FACT: The MAJORITY of light rail projects have come in within or even under budget.
To support that claim of fact it uses only three examples. And for those three examples, we have to take their word for it, not knowing if the claim is just flat out wrong, or if the "under budget", is under a revised budget that had been increased from earlier estimates.
A much more reasonable defense of light rail on this point would be that almost no transportation projects come in at or under their initial cost estimates. That includes light rail, but it also includes "heavy" rail, buses, new roads, etc.
US transit ridership has been SOARING and hitting records. In 1999, ridership surged to a total of more than 9 billion trips, the highest peak in annual ridership since 1960.
1 - The study relies on old data. 1999 is now 10 years ago.
2 - Notice that even after the "soaring" of transit ridership, it was still below 1960, according to your own source.
The fully allocated costs of operating an automobile (including streets, freeways, parking facilities, traffic control, etc.) amount to about $1.32 per passenger-mile. For light rail, the cost varies by facility, but typically falls in the range $0.80-0.90 (in Austin, about $0.85).
The sources arguing the opposite, actually broke down costs and did calculations. Your site just gives the figures it likes.
Also your site assigns all the cost of the road, to the car, and none to the light rail which will also be using the same roads and signals, or will be using dedicated track which will increase the cost.
Also the site is double counting the road maintenance cost for cars since its counting fuel costs, and then also counting road maintenance costs, despite the fact that fuel taxes go to road maintenance (with excess being used to subsidize transit) |
