerns. I would like to throw out for consideration Dallas might be better served by directing the billions that have, and will be, spent on light rail toward traffic mitigation, energy conservation, and pollution control.
Almost all over budget public works programs are using the concrete-steel-fuel argument as the reason they are over budget. Has anyone taken a hard look at those claims or is this another example of “consensus” without factual basis? We are hearing the same excuses for our over budget school construction projects so I would appreciate any help. Thanks.
Randal, this time your rail hatred has gotten completely irrational.
If you bothered to look, HIGHWAY projects have been suffering the same sorts of cost overruns due to skyrocketing materials costs caused by the building boom in China, rising energy, and other factors. One key example you won’t like: the road cost overruns documented by that professor in Charlotte that put the cost increases on the Lynx LRT line into badly-needed perspective. Charlotte’s anti-railers were hopping mad at that comparison, but that academic was correct.
Sheesh!
I don’t like that material cost argument either. All projects are different but here is the likely scenario:
Project X costs a projected $100,000,000
Project X has $10,000,000 worth of steel, concrete and transportation costs, the rest is labor, profits, design, etc.
Costs of material doubles to $20,000,000
Price of project goes to $180,000,000 “because of material cost inflation”
WSDOT Structural Steel bid price 1990-2007.
Contruction, building and material cost indices
Last year:
DS
** http://www.concretemonthly.com/monthly/art.php?2920
One person commented that the transit lines are full (especially during rush hour), a scene that you also find in Portland with MAX (although the rest of the day MAX is typically pretty empty). When cities were smart and stuck with buses, when one bus on a line got full they simply put another one behind it. They could load a line with as many buses as they needed and drop off the extras as passenger demand decreased. With trains, due to schedules and timing, you are stuck with a VERY limited number of trains that can be on one line at a time; thus the trains (during rush hours) are crowded and are empty the rest of the time. For the pollution aspect, not only does the power to operate the trains cause it’s fair share of pollution, but many locals (Salem for example) have converted the buses to run on natural gas which is much less polluting. However, officials are both enamored with ‘trains’ and see a huge influx of dollars when trains are built; unfortunately after the trains get built it takes a huge influx of tax dollars to keep the dang things moving. If the passengers had to foot the true cost of it, the taxpayers would go back to demanding roads, which move both people AND goods and services – something that light rail will NEVER do.
Contrary to what some have claimed in the responses to this article, the DART Orange Line is actually scheduled to have 15 stations opened by 2013. 6 of those stations are located around the Las Colinas Business District, which has as much office space as the whole of Downtown Dallas, and the end of the line is scheduled to be Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. If 5 stations are supposed to bring less than 1000 riders/day, I think they’ll more than make up for it heading TO the Airport by going THROUGH the second-largest business district in the DFW Metroplex.
I stand corrected TexanOkie, as I was looking at the Corridor Analysis of the Irving Stations and not the entire route.
Now then, having admitted I looked at the wrong document (I did eventually find the correct one), how about this for an idea: How about simply building a dedicated two lane road, one lane in each direction, and running buses along the corridor. At $20 million per mile, a two lane road 14 miles long would cost $560 million. Take the rest of the $1.3 billion, spend some capital to create a bus depot and invest the rest into Treasury bonds. DART could probably reap some $60 million per year to operate about 200 buses. You could run 1 bus per mile in each direction and still have quite a few left over to serve the entire DART service area. If the route proved to be popular, you simply add more buses.
Denver’s LRT trains are packed? Balderdash. The only times they are full are going to downtown in the morning and leaving downtown in late afternoon. And at that a good amount of the actual capacity goes unused during those times. It makes one wonder if they only reason people ride is to avoid paying for parking downtown.
Ah. That explains my having to stand on the weekend going into Union Station, all those empty seats.
Someone obviously doesn’t use the train to go to, say, Mammoth games or when there’s a game or event downtown.
DS