Search Results for: rail

Plotting Transit’s Demise

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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A new website designed to help people plot the demise of public transit has been posted and is being publicized by, of all groups, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). To be fair, by “plot” I don’t mean “scheme” but “make a graph.”

Click image for a larger view.

The web site makes graphs showing weekly ridership for the nation or for any region or transit agency. Graphs can show the last four, 13, 26, or 52 weeks. Users can also access data showing ridership in the last 52 weeks either in absolute numbers or as a percentage of the same week from the year before. Continue reading →

Transportation & the Pandemic

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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As noted here previously, Americans are driving at least 90 percent as much as they were before the pandemic, while transit ridership seems stuck at around 37 percent. The Federal Highway Administration hasn’t yet posted driving data for October, but I’ve used data from Amtrak monthly performance reports and the Transportation Security Administration to track what has happened to intercity rail and air travel.

As the chart shows, air travel is also at 37 percent but, unlike transit, it is growing. Amtrak slowly grew to 24 percent by September but remained there in October. Continue reading →

A Billion Here, a Billion There . . .

By | | Transportation
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The city of Honolulu has now officially admitted that completing its misbegotten rail transit project will cost more than $10 billion and that it won’t be done until 2033. When first proposed back in 2006, it was supposed to cost less than $3 billion and when construction began in 2013 it was supposed to begin operations early this year.

Although it will be completely elevated, leading the Federal Transit Administration to classify it as heavy rail, the trains Honolulu has purchased will only have the capacity of light rail. It is costing more per urban resident than any rail line in the world, yet it won’t be able to carry as many people per hour as a bus-rapid transit line.

Meanwhile, Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD), which has suffered its own cost-overruns, is enthused about the idea of spending $2.5 billion for a 45-mph Front Range train from Ft. Collins to Pueblo. RTD’s own FasTracks rail project ended up costing more than twice as much as was promised to voters, forcing RTD to at least delay construction on a proposed line to Longmont.

When that line was at the stage that Front Range rail is at now, RTD estimated that it would cost $211 million. By 2008, the cost had risen to more than $700 million and the line was expected to carry so few riders that taxpayers would end up paying $60 a ride. Continue reading →

What Infrastructure Crisis?
Bridges & Roads Are In Great Shape

By | | Policy brief
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America’s bridges and highways are in very good to excellent condition, according to data recently released by the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA). Moreover, to the extent that their condition is changing over time, it tends to be improving as highway agencies replace outdated infrastructure and conduct regular maintenance on existing infrastructure.

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

These conclusions are completely contrary to the story told by interest groups such as the American Society of Civil Engineers, whose latest infrastructure report card gave highways a “D” grade and bridges a “C+.” These groups want Congress to pass a giant infrastructure bill, spending money the nation doesn’t have building infrastructure the nation doesn’t need, all to the benefit of engineers and other groups supporting such a bill. Continue reading →

$300 Million a Mile for 8-mph Transit

By | | Transportation
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The United States is not the only country where transit agencies are spending far too much money building obsolete infrastructure. TransportNSW (for New South Wales) has spent AU$3.1 billion (US$2.3 billion) building a 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) South East light-rail line in Sydney that’s slower than buses making the same journey. For those who are counting, that’s more than $300 million a mile in U.S. dollars, putting it well above the average U.S. light-rail project.

An existing (Dulwich) light-rail line crosses over the construction site for the South East in 2018. Photo by Gareth Edwards.

When first approved in 2014, the line was estimated to cost AU$1.6 billion. The project went through the usual cost overruns that nearly doubled the price. One reason was that the contractor hired to build the project successfully sued the New South Wales government, saying that the government had severely understated the amount of utility relocations that would be required during construction. The company won a settlement of AU$576 million. Continue reading →

Greasing the Gears of Deficit Spending

By | | Transportation
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Washington Metro says it will have to end weekend train service, close 19 rail stations, and reduce bus service by 45 percent if Congress doesn’t give the transit industry $32 billion (on top of normal federal funding of $13 billion) in 2021. In order to keep from making similar cuts, San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) says it will spend money that voters had approved for roads on transit instead. All over the country, transit agencies are preparing for doomsday, when they run out of the $25 billion that Congress gave them (in addition to the normal $13 billion) in 2020.

The New York Times editorial board thinks it has found the solution to problems like these: pork barrel. “Nothing greases the gears of government quite like pork,” it says. Specifically, the Times calls for a return to earmarks, which were banned in 2011 when a Tea Party-dominated Congress rebelled against wasteful spending.

During most of the twentieth century, Congress appropriated transportation dollars in general categories, such as airports, highways, and railroads, and gave them to state agencies to decide how best to spend them within broad guidelines. This was based on a philosophy of government that the local people understand their problems better than people sitting in offices in Washington DC. Continue reading →

How Transit Subsidies Harm Poor People

By | | Policy brief
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The nation’s transit agencies received nearly $56 billion in subsidies from taxpayers in 2019. One frequently used justification for these subsidies is that transit provides mobility to low-income people. Yet in reality transit subsidies do far more harm than good for low-income people.

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

Most of the taxes used to support transit are regressive, which means low-income people pay disproportionate shares of their incomes to keep transit going. Yet the goal of most transit capital spending has been to attract upper-income people to ride transit, a goal which apparently has been met as transit commuters have significantly higher median incomes than other workers. Meanwhile, the mobility that transit provides to people who don’t have cars is pathetic, as the typical urban resident can reach 30 times as many jobs in a 30-minute auto drive as a 30-minute transit ride and can actually reach more jobs on a bicycle ride of 40 minutes or less than a transit trip of similar length. Continue reading →

Amtrak Continues to Lie

By | | Transportation
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Amtrak is maintaining the twin fictions that subsidies from state taxpayers are “passenger revenues” and that depreciation isn’t a real cost even though its accountants list it as an operating cost on its consolidated financial statements. Based on these fictions, Amtrak claimed that it was “on track to break even financially for the first time in its history” in 2020.

The pandemic derailed that fantasy, so now Amtrak claims that it lost $801 million in fiscal year 2020 (which for Amtrak ended on September 30). Yet a close look at its unaudited end-of-year report reveals that the actual operating losses were well over $2 billion.

The end-of-year report says that Amtrak received $342 million in state operating subsidies, up $110 million from 2019. It counts these as passenger revenues even though most of the passengers on state-supported trains would never have ridden those trains if they were asked to pay the full fares. Continue reading →

The Obscure Origins of the Deep State

By | | Policy brief
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The idea that there is a “deep state” is strongly associated with Trump-loving conservatives. Many other people view this as a nonsensical conspiracy theory. But the United States does have a deep state. Another term for it is government bureaucracy.

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

The nation’s founders envisioned three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. These branches had different powers and were designed to act as checks and balances against one another. It worked, more or less, for many years. Continue reading →

Don’t Blame Congress for Transit Cuts

By | | Transportation
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“D.C. Metro faces service cuts due to Congress,” says a recent headline. The Metro board decided yesterday to cut both bus and rail service, but said it wouldn’t have needed to make those cuts if Congress had passed another bailout bill.

But don’t blame Congress for not spending money the federal government doesn’t have to rescue transit agencies that have already had a $25 billion bailout and more than six months to adjust to the new reality of much lower ridership. Instead, blame the fact that most DC transit riders are able to work at home, with the result that ridership is down 81 percent as of September. Blame the fact that, instead of cutting service in parallel with the drop of ridership and revenues, Metro cut service by only 42 percent as of September.

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