March 31, 201114 yr http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110330/NEWS01/103310345/Winburn-Scrap-streetcars-trolleys City Councilman Charlie Winburn has proposed that the city scrap the streetcar plan in favor of an alternative in which trolley buses would run through Downtown and many city and suburban neighborhoods. [...] Patterned after a successful program in Cleveland, the trolleys would extend from west side neighborhoods such as Westwood and Price Hill, through Downtown to destinations in northern and eastern Greater Cincinnati, such as Norwood, Blue Ash, Sharonville, Springdale, West Chester and Mason. -- Isn't he referring to the successful Cleveland BRT line?
March 31, 201114 yr Isn't he referring to the successful Cleveland BRT line? No. He may be referring to the downtown trolley buses that circulate around central business district. They are free thanks to business sponsorships. But they are expensive to operate (75% of transit bus operating costs are for labor, the trolley drivers are paid the same as any other Cleveland transit routes) and the ridership is surprisingly low considering it is free. I don't remember the exact figures but I can get them for you. He could also be referring to Cleveland RTA's community circulator buses which were operated in many city and suburban neighborhoods. They WERE also expensive to operate -- again due to high labor costs, discounted fares and low ridership on all but a few routes. I say "were" because Cleveland RTA completely eliminated all circulator routes between 2008-2010. If Councilman Windburn wants some useful figures from Cleveland, he should use these cost-effectiveness metrics from RTA and the National Transit Database (2000-2010): Operating expense per passenger-mile... Heavy Rail: $0.42 Light Rail: $0.72 Bus: $0.92 Demand Response: $8.68 The opponents dwell on the raw operating costs of rail without accounting for ridership and distance-traveled data that reflects the public's preference for riding trains, subways, light-rail and streetcars. That is reflected in passenger-mile data, which is a travel industry standard for fairly and accurately comparing different modes with different usage rates. And, BTW, many rail opponents tout demand response buses as a way of "combining the best of cars with the best of public transportation." Malarkey! Demand Response is the most expensive -- BY FAR -- mode of public transit per passenger-mile! If someone touts Demand Response as "cost-effective," that's an immediate signal that you should check to see who is paying him to say that because he is flat-out lying. Oh, and here's one more data set to show the popularity of rail, even in a second- or third-tier city like Cleveland: Unlinked Passenger Trips per Vehicle Revenue Hour Heavy Rail: 73.07 Light Rail: 49.88 Bus: 28.66 Demand Response: 2.09 Wait, here's one more tidbit: of Cleveland RTA's 68 transit routes, its three rail routes account for about 20 percent of system ridership. Keep this data handy in case someone wants to argue. Cleveland isn't a transit mecca. But even there, rail outperforms bus in cost-effectiveness and ridership. EDIT: copied over from the Cleveland HealthLine thread.... Looks like Cincinnati councilman Winburn is using the HealthLine as a model to replace the ailing streetcar project down here. The going is that a $25 million federal transportation grant would be used to purchase the buses - which he calls trolleys. In an earlier article, unrelated to the streetcar, SORTA was studying BRT routes for the city, and one of the models toted was Cleveland's. Interesting. Is he also noting that the 6.8-mile HealthLine (of which 4 miles is a true BRT) cost $200 million vs. $128 million for the Cincinnati Streetcar (is it 4 or 5 miles? -- I see different numbers out there). "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 31, 201114 yr I am definitely a streetcar supporter, but if I may play devil's advocate... What if it was known that the streetcar project was dead. We get this proposal about creating a trolley system, but a trolley route is painted onto the streets that would have been the streetcar route, and it was somehow made law that the trolley must be maintained and that the route must be fixed in perpetuity. Besides the rails, similar infrastructure would be built for the trolley as it would have been for the streetcar, such as easily located and identifiable stops and signs around the route. Is there an argument that this idea would not have similar economic impact that the streetcar would have, for less the fixed cost? Do you think there would still be a credibility issue about the possible changing of routes? I think rail would certainly attract more people than a glorified bus, but for less cost this system could possibly get a higher return.
March 31, 201114 yr Am I the only one that remembers that Winburn has been proposing these since 2008? http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2008/09/01/story7.html I have a friend whose mom took him to Charlie Winburn's church when he was a kid when they moved to the area. It was borderline snake-handling nonsense. The service was so bizarre that his mom apologized to him for taking him. The man is a total huckster.
March 31, 201114 yr Jake's right. This isn't the first time he's proposed this. From a couple of years ago: Is Charlie Winburn right when he says it would be better to run a diesel bus instead? Charlie Winburn is an important leader in our community, but he has been misinformed on the benefits of the bus trolleys outlined in a story that appeared in the Cincinnati Business Courier. Your can read the Courier article here: http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2009/01/12/tidbits1.html In a packet mailed in January to Cincinnati business leaders seeking contributions of $14 million, Mr. Winburn outlines the details of his plan for a rubber-tired trolley to serve Downtown, Over-the-Rhine and Uptown. Unfortunately, many of his assumptions are flawed. First, ridership: Mr. Winburn projects that his trolleys will attract 5,000 riders per day. Yet Northern Kentucky's Southbank Shuttle, a similar rubber-tired trolley operating in the densest parts of downtown Kentucky and Ohio carries an average of 1,273 riders per day. Louisville's trolleys attract about 1,100 passengers per day. Unlike Mr. Winburn's "free" trolleys, both of those operators charge fares to use their systems, but still ... For the past decade, bus ridership has been generally flat in almost all but America's smallest cities, while rail ridership is seeing robust growth. Some new light rail lines have achieved first-year ridership that wasn't expected for ten or fifteen years. Where it's available, consumers see rail as car-competitive. It's just the way it is. Second, cost: Assuming the trolleys run fifteen hours per day, he apparently figures they can be operated for about $40 per hour. Yet the Louisville trolley system operates similar vehicles at a cost of $75 per hour for labor, maintenance and fuel. Each of TANK's Southbank Shuttle buses costs $70 per hour to operate.It costs TANK $6.05 per passenger trip to operate the Southbank Shuttle over its 5.9 mile route. Mr. Winburn claims he can transport passengers on a route connecting Downtown through Uptown, about six miles round-trip by the shortest route, for around $1.42 per passenger trip. Third, environmental impact and sustainability: Mr. Winburn's plan promises "sustainable and green" technology. Regrettably, what he proposes is a fleet of diesel-powered trucks disguised as streetcars. As many know, diesel-powered engines are a main source of micro-particulates, the kind of pollution that gets deep into the lungs and causes all sorts of health problems. Cincinnati is already our nation's ninth-most polluted city in terms of micro-particulate pollution.You know what is really sustainable? Electric rail transit. No American electric rail system that has opened since the end of World War II has ever gone out of business. Fake trolleys come and go whenever some money appears or finally runs out. The best evidence: SORTA purchased the almost-new truck-trolleys pictured in the Courier article for a song when their operator went out of business a few years ago. Finally, economic development: If buses promoted economic development, then we'd see cranes all over Cincinnati because we have lots of buses. Mr. Winburn likes the idea that a bus route can be easily changed or eliminated. But who would ever make a long-term investment in one of our close-in neighborhoods because of a "here today, gone tomorrow" policy of infrastructure development? Serious critics of rail transit no longer dispute that cities which have invested in modern rail systems are seeing tremendous economic development along the lines. Fixed routes with permanent tracks drive investment, create jobs, reduce pollution and assist in not only transporting a workforce but in retaining the young workers who are among our best assets for the future.Unfortunately, Mr. Winburn's trolley can deliver none of those benefits.A streetcar system is a substantial investment, but it will deliver even greater returns - an estimated $14 in new economic development for every dollar invested. It is one of the best hopes for revitalizing many of our neighborhoods. Long-term, the Cincinnati Streetcar will be the foundation for a revitalized city-wide transit network. Just a few decades ago, Cincinnati had 50% more people and thriving neighborhood business districts. That was when we had an efficient, customer-friendly and extensive system of electric streetcars operating throughout the city. We can be that city again.Cincinnati's competitor cities, almost fifty of them across the nation, are considering new electric streetcars. The great cities of the 21st century - and we want my Queen City hometown to be one of those - will have modern, rail-based transit systems. Let's hope that Mr Winburn will join efforts to move toward that future, but the bottom line is simple: Trains will get us there. Trolleys won't. http://www.pro-transit.com/FAQs/
March 31, 201114 yr The opponents dwell on the raw operating costs of rail without accounting for ridership and distance-traveled data that reflects the public's preference for riding trains, subways, light-rail and streetcars. That is reflected in passenger-mile data, which is a travel industry standard for fairly and accurately comparing different modes with different usage rates. And, BTW, many rail opponents tout demand response buses as a way of "combining the best of cars with the best of public transportation." Malarkey! Demand Response is the most expensive -- BY FAR -- mode of public transit per passenger-mile! If someone touts Demand Response as "cost-effective," that's an immediate signal that you should check to see who is paying him to say that because he is flat-out lying. Ken touches on an important point. Cost per passenger mile comparisons often put urban circulators at a disadvantage to other modes including driving. That's because passengers on circulators make shorter trips. This really shows up in the data with respect to auto trips. Say there are two downtown office workers. One lives three miles from downtown and drives on arterial streets a low speeds. The other lives 25 miles from downtown and drives at more efficient operating speeds. Each pays $10 to park all day. Who has the cheapest commute when figured on a total cost basis? Probably the guy who lives three miles from his work simply because he drives fewer miles. Who has the cheaper commute when measured per passenger mile? Almost certainly the guy who lives farther away, even though he pays more in total for his commute. Comparisons like these are often used to justify sprawl. A better way to measure mobility performance is by cost per trip instead of cost per passenger mile.
March 31, 201114 yr Except cost per passenger-mile shows the density of the travel and also suggests the revenue opportunities possible with longer trips. Cost per passenger-mile can be used to justify sprawl because the costs of using highways aren't reflective of price as a regulator of supply of and demand for highways (and it's also why highways aren't part of the free market because supply, not price, is used to regulate demand). OK, to show the cost that John would like to see, here are RTA's costs per unlinked passenger trip: Heavy Rail: $3.18 Bus: $3.48 Light Rail: $4.26 Demand Response: $47.20 "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 31, 201114 yr The ODOT Budget Bill was signed by Gov. Kasich yesterday. I do not see any reference to the streetcar funding ban in the cliffnotes version of this bill. Any word on whether the anti-streetcar amendment was kept in? EDIT: it's in there...... SECTION 755.60. No state or federal funds may be encumbered, transferred, or spent pursuant to this or any other appropriations act for the Cincinnati Streetcar Project. http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText129/129_HB_114_EN_N.html "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 31, 201114 yr >This isn't the first time he's proposed this. The local media is too dumb to remember this. So basically what this guy does is every 18 months he comes out with his "Winburn Plan", nobody remembered that he did it 18 months ago, and he gets another round of press. The only member of the press to attack this guy's "ministry" has been Kevin Osbourne at CityBeat, who has occasionally discussed his exorcisms, seances, and his book which condoned beating women. But -- and I'm not making this up -- the little old white ladies on the west side love Charlie Winburn. They are convinced that he's a good guy, just like they are convinced that Tom Luken is a good guy. Is he putting a spell on people?
March 31, 201114 yr The ODOT Budget Bill was signed by Gov. Kasich yesterday. I do not see any reference to the streetcar funding ban in the cliffnotes version of this bill. Any word on whether the anti-streetcar amendment was kept in? EDIT: it's in there...... SECTION 755.60. No state or federal funds may be encumbered, transferred, or spent pursuant to this or any other appropriations act for the Cincinnati Streetcar Project. http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText129/129_HB_114_EN_N.html Is this legal? Precedented? Are there state laws aimed at specific developments in specific cities? No money for a bridge over the blah river in Toledo, no money for a right turn lane on Main @ 7th in Youngstown. That seems bizarre & unconstitutional, it's certainly unethical
March 31, 201114 yr I don't want to insult anybody's religion (except Winburn's), but he promoted prosperity theology at his constantly self-reinventing "church" for awhile. That's a pretty sketchy form of Christianity. He seemed to go from scam to scam. The guy is a cut above the tent revivalists.
March 31, 201114 yr The ODOT Budget Bill was signed by Gov. Kasich yesterday. I do not see any reference to the streetcar funding ban in the cliffnotes version of this bill. Any word on whether the anti-streetcar amendment was kept in? EDIT: it's in there...... SECTION 755.60. No state or federal funds may be encumbered, transferred, or spent pursuant to this or any other appropriations act for the Cincinnati Streetcar Project. http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText129/129_HB_114_EN_N.html Is this legal? Precedented? Are there state laws aimed at specific developments in specific cities? No money for a bridge over the blah river in Toledo, no money for a right turn lane on Main @ 7th in Youngstown. That seems bizarre & unconstitutional, it's certainly unethical If I were an attorney, I'd be chomping at the bits. There has got to be something illegal in the way this was passed.
March 31, 201114 yr >Are there state laws aimed at specific developments in specific cities? There WAS, I don't know if there still is. Specifically, around 1909 Ohio could no longer enact laws that applied to specific municipalities. I know this because when the Cincinnati subway project got off the ground, the 1915 state law that enabled Cincinnati to establish a Rapid Transit Commission applied to all Ohio municipalities, even though specific elements of the act pertained directly to Cincinnati's situation. Specifically, parts of the act discuss canals and parkways, which was a situation specific to Cincinnati.
March 31, 201114 yr The one legality question I am most interested in is the fact that it could violate the law passed in 1997 that formed a TRAC board and project ranking system. You can't make a law that violates a standing law.
March 31, 201114 yr Nope, you can't spend any state-appropriated federal funds on your Cincinnati Streetcar, but here's $750,000 in state TRANSPORTATION funds to scrape algae off the the bottom of a lake that isn't even part of a navigable waterway..... State adds to funds to dredge algae-plagued lake State allocating another $750,000 to deal with algae The state plans to spend an additional $750,000 in its battle against the toxic blue-green algae that has kept visitors away from Grand Lake St. Marys in western Ohio. The money, part of a two-year, $7 billion transportation budget that state lawmakers sent to Gov. John Kasich last week, will expand dredging at the state park. ...State Sen. Keith Faber said he was able to increase the amount of money set aside in the transportation budget for inland-lake dredging. Although it's not specifically designated for Grand Lake, the Celina Republican said Natural Resources Department officials pledged that they would spend it there. READ MORE AT: http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/03/29/copy/state-adds-to-funds-to-dredge-algae-plagued-lake.html?adsec=politics&sid=101 "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 31, 201114 yr Like when Kentucky spends Transportation Enhancement Funds to do special interest projects - such as rebuilding streetscapes, upgrading state parks, constructing parking structures and other things that might involve transportation. I'm not in favor of that (or the above), but I can remotely see where it can come from.
April 1, 201114 yr One thing all Ohio laws have to comply with is the state's "one-subject" rule, which is a constitutional provision designed to prevent log rolling and riders. Sort of a "your bill needs to all be about the same thing" requirement. (Depending, of course, on the unity of subject matter in the bill.)
April 1, 201114 yr Operating expense per passenger-mile... Heavy Rail: $0.42 Light Rail: $0.72 Bus: $0.92 Demand Response: $8.68 It's interesting that the AAA puts the cost of driving a regular passenger car at about $0.55 per mile, which falls between heavy rail and light rail on KJP's scale.
April 1, 201114 yr The AAA $.55/mile average constitutes 60% city and 40% highway driving. And AAA is hardly an unbiased party in the highways v. railroads debate.
April 1, 201114 yr Irony of ironies -- Cincinnati's AAA office is directly across the street from the entrance to the unused Race St. subway station.
April 1, 201114 yr What's the use of depoliticizing the process if it's allowed be politicized? I guarantee COAST wrote Sen. Shannon Jones' amendment for her. That was COAST trump card and now we have to make sure the streetcar is built and expanded. Never, never, never give up! The ODOT Budget Bill was signed by Gov. Kasich yesterday. I do not see any reference to the streetcar funding ban in the cliffnotes version of this bill. Any word on whether the anti-streetcar amendment was kept in? EDIT: it's in there...... SECTION 755.60. No state or federal funds may be encumbered, transferred, or spent pursuant to this or any other appropriations act for the Cincinnati Streetcar Project. http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText129/129_HB_114_EN_N.html Is this legal? Precedented? Are there state laws aimed at specific developments in specific cities? No money for a bridge over the blah river in Toledo, no money for a right turn lane on Main @ 7th in Youngstown. That seems bizarre & unconstitutional, it's certainly unethical
April 1, 201114 yr Operating expense per passenger-mile... Heavy Rail: $0.42 Light Rail: $0.72 Bus: $0.92 Demand Response: $8.68 It's interesting that the AAA puts the cost of driving a regular passenger car at about $0.55 per mile, which falls between heavy rail and light rail on KJP's scale. Of course, the rail costs per passenger mile are "all-in" costs. They include the right-of-way the trains run on. The automobile costs only reflect the costs paid by the motorist. Fuel taxes pay about 60% of the cost of arterials and freeways but hardly any of the costs of local streets, so you'd have to add-in those costs. And parking. Donald Shoup estimates that the value of all the parking spaces in America now equals the value of the fleet of all the automobiles that use them. With three parking spaces per registered vehicle now (some say more), that seems plausibile. And of course, the private auto costs don't include the costs of enforcement and externalities like pollution. You should probably also assign a value of your time as a driver, car-washer, fueler and accident repair estimate-getter. If auto costs per passenger mile were fully accounted for, including all non-owner costs, the result would be far in excess of 55 cents per mile.
April 1, 201114 yr That's all true, but one thing the anti-transit pundits like to trot out is the relative disparity between the expenses and subsidy per mode. For simplicity's sake, let's say that the operating expenses for both transit and cars are $0.55 per mile. With transit, no more than $0.25 is going to come from fares, and usually it'll be closer to $0.15-0.20. The rest is subsidized. With cars though, nearly all of that $0.55 per mile is paid by the driver. To put it a slightly different way, despite the fact that gas taxes pay for only a small portion of roads, the amount (in total dollars) that we spend on roads, whether subsidized or not, is a very small portion of the total cost of driving. In 2008, we drove just about 3 trillion miles in total (about 10,000 miles per capita) in the US. That's $1.65 trillion in driving costs, and we spent about $182 billion on roads. Half of that $182 billion is covered by gas taxes, but the point is that the remaining $91 billion is only a subsidy of 5.5% of the total cost of driving. The tea party folks and sprawl apologists love these numbers, because they can say "look, 95% of the cost of driving is borne by the users, while for transit it's only 50% at best!" They hand wave away the cost of parking, externalities, and military protectionism, or say that transit causes nearly as much externalities as cars, etc. They also ignore that $91 billion is still a humongous number, twice what we spend on ALL transit. Nevertheless, they'll also say that we spend something like 20% of our surface transportation budget on transit, but it only accounts for some low single-digit percentage of trips (probably also because of the misleading passenger-mile stats). This does illustrate that driving is hugely expensive, regardless of who pays what, but the point is that roads are a very small proportion of the cost, even if the total amount spent is pretty large. These are difficult arguments to refute.
April 1, 201114 yr Here's a great idea from Charlie Winburn: copy Cleveland, not Portland! :roll: Streetcar Foe Proposes Alternative Transit Plan Winburn Suggests Trolleys Instead Of Streetcars http://www.wlwt.com/money/27389084/detail.html CINCINNATI -- As funding issues threaten to derail a proposed streetcar route in Cincinnati, some are suggesting the city scrap the plan and use trolleys instead. City Council member Charlie Winburn has proposed a fleet of trolleys that seat about 50 people and don't use permanent tracks. "Cleveland has 4,000 people a day riding their downtown trolley, which is six (or) seven miles," Winburn said.
April 1, 201114 yr Is there a way to keep the entire length of the project if we eliminate some of the redundant spots, say, by ending at 2nd Street instead of Freedom Way, by utilizing just Findlay Street instead of that bit on Elder, and by keeping it on 12th instead of taking it down to Central Parkway as well?
April 1, 201114 yr Of course, the rail costs per passenger mile are "all-in" costs. They include the right-of-way the trains run on. The automobile costs only reflect the costs paid by the motorist. Fuel taxes pay about 60% of the cost of arterials and freeways but hardly any of the costs of local streets, so you'd have to add-in those costs. And parking. Donald Shoup estimates that the value of all the parking spaces in America now equals the value of the fleet of all the automobiles that use them. With three parking spaces per registered vehicle now (some say more), that seems plausibile. And of course, the private auto costs don't include the costs of enforcement and externalities like pollution. You should probably also assign a value of your time as a driver, car-washer, fueler and accident repair estimate-getter. If auto costs per passenger mile were fully accounted for, including all non-owner costs, the result would be far in excess of 55 cents per mile. About 120 years ago Cincinnati had about the same population & about 2/3 the area. We had around 300 police on foot & horseback using call boxes for communication. We now have near 4 times as many police driving gas guzzling virtual batmobiles. I can only conclude this immensely more expensive police force is needed to deal with automobiles - accidents, moving & stationary violations & their use in crimes. +$$$
April 1, 201114 yr Kids who didn't walk used to ride streetcars to school at a reduced rate. Then the suburbs happened, which didn't have streetcars, and the districts were forced, at great expense, to run their own buses. Meanwhile, the urban districts like CPS then started their own bus services to shield the kids from an increasingly low-class clientele on city buses. Yes, I know that some CPS students ride metro, and even some suburban catholic school students do, but the general hostility toward public transportation has caused the urban school districts to spend much more money per student than they would have had to otherwise. Swarms of kids ride the T to school in Boston, and somehow manage to cross the streetcar tracks from getting run over. I'm sure a similar proposal here would send certain parents into orbit.
April 1, 201114 yr Operating expense per passenger-mile... Heavy Rail: $0.42 Light Rail: $0.72 Bus: $0.92 Demand Response: $8.68 It's interesting that the AAA puts the cost of driving a regular passenger car at about $0.55 per mile, which falls between heavy rail and light rail on KJP's scale. Of course, the rail costs per passenger mile are "all-in" costs. They include the right-of-way the trains run on. The automobile costs only reflect the costs paid by the motorist. Fuel taxes pay about 60% of the cost of arterials and freeways but hardly any of the costs of local streets, so you'd have to add-in those costs. And parking. Donald Shoup estimates that the value of all the parking spaces in America now equals the value of the fleet of all the automobiles that use them. With three parking spaces per registered vehicle now (some say more), that seems plausibile. And of course, the private auto costs don't include the costs of enforcement and externalities like pollution. You should probably also assign a value of your time as a driver, car-washer, fueler and accident repair estimate-getter. If auto costs per passenger mile were fully accounted for, including all non-owner costs, the result would be far in excess of 55 cents per mile. That is similar to my response. The rail costs are mostly pre-subsidy, while the 55 cents per mile for driving is post-subsidy. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
April 1, 201114 yr Not sure if you guys saw in the subway tunnels topic, but with all the bad transit news we've gotten lately, this is HUGE! Can't believe they kept the private partnership and funding this quiet for so long. "Construction on Cincinnati's Subway to Resume." "It's been 84 years since construction of the Cincinnati Subway halted. Nearly two miles of unused tunnels have been sitting silently beneath the city streets since 1927. Despite efforts to try and revive the project - political corruption, economic climate, changing population trends and even war were one of the many historical circumstances that prevented the subway from ever seeing a train or rider. That is, until today." Read the full press release here: http://bit.ly/gcArjJ
April 1, 201114 yr Great Article. Everything would be better if Jean-Luc Picard said, "Make it so" True story.
April 1, 201114 yr ^haha, sorry guys. I had to. I wasn't going to post it in this topic, but with all the bad news lately I felt we needed a little bit of lighthearted transit humor.
April 1, 201114 yr I chuckled hard! However don't think a PPP couldnt be used. I get the feeling that with the GOP guiding the house and dictating a lot of the coming surface transport bill, the processes n place may change to make PPP a reality for projects like that.
April 1, 201114 yr "$0.55 per mile does not represent the true cost of driving, blah blah blah...." I know that and you know that, but it doesn't matter. What the cost per mile discussion illustrates is that no one really knows what it costs to drive, when considering all the factors. The $0.55, I think, represents the cash outlay for the cost of the car, fuel, repairs and parts, license, and insurance. It does NOT count an hourly rate for the driver, whether he be driving or maintaining the car. It certainly does not count anything for road construction, police & emergency, parking garages, etc. The typical voter who drives will say, "Why should I pay for someone else's ride in addition to my own? I won't use it." He is being given a choice to vote for transit, but not for highways.
April 1, 201114 yr That's all true, but one thing the anti-transit pundits like to trot out is the relative disparity between the expenses and subsidy per mode. For simplicity's sake, let's say that the operating expenses for both transit and cars are $0.55 per mile. With transit, no more than $0.25 is going to come from fares, and usually it'll be closer to $0.15-0.20. The rest is subsidized. With cars though, nearly all of that $0.55 per mile is paid by the driver. To put it a slightly different way, despite the fact that gas taxes pay for only a small portion of roads, the amount (in total dollars) that we spend on roads, whether subsidized or not, is a very small portion of the total cost of driving. In 2008, we drove just about 3 trillion miles in total (about 10,000 miles per capita) in the US. That's $1.65 trillion in driving costs, and we spent about $182 billion on roads. Half of that $182 billion is covered by gas taxes, but the point is that the remaining $91 billion is only a subsidy of 5.5% of the total cost of driving. The tea party folks and sprawl apologists love these numbers, because they can say "look, 95% of the cost of driving is borne by the users, while for transit it's only 50% at best!" They hand wave away the cost of parking, externalities, and military protectionism, or say that transit causes nearly as much externalities as cars, etc. They also ignore that $91 billion is still a humongous number, twice what we spend on ALL transit. Nevertheless, they'll also say that we spend something like 20% of our surface transportation budget on transit, but it only accounts for some low single-digit percentage of trips (probably also because of the misleading passenger-mile stats). This does illustrate that driving is hugely expensive, regardless of who pays what, but the point is that roads are a very small proportion of the cost, even if the total amount spent is pretty large. These are difficult arguments to refute. Jeff and I are approaching this from different perspectives. He is addressing the finance question -- who pays? I'm approaching it from the economics perspective -- what are the total costs compared to the benefits? Economists tend not to worry about who pays, just whether the investment is a worthy one regardless of how it is financed. Financial types generally succeed in life. Economists write books.
April 1, 201114 yr I do want to clarify that the $182 billion is just for Federal and State maintained roads. There may be county roads in that as well, but I'm not sure. The point though is that it excludes the expenditures on nearly the entire local road network. Unfortunately that's next to impossible to track since it's all done on a municipal level and no data seems to be collected on it. All that said, I'm not making the argument, but I'm pointing out that it's something transit opponents bring up. I'd like to find some good arguments to refute those claims, or at least point out the return on investment that John mentions. There's no doubt that we're well into the state of diminishing returns on road investments, if not negative returns, because the network has been so overbuilt. On the other hand, there's so little transit that we can see huge returns from those projects just from novelty alone. Some actual numbers to compare would be helpful. Still, then there's the issue of exactly who benefits. A high ROI isn't as good when those benefits are externalized. It's all a big tangled web I know, but the cost/subsidy comparison is one I haven't seen anyone on the pro-transit side successfully argue against, myself included.
April 1, 201114 yr I came across an ad from the 1910 era claiming that the horse and buggy was more economical than driving a car. We know what happened in that debate. Incidentally, the population of horses in the United States peaked around 1915 according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What all these cost calculations ignore is the user's time. People drive to save time, plain and simple.
April 1, 201114 yr ^ I think one way to look at this is empirically by "revealed preference." How many ordinary citizens are out there demanding more and wider roads? Not a lot, I'm guessing. In fact, it seems to me that generally when road "improvements" are proposed, you tend to have more opponents than proponents. On the other hand, poll after poll, year after year, reveal a preference for transportation choices. And that will grow with the increase in fuel prices. I suspect a lot of people are expressing the stresses in their family budgets when they respond to whether they would like more of the status quo or more alternatives to it. One thing that's been really interesting to observe over the past few years with respect to the Cincinnati Streetcar is the number of people who say, yeah, fine, Ok, whatever. But what we really want is light rail.
April 1, 201114 yr How many ordinary citizens are out there demanding more and wider roads? In my community the local government performed a survey to see what people of the community were interested in. The results were: 30% wanted more parks and/or greenspace. 30% wanted the local government to do something about traffic. 30% wanted the local government to do something about crime. 10% everything else put together. As a result, the local government purchased some land for parks, initiated a couple of road projects, and made a concerted effort to reduce crime in two problem areas.
April 1, 201114 yr I remember one of the comments about the Metro Moves proposal: "In order for me to get to work on this system, I'll have to transfer twice, and it's going to take me an hour and a half to get to work. I can drive in 25 minutes." One of my friends said, "Sure, I'd be happy to use it. I would even use it if took 10 minutes longer, because I could read while riding. But it has to come to my house."
April 1, 201114 yr How many ordinary citizens are out there demanding more and wider roads? In my community the local government performed a survey to see what people of the community were interested in. The results were: 30% wanted more parks and/or greenspace. 30% wanted the local government to do something about traffic. 30% wanted the local government to do something about crime. 10% everything else put together. As a result, the local government purchased some land for parks, initiated a couple of road projects, and made a concerted effort to reduce crime in two problem areas. Apparently, in this community, residents weren't even given a choice of whether they wanted more transit, correct?
April 1, 201114 yr I forgot to say that the survey was completely open. The question was something like: "What is the most important issue in this community" or something like that and responders wrote in answers. The answers were then divided into categories by the local government, but they also published the raw data. I looked over the data myself and found no problem with it. Also, the survey was mailed to residents randomly selected by telephone number in order to avoid selecting based on home ownership.
April 2, 201114 yr The roads that matter most for any analysis of cost are connecting and limited access roads. We would be build residential roads and commercial district roads no matter the transportation. The harder question is the scope of some of those roads.
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