Has any city come to realize that building expensive light-rail lines is not a good idea?
One is Buffalo. They built one line and it shattered their transit ridership. They lost a lot of riders and they said, “We’re not going to build anymore.” Here’s the problem with rail transit: It’s so expensive — and it almost always has cost overruns; cost overruns average 40 percent but in some cases they’ve been over 100 percent. So transit agencies end up cutting bus service and raising bus fares to help pay for the high cost of rail transit. The result is, you get fewer riders. When Los Angeles was building its rail system, it lost 17 percent of its bus riders. They were sued by the NAACP for building rail lines into white, middle-class neighborhoods at the same time they were cutting bus service in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Q: That’s what’s going on here. Our light-rail line goes into middle-class neighborhoods and bus service is being cut back and fares are going up. A: It’s happening in Washington, D.C., in Chicago, Philadelphia, San Jose, Portland, Sacramento — the l
