“We need to rethink rail,” says Fred Jandt, the editor of Mass Transit magazine. After first defending his credentials as a rail and transit advocate, he admits, “Rail is expensive.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it is “prohibitively” expensive, he says, “but it may be something we need to rethink.”
This need-to-rethink was inspired by Joel Kotkin’s recent article in Forbes. Though Jandt is put off by Kotkin’s use of the word “boondoggle,” he admits that Kotkin’s “piece was more carefully considered with numbers to back up the writer’s arguments.” (Kotkin’s numbers come from Antiplanner allies Tom Rubin and, no doubt, Wendell Cox.)
It is hard to tell from Jandt’s rambling blog post just how he thinks rail can be rethought, but he suggests that “we need something in-between what we have for rail and what we have for buses” and points out that “most of the movement has been made on the bus side. Buses have moved more toward trains than the other way around.” In other words, buses are flexible: they can act like buses, but they can also act like railcars (i.e, bus-rapid transit). Railcars can act like railcars, but they can’t act like buses.
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For example, Houston businessman and part-time politician Bill King recently looked at a planned light-rail route and found it included 20 “short-radius turns” that are close to 90 degrees. To make such turns, he says, trains will have to slow to a crawl and will make “a heck of a racket as the steel wheels and rail grind against each other.” Why is it necessary to build a rail line along a route where buses would work much better? The answer seems to be that Houston Metro conned voters into supporting rail, and since it has the money, it will build it whether it is a good idea or not. Maybe Houston Metro should do some rethinking as well.
Joel Kotkin’s article says this:
“None of this is to argue that we should not invest in transit. It even makes sense if the subsidy required for each transit trip is far higher than for a motorist on the streets or highways. Transit should be considered a public good, particularly for those without access to a car–notably young people, the disabled, the poor and the elderly. Policy should focus on how we invest, at what cost and, ultimately, for whose benefit.”
Since Antiplanner put forwards the article as the basis for his argument, does he agreed with that opinion?
The article also shows a picture of a light rail unit, which are often heavier than a heavy rail system. There are many alternatives – including rail units which aren’t built like that. The rail units in mind would be single light-weight driverless units. They can be used to create new transit lines inexpensively. If more capacity is required, more vehicles can be added – there are no driver salaries to pay – with the benefit of more frequent services. Because of the light weight the tracks are cheaper. We accept that if access to utilities is required the rails can be removed – hence we don’t have to move utilities out of the way during installation. So, if you don’t need to have a mega-project, rail systems can be inexpensive.
As to why Bill King is worried about light rail past schools – I don’t know. Light rail has guards on the wheels, making collision with pedestrians less of an issue.
Like I always say, stop subsidizing roads and start tolling them then all kinds of mass transit suddenly becomes cost effective and even profitable(ergo, do-able in the private sector).
Still, I doubt that rail would ever be cost effective or competitive even if we tolled all the major roadways. There is just too much concrete and rubber wheel infrastructure for rail to compete against. And this same concrete and rubber wheel infrastructure already goes to every address in America.
It would be nice if the “free marketeer” road and bus boosters would keep in mind who their real inspirations are in promoting government owned and controlled roads, automobile dependence and the emptying of cities and towns in favor of sprawl and large lot development. Communists like Le Corbusier and Karl Marx.
“The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work … enough for all.”
— Le Corbusier, The Radiant City (1967)
“6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the State.
“9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.”
— Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto
When the US had a true free market in land development and transportation prior to government involvement in zoning and road subsidies in the 1920’s, and oil was priced at market levels instead of unnaturally subsidized via overseas foreign war adventures, development was concentrated naturally in walkable cities and towns centered around privately owned, constructed, operated, and maintained rail lines.
Bus Rapid Transit systems only really works where there is an employment concentration that would also be sufficient for rail – places like Pittsburgh or Ottawa.
Mass Transit in all forms fails abysmally for suburb to suburb trips because the concentrations of housing and employment are too atomized and spread out to possibly be effective within people’s normal tolerance for walking to a final destination. The problem here is the location of places of employment where they can only be accessed by cars, meaning employment opportunity is restricted to people who own at least one, and frequently a minimum of two cars. This can now be seen for the failed business model that it is due to the requirements for heavily subsidized bus or rail transit lines or jitneys to pass by these locations to bring low income workers to their jobs as janitorial and clerical staff, low/no skill line production, etc. Of course without this transit dependent staff, the businesses could not function in their suburban location.
Well said Andrew!
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