A Desire Named Streetcar: How Federal Subsidies Encourage Wasteful Local Transit Systems

Cato Institute ^ | January 5, 2006 | Randal O'Toole

[logician2u]

January 5, 2006
Policy Analysis no. 559

A Desire Named Streetcar: How Federal Subsidies Encourage Wasteful Local Transit Systems

by Randal O'Toole

Randal O'Toole is director of the Thoreau Institute and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

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Executive Summary

The nation's mass transit system is a classic example of how special interests prevail over the needs and interests of voters and taxpayers. Total inflation-adjusted subsidies to transit?buses and trains?have more than doubled since 1990, yet total ridership has increased by less than 10 percent. Train ridership has dropped dramatically while automobile use has skyrocketed.

Prior to 1964, when Congress began subsidizing transit, the industry was mostly private. Since then, the industry has been almost entirely taken over by state and local governments. Today more than three of every four dollars spent on transit come from taxpayers, not transit riders.

The effectiveness of local transit systems is undermined by federal subsidies, which encourage the construction of highly visible and expensive services such as light-rail trains to suburban areas despite the chronically low number of riders on those routes. Federal subsidies to transit advocacy groups and misguided environmental and labor regulations also encourage a large investment of taxpayer money in wasteful transit systems.

The ideal solution would be to devolve transit and other transportation funding entirely to state and local governments. Short of that, Congress should reform the federal transportation funding system to minimize the adverse incentives it creates.

Full Text of Policy Analysis no. 559 (PDF, 1 MB)

[logician2u]

If we're ever going to solve the traffic problem, we have to stop wasting taxpayer funds on things that don't work and begin building a system that does.

Mass transit in most of the nation has become just another pork program that makes politicians of both major parties feel good about what they've done. The result makes enviros and one select class of commuters happy while the rest of us are stuck in traffic. It's bad enough that the federal government takes tax money from people in rural America to subsidize downtown businesses in St. Louis and Salt Lake City. It's worse that the money is misspent, paying through the nose for the most expensive, least effective forms of transit -- that does hardly anything to relieve highway congestion and still leaves lower-income city dwellers without adequate transportation.

Randal O'Toole has done an excellent job of showing just how we got to this sad state of affairs and, with a little more public support, how we might eventually find our way out.

On page 8 of his report, you'll find a series of bullets listing some incentives our federal government has dangled in front of local governments and transit agencies encouraging them to adopt the costliest, least efficient projects in order to qualify for federal money. Three of them are worth repeating here:

• a transit planning process that allows agencies to systematically low-ball cost estimates and overstate potential ridership,
• a mandate for a comprehensive planning process that is biased in favor of high-cost transit projects,
• federal grants to nonprofit anti-highway organizations, and

[jeremiah]

bttt

[Dog Gone]

Houston built its light rail system connecting downtown and the football stadium where the Texans play.

This makes sense for all those office workers who work on Sundays and can take a half day vacation to go see the game.

It doesn't for the rest of us.

[logician2u]

You may find this one worthwhile.

[logician2u]

Good one. Can I use it?

[Dog Gone]

Absolutely.

[Bob]

Houston built its light rail system connecting downtown and the football stadium where the Texans play.

This makes sense for all those office workers who work on Sundays and can take a half day vacation to go see the game.

Light rail in San Jose was jokingly referred to as having been built to assist the homeless folks downtown in more easily getting to the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara. :=)

[logician2u]

And what about all those patients at the medical center?

Do you think any of them might want to forego a family visit to see a football game on a Sunday afternoon?

So light rail (the Wham-Bam Trolley, if I'm not mistaken) works for them, too!

Give the Mayor a trophy!

[groanup]

IN Atlanta we have MARTA. It doesn't even go the the baseball stadium because the city owns the parking franchise and didn't want to lose patrons. The system also goes to other places that no cares to go to.

Now we have this idiotic organization called "The Atlanta Regional Commission" which has nothing to do but sit around and think up ways to change traffic patterns. The have recommended a light rail from Atlanta to Chattanooga (huh?). I have lived in Atlanta for over 50 years and have only been to Chattanooga three times and that was just passing through. If I need to go there it's only an hour and a half.

[Dog Gone]

I've been noticing a lot of fans at the Texan games with IVs in their arm, but I assumed it was vodka.

I'm going to rethink that now.

[logician2u]

If I need to go there it's only an hour and a half.

By car?

It would be much faster by rail, they'll tell you.

120 minutes, minimum.

Not counting the time you spend waiting for the train, or getting to the station, or getting to where you might want to go in Chattanooga.

But there'd be one less car on the highway, and the enviros (and probably ARC, too) would tell us that's a good thing!

[Amerigomag]

Light rail in San Jose was jokingly referred to as having been built to assist the homeless folks downtown in more easily getting to the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara. :=)

From CATO Institute white paper:

Ridership in San Jose crashed when the recent recession reduced sales tax revenues and the agency had to cut service to avoid defaulting on the bonds it sold to build the rail lines.

[PAR35]

The have recommended a light rail from Atlanta to Chattanooga (huh?).

No, they haven't. (Check your definition of 'light rail').

[j. earl carter]

The have recommended a light rail from Atlanta to Chattanooga (huh?). I have lived in Atlanta for over 50 years and have only been to Chattanooga three times

,

See Rock City!
(and Ruby Falls too)

[hedgetrimmer]

Thanks for posting.

[Fast Ed97]

Living in Chicago I will admit the CTA trains have a great system here. That being said the Metrolink in St. Louis leaves much to be desired.

The only good use of the Metrolink is to get from Lambert Airport to downtown cheap. Otherwise its stops are in awkward locations and usually horrid neighborhoods. They actually have the thing going all the way out to the Illinois Mid-America Airport. I guess at the time they thought it would eventually be a LCC alternative (like Houston Hobby) for St. Louis back in the good ol' days when TWA owned Lambert. Now TWA is gone...they have about two empty concourses at Lambert..and they are desperate for even an AirTran or JetBlue to add a flight or two. What a waste!

[groanup]

Ruby Falls, wasn't she at Radio City Music Hall?

[SW6906]

Here in WA state they spent something on the order of $340 MILLION capital costs to set up a commuter train service from Seattle to Everett. Door-to-door, I bet I can drive it faster.

Ridership is about 150 people a day.

[SW6906]

Who's the guy around here who's always flogging light rail and mass transit? can't recall his name to ping him. Larry something? Do you know?

[Dog Gone]

There's really no coherent argument that works with the choo choo train people.

Economics doesn't work. Past results don't mean a thing.

As far as they're concerned, the concept is right, holy even, and it's just a training problem. The masses are too stupid to want to use the damn thing.