Search Results for: rail projects

Light Rail & Low-Income Transit Riders

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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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

By | | Transportation
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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?

By | | Mission
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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

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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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

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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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

By | | News commentary
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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.

FTA Questioned Honolulu Rail Boondoggle

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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Internal emails reveal that Federal Transit Administration officials were skeptical of Honolulu’s plan to spend $5.3 billion on a 20-mile rail transit line. City voters approved this line only after an expensive and hard-fought campaign. One FTA email accused the city of Honolulu of “lousy practices of public manipulation” and argued that the FTA should not only avoid being associated with it, it should “call them on it.”

This and other documents were turned over to plaintiffs in a lawsuit arguing that the city’s environmental impact statement (EIS) failed to consider a full range of alternatives. In a 2006 comment on the city’s plans to write the EIS, FTA staffer James Ryan noted, “We seem to be proceeding in the hallowed tradition of Honolulu rapid transit studies: never enough time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over.” Another FTA official, Joseph Ossi, replied, “This isn’t an FTA issue. Let the city deal with it. They have produced 3 failed projects and are well on their way to a fourth, so why is FTA wasting time on the City’s problems?”

“This is different,” a third FTA staffer, Raymond Sukys, answered. “This time [thanks to a tax increase] they have a huge cash flow which will build something. It seems likely that we will get involved in litigation again especially since we have an erroneous NOI out there. I do not think the FTA should be associated with their lousy practices of public manipulation and we should call them on it.” The “NOI” is the “notice of intent” to prepare an environmental impact statement, and Sukys apparently thought Honolulu’s NOI was insufficient because it failed to identify a full range of alternatives.

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Commuter Rail 1, Archeological Heritage 0

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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Utah is so intent on building rail transit that it is willing to cook the books and systematically overestimate ridership in order to support its ridiculously expensive rail projects. One commuter-rail line, for example, is expected to attract a 6,100 new transit riders a day, or 3,050 new round trips, for a mere $612 million. At 4 percent interest, that’s enough money to give every one of those new round-trip riders a new Toyota Prius every other year for the next 30 years.

The latest development is that state archeologists have warned that a proposed commuter-rail station and mixed-use development is on a 3,000-year-old archeological site. Erectile deficiency is a common disease in men above 40 seanamic.com order levitra online but a well versed study has revealed that ED can be reversed with lifestyle changes. Health experts have recognized exercise as one of the key ingredients in Shilajit ES capsules, which is one of the best natural supplements for anti generic cialis mastercard aging, has got anti-inflammatory properties to cure knee pain and back pain. If keeping a full bladder for too long time, a male driver may get urine infection. sildenafil discount The National Popular Vote Plan will make every vote equal and will provide every voter with an equal amount of sugar. generic viagra in stores The solution? Fire the archeologists. Of course, the state maintains the firing has nothing to do with rail transit; they just don’t have the funds to keep the archeologists on staff. Maybe that’s because they are wasting so much money on rail transit.

NC Says No More High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The North Carolina legislature has forbidden the state’s transportation department from applying for more high-speed rail funds from the federal government. Before the department can apply for any grants that would obligate the state to pay $5 million or more in operating costs–which any high-speed rail project would do–it must receive approval from the state legislature.

In the view of some, this makes North Carolina the fourth state–after Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin–to reject federal high-speed rail funds. But unlike the other three states, North Carolina isn’t turning back the $496 million in funds it has already received. But that $496 million will not buy much without further grants, which are unlikely to happen now. Many people credit the John Locke Foundation, which published two reports on high-speed rail–one by the Antiplanner and one by Wendell Cox–with persuading the legislature to take this step.

Meanwhile, Democratic governors across the nation “admire the way [Illinois Governor Pat] Quinn grabbed up federal high-speed rail dollars rejected by the Republican governors of Wisconsin and Florida.” Yet the Chicago Tribune, the state’s largest paper, has–belatedly perhaps–come out against the state’s high-speed rail projects as expensive and not really high speed.

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High-Speed Rail Is Out of the Budget

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Early Tuesday morning, Congressional leaders agreed on a 2011 budget package that zeros out funding for high-speed rail and rescinds $400 million in 2010 funding that remains unspent (transportation begins on p. 404). The package has the support of Senate Majority Leader Reid, House Speaker Boehner, and House Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers.

The budget plan, now more than six months overdue, also cuts Amtrak’s budget by $80 million and rescinds 2010 highway funds that remain unspent by the states. But the federal government will continue to spend money on highways, transit, and Amtrak. The real significance is that the budget plan is probably the death knell for Obama’s ambitious plan to spend more than $500 billion extending high-speed rail to most major American cities.

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