Light Rail, Heavy Costs

Now that the Orange County Transportation Authority has found a way to proceed with preliminary engineering for the Centerline system, we taxpayers should become fully aware of light rail’s costs and get ready for future assaults on our pocketbooks.

OCTA has essentially given up on highway improvement as a means of accommodating significant projected growth in population, employment and travel. Instead it has chosen a path of public transit, particularly fixed guideway systems such as light rail.

In the next 10 years, OCTA strategy calls for 60% of capital improvements on transit and only 17% on expanding highways. If it were not for Measure M, the half-cent sales tax for transportation, the 17% would be essentially zero. They have convinced themselves and a vocal pro-transit public that this is the right path. But is it? If you dig below the glitz and spin, there is real evidence that transit is an ineffective solution. There are no easy answers, but of all the options, light rail is the least promising.

The transit advocates press the point that building roads is never-ending, very expensive and very disruptive. But they ignore the fact that the transit alternative would be more expensive, more intrusive and also never-ending. According to data compiled and reported by the Department of Transportation, transit is a very ineffective means to cope with travel growth. Of course, the department did not specifically state this conclusion. After all, they are the ones most prominent in promoting transit over highways. While trying hard to overlook the truth, they provide enough data for any careful observer to draw the following conclusions.

By Transportation Department data, coping with the nation’s travel growth by expanding transit would cost 76 times more than coping by expanding highways.

Transportation expenses at all levels of government now amount to about $126 billion annually, which is not quite enough to keep up with demand. The idea of relying on transit to meet demand is almost absurd. The transit advocates don’t address this issue and myopically focus on such claims as “We need to provide choice.”

In the current OCTA proposal, building the 20-mile rail system and establishing an operating trust fund for the first 25 years will cost about $2.1 billion. That comes to $750 per man, woman and child in Orange County, or $3,000 per family of four. The estimated impact of the system is to reduce auto trips by just one-tenth of 1%. By OCTA estimates, the system would add the equivalent of one-third of 1% capacity to the transportation network. When faced with a 30% growth problem, this is surely putting one’s head in the sand.

But a 20-mile system is only a starter line, leading to an ever-growing appetite for more rail. It will grow for two basic reasons: political greed and lack of effectiveness. First, the system is only part of the earlier 28-mile Centerline proposal. The rest of the line is not being promoted because Anaheim and Orange turned it down. But if the starter system proceeds, the political pressure for a piece of the pie on the northern cities will be too great.

Next the western Orange County cities want to get in on the action. The West Orange County Cities Assn. has already completed a superficial study, and OCTA is spending $1 million on western rail extensions. This may add 20 miles. Then consider that the original plan was for an 87-mile system.

Having started down the path of building light rail, OCTA will have to continue adding. To do otherwise would be to admit that the rail strategy was a failure, an admission politicians are unwilling to make. The impetus will be ever-worsening traffic.

How far can this recipe for disaster be continued? It is estimated that keeping up with Orange County demand would take the addition of about 160 track miles per year. It would take less than one-third as much in highway lane miles at less than 10% of the cost. More land acquisition, more cost, less convenience, longer trip times and less accessibility is what rail offers.

Why would anyone want rail unless they had no choice? But with OCTA leading, we will end up with expensive rail and more congestion unless the public begins to vociferously speak up and demand real fixes.