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Rail, particularly light rail, is promoted as an inex-

pensive alternative to expanding highway capacity.  Backers

of light rail often claim that a dual-track light-rail line

can carry as many people as a six-lane freeway.  But rail

EISs almost never compare actual costs and ridership of rail

with the cost and capacity of highway expansion.

A six-lane freeway, with interchanges and bridge work,

will typically cost about $30 million per mile to build.

Adding lanes to an existing freeway typically costs about $5

million per lane-mile.  At a cost of $1 million to $2 mil-

lion or less per mile, light-rail, in the first proposals

made during the 1970s, sounded relatively inexpensive.

The problem is that light rail has proven to be far

more expensive than originally thought.  According to the

two dozen EISs this author reviewed, the cost of light rail

would range from $10 million to more than $100 million per

mile.

Only one of the EISs reviewed compared transit with

highway expansion: the I-15/State Street Corridor plan for

Salt Lake City.  In addition to two light-rail alternatives,

that plan considered adding two, three (one reversible), or

four lanes to Interstate 15, the north-south freeway through

Salt Lake City.  The EIS measured reductions in congestion

by the number of person-hours of time each alternative would

save.

The light-rail alternatives were projected to have

capital costs of about $125 million more than transportation

system management and to save about 5,176 person-hours of

time each day, for a capital cost of nearly $24,000 per

daily hour saved.  By comparison, adding two lanes to the

freeway would cost about $166 million but would save more

than 30,260 hours of time, at a cost of less than $5,500 per

daily hour saved.  Each hour saved by light rail would cost

more than four times as much as an hour saved by highway

expansion.

Ignoring Important Data

In addition to ignoring obvious alternatives to rail,

many of the EISs failed to present data that should be

critical to a decision.  Most presented basic financial data

such as capital and operating costs and the number of new

transit riders the line would generate.  Many left out

important data such as