[sustran] Re: UK Funding switch from Light Rail to Busway

[Jonathan E. D. Richmond]

The situation Brendan describes in Ireland seems to be almost universal.
As I found in my work (and as Don Pickrell established before me),
forecasts are overestimated, costs underestimated and -- more important --
there is a lack of realistic analysis of alternatives, which are assumed
to be inferior from the start. Such analysis as takes place is usually
biased: For example, a rail plus feeder bus network is compared to a bus
only network, but the cost of the feeder buses is left out!

In case any of you have not yet seen Randy O'Toole's response to Todd
Litman, I am posting it below. I differ from Randy on his views of sprawl,
and support the provision of public transport with public subsidies where
appropriate, but I believe his analysis should be noted. My own analysis,
(which I will be pleased to send anyone interested), shows that new rail
projects in the US are a failure in every case except San Diego, and we do
need to look at the record of such new projects to understand what is
happening and not look at data for New York which really is not going to
tell us much about the likelihood of success in rather different
situations.

                               --Jonathan


-----

Jonathan E. D. Richmond                               02 524-5510 (office)
Visiting Fellow                               Intl.: 662 524-5510
Transportation Engineering program
School of Civil Engineering, Room N260B               02 524-8257 (home)
Asian Institute of Technology                 Intl.: 662 524-8257
PO Box 4
Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120                        02 524-5509 (fax)
Thailand                                      Intl:  662 524-5509

e-mail: richmond at ait.ac.th               Secretary:  Ms. Nisarat Hansuksa
        richmond at alum.mit.edu		              02 524-6051
					      Intl:  662 524-6051
http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond/


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 02:53:54 -0700
From: Randal O'Toole <rot at i2i.org>
To: Todd Alexander Litman <litman at vtpi.org>
Subject: Re: Comprehensive Evaluation of Rail Transit Benefits - Released
    Tomorrow

Dear Todd,

Thank you for sending me an advance copy of your rail transit paper.
I am sorry I haven't been able to review it until now. While our
conference ended last Sunday, I was still entertaining speakers and
doing other follow-up work through yesterday.

While I do not have time to review every statement made in your
paper, I would like to make some general comments.

1. NEW YORK DISTORTS DATA

I like to say that the U.S. has two kinds of urban areas: New York
and everywhere else. Nowhere else has a Manhattan with 52,000 people
per square mile and (more important) 80,000 jobs per square mile. New
York transit has more than twice the market share of the next leading
region.

Lumping New York in the transit data for any other group of urban
areas (as you do in your discussion of "Large Rail cities" along with
tables 1, 6, 7, and elsewhere in your report) produces distorted
results that are not reflective of other regions. Because New York is
so large and because it produces more than 5 times as many transit
rides as the next-highest urban area (and 38 percent of all transit
rides in the U.S.), the averages you get from lumping it with other
regions will be unrealistically high for any other region.

Similarly, the other six "Large Rail cities" are all older cities
with high-density cores that have not been built elsewhere in the
last century. While it is amazing that these regions have such low
transit ridership compared with New York, any results for these six
regions cannot be applied to newer regions such as Atlanta, Phoenix,
and San Jose. These newer regions are just never going to look like
Chicago or San Francisco.

This is why I compared each region individually and didn't try to
lump them together.

2. PER CAPITA TRANSIT RIDERSHIP IS NOT AN INDICATOR OF LIVABILITY

Much of your report focuses on the allegedly high per capita transit
ridership in rail regions. But why is this important? Even the
fastest transit tends to be slower and (because it is not
door-to-door) less convenient than the automobile. High levels of per
capita ridership thus suggest lower levels of mobility.

Perhaps this is because the city is so well designed that people
don't need that mobility -- the Robert Cervero argument for
accessibility rather than mobility. In fact, no urban area, with the
possible exception of New York (really, only parts of New York) is
designed to give people accessibility through transit.

This means that high levels of per capita transit ridership probably
mean lower levels of mobility, which in turn means higher housing
costs, consumer costs, and other costs.

3. THE REPORT EMPHASIZES POINTS IN TIME WITHOUT SCRUTINIZING TRENDS

Most of the indicators in Great Rail Disasters were trends: typically
1990 to 2000. Most of the indicators in your report represent single
points in time. Rail regions, for example, may have high per capita
transit ridership, but if transit commuting is declining while it is
increasing in bus regions, then that high ridership is pretty
meaningless. Rail cities may have slightly lower per capita driving,
but if per capita driving is increasing faster in those cities, it
will not do them much good.

Of your "large rail cities," Boston is the only one that is showing
much transit growth. Of your "small rail cities," Portland and, to a
lesser degree, San Diego are the only ones showing much transit
growth. That is hardly indicative of rail's great success.

4. RAIL COST EFFECTIVENESS IS GREATLY OVERESTIMATED

The report says that "rail transit is generally constructed in the
densest part of a city where capacity expansion is most costly." It
is equally true that rail transit is generally constructed in the
slowest growing part of a city where capacity expansion is least
needed. In any case, we have several examples of parallel rail and
highway construction where the rail cost per passenger mile was far
greater than the highway cost (I-25 in Denver, I-15 in Salt Lake
City).

Table 4 of your analysis compares user costs without mentioning the
huge subsidies for rail transit. Through gas taxes, U.S. highways pay
for themselves. Total subsidies to auto users are little more than
0.3 cents per passenger mile. Subsidies to the average transit rider
are around 60 cents per passenger mile, and subsidies to rail riders
are greater.

Your analysis also compares operating costs, when in fact capital
costs (when annualized using a standard amortization formula as
required by the FTA) greatly outweigh operating costs for rail
transit. That is like comparing the costs of housing but leaving out
the costs of the walls and roof!

5. HOUSING AFFORDABILITY DISCUSSION WRONG

The report says that "rail transit projects and smart growth policies
are generally implemented in rapidly growing cities where property
values are rising due to increasing demand." That is not necessarily
true. The fastest growing cities in the U.S. have no rail transit and
little smart-growth planning and their housing remains very
affordable. It is only in cities such as San Jose and Portland, where
planners have attempted to create a transit utopia by increasing
population densities that housing prices have become dramatically
unaffordable.

6. SAFETY DISCUSSION USES WRONG MEASURE

I compared the safety of various forms of transport in terms of
fatalities per passenger mile. You compare it in terms of fatalities
per capita. If it is true that smaller cities have higher per capita
driving, then they can have lower fatalities per passenger mile yet
higher fatalities per capita.

Which is the right measure? If you value mobility, as I do, then
fatalities per passenger mile is the correct measure. Though
regrettable, fatalities result from almost anything we do. The
question is whether what we do is worth the risk. Is getting to work
on time worth the tiny and declining risk of getting killed in
traffic? Apparently it is because most people drive.

If you don't value mobility, then fatalities per capita may be
adequate. But then you have to ask what the people in your smaller
rail and bus cities are getting for their mobility. I suspect they
are getting lower housing prices and other consumer costs, a wider
range of job opportunities, access to more recreation, etc.

7. THE COST OF SPRAWL IS EXAGGERATED

Your report says that I "favor automobile-oriented sprawl." Nothing
could be further from the truth. I favor freedom of choice and I
oppose government manipulation of people to get some predefined (and
ineptly designed) goal.

Cities without zoning (e.g. Houston) have demonstrated that, in the
absence of regulation, people prefer to drive and to live in
low-density, single-use developments. Cities with high degrees of
regulation and restrictions on driving and low-density development
(e.g., Paris, Amsterdam, and almost any other major European city)
show that people still prefer to live in low densities and to drive,
as driving is rapidly increasing and densities declining in almost
all European cities.

What is wrong with what you call "sprawl"? The Russians say that
"Americans don't have real problems, so they make them up." Sprawl is
one of those made-up problems. Pollution from auto driving is rapidly
declining even though we drive more every year. Auto fatalities are
also declining. Lower densities translate to lower housing and
consumer costs, lower taxes, and less congestion.

If people decide to move to higher densities, that is up to them. I
only oppose subsidies and regulation designed to promote higher
densities and discourage lower densities.

9. LACK OF REFERENCES A VALID CRITICISM

You accurately point out that I failed to provide adequate references
to some of my statements. I still stand behind those statements. In
one case, I said that most rail cities are spending over half their
transportation capital funds on transit. You can find the references
at http://ti.org/vaupdate24.html . I will send you the list of EISs
that I used to review rail costs and ridership soon.

Let me know if you have any questions or response.

Yours,

Randal O'Toole
-- 
Center for the American Dream
Independence Institute
13952 Denver West Parkway, Suite 400
Golden, CO 80401
303-279-6536
303-312-1577 (my voice mail)
303-279-4176 (fax)
541-297-6798 (cell)
http://i2i.org/cad.aspx


-----

Jonathan E. D. Richmond                               02 524-5510 (office)
Visiting Fellow                               Intl.: 662 524-5510
Transportation Engineering program
School of Civil Engineering, Room N260B               02 524-8257 (home)
Asian Institute of Technology                 Intl.: 662 524-8257
PO Box 4
Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120                        02 524-5509 (fax)
Thailand                                      Intl:  662 524-5509

e-mail: richmond at ait.ac.th               Secretary:  Ms. Nisarat Hansuksa
        richmond at alum.mit.edu		              02 524-6051
					      Intl:  662 524-6051
http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond/