But who knows what city taxpayers will end up getting for their “investment?”

Taxpayers likely won’t get the 17-mile route they were presented last year. After more than a year of study, it was recently announced that the first phase of expansion will run some 9 miles, roughly from Chippewa St. to the NGA site north of downtown, and will cost $700 million. The project is also totally dependent on federal funding, which is a big if at this point, and will begin operations, best case scenario, in a decade.

It’s also unclear whether the expansion will get St. Louisans out of their cars. While consultants project the line will carry some 9,200 riders a day, my colleague Joe Miller has pointed out that it runs through neighborhoods with relatively low population density—density about a quarter of what’s needed for light-rail to be successful. Also, overall MetroLink ridership is trending downward; not only has it lost 3.9 million annual rides since 2014, but the rail system carries fewer passengers than it did prior to the 2006 Shrewsbury expansion. And crime on and around MetroLink trains has, according to Metro, contributed to an 11% decline in ridership since last year. While I don’t doubt that an expanded system will (at least initially) carry more passengers, experience—and more than 15 years’ worth of data—suggest we shouldn’t get our hopes up.

Source: National Transit Database, Federal Transit Administration

But perhaps the biggest if is the economic renaissance promised by MetroLink officials and proponents. Transit advocates claim that rail spurs economic development, that, once you put the rails in, the traffic generated by riders will induce all sorts of business growth. Unfortunately, this claim just doesn’t hold up. Many MetroLink stations are surrounded by land that’s either (a) already developed (and likely heavily subsidized), or (b) relatively empty. In fact, transit-oriented and adjacent development is so scarce in St. Louis that rail advocates have to cast an incredibly wide net for any evidence of it. For instance, Citizens for Modern Transit, the region’s major transit advocacy group, includes investments on Interstates 64 and 70 and parking garages as development “spurred” by MetroLink. And Metro, which operates MetroLink, seems to think any investment within a half-mile of a rail station is causally linked to the presence of their trains. (Or, all they present is data on development within a half-mile of their stations.) Perhaps this is why consultants are now saying that MetroLink could “spur possibly millions of dollars in economic development….” (my emphasis).

At this point, it’s unclear what, if anything, taxpayers will get in return for hiking up their sales taxes. Although rail proponents may have inexhaustible faith, history and facts suggest taxpayers won’t get much for their investment.

The post What Will the City’s New MetroLink Tax Get Us? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Over $440 million in road, bridge, and parking garage investments. That’s right, asphalt to drive and park your car on. (Most curious are improvements to Interstates 64 and 70.)
• $3.4 billion in renovations and expansions of established institutions like Barnes Jewish Hospital, Washington University, Saint Louis University, and the University of Missouri–St. Louis—investments that likely would have occurred with MetroLink or without.
• Another $785 million from government agencies and publicly funded sources—not the privately funded, mixed-use development rail advocates promise.
• CMT even associates another transit project—the $51 million Loop Trolley—with MetroLink.

Who, besides those ideologically wedded to rail, would think MetroLink is primarily responsible for these projects?

The chart below shows other developments that CMT associates with MetroLink. Even charitably assuming a causal link between rail investments and development, much of the economic activity CMT cites is tangentially related—at best—to MetroLink. So, be wary of claims about the economic payoff from rail investments. If MetroLink was so good at driving development, its advocates wouldn’t have to cast such a wide net for evidence of its success.

The post Has MetroLink Spurred Development? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

[Executive Director of Citizens for Modern Transit Kimberly] Cella cites studies that name MetroLink percentage-wise among the most utilized light rail corridors in the U.S.

Calling MetroLink one of the most utilized light rail lines could be considered damning with faint praise. However, the compliment itself does not appear to be correct. A quick look at data from the National Transit Database contradicts the idea that MetroLink is a particularly successful light rail line.

Of 21 reporting light rail systems, MetroLink ranked ninth in terms of passenger trips in 2013. Of course, those systems vary in their total mileage and level of service, so a better measure of utilization is passenger miles or passenger trips divided by total vehicle revenue miles (VRM), a proxy for total service provided. By those measures, MetroLink ranks eighth for passenger mile per VRM (24.6) and 19th for passenger trips per VRM (2.7).

From this data, we can see that large, dense cities tend to have the highest rate of ridership given the level of service provided. The best term to describe MetroLink utilization is middling.

Interestingly, utilization was much higher before MetroLink expanded in the early and mid-2000s.

When MetroLink only had the initial line from the airport to just across the river, it may have been true that the system had among the highest utilization rates of any light rail system. But after MetroLink expanded further into Illinois and again to Shrewsbury, utilization rates fell substantially. The reason for this is obvious: The route with the highest ridership potential was built first, with secondary options being built secondarily. Later routes, with fewer riders at a given level of service, drag down the entire system’s average.

In reality, MetroLink does not stand out among light rail systems in terms of ridership. Furthermore, adding new lines in Saint Louis County are likely to have even less ridership potential than existing routes, due to lower population density and higher car ownership. And since fewer people per train means higher subsidies per train, new lines will likely require higher subsidies and carry fewer riders. Residents should think carefully about whether Metro should, or even can, take on the extra burden.

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St. Louis’s light rail, MetroLink, has been built on press events and promises. The CMT made-for-media race earlier this month is a great example of the former, but consider some of the promises made to sell MetroLink:

* “…some of Metro Link’s heaviest use could come from lunch-hour passengers moving among downtown, Union Station and the Central West End.” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10/26/1988

* “The city is talking with investors and developers about building a golf course just north of the King Bridge, an area of abandoned rail lines… City planners picture light industry around the golf course.

“Conventioneers, just five minutes from East St. Louis by rail, offer a natural market for a golf course…” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10/17/1993

During our race, Joseph Miller provides the numbers behind MetroLink. It’s incredibly expensive and there are better ways to improve public transportation. For example, money used on MetroLink would be better spent improving bus service.

Note 1: When Joseph Miller refers to “city” and “city planners” he means the “St. Louis region” and “regional planners”.

The post MetroLink: The Great Race – Part Deux appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But over the past decade, the “cool” cities have not seen any faster job or population growth than cities dominated by non-creative industries. The fastest employment growth has been in areas such as Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Omaha. The main employment in those cities is not in the cool, creative sector, but in industries such as oil and manufacturing. And, even the rapidly growing “cool” cities, such as Raleigh and Austin, are not transit-centered places.

So why do we keep hearing that transit is what causes economic development and revitalizes downtowns? Transit may attract a certain demographic, but trends over the past several years in our country hint that this demographic is not the economic driver it appeared to be.

Now, it is not to say that transit precludes development. But why keep focusing our efforts (and subsidies) on something that is not an absolute necessity to promote growth in Saint Louis? We have written about our support for toll roads to limit subsidies for roads, but at least those subsidies benefit a majority of the population. With transit, we are taking money from a majority of the population to pay for something that benefits the few. Even Citizens for Modern Transit unintentionally admits this with their statement “You may not ride transit, you may not know anyone who uses the bus or MetroLink; however, Missouri needs transit.”

The post Get Off The Train: Saint Louis Cannot Ride To Economic Growth appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It was plain to see that people who represented a specific organization placed a high priority on funding the project that most affected their group. This is what tends to happens in democratic societies. The people who want the public goodies take the time and effort to get them. For instance, Show-Me Policy Researcher Kacie Galbraith and I were at a table with a woman who represented bicycle enthusiasts. Not surprisingly, she pushed for more funding for bike trails. Show-Me Policy Analyst David Stokes was at a table where a representative from Citizens for Modern Transit talked up the benefits of high-speed rail.

This is not to say that some of the projects that some people favor do not have merit. I favor increased funding for road maintenance and highway safety. But when you get a lot of special interests together, the result is a lot of projects that “need” to be funded. For example, MoDOT has four long lists of proposed projects just for the Saint Louis District, with total costs in the billions.

I do not really blame people for showing up to try to get a piece of state funding. However, we should consider what William Graham Sumner wrote:

Whenever A and B put their heads together and decide what A, B and C must do for D, there is never any pressure on A and B. . . . The pressure all comes on C. Now, who is C? He is always the man who, if let alone, would make a reasonable use of his liberty without abusing it. He would not constitute any social problem at all and would not need any regulation. He is the Forgotten Man.

“C” is the Missouri Taxpayer here. Do not forget that the Missouri Taxpayer will pay for these projects. I believe in funding transportation, but the state should only fund what is necessary, not what every special interest wants to have financed.

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Citizens for Modern Transit recently hosted a luncheon with national TOD expert Dena Belzer on the Economics of Building Around Light Rail. I had an opportunity to review her Powerpoint presentation, which did not convince me of any such economic benefit.

Granted, I have to hedge my comments with the fact that I did not physically attend the presentation. That being said, the most outrageous trend running throughout the presentation is that TOD will save money. It will save money for the government, it will save money for households, employees, employers — pretty much everybody.

The presentation suggests that compact development helps municipalities save money. Just like you save money at Jos. A. Banks buying two suits to get the third one free, when you did not even need a suit. Spending money just to get a “good deal” is not always a good justification for spending that money.

And what about households? Belzer’s presentation suggests that TOD can save households billions of dollars and that money can be reinvested in the community. First of all, TOD will not save us money when we are paying for it in our taxes.

Secondly, she cites figures that suggest Portland’s transit policies save residents $2.6 billion per year. However, more than half of that imaginary figure comes from the estimated value of commute time that has been reduced due to transit options — the opportunity cost. I do not know about you, but I have not found a way to manufacture gold coins from the time I save on days that traffic is light. Nor do I mind my commute to work. Many people choose to spend more time commuting in favor of lower housing costs, community preference, or a variety of other factors.

Other people prefer to use transit or live near a Metro stop and enjoy a predictable commute. There is nothing wrong with that. However, it is not a sufficient reason to compel all taxpayers to subsidize housing, retail, and office facilities around transit stops so that planners can impose their views on the rest of us.

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