(The full report is now available online from the UNCC Center for Transportation Policy Studies. Folks at the center reported some problems with it, however, so if you can’t open it, try again later. This links to the center’s home page, where there’s a link to the report.)
Are Charlotte’s bus system costs way out of line for similar cities?
Does the cost for building the South Corridor light rail line make it among the most expensive in the country?
Have the South Corridor construction costs gone up so much that it stands out among public projects as bloated and wasteful?
If you only read the John Locke Foundation’s data, or listen only to AM talk radio, or believe everything someone tells you in the grocery store line — or in the comments section of this blog — you’re going to answer YES, YES and YES.
And you’ll be wrong. So says a new research report from Edd Hauser. Hauser is founding director of UNC Charlotte’s Center for Transportation Policy Studies, and he has a lengthy and impressive pedigree in transportation engineering and planning, including master’s and Ph.D. degrees from N.C. State in transportation engineering and a master’s in regional planning from UNC. He helped found the Institute of Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) at UNC, was an assistant state highway administrator at the N.C. Department of Transportation and worked in the private sector for almost a decade, with Kimley-Horn and Associates.
He happened to see a March 26 City Council meeting at which Charlotte Area Transit System chief Ron Tober and City Manager Pam Syfert gave their version of the effect on city taxes and CATS if a proposal to eliminate the county’s half cent sales tax for transit succeeds.
“Emotions are running amok in this. I wanted to start looking at the data,” Hauser told me today. He and colleagues at the CRPS started looking at the numbers. “Our objective was to layout relevant data. I had no idea what it would look like when I started.”
His report isn’t available online yet, but here’s a link to an executive summary. (Hauser points out a typo. In the bulleted paragraph “Construction Cost Estimating,” the phrase “the original project cost” should read “the original project cost estimate.”)
He found CATS’ bus operations are comparable to, and in some cases are more economical than those in comparable cities, including four others in North Carolina, using three widely accepted measures of cost. He found CATS per-mile costs for light rail construction are in the middle of other cities with recent LRT projects.
He looked at metro areas from 300,000 to 1 million population, but only three of those had light rail transit operations so he also looked at metro areas roughly Charlotte’s size with more than a million population. He looked at operating expenses per passenger mile, operating expenses per vehicle revenue mile and cost per passenger trip.
For areas of more than a million, CATS’ bus operations ranked No. 1 (i.e. least cost) in operating expenses per vehicle revenue mile (VRM); No. 4 in operating expenses per passenger mile; No. 8 in cost per passenger trip.
For areas of 300,000 to a million, CATS’ bus operations ranked No. 2 out of 10 in operating expenses per passenger mile; No. 3 in cost per passenger trip; No. 4 in operating expenses per VRM.
He also compared CATS with bus systems in Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham and Winston-Salem, “with all four systems in total having fewer operational buses than the Charlotte system,” the full report notes. CATS ranked No. 3 in operating expenses per VRM, No. 4 in operating expenses per passenger mile, and last in cost per passenger trip.
He looked at Charlotte’s capital costs for its light rail construction, compared with 9 other new transit projects, and converted all costs to 2007 dollars. In cost per mile, CATS ranked 6, with $48 million per mile. More expensive per mile were St. Louis ($56 million), Dallas, ($60 million), Phoenix ($65 million), and Seattle ($179 million).
Finally, he looked at other regional transportation construction projects, to see how much they cost above their original estimate. The current estimate for the U.S. 29-601 Connector is 305% ABOVE the original estimate. That for the northwest segment of I-485 is 584% ABOVE the original estimate. The current estimate for the U.S. 29-N.C. 49 Connector is 327% ABOVE the estimate. The third runway at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport is 180% above the original estimate.
The CATS South Corridor line is 109% above the estimate.
(Note: “original estimate” is what you get from the engineers after thorough study. The estimates given before the 1998 sales tax referendum were projections, not specific estimates for specific routes, with a specified number of stations, etc., from engineers. Why would anyone who knows anything about public projects and how they’re funded think they’d be precise engineering studies, when there was no funding at that point for study or design? In other words, of course they were flabby. Get over it. And all the brouhaha because the costs weren’t given in inflation adjusted dollars? Maybe that SHOULD be standard practice but it isn’t. Hauser says typically construction project estimates aren’t adjusted for expected inflation.)
I hope he’ll be able to put the whole report online. Hauser is a researcher who looks at the data and then draws his conclusion, rather than drawing a conclusion and then seeking data to support it. “A lot of information is put into the media based on an incomplete look at relevant data,” he said.
What should you conclude? If you think any spending on light rail transit, or on a public bus system, or both is a waste of money, none of that information will change your mind. But if you’re under the impression CATS is a lot more inefficient than other transit systems, then consider whether you’ve been getting only part of the story, from whoever you’re getting your information from.