Light Rail in Maryland A Boondoggle : Historic Failure Means Nothing

But wait a minute - if light rail is only about the money coming from the feds, this has to be a loser from the beginning, the feds are broke!! Wake up California and Milwaukee! The two mile downtown trolley in Milwaukee will fail just as the commuter train in California will fail, there is proven history of other projects like this have all failed to produce imagined and fantasized results.

This is simple government officials taking advantage of the public trust to enrich themselves. There can't be any other reason for such ignorance of economics. The history for these projects is everywhere.

The only reason that I can see to forge ahead on such boondoggles, given the known history of failure of such projects, is those that are in control see an advantage for having all these promised funds coming from the feds, and how they will be able to skim millions for themselves.

And as always, in the end, it's always the taxpayers that will have to pay the freight while the government officials that are responsible for the economic catastrophic failures, are gone, they have skipped town, leaving taxpayers hold the bag, again.

Inefficient Public Transport Project Should Be Reevaluated
Source: Randal O'Toole, "Proposed Purple Line Will be Slow, Increase Congestion, Waste Energy," Cato Institute, March 17, 2015.



March 20, 2015

A proposed light-rail line in Maryland called the Purple Line is both expensive and will likely fall short of its estimated benefit to the community. Ironically, the line's own environmental impact statement (EIS) supports this claim.

The Purple Line's many disadvantages include:

• An average speed of 15.5 miles per hour, which could cause many line commuters to lose valuable time;
• A loss of over 12 million hours per year for car owners due to the line causing traffic congestion;
• Up to 160 million barrels of oil to build the line, and 300,000 barrels annually to operate it;
• An adjusted cost upwards of $2 billion;
• And an estimated 65,000 people who will use the line each day, when similar light-rail establishments such as New Jersey's Hudson-Bergen line have four times the population density in the surrounding area and only 43,000 riders.

Businesses and individuals will eventually need to pay for the infrastructure, and so the pairing of high costs and such low return may even lead to a stagnation of economic activity.

It is already very clear Maryland will take a financial hit due to the line, with cancelation costs expected to be $900 million in federal funds, but the cost of creating an incredibly inefficient public transit system could haunt the state for much longer.