Lynx Bites Taxpayers In The Wallet
The incessant braying and ballyhooing from Charlotte’s uptown lunch bunch over the purported success of the Lynx light-rail line is brought to task in a recently released Cato Institute policy report, penned by transportation guru and transit realist Randal O’Toole.
While sleek trains and streetcars might look grand in full-color, glossy brochures distributed by local chambers of commerce, O’Toole’s report, “Defining Success: The Case against Rail Transit,” reveals a more sobering reality: that the majority of rail transit projects are little more than money pits that fail to fulfill their touted goals of reducing congestion and improving air quality.
O’Toole uses six measurable standards – from profitability and ridership to cost-efficiency and economic development – for judging a rail project’s success or, in the majority of cases, lack thereof.
Charlotte Area Transit System’s Lynx light-rail line is a prime example, with its performance falling miserably short stacked up against projects from other cities and the national average. Among O’Toole’s findings: Charlotte taxpayers lose about $20 for every ride taken on the Lynx, versus a national average loss of about $7 for light rail and $4 for all transit. Fares, in fact, cover only about 17 percent of the Lynx’s operating costs, compared to 29 percent for the average light-rail line and 53 percent for all transit.
And lest anyone try to justify the huge hit to taxpayers’ wallets by dragging out the tired argument that the Lynx has spurred a groundswell of growth along its tracks, O’Toole points out that in most cases the economic development bang-for-the-buck from light rail is grossly overrated. From his paper:
A literature review commissioned by the FTA found that “urban rail transit investments rarely ‘create’ new growth.” At most, they “redistribute growth that would have taken place without the investment.” The main beneficiaries of the redistribution were downtown property owners, which explains why they tend to strongly support rail transit projects.
Substitute “downtown” with “uptown” or “center city” and tell me that doesn’t fit Charlotte like a very, very expensive glove.
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