Transit agencies need $25 billion to infect us with Wuhan Flu
Most cities should shut down their transit and move to reimburse the poor for ridesharing/taxi trips (the cities should negotiate prices and offer the poor transportation use cards with which to pay for their transportation). Most bus, train, rail, streetcar, tram, and other services should be eliminated. To the extent they remain, they should be privatized, which would trigger repricing at actual market prices. Here in greater Portlandia, people squawk when I make this argument because they believe that roads will become clogged with autos. But the reality is all transit in the metro area only carries about 2% of all daily trips and about 7% of rush-hour trips. So, go down to your local road, and during the day count 100 cars, then fictitiously add 2 cars to represent the daily transit load. Does that change anything? Nope. Do the same at rush-hour but add 7 cars. Ask yourself, "does that change anything?" Not much. Yet the cost of transit is astronomical. Portlandia recently built a bridge over the Willamette River, which cost 1 billion dollars, for a light rail line that extends 7 miles and which cost another $500 million dollars for a total cost of $1.5 billion. The fare does not even cover the daily rider use cost or daily maintenance. It is a joke. In 30 years, the city will need to rebuild most everything on the line except the bridge. These are dollars the city does not have. But that will not last much more than 90 years so even that will have to be rebuilt with money the city does not have. Did I say no one rides this light rail? All light rail in the Portlandia metro area accounts for about 1.3% of daily trips. More people travel by skateboard and other weird alternative transportation mechanisms than travel by light rail. More than twice as many people travel by bike than travel by transit. Yet transit is the most expensive and capital intensive transportation in the city. We've lost our minds. I am optimistic that the Wuhan flu will begin to change minds and help us understand that these antiquated 19th-century transportation mechanisms need to go. Progressives need to stop facing backward in time yearning for the olden days and begin to look forward to the future and progress.
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