The Scandal of High-Cost, Low-Capacity Transit
2nd June 2014
The report focuses on cities that are building systems that, like heavy rail, have costly, exclusive rights of way yet, like light rail, can’t move more than about 9,000 to 12,000 people per hour. Seattle, for example, is spending well over $600 million per mile building an underground light-rail line that will be able to move no more people than San Diego’s original, 1981 light-rail line that cost just $17 million per mile (in today’s dollars). Honolulu is spending $250 million a mile building an elevated line whose capacity will be little greater than a surface light-rail line.
Yet these are only the most extreme examples of high-cost, low-capacity transit systems. Streetcars qualify: they cost at least half as much to build as light rail yet can carry little more than a fifth as many people. A proposed light-rail line in Austin may qualify: the city wants to spend $100 million per mile building the line yet planners say demand is so low that they expect to run “trains” that are just one-car long.
The real point of the report is that almost all proposed new rail lines are high-cost, low-capacity transit. Double-decker buses can move 18,000 people per hour on city streets, twice what three-car light-rail trains can move; double-decker buses can also move more than 100,000 people per hour on a freeway lane, twice what a subway line can move.