Oh my goodness! Even the Wizard didn't foresee this bolt from out of the blue cast by Tory. $1.8 billion for a 14 mile light rail line? $130 million per mile for light rail? Richmond and Wheeler costing $1.3 billion?
Just this past week I wrote about Metro's $3 billion limousine. Now, 30 miles at $130 million per mile is $3.9 billion. Add in the $520 million Main Street train and the $300 million Intermodal temple and you have a $4.7 billion limousine. I tried to show an argument that Metro could afford to field 500 buses on the road for a $3 billion limousine. Now the opportunity costs of the rail build out would mean we could probably operate 800 - 1,000 new buses everyday out on the road instead of 500. Instead, we have 18 rail cars on Main and Frank Wilson wants to buy another 100.
Folks, this is nothing short of a disaster! For American cities that were built in the age of the automobile, we need to completely reorient our public transportation tax dollars towards building up massive investment trusts for operations purposes - which would be inviolate and could not be touched by elected officials - and get them completely away from flashy transit monuments. Leave the massive capital spending for New York's subways and maybe Chicago. As described in my previous post, at a $4.7 billion we could acquire and operate 5 or more times as many additional buses out on the road as rail cars - indeed we could completely bury all of Metro's five rail lines with two times as many additional buses as rail cars - and still have some 400 or more new buses left over for the entire rest of the City. This would cut down wait times everywhere, give us a vastly more nimble transit system that would serve the entire city, rather than have a few dozen miles of trains going nowhere near where I need to go and a shriveled, truncated bus system which serves no other purpose other than to feed a greedy and rigid set of trains.
Friday, December 7, 2007, will be a day which will live in Houston Transit Infamy. Yes gentle readers, there will be even more Fireballs, Lightning Bolts, and Hell Storms yet to come.
Addendum edit - December 8, 2007: The news came across last week about the FTA's decision to require Metro to resubmit documentation and allow public comments on the North and Southeast alignments. I don't care if you are all for railroading the city and for violating the property rights of the home and business owners along the corridors by stuffing them into 500 yard radial condemnation zones which will surround all of the train stations. As a taxpayer, you should be thankful for the FTA's decision to do this.
Wizard
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at December 7, 2007 09:11 PM