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The low friction, self-guiding principles of rail transport are most suited for high tonnage, long haul, bulk loads such as grain, coal, ores, and chemicals. The general inertia of this system, however, renders it less effective for higher value, time-sensitive, low-density, short haul cargo such as televisions, coffeemakers, and people. So it is not a fair comparison to say that rail is more efficient than road transport for commuters by citing the bulk cargo tonnage advantage of rail. People cannot be handled like coal. Rail may indeed be perceived as more fun than road transit, but this hardly seems like a proper justification for spending taxpayer’s money. Commuters would probably think it even more fun to be transported in small flying machines, even if they were less practical than rail as a transport alternative. Commuter rail made sense 100 years ago when roads and vehicles were in their infancy. Furthermore, the initial rail corridors attracted development. The development clustered around the corridors, creating a density of users that justified the hauling capacity of the rail line. So the corridor patterned the development, and the pattern justified the corridor. Minneapolis had an extensive electric streetcar / interurban network with corridors matched to corresponding development. In the 1950’s, when rubber tired vehicles and roads had matured, they scrapped the rail system. It was seen as a natural evolution. They said it was absurd to tie transit to rails on fixed routes when you could liberate it to go everywhere on the roads. Moreover, because roads were far less costly to build and maintain compared to railroads, you could produce a network of roads covering the entire area rather than the select linear corridors of railroads. It made a lot more sense because the city transport requirement is patterned in an area, as opposed to say a freight haul across Montana, which is a linear pattern. Today, the development has continued by evenly filling in area without specific corridor clusters. So any proposed light rail route does not have a dense enough cluster of development to justify its hauling capacity. Therefore, even if people could be handled like coal, exploiting the natural advantage of rail, there are not enough passengers to fulfill that objective on any given route. The most unique characteristic of light rail projects is that they are being foisted upon the public despite the public’s rejection based on the cost. So light rail projects come packaged in dishonesty. They must be sold to the public in a package of marketing ploys and outright lies. After it is built, we are told that it is exceeding expectations. But we are not being told that the expectations allowed for a breathtakingly large subsidy for every passenger that drops some change into the fare box. One good way to sell light rail is to slack off on road development and maintenance and let the traffic nightmares sell light rail. Light rail is an anti-automobile, political agenda. That is why it does not make sense in terms of economics and transportation engineering. It doesn’t have to. It is so anti-automobile that they built the Minneapolis Hiawatha LRT with no parking at the mid-line stations. Yet they managed to budget about $400,000 for public art at the stations. It’s an expensive hobby.
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