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LaHood’s Cost-Effectiveness Rule

By | | Transportation
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It was with some trepidation that the Antiplanner finally took the time to carefully read the Department of Transportation’s final rules for major transit capital grants. Long-time readers may recall that the Antiplanner is concerned about the cost-effectiveness of these grants, and urged the Department to strengthen those requirements–without much hope that the Obama administration would pay any attention.

The law requires the Department to take cost-effectiveness into account when it considers applications for funds for streetcars, light rail, and other “New Starts” transit projects. But the Federal Transit Administration had always given this only token consideration until Bush’s second Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters, put some strict limits on just how expensive projects could be if they were to get any federal funds.

Secretary LaHood chafed at these limits, particularly because they prevented any funds being given for streetcars. So he announced in 2010 that he was going to get rid of the limits. On behalf of the Cato Institute, the Antiplanner commented on LaHood’s proposal to make the change and then commented on the draft rules.

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TriMet Makes More Friends

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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One peculiar thing about almost every light-rail line in the country is that fares are on the honors system. There are no turnstiles, no drivers who demand fares upon boarding (the drivers are in a separate compartment from the passengers), and no fare collectors.

Instead, there are ticket boxes at stations and an occasional fare inspector who issues expensive tickets ($175 in Portland) to people who aren’t carrying proof of payment. If the potential for abuse by freeloading passengers is great, the potential for alienating fare-paying customers is almost as serious, particularly since the fare rules aren’t always clear and the ticket boxes at the stations don’t always work.

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Naturally, the attorney who was banned from riding the trains is suing. We can only hope that the court will determine that, not only do people have free-speech rights, they have the right to claim they have free-speech rights without fear of being kicked off the trains. In the meantime, I advise the attorney to telecommute or start riding a bicycle to work.

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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Should New York Rebuild the Subways?

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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After Hurricane Katrina, some people argued that we shouldn’t rebuild New Orleans, not simply because it was below sea level but because the city was economically and politically dysfunctional. The same argument could be made for the New York City subway system, which was so heavily damaged by Sandy that repairing it could cost “tens of billions of dollars.”

You could always swim to work.

It’s not just the subways, of course: the entire transit system has been damaged. But in the suburbs, at least, buses on streets can easily substitute for rail.

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DC Metro Continues to Decline

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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It’s a sign of distinction that the Washington Metro Rail system has not one but at least two blogs dedicated to documenting the system’s poor operating condition. One of the blogs reports that, in July, MetroRail suffered from nearly 500 problems that led to a “deviation from normal scheduled service,” all but about 20 of which were due to maintenance failures.

The other blog reviews a recent WMATA report on the system’s health and concludes that “it’s the trains, stupid,” meaning that the train cars are experiencing so many breakdowns that “Metro should lay off the track work for a while” and concentrate on repairing the railcars.

The problem with that is that tracks and signals are responsible for lots of problems too. Broken rails are common, with an average of nearly one cracked rail a week in 2011. Faulty signals, of course, were responsible for the crash that killed nine people in 2009. Signals may cause the fewest number of equipment-related train delays, but nobody wants to admit they were busy fixing doors but letting people die because they neglected the signals.

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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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Oahu Rail Construction Halted

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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The City of Honolulu was so anxious to start construction of its $5 billion rail line before voters could elect an anti-rail mayor that it began without completing the legally required archeological surveys. Only about a quarter of the surveys have been done, and the rest won’t be completed before the end of the year. As a result, the state Supreme Court has put a stop to construction until those surveys are done.

The city argues that delaying construction will simply make the rail line even more expensive. But that’s what happens when you fail to comply with a law that, no doubt, rail advocates would have eagerly used to delay any new highway construction.
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As University of Hawaii engineer Panos Prevedouros notes, costs have already nearly doubled from estimates made in 2002. Mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano, who won a plurality but not quite a majority in the recent primary, argues that improving the bus system would do more to provide mobility at a far lower cost.

Bloomberg: Taxpayers Gouged by Transit

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Bloomberg News, or at least a writer named Stephen Smith, has discovered that the transit industry is gouging taxpayers with its schemes for high-cost rail transit and high-speed rail. Smith says there are two causes for this gouging.

First, “agencies can’t keep their private contractors in check,” and instead hire “consultants who consultant with consultants and advisers who advise advisers.” This drives up the cost of planning and building rail lines. Second, antiquated labor practices drive up the cost of operating the trains.

Smith makes good points, but his implicit assumption, that fixing these problems would make passenger rail transportation economically feasible, is wrong. He cites several examples in Europe and Japan of “how it ought to be done,” but the fact is that European and Asian countries are wasting their money on rail transit as well.

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A Model for the Nation

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood says that Washington DC’s Silver line is a “model” for “other places in the country.” Let’s see:

Is the line over budget? Of course.

Will the new line disrupt service on other transit lines? Totally.

Is the region building new rail transit lines even when it doesn’t have enough money to maintain existing lines? Absolutely.

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Is the rail line being built by an agency known even to LaHood for its corruption? Yep.

Is the rail line being funded by stealing money from other transportation users? Naturally.

That’s quite a model you have there, Mr. Immobility.

“You’ll Be Given Cushy Jobs”

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Mame Reiley, a professional political activist who supports liberal Democratic causes in Virginia, recently resigned from the board of directors of the Washington Metropolitan Airport Authority (WMAA), the entity that is extending Metrorail to the Dulles Airport. Immediately upon resigning, the authority hired her as an “advisor” and will pay her $180,000 a year.

Since she supposedly resigned from the board for health reasons, the Antiplanner has to wonder if she is really worth $180,000 a year. Is this her reward for helping plan the WMAA’s political campaigns to finance the insanely expensive rail line? Or does the authority expect to tap into her expertise as it negotiates the final pieces of funding for the project?
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In any case, expensive projects such as airports and rail lines attract political attention because of their potential to provide cushy jobs for their political supporters. The Washington Examiner identifies four other authority board members who received contracts ranging from $42,000 to nearly $1 million from the authority. While most would call this a conflict of interest, to some it is merely politics as usual.