Search Results for: rail

San Jose Light-Rail Service Resumes

By | | Follow up, Transportation
3 Comments

Last week, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) resumed “limited” light-rail service for the first time since the May 26 shooting at VTA’s maintenance center. Service began on the Orange Line and part of the Green Line. A week later, part of the Blue Line opened along with another segment of the Green Line. VTA has to test tracks on each segment before it can open; some lines were lower priorities, said the agency, because they carried few riders, providing further support for the Antiplanner’s belief that light rail was the wrong technology for San Jose in the first place.

VTA closed its light-rail system for more than three months and part of the system will be closed for even longer. Photo by Minh Nguyen.

VTA claims it closed down the light-rail operations “to give employees time to heal from the traumatic experience” of the May 26 shooting. But transit advocate Eugene Bradley pointed out “that other major cities that experienced violent disruptions of transit, such as New York and London, managed to restore service within hours.” Not only did VTA not run light-rail trains for three months, for much of that time it didn’t provide light-rail riders with alternative bus services. “VTA is showing the world how to not recover from a tragedy,” said Bradley. Continue reading →

The World’s Finest Railroads

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
8 Comments

The United States has the most efficient and productive railroads in the world. Not coincidentally, the United States also has the most private railroads in the world. Other than Canada, almost every other country that has railroads has nationalized them.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

Private railroads operate with very different goals from those that are owned by the government. Private railroads seek to maximize profits, and to do so they must be as efficient and productive as possible. Government-owned railroads seek to maximize political popularity, and to do so they must favor actions that are highly visible and often are highly inefficient and unproductive because economic costs translate into political benefits. Continue reading →

VTA to Resume Running Light Rail — Someday

By | | Transportation
1 Comment

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) announced that it is going to resume running its light-rail trains. It doesn’t know when it is going to do it, but it has a plan. The plan is pretty vague but it hints the trains might be accepting passengers again by the end of July, although the agency’s CEO admits that mid-August is more likely.

As Antiplanner readers will remember, on May 26, a disgruntled employee killed nine other VTA workers at the light-rail maintenance center and then shot himself. The shut-down of the maintenance center meant no light-rail trains could run while police were doing their investigation.

To make matters worse, VTA said it didn’t have enough bus drivers to replace light-rail service. What buses and drivers it had were dedicated to the “regular bus network that serves the majority of our riders who rely on public transit the most,” the agency said. Continue reading →

No Light Rail for You, San Jose

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

After last week’s shooting, restoring light-rail service to Silicon Valley will take “weeks or months, not days,” says a representative of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). In place of light rail, the agency was providing “bus bridges” to serve light-rail routes.

On Monday, however, VTA announced that it would discontinue such bus bridges. Instead, it “is directing all resources to the regular bus network that serves the majority of our riders who rely on public transit the most.” In other words, light rail serves mainly high-income workers who aren’t riding anyway because they are working at home. So those who were still riding light rail before last Wednesday must hustle to find alternate transportation such as riding buses that don’t necessarily parallel the light-rail lines.

If these light-rail lines were so important to the region that they had to be built, it seems like they would be important enough to keep running buses serving their customers while the rail system is out of commission. VTA is tacitly admitting that it was a mistake to build them in the first place. Continue reading →

San Jose Discovers Light Rail Is Not Resilient

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
5 Comments

As of this writing, light-rail service in San Jose remains cancelled more than 24 hours after the mass shooting that left 10 people dead. This was a terrible event, and I join Governor Gavin Newsom in wondering “what the hell is going on in the United States?” Beyond that, I don’t feel qualified to write about gun control, mental illness, or other factors that may have played a role in this tragedy.

However, it does point out one more problem with light rail or any rail transit: such systems require central control that can easily be disrupted by accidents, terrorists, or other criminals. Buses, which the Valley Transportation Authority is using in place of light rail in the aftermath of the shooting, don’t need such central control and are less vulnerable to natural or human-caused disasters.

Light rail has been a thorn in the side of Silicon Valley transportation since the 1980s. San Jose’s bus-only system carried 38.5 million trips in 1984, or 29 trips per resident of the San Jose urbanized area, also known as Silicon Valley. Continue reading →

$85 Billion for Empty Buses and Railcars

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
4 Comments

The future of public transit is nearly empty buses and railcars. Yet President Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for spending $85 billion on transit. Although transit carries less than 1 percent of passenger travel in the United States, and no freight, this represents 28 percent of the funds Biden proposes to spend on transportation.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

Considering that the pandemic has cut transit ridership by more than half, while driving has recovered to 97 percent of pre-pandemic levels, this a poor, and poorly timed, use of public funds. Biden’s plan claims that spending more on transit “will ultimately reduce traffic congestion for everyone.” Other transit advocates claim that it will help low-income people as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But none of these claims are true. Continue reading →

Honolulu Rail Disaster Gets More Disastrous

By | | Transportation
9 Comments

When we last looked at the Honolulu rail project, less than a month ago, the projected cost had risen from $5 billion (when the city decided to build it) to $11.3 billion and the date it was expected to open had been delayed by more than 11 years. It’s gotten even worse since then.

Wheels that are too narrow will slip off tracks at joints like these, known as “frogs.” Photo by Meggar.

The latest problem is that the railcar wheels are too narrow for the tracks. To negotiate “frogs,” the places on switches where tracks cross, the wheels need to be a half-inch wider. Continue reading →

A Stagecoach-Age Monorail for Los Angeles

By | | Transportation
19 Comments

Nearly a year ago, an Antiplanner policy brief made fun of the many science fiction stories that portrayed monorails as the transportation of the future. The Antiplanner pointed out that monorails date back to the nineteenth century and are an ugly, slow, and often noisy form of transit.

An artist’s impression of what a monorail over LA’s I-405 freeway would look like. Note that the image accurately shows that the monorail has failed to relieve congestion on the freeway. Image from LA Skyrail Express.

So naturally Los Angeles is planning a monorail, which Forbes magazine gushes is “space-age” travel. More like stagecoach-age travel, as a monorail was used at the 1876 American centennial celebration in Philadelphia. Continue reading →

What Would Billions for Rail Buy Us?

By | | Transportation
Leave a comment

Last year’s Moving Forward Act, which was passed by the House but not the Senate, would have included $29 billion for Amtrak over six years, about triple what Amtrak has been getting. As the Moving Forward Act proposed to spend about $1.5 trillion and Biden’s vague infrastructure plan is supposed to cost $3.0 trillion, some people assume that plan will include about $60 billion for Amtrak and high-speed rail.

That wouldn’t be enough to complete the California high-speed rail project, must less build a real national high-speed rail network. As I’ve noted before, the cost of such a network would be in the trillions. High-speed rail supporters hope to get projects going in a couple of states that will make members of Congress from other states demand high-speed rail money for their states or districts.

What will travelers get out of all this spending? The 328 million Americans in 2019 traveled almost 15,000 miles by automobile, 2,300 miles by commercial airliner, 164 miles by public transit (of which 50 miles is by bus), and 19 miles by Amtrak. The official number for all bus, including transit, intercity, charter, school, and so forth, is 1,100 miles per capita, but I suspect the real number is 400 (350 for non-transit buses). Walking and cycling are officially 100 and 26 miles, but this only includes trips that have destination such as work or shops; when recreation and exercise trips are included, they are probably at least double that. That brings total per capita travel to about 18,000 miles. Continue reading →

Bus vs. Rail in Manhattan

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
3 Comments

The formerly free-market Manhattan Institute, which has lately become a shill for transit and other big-government subsidies, has taken a stand against spending $10 billion on a bus terminal in New York City. The only problem is that, instead of the bus terminal, the Manhattan Institute proposes to spend multiple tens of billions of dollars on new underground rail transit lines connecting Manhattan with New Jersey.

The Port Authority Midtown Bus Terminal. Photo by Hudconja.

The 1937 opening of the Lincoln Tunnel led to hundreds of buses roaming the streets of Manhattan after bringing commuters and other travelers from New Jersey. To reduce congestion, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey built a midtown bus terminal near the Manhattan entrance of the tunnel in 1950. That terminal cost $24 million, less than $210 million in today’s dollars. Continue reading →