Daren’s friends at NCPIRG have a new report on the benefits of mass transit(read: trains). Most of these benefits are from reduced gasoline consumption and theoretical greenhouse gas reductions, although the fact that people have to walk more to get to and from the train station has “public health benefits.”
It’s worth checking out a couple paragraphs just to get a sense of everything that’s missing from the report.
The 14 cities that have built wholly new light rail transit systems since 1980 saved more than 200 million gallons of gasoline through those services in 2006. These cities span the nation, from Baltimore to Sacramento and from Dallas to Minneapolis-St. Paul, showing that rail transit can work in a variety of cities. [Trains can run in cold climates and warm climates.]
[snip]
In 2005, federal, state and local governments spent $30.9 billion to provide transit services (not including fares). These investments yielded at least $60 billion per year in benefits from reduced vehicle expenses, avoided congestion, global warming emission reductions, reduced road expenditures, reduced spending on parking, and avoided traffic accidents. In other words, investment in transit more than pays for itself. [as long as we don’t consider what people pay to ride and the extra commuting time spent walking and waiting]
Transit investments are potent job-creators. Investments in transit produce 19 percent more jobs than equivalent investment in new road and bridge projects. [Maybe that’s because people drive cars themselves, even toll roads are electronically monitored, and the whole array of work at train stations themselves is not needed on roads]
You don’t need me to tell you what most of their recommendations are: more transit system trains in cities, more high-speed trains between cities, commuter rail and ring lines for suburbs, and of course more planning and subsidies for riders. One that took me by surprise was to “Improve the transit experience through upgraded amenities on trains and buses, including on-board wireless Internet service…” I thought municipal wifi networks were supposed to take care of that problem.
