Tag Archives: light-rail transit

On November 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Austin voters foolishly agreed to raise property taxes in order to build 28 miles of light rail at a projected cost of $5.8 billion. To avoid congestion, the downtown portion of light-rail lines would go through a four-mile-long tunnel.

Artist’s impression of light rail running near downtown Austin.

No one reading this blog will be surprised to know that, in the short amount of time since then, projected costs have nearly doubled to $10.3 billion. Early this week, the city’s transit planners announced a new plan that would build fewer than half as many miles of light rail. Continue reading →

Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Metro Transit is going to spend $3 million a year hiring private security to deter crime at six of the region’s light-rail stations. As the Antiplanner recently documented, light rail attracts more crime than any other form of transit and the Twin Cities’ light rail attracts far more crime than any other light-rail system in the United States.

Patrons of the Twin Cities’ light-rail system suffer nearly twice as much crime as those of the next-highest system and at least six times as much as those of all but three other systems. Click image to download the Antiplanner’s report on Minnesota transportation in a post-COVID world.

Light rail attracts crime because fare enforcement is spotty and potential criminals figure that, if they can ride the trains for free, they can get away with other crimes as well. The Antiplanner recommended that Metro Transit install gates at every light-rail station, similar to those used for heavy-rail lines, but Metro Transit rejected this idea. Continue reading →

Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, has a 19.6-mile light-rail system that consists of a north-south line intersecting an east-west line. It cost $475 million, or less than $25 million per mile. That sounds like a good deal compared with U.S. lines now under construction or in planning, the least expensive of which is more than $135 million a mile and the average cost is more than $275 million a mile.

Addis Ababa’s light-rail line. Photo by A.Savin.

There’s just one little problem. Although the light-rail system is just seven years old, it is already suffering serious maintenance problems. Only eight of the city’s 41 light-rail trains are functional, and the city has resorted to operating just every other day in order to do track maintenance. The city estimates it needs $60 million to restore the system to full capacity, which it doesn’t have. Continue reading →

Mariya Frost, of the Washington Policy Center, has alerted me that Seattle should be added to the list of cities with transit projects gone wild. Sound Transit, the region’s rail transit authority, has raised the projected costs of projects built between 2017 and 2046 from $54 billion to $142 billion.

An artist’s impression of a planned Seattle light-rail line. Notice that the artist didn’t project any decline in automobiles or driving. Photo from Siemens.

Most of the increase is for the cost of building 62 miles of light-rail lines. Seattle already had the most-expensive light-rail system in the nation, but the latest costs are completely insane. Continue reading →

Los Angeles Metro recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of the opening of its Expo light-rail line. Construction on the line began in 2006, a year in which LA Metro buses carried 409 million trips, and the line opened in April, 2012.

The LA Expo line shortly after it opened. Photo by Gary Leonard for Los Angeles Metro.

To help pay for the Expo and other new light-rail lines, LA Metro cut bus service by nearly a quarter between 2006 and 2019. This contributed to the loss of a third of its bus riders, or nearly 138 million trips per year. The Expo line, meanwhile, boosted light-rail ridership by about 2 million annual trips, enough to make up 1.5 percent of the loss in bus ridership. Continue reading →

Sound Transit, Seattle’s light-rail agency, has a goal of collecting enough fares to cover 40 percent of operating costs, yet it is collecting just 5 percent. That’s partly because of COVID-depressed ridership, but mainly because the agency makes almost no effort to collect fares. As a result, the agency estimates that 70 percent of its passengers are riding without paying.

Not getting much use: a Sound Transit ticket machine. Photo by Evan Didier.

Like other light-rail systems, Seattle’s operates on an “honor system,” meaning people are expected to pay before they board, but there are no turnstiles to keep them from boarding if they don’t pay. Like other light-rail systems, Seattle’s used to have “fare inspectors” who would hand out tickets to people who didn’t have proof of payment. But then someone pointed out that minorities were getting most of the tickets (maybe because they were most likely to not pay?), so this was deemed inequitable. Continue reading →

The Antiplanner has previously written that light rail should be called lie rail because everything its advocates say about it is a lie. The latest proof comes from Capital Metro, Austin’s transit agency, which now admits that light-rail projects voters approved in 2020 are going to cost at least 78 percent more than originally projected.

Capital Metro persuaded voters to support light rail by claiming it would reduce congestion when in fact it will make it worse by taking lanes away from autos and dedicating them to empty tracks carrying empty light-rail trains.

The original projection, of course, was one of many lies told about the project. Almost every light-rail project ever built has cost far more than the original projections, overruns so systematic that Oxford researcher Bent Flyvbjerg says they are “best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying.” Other lies included overestimated ridership numbers and the claim that light rail is “high-capacity transit.” Continue reading →