One of the most respected transportation and urban planning analysts in the country, the Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole has blogged about yet another city streetcar system that’s bound to fail. With consequences similar to what O’Toole has written about Portland and Detroit, here are some excerpts from Sacramento Streetcar Scam today:
As I’ve said before, streetcars are an urban intelligence test. They are slow. Oregonian reporter Joseph Rose decided to test the “urban myth” that Portland’s streetcar is slower than walking and discovered, “It’s no myth. You can walk faster than the streetcar to your destination.” Streetcars are low-capacity transit, capable of moving only a few thousand people per hour. Buses can move far more people because buses can safely travel a minute or so apart while streetcars must be spaced at least three minutes apart. Streetcars actually increase urban congestion because they occupy a lane of traffic, stop frequently, and take few if any cars off the road.
Most important, streetcars are expensive. Not only is their capital cost high, they cost twice as much to operate as buses and impose high long-run maintenance costs as well–costs that never get considered in any streetcar analysis. The Sacramento plan says, for example, that it will cost $4 million per year to operate and maintain the streetcar, but says nothing about replacing worn-out tracks, wires, vehicles, and other infrastructure after 25 or so years. Anyone who think that it is worth spending more than $100 million on a 7-mph clunker of a streetcar line fails the intelligence test. Of course, someone will make a lot of money building the line, so they will no doubt lobby for it. Unfortunately, a lot of other people will get sucked into the plan by a combination of nostalgia and misleading claims about economic development. The losers will be taxpayers and travelers.
Anaheim and Santa Ana are both on a very wrong track in considering streetcars as transit systems REDUNDANT to both cities’ comprehensive bus systems as built and operated by the OCTA. Will either city do the necessary research to justify these financial atrocities? We doubt it given the money to be made by political manipulators like Miguel Pulido, Curt Pringle and Lucy Dunn.
As well, as we implied in the headline, neither will the Measure M Oversight committee lift a finger to look at this new infrastructure that’s completely unnecessary and has already pissed away Measure M money in planning efforts like OCTA’s ridiculous Go Local effort. Fortunately, as reported a week ago by the Voice of OC, some of the OCTA Directors might at least take a look at the Anaheim system that Councilmember Kris Murray is trying to shove down the throats of her constituents: OCTA Directors Will Scrutinize Anaheim Streetcar Project. We reported on this mess months ago, here.
To emphasize how redundant the Anaheim streetcar system will be to existing transit — as Murray, a disciple of the fatuous Lucy Dunn, would certainly be aware as she’s privileged to sit on (but was never elected to) the OCTA Board, here’s a list of the OCTA bus routes that run to or travel around Disneyland: 430, 83, 43, 46 and 50. These routes touch the Convention Center: 430, 50, 83 and 43; and these routes reach the Anaheim Metrolink/Amtrak station: 430, 50, 57 and 757. And if this isn’t enough for transit expert Murray, TWO Anaheim Resort Transit shuttle routes, 14 and 15, stop at all three sites. Yet, she and Gail Eastman and Harry Sidhu believed a new $319 MILLION streetcar system is crucial to moving tourists around their Resort District, built with Federal (maybe, if they can steal it, but NO Disney money) and Measure M funding. Even Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait isn’t “against the project”, he said to the Register, he’s just been insistent, and so far successful, that NO Anaheim money from its general fund is used to build it. Like Irvine, other taxpayers will pay for their nonsense and misadventures in badly planned, completely unnecessary, wasteful transit systems.