Category Archives: Economics – Urban Boondoggles

Reviewing the track record of an urban boondoggle

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Earlier posts here and here explored the economic absurdity of urban rail systems in modern American cities, which is a hot topic in Houston these days given the recent launch of Metro’s Light Rail System earlier this year.
Now, the long-range empirical data refuting the economic basis of such systems is emerging. In this article, Wendell Cox analyzes the $10 billion cost relating to creation and maintenance of the Washington, D.C. “Metro” rail system over the past 30 years. His findings are insightful:

No US urban area has built more new high-quality urban rail than Washington, DC, which spent $10 billion, most of it from national taxpayers, on a more than 100 mile system. Of course, it would be unfair to have expected Washington?s ?Metro? subway to have made a difference in area-wide traffic, since, as noted above, transit is about downtown. Predictably, at the
metropolitan area level, Metro?s impact has been virtually absent. In 1970, before the first section of the system opened, the Census Bureau reported that 15.3 percent of area workers used transit to get to work. By 2000, transit?s work trip market share number had dropped 29 percent, to 10.9 percent. Perhaps even more astounding is the fact that Census data indicated a five
percent reduction in actual work trip usage from 1990 to 2000, a period during which the system was expanded more than 25 percent.
Over the past 20 years, traffic in the Washington area has become the fourth worst in the nation, following only Los Angeles (which has opened a metro, light rail and commuter rail), San Francisco (where BART has made no difference) and Chicago (with the nation?s second most extensive rail system). The problem in Washington is that so many planned freeways were cancelled. In Houston, where capacity has been built to keep up with demand, traffic is better than in 1986, and the area has improved to 10th worst traffic in the nation from having been the worst in 1985.

Read the entire article. As we ponder why these public boondoggles continue to proliferate despite the increasingly clear evidence of their enormous cost relative to their relatively small public benefit, I pass along an astute commentator’s observation regarding the politics of such systems from one of my earlier posts:

Concentrated benefits and dispersed costs are one economic reason for the existence of inefficient public projects. The many who stand to lose will lose only a little, whereas the few who stand to gain will gain a lot. Of course, if other public projects exist where overall costs outweigh benefits, then $6 a year per project could add up to quite a hefty boondoggler?s bill.

New plan for the Astrodome

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With the construction of the Juice Box and Reliant Stadium, one of the local political footballs that is lobbed around Houston from time to time is the following issue: What should we do with the Astrodome?
The local sports and convention corporation spends about $1.5 million annually to host a small number of events at the Astrodome and, even if the facility were to be mothballed, the corporation would spend $500,000 annually in maintaining it. Even razing it would be expensive, probably costing $10 million to $20 million. Moreover, Harris County still owes more than $50 million on bonds issued to pay for renovations at the Astrodome during the 1980s (remember Bud Adams?), and that debt will mature in 2012.
Consequently, The Astrodome is a knotty problem. It’s expensive to maintain and, quite frankly, the County is not spending the money to maintain it properly. As a result, it is a dump at this point, and it looks haggard next to gleaming Reliant Stadium and the new Reliant Convention Center that are next door neighbors to the Dome in Reliant Park. Unless something can be done to make some other use of the grand ol’ dame of Houston sports facilities, most Houstonians would rather see it blown up so that the space it uses could be transformed into more parking at Reliant Park.
However, this Chronicle article reports that the company looking to redevelop the Astrodome is planning on converting it into a 1,000 room convention hotel. The Astrodome hotel would be the second largest hotel in town, second to the 1,200 room Hilton Americas Convention Hotel next to the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston.
Although the Gaylord Texan Hotel in Grapevine near DFW Airport in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area is an existing prototype of what a retrofitted Dome could be, my sense is that this proposal for the Astrodome is not likely to occur without a substantial subsidy from Harris County. Consequently, let’s see if the Chronicle or any other Houston news media discloses the true taxpayer cost of retrofitting and maintaining the Dome in comparison to alternative uses of the property. Given the Chronicle’s abysmal performance in providing accurate information regarding the cost of the Streetcar Named Disaster, my expectations are not high.

More on Houston’s light rail boondoggle

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Following this earlier post on the economic absurdity of light rail systems, Randal O’Toole, one of the economists over at The Commons, cites the Houston light rail system as one example why cities such as Denver and Austin should reject such systems:

Houston opened a 7.5-mile light-rail line in its downtown on January 1. It has so far caused more than 50 collisions with autos or pedestrians (including a few during testing before January 1). While the transit agency blames bad auto drivers, the accident rate is twenty times the national average for light-rail lines.

Mr. O’Toole notes other economic disasters involving rail systems in other cities, and then aptly summarizes as follows:

The push for rail transit comes from construction companies that seek to soak the taxpayers building it, downtown property owners who hope to enhance the value of their properties, anti-auto environmentalists who view congestion with schadenfreude, and collectivists who think we would be better off in collective transit than private autos. None of these reasons are very appealing so they cloak their goals behind specious claims that rails will reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, something that rail transit has never done.

Amen.

The economic absurdity of light rail systems

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Molly D. Castelazo is a research associate and Thomas A. Garrett is a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. They authored this article that analyzes the bad economics of the St. Louis light rail system and includes a devastating chart reflecting how it would have been much more economically prudent to buy a new Toyota Prius for all the light rail riders than to build and maintain the light rail system. The entire article is well worth reading, particularly for Houstonians who have funded a similar boondoggle, and the authors make the following concluding observation:

If light rail is not cost-efficient, nor an effective way to reduce pollution and traffic congestion, nor the least costly means of providing transportation to the poor, why do voters continue to approve new taxes for the construction and expansion of light-rail systems?

One economic reason is that the benefits of light rail are highly concentrated, while the costs are widely dispersed. The direct benefits of a light-rail project can be quite large for a relatively small group of people, such as elected officials, environmental groups, labor organizations, engineering and architectural firms, developers and regional businesses, which often campaign vigorously for the passage of light-rail funding. These groups would benefit from light rail, not from the subsidization of cars and money to all potential riders of light rail.
The costs of light rail, while large in aggregate, are often small when spread over the tax-paying population. (The cost of light rail in St. Louis totals about $6 per taxpayer annually). A large group of taxpayers facing relatively minimal costs can be persuaded to vote for light rail based on benefits shaped by the interested minority, such as helping the poor, reducing congestion and pollution, and fostering development. Even if these benefits are exaggerated and the taxpayer realizes the cost-ineffectiveness of light rail, it is probably not worth the $6 for that person to spend significant time lobbying against light rail.
Proponents of light rail argue that it will create jobs, foster economic development and boost property values. While there is some academic evidence of these benefits, it is important to realize that they are not free to society?light rail is kept afloat by taxpayer-funded subsidies that amount to hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
Concentrated benefits and dispersed costs are one economic reason for the existence of inefficient public projects. The many who stand to lose will lose only a little, whereas the few who stand to gain will gain a lot. Of course, if other public projects exist where overall costs outweigh benefits, then $6 a year per project could add up to quite a hefty boondoggler?s bill.

Dr. Barton Smith, University of Houston professor of economics and director of the UH Institute for Regional Forecasting, is the leading expert on the regional economics of the Houston metropolitan area and has prepared a similar analysis regarding the Houston Metro light rail system.
Alas, I do not expect the Houston Chronicle to address this issue anytime soon. Hat tip to Professor Gordon for the link to this study.