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| May 11, 2008 |
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by Emory Bundy Why do we support systems that almost never work? Since the record of new rail systems in America is abysmal, it is puzzling why they enjoy so much support. The answer lies in a marriage between an idealistic desire to recapture features of the pre-automotive era, when sprawl and congestion did not so blight our lives, and cynical, old fashioned, pork barrel politics. The introduction of urban rail systems in American communities almost never works. In addition to a loss of transit market share, such systems impose a perpetual burden in the form of higher subsidies. The consequence of such capital investments, followed by burgeoning operating subsidies, is to pay more and get less, while failing to address the manifest challenges of congestion and mobility. Why, in the face of experience, do many people still promote rail development, the quintessential non-solution? Later in this article, a list of affordable and affirmative responses to the awesome challenges of congestion and mobility will be presented, headed by lesson number one: don’t squander resources. Why Don't (Most) New Rail Systems Work? The fact that new rail systems almost never work is well documented.("Work" is defined as making a positive contribution to the cost efficiency of the transit system, and/or [ideally both] an improvement in the share of trips served by transit. The goal is to improve market share, not simply to add some new riders. If the community is growing and travel trips are increasing, local transit could add riders while losing market share, which amounts to going backwards.) The studies are legion, but among the most lucid and up-to-date are those by Jonathan C.D. Richmond of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. His most comprehensive study on the subject, which includes close attention to Los Angeles and Portland, is "A Whole-System Approach to Evaluating Urban Transit Investments," Harvard University (November 1999). He concludes, "[N]ew US rail transit systems have generally performed poorly. Total transit ridership has shown only minimal improvements and, at times, declined. Financial performance has been disappointing in most cases, particularly when understood in the context of the additional system costs imposed through the reconfiguration of bus networks to serve the new rail systems." A bit of history illustrates the underlying nature of the problem. The background was elegantly summarized by the late Dr. Stanley J. Hallett, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, in his short treatise, Common Sense: Until a little over a century ago, most of our ancestors worked at home. The farm or shop was around, near, or under the dwelling place. Primary trips were to the market to trade homemade products, or to visit neighbors or participate in local community life. Even the great migrations Westward were to establish 'homesteads.' Walking or riding in horse-drawn vehicles was all that was needed to get around. As new tools were invented, we changed the nature of our work and the workplace. Our skills and tasks were more specialized. Our homes became less centers of production and more places of consumption and leisure. We began to work 'away,' that is, away from home. We moved to remote work locations, and rails were embedded in the streets so that horses could pull larger trolleys. Then, electric motors replaced the horses. More and more of us went to work in horseless carriages. By this point, American cities were sited and developed where the rail head hit the harbor, because heavy items of commerce and industry could be transported efficiently only by ship and rail. The ports of Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland were hitched to an intercontinental rail system, an interurban passenger rail system linked a network of local communities, and intra-urban transport needs were served by trolleys and cable cars. It was an admirable and rather efficient system, shaped and confined by the technology of the era. That is the essential point: there is a fundamental interplay between the evolution of transportation technology, industrial and commercial siting, and human settlement patterns. The internal combustion engine changed everything. As cars and trucks became more abundant, people and businesses had greater latitude for settlement. The population distributed more widely across the landscape. The market for the formerly successful interurban train lines slipped until its operators could no longer afford to run the trains, and the lines were discontinued. In the Puget Sound area the trains were gone by the 1930s, victims of new technologies that enabled people to live, work, and form business activities in places that the old rail technology could not cost-effectively serve. Seattle's rail streetcar trolleys were gone by the 1940s, replaced by more flexible, rubber-tire buses. Contrasted with the social attributes of the rail era, today people live further from places of employment. The ratio of adults to children has grown. More women are in the workforce, and household residents head off in diverse directions. People change jobs and places of employment more frequently. A region once featuring a compact central city, connected by interurban rail to a modest number of compact villages, has evolved countless business parks, shopping malls, and low-density housing patterns. Every day people travel to multiple destinations, work sites, schools, and supermarkets. These destinations no longer need to be sited within walking distance, or in proximity to a rail line. And they're decidedly not. An underlying assumption of the rail promoters is that we've become dispersed and auto-dependent, we ought not to be, and by God they've set out with a vengeance to cure it. It may be understandable to long for a golden past, but it's an utterly fantastical impulse, and the cause of a great deal of mischief and waste. In 1950 metropolitan Seattle averaged over 5,000 people per square mile; in1990 the average was roughly 3,000, just like Portland. Growth management policies-strict adherence to urban boundaries, urban in-fill, smaller lots, and greater use of apartments and condominiums-could moderate this trend, with sufficient political will and skillful planning. But that is a very long-term strategy, because the built environment changes slowly. The evolution from a density averaging 5,000 to 3,000 people per square mile took 40 years. Now zoning codes, stipulated lot sizes, spacious single family homes, and height restrictions are embedded, and average family size is smaller. To significantly re-concentrate the built environment and "densify" the people who occupy it poses a formidable challenge, even if the region's county and municipal councils had the resolve to pursue that goal. Portland is nationally famous for its pioneering growth management policies, yet after three decades its population density is utterly conventional for an American city. It makes sense to curb sprawl and use land more efficiently. It is critically important to protect environmentally sensitive areas, and desirable to maintain existing forests and farmlands. The provision of bicycle and walking paths, and easy access to transit facilities for those who prefer and need them, are desirable objectives. But the ability of rail transport to contribute to such constructive goals is negligible to nonexistent. Rather, these intrinsically attractive amenities have been disingenuously highjacked, and used to promote an outdated, inflexible, noisy, capital-intensive, ruinously expensive-to-operate rail system-with the unstated premise that good urban design can exist only by imposing immense costs on taxpayers. It is akin to the advertising stratagems of clever auto-makers and cigarette companies that hype themselves and promote their own ends by shrewdly associating their names with gorgeous scenery, macho guys, and beautiful women. Who is it that signs off on these extravagant rail systems, imploring voters, assigning funds, lobbying congress? Local government officials: mayors, county executives, council members. Who is it that zoned the land for sprawl? The exact same institutions, and by and large they're still doing it. Having caved to the pressures to zone for sprawl, now they cave to the pressures to spend for rail-hence pleasing land developers, the construction industry, and rail buffs alike. It's not a bad strategy for staying in power, but it doesn't offer much as a response to traffic congestion. The Los Angeles urban area, today, is far more concentrated than metropolitan Seattle or Portland-5,800 people per square mile. Immense determination, political courage, and policy discipline would be necessary for Seattle or Portland to match that density two generations hence. And an ambitious, horrifically expensive effort to serve LA with rail has been an unmitigated disaster in that still widely distributed region. Over the past three decades Boston has added light rail and commuter rail lines, and integrated its entire metropolitan transit system. During that period, ridership has remained essentially static, market share has diminished, and annual transit subsidies have exploded from $30 million to $560 million per year-which still isn't enough to sustain transit operations. So why doesn't rail generally work in American cities? The reason is exceedingly simple: the technology is far too expensive. Sound Transit is setting out to serve the transportation needs of a far-flung region with alight rail system estimated to cost $100 million per mile. People have a complex set of destinations they need to reach: how extensive a network can be formed at a cost of $100 million per mile? But unless the transit system becomes a highly elaborated network, it simply cannot get many people from where they are to the myriad destinations to which they routinely travel. Even buses fail to do the job well, and they're far better suited to the task than trains are. They're less costly, more flexible, and consequently forge a more intricate network of service. But train promoters shamelessly use the shortcomings of buses as an excuse to promote rail schemes. When they succeed, they make an already inefficient transit system markedly less efficient, driving up costs, and driving down market share. As Professor Richmond found, and reported in Transitory Dreams: How New Rail Lines Often Hurt Transit Systems. [C]apital expenditures on new rail systems often drain resources from lower-cost but more effective alternatives. Nowhere has this been more clear than in Los Angeles, where the damage to bus ridership from the diversion of resources to rail far exceeds any ultimate benefit expected to be derived from rail, a situation that recently provoked a civil-rights lawsuit. (The suit was brought on behalf of low-income and ethnic minority citizens and bus drivers, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority is now under federal court order to quit beggaring service and raising fares for low-income bus riders while lavishing resources on up-scale train riders. It must put hundreds of buses back into operation, improve service, and reduce bus fares. The roughly 15percent of LA MTA patrons on the trains [average income $65,000] have been the beneficiaries of 45 percent of the subsidies, while the 85 percent on the buses [average income less than $15,000] have received 55 percent-or roughly one-fifth the level of per-ride transit subsidy.) Rail dreamers can fantasize about recreating the train-dependent human settlement patterns of the 19th century, but it is absolutely impossible, for this simple reason: they're not prepared to outlaw the competition, the automobile. So it's the rail partisans' cumbersome, rigid, enormously expensive, hard-to-get-to technology vs. a nimble, efficient, affordable, sexy, instantly-available system of transport-the car-that comes equipped with heat, air conditioning and stereophonic sound. See if you can pick the winner. There is one qualification to the statement above, allowing that it's possible to install a defensible urban transit project with today's rail technology. The fundamental requirement is a modest-priced system injected into a sufficiently promising transportation corridor, so the capital requirements are not crazy, and it can operate without too heavy a subsidy. For example, San Diego acquired an existing right-of-way in a corridor with a great deal of potential, and put a train into operation for $11 million per mile. It has proven to be a sensible transit investment. Similarly, Chicago's suburban commuter rail system, METRA, identified some promising, pre-existing corridors, put them into service at modest cost, and they do quite well. In short, unlike rail systems generally, these systems maintain a reasonable relationship between costs and benefits, and have enhanced transit operations. While these projects are hardly a panacea for urban congestion, they are sensible additions to the transportation mix of their communities. In contrast, Seattle's Link light rail system promises to seta new standard for extravagance and inefficiency.
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