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I am taking the
liberty of forwarding a very useful message from Tom Rubin about an erroneous
claim about rail's advantage over buses often seen in cities with on-going
debates on rail proposals. I think Mr. Rubin's credentials are well known to
most people receiving this who are, for the most part, people taking part in
those debates in their respective communities. Those unfamiliar with Tom's work
may contact me.
This was
originally prepared in response to a query from a man in Madison, Wisconsin who
is fighting a rail proposal there.
I wish that Tom
had a website where he could post his information for the world to see.
— Barry Klein
-----Original Message-----
Subject: Re: ANY HELP?
I know that Tom Rubin has an answer to this claim.
Mike Roach wrote:
> The Mayor "claims substantially more people will ride the trolley than
ride
> a bus" therefore, we need to build it.
>
> ANY retort HELP?
>
TAR: Sure.
Well, first, there is a large body of reports -- including one done by a
Nobel Prize Economist -- that specifically refute this. The literature
shows that potential transit users make their decisions on the basis of the
ATTRIBUTES of modes -- travel time (primarily origin-to-destination), cost
(primarily, but not totally, fare, in the case of transit), frequency of
service, headway (times between vehicles and trains), accessability on both
ends of the transit trip, hours of service, safety, security, number of
transfers (the fewer, the better), wait times for transit vehicles/trains,
etc. See attached Powerpoint Presentation by Sam Zimmerman, a
well-respected former high FTA mucky-muck.
Also, the Federal government now specifically disallows what is know as a
"modal preference" -- a discrete assumption that riders will prefer one mode
of transit over another simply because of mode, independent of the
characteristics of the modes -- in any application for "new starts" funding,
the major source of Federal funding for new rail projects and extensions.
The exception is, if there is a competent study showing such preference does
exist, IN THE AREA THAT IS FILING THE APPLICATION, it may be allowed. In
other words, if this is the first rail project in a community, modal
preferences are never allowed. (In the "good old days," such modal
preferences WERE allowed, so the change to prohibit it is important in and
of itself.) Details available on request.
Yes, any time a rail line is proposed, there will be people who will get up
at the meetings and should to the heavens that they WILL ride the train, but
they would NEVER get on a bus. However, when things change from a "stated
preference" response to the real world, "revealed preference" (in other
words, who actually gets on the transit vehicle), things tend to look a bit
different.
As a practical matter, in most urban areas I have studied, it is almost
universal that the same amount of money invested in rail or in bus will show
that bus will produce far more new ridership. Of course, to do this, you
actually need to have a plan for a good transit system, not a "straw man"
that was set up to make sure that nothing really looked better than the rail
plan that was selected as the winner long before the evaluated as the winner
long before the evaluation commenced. In most cases, a significant protion
of the existing bus riders -- ALL in some particulars -- will also receive
significant benefits, benefits far in excess of those that would be received
for a similar investment in rail. (The above is somewhat overstated because
it is often very difficult to figure out any reasonable way to spend as much
money on bus as is proposed to be spent on rail.)
You need more, you know where to find me.
Tom Rubin
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