[sustran] More comments on profitability and more

[Eric Bruun]

Regarding Zegras and Cox' obsession with profits:

The answer is that the conditions are right in many places to turn
a profit. It depends upon what the conditions are like for the 
competition, namely cars, not just whether there is a public sector
that is unionized.  But just because it is possible does not mean
that one should necessarily charge enough to make a profit. Usually
subsidizing transit keeps total expenditures on transportation down and
makes cities more livable.  That is, people do not drive
as many cars as often and there are economies of scale in transit
operations.

The London Underground is turning about a 20 percent operating profit last
I heard and is using it for capital investment.  They can do it because
the conditions for driving are so miserable. But it is still stupid
policy to encourage people to drive through high prices, not to mention
very difficult for the low income people.  LU have had little choice,
given the Central Governments bias in favor of road building under
the Tories. Even the NYC subway is up over 80 percent of operating
costs due to a high fare policy combined with poor alternatives. 

Covering capital costs in addition to operating costs is much rarer, but
Hong Kong is an example (they own all of the real estate over the
stations.)  I suspect that Zagres and Cox solution to covering capital
costs is just not to have many of these; they seem to be advocating
bus/jitney only systems even in big cities. Show me a big city in the
industrialized world without rail transit that tourists want to see; the
three biggest metro regions without are all in the US: Houston, Detroit,
and Seattle. (I am a native of Seattle, and it is now completely
gridlocked.)

It is simply not true that increased car use and decreased transit
use is inevitable with increased prosperity.  Munich, Stuttgart,
Freiburg, Zurich, Oslo, Stockholm, etc., have seen increased
ridership of transit in the 1990s through a combination of (heaven
forbid) capital investment in transit, physical redesign of streets
and cities to favor transit, and disincentives to car use.  Meanwhile,
in the United States, where over half the public has seen a DECREASE
in real income in the last decade, transit has nevertheless seen a
decline in most regions and car use increases faster than population 
growth. So, income is certainly not the deciding factor.

I strenuously disagree with Cox' analysis of why transit investments have
been made in the US.  It is not because of powerful rail transit
investment lobbies. With the notable exception of California, all
transit lobbies are laughably weak.  The real reasons that particular
projects have been chosen are because of the disenfranchisement
of cities and the poor in general.  Almost the only kind of investments
allowed are for suburban commuting systems. Look at Atlanta, BART in the
San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington's MetroRail: all are suburban
commuter systems disguised in rapid transit technology and operations.
Almost all of the new light rail lines make a beeline to affluent
suburbs with very little coverage of the city proper. The Federal
Government has also contributed to the bias against city investments by
using a narrow criterion of incremental cost per new passenger that favors
long trips and high income communities.

I am not saying that these investments were a waste, because 
the alternatives would not have been better bus services or
intracity rail systems inherently more efficient than suburban
peak-hour peak-direction oriented rail systems. At least these new 
systems have been attractive enough to get people out of their cars. 
The real alternatives would have been more freeways and a more decayed 
central city. 

What rail transit bashers have failed to explain is why even areas that
could easily support rail transit do not have it; SF and Seattle have
corridors with 50,000 bus rides a day, the Philadelphia streetcars have 
not seen a dime of upgrade towards Light Rail standards in over 15 years,
Chicago's Green Line was allowed to decay so far it was almost abandoned, etc. 

I do agree that the existence of the jitneys in Miami and New York 
shows that transit is inadequate, but the solution is to integrate
them, like is now being done in Miami, not throw away the existing system. 
The jitneys do not serve the same markets as the rail system;
affluent suburbanites will ride MetroRail, they will not ride a 12
passenger van.  If anything the Miami experience only supports my
point that the needs of the low income city dweller have traditionally
been ignored.

Finally, the only thing I seem to agree with Cox about is that 
contracting saves money. In the case of Stockholm or Helsinki,
contracting saved money without cutting wages through operating
and work rule changes. In other cases, the savings come from
busting unions and converting jobs that pay a living wage into
ones that don't.  I am not too enthusiastic about
saving money in this way.

Eric Bruun