This post from last year addressed the economic failure of the urban rail system in Washington, D.C. Now, the Washington Post is running a series of articles (first one here) that is examining the dubious economics and management of D.C.’s subway system. Here are other posts on various urban rail boondoggles.
Tory Gattis over at Houston Strategies picks up on the same WaPo article and observes the following regarding the failed economics of most urban rail systems:
Quite the depressing and scary litany. It’s really hard to have good management at a public agency, and transit is a seriously complicated and expensive business with billions of dollars at stake, especially rail transit. Amtrak’s a mess. DC’s a mess. NY, Chicago, SF/San Jose, and LA all have serious problems with their transit agencies. What makes us think Houston Metro can buck this trend?
I think you’re seriously mischaracterizing the Post article. I hope readers will go read the whole thing for themselves. There’s really no discussion of the underlying economics of the DC Metro system. And, as I pointed out in a comment to the older post you referenced, labelling it a “boondoggle” is pretty clueless. The criticisms you references were that DC Metro didn’t solve a problem it wasn’t designed to solve, while providing
The Post article is useful, though, in that it points out how important it is to keep a very close eye on how these agencies are run.
John, WaPo describes the article as follows:
“Washington’s world-class subway has fallen into decline, and nearly $1 billion spent on projects to upgrade the system has not improved service.”
Whether you want to call that a big management problem or a big economic problem makes no difference to me. However, let’s agree that it’s a big problem.
Moreover, I may be “clueless” as you suggest (my teenage children certainly agree), but what do you call expending billions on urban rail systems to relieve traffic congestion and then continuing to expend such amounts when it becomes apparent that the systems have failed in that purpose?
Tom: I know your last question wasn’t directed at me, but I call it “irrational exuberance.”
There are some folks who so love the idea of rail that any cost/benefit approach to mass transit policy just isn’t really acceptable to them.
These are the sorts of people who promised poor folks in Houston a 50% increase in their bus service in exchange for our own light rail (it’s helpfully still on METRO’s site, lest anyone disagree). Instead, we have cuts in bus service, cuts in security at park-and-rides (facilities that are actually utilized by people), METRO taking on debt for the first time ever, and signs that the train will continue to eat up many more dollars than even the worst critics EVER predicted.
The article doesn’t address the fundamental economics of the system, thus you can draw no conclusion about it from them. That’s all I said. I don’t care whether your conclusion is that rail makes sense or doesn’t; the article talks about current financial picture, management, maintenance, etc., but it does not talk about the fundamental issue of whether rail makes sense.
Which, in DC, it clearly does. (You may want to look at the comments I made to the original post.) The idea that rail is a failure in DC is just silly; the idea that you could replace Metro’s contribution with roads and busees without disastrous consequences ignores all kinds of costs and issues that such an approach would impose.
Kevin – there may be people like those you describe, but I’m not one of them. In Houston I think we’d be better off with improved bus service than more rail. In DC, the rail system has been a huge boon to the city. I see a lot irrational naysaying that assumes anything that requires a big public investment has got to be bad. The cost/benefit analyses tend to make rail look bad if you externalize a lot of costs, but if you look at broader impacts, rail is a very good choice in some places.
“The performance of Metro carries extraordinarily high stakes, both for the system and the metropolitan area. The public invested more than $10 billion to build the subway. As its lines have spread across Washington and its suburbs, the system has fueled population growth, revitalized neighborhoods and stitched together a diverse region. Businesses select locations and families buy homes based on proximity to a Metro station. The subway is critical to the federal workforce. People increasingly depend on it; since 2000, ridership is up 18 percent to nearly 660,000 passengers daily.
And in a region with some of the worst traffic in the country, access to reliable mass transit could determine whether the area continues to attract businesses and residents.
Christened in 1976 as “America’s subway,” Metro can claim real accomplishments. It created cathedral stations lauded by architects and built a technically challenging, 106-mile subway with few construction problems. It remains popular among commuters and tourists. And on Sept. 11, 2001, it proved critical to evacuating Washington.”
Does that really sound like a failure? The only failure is that they tried to cheap out on upgrades to the system– upgrades that were made necessary by the popularity of the rail system. As someone who has visited Washington on numerous occassions, I can tell you that their system works spectacularly in moving people around the capital area which was once also considered to be too large to have effective mass transit.
While there are definitely things that can be done to improve the light rail (better sync of lights, devoted lanes, and expansion into suburbs) these are things that are currently opposed by the very people it would be most likely to help. Can you imagine how useful rail lines between the airports, or a line going from Katy, Sugar Land, Woodlands, and Clear Lake to downtown would be?
The only problem is obstructionists in Congress are preventing Metro from getting the funding necessary to expand the rail and make it more useful to the city at large.
Ultimately, Houston can decide to sprawl itself out into small independent suburbs divorced from the city, or we can use the light rail to entice growth in areas that will help Houston become a world-class city, rather than a hollow core of businesses dozens of miles removed from where people work. As someone who thinks Houston doesn’t get the credit it deserves as an excellent city nationwide, I think unifying the city with rail is a good first step into becoming an even more prominent city. It worked for Washington, and it can work for us– if we let it. Because remember, just like there were people opposing rail in Houston, people opposed it in DC as well. And look how well that turned out.
The future of Houston’s METRO?
Both Tom Kirkendall (Houston’s Clear Thinkers) and Tory Gattis (Houston Strategies) call attention to the first of a series of Washington Post articles on problems with D.C.’s mass transit agency…
Sam: “Obstructionists in Congress” are not preventing METRO from getting funding. Oh how I wish they were (it would be a public service, given METRO’s recent performance, because someone would be holding the largely unaccountable agency to account), but METRO’s recent funding difficulties came because it refused to follow FTA guidelines (another example of an arrogant, out of touch bureaucracy of the type that is alluded to by Tom and by the article he cites).
Let’s not kid ourselves about the current light rail in Houston. It’s expensive, it’s poorly designed, it’s largely operating on the volunteer payment system, and the overall development of the system is not what poor voters were promised when they made the difference on the vote for rail (they were promised 50% more bus service!).
BTW, have you been out walking lately? Because I actually like walking — and I have to say, I’ve gotten my arse roasted walking around the Galleria area lately. Summer’s here! Houston’s climate is a big strike against making people walk to inconvenient rail stops. And surely Houtopians won’t try to blame THAT on Congresscritters!