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Tag transit

CTA “Super Station” Mothballed

Photo by flickr user mss2400 Thanks, DBM for the tip: Faced with runaway costs, the CTA and City Hall slammed the emergency brakes Wednesday on ambitious plans to build a “super station” in downtown’s Block 37 to speed express trains to both Chicago’s airports. A combined $213 million has been spent on the project, yet there is not much more than a massive hole in the ground to show for it. At least an additional $100 million would be needed to complete the subterranean station, the CTA estimated. “The Block 37 curse continues,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a transportation and urban planning professor at DePaul University who has for years doubted the viability of the transit project. read the Chicago Tribune article here: CTA ‘super station’ in a hole Damn. I was really looking forward to the express connection to the airports. Had I not gone back to grad school, I would have worked on the subway station and tunnel design. But, I was always suspicious of how/if trains would actually be express without adding significant amounts of track and switching. With any major Chicago public project, always be suspicious that it will cost what the politicians say. The common joke is that there is a factor of 2.5: actual cost / original announced cost. The funny thing is that the factor seems pretty close to accurate. I wonder if there is any real data on that. I definitely recommend reading Here’s the Dealby Ross Miller, to learn the long history of Block 37 and political meddling in Chicago’s downtown.

Free Market Impostors

I subscribe to the CATO Institute’s Daily Dispatch email. I enjoy ready the daily briefings of current events from a free-market perspective. But, once in a while, my capitalist stomach turns when they mention transit, usually accompanied by a quote from Randal O’Toole. Usually he bashes some transit plan, and gives some statistics about the inferiority of transit. Here’s a quote form the most recent Dispatch: Cato senior fellow Randal O’Toole writes: “A mile of rail transit line typically costs more to build than a four- to eight-lane freeway and typically carries fewer than half as many people as a single freeway lane mile. Federal funding for rail transit comes out of gasoline taxes and other highway user fees, and in most cases those funds would be more cost effective if spent on other transportation facilities.” Does this sound particularly “free market” to you? He’s just saying one socialist system is better than the other. On top of that he consistently presents only half the facts. You don’t even have to dig into his sources of data to know he is pulling a trick on the reader. Can you detect the deceptions? Yep, he discusses construction costs and completely neglects land costs, then focuses on cost/mile (as opposed to the more relevant cost/trip), while falsely inferring that the costs of automobile use is fully paid by fees and gas tax. Out in the country, land may be cheap and costs can be neglected. But, in urban areas where transit becomes more competitive, land is significantly more expensive. If one neglects land costs, one could justify tearing down several 60 story, $1000/sf office buildings Midtown Manhattan to build a 10 lane highway instead of an underground subway. I have a hard time respecting anyone who willingly neglects real costs (not just […]

Happy 125th, Chicago’s L

Stephen Smith at rationalitate picked up on a Wired article and posted Thomas Edison builds the first el: today is 125th anniversary of the debut of Thomas Edison’s elevated electric railway demonstration in Chicago. The project was financed with $2 million in private funds, through the newly-incorporated Electric Railway Company. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for the days when the government wasn’t so involved in transportation and regulating land use, and that it was actually possible for the market to come up with transportation solutions We’ve come along way in destroying transit by government over-spending since the good ol’ days…. photo by flickr user harshilshah

How McCain or Obama Can Permanently Eliminate the Gas Tax, Cut Pork and Help the Environment

John McCain and Hillary Clinton have both supported the idea of a “Gas Tax Holiday“. The whole idea of a Holy Day to celebrate the worship of socialized transportation catered by Santa Clinton/McCain seems pretty absurd to me. Nonetheless, they expect pandering to gas-addicted voters to pay off in their election hopes. Unfortunately, such a gas holiday would burden the deficit, incentivize the burning of fossil fuels, and further socialize our transportation system. Highway advocates currently cling to arguments that roads are more “free-market” than transit because the costs of maintaining the highways are paid by the user through gas taxes and user fees. That is a myth to be debunked in future posts, but the argument would be void during McCain’s new “holiday”. And, with future tax money footing the bill instead of gas users, we would have a full blown transfer of wealth from the responsible taxpayers who don’t depend on petroleum to the gas guzzlers and petroleum industry. I propose a more free-market solution at the federal level – get out of the transportation business altogether! The federal government would end the gas tax permanently, but at the same time deed the entire federal highway system over to the individual states where the highways are located, and abolish the Department of Transportation over a span of a few years. The individual states would be free to handle their transportation as they see fit, as long as the they do not diminish the military’s ability to mobilize forces for defense. States could pay for maintenance of the assets in ways that best suit them, whether it be a gas tax, tolls, property taxes or states could actually raise money through complete privatization of the new assets. Besides easing the burden on the deficit, getting the federal government out […]

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