Numb3rs

In the blog entry, "Train wreck or a Land Use and Development Paradigm Wreck?" thm responded to the assertions in the Richmond Times-Dispatch's editorial about the cost of transit vs. driving. I thought his point needed to be emphasized in a separate blog entry. THM writes:

The costs per passenger-mile are totally wrong.

Both AAA and Runzheimer International estimate the operating costs of cars to be $0.50--$0.60 per mile, that's ignoring subsidies and parking which can take the total to the order of $0.90/pax mile.

Metrorail operating cost is $0.34/pax-mile; add another $0.33 for capital costs. The San Diego Trolley (first of the modern/revival light rail systems) takes about $0.30 operating plus $0.25/pax-mile capital recovery. MARC operating costs are about $0.30/pax-mile.

Wendell Cox has worked with Maryland and Virginia state "public policy institutes" associated with hard right conservative positions, which tend to favor roads and cars and sprawl over compact development and transit. These institutes have published reports in association with the Heritage Foundation that include a special chapter respective to each state, written by Cox, with the kinds of analysis comparable to the RTD editorial, but even more favorable to roads.

Similarly, I find it interesting that the hard right anti-taxers have positioned the WMATA funding issue as an "egregious earmark" and tax, rather than a sound public policy choice.

But then, they probably weren't smart enough to buy developable land along proposed transit routes either. As we know in places like DC and Arlington, the land value appreciates "extranormally." E.g., the houses in the area north of H Street appreciated upwards of 250% during the time period between when the New York Avenue Subway Station was announced and its opening in 2004.
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Speaking of Wendell Cox, like clockwork, he has a letter to the editor in today's Examiner.

(1) He says that WMATA should contract out services "as is done in Stockholm, Copenhagen, London, Adelaide, and others." Note to Examiner, your editorial said this is done widely throughout "North America." But also, no one has demonstrated that WMATA's operational costs are out of line compared to other systems. It's true that privately contracted transit services can cost less if not unionized, but some of these "savings" get diverted to "profits" for for-profit businesses. WMATA doesn't work to generate profits other than monies that can be reinvested in the business.

(2) He throws out the kind of typical b.s. number that he does all the time, in this case "60,000 more cars enter downtown DC daily than before Metro opened." So what, hundreds of thousands of other people enter downtown DC daily on Metro, not using cars to get there. I don't know the extent of his knowledge about traffic congestion, but it increases significantly with more cars.

(3) The point he makes about transit's share of work trips in the region dropping obscures two very different points: (a.) overall employment has increased; and (b.) unfortunately, because land use planning doesn't occur in concert with extant transportation infrastructure, more jobs are "opening up" where transit is a relatively inefficient mobility option (i.e., Dulles Corridor, in many places in Northern Virginia, along the I-270 Corridor, etc.).

This paper, "Evaluating Rail Transit Criticism," from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, is very good. Other reports from VTPI include:

-- Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs
-- Rail Transit In America: Comprehensive Evaluation of Benefits - Executive Summary
-- Rail Transit In America: Comprehensive Evaluation of Benefits - Full Report
-- Evaluating New Start Transit Program Performance: Comparing Rail And Bus

And one of the things that transit critics don't discuss is how the value created by transit most often connotes to the property owners (although some is captured in property tax revenue increases), not the transit system. The Hong Kong Transit system is one of the world's only transit systems that operates without subsidies. That's because they actively develop the land around and above their stations, which provides an ongoing leasing revenue stream that increases as the properties become even more successful. This revenue stream (comparable to the revenue that GWU earns from its leased-out office buildings in Foggy Bottom) is a significant source of income for HKT.

Also see this report from VTPI, Financing Transit Systems Through Value Capture: An Annotated Bibliography.

Index Keywords: transit; car-culture