Reinventing the transportation boondoggle

reprinted from 4/13/2004

Last Saturday, the StarTribune editorialized justification for Light Rail Transit. Here's a telling portion:

The transit revival now underway across urban America is, in a tiny way, recompense for the Interstate Highway Act. Hiawatha and its paltry development subsidies are aimed at repairing a portion of the damage unwittingly done to an older city. Restoring jobs and a wide range of housing while employing rail transit to take pressure off busy freeways seems to us not a theft of taxpayer money, but a fair and worthy public investment in line with long-standing American tradition. Canals, western railroads, homesteads, Interstate highways and thriving suburbs added untold value to the nation. There's no reason to hold the Hiawatha corridor, or any other emerging transit corridor, to a different standard.

In other words, because we did it before, it's OK to do it again? Because previous grand forced schemes have had serious unintended consequences, another grand forced scheme will make it better?

How many canals do we have in operation now?
How successful are the western railroads now?

At a time when individual transportation alternatives were limited to walking and riding a horse, subsidized straight-line methods such as canals and railroads made some slight sense. Even if they couldn't get you to where you actually wanted to go, they gave you the alternative of at least going somewhere more easily. They satisifed some people, at the expense of many more, who could live with point-to-point travel.

The point the Star Tribune editorial seems oblivious to is that the LRT is a solution from the past, and one that attempts to fill a need that no longer exists. We have many better alternatives available now. We are no longer desperate for a way to get somewhere, anywhere, without walking.

Subsidized transportation of any kind lures people into patterns... patterns that probably wouldn't have developed without the subsidization. A subsidy comes from taxes, and taxes are forced upon us. We have no choice, so we are left to accomodate ourselves with what the subsidy provides. The fact that we use the subsidized transportation does not mean that it provides what we really needed, or that it is a good alternative. It just means that we have to take what we got.

Government subsidies forced railroads on America, with enormous subsidies. Later, government forced the freeway system on us, virtually killing the railroad system in the process. As we all took our cars and trucks to the freeway system that was laid in front of us, railroad passenger and freight traffic dropped and became unprofitable. Most of the widespread railroad network lies unused. AmTrack was created... subsidized passenger rail travel to lure a few people back onto the rails. If you happen to want to go to one of the places served by AmTrack, it's a great deal. Why shouldn't it be? The rates are cheap, because we all pay for the subsidies to keep them cheap, so that a few of us can use them once in a great while. If AmTrack subsidies were removed, it would quickly die.

Subsidies force us to act in ways that only make sense because we have no choice. Subsidies force us to consider an alternative we would otherwise have ignored, and they always have unintended consequences.

We need to ask the question - what would happen without the subsidies? What would naturally occur if government didn't try to ram certain solutions down our throats? What would have developed instead, if politicians hadn't caved in to big developers and labor unions looking to line their own pockets with massive government development projects?

Why are subsidies needed?

Subsidies, if they are needed to make a project practical, are needed because there is not enough potential value to get enough people to pay for what they receive in return. UNsubsidized solutions, even those that fail, do us a great service. They give us information about what is really of value. Such a failure may illustrate that a smaller version might succeed, or that certain changes might succeed, or that building on a grander scale might work. It might even demonstrate that the whole idea is nuts. Subsidized ideas give us none of that information, because they're not allowed to fail on their own. We're forced to pay for them even when they're relatively worthless... and we learn nothing from them, because those promoting the subsidy, and receiving benefit from it, will twist results to justify their continuance. Private businesses can spin facts all they want, but if profit isn't happening, it's history.

Subsidized transportation, like the LRT, is like me going to a potential employer and claiming that I should be hired even though I can't do the job well, and arguing that I'm sure to be of use once I'm hired. Once you're paying my salary, you'll find work for me because you'll have to. Even if the employer has to reorganize a bit and hire someone else just to keep me productive, it'll be just swell. I'll be employed and my presence will certainly produce some results. A politician might even claim that we "created a job".

Sure, subsidized projects produce some value... just as my forced job has an upside, but they don't produce as much value as they cost. It has become de rigueur to complain about what the freeway system hath wrought... suburban sprawl, traffic congestion, pollution, destruction of neighborhoods, population displacement, etc. It seems silly that I must remind that the freeway system was forced on us by the same sort of planners that are now trying to mollify some of it's effect by forcing yet another "solution" on us. It's disingenuous of the StarTribune to now promote LRT, and use the freeway system subsidies as justification.

The railroads were forced upon us, so we rode... until the freeway system was forced upon us, then we moved to buying cars and driving. Once we had all made the investment in a car, and businesses had moved to border the freeways, we found ways to take advantage of what had been forced upon us. Companies moved to the suburbs where they could build at less cost, so employees followed them, because now they could drive to the suburbs easily. Some people moved to the suburbs even though they worked downtown... because they could. The cities almost died, but gradually, we discovered that we could live anywhere and still work downtown. Cities began fighting for their lives with more subsidization... stadiums of all sorts, subsidized cultural activities, and were soon back in the running. People will always, over time, do what is in their own self-interest, but force through subsidies twists people into unnatural patterns.

There is little doubt that LRT will twist some people into using it, and building alongside it, and even moving to be near it. Those that do will be taking advantage of what was forced upon them. If their money is going to taken and spent somewhere, it's to their slight advantage to use that facility. Nobody believes that enough people will use it to make it profitable in any sense, so the rest of us will be forced to pay for it even if we can't find enough value to use it ourselves.

It's ironic that LRT is the current government transportation boondoggle, since it's an attempt to force us BACK into railroad mode, with obsolete means and all of the faults that railroad had.

The tradegy of subsidized transportation is the loss of development of naturally-developed solutions that cannot compete against them. Because government is so embedded in the transportation and construction industries, we have handicapped almost all alternative innovation... we've taken the potential profit out of superior transportation means by allowing government to force upon us those means that are selected for massive lobbying and contributions.

Personal Rapid Transit, in the form of SkyWeb Express, developed right here, is so far superior to LRT that it's laughable. Critics of PRT (who coincidentally happen to be pro-LRT) have resorted to some of the most inane objections imaginable, but what really keeps that superior transportation system from becoming reality is that it's too inexpensive and efficient to attract support from large construction and union lobbies. They naturally want massive, expensive projects... of the kind that only government is wasteful enough to support. While the rest of us trim the fat off our lifestyles, they promote grand boondoggles to be forced upon us, and spend great sums of tax money promoting it, trying to convice us to accomodate our lives to it.

SkyWeb Express will succeed... it solves too many problems not to, but it's more likely to occur somewhere else... where government isn't quite so comfortably in bed with those who really benefit from subsidies. You and I won't benefit from LRT, but those who created it didn't give a damn about you and I. We'll pay for it, and somebody will benefit... that's close enough for government work.