Search Results for: rail projects

Peasant Stories

By | | Transportation
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News flash: A state-sponsored company in China has announced that has developed an electric typewriter that is faster than an IBM Selectric. HCN (whose motto is “we’re one step beyond IBM”) plans to sell an electric typewriter that allows typists to type more words per minute than any previous electric typewriter.

This demonstrates that the United States is falling behind in the critical electric typewriter race, just one more field in which other countries are demonstrating their technological superiority. IBM hasn’t even made a Selectric typewriter in the United States since the 1980s, which must be another example of manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. Members of Congress have reacted by proposing to tax word processing software so that the federal government can raise the billions of dollars needed to restore American technological superiority in this vital field.

Sounds ridiculous? Of course. Yet how is this different from saying that, because China, Japan, France, and Spain are losing money on new high-speed rail lines, we need to lose money building high-speed rail lines as well? Perhaps we should tax airlines to subsidize high-speed rail in the same way that some cities and states are taxing ride hailing to subsidize public transit. Continue reading →

VTA’s Transit-Superiority Complex

By | | Transportation
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San Jose light-rail ridership is declining, so the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) wants to speed up light-rail trains to make them more attractive to riders. To do this, the agency wants to give light rail the priority over cars, bicycles, and pedestrians at all intersections.

Having to “slow down to avoid hitting somebody that may be crossing the tracks,” says a VTA board member, “slows [the light-rail trains] down quite a bit.” Light-rail trains in downtown San Jose are “possibly some of the slowest in the country,” says a news report. “People are beating transit on their e-scooters,” frets San Jose’s mayor, who also happens to chair VTA’s board. “We’ve got to speed up the light rail trains, so that way, folks will be motivated to use them.”

San Jose light rail is far from the slowest in the country. According to the National Transit Database, it averaged 15.9 miles per hour in 2016, slightly better than the national average of 15.3. While they (along with all other light-rail lines) are slower in downtown, it’s the average speed that counts for attracting riders. Continue reading →

Are the Koch Brothers Killing Transit?

By | | Transportation
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Transit supporters have a new explanation for transit’s decline: the Koch brothers are killing new transit projects. At least, that’s what the New York Times says, and since that is the nation’s newspaper of record, it must be true.

According to the article published yesterday, Americans for Prosperity have combined with the Cato Institute to fight light rail all over the country. Since both of these groups were initially funded by the Koch brothers, it must be some sort of conspiracy.

Speaking for myself, I don’t mind being associated with the Koch brothers. After all, they support gay marriage, marijuana legalization, and ending Middle East military interventions. They oppose tax-increment financing, the use of eminent domain to take private property to give to other private developers, and NSA surveillance of American citizens. What’s not to love? Continue reading →

The Future of San Antonio Transit

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Someone asked the Antiplanner to briefly review the prospects for public transit in San Antonio. Much of my answer would apply to many other urban areas as well.

1. Transit Is About Downtown

A century ago, most urban jobs were downtown and people walked or rode transit to those jobs from dense residential areas. Today, only about 7.5 percent of urban jobs are located downtown; in San Antonio it’s about 6.2 percent.

Source: Wendell Cox, United States Central Business Districts for downtown jobs; 2010 American Community Survey table B08301 for percent of transit commuters. Continue reading →

Portland Has Too Many Loose Screws

By | | Transportation
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A loose screw caused the Portland streetcar crash that took place a couple of weeks ago, reports TriMet. The screw jammed up the streetcar throttle, making it difficult to impossible to slow the streetcar down.

Of course, this invites all sorts of invidious jokes that the Antiplanner can’t resist making, mainly because it’s nearly midnight and I’ve been working on too many other projects to have written a more incisive blog post for Thursday.

Anyone who watches Portlandia, which some consider to be more of a documentary than a comedy, knows there are a lot of loose screws in Portland. One of the first real examples of loose screws was the decision to build the streetcar line that opened in 2001. There was some plausible justification for light rail, at least at first glance, but streetcars made no sense at all when buses were better at everything streetcars could do except spending lots of money. Continue reading →

Broward County Fails to Learn from History

By | | Transportation
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The Broward County commission voted six to one to put a measure on the ballot to raise sales taxes by a penny to pay for transportation improvements. This tax, which is expected to raise about $350 million a year, will do such things as “enhance traffic signal synchronization, develop safe sidewalks and bicycle pathways, expand and operate bus and special needs transportation, [and] implement rail along approved corridors.”

That all sounds so reasonable until you get to the last one. Then it becomes clear that nearly all of the money is going to be soaked up planning and building a east-west light-rail line to complement the north-south TriRail commuter rail line. Never mind that light rail was obsolete ninety years ago.

This is the same county commission that spent fourteen years and millions of dollars planning a Fort Lauderdale streetcar project that was finally abandoned when construction bids proved to be far higher than the county had expected. Clearly, most of the commissioners haven’t learned the most important lessons about rail transit: that it takes too long to plan and build, costs too much, and always costs more than planners claim. Continue reading →

Taking the Not-Stupid Option

By | | Transportation
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The Puget Sound Transit board of directors considers themselves to be between a rock and a hard place. The projected cost of the eight-mile Northgate-Lynnwood light-rail line has risen from a low of $1.2 billion to $3.2 billion. The agency is counting on getting more than a billion of that from the Federal Transit Administration, but the Trump administration has been stingy about funding new projects.

So should the board commence construction now even if it means foregoing federal support? Or should it wait until federal support is assured and take the risk that costs will rise even more?

How about a third option: Don’t build it at all. It would have been a stupid idea if it cost just $200 million. It was a really stupid idea at $1.2 billion. It is an extremely stupid idea at $3.2 billion. It’s stupid because buses can do everything light rail can do, but do it more safely and at a much lower cost. Continue reading →

Half a Station Is Worse Than None

By | | Transportation
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The Washington Metro is adding a new station to its rail system, and — surprise! — it is over budget and years behind schedule. Known as Potomac Yard, the station is designed to serve a high-density, mixed-use development that is being built on a former train yard located on the border between Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia.

Metro’s solution to the cost issue is, essentially, to build half a station: one that would serve the north half of the Potomac Yard development but not the south half. Metro knew this decision would be controversial because retailers and apartment renters were signing leases in the south half confident in the knowledge that their shops and homes would soon be a few steps away from the a Metro station.

For example, a group called National Industries for the Blind (NIB) agreed to build its world headquarters in Potomac Yard. The group “would not have picked out Potomac Yard town center without knowing Metro would be coming,” said the developer in 2016. Metro is “absolutely vital.” Continue reading →

The Case for Neglecting Transit

By | | Transportation
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The American Public Transportation Association has just published a paper on the economic cost of failing to modernize transit. The paper claims that the roughly $100 billion maintenance backlog built up by U.S. transit agencies — mostly for rail transit — will reduce “business sales” by $57 billion a year and reduce gross national product by $30 billion a year over the next six years.

Reaching this conclusion requires APTA to make all sorts of wild claims about transit. For example, it claims that a recent New Orleans streetcar line stimulated $2.7 billion in new infrastructure. In fact, that new infrastructure (including a Hyatt Regency) received hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidies and low-interest loans from Louisiana and New Orleans. In any case, APTA fails to make clear how rehabilitation of existing infrastructure could generate the same economic development benefits as building new infrastructure. Continue reading →

Time to Pull the Plug on SW LRT

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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As noted here before, a light-rail line from Minneapolis to the wealthy suburb of Eden Prairie was originally supposed to cost $1.2 billion for 15.8 route miles, or less than $80 million a mile. Now the projected cost has risen to more than $2 billion for just 14.5 route miles, or around $140 million a mile.

On top of this, the Metropolitan Council, which is planning the rail line, is in a dispute with a local railroad whose right-of-way Metro wants to use for the light rail. The railroad is concerned that light-rail construction will delay its trains. This dispute is being dealt with in a time-honored American fashion in which the railroad is suing the Met Council.

The Met Council is counting on getting $929 million from the Federal Transit Administration, but the FTA hasn’t signed a full-funding grant agreement and the Trump administration is resisting funding any projects without such agreements (though, as noted yesterday, it has made some exceptions). Local governments, however, would be responsible for covering all cost overruns including the recent $200 million increase in projected costs. Continue reading →