The LA Weekly continues its good fight

The LA Weekly reports that Los Angeles's Metropolitan Transit Authority plans to ask voters for "$40 billion for mass transit over the next 30 years". The Weekly then raises some interesting points:

Voters might question the scope when they learn that cities with extensive light-rail systems have been unable to take more than 1 to 2 percent of the cars off the road.

In fact, a recent study by Seattle’s Washington Policy Center, of the six West Coast cities that have invested in light rail since 1995 — L.A., Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Portland and Seattle — found it costs a princely $82,000 to $240,000 for each transit rider they have wooed on to their systems. . . .

In 1980, politicians similarly promised that a half-cent tax would build a modern transit system. In 1991, L.A. leaders again claimed that an additional half-cent was needed. Those dual transit taxes, Proposition C and Proposition A, provide MTA with an annual $1.4 billion windfall, but the agency has delivered only a fraction of what was promised.

Even the darling of mass-transit advocates, the city of Portland — which has embraced “transit-oriented development” and so-called “smart growth” — is in the throes of massive congestion, and local critics say the dense urban-development projects that were supposed to reduce Portland’s traffic have had the opposite effect. A nonscientific 2005 survey of more than 400 Portland residents showed that they wanted tax dollars to be spent on better roads. “Transit” came in a distant fourth in Portland.

Comments

[jurisnaturalist]

Is there any hope, contrary to what Mike said on the Mike and Russ show last week, that public transportation will be de-regulated if oil prices continue to surge? Can we expect more black-market public transit? Will "slugging" spread beyond DC?

[The Overhead Wire]

That study is discussed at PublicTransit.US.

http://www.publictransit.us/ptlibrary/Retort-WPC-LRTreport.pdf