[sustran] Re: more on Bus and rail

[Alan Patrick Howes]

I'm not an expert on US funding arrangements, but if NYCTA can get
Maintenance treated as Capital (and thus presumably attract Federal
funding), I can see why they do it.

But the whole idea of separating Capital and Operating costs in the way they
do in the US is grotesque - the problem is that Americans think it is the
way God planned, and what America thinks we all have to think too :-)

The only thing to be said for it is that it (sort of) puts transit spending
on a level playing field with road spending. The big problem is that it
skews comparison of different transit solutions depending on how
capital-intensive they are (which is one of the reasons why our US
consultants are recommending an LRT for Dubai).

But the real answer is for proper cost-benefit comparisons of ALL transport
schemes, taking into account environmental factors too - as well as costs of
capital, and the sort of things Craig was talking about. Seems the reason
this is not done in the US is that they can't agree on cost parameters for
environmental effects - or even, I suspect, values of personal time. OK,
that's a real problem, but it should not stop an attempt being made with
quantified assumptions, plus a sensitivity analysis.

Of course, if this was done, in urban areas at least, few road-based schemes
would be justified. Perhaps, bearing in mind who calls the shots,  this is
why this approach is not followed in so many countries ...

Just my personal opinions.
-- 
Alan P Howes, Special Transport Advisor, 
     Dubai Municipality Public Transport Department
aphowes at dm.gov.ae
Tel:    +971 4 286 1616 ext 214
Mobile: +971 50 5989661


> -----Original Message-----
> From: BruunB at aol.com [mailto:BruunB at aol.com]
> Sent: Tue, March 05, 2002 3:40 AM
> To: sustran-discuss at jca.ax.apc.org
> Subject: [sustran] more on Bus and rail (fwd)
> 
> 
> 
> Is that you, Walter, who raised these good points?
> 
> Just to complicate things further, NYC's capital costs are 
> higher than average
> due to the abnormal complexity of the system and the starving 
> of repair 
> budgets for many decades, up to the early 1980s. I think this 
> is why normal 
> maintenance balloons into major capital investments.
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In a message dated 3/4/02 3:09:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
> mobility at igc.org 
> writes:
>  
<snip>
>  Regarding the costs of operations, it would seem to depend 
> on whether you
>  consider large scale maintenance part of operating costs or 
> not.  If you 
> exclude
>  large scale maintenance in New York,  the subways have lower 
> operating costs 
> than
>  buses, but if you include large scale maintenance they are 
> higher.  We have a
>  habit in the US of calling large scale maintenance 
> ''capital'' investment, 
> but in
>  fact the entire capital budget of the NYCTA is not actually 
> building anything
>  new, it is just keeping the system from further 
> deteriorating, other than 
> some
>  very slow signalling system improvements and perhaps 
> marginally better 
> trains.
>  
>  
>   >>
>