Coyote Blog

The (flawed) theory of government stimulus plans is that in certain economic under-capacity situations, government spending can have a multiplier effect.

The Anti-planner shows that, as far as government spending on mass-transit is concerned, $9,150 of taxpayer subsides per rider generate about $6,100 in average savings per rider.  Every dollar of public transit spending destroys about 30 cents of value, which I guess makes it the anti-stimulus.

Update:  Yeah, I know, transit supposedly eliminates all those externalities.  But most rail transit plans typically reduce congestion by fractions of a percent, even by their builder's estimates, while energy savings is wildly over-estimated.

Yesterday I posted on a new bus system Phoenix is implementing but that appears to cost 30x less than the light rail system we just built.  I wrote Randal O'Toole of Cato, also known as "the AntiPlanner," to see what he knew about this system.  Here is what he was wrote back"

Yes, I've written about it a lot. The best system is in Kansas City, where they didn't feel they had to spend $750,000 to make a $300,000 bus look futuristic.

Take a look at my blog, http://ti.org/antiplanner and search for "bus rapid transit" to see some articles on better bus service. Here is the article about Kansas City BRT: http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=102

Here is an article about Eugene's bus-rapid transit, which was a stupid waste of money: http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=21

The only thing good about it is that it didn't waste as much money as light rail. But that's like saying you'd rather be stabbed in the heart with a three-inch knife than a six-inch one.

The Eugene mess he refers to has the city building a dedicated bus lane, something Phoenix fortunately is not considering, opting for a traffic light transponder approach rather than dedicated lanes to try to hold schedules.  Here is a snippet of what he wrote about Kansas City:

In 2005, Kansas City did a wonderful thing: It started a bus-rapid transit system the way bus-rapid transit ought to be done. The transit agency didn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars building exclusive bus lanes. It didn't buy million-dollar buses just to have a semi-futuristic look.

Instead, it simply began running buses on existing streets on rail schedules. That is, the buses stop only once per mile and the operate three to four times every hour from 4:20 am to 11:20 pm. The greater frequencies and faster buses increased ridership by 25 to 30 percent (see page 11), and most of these new riders were new to transit.

The city built inexpensive but easily identifiable transit stops for the route. The buses were regular buses but were "branded," that is, painted in an easily recognizable style. In short, Kansas City achieved the kind of ridership increases that light rail would achieve for a tiny fraction of the cost.

In other words, the basic idea makes great sense, but spending a million bucks a bus (as Phoenix plans) just to make the bus look like a train is crazy.

All true, but I might be willing to give in on the more expensive busses if thats what it takes to kill this crazy infatuation with steel rails.   In the Phoenix Mesa Link example, they are probably spending $4.5 million too much for the train-like busses, but if that gives public officials the ability to walk past the light rail buffet and save the $800 million extra rail would have cost, I might consider that a good investment.

Apparently, Phoenix is experimenting with a new style of bus transport that looks and operates like a train:

The Mesa Link debuted the same week as light rail. For now, Link involves a fleet of 10 buses. Each $756,000 vehicle carries a transponder to coordinate traffic lights and keep the bus on schedule for a 12-mile run in 45 minutes.

It's the start of a much more ambitious program.

Over the next few months, the Regional Public Transportation Authority, which coordinates Valley Metro bus service, will build stations and add technology to the Mesa line to give it more of the pace and feel of a train.

Basically, they are building the thing to look and operate like a light rail train, only running on tires on the existing road.    The travel time may seem slow, but it is nearly identical to the average speed of our light rail line (20 miles in a claimed 70 minutes, though a number of riders say its slower).  And the capacity is nearly identical.

So with the same speed and the same capacity and similar scheduled service with similar style stations, here is the real appeal:

In 2010, a second line will be created to run 12 miles along Arizona Avenue in Mesa and Chandler. It will feature 10 stations and cost $28 million for construction and the purchase of nine buses. Future lines are planned for Scottsdale Road, Baseline Road and Chandler Boulevard.

The 20-mile light-rail line cost $1.4 billion to build.

Holy cr*p.  $70 million a mile for light rail vs. $2.3 million a mile for this system.   That is 30x cheaper.  The only discernible difference is one runs on steel rails and the other on tires.  Oh, and the rail line, in most places it was built, completely removed up to two lanes of existing roadway capacity, while the bus-type system leaves the roadway intact and just uses a fraction of one lane's capacity.

Now, I would have to sit down and look at the numbers and the service profile to decide if this new bus system made sense financially vs. the old bus system, but why are we even considering extending light rail?  And why oh why did we build this white elephant in the first place.

Share a ride with a prisoner:

Maricopa County sheriff's deputies may soon begin taking some inmates to Fourth Avenue Jail on Metro light rail in a bid to cut costs.

The Sheriff's Office announced its intent to transport inmates using the light rail from 44th and Washington streets to the Fourth Avenue Jail in order to eliminate parking fees. MCSO estimates that the new system can save about $72,000 in transport fees.

Seems to be some funny economics at work if the city charges the Sheriff more money for parking a car at the jail than it does for at least 3 people to ride the metro.

Anyway, count on Sheriff Joe to ease any tension you might have with this share-a-ride program:

"There is nothing to be concerned or worried about as my deputies will be armed," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in a press release.

Great, but who is going to protect me from the sheriff?  And why does this statement remind me of the famous Al Haig "Don't Worry, I'm in charge" press conference?

Politics is full of premises that people take on faith without actually testing against facts.  One such premise is that light rail investments reduce energy use and CO2 output.  But data from the USDOT, as I posted before, shows that light rail at average occupancy and autos at average occupancy are in an energy dead heat.   Driving a hybrid or even high fuel efficiency conventional automobile, even solo with no passengers, uses less energy and produces less CO2 per passenger-mile than light rail.

A group critical of the Denver light rail system brings us another data point.  In their report (pdf), compiled from the official figures of the Denver transit authority, they claim:  (via the Anti-Planner)

Denver's light-rail trains use 4,400 British thermal units (BTUs) and produce 0.78 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile. By comparison, the average SUV uses about 4,400 British thermal units (BTUs) and produces 0.69 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile.47 In other words, people who ride Denver's light rail when gasoline prices rise are not saving energy: they are merely imposing their energy costs on other taxpayers. If oil prices rise again, people can save more energy by buying more fuel-efficient cars than by riding energy intensive rail transit lines

Quite a while back, I made a light rail bet.  I said that for the capital cost of constructing these systems, I could purchase every regular rider a Prius, and with the annual operating deficit each year could purchase gas for all these Prius's for a full year.  This bet has not yet proved wrong (LA example), even for heavy rail (Albuquerque example).  Now,though, in addition to being more cost effective, the hybrid is also more energy efficient.

Postscript: I am sometimes criticized for not including the highway construction cost in my Prius bet.   First, a new highway lane has far more capacity than most light rail lines, and is far cheaper to build.  I don't think anyone, even light rail supporters, dispute this.  Light rail is generally supported over highways for what I would call aesthetic reasons -- light rail just strikes some people as more elegant a transportation solution.  All the traffic carried by most light rail lines is generally a small fraction of a single highway lane.  The congestion argument is a chimera, and is never supported, even in the fine print of transit authority statistics.  From Denver's internal projections:

Now, RTD says the line will cost more than $600 million, which is a lot for a mere 11 route miles. Moreover, RTD has changed the proposed technology to something it calls "electric multiple-unit commuter rail," which sounds something like the Chicago Electroliners or some of the Philadelphia commuter trains.

For this high price, the DEIS reports incredibly trivial benefits. The proposed rail line is projected to take 0.0085 percent of cars off the road. Of course, that's for the region as a whole, but in the corridor it will take a whopping 0.227 percent of cars off the road. A handful of buses could do as well.

Sent to me by a reader, picture from this article.

Fortunately, there seem to be plenty of empty seats for him ;=)

Via a reader, comes this update on the link from Phoenix's new light rail line to the airport:

Down the line, Sky Harbor plans to phase out shuttles.

Eventually, an automated train will take passengers around the airport. The project will cover 4.8 miles and will cost $1.1 billion.

Construction on the project began this year, and the first phase is scheduled to open in 2013.

The entire system will be up by 2020, Sky Harbor officials say.

I beg your pardon?  $1.1 Billion.  With a B?  For 4.8 miles?  That is, as the title implies, $3,617 per inch.   It is probably so expensive because they will be working at the blistering pace of 1/3 mile per year, or about 5 feet per day.

Some Valley residents have questioned the reason Phoenix and transit officials didn't build one train system - light rail - with several stations at Sky Harbor.

Transit leaders considered that, but they decided against it, light-rail officials have said.

Running the line through Sky Harbor would have made light rail even more expensive.

Because, you know, if the Sky Harbor extension is an entirely different project that has to be funded later to make up an obvious service gap that everyone and his dog can immediately spot in the system, then the cost doesn't count?

Incredibly, it looks like Proposition 1A in California is going to pass.  This act authorizes a $9 billion dollar bond issue to start a high-speed rail passenger line from the Bay Area to the LA Area. 

Why do I say "start."  Because even the line's supporters put the minimum cost at $40 billion, so the taxpayers have authorized 22% of the line.  And this is by supporters numbers.  By my numbers they have likely authorized less than 10% of the line. 

I wonder if voters knew they were authorizing either a) $40-$100 billion, in effect, rather than $9 billion; or b) a $9 billion white elephant of a rail line that ends up incomplete and going nowhere or c) something that is not really high speed rail and therefore not different from Amtrak service that already exists.  (What are you talking about Coyote, government transit people would never begin a project without full funding and leave an orphaned white elephant in place.)

The state that makes up a huge percentage of the current mortgage and
foreclosure problem seems to not have learned its lesson about
borrowing.

I am generally an optimistic guy, but I wonder if we have gotten to the point where there is a large subset of the population for whom voting is solely for the purposes of boosting self-esteem.  I feel good when I support public transit, so I vote for Prop 1A, despite the fact there is no possible way it will ever deliver any public transit.

Apparently, even before the first train starts carrying passengers (sometime in December), Phoenix's new light rail system is already forcing bus fares up.  (via a reader)

Before the Valley's light-rail service ever begins, the cost to ride the train and city buses may be headed up.

The issue of raising the Valley's regional fare policy has been brewing for several months as transit officials have struggled to cover
rising gas prices and other increased operation costs, said Greg Jordan, Tempe's transit administrator. Transit and light-rail costs are covered by a half-cent sales tax, which has fallen over the past year.

The real issue is that transit agencies are generally given a fixed pot of money for operating subsidies (in this case the proceeds of a half-cent sales tax) and rail tends to take a hugely disproportionate share of that money, starving out less sexy but more practical and cost-effective bus systems.  Even in the that wet dream of rail planners, Portland:

In fact, 9.8 percent of Portland-area commuters took transit to work before the region build light rail. Today it is just 7.6 percent. In a story repeated in numerous cities that have built rail lines, rail cost overruns forced the city to raise bus fares and reduce bus service. That's a success?

This is even more likely in Phoenix, where buses make far more financial sense than rail, given our very low densities, lack of a real downtown area, and numerous commuting routes.  In fact, not only is it predictable, but I predicted it:

Rail makes zero sense in a city like Phoenix.  All this will do is create a financial black hole into which we shift all of our bus money, so the city will inevitably end up with a worse transportation system, not a better one.  Cities that build light rail almost always experience a reduction in total transit use (even the great God of planners Portland) for just this reason - budgets are limited, so since rail costs so much more per passenger, other transit is cut back.   But the pictures of the train will look pretty in the visitor's guide.

The Arizona Republic had another of its cheerleading articles on light rail this morning.  In it was a chart that, contrary to the intent of the article, summarized exactly why Phoenix light rail is doomed.  Below is a chart of the employment density (top chart) and population density (bottom chart) at each stop along the first rail route.  Note that this line goes through what passes for the central business district of Phoenix and the oldest parts of town, so it was chosen to run through the highest density areas - all future extensions will likely have lower numbers.  Unfortunately, they do not reproduce this chart online so here is a scan:

Take the population density chart.  As a benchmark, lets take Boston.  The average density for all of the city of Boston is 12,199 people per square mile.  Phoenix's light rail line cut through the highest density areas of town has only one stop where density reaches this level, and most stops are less than half this density.  And this is against Boston's average, not against the density along its rail routes which are likely much higher than the average.

Rail makes zero sense in a city like Phoenix.  All this will do is create a financial black hole into which we shift all of our bus money, so the city will inevitably end up with a worse transportation system, not a better one.  Cities that build light rail almost always experience a reduction in total transit use (even the great God of planners Portland) for just this reason - budgets are limited, so since rail costs so much more per passenger, other transit is cut back.   But the pictures of the train will look pretty in the visitor's guide.

Postscript: Phoenix's overall average density is around 2,500 per square mile.  Assuming that the 12,000 in the chart above is one of the densest areas of Phoenix, this gives a ratio of about 5:1 between peak and average density.  This same ratio in Boston would imply peak density areas of 60,000 per square mile.  This may be high, but indicates how much higher route densities on Boston rail should be.  Oh, and by the way, Boston rail is losing a ton of money.

Other city densities here from 1990.  People think of LA as spread out, but LA has a density over three times higher than Phoenix!

The Anti-Planner has more on the California high speed rail proposal I wrote about earlier.  My guess was that the first $9 billion bond issue, on the ballot this fall, would not get the train out of the LA metro area.  Well, I was right and wrong.  The smart money thinks the line will start at the other end, in San Francisco.  But the betting is that for $9 billion the line won't even get out of the San Francisco metro area, making it perhaps as far as San Jose. 

But we have a second data point -- there is a proposal on the table to extend BART from Fremont to Santa Clara for $4.7 billion, a distance (as shown on the map below) about a third of that from San Francisco to San Jose.

I am not sure what high-speed rail technology that they are considering, but a true high-speed line requires special alignments, track, and signaling that should make it FAR more expensive per mile than a BART line (just as an example, a true high-speed line could take miles to make a 90 degree turn, eating up land and reducing alignment flexibility in a very congested and hilly area).  And remember, the BART cost estimate is probably low.

No way these guys get to San Jose for $9 billion, much less to LA for $40 billion.  Just what Californians need with their massive budget deficit:  a brand new white elephant.

A few weeks ago I was amazed at the story of the city of Chicago spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build the terminal rail station of a rail line that had no plan, no route, no approval, and no money.  Why spend hundreds of millions on a station that could well be orphaned?  The reason, I supposed, was to make a toe in the water investment where the public could later be shamed into voting more funds for building a rail line to actually connect to their fabulous new station.

It appears that California may be doing the same thing. This November, voters in that state will have the chance to approve a $9.95 billion rail bond issue.  $9 billion of this is earmarked for building a high-speed rail line from Anaheim to San Francisco.  But current estimates for this line's cost, which are always way too low, are for $30 billion.  Who in their right mind would proceed with a $30 billion (or likely more) project when only $9 billion of funding has been obtained?  Only scam artists, Ponzi schemes.... and the government.

Update:  Wow!  Boy, I must be dumb or something.  The website supporting this bond issue says that this project will create 450,000 permanent new jobs.  How can anyone oppose that?  This is really amazing, since the entire US railroad industry currently employs 224,000 people, but this one rail line will create 450,000 jobs! 

Update #2:  I like to make predictions about government rail projects, so here is mine for this one:  I don't know what end they are starting with, but if they start from the south, I will bet that $9 billion does not even get them out of the LA area (say past Santa Clarita or Santa Barbara), much less anywhere close to San Francisco.

The absurdly porked-up transportation initiative has been dropped from the November ballot in Arizona.  So we can relax for another year, and local jurisdictions will be forced to pay for their own silly projects with local money.  My last post on this ballot initiative was here.

I don't really understand the various issues in this article on the next phase of Phoenix light rail expansion, but this certainly caught my eye:

It will add another $9 million to the $297 million project. But by
acting quickly to make these changes, there aren't expected to be
delays in rail construction. Work is scheduled to start in early 2009
and be completed by 2012.

Opposition to the rail plan arose last fall in the last half mile of
the 3.2-mile light rail line that extends from just south of Bethany
Home Road to Dunlap Ave.

Let's see -- $306 million divided by 3.2 miles is very close to $100 million a mile, and that is even before the inevitable cost overruns cut in (as a rule of thumb, I tend to double estimates of light rail construction costs to estimate the actual final total, and even then I am often low).   It also does not include inevitable operating losses.

Nearly a third of a billion dollars to run a rail line a distance most people could walk in 45 minutes.  For three freaking miles.  As a comparison, three buses could provide service on this same route running at 5 minute intervals for perhaps 1% of this capital cost and a substantially lower operating cost.  And better service, since the frequency would be 3 times higher.  Absolutely absurd. 

More on Phoenix light rail here, and more on light rail in general here.

Postscript: Some of you may be familiar with my light rail bet.  I often bet that a light rail line will cost more to build than it would have cost to buy every  regular daily rider a Prius, and more to operate in a year than it would require to gas up all of these Prius's for a year.  For reference, with a $22,500 cost for a Prius and $306 million (and counting) capital cost, that is enough to buy 13,600 Prius's.  Anyone want to bet that the number of incremental users attracted to the line by this 3 mile extension don't exceed 13,600?

Update:  TJIC does the math -- $1500 per inch!  Fixed link, thanks to commenters.