New Geography

Tag: rail

  • Finally, A Vegas Train That Makes Sense

    Las Vegas Railway Express has signed an agreement with the Union Pacific Railroad to operate a conventional speed train from Fullerton, in Orange County to downtown Las Vegas, according to a story by Michelle Rindells of the Associated Press.

    This is not to be confused with the proposed Xpress West (formerly DesertXpress) high-speed rail line which would operate from Victorville to Las Vegas, expecting riders to drive through Los Angeles Basin traffic congestion to get to the station. Further, unlike Xpress West, the Las Vegas Railway Express train would require no financial assistance from taxpayers for its largely leisure travelers. As we indicated previously, our analysis concludes that XpressWest revenues are unlikely to be sufficient to repay a proposed federal loan. This could expose taxpayers to a loss of $5.5 billion or more — approximately 10 times as great as taxpayer losses in the Solyndra federal loan guarantee debacle.

    The Las Vegas Railway Express promoters intend to take the full financial risk, as do most entrepreneurs who start businesses. Moreover, the Las Vegas Railway Express train would operate only when demand is substantial, with all trips between Thursday and Monday. The first trip is tentatively scheduled for New Year’s Eve, 2013.

    Here’s hoping the train is successful and that the owners make at least a competitive return on investment, while providing employees commercially funded (not subsidized) jobs, paying, not consuming taxes and with revenues earned from willing customers, rather than relying on public funding. And just as important, if they fail, taxpayers will not be left holding the bag. That’s how things should work.

  • The Future of Passenger Rail in America

    On October 19, an Amtrak passenger train hit 111 mph in a test run on a 15-mile stretch of track between Dwight and Pontiac, Illinois. It was the first tangible return from a three-year $1.5 billion program of improvements funded under the Administration’s high-speed rail initiative. The program hopes to shave about an hour off the 5 ½ hour rail trip between Chicago and St. Louis. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn who were aboard, called it a "historic" event. They were perhaps unaware, as Chicago SunTimes respected columnist Mark Brown pointed out, that "ten years ago, also on the eve of an election, the same Illinois Department of Transportation offered another demonstration along nearly the same stretch of track, also reaching 110 mph."

    Setting this pre-election rhetoric aside, of President Obama’s vaunted HSR initiative that promised to connect 80 percent of Americans with high-speed rail, only two true high-speed rail projects remain.  They are the California SF-to-LA Bullet Train and the "Amtrak Vision for the Northeast Corridor." The future of these two projects is discussed below. A condensed version of this commentary appeared in the Wall Street Journal on September 24, 2012.

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    High speed trains are hardly new — they have been crisscrossing France and Japan for over 40 years. But building a nationwide high-speed rail network in America is quite a novel idea. It originated with President Obama who, on April 16, 2009, announced a plan "to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within the next 25 years." The program was seeded with an $8 billion grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), later supplemented with an additional $2.1 billion in general funds.

    But this lofty and extravagant vision soon yielded to practical realities. One such reality is America’s demography. Unlike Western Europe and Japan, the United States, lacks an urban pattern that favors high-speed rail connections. This pattern requires large traffic generating city-pairs that are neither close enough to each other to favor travel by car nor far enough apart to favor travel by air. In Europe and Japan those distances happen to fall in the range of 200-400 miles (Think Paris-Lyon, 290 miles; or Tokyo-Nagoya, 220 miles). The only corridor in the United States that fits this description is the Northeast Corridor. No wonder, the Boston-to-Washington rail line has lately become a focus of high-speed rail planning.

    Another reality is that true high-speed rail service requires a dedicated alignment reserved exclusively for passenger trains. Such is the case with the French TGV, the German ICE and the Japanese Shinkansen trains— as indeed, with any train that runs at top speeds of 150 miles per hour or higher. Having high-speed trains share a common track with lumbering freight trains as the Obama Administration has proposed to do, is to invite serious operational conflicts and safety problems. But dedicated rights-of-way for high speed trains require relatively straight and level alignments with minimal curvature. To assemble such rights-of-way in densely populated corridors where land holdings are highly fragmented, would be extremely costly and disruptive if not totally impossible.

    Yet another reality is the uncertain prospect for further federal support. Such support is deemed essential for the future of the Administration’s HSR program (but not for the future of privately funded ventures such as the proposed Lone Star HSR line between Dallas and Houston). Congress, by denying White House requests for high-speed rail funds three years in a row, has sent a clear bipartisan signal that states should not count on continued congressional appropriations for high-speed rail. The lawmakers reaffirmed this intention by eliminating Title V of the Senate transportation bill (the National Rail System Preservation, Expansion and Development Act of 2012) from the final version of the surface transportation reauthorization (MAP-21). In the meantime, the $10.1 billion earmarked for high-speed rail has been fully committed.

    In sum, high-speed rail advocates, promoters and dreamers need a triple reality check.

    Improving Existing Rail Service

    But this is not to say that nothing should be done to improve and expand existing passenger rail services, especially commuter rail lines serving major metropolitan areas. Even though such improvements will not result in significant travel time savings, they could lead to more efficient, frequent and reliable transportation service benefitting millions of daily commuters. In 2010, commuter rail systems across the country provided service to nearly 460 million riders.

    Improving commuter rail services is indeed, the approach embraced by the California High Speed Rail Authority. Despite its avowed goal to link LA and San Francisco with high-speed trains, almost half of its initial $10 billion first stage of the project will be devoted to upgrading conventional transit and commuter rail services in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, the "bookends" of the high-speed rail line, e.g. through electrification of the SF-to-San Jose Caltrain and "connectivity" improvements in LA’s Metrolink.

    The dollars spent on commuter rail improvements will have "an immediate and dramatic effect" according to the Authority’s chairman, Dan Richard. Will Kempton, chief executive of the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) and chairman of the Independent Peer Review Group advising the High Speed Rail Authority concurs. It will be a good investment, he said, whether or not the overall $68 billion high-speed rail project ever gets completed.

    Similarly, in the Northeast Corridor where Amtrak has proposed a 30-year $151 billion capital investment program to bring true high-speed rail service between Boston and Washington DC, the initial efforts will be focused on "meaningful incremental improvements" in track, catenary and signals in the New York-to-Philadelphia corridor (the "NEC Upgrade Program"). This stretch of the line was chosen for the initial upgrade because it carries a heavy volume of local commuter traffic in addition to serving long distance trains. As in the case of California’s "bookend" improvements, the upgrades of the 90-mile NY-Philadelphia rail line will not only benefit large numbers of travelers – they also will be far more cost-effective in dollars-per-passenger terms than any eventual improvements raising line speeds over the entire Boston-to-Washington corridor.

    Thus, fiscal, economic and political constraints have caused both the California Bullet Train and the Amtrak vision for the Northeast Corridor — the only two projects that have survived on the Obama Administration’s vaunted high-speed rail agenda — to morph largely into a program of modest near-term improvements in existing commuter rail services. Lack of funds may prevent either project from achieving its avowed goal of providing true high-speed rail service— in the case of California, reducing travel time between LA and San Francisco to two hours and forty minutes (see Note below).  To achieve it, the California project will require $68 billion; the NEC program will need $151 billion.

    Is this goal even worth pursuing? Some people think so—in fact they passionately believe in it. They contend that in order to make our cities less auto-dependent we need to invest in high-speed trains. Minor upgrades in existing rail services, they argue, will not make a significant dent in auto use. But many planners beg to differ. They believe that the best chance of persuading current auto users to leave their cars at home is to improve the daily suburban rail commute. Business travelers will continue flying because they look for the fastest way to get to their destination. Families on vacation trips will not abandon their cars in favor of trains because cars offer the least costly and most convenient way to travel to holiday destinations. The only sector of the traveling public that can be influenced to shift to trains in large numbers are suburban commuters.

    What of the argument that a great nation like ours—a nation that built the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, the Panama Canal and the Interstate Highway System — should continue the tradition of visionary grandiose public works.

    Regretfully, both ventures have come at a most inopportune time. The nation is recovering from a serious recession and is trying to rein in the deficit and reduce the 16 trillion dollar national debt. At a more distant moment in time, when the economy is growing again and the deficit has come under control, the nation might be able to resume its tradition of pursuing "bold endeavors"—ambitious programs of federally financed public works that benefit the whole nation. When that time comes, perhaps toward the end of this decade, it might be appropriate to revive the idea of high-speed rail— at least in the context of the densely populated Northeast Corridor where road and air traffic congestion may eventually threaten its continued growth and productivity. For now, prudence, good sense and the nation’s fiscal well-being require that we lower our sights and focus on improving commuter rail connections.

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    Note on the Status of the California HSR Project

    There is a high likelihood that the LA-SF bullet train project will never get completed. Law suits are pending to stop construction of the first stage of the project—the Central Valley segment from Madera to Bakersfield. A motion for a preliminary injunction has been filed by Madera County, the Madera and Merced County farm bureaus and other opponents. The motion seeks to prevent the rail Authority from moving forward on the initial Madera-to-Fresno section until a trial on the lawsuit is completed. Hearing on the preliminary injunction is set for November 16.

    Even if the preliminary injunction is denied, construction on the rail section will not begin until the fall of 2013 according to a legal declaration filed by the Authority in the Sacramento Superior Court. What’s more, the Madera-to-Fresno section will not be electrified before 2022 according to the rail Authority—and then only if more funds become available. Additional legal challenges are expected over the Fresno-to-Bakersfield section of the line. The City of Bakersfield has already announced plans to file a lawsuit contending that the Authority’s environmental impact report doesn’t meet CEQA standards. The cumulative effect of these delays has led to speculations that the Authority may not be able to complete work on the Central Valley segment by September 2017 when the federal $3 billion grant expires. And if the federal money stops flowing, who will step in to fill the gap?

  • The Moonbeam Express

    Seldom has public opinion and expert judgment been more unified than in its opposition to  the California high-speed rail project.    The project has been criticized by its own Peer Review Group, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), the California State Auditor,  the State Treasurer and a group of independent  experts  (Enthoven, Grindley, Warren et al.).  In addition, the bullet train has come under severe criticism by influential state legislators and  by members of the state’s congressional delegation. Equally damaging to the project’s future prospects have been two public opinion surveys showing  that California voters have turned solidly against the project, and the opposition of  virtually all of California’s newspapers, including The Orange County Register, whose latest editorial we reprint below.  

    Editorial: Bullet train becoming "Moonbeam Express" (OC Register, Feb 1, 2012)
    Gov. Jerry Brown wants to use anti-global-warming carbon taxes to fund California’s much-maligned high-speed rail project. 

    In a brazen denial of the obvious, Gov. Jerry Brown now insists the proposed California high-speed rail can be built for much less than its own business plan stipulates, and wants to use anti-global-warming carbon taxes to underwrite the proposal, whose price tag has nearly tripled in the three years since voters approved it.

    The governor seems intent on demonstrating how California’s state government has burdened taxpayers with mounting debt, while overspending to create consecutive years of budget deficits. The rail project has been dubbed "the train to nowhere" because the only portion close to being built would link relatively sparsely populated Central Valley towns and no metropolitan areas. Perhaps with Mr. Brown’s new foolish insistence, it should be christened the Moonbeam Express. 

    Since the rail proposal appeared on the 2008 ballot, it has been widely and legitimately criticized in detailed analyses by the rail project’s own Peer Review Group, the state auditor, treasurer, Legislative Analyst’s Office, local governments including Tulare, Madera and Kings counties and the city of Palo Alto, numerous state and federal lawmakers from both parties and studies by UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation and the Reason Foundation. These highly unfavorable critiques reflect many of the criticisms the Register Editorial Board has raised since the project was proposed.

    In only three years, the train’s estimated cost has increased from $33 billion to $98.5 billion in the latest version of its own ever-changing business plan.

    Voters approved only $9.9 billion in bonds based on the rest coming from Washington and local governments along the route, and private investors. Washington has provided about $3 billion and not another dime has materialized or been pledged. Meanwhile, the estimated completion of the original phase of the project, from San Francisco to Anaheim, has been extended 14 years beyond the original estimate of 2020.

    Ridership estimates are unrealistic, meaning trains can’t operate solely on ticket revenue as required by the initiative. Costs, even at their current highest level, are certain to increase, and the needed additional funding sources are not forthcoming. Given hostility in Congress to the project, more money from Washington, which is grappling with its own massive deficits and debts, won’t be seen in the foreseeable future.

    State Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, introduced a bill Monday to put the high-speed rail proposal back on the November ballot so voters can de-authorize selling the $9.9 billion in bonds.

    The Register has urged this ill-conceived and increasingly untenable project be resubmitted to voters. Thankfully, for the most part, bonds remain unsold. There is no reason taxpayers should assume billions more debt — with annual interest payments of up to $1 billion — when the likelihood is remote the train ever will be built, despite the governor’s strained assurance.

    Moreover, state Sen. Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, notes that the governor’s proposed new revenue stream — carbon taxes created by the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act— is another hoped-for, rather than assured, solution. "The state’s cap-and-trade program is not yet in operation, and revenue estimates of $1 billion per year are unreliable and unsubstantiated," Ms. Harkey said. "Relying on projected revenues that fall short is the key reason why our state deficit continues to explode year after year. To rush this project forward, just using up the $3.5 billion of federal funds, with the hope of an additional funding mechanism based on guesswork, is irresponsible."

  • California’s Bullet Train in the Court of Public Opinion

    A business plan released on November 1 by the the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), has placed the price tag for the LA-SF bullet train project at $98 billion— trippling the $33 billion estimate provided in 2008 in the voter-approved Proposition 1A. At the same time, the date of project completion has been pushed back by 13 years — from 2020 to 2033.

    California state legislators who must soon decide whether to proceed with the high-speed rail project are facing an increasingly skeptical climate of opinion.  A growing body of their colleagues who formerly supported the rail authority, including state Senators Alan Lowenthal, Joe Simitian and Mark DeSaulnier, have been shocked by the new estimate and have begun to question the wisdom of proceeding with the project. Other legislators intend to go further. State Sen. Doug LaMalfa said he will sponsor a bill to put the voter-approved rail project back on the ballot. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy announced that he will introduce legislation that would freeze federal funding for the project for one year so that congressional auditors can review its viability.

    At the federal level, chances of further funding for the California project are judged to be negligible, with Congress having virtually zeroed out high-speed rail funds in the FY 2012 federal budget.

    At the same time, the bullet train is rapidly losing public support. Nearly two-thirds of California’s likely voters would, if given a chance, stop the project according to a recent opinion survey. Organized opposition within the state is widespread. Public interest groups and watchdog coalitions such as  Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design (CARRD), the Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail, the California Rail Foundation, and the Planning and Conservation League have repeatedly challenged the Authority’s cost estimates, ridership projections and rail alignments. They have testified against the project in public hearings and taken the Authority to court. Recently, they scored a legal victory when a state judge ruled that the Authority has to reopen and revise its environmental analysis of a controversial alignment.

    A team of respected independent experts, comprising Stanford economist Alain Enthoven, former World Bank analyst William Grindley and financial consultant William Warren, have reinforced the growing feeling of doubt about the project’s viability by challenging the rail authority’s assumptions and pointing out the flaws in its business  plan. 

    Finally, at both the national and state levels, the bullet train project is receiving an increasingly skeptical press scrutiny. Nearly every newspaper in the state (with the exception of the LA Times and SF Chronicle) has turned critical.  News services, notably California Watch (founded by the Center for Investigative Reporting) and investigative reporters, such as SF Examiner’s Kathy Hamilton, Mercury News’ Mike Rosenberg and OC Register’s Steve Greenhut are providing incisive critical analysis to counter the steady flow of publicity generated by the Authority and its supporters. 

    Critical commentaries in mainstream press vastly outnumber favorable stories. Here are three examples:

    The Train to Neverland
    The Wall Street Journal , November 12, 2011

    California’s high-speed rail system is going nowhere fast
    The Washington Post, November 13, 2011

    High-Speed rail depends on $55B in federal funds
    California Watch, November 12, 2011 (by Ron Campbell and Lance Williams)

     

    Ken Orski has worked professionally in the field of transportation for over 30 years.

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    Note: the NewsBriefs can also be accessed at www.infrastructureUSA.org
    A listing of all recent NewsBriefs can be found at www.innobriefs.com

  • Placing Amtrak Records in Context

    The state of Michigan recently announced record ridership on three routes supported by Michigan taxpayers. Records mean little when the numbers are insignificant.

    That, to say the least, is the situation with Amtrak in Michigan. For example, the additional passengers (this year versus last) on the Pere Marquette (between Chicago and Grand Rapids) was small enough to be carried in a once daily round trip by an airport shuttle van. The additional passengers on the Wolverine, which operates from Detroit to Chicago would not have filled a single intercity bus operating each way on a daily basis. The same is true of the Blue Water, which operates between Port Huron and Chicago.

    But there’s more. High quality bus service, featuring on-board high speed wireless internet (wi-fi), costs passengers less between Detroit and Chicago and takes about the same time. There is a big difference, however. Train riders are subsidized by taxpayers, while bus riders pay their full fare. Even so, the unsubsidized bus fares are lower than the subsidized train fares.

    In a nation that needs to cut spending, unnecessary transportation subsidies, such as for intercity rail services should be at the top of the list.

  • Major Texas Metro Areas Are Confirming Failures in Rail Transit

    Despite the success of the Main St. line, I’ve been concerned for a long time now that the next set of rail lines will essentially bankrupt Metro while providing minimal benefit (except for possibly the Universities line, which has moderate benefits, but may not get built anytime soon because of the money drain of the other lines being built first).  Now the Coalition On Sustainable Transportation (COST) has come out with the numbers from other cities (especially Dallas) that don’t bode well for Houston at all.  Some key excerpts (I know it’s a lot, but there are some really good points in here):

    —————

    For example: Dallas will pay increasing debt service for many years and has 30 plus year bonds and commercial paper for its almost $4 billion of debt. Their debt service is considered annual operating costs in the chart below, because: By the time current bonds are paid, the rail system will be at the end of its service life and will need replacement through the creation of a new round of bonds, continuing this high bond expense for as long as the system operates. While other Texas cities have not yet reached this Dallas level of bond debt and expense, Houston is rapidly moving in the same direction and Austin’s planning is pointing in this direction. Currently Dallas’s debt service is about 3 times Houston’s and almost 40 times Austin’s.
    …
    One may look at the data in the table above in many ways, but, none of the conclusions seem to be positive for rail transit. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin are all among the top 20 fastest growing major cities in the nation. However, the three cities with various levels of rail transit, Dallas, Houston and Austin, all have declining transit ridership trends and have fewer absolute transit riders today than they had a dozen years ago. They have spent billions to implement and promote transit with a heavy focus on rail transit.
    …

    These data highlight a number of broader Texas Metro Area negative transit trends:

    1. Metro areas with more rail transit have significantly higher costs and higher taxpayer subsidies per ride.
    2. Metro areas with more rail transit have fewer total transit boardings per capita.
    3. Metro areas with higher densities have fewer transit riders (boardings) per capita.
    4. Dallas has the largest population and greatest population density but the least cost effective transit system: Higher cost per ride (boarding) and fewer boardings per capita.
    5. Increasing the proportion of a region’s transit funds being spent on rail transit leads to less cost effective overall transit and degraded transit for the majority of transit riders who still ride busses.

    Some Major Texas City Metro Areas comparisons/observations regarding transit data:

    1. Dallas-Ft. Worth Metro’s population is more than 3 times San Antonio’s and Dallas’ annual transit operating expense is 4.4 times San Antonio’s but Dallas has only 1.6 times the transit ridership of San Antonio.
    2. Dallas-Ft. Worth Metro’s population is 3.8 times that of Austin and Dallas’ annual transit operating expense is 3.7 times the transit expense of Austin but Dallas-Ft. Worth has only 1.9 times Austin’s ridership.
    3. Dallas has the most invested, more than $4 billion, in light rail and it has the highest cost per transit ride at 2.8 times San Antonio’s costs and almost 2 times Austin’s. Dallas has the least boardings per capita, about one-half of San Antonio and Austin.
    4. San Antonio’s bus only transit system has 1.2 times Austin’s ridership but only 82% of Austin’s annual operating expense.
    5. San Antonio’s ‘cost per transit rider’ is about one-third of Dallas-Ft. Worth’s and San Antonio has 2 times as many transit riders per capita as Dallas-Ft Worth.
    6. Dallas’ 2011 net debt service (principal and interest) budget of $153 million is greater than San Antonio’s total 2011 budgeted operating costs of $141.3 million and almost as much as Austin’s $168.2 million.

    …
    It is no surprise that Dallas has hit a transit financial wall causing it to pause and curtail, at least temporarily, further light rail expansion. It seems, the more light rail Dallas implements, the more inefficient and expensive its transit becomes. This is an often occurring trend when regions implement rail transit and is a serious problem trend now developing in Houston and Austin. The result is overall degradation of transit service as exorbitantly expensive rail transit and resulting debt absorb increasingly higher percentages of transit funds. This, in turn, results in increasing transit fares and reductions in bus service which have disproportionately negative quality-of-life impacts on lower income citizens. Almost everyone forgets that the majority of transit riders still ride busses even after such massive investments in rail transit such as in Dallas or in Portland, the Mecca of train transit, where well over one-half of the transit rides are on busses. More importantly, this wasteful spending on ineffective trains ‘bleeds dry’ taxpayer funds which could be used to make positive contributions in serving communities’ many, higher priority needs for all citizens. (like express commuter bus services from all neighborhoods to all job centers, as I’ve been advocating)
    …
    Much experience has shown that once a cycle of high cost rail transit is implemented, the agency becomes heavily burdened with debt for a very long time. It is highly probable that the very high debt service (principle and interest) will become a permanent and major part of the transit agency’s annual operating costs. When one issue of bonds is paid down, it becomes time for another round of debt to replace aging equipment. This, in turn results in very poor cost effectiveness and degradation of the overall transit system as it serves fewer riders at higher costs. This high debt can never be paid-off without major increases in local taxes. Transit agencies cannot responsibly project and achieve enough ridership to make rail transit cost-effective. This has even less credibility in light of the national declining trend in the use of transit and the fact that the use of transit in Texas’ major metro areas has a declining trend over the past dozen years. As Dallas and other major cities have experienced, this results in a spiraling decline in transit performance and effectiveness, degradation of mobility for low income citizens and, often, cutbacks in other higher priority city services. This results in reducing overall quality-of-life.

    —————-

    Is this the future we really want for Houston?  Because it’s not too late to stop it now, but it will be too late very, very soon, and then we will be stuck with the same harsh reality as Dallas for decades to come…

    This post first appeared at Houston Strategies

  • Report: China to Suspend High Speed Rail Development

    Railway Age reports that Premier Wen of China "has told the state media that the government will suspend approvals of new rail while it conducts safety checks to address concerns rising from the high speed train collision last month that killed 40 people."

    The Premier also indicated that high speed rail trains should operate at slower speeds "at their earlier stage of operation." Earlier this year, the Ministry of Railways slowed all trains to a maximum speed of 300 kilometers per hour (186 miles per hour) and many trains that were to operate at that speed were slowed to 250 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour). At the time, reports indicated that the slower speeds were to lower operating costs so that fares could be reduced. Concerns had been raised about the much higher fares on the new trains and the cancellation of many conventional trains, which had much lower fares. Railway Minister In addition, Sheng Guangzu told the press that the slower operating speeds would "offer more safety."

    Photo: Suzhou to Nanjing at 300 kph (by author)

  • Exaggerating in Orlando: Sunrail

    For decades taxpayers have paid billions to finance major transportation project cost overruns far exceeding the routinely low-ball forecasts available at approval time. This has been documented in a wide body of academic literature, the most important of which was conducted by Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University, Nils Bruzelius University of Stockholm and Werner Rothengatter of the University of Karlsruhe in Germany (Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition).

    Major project advocacy, however, has descended to a new low of unprecedented and absurd exaggeration. This is evident in the current public policy debate about the Sunrail commuter rail project in Orlando. Two examples make the point

    Exaggeration #1: Job Creation: The Central Florida Partnership claims that Sunrail will create 10,000  jobs. "almost immediately." This would be quite an accomplishment. The Sunrail project is currently projected to cost approximately $850 million for just the first segment. Every cent of the likely cost overruns will be on a blank check drawn the account of Florida taxpayers.

    At Sunrail’s claimed rate of job creation,  the Obama Administration’s $800 million "shovel ready" stimulus program (enacted in 2009), would have "almost immediately" produced more than nine million jobs. By now, the unemployment rate would have been reduced to little above 2 percent, lower than at any point in the more than 60 years of available data. Of course, and predictably, the stimulus program did no such thing, not least because a job created by public spending is likely to destroy more than one sustainable job in the private sector.

    Exaggeration #2: Sunrail Will Make a Difference: The proponents imply that Sunrail will carry a significant number of trips in the Orlando area, claiming that the line will carry one lane of freeway traffic and that it will give central Florida residents an alternative to high gasoline prices. In fact, even if Sun Rail reaches its ridership projections, it would take a full day of train travel to remove less than an hour’s peak hour freeway volume. Needless to say, no one will notice any fewer cars on the freeway (Figure).

    Further, Sunrail will not provide an alternative to the overwhelming majority of central Floridians, since it will attract only 1,850 new round-trip riders per day by 2030 (Sunrail’s number). Spending $850 million on Sunrail is the same as the taxpayers giving each new rider a gift of $450,000.

    The Need to Set Rational Priorities: All of this is occurring in the face of an national fiscal crisis so severe that even the AARP has expressed its willingness to consider cuts to Social Security. As an AARP spokesperson put it "You have to look at all the tradeoffs." Indeed.

  • Giving the “New Houston Metro” Credit Where it’s Due

    Tuesday, the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro) held a blogger luncheon with senior Metro people (Chairman, CEO, board members, managers) at the Rail Operations Center south of Reliant.  It was an informative event with a lot of good two-way Q&A.  And it included an impressive tour of the facility, which, btw, is not air conditioned in the main maintenance bay.  Let’s just say it was the right time of year for a tour and I’m really glad I don’t work there in the summer.  The facility is doing its job though: Metro claims to have the highest operational uptime for rail cars in the country.

    Sometimes in my push for increasing commuter bus services and cutting back rail, I fail to give credit to a lot of good work that is going on at the “New Metro”:
    a few issues for our collective consideration:

    • They really are a lot more open and transparent, and are really trying to do the right things.  
    • There’s been a lot to clean-up, and they’ve done a good job (although CEO Grenias says it will take another 2-3 years to completely turn around the organization).  
    • They’ve also done a good job continuing to reach out and create collaborative agreements to provide commuter bus services outside of their service area (like Baytown and Pearland).
    • They’ve fixed the poorly performing Airport Direct service, price and route-wise.
    • They shifted to a cash basis for the General Mobility Program instead of increasing debt.
    • They fixed their broken relationship with the FTA.

    There was a lot of good talk about improving express commuter bus services to TMC, Greenway, and, most importantly, Uptown.  I pitched them on expanded HOV/HOT lanes (like the 610 Loop) and laptop trays and wifi on the commuter buses, which are under consideration.  They have a very high percentage of downtown commuters – 30-40% – and claim a pretty high number for TMC – 20-30% – but that includes people who park in Smithlands and ride the rail, which I don’t consider a true commuter solution (it’s not doing anything to reduce freeway congestion).

    Ultimately, they’re trapped by the voter referendum and the federal money process to keep pursuing a rail plan (and line prioritization) that really doesn’t make a lot of sense given the new fiscal reality since the referendum was passed.  It will make even less sense if the Republican House guts rail funding.  But at least they’re taking steps to “firewall” the rail plan financially so it doesn’t end up stealing from critical local and commuter bus operations.  I may not agree with the overall strategic direction of the agency, but they do have good people doing good work within the constraints of the game they’re forced to play.

    This post originally appeared at houstonstrategies.com

  • California High Speed Rail Costs Escalate 50 Percent in 2 Years

    The highly respected Californians for Responsible Rail Design (CARRD) has released a new cost estimate for the phase 1 Los Angeles to San Francisco high-speed rail line. Based upon an analysis of California high-speed rail Authority documentation, including stimulus grant applications and other internal sources, CARRD estimates that the line will now cost $65 billion, rather than the current estimate of $43 billion.

    The CARRD release indicated:

    Our analysis, based solely on official and publicly available Authority documents, determines the
    current project costs are approximately $65 billion. The $43 billion figure was inaccurate, even at the time it was made.

    CARRD also pointed out that there has been no recent update to the official cost estimates and that the planned October 1, 2011 update, required by state legislation, may not be released on time because of contract negotiation difficulties with Price Waterhouse Coopers.

    Even as environmental and planning work has advanced, no update to the official capital cost estimate has been made. This is true even when the only alternatives in most segments still being studied are significantly more expensive than those used to calculate the $43 billion number

    However, CARRD cautioned even this 50% increase in just two years may understate the eventual costs:

    …we have received some feedback that these numbers may actually be too conservative since there still is very little engineering information about some of the most technically challenging parts of the project (like the mountain passes).

    The new CARRD cost estimate is consistent with the perennial cost escalation that has been noted in such projects by Oxford University professor Bengt Flyvbjerg and others, who found that passenger rail systems typically have cost overruns of 45 percent.