Is This Infrastructure Really Necessary?

The United States has "at least $232 billion in critical public transportation" needs, claims the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Among the "critically needed" infrastructure on APTA's list are a streetcar in downtown Los Angeles, another one in downtown Sacramento (which local voters have rejected), one in Tempe, and streetcar extensions in Tampa and Kansas City.

Get real: even ardent transit advocates admit that streetcars are stupid. The economic development benefits that supposedly come from streetcars are purely imaginary, and even if they weren't, it would be hard to describe streetcars -- whose average speed, APTA admits, is less than 7.5 miles per hour -- as "critically needed."

Much of the nation's transit infrastructure is falling apart, and the Department of Transportation has identified $100 billion of infrastructure backlog needs. (Page l -- that is, Roman numeral 50 -- of the report indicates a backlog of $89.9 billion in 2012 dollars. Converting to 2019 dollars brings this up to $100 billion.) Yet APTA's "critical needs" list includes only $24 billion worth of "state of good repair" projects. Just about all of the other "needs" listed -- $142 billion worth -- are new projects or extensions of existing projects.

In fact, few if any of these new projects are "needed" -- they are simply transit agency wish lists. For example, it includes $6 billion for phase 2 of New York's Second Avenue Subway, but no money for rehabilitating New York's existing, and rapidly deteriorating, subway system. Similarly, it includes $140 million for a new transitway in Alexandria, Virginia, but no money for rehabilitating the DC area's also rapidly deteriorating Metrorail system. (In case anyone is interested, I've converted APTA's project list into a spreadsheet for easy review and calculations.)

The $166 billion total on APTA's "Project Examples" list is less than the $232 billion APTA says is needed, but even if all of the difference is "state of good repair" projects, that difference plus the $24 billion on APTA's list doesn't add up to what the DOT says is needed to restore transit infrastructure. This shows that even APTA doesn't take public safety and "crumbling infrastructure" seriously.

I've previously pointed out that the best-maintained infrastructure is funded out of user fees. For example, Federal Highway Administration data show that only 2.9 percent of toll bridges are "structurally deficient," compared with 5.5 percent of state-owned bridges funded mainly out of gas taxes and 12.2 percent of locally-owned bridges that are funded mainly out of general tax dollars. Gas taxes are a user fee, so state bridges are better maintained than local bridges, but tolls are an even better user fee so toll-funded bridges are in the best shape.

Politicians allow infrastructure funded out of tax dollars to deteriorate because they would rather spend money on new projects than maintain old ones. APTA's list simply confirms this: APTA is trying to entice politicians into funding all sorts of new projects rather than maintain the existing ones that are falling apart.

To justify this spending, APTA claims that transit produces $4 in economic benefits for every $1 spent. This is based on a report prepared for APTA in 2009. This report includes two kinds of benefits from transit spending.

First, when anyone spends money on anything, the recipients of that money turn around and spends it again. That's called "indirect" or "secondary" benefits. Spending money on digging holes and filling them up would produce similar secondary spending. That doesn't mean the government should pay people to dig holes and fill them up (although that's really what it's doing for many rail transit projects). For one thing, if government didn't spend that money, there would be more money in the hands of taxpayers, who would spend it, generating just as many secondary benefits.

Second, the study counts cost savings to transit riders and other travelers, such as the savings from not having to own a car, from getting to destinations faster, or from congestion relief. But transit costs far more and travels far slower than automobiles; there is no cost or time savings from substituting expensive, slow methods of transportation for inexpensive, fast methods of transportation. Transit also does not provide a significant amount of congestion relief; in fact, large buses, streetcars, light rail, and commuter trains that have many grade crossings often do more to increase congestion than reduce it.

The study's arguments are even less plausible today, when transit ridership is shrinking, than they were in 2009, when transit ridership had been growing. Charlotte, Los Angeles, and Portland recently spent hundreds of millions or billions on new light-rail lines or light-rail extensions, yet transit ridership in those regions dropped after the new lines opened. There is no way that can that be good for transit riders or other travelers.

APTA's wish-list is just one more reason why Congress should only pass an infrastructure bill if it is one that is funded exclusively out of user fees. An infrastructure bill funded out of tax dollars or deficit spending would impose huge costs on taxpayers in order to build unnecessary projects that we won't be able to afford to maintain.