Posted on 05/17/2011 11:42:32 AM PDT by Qbert
A study released earlier this month by the Cascade Policy Institute questioned whether pricey mass transit options in Portland, Oregon are really being used by the public. The city has been a leader in securing funding for various forms of passenger rail and trolley systems. The Obama administration, for example, pledged $745 million in federal gas tax dollars to pay for the construction of a $1.5 billion, 7.3 mile light rail project connecting Portland to Milwaukie. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has singled out the city’s priorities as for praise.
“By adding innovative transit opportunities, Portland has become a model livable community, a city where public transportation brings housing closer to jobs, schools, and essential services,” LaHood wrote in March.
The Cascade Policy Institute wanted to verify the claim that the TriMet transit system was able to move more passengers than a standard bus line. The researchers did so by attending five special events where use of mass transit would make the most sense, including the final playoff game for the Portland Trail Blazers. The events were spread throughout the year to examine the effects of different weather conditions on transit use. City officials have never made a study of this sort.
“This is important because transportation planners at Metro, TriMet, ODOT and other agencies routinely make multi-billion-dollar decisions based on travel surveys, computer models or simply their own personal beliefs about how people should travel,” Cascade President John A. Charles, Jr wrote in his report. “They rarely have any direct knowledge of how people actually travel under specific conditions of time, mode availability, parking pricing and geographic constraints.”
The Cascade team counted a total of 47,666 individual attendees, noting how many headed toward the venue from a light rail station and how many arrived by automobile, bicycle or foot. At best, 21 percent arrived by rail to see the Trail Blazers. At worst, the opening of the Gresham Civic Station saw just 2 percent arrive by rail. On average, rail accounted for just 11 percent of the trips recorded.
“The field research shows that continued use of the phrase ‘high-capacity transit’ by local planners to describe the regional rail program is Orwellian,” Cascade President John A. Charles, Jr. said in a statement. “Light rail is actually a low-capacity system, and the streetcar is simply irrelevant. TriMet’s buses carries two-thirds of all regional transit trips on a daily basis, and that’s the service that should be recognized as high-capacity transit. Unfortunately, bus service is being sacrificed by TriMet in order to build costly new rail lines that carry relatively few people.”
A copy of the report is available in a 1.2mb PDF file at the source link below.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/cascademyth.pdf
To leftists the fact that its not being used is justification for more taxpayer funding.
We knew all this about the American public not using rail transporation in the 70’s. We learned the rail operations could never support themselves due to the lack of passengers. People don’t want to get mugged on American trains. And now we have to repeat it all over again?
Same with the one in Seattle/Tacoma.
It would have been far cheaper to buy each of those dozen people a Mercedes and a lifetime of free gas.
That's a lot of crumbling bridges and roads that could be fixed.
I fail to see why the federal government should be collecting any gas tax. With the Interstate Highway System completed, roads should be a state responsibility.
Yeah, So?
They have the best infrastructure, still......////sssss
I rarely see any passengers on the new Austin, TX rail.
Regardless of what information they have or where they got it; it is their own ideology that shapes how they view and use that information.
There is a rather nice light rail system here in Pittsburgh that people might actually use due to the scarcity of parking downtown.
But they don’t because it runs so seldom the cars are always packed like sardine cans. All the Port Authority’s cash goes to pay the pensions of drivers who retire at age 52, leaving nothing to actually operate a system they spent hundreds of millions to construct.
Mostly the last (their own personal beliefs about how people should travel). The surveys and computer models are used primarily to justify the personal beliefs.
Willie Greene would be sad.
Same story here in Seattle. And they are pushing more miles of it on us. Some areas are being taxed for it, who won’t see a track in their area until 2024
A survey of North American light rail projects shows that costs of most LRT systems range from $15 million per mile to over $100 million per mile. Seattle’s new light rail system is by far the most expensive in the U.S. at $179 million per mile, since it includes extensive tunneling in poor soil conditions, elevated sections, and stations as deep as 180 feet below ground level.
http://soundpolitics.com/archives/013562.html
I was thinking; that’s about 7 miles of interstate or about 2 bridges.
Remember that if you get federal dollars you get prevailing wage laws.
You also get union labor (most likely) so you get a padded payroll with lots of high priced standing around or sitting in a truck waiting.
Only $1.5 billion for 7.3 miles? How do they build things so cheap?
Our sick, twisted, foul, evil, corrupt, and degenerate political class love rail systems. When built with the idiotic taxpayers money raily systems provide a tangible object that upon which the politician can affix a sign exhibiting his name. For that little sign dear taxpayer sucker you pay billions. Plus the dollars going in the pockets of those politically related to its design, construction and operation are astronomical.
Our sick, twisted, foul, evil, corrupt, and degenerate political class love rail systems. When built with the idiotic taxpayers money raily systems provide a tangible object that upon which the politician can affix a sign exhibiting his name. For that little sign dear taxpayer sucker you pay billions. Plus the dollars going in the pockets of those politically related to its design, construction and operation are astronomical.
There is NO light rail system in America that is even close to self-sufficent:
- Boston recovers nearly 60% of its costs from fares
- The national average is 25%
- Houston recovers 10% (the lowest)
The biggest problem with urban mass transit systems is that they don’t go where people need and want them to go, they go where politicians want them to go or where politicians want people to go.
In Sacramento, for instance, they built light rail from low income neighborhoods to the downtown. Light rail notoriously does not connect to one single shopping mall in the region. Had they built it from the neighborhoods where most downtown workers live maybe it would do better, but the decision was based on politics and not on ridership.
“Same with the one in Seattle/Tacoma.”
In fairness, a system that’s not even finished yet is not going to have very high ridership at all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.