Thursday, March 23, 2006
Dulles Rail Project Costs Swell
Is that a redundent headline or what? I mean, it is a rail project, so of course the costs are swelling.
In this case, the project is a proposed 23-mile extension of the Washington DC subway to Dulles Airport. Expected to cost $1.8 billion, the estimates have now risen to $2.4 billion. Three-fourths of the costs are to be paid with gas taxes and auto tolls. Since they only expect to have $2 billion, they are talking about saving money by buying fewer train cars and not building pedestrian accessways to the trains.
That would make the perfect rail project. It costs a lot of money, no one can get to it, and there aren't any trains to ride even if you could. Why don't they just skip the train cars and stations altogether -- think how many miles of rail you could build if you didn't have to pay those extra costs!
Washington's rail system is popular with those who use it, but it is a failure by any objective measure. Mainly what it did was cut bus service to low-income minority neighborhoods in order to provide rail service to wealthy white suburbanites. And not many of them are using it: Honolulu has a higher rate of per capita transit ridership than the Washington metro area. (Honolulu is going to fix that by building a rail system, but that is another story.)
Between 1990 and 2000, the DC area gained more than 100,000 commuters, every single one of which drove to work. Meanwhile, 22,000 people who had taken transit to work in 1990 switched to driving by 2000. Washington's subways are great for tourists, but they aren't doing anything to relieve congestion.
In this case, the project is a proposed 23-mile extension of the Washington DC subway to Dulles Airport. Expected to cost $1.8 billion, the estimates have now risen to $2.4 billion. Three-fourths of the costs are to be paid with gas taxes and auto tolls. Since they only expect to have $2 billion, they are talking about saving money by buying fewer train cars and not building pedestrian accessways to the trains.
That would make the perfect rail project. It costs a lot of money, no one can get to it, and there aren't any trains to ride even if you could. Why don't they just skip the train cars and stations altogether -- think how many miles of rail you could build if you didn't have to pay those extra costs!
Washington's rail system is popular with those who use it, but it is a failure by any objective measure. Mainly what it did was cut bus service to low-income minority neighborhoods in order to provide rail service to wealthy white suburbanites. And not many of them are using it: Honolulu has a higher rate of per capita transit ridership than the Washington metro area. (Honolulu is going to fix that by building a rail system, but that is another story.)
Between 1990 and 2000, the DC area gained more than 100,000 commuters, every single one of which drove to work. Meanwhile, 22,000 people who had taken transit to work in 1990 switched to driving by 2000. Washington's subways are great for tourists, but they aren't doing anything to relieve congestion.
Comments:
You clearly don't live in DC or know anything about transit here. The Metro is pretty great. It does not only serve rich areas, but it also helps spur development in poorer areas. DC would be in a terrible situation without the metro. Besides that, the metro is only experiences problems with distance-cost relations becasue of the spread of very low-density housing areas (suburbia) which also contribute to a huge ammount of road congestion and pollution.
Sooooo mass transport is good.
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Sooooo mass transport is good.
