Making a Good Idea Bad
20th June 2023
Back when I first began studying light rail, one of my first questions was, “Why rail when buses can work just as well for a lot less money?” That question is becoming less valid today as transit agencies have done their usual job of making something affordable into something grossly expensive.
A case in point is Charleston, South Carolina’s proposal for a bus rapid transit line. Local backers have the audacity to call it South Carolina’s first mass transit system, as if Columbia, Greenville, Charleston, and other South Carolina cities haven’t had bus systems for decades. But the real problem is that they want to spend $625 million on a 21-mile line, or about $30 million per mile.
Back in 2004, Kansas City built one of the nation’s first bus rapid transit lines, a six-mile route for $20.9 million. Not $20.9 million per mile but a total of $20.9 million, or about $3.5 million per mile. That would be about $5.5 million in today’s dollars. Kansas City opened a second line in 2011 that cost $30 million, but it was 13 miles long, so in today’s dollars it was only about $3.0 million per mile. In 2019, Kansas City extravagantly opened a third line costing $5.4 million a mile, under $6.0 million a mile in today’s money.