Public transportation is often seen as the answer to a variety of issues and has become popular in the eyes of environmentalists, urban planners and traffic-haters.  There is a drive to create more all-encompassing and better mass transit.  Although it looks good on paper, public transportation is failing to show real potential to solve societal problems.  Trains, for the most part, and government-run busing are two forms of mass transit that have repeatedly shown their inability to save society money, let alone save the environment.

As a resident of New Jersey, I have plenty of first-hand experience with the initiative to make transportation cheap and public.  The government-sponsored transportation company, NJ Transit, is the product of years of government efforts to further prop up a system that does not fulfill any of the state’s dire needs.  The state of New Jersey pours billions of the taxpayers’ dollars into mass transit with little to show for it.  I’ve been on New Jersey’s infamous buses and trains and it’s quite a sad sight.  Most trains operating are cost-centers, which are considered crowded if barely half the train is full.  The only way NJ Transit stays in business is through the state’s fiscal support.  The CATO organization notes that, “The average public transit vehicle in the United States operates with more than 80 percent of its seats empty.”  This is especially evident in New Jersey.  Secaucus, New Jersey, is home to another fine example of government’s ineptitude and the failure of mass transit.  Senator Frank R. Lautenberg built an eponymous rail hub there, with federal subsidies, in 2003.  The site cost $609 million to complete and only attracts 5,600 daily riders.  There is no parking nearby, despite its location just off a major interstate.  The atrocious cost of building this monument to the Senator’s ego, incompetence and myopia is almost criminal when one considers how few people actually use the station.  At the current rate of usage it will practically never be paid off.  If it is any consolation to the fine people of New Jersey, I can note with firsthand experience that the station is immaculate, although that is probably not attributable to it being well maintained.  A more likely reason is that it is perpetually empty.

The root of the problem with mass transportation is that nobody wants to use it.  It appears to be a great idea but this façade is proved to be incorrect in light of the reality that very few people actually use the trains and buses that the government provides us through Amtrak, NJ Transit and other companies.  It becomes clear why so many opt not to use government-run trains once you see the state in which they are kept and operated.  Often trains are dirty and are very inconvenient to use.  They run late and they make you bend your schedule to fit their often s   skewed time frames.  It is much more convenient (and in most places cheaper) just to drive wherever you want to go.

My home state jumps to my mind when the issue of mass transit comes up just because I have plenty of personal experience with it there.  New Jersey, however, is not the only place this is an issue.  It has been shown over and over again how ineffective mass transit is, especially when it’s government-run.  The CATO Institute points out that the last 25 years have taught this country a great deal about mass transit and its shortcomings.  Public transportation is odd because it has consistently received governmental support despite its obvious failures.  It has been said that mass transportation provides the poor with available options of travel, cuts down on pollution, reduces traffic, saves energy and revives urban centers.  All of these claims are false.  Only 7% of trips made by the poor are on mass transit and therefore do not benefit impoverished areas.  Due to the low use of mass transit, it does not reduce pollution.  In fact, usage is so low that a doubling in patronage would still have a negligible effect on air quality.  The fact that trains have not diverted a significant number of travelers from the roads means that the traffic problems we had 30 years ago are even worse today.  Mass transit doesn’t save energy either.  According to CATO, “because of the low average number of passengers per bus, energy consumption per passenger mile for public transit buses now is greater than that for private automobiles and far exceeds that for car and van pools.” Buffalo is a good example of a city that was not ‘revived’ by spending on mass transit.  After investing billions of dollars in a major rail network, Buffalo’s downtown area is losing businesses at an even more rapid rate than before the rails were implemented.  Mass transportation looks good on paper and therefore legislators are willing to support it.  People like the idea of a train, but in reality it actually costs more money and more energy than would private transportation.

Private bus lines, like Trans-Bridge in the Lehigh Valley, run where the demand is great.  They make money.  Government-run buses and trains are propped up because they lose money servicing lines that are generally untraveled.  I can recall seeing many NJ Transit buses on local roads in my area with an abysmally low number of passengers.  It makes me cringe when I consider that I am paying for the absurd amount of gas being used to transport two people three towns over.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York City, the city run organization that runs the subway, is broke.  The New York City subway is a good example of how the economics of trains do not always play out as we would hope.   The MTA has nearly $2 billion in service debt.  The subway beneath the streets of Manhattan is one of the most widely used rail systems in the world.  New York probably couldn’t function today if there were not some sort of mass transit system in place.  The debt incurred by the MTA is one that New York is willingly to support, as it should be.  Cities understand the necessity of systems like subways.  However, what should be taken from this example is that the economics simply aren’t there to justify mass transportation, especially trains, as a viable means for people to travel.  When the most traveled train system on the East Coast is losing money, how do governments justify propping up rail lines that are 80% empty?  NJ Transit is perpetually in debt, just like the MTA.  Unlike the MTA, however, NJ Transit is not a needed resource for the people of New Jersey.  It would be cheaper, in terms of gas and immediate cost, having a private bus line replace all of NJ Transit’s current train lines.  Let the market decide which line is worth keeping.   The state ends up wasting more energy and money trying to support these rail lines because people won’t use them.  They are inefficient and wasteful examples of government’s meddling and pandering to environmental propagandists.

The Brown and White r an an article in its November 6th issue discussing whether a train line from Lehigh County to Somerset County, NJ, is feasible.  Hopefully, the authorities behind this proposed project will do their research well and understand that their train will lose money and waste resources.  As for me, I’ll be taking Trans-Bridge Bus Lines home.

Tags: National

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Features, Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.