Tag: mass transit

Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Bailing on Mass Transit

mass transit, metro, cars. low income, recession

Around the country, our major metropolitan transit systems have hit the skids. “Between 2016 and 2017, ridership fell in each of the seven largest transit markets,” the Washington Post informs.

You might guess that the reason for declines in ridership might have something to do with bad planning and poor service. Washington, D.C.’s Metro system, with which I am all-​too familiar, is a horror … run by people I wouldn’t trust to sweep your driveway much less mine, and certainly not to manage how I get between those (or any other) two locations.

But the Post quotes an urban planning scholar who attributes the decline (in part) “to increased car ownership, particularly among low-​income and immigrant populations, who were in a better position to afford cars following the Great Recession.” 

This puts planners in a pickle since, he explains, if “low-​income people are doing better, getting the ability to move around like everyone else, it’s hard to say that what we should do is get them to remove themselves from their cars and back on trains and buses.”

Shockingly sensible — especially coming from a planning specialist. “Transit systems should deliver quality service to low-​income people,” he insists. “But low-​income people do not owe us a transit system.”

Well, maybe that’s the problem, this notion that governments “owe” this service to “low-​income people.”

After all, web-​based services like Uber and Lyft have shown how market innovations provide the best ways to move millions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability folly national politics & policies responsibility subsidy too much government

Another Capital Atavism

pork, government waste, Streetcars, public transit

Had I ever heard of the zoopraxiscope before, I’d forgotten it by the time I read Randal O’Toole’s recent critique of the latest Washington, D. C., public transit debacle, the new streetcar system. So I had to look it up.

It was an early “motion picture” projector.

In other words, an “atavism.”

According to O’Toole, “Streetcars were technologically perfected in the 1880s, so for Washington to subsidize the construction of a streetcar line today is roughly equal to … Los Angeles subsidizing the manufacture of zoopraxiscopes.”

O’Toole, a transportation specialist, argues that the new system, barely in place, but already on the hook for more subsidy to build more lines, is grossly inefficient.

As well as atavistic.

“Rather than build five more miles of obsolete line,” he concludes, “the best thing Washington can do is shut down its new line and fill the gaps between the rails with tar.”

Drastic?

Well, is it any more drastic or extreme than debuting a mass system without a fare system in place? That is, without even having decided on which payment system to use?

Unfortunately, the inefficient clunkers are unaccountably contagious. “Following Portland’s example, Atlanta, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and several other cities have opened or are building streetcar lines,” O’Toole explains. “Most of these lines are about two miles long, are no faster than walking, and cost $50 million or more per mile while buying the same number of buses would cost a couple million, at most.”

Politicians idolize such schemes so much that we, the taxpayers, are forced to be iconoclastic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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pork, government waste, Streetcars, public transit

 

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Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Against Enabling Segregation

Rosa Parks, born February 4, 1913, became a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement for her actions on December 1, 1955. Ordered to move from the first row of the “colored” section after seats reserved for white passengers had filled up, Parks refused.

“When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.”

Economist Thomas Sowell believes that the conflict might never have even come up as an issue, had the bus been privately run.

“Why was there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the first place?” he asked on the occasion of her death in 2005. “[T]here was certainly plenty of racism in the South, going back for centuries. But racially segregated seating” did not have the same unbroken history. Sowell pointed out that no matter what their own views, owners of the private transit lines of the 19th and early 20th century lacked motive to enforce segregation and thereby alienate many of their passengers.

When markets aren’t overrun by politics, both buyers and sellers must focus on the value they want from trade — a good product or competent service. Participants are penalized if they routinely set aside those benefits in order to indulge an animus.

In the 20th century, the trend towards taxpayer-​funded mass transit displaced economic incentives with political ones.

Only governments can force entire industries to routinely act on an irrational prejudice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture insider corruption

Disguised Corruption

Some things about government are eternal.

The latest New Jersey scandal a‑brewing has it that Hoboken’s mayor was informed her city was to be denied federal aid following Hurricane Sandy unless she went along with a real estate project favored by Governor Chris Christie.

Shocking, but hardly … unheard of. Back in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt distributed disproportionate “stimulus” funds to swing states for one reason: re-election.

Corruption is ancient.

Christie’s staff seems, well, merely a bit more honest than usual. For modern America. Take the “Bridgegate” scandal: Trying to “hurt” a mayor by shutting down bridge lanes to his city, thus severely inconveniencing the mayor’s constituents? This sort of pettiness in policitics is common, with one difference: Most players disguise the pettiness.

So how does the continuing scandal of misgovernment usually get hidden? Dishonesty? Evasion?

Or, just ideology?

In several cities throughout the United States — Portland, Oregon, in particular — top metropolitan bureaucrats have deliberately developed policies that make automobile traffic more congested. Why? To encourage ridership in public transportation, which is considered (for ideological reasons) somehow better. Thus billions are spent on infrastructure supporting light rail, which take lanes away from car drivers, and move fewer people at greater inconvenience.

So why is that policy not itself a scandal?

The intent of Chris Christie’s aides was, obviously, base and petty and wrong. And actionable.

The ideology driving today’s anti-​automobile agenda, on the other hand, is said to be noble and altruistic. Even though the harms to the public in terms of hours lost in frustrating commutes far exceeds the recent New Jersey scandal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

A Conspicuous $2.4 Million

Flint, Michigan, has seemed like a hopeless case for a long time. Even before Michael Moore’s Roger & Me, Flint was undergoing deindustrialization. Politicians resisted, promising to reverse the trend. Failure after failure, they still desperately prove themselves interested in trying something, anything, to make the town “seem” vibrant and “cutting edge.”

Most recently, the Flint Mass Transportation Authority has exerted its rhetoric, its dreams, and its grant-​writing skills to nab a $2.4 million bus.

The hydrogen fuel cell technology transit bureaucrats have set their eyes upon is quite leading edge, and I guess it seems a bargain, what with the recent drop in prices (“$3.5 million a few years ago,” according to the Michigan Capitol Confidential).

But the town could buy nine diesel buses for the same money, and it’s not as if they’re rolling in dough. Flint has had to order out for emergency management, suffering a tax base plagued by an official (read: underestimated)  unemployment rate of 18 percent.

So, of course, the transit authority hopes to pull in federal “stimulus” funds.

Ask yourself, though: how would a new, expensive bus stimulate Flint’s economy?  Luxury buses running on outré technology don’t exactly inspire businesses to invest in otherwise depressed towns.

As a rule, only rich people can afford leading-​edge technology.

Sad to say, folks in government behave like rich people.

Only worse. Folks in government behave like rich people spending other people’s money.

And, now more than ever, the citizens of Flint can’t afford such conspicuous consumption.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Buck-​Stop Bus Stop

A million dollars here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about a real bus stop.

At least, that’s the sticker shock in Arlington County, Virginia, just minutes south of our nation’s capital; a bus stop costs a million bucks.

“Is it made of gold?” asked one commuter.

Others called it “ridiculous,” an “outrage,” and suggested someone get “their butt canned.”

Let us properly note, however, that local transportation officials have unequivocally pronounced this state-​of-​the-​art bus stop “an investment in infrastructure to support the [Columbia] Pike’s renewal.” According to Washington Post reporting, “New and densely developed housing is expected to be built in the next 20 years,” along the highway — not to mention a planned streetcar with a $250 million price-tag.

Think Arlington taxpayers are lazy and wasteful? Well, 80 percent of the money for the bling bus stops came from state and federal taxpayers. And county officials are hoping federal taxpayers will fork over 30 percent of the streetcar project, too.

There are so many exasperating elements to this fiasco that it’d be easy to callously ignore the fact that the million-​dollar-​bus-​stop-​shelter, as County Board member Libby Garvey put it, “doesn’t seem to be a shelter.” Calling it “pretty,” she added, “but I was struck by the fact that if it’s pouring rain, I’m going to get wet, and if it’s cold, the wind is going to be blowing on me.”

If you don’t like wasting a million dollars on a shelter that doesn’t provide shelter, chill out; the county is only planning to build another 24 shelters, and at a savings — only a smidgen over $900,000 each.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. After news reports, lots of folks apparently refused to “chill out” causing Arlington County officials to abruptly suspend plans, for now, to build 24 more million-​dollar “Super Stop” bus stops. Hooray!