Cato: Is This Infrastructure Really Necessary?

The United States has “at least $232 billion in critical public transportation” needs, claims the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Among the “critically needed” infrastructure on APTA’s list are a streetcar in downtown Los Angeles, another one in downtown Sacramento (which local voters have rejected), one in Tempe, and streetcar extensions in Tampa and Kansas City.

Get real: even ardent transit advocates admit that streetcars are stupid. The economic development benefits that supposedly come from streetcars are purely imaginary, and even if they weren’t, it would be hard to describe streetcars – whose average speed, APTA admits, is less than 7.5 miles per hour – as “critically needed.”

Much of the nation’s transit infrastructure is falling apart, and the Department of Transportation has identified $100 billion of infrastructure backlog needs. (Page l – that is, Roman numeral 50 – of the report indicates a backlog of $89.9 billion in 2012 dollars. Converting to 2019 dollars brings this up to $100 billion.) Yet APTA’s “critical needs” list includes only $24 billion worth of “state of good repair” projects. Just about all of the other “needs” listed – $142 billion worth – are new projects or extensions of existing projects.

In fact, few if any of these new projects are “needed” – they are simply transit agency wish lists. For example, it includes $6 billion for phase 2 of New York’s Second Avenue Subway, but no money for rehabilitating New York’s existing, and rapidly deteriorating, subway system. Similarly, it includes $140 million for a new transitway in Alexandria, Virginia, but no money for rehabilitating the DC area’s also rapidly deteriorating Metrorail system. (In case anyone is interested, I’ve converted APTA’s project list into a spreadsheet for easy review and calculations.)

The $166 billion total on APTA’s “Project Examples” list is less than the $232 billion APTA says is needed, but even if all of the difference is “state of good repair” projects, that difference plus the $24 billion on APTA’s list doesn’t add up to what the DOT says is needed to restore transit infrastructure. This shows that even APTA doesn’t take public safety and “crumbling infrastructure” seriously.

Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/infrastructure-really-necessary