More people on the bus in KC, but rail gets more riders elsewhere

Growth in rail transit is highly significant as the nation seeks to diminish its dependency on foreign oil.

A couple of quarters results are not necessarily significant however long term trends must be analyzed carefully, especially in reviewing results of existing routes using comparable periods in prior years.

Both advocates and opponents of rail transit must study actual numbers.

David R. Peironnet

Some cities do great with lightrail because of there high density of people populated in a square mile. Kansas City does not have it. Kansas City is more diverse in mixing poor with middle class. Some people won't or can't afford to take lightrail like some do. Take midtown. Alot of people but spread out with alot of section 8, poor people, people on food stamps, etc...
More people are happier with the bus system. They actually can make more turns than lightrail. Buses are more compatible with our streets with no re-development as Glenn LeRoy once put it," the purpose of lightrail is to spur re-development along the lightrail route".
KANSAS CITY DOES NOT NEED LIGHTRAIL

"Rail transit...is still the real draw across the country." You have got to be kidding me.

There is absolutely no case for light, heavy, commuter, or HO gauge rail in Kansas City. The sooner we forget about this silly boondoggle the better off we'll be. The lauded "task force" has done nothing but recommend a toy train to nowhere. We have a $3.6 BILLION (and counting) sewer project looming. Stop this light rail insanity NOW!!!

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Read this at: http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=347#more-347.

Is Dulles Rail Dead or Alive?

Posted in Transportation, News commentary

Dulles Rail All But Dead shrills the Washington Post. The idea of extending Washington’s MetroRail system 23 miles to (and slightly beyond) Dulles Airport has been around for years, but its huge expense — at least $5 billion or more than $200 million per mile — has been daunting.

To provide local matching funds, northern Virginia counties recently created a huge transportation authority that would tax home sales, hotel rooms, rental cars, and auto repairs to pay for local road and transit projects. It was generally understood that a large share of the authority’s money would go to Dulles rail, but local officials were counting on federal funding for at least half the cost of the project.

Only 12 percent of air travelers who fly out of National Airport use MetroRail to get to and from the airport. No other airport rail line in the country carries more than 8 percent of air travelers.

Last week, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and FTA Administrator James Simpson stunned northern Virginia officials by announcing that they were disqualifying the project from federal funding. Washington’s Metro, they said, was unable to manage the rail lines it has today, and certainly did not seem capable of building and operating 22 percent more miles.

The Washington Post did not hesitate to let readers know in the very first paragraph of its story that the rail project is “widely considered crucial to the region’s economic future.” Plus, an editorial complained that “international airports in Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Sydney are served by passenger rail lines,” so why not Washington?

This was followed by a “news report” claiming that the Department of Transportation had somehow misled Virginia officials into thinking that it would support the rail project and then backed out without warning. But that’s not really true.

Several years ago, the Department of Transportation issued new rules requiring rail projects to meet cost-effectiveness tests that the Dulles line obvious could not meet. In its recent transportation bill, Congress exempted four projects from those tests: BART to San Jose, a light-rail tunnel in San Francisco, the Wilsonville commuter rail in the Portland area, and the Dulles rail project. Despite that exemption, it was hardly a secret that Dulles rail was controversial and that Secretary Peters was looking askance and such expensive projects.

Personal anecdote: The Antiplanner happened to fly from KC to DC the day of the Dulles announcement. Since I am one of the 12 percent of air travelers into Reagan National who take Metro Rail, I headed straight for the outdoor Metro station, where I told myself it was warm (28 degrees) compared with the 3 degrees I left in Kansas City. Since I travel light, I had nothing more than a hat and gloves to supplement the thin wool fabric of the suit I uncomfortably wore.

The good news was that signs promised a yellow train would arrive in 1 minute and a blue train in 8. Either one would take me where I wanted to go, but the yellow train would get me there faster. The bad news was that the minutes crept by, with the sign continuing to promise a yellow train in 1 minute, while I was steadily turning hypothermic.

Meanwhile, the PA system repeatedly announced that smoke in the Clarendon station had shut down through service on the Orange line. Passengers to Vienna would have to transfer to buses at Courthouse, and then back to the train at GMU. Sounds like fun in 28-degree weather.

The system has suffered such smoke events before and no one seems to be sure what is causing them. But they underscore the $10 billion that Metro doesn’t have to rehabilitate its system and keep it running.

A train finally arrived and I gratefully entered the warm cars. It turned out to be a blue train. On Saturday, when I returned home to Oregon, I would have taken Metro again — except that Metro trains don’t start running until 7 am on Saturdays, and my plane left at 7:05. No wonder 88 percent of air travelers don’t use Metro.

So is Dulles rail really dead? “The contract to build the rail line has an escalation clause beginning Feb. 1,” says the Post. “If it kicks in, it would probably cause the state to terminate the contract and start the process over again.” But rail watchers know that no rail project is ever really dead. Once Bush leaves office and Democrats raise gas taxes — dedicating at least 40 percent of the increase to transit — the threat of Dulles rail will no doubt rise again.

Ironically, immediately adjacent to Saturday’s Post article about Dulles rail was an article about brave residents of Shanghai organizing marches and other protests. Are they advocating human rights? Protesting restrictions on freedom of speech? Demanding complete access to the Internet?

None of these. You have to read to the article’s fourth paragraph to find out, but they are protesting the proposed extension of Shanghai’s maglev train. This train, which currently connects downtown Shanghai with its international airport, can go more than 250 miles per hour. But even after reducing fares, it has been running mostly empty. Air travelers say it doesn’t go where they want to go. “It may take me longer, but the taxi is more convenient,” says one.

So why, Shanghai residents ask, waste more money extending an expensive rail project that doesn’t work that well in the first place? That’s a question that the Washington Post should be asking as well.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Transportation, News commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.