This article appeared originally in the Fayetteville Observer.
First, it was the Global TransPark. Then it was the Randy Parton Theater. Now state planners are going for the trifecta. Call it: “The Great Train Robbery.” A cadre of special interests, activists and politicians has put together an audacious piece of model legislation that would allow the General Assembly to pull a few levers and set the Triangle’s light rail project in motion after decades of inertia. Charlotte would get money for phase two of its LYNX system. Other urban areas would get a few buses.
This $2 billion wonder of central planning is called “The Congestion Relief Fund.” It’s designed to mirror the Highway Trust Fund in collecting revenues from people around the state, except said revenues will be kept in a pot designated for urban transit (read: light rail plus some buses and heavy-rail subsidies thrown in for good measure).
Yet there are deep problems with this scheme. First, it will not relieve congestion as the name suggests; second, it will divert transportation resources from other desperately needed areas; and third, it will serve mostly a small group of special interests and not the state or even urban areas as wholes. Allow me to elaborate.
UNC-Charlotte Emeritus Professor David Hartgen, a transportation expert, estimates that Charlotte will be lucky to get a one percent reduction in overall traffic with its new LYNX line — for maybe a year or two. Now Charlotte’s a hub-and-spoke city with a sizable downtown. Does anyone honestly believe the Triangle — likely the largest beneficiary of the $2 billion in the proposed Congestion Relief Fund — will feel the difference of a one-percent reduction in traffic? Even rail advocates such as Wake County Commissioner Tony Gurley say “I don’t expect the transit plan to create a significant reduction in traffic on the roads.”
Refocusing resources
Of course it won’t. The Triangle is not a hub-and-spoke area, but a region of small clusters. This reality damned past Triangle efforts. Even the spend-happy folks in Washington had to draw the line — denying the Triangle federal funds. Unfortunately, despite “exponential” growth in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, no light rail system will ever be able to relieve congestion like a more holistic approach, that is, by cost-effectively attending to the roads, lanes, exits, intersections and bottlenecks of the entire system. That means focusing resources where the cars are, not on rail that serves so few.
According to Randall O’Toole of the Cato Institute, the average light rail line in the United States costs five times the average urban highway lane, but carries only one-fifth the passengers. This is a particularly unflattering statistic given that, despite aspirations to “world class” status, the Triangle is unlike denser cities such as St. Louis or Portland — all of which have suffered under the illusion that rail transit makes for smart growth.
“(Smart growth) policies’ real effects appear to be increases in traffic congestion, air pollution, consumer costs, taxes and just about every other impediment to urban livability,” says Randall O’Toole. And that bleak assessment leaves out all the folks statewide who’re forced to bankroll these planning failures without seeing any benefit from them.
Economists Molly D. Castelazo and Thomas A. Garrett of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis sum the issue up tidily: “One justification for the subsidies paid to build and operate light-rail systems is that light rail will reduce pollution and congestion from automobile traffic.” The reality? Light rail is “only a short-run solution to the problems ... To permanently alleviate traffic congestion and pollution, policy-makers must address the root cause of both: the inefficient pricing of roadway usage.”
Thus, far from being progressive, light rail is a highly regressive redistribution of resources from ordinary drivers and consumers around the state, to rich urbanites unwilling to take buses — this despite the fact that buses are more flexible and an order of magnitude less expensive. Light rail passengers will be paying less than one-tenth of their rides. You’ll be paying more than nine-tenths. Isn’t there something unscrupulous about concentrating such massive benefits on so few?
Developers, real estate investors, politicians, architects, construction companies and anyone else who stands to benefit from rail schemes are the ones who will be bankrolling ads for transit taxes, congestion relief funds and the various other means of bleeding taxpayers. Those same special interests will be standing in the picket line beside activists making false claims about environmental benefits. But who will speak for all the people around the state who have neither the resources nor the information to fight the machinations of these groups in Charlotte and the Triangle?
To put all this into perspective, suppose the fund built a Triangle system at the current estimate of $2 billion. Suppose that system served twice Charlotte’s current line, or 24,000 riders. For that kind of money, you could buy every light rail rider a Toyota Prius every five years for the next 15 years with money left over to pay them to leave for work earlier. Or, you could rent an apartment for every would-be rider within walking distance of his office for four years, and still have money to spare ($1,600 monthly rental for 24,000 apartments over four years comes to $1.84 billion).
Would you be willing to do that?
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