I've long read about the efforts to promote light rail in US cities and the enormous expense it incurs. I lived in Washington, D.C., and saw how the Metro subway works -and it works. But light rail in Austin? Not so sure.
My neighborhood assiciation had a speaker from Austin Metro touting the launch of light rail in Austin. I also was interested to see Paul Burka (Texas Monthly) on his blog - highlighting the problems with light rail. It's worth a read:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/blogs/burkablog/?p=3046
Is an answer to the commuter's prayers? Is it a good investment? Does it take enough cars off the roads to justify the expense? Or are taxpayers footing the bill for a boondoggle? Time will tell - but it wouldn't be the first time for Austin.
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I'm probably one of the few fiscal conservatives who is PRO light rail.
Most fiscal conservatives can only see within 1 year's time frame.
What we don't see is the cost of having to expand roads for traffic increases 25 years from now. If we have to pay $1 Billion dollars now for a light rail system, and we lose $30 million a year on the investment, it is still cheaper than having to pay $100 million every year in expansion of Roads to keep up with traffic increases when we can shift those drivers to riding rail to get away from congested highways.
I pulled the numbers out of thin air, but you get my point.
Light rail - buses for white people. Commuter rail has been shown to, in the aggregate, be much more expensive and do more environmental damage than cars. Trains running around empty half the day (and mind you, they have to run around empty half the day, otherwise people don't use them) cost the government lots of money and does lots of environmental damage. If the government can't pass those costs into fares (and they usually can't), it costs taxpayers money.
It really has nothing to do with providing cost-effective, green transportation. Buses do that well. It's about a city pointing at really nice looking trains and bragging about how progressive they are.
Austin should buy the funny looking rapid transit buses that Denver has. They look progressive, and can be added for much lower cost than light rail.
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