New Boondoggles

Back in the early 1980s, San Diego spent an average of $7 million per mile–about $17 million in today’s dollars–building two light-rail lines. In the mid-1980s, Portland spent $15 million a mile–about $28 million in today’s dollars on the eastside light-rail line.

The Antiplanner is convinced that neither of these expenditures was worthwhile. Yet their cost is but a pittance compared to what transit agencies are spending today. For example, the 2013 New Starts projects include 26 different commuter rail, light-rail, and heavy-rail plans.

Of the seventeen light-rail plans, not a single one is expected to cost less than $50 million per mile, and only one is less than $60 million. The average cost of all seventeen is $138 million per mile. Even taking out three very expensive projects–mostly underground–that cost an average of $727 million per mile, the remaining light-rail plans cost $110 per mile.

Three heavy-rail projects cost an average of $312 million per mile each, and that doesn’t count the Second Avenue Subway, which is costing $2.1 billion per mile. Commuter-rail projects are similarly tilted by the Long Island Railroad East Side project, which is also $2.1 million per mile. Not counting that one, the other three are $39 million per mile. Two bus-rapid transit projects are costing more than $60 million per mile, while several others are in the range of $3 million to $13 million per mile.
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How much transportation will we get for all this money? Not much, really. Freeway lanes cost an average of less than $5 million per mile, and–according to the 2008 Highway Statistics, the most recent data available–the average mile of freeway line in the nation’s fifty largest urban areas moves more than 25,000 passenger miles per day.

By comparison, according to the 2011 National Transit Database (or download my summary), the average light-rail line (counting both tracks) moves only about a third that much. Heavy-rail lines (again, counting tracks in both directions) in New York City and New Jersey move a bit more than two freeway lanes, while Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington heavy-rail lines are about tied with two freeway lanes. No other heavy-rail line comes close to even one freeway lane.

Commuter-rail lines, including the all-day lines that the FTA calls “hybrid rail,” are even more pathetic. New York’s and New Jersey’s move about two-thirds of a freeway lane each day, while the others are, at most, one-sixth of a freeway lane.

High cost; low productivity. That’s what transit is all about today. Combine that with more revelations of very well-paid transit workers and it seems likely that support for more transit boondoggles will sooner or later weaken. Let’s hope it is sooner rather than later.