Why the US Gets Less Transit for More Money

public transit is getting funded all over the place especially in North America and while I was recently chatting with Dave from the channel City beautiful he had this to say hey Reese I just heard that Governor Newsom here in California announced 690 million dollars for public transit across the state that's across 28 separate projects what I need to know from you is how should I feel will this make a difference in how people get around California I need to know your perspective so let me know I think Dave's question is a good one around the world Transit is getting funded at levels never seen before but funding often doesn't seem to translate into good Transit as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law around a hundred billion US dollars is going to be poured into public transit projects across the U.S that's enough money to build at least 10 Montreal REM systems or around 700 kilometers of Rapid Transit if you were to use even some of that money for brt and Light Rail you could go much further but the sad reality is I don't think anyone expects that much to come of it I personally can't help but be a little bit cynical about the way Transit funding is delivered in a variety of places California being one of them so let's talk about The Good the Bad and the Ugly of Transit funding so let's work our way through some of the common issues that we often see with Transit funding the first thing that stands out to me is far too often we as the public and Transit Advocates allow politicians to turn basic Transit funding into some Grand spectacle to be sure I support politicians funding Transit but a lot of funding announcements including those in the California announcement are basically just state of good repair work and Status Quo stuff this stuff shouldn't be made special because what it should essentially be is a background process that's always operating when the buses get old we replace them and when a bridge needs upgrading we do the upgrade works that should all be able to happen without politicians getting directly involved ultimately if a bridge is falling apart it needs to be replaced but in reality it should never be falling apart in the first place politicians just shouldn't be parachuting in to tell us they're saving our infrastructure with our tax dollars that should have never needed saving in the first place the more politicians see Transit funding and Transit projects as something that they can give to the public to influence the Public's views on them the more they're encouraged to personally get involved then influence Transit projects this runs the risk of elevating standard projects into something that politicians feel a need to get involved with because they feel like it's going to have some political influence there's a certain positive element in my personal opinion that there are so many big Transit projects happening in Toronto for example that can cost up to hundreds of millions of dollars and yet never have a politician studied ribbon-cutting event from elevated guideways to new stations that's probably how these things should work at the same time big Transit funding is getting us less and less several hundred million dollars used to buy you a decent Subway extension if not an entire subway line but nowadays it might get you a single subway station or a brt route as Transit project costs have exploded in North America and the US in particular far too little attention has been given to and far too little action has been taken based on the findings that have come out of New York University's transit cost project that lays out a lot of practical ways that we could make Transit projects less expensive without actually compromising the transit personally whenever I see a funding announcement especially a large one I sort of cringe because I know that every year the prices will go up and the amount of Transit we get for any given amount of money will have dropped further and further and further the fact that I don't see politicians acknowledging and addressing these problems especially as part of an announcement of Transit funding is to put it simply concerning I'd love to hear something like and we're using the latest academic research so that we can send these dollars off and get even more transit for them instead of building a single Light Rail Project we'll build two and instead of building that Subway extension as multiple discrete phases we're going to build it as one big extension and I can't help but feel that our priorities are often backwards while it's great that this new funding will potentially allow for more Pacific surfliner trains from LA to San Diego the Pacific surfliner has been increasingly shut down because of coastal erosion in fact the entire service was suspended just a few days after this announcement if we're only doing small incremental Improvement projects while entire services are collapsing because the infrastructure they have needs a total overhaul it feels like winning the battle and losing the war and I'm sure the bridge replacement double tracking being funded by California here is an important project it's hard to feel like that's the most important project when the service isn't running for a couple of weeks every year because of all of these other problems another funding problem that applies to California but frankly applies the entire world is the operations funding to Capital funding disparity picture this a government is willing to build a city a new brt light rail or even subway line for Millions if not billions of dollars but then the trains or buses run so infrequently that no one actually wants to get on the line because government doesn't want to spend a few million a year on operations you can see that in La for example where when the regional connector opened it served areas home to millions and millions of people and yet the trains only run every 10 minutes another example is the Viva brt to Toronto's North where buses seemingly run every 30 minutes along opulent busways that cost hundreds of millions of dollars meanwhile within the city of Toronto Toronto itself buses which are far busier and run every five minutes get stuck in traffic because they don't even get dedicated bus lanes and prioritization is a problem too despite costing billions upon billions of dollars and having over a hundred stations the entire LA metro rail system moves the same amount of people every day as the 24 station L Line in New York and sure New York is a Transit Haven but one quarter of the average Riders per station on LA metro rail versus the New York subway is really bad especially after spending so much money on these various projects I don't believe that funding was going to projects which maximize ridership even if I think it probably should have far too often we get a crappy Transit project because government was willing to pay for the trains but not for drivers to drive them and a big part of this is yes governments don't want to commit to a long-term subsidy that limits their ability to shuffle funding around in the future but them is the breaks the hard part of running a transit system is keeping it running providing frequent service and maintaining it so it lasts a long time you've got to do that stuff if you want the glory especially if you're talking about the environmental benefits of Transit and all of the emissions it reduces as Californian Transit announcements so often do because Transit only reduces emissions if people actually take it and if not enough people ride Transit then it might still not actually reduce emissions since a lot of emissions have to go into building the transit in the first place this shouldn't be falling on deaf ears in California where until just a few weeks ago Transit agencies were headed for a fiscal cliff there was talk of closing subway stations and not running Bart past around 9pm for example you cannot seriously talk about funding new Transit when the transit you already have is teetering on the brink and of course if you actually care about the environment and reducing emissions running the transit you already built and already invested that carbon into more frequently is the best way to do that now this whole video probably came off as fairly ranty and negative but I don't want that to be what you come away with of course it's good that California's governor supports spending more money on Transit and California is building more new public transit than anywhere else in the U.S including High-Speed Rail which despite its problems is super exciting it's also good that the California transit funding apocalypse was at least diverted this time but the reality is that's not good enough for people like me who rely on public transit a train returning after it's been shut down for a week isn't good news it's a Lifeline it's the bare minimum and at the same time if you rely on Transit and it's constantly at risk of being shut down on weekends or only running until nine PM you're gonna probably think about getting a car because you can't rely on Transit these constant funding battles are terrible for getting people to actually rely on Transit and get rid of their cars which is so important at the same time while spending more money on Transit is good I like to think about how much more we could be getting for every single dollar across North America if we started just following the research that's come out of places like NYU I also think we need to shift the balance it's good to be laying new tracks and boring new tunnels but you also need to run the existing trains and buses frequently ultimately I think actual Transit service is the type of thing the governor should be announcing thanks for watching [Music] thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 48,859

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, caltrain, california, cahsr, high speed rail

Id: Zzcy7Usw8y8

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2023