As America's largest city without rail transit, some people want San Antonio to "keep up" by building light rail. You need to know only one thing: Light rail is really expensive.
I mean, really, really expensive. The average mile of light-rail line costs two to five times as much as an urban freeway lane-mile. Yet in 2007 the average light-rail line carried less than one-seventh as many people as the average freeway lane-mile in cities with light rail.
Do the math: Light rail costs 14 to 35 times as much to move people as highways.
The Government Accountability Office found that bus-rapid transit—frequent buses with limited stops—provided faster, better service at 2 percent of the capital cost and lower operating costs than light rail.
If light rail is so expensive, why are cities building it? Starting in the 1970s, Congress offered cities hundreds of millions of dollars for transit capital improvements. If they bought buses, they wouldn't have enough money to operate those buses.
So cities like Portland and Sacramento decided to build light rail—because it was expensive. Only light rail would use up all the millions of federal dollars. Other cities that wanted their share of federal pork soon began planning light rail, too.
How successful is light rail? In 1980, before Portland began building light rail, 9.8 percent of the region's commuters took transit to work. Today, it is 7.6 percent.
Since 1980, Portland has spent more than $2.3 billion, half the region's transportation capital funds, building light rail. Yet light rail carries less than 1 percent of Portland-area travel. That's a success?
In 2002, Dallas opened a new light-rail line, doubling the number of miles in the city's light-rail system. The new line attracted some rail riders, but the region lost more bus riders than it gained rail riders.
This often happens because rail's high cost forces transit agencies to cut bus service. When Los Angeles started building rail transit to white, middle-class neighborhoods, it cut bus service to black and Hispanic neighborhoods. The city lost more bus riders than it ever gained in rail riders, and an NAACP lawsuit forced the city to restore buses and curtail its rail plans.
Is light rail good for the environment? Hardly. Dallas and Denver light-rail lines consume about as much energy and emit about as much greenhouse gases per passenger mile as the average SUV.
Engineering, construction, and rail car companies make huge profits from light rail. Their political contributions promote new rail lines. Siemens Transportation donated $100,000 to Denver's light-rail campaign and was rewarded with a $184 million railcar contract.
Some people say San Antonio should build light rail because Dallas and Houston have light rail. To paraphrase American mothers, if Dallas and Houston jumped off a cliff, should San Antonio jump as well?
Taxpayers lose because their money is wasted on rail when buses could do the same thing for less. Transit riders lose when transit agencies cut bus service to pay for rail. Commuters lose when money spent on rail, which does nothing to relieve congestion, delays projects that actually can reduce congestion.
Light rail is a giant hoax that makes rail contractors rich and taxpayers poor. San Antonio should be proud to be America's largest city that hasn't fallen for this hoax.
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We have light rail (in CA) and we love it. It may be costly at the beginning but it is well worth it in the long run. It is also one of those things that make a city desirable.
The money that is allocated for transportation will still be allocated for such and it will just be spent on something else..which may or may not be a smart option...but it will be, nonetheless.
Most people here prefer light rail to buses. Light rail does help with congestion by keeping cars (and in some cases buses) off the road.
With residences rapidly fleeing our overpopulated urban areas, and jobs becoming more decentralized and service oriented, the need for mass transit to deposit and remove large swaths of humanity to and from a central area, diminishes daily. Like it or not folks, the largest remaining employers in most cities , is the city and state government itself. In downtown San Antonio the ' legal community', Suburban dwelling lawyers, Judges, Cops and the countless social service type that depend upon the courts and feasting at the public trough, are just about all that works downtown. Doubtless these self dealing bureaucrats prefer to keep their power base intact, so it's important to keep up the pretense of a 'thriving downtown economy ', but the facts belie any such assertion. Indeed, most people in near major cities avoid going downtown unless there under a subpoena or there's a warrant out for their arrest . Certainly the same can be said for Dallas and Houston as well. One need look no farther than the ability to purchase gas, a toothbrush, shoes, or groceries after dusk in most Texas Downtown areas to question the viability and the wisdom of light rail. Personally, to paraphrase the movie 'Field of Dreams', perhaps if we don't build it, they won't come'.
A fundamental problem with this argument is stated right at the beginning: "average mile .. costs". There is a problem with calculating costs per mile or per passenger mile. Urban rail tends to serve areas that are much denser, where everything is packed closer together. Whereas the average commute on the highway may be 20 miles, the average commute on light rail may be 2 - 5 miles (these are guesstimates). Both the highway commuter and the rail commuter get to work; is the highway commuter better off because he traveled four times as far? Even if the average passenger mile cost is higher, the per trip cost could be the same or lower.
Another thing that this kind of analysis fails to account for is "the trip not taken". Passengers who ride rail to work, if they then run errands or go to lunch during the day will often do so on foot. In addition rail enables the creation of places where it is easier to bike and walk to work and other destinations so other people who never set foot on transit are benefiting from it and benefiting the taxpayer by using less infrastructure. Studies by Portland Metro show that transit stops with mixed use development have a 27% walk mode split compared with 9.7% for the rest of the county. Highways may be cheaper per mile but they require many more miles of infrastructure in the system because they are only compatible with a land use structure that simply takes up much more space.
The article says that 7.6% of the population rides transit now as opposed to 9.8% in 1980, mistakenly giving the impression that there are fewer riders. The population of Portland PMSA increased 40% in the same time period. If the author's numbers refers to the metro that would mean 34,000 new riders. If it refers only to the city it would be 5,000 new riders; this during a period when transit all over the country has seen significant declines. I wonder how many new/widened roads have been built in the same time period and at what cost? Again this also disregards the fact that some of that share may have been lost to walk/bike trips as described above.
It is true that in most cases buses could serve the same route for lower cost. The reason buses are not a good enough substitute for rail in most American cities is "Transit Oriented Development". Transit functions best when adjacent development patterns are suitable. Development patterns around new rail stations change to suit. Development patterns around bus stop stay exactly the way they are and most of them are not suitable for transit.
The only way to really equalize the playing field between transit and roads without public subsidy would be to charge user fees for all highways AND all local roads including finding some way to account for all the positive and negative externalities including pollution, congestion, noise, property value increases etc. Oh yeah, not to mention fixing all the regulations and market distortions that result in places that are not easily served by transit. When CATO and the American people are ready to change how we pay for our transit system writ large then we can stop building light rail with taxpayer money.