Your cost, my benefit
Max Borders explains today why Charlotte's new commuter train system is wildly popular among train enthusiasts:
"If you could spread 50 percent of the costs of something big, new and shiny for yourself over millions of other people and get away with it, wouldn't you? It's a phenomenon called 'concentrated benefits and dispersed costs' ..."
The set-up will be similar in the Triangle, where a proposed $2 billion light-rail system will be funded according to this formula: half local money; one-fourth state sources; one-fourth federal sources.
"Bubba" raised the cost-benefit question in relation to the proposed Downtown Greenway at our Your Voice blog the other day.
I answered with doubts about how you put a dollar figure on a greenway's benefits.
Of course, he was getting at a valid point -- the same one Borders raises with much more specificity. However you calculate the benefits, they will be enjoyed by the relative few and paid for by the many.
As an avid jogger, I use and appreciate greenways. I derive substantial benefit but pay very little of the cost. I certainly recognize that the vast majority of taxpayers, who cover most of the costs, don't use greenways and therefore get little if any benefit from them. So, from my perspective, it's a matter of my benefit, your cost. Hey, works for me. And that, of course, illustrates the special interest mentality.
I happen to like light rail, too, and used it daily when I lived in the Washington metro area a long time ago. If there were a line from High Point to Greensboro, I'd definitely be on it today. In reality, that day is a long way off, if it ever comes. So, my mass transit option is limited to the PART buses, which I ride on occasion. Since it only "costs" $2 each way, the cost-benefit ratio is quite favorable. For me. But then again, other people pay the bulk of the costs.
Borders notes that the cost of a commuter rail ride in Charlotte is $2.60, "while an unsubsidized ticket would cost $29.66."
With that kind of difference, someone has to convince the general public that they're reaping some big benefits even if they never use the system themselves. Actually, the public seems pretty well conditioned to believe it from the start. Mass transit reduces pollution and congestion on our highways, which means we won't have to spend so much building more or wider roads and we won't contribute as much to the total destruction of our planet through global warming. So goes the conventional wisdom.
I'll leave discussion of Benefit 2 to another time, but Borders claims Benefit 1 is dubious. He quotes transportation expert David Hartgen as predicting Triangle light rail would reduce auto traffic by only about 1 percent, and population increases would overtake that reduction quickly anyway.
Of course, any little bit helps, but it's important to find the most cost-effective means to solve big problems like traffic congestion.
As for the Downtown Greenway, well, that's not even a project designed to solve a problem. It's purely an amenity. Proponents make a very exciting case for its possibilities, but coming up with a positive cost-benefit analysis might be a tough proposition.
Comments (5)
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One of the things I wonder about the Greenway, Doug, is how the city would propose to keep it safe. Walkers or runners would be vulnerable to predators that station themselves along the path. Our current police force is plainly inadequate to meet its current demands-- let alone any new challenges.
Posted on March 2, 2008 4:57 PM
The crime-perception of any greenway is crucial. In both Chapel Hill and Gboro, to my knowledge, existing greenways are mostly in low-crime areas, but that wouldn't be the case with the one they're proposing. On the other hand, greenways are gentrifying catalysts: they attract joggers, stroller-pushing moms, post-latte pedestrians, and other yuppie types.
One difference b/t the greenway and light rail is scale: 26 mil (right?) vs. 2 bil. With my tax bill going up a few hundred every year anyway, I'd just as soon have a greenway.
Posted on March 2, 2008 9:58 PM
Doug, there are two fallacies in Borders' column. The first derives from his discussion of Charlotte's light-rail system in a vacuum. If that program were the only one ever proposed and implement, it might well make no sense for it to be subsidized. Charlotteans would benefit and the rest of us would help them pay for it. But the reality is that there are myriad such projects, some that Charlotteans help pay for without benefiting from, and some--like the light-rail system--that are the other way around. I'm not going to claim that all such programs average out (see below), but you can't just look at one in isolation.
The second fallacy is that while metro areas like Charlotte and the Triad generate the bulk of economic activity in the U.S., they receive well less than their share of federal transportation funding (I don't know if this is also true of state funding, but I wouldn't be surprised). If anything, the subsidy of Charlotte's light-rail system helps undo a funding imbalance.
Posted on March 3, 2008 12:25 AM
Thanks, Andy. Charlotte leaders indeed make the argument that they lag badly in state transportation funding.
I think the question remains about cost-effectiveness of light rail as opposed to, say, special bus lanes on highways.
As for security on the greenway: Always a concern. A couple of older men were attacked on High Point's greenway on a Sunday morning last year, and one was badly beaten. Certainly, the more traffic a greenway gets, the safer. People would be unwise to use them after dark in any part of town.
Posted on March 3, 2008 8:40 AM
Actually, it should be noted that the next two rail projects Charlotte intends to build -- the $470m. North line commuter rail as well as $400m. worth of streetcars -- will NOT qualify for federal funding. Instead future local property tax dollars will fill the gap as our half-cent dedicated sales tax CANNOT pay for all the projects.
I imagine this would also be the case for any Triad or Triangle rail plan as well. The promise of federal help will be dangled by train fans for as long as possible, especially to win dedicated taxes with which hundreds of millions in debt can be issued in the bond makret. Then train builders will merely shift to a combo of tax increment financing and higher fares for bus riders in order to pay for further rail construction and operation.
It is a pattern that has been repeated across the country and is unfolding right now in Charlotte. Bottomline, ignore our South (LYNX) line -- that model cannot be replicated.
In fact, the model is completely broken, we just have not admitted it yet.
Posted on March 4, 2008 10:57 AM