Search Results for: rail projects

Slow & Boring vs. Fast & Wasteful

By | | Transportation
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Matthew Yglesias thinks that Amtrak’s latest “vision” is “slow and boring” and that Amtrak instead should spend money on high-speed trains in the Boston-Washington corridor. But Yglesias’ vision is no better; it might be faster, but it also means faster spending of money on worthless projects.

Amtrak’s 2021 “vision” for expanding its rail service. Click image for a larger view.

The first thing to note is that Amtrak’s latest plan is not so much a vision as it is a smorgasbord of pork barrel. Amtrak told the states, “We have this free federal money to spend; if you want some of it, draw some lines on a map where there are rail lines and maybe we’ll spend it there.” What Yglesias calls a vision is a taxpayers’ nightmare of idiotic rail projects. Continue reading →

The Automobile Won

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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Last month, anti-automobile activists led by the Congress for the New Urbanism announced the formation of a national Freeway Fighters Network. The network opposes new freeways and freeway expansions and wants to shift freeway money to other forms of transportation. Among other things, they object to new freeway capacity because it induces more highway travel.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

I have a message for these anti-auto activists: The war on the automobile is over. The automobile won. More accurately, auto drivers and users won. It is time for those engaged in this war to stop wasting their time, and everyone else’s, and start doing something productive. People concerned about the impacts of the automobile should give up trying to reduce driving, which has never worked, and instead encourage new automobiles and highways that are safer, cleaner, and more energy efficient.

Continue reading →

Old Technologies for New Starts

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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As part of the president’s proposed 2023 budget, the Federal Transit Administration plans to give out an unprecedented $4.45 billion on new transit capital projects, sometimes called New Starts and Small Starts. For comparison, in 2022 it gave away less than $2.5 billion. The difference, of course, is due to passage of the infrastructure law, which massively increased federal subsidies to transit.

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

This increase in spending and the projects that the FTA proposes to fund demonstrate that neither the transit industry nor the legislators funding it are responding to changes resulting from the recent pandemic. Transit was already declining before the pandemic, and the pandemic led to a much larger decline, much of which is likely to be permanent. Transit’s response to the decentralization of downtowns and cities should be to rely on smaller vehicles. Yet the New Starts proposals all presume that downtown job numbers and transit ridership will rapidly grow and thus more spending and larger vehicles are needed to accommodate that growth. Continue reading →

A Great Opportunity to Spend Your Money

By | | Transportation
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The latest business plan for the California high-speed rail boondoggle estimates costs will be about $5 billion more than the last one, which were already 150 percent higher than the estimates in effect when voters approved the project in 2008. As noted in an AP news report, the latest estimates indicate that “it could take $105 billion to finish the route.”

Click image to download the plan.

Note the word “could.” The state report is actually estimating the cost will be $86.7 billion to $88.2 billion, but admits it could go as high as $105 billion. The previous (2020) plan projected the final cost would be $82.4 billion to $83.6 billion, with an upper limit of $99.9 billion. So the high-speed rail authority has basically added about $5 billion to all of the estimates. Continue reading →

Why U.S. Infrastructure Is So Expensive

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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Now that Congress has passed an infrastructure bill, major media outlets are beginning to ask questions about how the money will be spent. Using the Honolulu rail project as an example, the New York Times wants to know why so many infrastructure projects suffer from such large cost overruns. Bloomberg asks similar questions using Boston’s Green Line extension as an example.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

The Eno Transportation Foundation and Manhattan Institute wonder why projects cost more than in other countries even before the cost overruns. These are all good questions that should have been asked before the bill was passed. Continue reading →

Cost Overruns and Ridership Shortfalls

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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Rail transit projects built in the United States typically suffer severe cost overruns and end up carrying far fewer riders than originally projected. The latest studies published by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) indicate that the projections made for some recent projects are better than those made in the past. However, this is partly because the FTA has changed its definition of “cost overrun” and partly because the FTA has not yet looked at some projects that we know have huge overruns, such as the Honolulu rail project.

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

The Department of Transportation first looked at this issue in a 1990 report by Don Pickrell, who looked at four heavy rail, four light rail, and two automated guideway (“people mover”) projects in nine cities. On average, Pickrell found, building these projects ended up costing 62 percent more than projected, operating them cost 130 percent more than projected, and ridership was 47 percent less than projected. Continue reading →

Reinventing Transit for a Post-COVID World

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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As society rebuilds after the pandemic, the transit industry at a crossroads. It could totally reinvent itself to truly serve the residents of modern cities. Alternatively, it could come up with new reasons for ever larger subsidies despite continuing to be ineffective and wasteful. Since President Biden and Democrats in Congress seem eager to give it subsidies with few to no questions asked, it is likely to choose the latter course.

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

Transit ridership has declined steadily since 2014, losing 7.7 percent nationally between 2014 and 2019. During that time, transit ridership declined in about 85 percent of the nation’s major urban areas. On a larger scale, it has been declining for the last century, with per capita ridership falling from nearly 290 trips per urban resident in 1920 to just 37 in 2019. As of April, 2021, ridership was 60 percent lower than it had been before the pandemic, and it isn’t clear that ridership will ever recover to 2019’s already low levels. Continue reading →

Bringing the FRA into the Fantasy World

By | | Transportation
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“As in many other arenas, California has taken the lead nationally to advance high-speed rail, starting an economically transformative project in the Central Valley and assuming the challenges that come with that leadership.” That sounds like something someone might have made in 2009 when excitement was building over California’s plan to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. There’s no way anyone would talk like that today given what we know about 100 percent cost overruns, more than a decade of delays, and the inability of California to raise the money to finish more than a fraction of the project.

Yet that statement was made just three months ago by Amit Bose, who President Biden has nominated to lead the Federal Railroad Administration and serve as the administration’s cheerleader for high-speed rail and other passenger rail projects.

Bose’s career clearly demonstrates a faith in big-government spending on transportation projects of little value to travelers or shippers. He worked for New Jersey Transit early in his career, and during the Obama administration he worked closely with Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood, who firmly believed that 8-mile-per-hour streetcars were better than buses despite the buses’ higher speeds, greater capacities, and lower costs. While at DOT, Bose arranged a $2.5 billion federal “loan” to Amtrak to buy new Acela trains despite knowing that Amtrak is unlikely to ever have the funds to repay such a loan (unless they come from other federal grants). Continue reading →

Expensive and Obsolete

By | | Transportation
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“Like electric typewriters, rotary telephones, and Conestoga wagons, high-speed trains are an obsolete technology,” argues an op-ed on Real Clear Policy. The op-ed shows that the Obama administration wasted at least $11.5 billion on ten high-speed rail projects that Wind blows on cialis 5 mg http://opacc.cv/opacc/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/documentos_provas_Exame%20-%20Contabilista%20-%20Contabilidade%20Aprofundada.pdf the rotor blades on the turbine, letting it turn. Cyaniopsia has been spotted in a fraction of a cost you would normally pay in US. sildenafil pill This particular pill should not be practiced by the children as these maybe dangerous if they consume them accidentally. opacc.cv commander levitra Tip #3: Review and Feedbacks If there are no vehicles cheapest online viagra or pedestrians while taking a right turn. produced almost no benefits. “The United States should not waste any more money on such projects,” the op-ed concludes.

Antiplanner readers have seen these arguments before, but it is nice to see that they will reach a wider audience.

Dueling Databases

By | | Transportation
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Outside of New York City, rail transit construction costs in the United States aren’t any higher than the rest of the world, according to a preliminary report from the Eno Transportation Foundation. The report is based on a database of 171 projects in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

In a stark example of high-cost, low-capacity transit, Sound Transit spent well over $500 million per mile building an underground light-rail line from downtown Seattle to the University of Washington. Photo by Joe Goldberg.

Not so fast, says the Transit Costs Project (a part of New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management). This program has compiled a much larger database of 574 projects, and it shows that U.S. costs are twice almost everywhere else in the world. Continue reading →