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Light rail issues

I do not live in Minneapolis, but have visited there and have been a passenger on several Hiawatha light rail trips.

Whether predicted costs and ridership are being met, or exceeded (costs under, ridership over), I have no idea.  I do know that rail transit agencies systematically understate costs and overstate benefits--but, as the time of service approaches, they revise the numbers, raising estimated costs and lowering estimated ridership, and then, when the finagled figures are realized, they claim success and brag about it.

In the case of Sound Transit, we've carefully recorded the original promises and predictions--the ones used to justify the rail lines--for comparative purposes.  Interesting, perhaps predictable, Sound Transit has expunged its 1996 Sound Move Plan from its own Web site, trying to erase the promises it's in the midst of breaking.

When it's over budget, it revises the budget and announces it's under budget.  When it's short on ridership, it revises its predictions, and declares victory.

I was riding Hiawatha during the week of its first anniversary, when it claimed it was beating its ridership predictions.  Maybe so.  But a few days later when I returned to Minneapolis there was a page-one story of severe cutbacks in bus service and drivers, for budgetary reasons.  Which prompts two questions (not that the Minneapolis Star would address them):  Might it have been the burden of cost overruns by Hiawatha, capital and operating, that led directly to the revenue shortfalls of the transit agency, necessitating service cutbacks?

And, is it possible that, whatever record Hiawatha sets, that transit in Minneapolis is become more costly while market share is falling?

That's usually the consequence of introduced rail lines in US urban areas.

As for the comparison between Detroit and Minneapolis:  Today I was listening on NPR to what a desperate condition General Motors is in, losing market share, supporting two and one-half retirees for each employee, trying to figure out how to reduce the burdens of health case costs and retirement payments, planning to reduce employment by 30,000, etc.  Ford, of course, faces similar, though not as acute challenges.  Does the Michigan Land Institute argue that, if only Detroit lavished a billion or two on a rail system all would be well--GM and Ford would be smashing the competition from Japan and Europe, bringing affluence to Detroit.?

I can hardly imagine how a serious entity can make the case that the relative success of Minneapolis, compared with Detroit, is because the former has a one-year-old 14-mile light rail line.

E. Bundy

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