Myths: Give Us a Break

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"Give Us a Break"

The following material has been provided by Light Rail Progress, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Light Rail Now! and Walkable Neighborhoods. The material exclusively reflects the views of Light Rail Progress.

ABC's television news magazine 20/20, on Friday, 7 July 2000, featured another blistering attack on rail transit - including light rail -- by the program's co-anchor, John Stossel, who frequently champions libertarian causes

Stossel, in his "Give Me a Break" segment, cued his attack on the recent opening of the latest extension of the Red Line "heavy" "ail subway in Los Angeles, which has exceeded ridership expectations and has been widely praised throughout the Los Angeles region for its success. Stossel's method was to belittle those ridership numbers by comparing them to the entire metropolitan population -- much of it not served by transit at all.

The "Give Me a Break" segment is obviously intended as a form of commentary or editorial. The problem is that there has never been an open and fair discussion of the merits vs. drawbacks of LA's subway project or rail development as a whole. On the contrary, Stossel's diatribe comes in the context of a relentless media barrage against LA's subway project which represents the worst of mainstream "journalistic" practice.

Even as an opinion piece, Stossel's commentary was hardly a model of fair, deliberative journalism. LA's transit agency (LACMTA) was simply pilloried, while longtime, virulent rail and transit opponents (e.g., the libertarian Reason Foundation) were embraced as the sole representatives of "expert" and "independent" assessment.

Scholarly and professional supporters of rail transit and LA's subway were totally bypassed. Evidently, Stossel considers that simply quoting ridership figures from LACMTA is a sufficient representation of "the other side".

Certainly, Stossel is entitled to present his own assessment of the merits of rail transit and LA's subway. However, these issues deserve far better than the caricature treatment presented in Stossel's "Give Me a Break". If rail transit is such an inherent boondoggle, as Stossel portrays, why are so many cities worldwide installing, upgrading, and expanding such systems? There is a significant body of opinion, and substantial support, among transportation planners and political decisionmakers in favor of new rail systems, and responsible journalism would acknowledge it.

A summary of Stossel's presentation is posted below, followed by a rebuttal from Light Rail Progress.

The facts and arguments in this rebuttal may be helpful to light rail supporters who wish to formulate their own response.

Light rail supporters are encouraged to make their views known to John Stossel and 20/20.

The URL for the "Give Me a Break" segment is http://www.abcnews.go.com/onair/ABCNEWSspecials/JohnStossel.html

The URL for submitting feedback to John Stossel is http://www.abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/stossel_suggestions__mailform.html

Derailed Logic

New Subway More Expensive, Less Efficient Than Buses

The final leg of the Los Angeles subway line is now open, but will there be enough riders to justify the immense cost of building the system? (ABCNEWS.com)

By Frank Mastropolo

July 7 -- Last month, the city of Los Angeles celebrated the completion of the final six miles of its brand-new subway system. At more than $4.5 billion, the 17-mile long subway line is the most expensive in America.

The project was dogged by construction delays, accidents and cost overruns, but the citizens who paid for it are happy to know it is finally complete. Los Angeles taxpayers were so fed up by the project that in 1998 they voted against anymore tax dollars being spent to expand the subway system.

Transit officials nonetheless proudly cite the number of people riding the new line: over 120,000 one-way trips a day. But as 20/20's John Stossel points out, in a city of almost 4 million people, there's no "mass" in this mass transit.

Stossel believes that Los Angeles, like many cities that have embarked on expensive subway and light-rail projects, has miscalculated the way people need to commute. It's not as if everyone lives in the suburbs and commutes to the city center, Stossel says. People commute in all directions -- from suburb to suburb, from school to the mall, from the mall to grandma's house. Rarely do people's travel needs happen to coincide with the mostly straight lines that rail systems cover.

Buses Are the Answer

The solution, Stossel says, is more buses, which carry many more people for less money. As commuting patterns change, bus routes can change. And transit planners in Los Angeles recently announced some good news. Eighty new express buses -- equipped with special sensors that keep traffic lights green as the buses approach designated intersections -- have been added to their fleet.

A study citing U.S. Department of Transportation figures published by the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based public policy research organization, says that new rail lines are so underused, an average one-way ride costs more than $9.

And cities across the country -- like Salt Lake City, which just opened its first rail system, and Denver, which has decided to extend its light-rail system -- continue to focus on trains? "Give Me a Break!"

Contact information

L. A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority One Gateway Plaza P.O. Box 194 Los Angeles, CA 90053 (213) 620-RAIL (620-7245) (Rail info) (213) 623-1194 (Other matters) http://www.mta.net

Reason Foundation 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400 Los Angeles, CA 90034 Phone:(310)391-2245 Fax: (310)391-4395 www.reason.org

Rebuttal

Stossel's diatribe states:

Last month, the city of Los Angeles celebrated the completion of the final six miles of its brand-new subway system. At more than $4.5 billion, the 17-mile long subway line is the most expensive in America.

All major transportation projects these days -- especially in built-up, prime-real-estate, central-city areas -- are expensive. Does Stossel ever focus on highway or freeway projects? Downtown parking garages?

Stossel argues:

A half-truth. Underground construction has been banned, but not surface construction. This formulation plays on the ambiguity of the term "subway". Major portions of almost every "subway" system (e.g., New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco) are routed above-ground. In LA, politicians (many of whom now criticize the Red Line subway for its high cost) insisted that it be routed entirely underground, never seeing the light of day.

Stossel's diatribe continues:

Why target a single 17-mile-long transportation facility, and compare it to the size of the entire population? Freeways typically handle about that number, or at most a few hundred thousand trips a day -- far, far less than the number of residents in their surrounding metropolises. Stossel's otherwise pointless comparison is obviously intended to perform no other purpose than to belittle what is actually an impressive ridership figure for a single transit line.

How about 1,200,000 trips compared to that 4,000,000 population? That's the total number of daily transit trips carried on LACMTA's entire system, including buses, as of 1997 -- and it's grown since then. That's more than 25% of that population figure.

And, in terms of annual per-capita ridership, as of 1997 LACMTA's ridership averaged about 37 trips for every man, woman, and child in the metropolitan area. Transit is an essential service, that's there when you need it.

The Stossel's diatribe argues

... that Los Angeles, like many cities that have embarked on expensive subway and light-rail projects, has miscalculated the way people need to commute. It's not as if everyone lives in the suburbs and commutes to the city center, Stossel says. People commute in all directions -- from suburb to suburb, from school to the mall, from the mall to grandma's house. Rarely do people's travel needs happen to coincide with the mostly straight lines that rail systems cover.

Well, no one (except, apparently, critics and opponents) claims that rail, or bus, transit can possibly meet all trip needs. Transit is designed to serve the heaviest travel corridors. And such corridors so exist -- otherwise, why would freeways be needed?

Not everyone travels to city centers and other congested areas. But many thousands do -- that's why 14-lane freeways and mammoth freeway tunnels have been built, and why rail lines are needed.

The "Give Me a Break" summary continues:

Buses Are the Answer

The solution, Stossel says, is more buses, which carry many more people for less money.

Stossel fails to support such a claim. If buses are so incredibly cheap, and can do the job, why are cities across the globe hastening to install rail systems? An epidemic of municipal delusions of grandeur?

Given the operating cost, vehicular life-cycle costs, and the cost of roadway facilities, rail is typically the more cost- effective mode, per passenger-mile, for moderate to high passenger volumes. When benefits, such as the averted need for freeway capacity, street capacity, parking facilities, and the associated operating and administrative costs, are considered, rail wins, hands-down.

Furthermore, supposedly "cheap" buses fighting traffic on congested streets and freeways have largely been LOSING passengers. Rail systems, nationwide, have been the big winners in attracting ridership, particularly from automobiles.

Stoessel's argument continues:

As commuting patterns change, bus routes can change.

But changing bus routes can also confuse passengers and the public at large, and cause ridership to drop. Fixed routes are more understandable, and the sense of permanence attracts both riders and adjacent development, which tends to build in more long-term ridership. Where has such a change in "commuting patterns" ever left a transit line high and dry -- the Love Canal maybe? And if "commuting patterns" change, what's to happen to that expensive, multi- hundred-million-dollar freeway that was built in the old, "abandoned" corridor?

Stossel's piece continues:

And transit planners in Los Angeles recently announced some good news. Eighty new express buses -- equipped with special sensors that keep traffic lights green as the buses approach designated intersections -- have been added to their fleet.

LA's new "Rapid Bus" service was analyzed in a previous LRP List posting. The buses operate in mixed traffic with ridership volumes much lower than for rail lines. Will Stossel compare their ridership to the 4 million population?

Stossel makes his most controversial claim:

First, Stossel's description of the Reason Foundation as merely a "public policy research organization" is disingenuous. The Reason Foundation states that its monthly magazine "covers politics, culture and ideas from a dynamic libertarian perspective". This is an "impartial" and "independent" source of unbiased information?

To say, as Stossel does, that the Reason Foundation "study" (actually, a political tract) cites "U.S. Department of Transportation figures" is a misrepresentation based on an ambiguity (similar to the case of "subway" construction noted above). In actuality, the Reason tract is yet another case of "numbers voodoo" drawing upon previous "numbers voodoo" to produce the "food-blended" figure of $9 per "one- way ride" which Stossel has quoted.

The Reason document in question is "Ten Transit Myths" by well-known professional anti-rail activists Thomas A. Rubin and James E. Moore II. To generate their desired outrageous cost "per rider", Rubin and Moore in turn perform hocus-pocus on previous "numbers voodoo" by earlier professional anti-rail activist Charles H. Pickerell, performed in 1990 under contract to the US Department of Transportation (then run by the Bush administration) and predominantly relying on data from the 1980s.

The DOT routinely commissions such "policy papers" from a range of viewpoints (sometimes favoring bus over rail, depending on the political bias of the governing administration). These are non-peer-reviewed studies used as inputs to broader policy decisionmaking. To refer to Pickerell's claims as "U.S. Department of Transportation figures" is misleading, conjuring a misconception of federally monitored data collected in a standardized format. DOT has never endorsed Pickerell's conclusions as any kind of officially valid data -- such as, for example, are reported in the National Transit Database.

Pickerell's methodology and calculations have been widely criticized within the professional transportation community for inaccuracies and questionable practices. Pickerell's original data manipulations were based on 1988 figures from just 4 "heavy" rail systems (Washington, Atlanta, Baltimore, Atlanta) and only 3 light rail transit (LRT) systems (Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Portland). In contrast, there are at least 10 brand-new LRT systems in operation today. Furthermore, Pickerell's methodology included inferences and statistical methods to estimate cost and ridership data which have been challenged by at least some of the agencies involved in his study.

Of the 3 LRT systems examined by Pickerell, two -- Buffalo and Pittsburgh -- have extensive sections in subway, thus raising both capital and operating costs. In fact, 84% of the Buffalo system is in subway. Furthermore, Pittsburgh's is an upgrade of its streetcar system and includes some older, more expensive operational practices. Pickerell's subjects, therefore, can hardly be considered a representational cross-section of typical light rail operations on which to base "average" costs.

Another questionable practice by Pickerell was the use of a 10% discount rate (a form of interest rate, reflecting the "opportunity cost" of capital -- what rate of return could the capital expenditures otherwise generate if invested elsewhere?). The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) now recommends use of a rate of 7% in calculating the annual capital costs of projects. Pickerell used a substantially higher rate of 10% -- thus jacking up annualized capital costs (and cost per rider) even further. Furthermore, these are not actual capital costs -- they're hypothetical costs based on an assumption of alternative use of the investment capital. Typically, this procedure is used in the evaluation of alternative project proposals, not in quantifying the actual cost expenditures of an existing project.

Rubin and Moore, then, take Pickerell's "numbers voodoo" assumptions, escalate them to "1992 dollars" in some fashion, and slap them in their own Reason Foundation tract. For his 20/20 commentary, Stossel is thus brandishing a figure based on highly questionable calculations -- drawn from a very limited number of cases - that are already some 12 years old.

Stossel then jumps to his conclusion:

Salt Lake City and Denver are both surface-routed light rail systems whose installation projects were completed on time and within budget. The extensions alluded to by Stossel were both judged to be cost-effective projects by the FTA and consequently approved for federal funding

In response, one might well retort: "And ABC calls this responsible journalism? Give us a break!"