More trains - not enough riders

For all of us suckers:  Here are some sobering facts about light rail.  Is it too late to stop the PDX to Tigard and other planned light rail projects?  Probably.  Once the Central Planners get their teeth sunk into raw meat they won't ever let go. Not only don't they want to see their long-range plans foiled, getting new projects into the chute means job security, empire-building and more administrative state control.  Developers are their fiercest cheerleaders.  Light rail lines aren't worth the skinny tracks they are built on.  Can you say 'boondoggle'?

Newgeography.com. by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox 08/30/2017

THE GREAT TRANSIT RIP-OFF

Over the past decade, there has been a growing fixation among planners and developers alike for a return to the last century’s monocentric cities served by large-scale train systems. And, to be sure, in a handful of older urban regions, mass transit continues to play an important — and even vital — role in getting commuters to downtown jobs. Overall, a remarkable 40 percent of all transit commuting in the United States takes place in the New York metropolitan area — and just six municipalities make up 55 percent of all transit commuting destinations.

But here’s an overlooked fact: Most urban regions, such as Southern California, are nothing like New York — and they never will be. Downtown Los Angeles may be a better place in which to hang out and eat than in the past, but it sorely lacks the magnetic appeal of a place like Manhattan, or even downtown San Francisco. Manhattan, the world’s second-largest employment center, represents a little more than 20 percent of the New York metropolitan area’s employment. In Los Angeles, by contrast, the downtown area employs just 2 percent.

As we demonstrate in a new report for Chapman University, our urban form does not work well for conventional mass transit. Too many people go to too many locales to work, and, as housing prices have surged, many have moved farther way, which makes trains less practical, given the lack of a dominant job center. But in its desire to emulate places like New York, Los Angeles has spent some $15 billion trying to evolve into what some East Coast enthusiasts call the “next great transit city".

This experience is not limited to L.A. Most of the 19 metropolitan areas with new mass transit rail systems — including big cities like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and even Portland, Ore. — have experienced a decline in transit market share since the systems began operations.

Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.