Last week during the big Metro Transportation Commission dog-and-pony show last week, the one that voted to spend $1 billion more on trains, UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois stood up to help pay back his $45 million Uptown building with the following challenge to rail doubters:
Can you imagine places like Washington, D.C., or Portland or Salt Lake City without their rail systems? Can you find a city that has ever regretted building one?
Short answer, yes, absolutely on both counts.
As Ted Balaker of the Reason Foundation notes, Salt Lake City has had a rail system for “like 10 minutes. It’s hardly a fixture.”
Balaker also adds that if you are talking about the Phil Duboises or the MTC members of world, you know, the people spending other people’s money, no they do not regret a thing. But if you look at from a community-wide perpsective, then you are talking big regrets.
Actual economists who study the cost and impact of rail projects have come to the conclusion that these projects are a horrible deal for communities. There is literally a solid decade of research on this topic, dozens of papers, and hundreds of pages. Just follow the links to it. It is all out there.
Just one snippet which Balaker points to, a study which found that every rail system in America with the exception of San Francisco’s BART system reduces total social welfare. This same study finds that DC’s rail system, for example, is a net $200 million annual loss to the local economy.
In Charlotte’s case, hundeds of millions of dollars which could be spent on gridlock reducing road capacity is instead being diverted to rail projects that will do little, if anything, to reduce congestion and, in fact, will actually increase congestion in areas where high-density “transit oriented development” is encouraged and even subsidized with yet more public money.
Super-short answer then, Phil: Building trains in Mecklenburg is insane.
