BIKE: Poor little monorail, nobody loves it.

[Patrick Goetz]

ddobbs wrote:
> 
> Anything that will really provide first class transit
> service is going to cost big bucks, but count on the Feds to
> cheap it while road lobby devises evermore creative
> accounting schemes to keep the paving machines operating and
> sprawl sprawling.

I second Dave's comments, although I think there are at least some 
people at the FTA who are quite sympathetic to rail.  I was at the TRB 
(Transportation Research Board) conference a couple of weeks ago 
(wearing my Austin Monorail Project T-shirt, of course) and got a 
good-natured lecture from one of the FTA administrators about 
pre-selecting technologies before the need had been established.  (She 
and other parties present, however, agreed that a quality transit system 
should include a considerable amount of grade separation, although they 
didn't think 100% grade separation is necessary in most cases.)  Her 
goal was clearly to educate me on how to increase the likelyhood of 
federal funding for such a system, not shoot it down.

Because of the unfortunately lengthy time out of service, there was 
absolutely no way that the LVM was going to be approved for federal 
funds in this budget cycle.  What surprises me is LV Mayor Goodman's 
comments regarding a system which -- by all accounts -- most potential 
and actual riders are liking a lot despite the rather steep $3 fare. 
Feel free to google for other Las Vegas articles to get a more balanced 
picture of what is going on; just about any other article will do.  As 
one casino employee commented in one of the articles you can google for 
[quoting roughly] "Taking the bus to work means a 1.5 hour commute each 
way.  Am I willing to spend $3 to cut that time down to 15 minutes?  You 
better believe it."

If we're going to be serious about trying to get away from the 
car-culture, then we have to be serious about an alternative, which 
means spending some money.  A 2-billion dollar monorail (or whatever) is 
a bargain compared to the $14 billion in new sprawl highways and toll 
roads that CAMPO is planning; never mind that a possible cheap-energy 
crisis will render these roads about as worthless as an ice cube machine 
at the North Pole.  The important thing is that it (the planned mass 
transit system) can get people around quickly, conveniently, and safely.

Now for a juicy TRB tidbit lifted from a lecture given by Todd Litman of 
the Victoria Transport Policy Institute (vtpi.org -- the best lecture of 
the conference, in my opinion).  Politicians and Chamber of Commerce 
types are always cracking on about how building new highways creates 
jobs.  The facts beg to differ with this attitude:  According to at 
least one study (see http://www.vtpi.org/railben.pdf), every million 
dollars spent on automobile transit results in the creation of about 8.4 
regional jobs, while a million dollars spent on rail results in the 
creation of 62.2 jobs -- almost an order of magnitude greater! 
Furthermore, Large Rail (read: grade-separated, fast, frequent, 
high-capacity) city residents spend an average of $448 less annually per 
capita on transportation than residents of Bus Only cities, despite 
higher incomes and longer average commute distances, totaling $22.6 
billion in savings (ibid.).  To put this in perspective -- by this 
measure -- Austin as a community would save around $300 million dollars 
per *year* if we had a monorail, subway, or elevated heavy rail system. 
  Basic Math Question:  how long would it take for a 2-billion dollar 
monorail to pay for itself, given these numbers?

Once again, these observations point towards the common wisdom that 
you've got to spend money to make money.  Why there isn't even one 
person affiliated with Capital Metro who understands this is beyond me. 
  As far as I can tell, the only way that organization is ever going to 
improve is if we import some Iraqi insurgents to reform them the good 
old fashioned way and then start over with a clean slate and some folks 
with a few functional neurons.

Finally, for the Planning/Zoning buffs out there, recently there's been 
a lot of talk about car-sharing programs.  A whole TRB session was 
devoted to car-sharing.  Bad news for Austin:  100% (that's right: 
100.0%) of the people registered for Philadelphia's (very successful) 
car-sharing program commute to work by mass transit, bicycle, or 
walking.  We will *not* be able to get one of these programs off the 
ground until we have a transit system that can get people to work 
quickly and conveniently without having to drive.

Every metric: financial, environmental, safety, quality of life, etc. 
indicates that we need to spend the money -- whatever it takes and 
regardless of cost -- to get a quality mass transit system.  Where in 
the hell is Capital Metro?!  Asleep at the wheel.