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Miami-Dade Transit Earns a D

By | | Transportation
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With as much ballyhoo as it could muster, TransitAlliance issued a “mobility scorecard” for Miami-Dade Transit, awarding it a D for its Metro rail and bus programs and an F for its free trolley services (“trolley” meaning buses built to look like vintage streetcars). The criteria for much of this scorecard is be pretty simple: is ridership increasing? (it’s not) and what is Miami-Dade County doing about it? (nothing).

Based on these criteria, the Antiplanner would have to agree with the D grades (though F is pretty harsh for a free bus service). The real question is what should be done about it. TransitAlliance suggests creating a dedicated transit agency (instead of one run by the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation) with its own dedicated source of funding. TransitAlliance also wants to expand the Metro rail system, build dedicated busways, buy lots of new vehicles, and run trains, buses, and trolleys more frequently.

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Miami Having Wrong Debate over Bus vs. Rail

By | | Transportation
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On July 19, Miami-Dade’s transportation planning organization will decide whether to spend $300 million on bus-rapid transit or $1.5 billion on rail. As noted by the Antiplanner a year ago, this continues a debate that has been going on for years.

It’s a stupid debate because buses can move far more people for far less money. It’s even stupider because the $300 million bus-rapid transit plan is also a waste of money as Miami can’t generate enough transit traffic to effectively use dedicated bus lanes. The heart of the debate has nothing to do with transportation and everything to do with politicians’ egos.

“People in the south understand that if they settle for a bus, they’ll never get a rail,” said one politician. “Nobody wants buses.” Let me give you a clue: nobody except contractors and politicians really wants rail either. More than 90 percent of Miami-Dade commuters drive to work and less than 6 percent take transit (less than 1 percent of which uses existing rail). Continue reading →

Will Miami Settle for Modern Transportation?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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“Can Miami afford more rail?” asks the Miami Herald. “Or will it settle for buses?” That’s like asking if you can afford an IBM 700 mainframe computer from the 1950s or if you will settle for a MacBook Pro. Both buses and laptop computers are far less expensive than rails and mainframes, but the former are also far more flexible.

In 1972, Miami persuaded voters to put up the money to build a 50-mile heavy-rail system. With 80 percent of the cost paid for by the feds, they finally opened a 20-mile line in 1984, but then ran out of money having spent well over a billion dollars, far more than expected. Ridership was poor and people took to calling it a white elephant.

Memories grow dim, however, and in 2002 Miami convinced voters to approve another transit tax, supposedly to finish the system. Only a handful of miles were built, at the cost of close to another billion, before that effort ran out of steam as well. Continue reading →

Don’t Blame Housing Affordability Problems on the Free Market

By | | Housing, Urban areas
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Miami is one of many places where housing prices have reached crisis levels, and the Miami Herald editorial board blames the problem on the free market. Only government intervention in the form of subsidized low-income housing will fix it, says an August 3 editorial.

Wrong. Government caused the problem in the first place. No matter what the cause, subsidized housing for a few low-income people will not solve it, except for those lucky few.

Despite being one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, Florida housing remained affordable up through 2000. Miami was generally the state’s least-affordable housing market, probably because an influx of immigrants kept median incomes down. But from 1959 through 1999, median home prices remained between two and three times median family incomes.

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Will Miami Change Mass Transit?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Betteridge’s law states that, “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” While there are exceptions, a headline in the Guardian reading, “Could Miami’s rail project be test model that could change mass transit in US?” isn’t one of them.

The article claims that Miami is installing a new light-rail system being built with the financial support of Hitachi and Ansaldo. None of this is true. What is true is that Miami is spending close to $314 million buying new railcars from Ansaldo (now a subsidiary of Hitachi) that will operate on the city’s 32-year-old heavy-rail system, a system that is such a failure that it should have been scrapped rather than supplied with new and expensive ($2.3 million apiece) railcars.
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It’s ironic that a left-wing publication like The Guardian is effectively acting as a corporate mouthpiece for an international conglomerate. But all you have to do is mention the words “public transit” and progressives will fall over themselves to support you no matter how expensive and ridiculous your plans.

Every Kind of Fail

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
3 Comments

Does Miami need a light-rail line? In 1988, the Florida city built the Metromover, a 4.4-mile automated system that cost twice as much as projected and carried less than half the projected riders. Although Wikipedia claims this is a great success, the National Transit Database reports that it carried less than 31,000 riders per day in 2013 (less than a third of what Wikipedia claims and well under the projections).

In the same year, Miami also opened Metrorail, an elevated rail line that cost far more than projected and carries less than a third of the projected riders.

Then there’s Tri Rail, a commuter train between Miami and West Palm Beach that began service in 1989. Taxpayers have lavished around $600 million in capital improvements on this line, and spent $46 million subsidizing operations in 2013, for a commuter system that carried less than 15,000 riders (i.e., under 7,500 round trips) per day.
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