Houston Strategies

METRO BRT: 'The most colossal waste of taxpayers’ money in the history of the City'

Bill King has written one of the most impressive analytical take-downs of any proposed transit project I've ever seen - in this case the Universities and Inner Katy BRT lines. If this doesn't seal their death, I don't know what would.  As an alternative, can you imagine what we could do with $3 billion dollars to rehabilitate our street and drainage infrastructure?!? Here are my highlights/excerpts: 

"Metro’s previous leadership proposed the construction of two bus rapid transit (“BRT”) lines. At an estimated cost of over $3 billion, these two projects, if constructed, would be the most colossal waste of taxpayers’ money in the history of the City.

If you are not familiar with the term "bus rapid transit", it is the construction of dedicated lanes for buses. The only example we have in Houston is the disastrous Silver Line in Uptown. After spending about $200 million to construct the project, and who knows how much to operate, it is attracting about 800 riders per day, just over 5% of the 14,000 Metro had projected. The ridership is so bad that Metro recently announced it intends to reduce the service. Based on this rousing success, Metro has proposed to build these two additional BRT lines. ...

Let me pause for a moment to comment on ridership projections. Generally speaking, transit ridership projections are almost always too high. But Metro has been in a category of its own when it comes to overestimating projected ridership. This 2020 FTA study, comparing projected costs and ridership to actual results on about 20 projects around the country, found Metro’s ridership projection for the Purple Line to be, by far, the worst of any project they studied. The Purple and Green light rail lines are carrying about 25-30% of their projected ridership. And, as I mentioned earlier, the Silver is running a little over 5% of its projections today. So, we certainly have every reason to be skeptical of any ridership projection just based on Metro’s history. ...

While Metro’s current estimate for the University and Inner Katy projects are $2.43 billion and $735 million, respectively, Metro’s previous estimates of the cost to construct fixed guideway projects have also been unreliable. The cost of the Purple Line, for example, came in 33% higher than estimated ($591MM→$787MM).

Metro has already made massive changes to the estimates for both of these lines. Just 18 months ago, in a request for funding Metro filed with the FTA, it represented that the total cost of the University Line would be $1.57 billion, which is only about two-thirds of the current cost estimate. In 2018, Metro told HGAC the Inner Katy Line would cost $281 million, barely a third of the current estimate. So, there is no telling what these projects would actually eventually cost. ...

$188k per new rider + $11k/year!! "We could easily buy a car for every new rider and pay for their insurance, gas and maintenance for the rest of their lives, and not come close to spending this much money. ...

Metro’s updated ridership projections also projected that the end-to-end travel time on the University Line would be 1:28 during peak and that the buses would travel at an average speed of about 17mph. (p.17) This morning at 7:30AM Google Maps estimated that trip using the existing Metro service would take 1:29 and by car it would take 40 minutes. In other words, after spending $2.4 billion we would save transit riders one minute and someone in a car would get there 48 minutes sooner. ...

The plan currently calls for Richmond to be reduced to one lane each direction from downtown to Edloe. The left turn across Richmond at Edloe alone would be a nightmare. I think it is quite telling that the very people the project is supposed to serve are either ambivalent or vehemently opposed to it.

...

I have never seen this stark of a case against a public investment. Frankly, only a financial illiterate would support such an irresponsible expenditure of taxpayer money. And to make matters worse, after spending this reckless amount of money, few people would use the system and it would cause all sorts of collateral problems because it is so ill-conceived.

Fixed guideways are not the future of mobility. The paradigm of attempting to gather a large number of people on a single vehicle is rapidly becoming obsolete. The future is going to be door-to-door, on-demand service, which will eventually be provided autonomously and directed by AI controlled smart grids. Metro needs to be looking to that future, not building more white elephant projects. We already have enough of those."

Labels: Metro, transit, transportation plan

posted by Tory Gattis @ 5:54 PM