Train-Damaged Transportation Policy

January 29, 2009

They never learn, do they?

Connecticut’s pols are drooling over the prospect of using the messiah-in-chief’s “stimulus” package to fund rail projects. Whether it’s an acceleration of the long-sought New Haven-Hartford-Springfield commuter line, a scheme to restore passenger service between Waterbury and Hartford, or a light-rail route for Stamford, the usual suspects are touting the alleged economic and environmental benefits of government-run trains.

As usual, their claims are baseless.

Only three states have higher population densities than Connecticut. Yet according to U.S. Census Bureau data, the state’s commuters use government transit less frequently than the nation as a whole. Due to its proximity to New York City, Metro-North’s New Haven Line does carry a respectable, if small, number of Nutmeggers. But Shore Line East (SLE), which links New Haven and New London, is a debacle. It has the worst occupancy rate and highest fare per passenger mile of any commuter-rail system in the nation.

If built, the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield line might outdo SLE. In September 2007, Wendell Cox, a reality-based transportation analyst (among his latest “I told you so” honors, he correctly predicted that the Las Vegas monorail would generate less than half its estimated ridership) ran the numbers. Using state data, Cox concluded that “taxpayer subsidies are projected to be more than enough to lease each new rider a top-of-the-line Lexus or BMW.” He also found that “ridership on the line is so scant that it would not even approach taking 0.5 percent of the traffic off … Interstate 91,” and that “it is highly unlikely that the rail line would reduce energy consumption.”  

The folks behind Stamford’s light-rail fantasy -- a proposal Chamber of Commerce President Jack Condlin says is “a bold and exciting project” that “could make Stamford a national model for a city its size, one recognized as a city on the move and building for the future” -- don’t appear to have examined how similar systems actually perform. If they had, they’d be somewhat less enthusiastic. Since the late 1980s, researchers and auditors have consistently found that light-rail pushers underestimate costs and overestimate usage. According to environmental scholar Randal O’Toole, the two most recent light-rail lines to go into service, in Minneapolis and Houston, both produced “disastrous results.” Neither relieved congestion, and the cities’ transit bureaucracies “carried fewer riders in 2004 than 2003, partly because the high cost of the rail lines forced the agencies to curtail bus service.”

Why does rail fail? Cox has a simple answer: “For most trips, transit is not an acceptable substitute for the automobile. Transit may be too slow, too inconvenient, or, more often than not, transit simply does not go where people are going.” Connecticut’s workers agree. Since 1980, transit’s market share of state commuting has fallen by 6 percent. A 2005 poll found that 95 percent of Connecticut residents believed it would be impractical for them to take a train to their job. (The satirical newspaper The Onion was on to something with its 2000 article “Report: 98 percent of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation for Others.”)

The opportunity cost of Connecticut elites’ obsession with trains is high. By focusing -- and spending billions -- on transportation projects that don’t address citizens’ needs, they divert resources that could be applied to forward-thinking strategies founded on how people really live.

In 2006, the Reason Foundation recommended that the state add 1,600 lane miles to its highways. In addition to its traffic-reducing value, the expansion would contribute to “lower fuel use, reduced accident rates and vehicle operating costs, lower shipping costs and truck travel time reductions, greater freight reliability, and a number of benefits associated with greater community accessibility, including an expanded labor pool for employers and new job choices for workers.” What’s the best way to get the private sector involved in a massive highway project? Are there roles for elevated lanes, beltways, and tunnels to play in the state’s congested urban regions? What about toll lanes for freight haulers? With their flexibility and customer responsiveness, private buses and jitneys have succeeded elsewhere -- why can’t they replace the failure-ridden “Connecticut Transit” system?

The state’s choo-choo cultists are unwilling to ask such pesky questions. They want their trains, and they want them now. Disagree, and you’re a naysaying obstructionist who must be in the pocket of Big Oil.

Given the pork about to flow from D.C., more subsidies to passenger rail in Connecticut are certain. Another certainty: Commuters won’t see any benefits from this “investment.”

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com.

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