Search Results for: rail projects

Betteridge’s Law Applies Here

By | | Transportation
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“Will Twin Cities to Duluth train succeed where it once failed?” asks a headline from a St. Paul news station. As Betteridge’s law of headlines states, “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no,” and I’m pretty sure that applies here.

Should Minnesota’s failed commuter train be supplemented by a failed intercity passenger train? Photo by Jerry Huddleston.

There are exceptions to Betteridge’s law, of course. For example, this 2019 headline, “Could the Commuter Rail from Minneapolis to Duluth be a Flop?” poses the same question in the opposite direction. One of the two headlines violates Betteridge’s law. My money is on the law applying to the first but not the second. 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 →

Changing the Game for the Worse

By | | Transportation
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A 3/4-cent sales tax increase for transit is “seen as a game-changing model to fund transit service — and the envy of many cities nationwide,” reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. What the article doesn’t say is how the tax will change the game for the worse for transit riders and transportation users in general.

Twin Cities transit ridership had been going downhill before the pandemic, declining nearly 10 percent between 2015 and 2019. Photo by Metro Transit.

What this means is that Metro Transit will no longer care about ridership numbers. Instead, it can freely spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on projects that do little to generate ridership with no repercussions. Continue reading →

Amtrak Crossing: Watch Out for the Subsidies

By | | Transportation
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“Flush with cash” from the 2021 infrastructure bill, says the Wall Street Journal, Amtrak hopes to “double ridership by 2040.” That’s an ambitious goal, and yet one that is totally insignificant.

Amtrak’s logo looks like a pointless arrow, but the real point is to spend lots of money.

Amtrak carried 5.1 billion passenger-miles in 2022. Divide that among the 332 million Americans and Amtrak carried the average American 15 miles. That compares with 16,000 miles of per capita travel by automobile and more than 2,100 miles by domestic airline. The Census Bureau expects the nation’s population to rise to 373 million by 2040, so even if Amtrak could double ridership, which is unlikely, per-capita intercity rail travel would grow to only about 27 miles per year. In other words, Amtrak will still be irrelevant to most Americans. Continue reading →

July 2023 Transit Ridership 65% of July 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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After reaching 70 percent of pre-pandemic numbers in June, transit ridership in July fell back to 65 percent of July 2019, according to data released last week by the Federal Transit Administration. Since July 2019 had 22 working days while July 2023 only had 20, this decline is not surprising.

Meanwhile, Americans drove 97.2 percent as many miles in July 2023 as in the same month of 2019, according to Federal Highway Administration data released last week as well. Amtrak’s monthly performance report indicates that the railroad carried 91.2 percent as many passenger-miles in July 2023 as July 2019, while the Transportation Security Administration says that 98.8 percent as many travelers passed through security in July as in 2019. Continue reading →

How to Pay for Amtrak’s Deficits

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Amtrak operations lost $1.2 billion last year without even counting depreciation and the other costs that Amtrak pretends aren’t real. (The $1.2 billion is calculated by adding $885 million “adjusted operating earnings” to the $329 million “state supported train revenue” that Amtrak pretends isn’t a subsidy.) A railroad in Japan provides an example of one way Amtrak could cover this deficit.

The Choshi Electric Railway hit some hard times in the 1990s, as did most Japanese businesses, due to the nation’s economic slump. The railway almost went out of business, but then it hit upon the idea of asking its customers and patrons to buy rice crackers. Today, it makes twice as much money on its rice crackers than on the rail line itself. Continue reading →

“Priming the Pump” = Subsidizing the Myth

By | | Transportation
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Maryland has decided it needs to “take a more active role in promoting development around transit stations,” according to an article in the Baltimore Banner. “It’s priming the pump to get these things moving,” says Secretary of Transportation Paul Wiedefeld, who used to be general manager of Washington Metro.

Maryland’s stack-’em-and-pack-’em vision for transit recovery. But what if nobody wants to live there?

As of May, Baltimore transit ridership was about 67 percent of pre-pandemic levels, slightly less than the national average. But most of that was due to buses, which were at 73 percent. Baltimore light rail was only 59 percent and Baltimore’s subway was just 58 percent. Wiedefeld hopes that promoting transit-oriented developments will boost ridership. Continue reading →

Houston BRT Failure

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
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A Houston bus rapid transit route over dedicated bus lanes is attracting less than 10 percent of the riders that were projected for it. The Silver Line opened in August 2020 with the expectation that it would carry 14,850 weekday riders, but in fact it is carrying less than 900 riders per weekday, about 6 percent of projections.

A Houston Silver Line sits empty, which is not unusual for it even when in motion. Photo by Ricky Courtney.

Metro, Houston’s transit agency, originally wanted to put a light-rail line in the Silver Line corridor, but opposition from local residents led it to “downgrade” the line to bus rapid transit. According to Houston businessman Bill King, Metro still managed to spend $200 million on the 4.7-mile route, mostly through tax-increment financing. This was a lot less than the $500 million or so that light rail would have cost but still a lot more than necessary. Continue reading →

Purple Line Seven Years Late at Triple the Cost

By | | Transportation
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Maryland state officials failed to indicate the slightest degree of embarrassment when they announced on Friday that the Maryland Purple light-rail line will be delayed again until Spring 2027 and cost an additional $148 million. When originally approved, the line was expected to cost just over $1.9 billion and to open in mid-2020. Even at that price it made no sense; although nobody but the Antiplanner read the full EIS, that document admitted that the line would significantly increase traffic congestion in Washington DC suburbs.

The executive summary of the Purple Line draft environmental impact statement implied that the purpose of the line was to reduce congestion, but a technical appendix calculated that it would make congestion far worse. However, hardly anyone but the Antiplanner bothered to read that appendix. Click image to go to a list of environmental documents and technical reports written for this boondoggle.

Now the line is $3.8 billion over budget, meaning it is costing about three times as much to build as originally projected. That number comes with a qualifier, however. Maryland is building the line through a public-private partnership in which it is contracting to the private partner to not only build it but to operate it for 30 years. The cost of the contract was originally supposed to be $5.6 billion and now is up to $9.4 billion but state officials refuse to say what portion of that is construction and what portion is operating costs. While it is possible that the operating costs grew which means the construction cost less than tripled, the $148 million increase includes a $205 million increase in construction costs and a $57 million reduction in operating costs. Continue reading →

Honolulu Says It Underreported Riders

By | | Transportation
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The Honolulu Authority for Really-overpriced Transportation (HART) says that early reports of ridership on its new rail line only included people who paid full fares but not people who boarded with a transit pass. When all riders are counted, the rail line carried about 4,000 riders a day in its first week, about double its early reports.

Another nearly empty train obstructs views in Honolulu. Photo by HART.

Even 4,000 is a little short of the number that HART projected it would attract once the system is completed: 84,000 people a day. Unfortunately, the agency hasn’t published ridership estimates for the portion of the line that opened on June 30, but I doubt they would be anywhere near as low as 4,000 a day. Continue reading →