The Cato Institute has published a critique of the city of Austin’s proposal to build a 9.5-mile light-rail line that would cost nearly $1.4 billion (which was briefly discussed here). “Austinites make more than six million person trips per day, of which the light-rail line would carry less than a third of a percent,” says the critique. “Yet constructing the light-rail line would consume 5 percent of the region’s transportation budget for the next 25 years, and operations and maintenance would increase the cost still further.”
The proposed line is only one of several that the city wants to build. Yet projected ridership for the first line is expected to be less than 20,000 people per day and no more than 2,500 people per hour at its peak. As an associated op ed in the Austin American Statesman points out, since ordinary buses can move far more people than that, there is no reason to build rail. (A similar op ed looks at a light-rail proposal for St. Petersburg, Florida; a more generic op ed is here.)
Not surprisingly, “Project Connect” (the planning agency representing the city and Capital Metro) claims that light rail has a higher capacity than buses. To reach this conclusion, it made the absurd assumption that an exclusive bus lane can support no more than one bus every three minutes, allowing buses to carry no more than about 1,300 people per hour. In fact, ordinary city streets, much less exclusive bus lanes, can support far more than one bus every three minutes. Planners are clearly biased in favor of the expensive rail option, as based on this one fact alone they concluded that rail was the appropriate solution for Austin.
Essentially, Austin wants to do the same thing Portland did, which is to spend nearly all of its transportation dollars on transit systems carrying less than 2.5 percent of the region’s travel. The result is that Portland has no money to maintain its streets, which are in terrible condition, and city officials now plan to charge all residents and businesses a controversial “street fee” to make up for its fiscal mismanagement.
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Beyond Austin, USA Today has an article about Cato’s paper on high-cost, low-capacity rail transit. The article quotes the American Public Transportation Association’s VP of Government Affairs, Art Guzzetti, saying that Cato’s study is “fatally flawed” because it doesn’t account for the time required for passengers to get on and off buses. Actually, that time was counted by the Portland State University study of bus stop capacities cited in the Cato report.
Guzzetti argues that “Buses are important, but it’s really the system that’s the main thing, and buses are part of the system, along with rail and along with roads. To look at it otherwise is to look at the trees and not the forest.” But this is nonsensical; Guzzetti has defined the “system” as including rail which therefore makes rail an essential part of the system. If he had defined the system as including dirigibles or horses and buggies or unicycles, would those things suddenly deserve billions of dollars in federal subsidies?
The Antiplanner isn’t the only one who thinks that rail transit is too expensive. Matthew Yglesias, with whom the Antiplanner has few areas of agreement, now says that rail construction costs “are insanely high.” Yglesias takes the American Public Transportation Association to task for have “a posture of boosterism” rather than trying to find ways to reduce construction costs.
Yglesias makes the interesting point that, “Because transportation networks are networks, each over-priced project we build is less valuable than it would be if we actually built more projects.” The question I would have for him is why rail is so important in the first place. In most American cities–New York being the obvious exception–buses can create better networks than rails for far less money. The only thing buses can’t do is create political pork and patronage, which is why rails are favored by so many politicians. But that’s no excuse for Yglesias falling for the myth that somehow transit isn’t really transit unless rails are involved.
Actually the claim that on-street bus lane capacity is limited to one bus every 3 minutes or 20 per hour is correct. The key to this is the limits set by traffic signal cycle times. Typically these are 90 seconds. When buses on ANY ONE ROUTE operate more than every 3 minutes, you start to get bunching with more than one bus often showing up lined up at a given signal. This results in unreliable service and uneven headways and slower operations than with less frequent services. This limit on reliable service has been proven time and again by the limit of 20 buses per hour on the Orange Line Busway in Los Angeles, as well as the on-street Metro Rapid network. In retrospect, a grade-separated busway would have been preferable to greatly expand capacity, but would have cost as much or more as an LRT line with grade crossings. In this sense, LRT has a capacity of up to 12,000 per hour with LA’s large cars and 3-car trains.
This limit applies to ONE bus route operating on a street. Of course you can have multiple routes on one street, such as the main bus spine through a downtown. In San Francisco (when they’re not having sickouts), S.F. Muni operates 180 buses per hour on Market Street. But this operation requires two lanes of transit in each direction, with several trolley bus and diesel bus routes operating in each lane. And the entire service operate at only 8 mph; this is another reason why the Muni Metro was put underground along Market Street 35 years ago, e.g., both higher speeds and higher capacity than surface transit could provide, buses or streetcars.
I don’t agree with all of the finer point in the critique but it’s a cogent response to the Austin LRT plans. As for “Project Connect,” my god’s honest feeling is that the consortium is shooting for the moon knowing full well they’re never going to get there. The politics in this city will never allow that vision to be actualized. For example, for one of the biggest most important transfer centers in the city of Austin, connecting existing bus service with new LRT, BRT and regional high capacity rail, is going to be in the heart of Terrytown, the most affluent neighborhood in the city?!?!?!?! Really?!?!?!? And the residents of this neighborhood are just going to roll over and let this… no, welcome this?!?!?! It aint going to happen. Project Connect is going to get Austin some BRT with signal prioritization and access to the new HOT lanes. We may get a portion of the LRT or Streetcar that is envisioned but it will likely be from downtown out to the airport, around airport blvd and maybe some rail service to UT if the regents declare support. All of these lines will go through neighborhoods that have limited powers of political persuasion.
Also, Austin is booming right now. House prices are skyrocketing and the rental market is cutthroat. The Travis County Tax Assessor has given people quite a scare this year. Enough so that this last Monday citizens got out their pitchforks and torches and went down to city hall. In TX there is no State income tax, but alas the beast must be fed. Property tax is where the beast eats down here. If project connect is thinking bond initiatives will make it past the voters to pay for some of this stuff they may be mistaken.
Yglesias makes the interesting point that, “Because transportation networks are networks, each over-priced project we build is less valuable than it would be if we actually built more projects.”
Let me see if I’ve got this right. Individual projects are ‘over-priced’ and ‘less valuable’, but if we build more overpriced projects these less valuable projects will somehow become more valuable? How does that work again?
It is the federal matching funds and grants that distort the decision process on these projects. These projects are only salable because the local governments only pays 10-25% of the capital costs. So it is hard to say that they are “not worth the cost” to the local governments with such huge subsidies. Plus they under cost the initial costs, operating costs, and don’t provide for maintenance.
Has any city ever paired a decision of spending the same funds on light rail vs. bus service? What would a city’s bus service look like if it took all the funding for a light rail?
What would a city’s bus service look like if it took all the funding for a light rail?
Depends on who gets to send the money. If you give it to the same groups promoting high cost rail, they will find a way to make buses high cost also. Like million dollar bus stops, paying way above normal cost for buses with a few cool extras, etc.
If given to people dedicated to using buses for people, you would have several bus routes giving coverage to many parts of the city (with the flexibility to change routes as conditions warrant) – for the same cost as one rail line going though one corridor.
So even if that one rail line can move as many or more people than buses through that one corridor, buses will help people in many parts of the city, not just those lucky or privileged enough to be along the rail line.
Exactly, John1000. Just as education should be funded with vouchers – the funding following the child – transit funding if deemed justifiable at all, should follow the rider in a deregulated market. Technology is available now to make this a reality.
There should not be public money subsidising the operations of the highest income district in the nation by subsidising the travel of its workforce. And if transit is a social good, then it justifies being done properly, not being captured by a whole lot of vested interests that ruin its cost effectiveness.
One of the things that never gets considered in the public debate surrounding transit, is that the public subsidy cost per person mile of travel on them mounts up and up forever at 30 cents, 50 cents, more than a dollar even. But roads once built are always there, and the public cost per person mile of travel steadily falls over time.
No-one today is saying the Romans should have spent their public funds on moving citizens around 2000 years ago instead of building those roads that are still there.
This reality is the reason why in the long run, the split (and magnitude) of transit/road spending in a city will determine congestion delays. And the correlation is against transit spending, not “for” it.