Search Results for: rail projects

Making a Good Idea Bad

By | | Transportation
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Back when I first began studying light rail, one of my first questions was, “Why rail when buses can work just as well for a lot less money?” That question is becoming less valid today as transit agencies have done their usual job of making something affordable into something grossly expensive.

Proposed Charleston bus rapid transit line. Graphic by Low Country Rapid Transit.

A case in point is Charleston, South Carolina’s proposal for a bus rapid transit line. Local backers have the audacity to call it South Carolina’s first mass transit system, as if Columbia, Greenville, Charleston, and other South Carolina cities haven’t had bus systems for decades. But the real problem is that they want to spend $625 million on a 21-mile line, or about $30 million per mile. Continue reading →

Transforming Regressive Taxes into Profits

By | | Regional planning, Transportation
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Just once, I’d like to see a regional transportation plan that didn’t try to transform the region into some planner’s fantasy of how people should live but instead tried to serve the actual transportation needs of the people who lived there. Unfortunately, given that the federal government is giving out tens of billions of dollars for “transformative” projects, we are mainly seeing plans whose only real transformations will be to make some rich people richer and most poor people poorer.

Click image to download a 13.0-MB PDF of this 346-page draft regional transportation plan for Baltimore.

I bring this up because of an op ed earlier this week by two Baltimore-area politicians promoting that region’s $70 billion plan which, they promise, will produce “transformative changes to our transportation system.” More than half of the capital projects in the plan will be for urban transit, including the Red light-rail line that had previously been rejected as a waste of money as well as another, even more-expensive light-rail line. Continue reading →

Soaking the Rich Fails in Los Angeles

By | | Housing
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To help fund the $1.3 billion that Los Angeles’ city council believes it needs to house the homeless, the city decided to impose a “mansion tax” of 4 percent on the sales of any homes or commercial properties above $5 million and 5.5 percent on sales above $10 million. This was projected to bring in $900 million a year, funding most of the homeless program.

This home is currently on the market in Los Angeles for an asking price of $5.667 million. Many homes of this size are available for under $1 million in Houston and San Antonio and few are asking more than $2 million.

The reality is far different because planners, as usual, failed to take into account how their regulations and taxes would influence human behavior. In the month before the tax went into effect on April 1, 126 homes sold for more than $5 million. In the month since? Just two. Continue reading →

More Delays, Less Delays, But Always More Costs

By | | Transportation
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Maryland’s Purple Line, which was originally supposed to open more than a year ago, now won’t open until 2026. But that’s supposed to be good news, because two months ago the state said it wouldn’t open until 2027. The bad news, other than the news that it is being built at all, is that it is at least $1.46 billion over budget.

That’s kind of a breathtaking number — $1.46 billion — at least for those who understand how much money that really is. For one thing, this cost of this one light-rail line would have been more than enough to construct all of the light-rail lines built in Buffalo, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Jose during the 1980s. At that time, light rail construction was costing around $10 million to $15 million a mile, or about $30 million to $40 million in today’s dollars. The Purple Line is costing more than $210 per mile, or five to seven times as much. Continue reading →

Transit Carries 70% of 2019 Riders in March

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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America’s transit systems carried 70.3 percent as many riders in March 2023 as in the same month in 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. I reported last month that transit also carried 70 percent in February as in 2019, but that was due to a minor error that crept into my spreadsheet. The actual number was 68.5 percent, so transit is still gaining slowly compared with the pre-pandemic era. However, March 2023 had two more business days than March 2019, while the two Februaries had the same number, which is probably responsible for some of March’s improvement.

The Transportation Security Administration reports that 97.8 percent as many passengers passed through airport security in March 2023 as in March 2019. That’s down from the 100.3 percent in February. The actual number of passengers increased from 58 million to 72 million, but that’s just seasonal variations. Continue reading →

Nashville Transit Junkies Demand More Money

By | | Transportation
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Spending billions of dollars on on transit infrastructure, as proposed by a group called the Transit Alliance for Middle Tennessee, would be a complete waste. The group was formed to support the city’s 26-mile, $5-billion light-rail proposal that was rejected by voters five years ago. Now that the pandemic has proven that Nashville doesn’t need any transit infrastructure, the group is reemerging as an “advocate for action.”

The group wants “multimodal transportation,” which to them means bus-rapid transit on dedicated lanes, light rail, commuter rail, and maybe even heavy rail and monorail. For some reason, the group doesn’t mention cars, trucks, bicycles, pedestrians, scooters, and local buses, all of which make Nashville’s existing transportation infrastructure pretty multimodal. Continue reading →

Transit Carries 70% of 2019 Riders in February

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Public transit carried 70.2 percent as many riders in February 2023 as it did in the same month in 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration late last week. This is the first time ridership has exceeded 70 percent of 2019 numbers since February 2020.

The transit line on this chart has been updated to reflect the latest adjustments to the National Transit Database going back to late 2020.

Amtrak, meanwhile, reports that it carried close to 89 percent as many passenger-miles and the Transportation Security Administration reports that airlines carried more than 100 percent as many passengers in February 2023 as in February 2019. February highway data will be released later this month. Continue reading →

Tax Netflix to Fund Transit?

By | | Transportation
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New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority will soon go off a fiscal cliff, partly due to reduced ridership but also due to bad management. But never fear: New York legislators have a solution. They propose to tax Netflix and Uber to raise money to keep the subways and buses running.

One of the most expensive transit projects in the world, the Second Avenue Subway is expensive partly because the MTA spent more on consultants than it did on actual construction. MTA Capital Construction photo by Rehema Trimiew.

Taxing Uber makes kind of a warped sense, like taxing jet airliners in order to subsidize Conestoga wagons. But taxing Netflix? Just what does Netflix have to do with urban transit? Next thing you know, someone will propose taxing people for working at home because, you know, homes are “stealing” riders away from transit. Continue reading →

Brightline’s Folly to Vegas

By | | Transportation
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Brightline says it has raised enough money to start construction on a 200-mph rail line from Victorville, California to Las Vegas. The company projects the line will cost $10 billion, or about $45 million a mile for the 218-mile route.

Brightline in Florida. Illustration by All Aboard Florida (Brightline’s original name).

Brightline has $1 billion in private activity bonds to start construction. But I would be surprised if Brightline has managed to find private investors foolish enough to give the company the other $9 billion needed for this line. The company says that it expects to attract 12 million people a year heading to Las Vegas or Los Angeles out of their cars and buses, or almost 30 percent of the 42 million traveling by highway today, but that seems highly unlikely. Continue reading →

East Side Access Project Opens Today

By | | Transportation
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Today, more than a decade late and after spending $11.2 billion, the Long Island Railroad will begin running trains to Grand Central Terminal. This 3.5-mile project, known as the East Side Access tunnel, cost a mere $3.2 billion a mile, which is a trifle compared with the Second Avenue Subway, the next segment of which is expected to cost $4 billion a mile.

Architect’s vision of what new LIRR platform will look like in Grand Central Terminal. Source: STV Inc.

Meanwhile, New York transit has a $26.6 billion capital funding gap over the next two years. One result of this is that more than a quarter of the region’s transit vehicles are beyond the end of their expected service life. Continue reading →