How New Starts Harms Transit Riders
"Rail transit lines built with federal support have done more harm than good to transit riders and urban transportation systems as a whole. Too often, the high cost of rail has forced transit agencies to cut bus service and raise fares. In the worst cases, the systems lost more bus riders than they gain rail riders. In most other cases, per capita ridership and/or transit’s share of commuting declined. These regions and transit systems would have been better off without the federal government enticing them into build rail transit." Portlandia is a transit Utopia if you believe the hype. But the reality is different. "Portland is supposed to be a great light-rail success story, and it has certainly been successful in getting the federal government to pay for most of the costs of its rail system, especially considering that local and state voters have rejected all proposals to increase taxes to pay for transit improvements since the mid-1990s. One reason for that rejection is that the benefits of rail transit have been minimal. Bus ridership on TriMet, the region’s transit agency, grew by 180 percent in the 1970s, and transit’s share of regional commuting increased from 7.2 percent to 9.9 percent. After TriMet started building light rail with federal freeway turnback funds in 1981, however, cost overruns forced it to raise bus fares and cut service. The light-rail line opened in 1986 to great fanfare, but the 1990 census showed that transit’s share of commuting had fallen to 6.8 percent. Since then, Portland has built four more light-rail lines, a commuter-rail line, and a streetcar line, mostly with New Start funds, but transit’s share of commuting in 2017 was still only 7.9 percent, well below the 1980 share. Two recent Portland lines, the $1.5 billion Orange Line and the Westside Express commuter line, are particular failures. When the commuter line opened in 2009 after a 60 percent cost overrun, ridership fell well short of projections and it has never made a significant contribution to Portland’s transportation system. The Orange Line similarly fell short of its ridership projections when it opened in 2015. While it led to a small bump in light-rail ridership there was a more-than-equal drop in bus ridership for a loss overall, although that may be partly due to the rise in ride hailing." Portland is a cautionary tale, not a roadmap. The Orange Line discussed above cost $1.5 billion but only transits about 7 miles. It, like all light rail, will only last for 35 years then it will need to be rebuilt, at a cost similar to the original construction cost. Since no one rides the Orange Line, it will never come close to recovering the sunk capital costs. Frankly, it will never make enough revenue to cover the actual operating costs, instead, it will likely only recover about 20% of operating costs. It would have been cheaper to simply allow the Orange Line riders to use Limousines than building and run the Orange Line, and the resultant pollution would have been lower as well. Also, note that the cut bus lines were mostly in poorer neighborhoods so the subsidies are flowing to the middle class and upper middle class and away from the poor and working classes. One would assume Progressives would be against such transfers from the poor to the wealthier but they are not, this is just how the progressives roll.
Comments
|
AuthorMaddog Categories
All
|