Search Results for: rail projects

Critique of Austin Light-Rail Proposal

The Cato Institute has published a critique of the city of Austin’s proposal to build a 9.5-mile light-rail line that would cost nearly $1.4 billion (which was briefly discussed here). “Austinites make more than six million person trips per day, of which the light-rail line would carry less than a third of a percent,” says the critique. “Yet constructing the light-rail line would consume 5 percent of the region’s transportation budget for the next 25 years, and operations and maintenance would increase the cost still further.”

The proposed line is only one of several that the city wants to build. Yet projected ridership for the first line is expected to be less than 20,000 people per day and no more than 2,500 people per hour at its peak. As an associated op ed in the Austin American Statesman points out, since ordinary buses can move far more people than that, there is no reason to build rail. (A similar op ed looks at a light-rail proposal for St. Petersburg, Florida; a more generic op ed is here.)

Not surprisingly, “Project Connect” (the planning agency representing the city and Capital Metro) claims that light rail has a higher capacity than buses. To reach this conclusion, it made the absurd assumption that an exclusive bus lane can support no more than one bus every three minutes, allowing buses to carry no more than about 1,300 people per hour. In fact, ordinary city streets, much less exclusive bus lanes, can support far more than one bus every three minutes. Planners are clearly biased in favor of the expensive rail option, as based on this one fact alone they concluded that rail was the appropriate solution for Austin.

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Megaprojects Invite Corruption

FBI agents posed as transit-oriented developers willing to bribe the mayor of Charlotte to get his support for a streetcar line, light rail, and related projects. The now-ex-mayor Patrick Cannon gladly accepted bribes in exchange for lying to investors and pushing city planning agencies to fast track the developments. When on the city council, Cannon had opposed construction of a streetcar line, but mysteriously changed his vote when he became mayor.


Who did developers bribe to get this project completed?

The Antiplanner isn’t enthusiastic about police entrapments, but this case brings to light one of the seamier sides of rail transit. These projects cost so much that they make some sort of corruption, if only in the form of campaign contributions, mandatory. The FBI sting has to raise questions about other rail projects and developments, especially considering the current U.S. Secretary of Transportation was the mayor of Charlotte just prior to the one who was stung.

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Killing High-Speed Rail Even Deader

Even as the prospects of stopping Honolulu’s $5 billion low-capacity rail project grow dim, the prospects for ever building the California high-speed rail system grow even dimmer. This week, California’s Lieutenant Governor, Gavin Newsom–once a strong rail supporter–has come out against the project. As theSan Diego Union-Tribune says, this is “another nail in the coffin of high-speed rail.”


At the 2010 groundbreaking ceremony for what was supposed to be San Francisco’s high-speed rail station, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (left) tells then-Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood that he is “extraordinarily excited” about the future of the train. Flickr photo from Mayor Gavin Newson‘s photostream.

Asked about his former support for the project, he said it was “a $32 billion project then, and we were going to get roughly one-third [each] from the federal government and the private sector.” Now, “We’re not even close to the timeline, we’re not close to the total cost estimates, and the private sector money and the federal dollars are questionable.”

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Another City Gets Conned into Building a Stupid Rail Line

Mumbai opened a monorail last week, the first 12 miles of what is planned to be an 84-mile system costing a total of US$2 billion. A high-density city like Mumbai may be one of the few places in the world where rail transit makes sense. But the Mumbai monorail has a design flaw that makes it as stupid as the most idiotic rail lines in the United States (of which there are many candidates).


Not only are the monorail trains small, their average speed is just 20 mph. Wikimedia commons photo.

That flaw is that the trains are no more than six short cars long, and can run only every three minutes. Even at crush capacity, the system can move only 7,400 people per hour. That’s a tiny fraction of what a real high-capacity rail system can move. New York’s Eighth Avenue subway line can move 30 ten-car trains per hour, and each car has a crush capacity of 240 people, making it capable of moving 72,000 people per hour. Americans won’t accept crush-capacity conditions, but even at American levels of crowding, New York subways can move at least six times as many people per hour as the Mumbai monorail.
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Light Rail & Low-Income Transit Riders

When Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) opened its West light-rail line last April, it naturally cancelled parallel bus service. But, for many people, riding the light rail cost a lot more than the bus. This effectively made transit unaffordable for some low-income workers, who now drive to work.


Click image to download a 2.6-MB PDF of this report.

A group called 9to5, which represents working women, formally surveyed more than 500 people who live near the West light-rail line, and informally interviewed hundreds more. It found that the light rail had put a significant additional burden on low-income families. In one case, someone who was commuting to work by bus for $2.25 per trip now has to pay $4.00 per trip to take the light rail, a 78 percent increase in cost. 9to5 points out that the cost of gasoline to drive the same distance would be about $1.25.

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High-Speed Rail in England

High-speed rail fortunately appears to be dead in the United States, but it is still alive and kicking taxpayers in England. In the last decade, the country spent 11 billion pounds (about $18 billion) building high-speed rail about 67 miles from London to the Channel Tunnel, a project known as High Speed 1. Ridership was disappointing: the private company that operates it expected revenues would cover operating costs, but instead has required government subsidies of more than 100 million pounds per year.


Click image for a larger view.

Despite this, politicians and rail contractors want to spend at least 43 billion pounds (more than $70 billion) on High Speed 2, from London north to Manchester and Leeds. Manchester is about 200 highway miles from London, and the rail line promises to cut a bit more than an hour off of people’s highway journeys. However, the train will take about the same amount of time as flying, and by my count there are currently 13 flights a day between London and Manchester.

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Low-Capacity Rail for Las Vegas?

Robert Lang, a professor of urban affairs at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, thinks Las Vegas needs a low-capacity rail line (aka light rail). As the director of something called the Lincy Institute, Lang’s job is to “draw state and federal money to the greater Las Vegas” area, and low-capacity rail is one way to do that.


An ACE Gold bus-rapid transit vehicle in Las Vegas. With fancy vehicles like these, why does Vegas need low-capacity rail? Click this Flickr photo by HerrVebah for a larger view.

Of course, that’s not the way he puts it. He claims low-capacity rail has “transformed urban development patterns in the West” by changing “housing development from water-consuming single family homes to multifamily, mixed-use projects.” I guess he thinks people in multifamily, mixed-use projects don’t drink as much water as people in single-family homes. It’s also pretty clear he hasn’t read research by the Antiplanner and faithful Antiplanner allies such as John Charles showing that low-capacity rail attracts no new development unless it is accompanied by large subsidies to developers.

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Big Loss for Honolulu Rail

Opponents of the $5 billion Honolulu rail project prevailed in their lawsuit charging that the city failed to consider a full range of alternatives before deciding to build rail. A federal judge ruled last week that the city was “arbitrary and capricious” in selecting rail and violated the National Environmental Policy Act in failing to present more alternatives in the environmental impact statement.

Construction on the rail line had already been stalled by a previous lawsuit that found that the rail project failed to comply with state historic preservation and burial protection laws when it failed to complete an archeological inventory survey for the 20-mile route before starting construction. Instead, it had planned to do the inventory just ahead of each step of construction.

Basically, the city let construction contracts and began construction prematurely because it wanted to commit funds before voters had an opportunity to stop the project. Voters will get their chance tomorrow, when former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano, who opposes the rail project and was one of the plaintiffs in the recent lawsuit, is on the ballot for mayor of the city.

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Clackistanis Threaten Portland Light Rail

In all the times it has been on the ballot, Clackamas County has never voted for Portland light rail. But Portland planners were determined to run a light-rail line into the urban heart of the county, so they persuaded the county commission to give them $20 million of the $1.5 billion cost of the 7.7-mile rail line.

Residents, who had previously recalled several city commissioners from office over light rail, didn’t take this sitting down. Instead, a group that calls itself “Clackistanis” put a measure on the ballot directing the county commission to spend no county resources on light rail without voter approval. The commission responded by scheduling a $19 million bond sale to take place a few days before the vote.

Rail opponents filed a lawsuit attempting to stop the measure. The county responded by canceling the bond sale just a day before the Oregon Supreme Court issued a restraining order against the sale.

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Rail Propaganda Is Not a Civil Right

Honolulu’s transit agency signed millions of dollars worth of contracts to Parsons Brinckerhoff and other consultants to spread propaganda in favor of its $5 billion rail project, which is a major issue in tomorrow’s Saturday’s mayoral election. When a member of Honolulu’s city council proposed to require the transit agency to terminate these contracts and limit its public relations programs to just one staff member (instead of the current ten), the agency responded saying that it was required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to issue the propaganda.

This and other federal laws, says the transit agency, “require recipients of federal transit funding to engage in an active, inclusive, and extensive public participation and involvement process in the planning, implementation, operation, and improvement of public transit projects.” This would be believable if the agency ever actually listened to any member of the public who is not enthusiastically in favor of its vision of an ugly elevated rail line through Honolulu. While the agency has jumped through the hoops of seeking comments on environmental impact statements and other documents, it has totally ignored any the substance of those comments (such as a request that the agency compare rail with a wide range of alternatives).
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Propaganda is not public involvement, and transit agencies that conduct advertising or other campaigns to gain support for their projects (as opposed to simply getting new riders) are deceiving the public and wasting their money.