Why light rail is wrong for Tampa and
Hillsborough County Op-EdBy: Harry E. Teasley Jr. The Tampa Tribune January 16, 2005 Since 1981, two
dozen communities across this country have created light rail systems. Not
one of these systems has validated the rationales or lived up to the rosy
projections used by planners and advocates to justify investment in
rail. All
systems have been abject failures in reducing congestion. ·
Light rail has not lived up to the promise of reducing the
number of cars on the road. Light
rail does not get drivers out of their cars.
Not even one of
the nation’s 24 light rail systems carries 1 percent of all travel or even 1
percent of work trips. This is true
even for Portland, Oregon — the light rail “poster child” for the modern
urban community — where the city planners and politicians have
been promoting, building and subsidizing light rail for decades. If you build it, they will
not come. ·
Public resources that otherwise could have been available for
useful road projects are often allocated to light rail systems, leaving
much-needed road and transportation projects unfunded. The
result is avoidable congestion. Writing in Transport Reviews, Jonathan
Richmond of Harvard University has opined, “In no case has new rail service been shown to
have a noticeable impact upon highway congestion or air quality.” Over the last
twenty-four years, a massive database of time series and cross-sectional
(comparison) data has been accumulated, documenting the performance of light
rail in twenty-four communities. Unfortunately for local rail advocates, the
collective experience of these communities conclusively debunks many of the
optimistically happy
myths (see website) about light rail. The data and
experience has long been available to local planners, who nonetheless continue to
promote light rail as a “solution” to the mobility issues of Hillsborough
County. Why? Well, for those who benefit financially,
the answer is PORK. For planners,
some public employees and politicians, rail means: 1.
control, 2.
power, 3.
perks, 4.
privileges
and 5.
budgets. A less
pecuniary motivation, driving rail buffs, may be the romantic nostalgia that
rail can evoke. But for the average
taxpayer-commuter, light rail is an extremely costly venture that is: 1.
counter-productive,
2.
compromises
mobility and 3.
retards the
process of seeking real improvements to traffic issues. Rail is
expensive. Building rail can cost five times more per mile than building a
road. And since rail carries only a fraction of the
traffic of a single freeway lane, our community would end up paying lots and getting little. A Federal
Reserve Bank study concludes that it would be more cost effective to buy low
pollution cars for every projected new transit user. One would be well
advised not to believe the cost estimates that the promoters use in attempting to
sell their utopian visions (fantasies), because actual costs often dwarf
projected costs. Actual costs for the existing rail systems have been,
on average, 41 percent higher than projected costs. Costs are almost always higher and rider-ship lower than planners and
promoters project
(See website for Miami scandal).
While rail
doesn’t remove motorists from cars, it does remove riders from buses.
Typically rail lines replace bus lines and bus riders are rerouted to train
stations to become rail passengers. Most rail riders are merely displaced bus
riders. In LA, bus riders have come together in a Bus Riders Union to
fight light rail schemes that compromise the bus system on which they rely,
decrying the diversion of resources away from bus service, the transit mode
that offers the poor the greatest mobility and flexibility. Another myth is
that light rail is “rapid transit.” Rail's supporters tout its top
speeds, but in fact light
rail’s average speed is only 15 to 20 mph, not including: 1.
the time it
takes to get to a station, 2.
wait for a
train, and 3.
then get
from the final station to final destination. Buses can do
anything that one seeks to achieve with rail, more effectively at a lower
cost. The Government Accountability Office notes that even the most
extravagant kind of bus service (separate bus guide-ways) costs only about a
third the cost of light rail. Decades of poorly managed city bus
operations may have tarnished the reputation of bus systems, but there is nothing conceptually wrong
with bus systems. Not being tied to a fixed route, buses
are: 1.
flexible, 2.
adaptable, 3.
lower cost
and 4.
the pathways
already exist where riders might wish to go. Rail planners
often justify rail’s high cost by saying that the only way to get motorists
out of their cars is to provide them with a choice. Unfortunately, rail’s puny, barely-there market share shows that
motorists do not select rail even when presented with the choice. Quite simply,
there is nothing enlightened or progressive about rail—it is a step
backward. It is slow and inflexible — a
technology from the past, not one for the future. Asking motorists to
use rail is like asking office workers to exchange computers and printers for
typewriters and carbon paper. There is modern
technology—telecommuting—that does have a positive and increasing impact on
traffic and congestion. In Tampa, telecommuters already outnumber
transit commuters more than 2 to 1, and at virtually no cost to taxpayers.
From 1990 to 2000 telecommuting increased by 35% as users of public transit
decreased. Summary: The local transportation planners, opportunistic politicians
and editorial cheerleaders
who continue to promote light rail for Hillsborough County are unaware of,
have failed to avail themselves of, or have
simply refused to accept the truth and implications of the empirical information contained in
available databases. Light
rail is a well-documented disaster for transit users and taxpayers. The import of
the facts and logic is powerful and bad news for rail advocates. The concept
of light rail is simply an old turkey ready for the abattoir.
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