Search Results for: rail projects

TIGER Rips Through Dallas, Detroit, and Tucson

By | | Transportation
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With typical fanfare, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced $1.5 billion in “Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery” (TIGER) grants to 51 cities. The complete list of grants includes new “modern streetcar” (isn’t that an oxymoron?) lines in Dallas and Tucson, plus an extension of the existing streetcar system in New Orleans.

“In an overwhelming show of demand for the program,” said LaHood, US DOT “was flooded with more than 1,400 applications.” What a surprise to find that there is an overwhelming demand for free money.

Among the lucky winners was Tucson, which received $63 million toward the $150 million cost of a 3.9-mile streetcar line between the Arizona Health Sciences Center and the University of Arizona. So now students can take the streetcar to the hospital when they are too drunk to walk. (Sorry, that’s an insult: most students are too smart to ride streetcars.)

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Bringing an Old Voice to the Debate

By | | Transportation
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The Bipartisan Policy Project, a supposedly centrist organization, claims to be “bringing new voices to the transportation debate to create a dynamic and enduring vision for the future of federal surface transportation policy.” So what “new voice” did it hire to write a review of the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program, which gives away billions of dollars to transit agencies for rail projects each year? Answer: Parsons Brinckerhoff, known as PB for short.

PB is hardly a new voice. It proudly advertises that it built New York City’s first subway line in 1904. More recently, it has arguably benefitted from New Starts more than any other single entity. When transit agencies need to hire a consultant to “decide” whether to apply for New Starts funds, they turn to PB. When they need someone to do the analyses required to be eligible for FTA New Starts funding, they turn to PB. When they need someone to engineer and design a New-Starts-funded rail line, they turn to PB. In many cases, they hire PB to be the general contractor when they finally get around to building the line. PB isn’t the only firm that does this kind of work, but it has almost certainly worked on more New Starts projects than any other consulting firm.

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LaHood Eliminates Cost-Efficiency Rules

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Last week, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that federal transit grants would now focus on “livability.” Buried beneath this rhetoric is LaHood’s decision to eliminate the only efforts anyone ever made to make sure transit money isn’t wasted on urban monuments that contribute little to transportation.

Back in 2005, then-Secretary Mary Peters stunned the transit world when she adopted a “cost-effectiveness” rule for federal transit grants to new rail projects. In order to qualify, transit agencies had to receive a “medium” cost-effectiveness rating from the FTA, meaning they had to cost less than about $24 for every hour they would save transportation users (either by providing faster service to transit riders or by reducing congestion to auto drivers). This wasn’t much of a requirement: a true cost-efficiency calculation would rank projects that cost $0.50 per hour much higher than projects that cost $23.50 per hour; under Peters’ rule, they were all ranked the same. But any projects that went over the $24 threshold (which varied with inflation — by 2009 it was up to $24.50) were ruled out.

After throwing various temper tantrums, transit agencies responded in one of four ways. Those close to the $24 threshold went back and cooked their books to either slightly reduce the cost or slightly increase the amount of time the project was supposed to save. Those that were hopelessly far away from the $24 threshold, but had powerful representatives in Congress, obtained exemptions from the rule. These included BART to San Jose, the Dulles rail line, and Portland’s WES commuter train. Those that didn’t have the political clout either shelved their projects or, in a few cases, tried to fund them without federal support.

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HSR as Wasteful in U.K. as in U.S.

By | | Transportation
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Rail advocates argue that high-speed rail makes the most sense in 300- to 600-mile corridors, so some think that the United States is too big for it to work. Conversely, English columnist Simon Jenkins argues that Britain is too small for high-speed rail to make sense: what the country needs, he says, is more reliable trains, not faster ones. “In rail terms, England is one huge metropolis in which the chief constraint on time is not technology but the number of stops.”

Jenkins writes with authority (and a bit of sour grapes), as he was on the board of British Rail in the 1980s before it was privatized and also on the board of London Transport. He thinks the “pseudo-privatization” of rail services has made it less reliable and more bureaucratic than ever (against which it has to be pointed out that Britain is the only European country where public transit is gaining market share).

But his arguments against high-speed rail are right on: it is a “gargantuan project” that “will cost a lifetime of money” and mainly “serve a few rich travelers.” Nor is it “particularly green.” Instead of investing billions in building brand new tracks, the money should be spent on making the existing tracks work better.

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New FTA Head

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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President Obama continues his policy of bringing “change” to Washington by appointing Washington insiders to key posts in his administration. One such insider is Peter Rogoff, who will be the new head of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).

As a staff member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Rogoff had a hand in writing ISTEA, TEA-21, and SAFETEA-LU, the 1991, 1998, and 2005 reauthorizations of federal transportation funding. He has also promoted high-speed rail, light rail, and bus-rapid transit systems. Naturally, the American Public Transportation Association — the nation’s transit lobby — is elated to have in Rogoff in charge of federal transit programs, as he knows all the strings to pull to get big bucks for their tiny constituency (meaning, for the most part, transit contractors, not transit riders).

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Transportation for Some Americans

By | | Transportation
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A group calling itself Transportation for America has compiled a list of more than 80 transit agencies that have made or are considering cuts in service in response to the recession. T4America sees this as a reason for federal bailouts to support transit agencies. This would be stupid.

As bad as they are, recessions do have a golden lining: they force businesses to clear out the dead wood and pare inefficient operations. Even in a pure market economy, private businesses would tend to become inefficient because of tradition, internal politics, and other forces. Recessions keep such inefficiencies to a minimum.

But when public agencies survive on tax dollars, they can avoid such housecleaning by seeking more tax support. This leads them to become increasingly bloated.

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HSR Big Winner in Compromise Stimulus Plan

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The House proposed no money for high-speed rail. The Senate proposed $2 billion. So what do they compromise at? $8 billion. Plus Amtrak gets $1.3 billion, which is also more than in either the House or Senate bills.

Highways and urban transit get the amounts in the Senate bill, $27 and $8.4 billion, which is less than the House bill. Since the total for transportation is $46 billion, that leaves about $1.4 billion for airports.
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Just where are they going to find $8 billion worth of shovel-ready high-speed rail projects? Not in California, where I doubt they will be ready to begin construction for another couple of years.

Stimulus Status Report

By | | Meltdown, News commentary, Transportation
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When Obama started talking about an $850 billion infrastructure package to stimulate the economy, state and local transportation agencies began licking their chops. The federal government currently spends only about $45 billion per year on transportation of all kinds, so $850 billion would be almost 20 years of spending.

Free money.
Flickr photo by Tracy O.

As it turns out, only about $45 billion of the stimulus package is for transportation, which will be like the feds doubling spending for one year. The stimulus bill will not build a lot of new highways or light-rail lines. But it might set some bad precedents for future federal spending.

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The Handwriting Is on the Wall, but VTA’s Board Can’t Read

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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A newspaper in Gilroy, a little town south of San Jose famous for its garlic festival (even though they don’t grow garlic there anymore), is ecstatic that the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is beginning to “accept the reality” that the 16-mile BART-to-San-Jose line will never be built. But this jubilation is premature.

According to the article in the San Jose Mercury News that led to the Gilroy editorial, VTA’s general manager, Michael Burns, says, “we can’t afford all the projects” in VTA’s long-range plan, “and this will generate questions, especially about BART.” However, Burns didn’t dare suggest that they shouldn’t build BART at all, but merely proposed that they “phase it in.” They might build the first 12 miles to the edge of San Jose, then later build the last four miles (which, because they would be underground, will cost as much or more than the first 12) later.

At least some members of the board (which consists of members of the various city councils in the region) were not persuaded. “Clearly, BART is the No. 1 project,” says San Jose’s mayor, adding that “it needs to go all the way.” Damn the lack of funds; full speed ahead!

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Class: The Unmentionable Topic

By | | News commentary
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The recent brouhaha about Barack Obama calling small-town Americans “bitter” brings up an issue Americans rarely talk about: class. Unlike Britain, America does not have an inherited aristocracy, and we like to think we are economically mobile, so we don’t think about class.

Certainly, we use terms like upper class, middle class, and lower class, but these are strictly economically defined, and since (we tell ourselves) we are economically mobile, the labels do not permanently stamp anyone as one thing or another.

But there is another term we sometimes use: working class. Perhaps because of my egalitarian American upbringing, this term puzzled me when I first encountered it. Most families have at least one worker, so how is the working class distinguished from any other class? Are working-class incomes higher or lower than middle-class incomes?

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