I had hoped to respond with a link to reader’s email on Friday, in light of a piece I did for the N&O on light rail. The trouble is, every time I write for them, their circumlocution office fails to put my pieces on the Web. I’m not sure why I’m not Webworthy, but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. I won’t wax conspiratorial, but will chalk it up to bureaucracy.
In any case, if you read "Buses, Not Trains" in the paper on Friday, you’d have thought I was making an argument for buses, not trains. Unfortunately, that was the N&O’s title. I merely wanted to contrast buses with trains to give people an idea of just how big a fetish light rail has become in the eyes of those ensnared by smart growth groupthink. Anyway, here’s a reader’s response on the problem of buses, too:
In the article "Buses, not trains" in the Nov 16, N&O, Max Borders quotes Randall O’Toole: the "majority of light-rail systems consume more energy per passenger mile than the average passenger car."
This is true for many (most?) bus systems as well. According to the 2005 National Transit Database (the most recent data), the Triangle Transit Authority used 455.7 gallons of diesel for 2474 actual miles and 7257.7 passenger miles (all in 1000s). This equates to 5.43 actual mpg and 15.93 passenger mpg. And it’s diesel pollution too, which is far worse on health than gasoline.
-Max Borders
What is very interesting about the new light rail systems is that they have very little in common with the former interurban lines that they are the descendents of. If you would care to look into the history of these systems, several facts about them stand out:
1. They were privately funded.
2. They were built as inexpensively as was practical, as they did not have the capital available that the steam railroads did.
3. They were mostly run in an extremely parsimonious fashion, saving pennies anywhere they could.
4. They had a “day in the sun,” but declined after World War I, as inexpensive automobiles became widely available, thanks to Henry Ford. (Eventually, decent roads followed, with governments responding to the demand from the motoring public.) Even back then, it was apparent that Americans prefer the self-determination that is available to the automobile driver, but not to the user of public transit.
5. There was more of an acceptance of the risks and vicissitudes of life, as witnessed by the sharing of right of way between relatively light and flimsy interurban cars and the very heavy rolling stock of the freight railroads. Current FRA regulations prohibit running light rail cars on freight railroad tracks or rights of way unless the cars meet some very stringent safety requirements. This helps make the TTA-type DMUs much more expensive than they would otherwise need to be.
In the end, the trouble with any publicly funded system, whether it is bus or rail, is that there is no rational cost/benefit analysis, and there is no imperative to make a profit, which is necessary to keep capital and operating costs of any such system to a reasonable level.
Perhaps we could use the market to help with transit. Currently, many cities have taxi licensing laws that artificially lower the supply of this private transportation, and control the rates of those that are allowed on the streets. (Durham, curiously, makes it illegal to charge a lesser rate than standard.) Furthermore, the regulation of bus companies by the utility commission under NCGS Chapter 62 is nothing if not discouraging to potential private providers of mass transit. (NCGS 62-144, incidentally, prohibits bus operators from giving free rides to anyone, except for employees and certain state officials. Go figure.) Cities, such as Raleigh, also heavily regulate any potential private transit provider to the extreme by specific ordinance.
These laws all serve to tilt the playing field towards public funding and operation of transit systems. If we remove these impediments to the free market, then someone is bound to come into the market to service this demand – if there truly is a respectable amount of demand for mass transit.