Posted on 12/02/2002 7:16:43 AM PST by hsmomx3
St. Louis used to be known for beer, blues and barbecued pork ribs. Now my hometown is known for some of the best light rail pork in the nation, as I discovered during a visit home this Thanksgiving.
Like all light rail lines, the St. Louis MetroLink is funded by local taxes and by pilferage from the Highway Trust Fund. If you want to see how your gasoline taxes are being spent on light rail boondoggles, here are some facts about the line:
The completed section of the line runs east from the suburban St. Louis airport, in the opposite direction of where most people are moving. The line goes to downtown St. Louis, where virtually no one lives, and crosses the Mississippi River into Illinois, where it transverses miles of marshes and abandoned industrial sites, and ends at a state college in Belleville Illinois. It is designed for people who have a lot of time on their hands.
Why would a St. Louis rail line run to a sparsely populated area of Illinois? Because it was built by a bi-state transportation agency, which has to spread the pork to both states.
Central planners also built a second St. Louis airport in Illinois years ago. It has turned into a white elephant, because the major air carriers and the public have shunned it. But the planners, not learning their lesson, continue their public works pork projects, all in the name of the public good.
When completed in 2005, the line will be 45.9 miles long and have 37 stations, 19 park-and-ride lots, 10,000 parking spaces and 87 rail cars, each with a capacity of 178 riders. The 10,000 parking spaces represent .8 percent of the estimated autos in the St. Louis metro area. The lots will be a permanent reminder of the fact that light rail barely makes a dent in the number of cars on the road.
At least the line does not take up valuable road space. Unlike planned and existing light rail lines in Phoenix and other cities, much of the St. Louis MetroLink runs on abandoned rail tracks or below grade, not in the middle of streets.
Of the first 100 articles on MetroLink pulled up in an Internet search, all praised the line. Not one said how much each rider would be subsidized per ride above the $1.25 fare (probably about $6.25). Not one said if ridership has increased or decreased after the initial novelty. Not one said if the line has significantly decreased auto traffic. Not one honestly laid out the line's economics (even expensive buses are more economical).
One article did say that the line will be $146 million over budget when completed, but it gave the standard cockamamie excuses for the target being missed. And the bi-state transportation agency website says that "service on redundant, parallel bus routes will be reduced" when the line is completed. Apparently, most of the ridership will come from existing bus riders, as is the case in other cities.
The bi-state agency also says that service is "free" between Union Station and Laclede's Landing, which is a struggling tourist area of cobblestone streets and turn-of-the-century buildings along the wharf and near the Rams football stadium. The area is frequented by a small number of unfortunate tourists who foolishly stay at downtown hotels. Locals know that wonderful places to stay, eat and drink are in other restored areas of the city or in the suburbs. Of course the service is not "free" at all, but is paid by taxpayers as a subsidy to private businesses at Laclede Landing and to downtown corporations.
Based on my own observations over Thanksgiving week, auto traffic has increased, not decreased, near the line and in the metro area in general. Moreover, it appears that the trains are running half-full during daylight hours. I saw few people with suitcases get on or off the train at the airport. The vast majority of travelers were taking private cars, taxis or rental car shuttles.
My elderly parents keep seeing their taxes increase for MetroLink and other spending schemes. They are not pleased that the line will be extended soon to the nice working-class community where they have lived for 57 years. They are rightly concerned that it will destroy their neighborhood with increased traffic and crime. Neither they, their friends nor my childhood friends know anyone who takes the line. They believe it is used primarily by airport workers, other government workers and university students. A deterrent to using the line, especially at night, is the fact that it goes through some dangerous neighborhoods. Autos are considered safer and faster.
The usual suspects are gaga about the line: the business establishment, the Post-Dispatch newspaper, minority groups, politicians and rent-seekers who feed at the public trough. Of the 26 contractors, 13 are Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Firms, which is a euphemism for firms owned by favored minorities. More than likely, the firms are owned or fronted by wealthy minorities who are least in need of government assistance.
The usual suspects have trotted out the usual canards: that the line will reduce traffic and pollution (it won't), that it will save declining areas (it hasn't and probably won't), and that it will attract businesses to the line (it might, but only at the expense of businesses away from the line).
My non-degreed parents wonder why they can see this expensive transportation turkey for what it is, but college-educated elites in BMWs cannot.
Good question.
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Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
Looks like whiney naysayer Craig J. Cantoni relies on the same, lame old concoction of fiction to support his bias. If he has access to the Internet, as he claims, it isn't difficult to obtain ridership figures for the Metrolink system:
Saint Louis-MetroLink Light Rail
Before service began, ridership was projected at 12,000 per day. In August of 1993, the system's first month of operation, approximately 30,000 passengers rode MetroLink each day. In June 1998, average weekday ridership topped 46,750. MetroLink carried nearly 9 million customers during its first year of operation, almost double the projected ridership of 4.8 million passengers. During 1995 over 12.4 million commuters rode MetroLink; in 1996, over 12.8 million; and in 1997, 14.5 million people rode the system, a 12.5% increase over 1996 figures. 1998 ridership on MetroLink topped 14.48 million. Ridership continues to exceed expectations.
St. Louis MetroLink Light Rail Ridership Hits 160,000 a Day
St. Louis's transit agency, in early July 2000, scored a remarkable achievement for the city's new MetroLink light rail transit (LRT) system: carrying a record ridership of more than 160,000 rider-trips – and this on a Saturday (during the Fair St. Louis festivities).
Obviously, St. Louis Metrolink serves a LOT more people than this ignoramus realizes.
Light rail only "serves" the public in the same way a bull "services" a cow.
Our local boondoggle line in Houston follows the same pattern: from the Astrodome (lots of parking) to downtown (where nobody lives) at a cost of $400 million. Projected losses are over $12 PER PASSENGER MILE. Fortunately this ripoff is only seven miles long.
We don't need more "service" like this.
Ignore the ridership statistics and spew some worthless rhetoric.
Pretty lame.
The line only runs in one direction? No wonder it's over budget, what with the cars having to be built at one end of the line, used once, and then hauled away as they accumulate at the other end.
While there may be valid objections to the project, an author who begins with such a stupid statement is not a promising source for them.
Governments have no more business running railroads than they do operating bus companies, but in both cases providing infrastructure (and supporting same with tax dollars) is a legitimate function of government.
Asking that commuter rail "pay for itself like cars and trucks do" is unreasonable. Bus and motor freight companies could never operate profitably if they were forced to own the rights-of-way and maintain the superhighways they use; instead, government builds the roads using tax money and their own power to leverage debt and condemn property for public use; Greyhound and the motor freight carriers use them in turn to make money. On the other hand, railroads own, maintain and operate the railbeds, signals and the trains that use them -- and make a profit in the process! They can do this because rail is the most efficient form of transport (tons/mile) over long distances. Over short distances, the advantages of rail become less, since the tons/mile ratio is less. However, if government (or a public/private consortium) were to assume the burden of building and maintaining the railroad infrastructure (railbeds, signals, etc.) as they do for motor carriers then local rail companies could operate at a profit. On a cost per centerline mile basis, railbed is cheaper than paved highway, and has less of an impact on local environments (most railroad rights-of-way are havens for wild birds, animals, etc., a freeway is a desert).
Again: I'm not anti-car. I own and enjoy my motor vehicles. But if commuter rail is run along routes that serve areas where people actually live and work, and if the rail lines are privately operated using public infrastructure (and thus more efficient) they can be a valuable part of a regional transportation mix.
I did a six month project in ST. Louis two years ago. I traveled by plane then took metrolink to city center, then used the train to get to my hotel. It always had lots of people especially during the nights when the Cards or the Blues played. This joker does not know what is happening cause he is in his car not riding the train.
Well thank-you. But it leaves me somewhat puzzled.
My views regarding our nation's borders are strictly based on economics and national security.
It's really lame to require the taxpayers to subsidize somebody's ride. And that's what ALL these schemes are about: picking the taxpayers' pockets for construction, and further picking them to subsidize rides.
Not rhetoric, fact. Our virtually empty Metro busses in Houston lose hundreds of thousands of dollars PER DAY. The government organization pimping these boondoggles only claims a 21% farebox recovery rate, leaving 79% to be picked up by the taxpayers.
That spells R-I-P-O-F-F in anybody's language.
Wendell Cox, the nationally acclaimed anti-light-rail fanatic has high praise for Houston's buses. (Click here).
Seems to me, if you're against the buses as well, you might as well put a muzzle on the delirious banshee.
I was just going to say the same thing. And do you remember the commericals they ran before the election-- trying to get public support? Man, oh,man, talk about calvary talking to infantry!
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