Search Results for: rail projects

Competing Infrastructure Plans: Trump vs. Democrats

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Senate Democrats have proposed an infrastructure plan that calls for $1 trillion in federal deficit spending. In detail, the plan calls for:

  • $100 billion for reconstructing roads & bridges;
  • $100 billion to “revitalize Main Street,” that is, subsidies to New Urbanism and affordable housing;
  • $10 billion for TIGER stimulus projects;
  • $110 for reconstructing water and sewer;
  • $50 billion for modernizing rail (Amtrak and freight railroad) infrastructure;
  • $130 billion to repair and expand transit;
  • $75 billion for rebuilding public schools;
  • $30 billion to improve airports;
  • $10 billion for ports & waterways;
  • $25 billion to improve communities’ resistance to natural disasters;
  • $100 billion for a next-generation electrical grid;
  • $20 billion for broadband;
  • $20 billion for public lands and tribal infrastructure;
  • $10 billion for VA hospitals;
  • $10 billion for an infrastructure bank;
  • $200 billion for “vital projects” that “think big” such as building “the world’s fastest trains.”

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America Has Enough Infrastructure

By | | Transportation
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Many people in Washington are talking about infrastructure spending. Infrastructure is a bi-partisan issue, because every elected official is happy to spend other people’s money on projects that will get their names in the paper and contributions to their re-election campaigns.

George Will throws a dose of cold water on the party when he points out that it’s hard to spend money on infrastructure when we’ve thrown up so many roadblocks in the form of environmental reviews. But that’s not the real problem with infrastructure spending. The real problem is that we really don’t need any new infrastructure.

Most writers assume that government spending on infrastructure has a multiplier effect: that every dollar spent will generate more than a dollar of gross domestic product. That worked for early highway spending, which generated a huge amount of new travel and shipping that didn’t exist before. It won’t work for most infrastructure spending today.

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Election 2016: New Faces; Same Old Policies

By | | News commentary
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After many months of hype, the election tomorrow almost seems like an anticlimax. Maybe it only feels that way to the Antiplanner because I voted more than a week ago. Polls indicate that Trump has closed much of the gap that had opened up after the conventions. But I can’t help but think that, no matter who wins, nothing much is going to change.

Certainly none of the apocalyptic predictions made for if Clinton or Trump are elected are likely to come true. Our systems has too many checks and balances for anything really bad, such as nuclear war or a fascist dictatorship, to happen.

Instead, what is more likely is continued paralysis as our high-paid representatives in Congress decide the best course for them is to do nothing because doing anything would lend credibility to the other party. That means we’ll continue to fight too many wars, spend money on frivolous domestic projects, and grow more polarized.

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The Monster That Devoured Denver

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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The train that saved Denver? Give me a break! Politico‘s Colin Woodard claims that the effects of new rail transit lines on Denver “have been measurable and surprising.” In fact, his article is all hype with hardly a touch of reality.

Let’s start with same basic “measurable” numbers. In 1990, before Denver built its first light-rail line, the decennial census found that 4.74 percent of the region’s commuters took transit to work. By 2014, the region had four light-rail lines, and the American Community Survey found that the percentage of commuters taking transit to work was all the way up to 4.76 percent.

Yes, that’s a measurable 0.02 percent increase in transit’s share of commuting. If it is a surprise, it is only that it wasn’t a decrease.

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New Starts 2017

By | | Transportation
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The Federal Transit Administration has published its New Starts recommendations for 2017. The recommendations include profiles of more than 60 different transit projects, including bus-rapid transit (BR), streetcars (SR), light rail (LR), commuter rail (CR), and heavy rail (HR). Only 60 projects are shown in the table below as a few, such as the San Antonio streetcar, have been cancelled or at least are “on hold.”

CityProjectModeMilesCapitalCost/mi
PhoenixS. CentralLR5.0531106
TempeStreetcarSR3.018361
LAConnectorLR1.91,403738
LAStreetcarSR3.87520
LAPurple 1HR3.92,822720
LAPurple 2HR2.62,467949
Sac'toStreetcarSR4.215036
CalTransElectrifiedCRC51.01,75934
San DiegoMid-Coast LR10.92,171199
San Fran.CentralLR1.71,578928
San Fran.Van NessBR2.016381
San JoseEl Camino BR17.418811
San JoseBerryessaHR10.22,330230
San RafaelSMARTCR2.14320
Santa AnaStreetcarSR4.128970
DenverEagleCR30.22,04368
DenverSE ExtLR2.322497
Ft. Laud.WaveSR2.817362
Ft. Laud.BrowardSR5.00
J'villeEastBR18.5342
J'villeSWBR12.9191
OrlandoOIACR5.522541
OrlandoSouthCR17.218711
OrlandoNorthCR12.2696
HonoluluHARTHR20.05,122256
ChicagoAshland BR5.411722
ChicagoRed & PurpleHRC5.6957171
Indy.Red BR13.1967
BostonMedfordLR4.72,298489
MarylandPurpleLR16.22,448151
Gr. RapidsLakerBR13.3715
LansingMichiganBR8.516419
Minn.Blue extLR13.010
Minn.OrangeBR17.01519
Minn.SWLR14.51,774122
K. CityProspectBR10.0545
CharlotteBlue extLR9.31,160125
CharlotteGoldSR2.515060
CharlotteBlueHRC9.6404
DurhamOrangeLR17.11,800105
Albuq.RapidBR8.812614
Reno4th StBR3.15317
RenoVirginiaBR1.86033
AlbanyRiverBR15.0352
AlbanyWashingtonBR8.0648
NYCCarnarsieHRC6.027446
NYCWoodhavenBR14.023117
ColumbusClevelandBR15.6473
PortlandMilwaukieLR7.01,490213
PortlandPowellBR14.0755
DallasCBDLR2.4650271
DallasRed & BlueLRC48.11192
El PasoMontanaBR16.8473
Ft. WorthTEXRailCR27.299637
HoustonUniversityLR11.31,563138
ProvoBRTBR10.515014
EverettSwiftBR12.3675
SeattleCenterSR1.3135104
SpokaneCentralBR5.87212
TacomaLink extSR2.416669
A “C” after a mode abbreviation means that project is a capacity increase or reconstruction of an existing line. An “ext” at the end of a project name is an extension of an existing line. There are 60 projects in the table; to see all 60 at once, select “Show 100 entries.” Projects are sorted in alphabetical order by state, but you can resort by any column.

For the projects in this year’s report, the average cost of new streetcar lines is $45 million per mile; light rail is $163 million per mile; heavy rail is $347 million per mile; and commuter rail is $38 million per mile. Of course, cost overruns are likely for a majority of these projects, so the final costs are likely to average 20 to 50 percent more. Even without the overruns, these costs are outlandish, as the nation’s first light-rail lines cost only around $10 million to $25 million per mile (after adjusting for inflation), and streetcars were supposed to be even less expensive than that.

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How Do You Define “Feasible”?

By | | Transportation
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States and regions all over the country are developing plans for high-speed or conventional-speed intercity passenger trains. One of the first steps in writing such plans is the “feasibility study.” But the people writing these studies have a curious definition of “feasible.”


Click image to download this business plan. Click here to download technical memoranda behind the plan.

Louisiana Governor John Edwards doesn’t even understand the definition of “light rail.” He asked Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx yesterday for federal funding for light rail between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Or maybe he asked for money for commuter rail; it’s hard to know from the media reports. But Edwards is on the record saying he will do everything he can “to make sure that as soon as possible we can pursue light rail” between the two cities, which are about 80 miles apart on Interstate 10.

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Take the T Out of TOD and What’s Left?

By | | City planning, Transportation
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The latest issue of the University of California Transportation Center’s Access magazine has an article that asks, “Does Transit-Oriented Development Need the Transit?” Noting that previous studies found that people who live in TODs are less likely to own cars, the authors dare to ask if the observed changes in travel behavior had anything to do with having rail transit near the TOD.

Since you are reading this here, the answer, of course, is “no.” Instead, the biggest influence on travel behavior is the presence or absence of parking. (The paper didn’t mention the self-selection issue, which is that differences in travel behavior are largely accounted for by the fact that people who don’t want to drive are more likely to live in TODs than people who do.)

In any case, whatever benefits may come from TODs, the authors conclude, “may not depend much on rail access.” That’s good news, the authors claim, because rail lines are expensive to build, so the benefits of TODs could be attained without that expense.

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The Pickrell Effect

By | | Transportation
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Peter Callaghan, a reporter for the Minneapolis Post, has figured out that rail transit planners routinely overestimate transit ridership. He calls this the Pickrell Effect, after US DOT researcher Don Pickrell, whose 1990 report found that most rail projects underestimated costs and overestimated ridership.

(Callaghan doesn’t mention the other Pickrell Effect, which is that government employees who report such shenanigans are likely to be sent to the local equivalent of Siberia. For his effort, Pickrell was told by a Deputy Secretary of Transportation that he would never be allowed to work on a transit study again.)

Callaghan does say that Pickrell’s study led to “more scrutiny” by the Federal Transit Administration, resulting in “a measurable improvement in forecasts, with mixed results.” Which is it: an improvement or mixed results? Callaghan says that a 2003 FTA study found that, of 19 projects since the Pickrell report, “only” eleven greatly overestimated ridership while eight came within 20 percent of ridership estimates.

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Denver’s RTD Makes the Case for Lying

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Denver RTD Makes the Case for Public-Private Funding, says Progressive Railroading. In fact, Denver’s Regional Transit District is making the case for lying to the voters about everything possible in order to get as much of their money as possible.

The first lie was that FasTracks, Denver’s rail transit plan that Progressive Railroading calls “one of the largest transit expansion programs in the country,” would cost $4.7 billion. Soon after the election, RTD admitted the real cost would be $7.9 billion. Thanks to the recession, the cost has supposedly fallen to $6.9 billion, but none of these estimates include interest and other finance charges.

The second lie was that RTD would build six new light-rail or other rail lines. In order to get the support of all of the suburban mayors in the region, RTD had to promise to build all the lines at once, as mayors realized that any that were deferred to later would probably never be built. Today, RTD realizes that the Northwest line to Boulder and Longmont is just far too expensive and will carry too few riders to be worthwhile. But that applies to the rest of them too, it’s just that RTD doesn’t have enough money to build them all.

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No Infrastructure Fund

By | | Transportation
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A lot of people have proposed that Congress create an infrastructure bank that would fund or finance the reconstruction and expansion of America’s transportation and other infrastructure. One problem is where the money would come from. Another problem is how would it be allocated.

Representative John Delaney (D-MD) thinks he has the answers to these two questions. He notes that, for tax reasons, American corporations have kept billions of dollars in foreign profits overseas so they don’t have to pay U.S. taxes on them. He proposes to drastically reduce the rate they would pay on this income, leading them to bring the funds back. The revenues from the lower rates (he proposes about 8 percent) that would then be paid would seed what he calls the American Infrastructure Fund.

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