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Brightline’s Orlando Route Claims First Victim

By | | Transportation
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The good news is that it took a month before a Brightline train on its new Orlando route killed a pedestrian. The bad news is that it did so in the same circumstances as previous fatalities south of West Palm Beach: a busy railroad crossing with inadequate crossing gates that previously saw only a few slow freight trains per day now populated with frequent fast passenger trains.

The crossing where a pedestrian was killed by a Brightline train last week is shown in this Google street view. Note that crossing gates only block the right side of the road, so pedestrians on the left side are not prevented from crossing tracks when gates are down.

This isn’t part of the route that was built new but an existing freight line that is being used by Brightline trains. When Brightline introduced fast passenger trains to a corridor previously used by slow freight trains, it should have installed better gate crossings. Instead, all it did was issue “ public service announcements on railroad safety that emphasized when the arms go down, don’t go around.” Since, as the photo above shows, the arms don’t completely block the sidewalks when they go down, that’s not very useful advice. Brightline’s failure to add better crossing gates despite the high number of deaths in the Miami-West Palm Beach corridor shows its callous disregard for people’s safety. Continue reading →

HSR: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone

By | | Transportation
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The Mineta Institute — named after a San Jose congressman who was Secretary of Transportation in 2001 through 2006 — has a new report claiming that high-speed rail will produce huge economic and environmental benefits. Rather than being based on any careful analyses, it basically repeats old claims that are even less valid today than when they were first made.

Click image to download a 3.1-MB PDF of this report.

For example, the report cites the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s claim that rail construction “has generated an estimated 74,000 to 80,000 job years, $5.6 to $6.0 billion in labor income, and $15 billion to $16 billion in economic output between 2006 and 2022.” That’s like saying that buying a $100,000 car generates $100,000 in income. It might be income for someone, but for the person buying, the $100,000 is a cost, not a revenue. Continue reading →

Indonesia $7.3B Debt for an Archaic Train

By | | Transportation
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At least one passenger is thrilled that a high-speed train that began operating earlier this month has reduced train travel times from Bandung to Jakarta, Indonesia, from 3 hours to 44 minutes. The rail line uses Chinese technology and was financed by China under that country’s belt-and-road initiative.

Indonesia’s high-speed train on a test run before the October 2 inauguration. Photo by Muhammad Bintang Nurandi Putra.

Although the train has a top speed of 210 miles per hour, the rail distance between the two cities is only 88 miles, so the average speed is only 120 miles per hour. The rail line cost $7.3 billion, which was $1.2 billion more than the original projection. At $83 million per mile, that’s comparable to the cost of the high-speed rail line being built in California, thus defying arguments that high-speed rail can be built at a much lower cost. Continue reading →

Melbourne’s Rail Folly

By | | Transportation
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American cities are not the only ones building insane rail projects. Melbourne, Australia’s largest city, is currently building a 56-mile (90-kilometer) suburban rail line. Once projected to cost AU$50 billion (about US$32 billion), the projected costs have risen to AU$125 billion (about US$79 billion). Although construction has already begun, the city doesn’t expect to complete all 90 kilometers for 25 years, by which time the costs will probably have risen much higher.

The Melbourne Suburban Loop under construction. Photo by Rail Projects Victoria.

At the present projected cost, that’s more than $1.4 billion per mile in U.S. dollars, making it the most expensive (in dollars per mile) transit project in the world outside of New York City. One reason for the high cost is that it will all be underground, but plenty of other cities (other than New York) have been able to build subways for less than $1.4 billion a mile, and most of them much less than $1.0 billion a mile. Continue reading →

Proven to Be an Expensive Way to Reduce Ridership

By | | Transportation
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Light rail is a “proven technology,” claims Atlanta Beltline engineer Shaun Green, so there is no need to look at alternatives to spending a couple of billion dollars or so building a 22-mile light-rail and streetcar loop around the city. He was responding to some local residents who think that alternatives should be considered because “rail is the 20th century.”

Proposed route of Atlanta beltline transit system.

It is sad that even trained civil engineers have lost the simple analytical skills needed to handle questions like this. Let’s look and see where light rail has proven itself. Continue reading →

Driverless Buses in Abu Dhabi

By | | Transportation
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Abu Dhabi, the capital of United Arab Emirates, has begun operating a bus-rapid transit system with a couple of twists. First, the buses are gigantic: with two trailers (illegal in most U.S. cities), they can easily hold 200 passengers and squeeze in 240. Second, they will be completely automated despite using existing infrastructure. Some videos show a driver at the wheel, but I presume this was solely during a trail period.

The battery-powered buses operate over a 27-kilometer route with about one station per kilometer. The city of Abu Dhabi consists of several islands, and the buses connect Abu Dhabi island with Yas Island, a major tourist center. Because the buses are oriented around tourists, for now they only operate on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Continue reading →

Palestine and Property Rights

By | | News commentary
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The horrible war in Palestine raises an important question. Strife in the Middle East is often portrayed as Muslims vs. Jews. But what if religion had nothing to do with it? What if it is really just a question of property rights?

A home bombed by Israel in the 2014 Gaza War. Photo by Muhammad Sabah.

Before Israel was founded in 1948, many members of the Zionist movement — those advocating a return of Jews to Palestine — understood the importance of property rights. Groups such as the Jewish National Fund began buying land in what became Israel as early as 1901. Eventually, they owned 13 percent of the land within Israel’s current borders. Another 7 percent was own by private individuals, 4 percent by Arabs and 3 percent by Jews. Continue reading →

Fixing MBTA’s Financial Mess

By | | Transportation
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Boston’s transit agency, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA or T for short), appears to be on the verge of collapse. Eight years ago, it reported a $7.3 billion repair backlog, which has probably grown since then. As I read its 2022 financial statement, it also has $5.4 billion in unfunded pension and health care liabilities.

No one was particularly surprised when an Orange Line train caught fire last year. Photo by Marissa Babin.

State officials have known about the T’s serious maintenance and safety problems at least since 2009, when an outside report commissioned by the governor found that it had a $3 billion maintenance backlog and wasn’t even spending enough on maintenance to keep that backlog from growing further (which is why it grew to $7.3 billion six years later). This was creating serious safety problems, the report charged, finding that the agency’s maintenance program was addressing only about 10 percent of the system’s most serious safety issues. Continue reading →

Keep Highway User Fees

By | | Transportation
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The Tax Foundation notes that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has proposed to save consumers money by eliminating federal fuel taxes. That’s an extremely short-sighted idea that would actually cost consumers in the long run. As the foundation’s writers, Alex Muresianu and William McBride, observe, Haley could have proposed that the gas tax, an imperfect user fee, be replaced with a better user fee such as a mileage-based fee. But instead she proposed to simply eliminate the tax.

A sunset for gas taxes?

The most recent report indicates that, as of yesterday, the price of regular gasoline averaged about $3.64 nationwide. Eliminating the federal gas tax would reduce that to by 18¢ to $3.46 a gallon — less than 5 percent. Encouraging more domestic oil production could cut fuel prices by more than a dollar a gallon, down to what prices were in around 2015-2020. If Haley wants driving to be more affordable (which I think would be a good thing), that’s what she should promote. Continue reading →

More Apartments Won’t Make Housing Affordable

By | | Housing
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“After a decade of building 8,000 apartments in Oakland, market rate 1-bedroom units are now affordable to low income people,” says a Bay Area writer named Joshua Davis. The implication is that the 8,000 apartments had something to do with Oakland become more affordable. It didn’t.

Cities all over the country are building apartments, many of them subsidized with so-called affordable housing funds. The mid-rise and high-rise apartments that aren’t subsidized aren’t going to rent for affordable prices because they are far more expensive to build than single-family homes. Continue reading →