White Elephant

Function: noun

2 a : a property requiring much care and expense and yielding little profit b : an object no longer of value to its owner but of value to others c : something of little or no value.

Example: NJ Transit's new Trenton-Camden light rail line. Orginally called SNJLRTS (pronounced snidgelritz, rhymes with, well, nothing), it's now called the River Line. At a cost of over $1 billion, it runs 34 miles from Trenton to Camden, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Officials recently decreased ridership estimates from 9,300 trips to 5,900 daily. Keep in mind that's 5.900 trips, which really means half as many round trips, assuming people want to go home (which is a shaky assumption in New Jersey).

Why won't people use the River Line? First of all, SEPTA offers commuter service from Trenton right into Philadelphia. It runs paralell to the River Line, but on the Pennsylvania side of the river. The River line is as long as a commuter line, but slower and doesn't even go into Philadelphia -- you have to transfer to the PATCO subway line in Camden.

Why does it matter that New Jersey flushed a billion dollars down the toilet and risks souring the legislature to future projects, which would be a real shame, because New Jersey is what the rest of America will eventually look like.

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the union, and one of the richest. However, there aren't any real "cities" to speak of to account for that density. The urbanized areas, such as Newark, Camden and Jersey City, are mostly industrial and have been losing population for years. New Jersey is dense because it is almost entirely suburban. Many years ago, outer New York City suburbs met outer Philadelpha suburbs, creating one large mass of subdivisions across the state. Traffic is understandably bad, but not for a lack of commuting options. Jersyites who work in New York can take the extensive NJ Transit commuter rail system, Newark City Subway to PATH subway service from Jersey City and Hoboken, Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and a commuter bus service of massive scope that is the envy of teenagers without drivers' licenses everywhere. Philadelphia commuters have more commuter rail lines and the aformentioned PATCO subway from Camden. Ridership rates into NYC and Philly are high since the presence of expensive bridges and a lack of parking limit driving into work to special occasions.

Despite all that transit, New Jersey roads are still clogged. Is this a sign of the failure of transit? Not at all. First of all, transit takes literally millions off cars off the roads, making many of the suburbs fiesable in the first place. In addition, much of the traffic on New Jerseys major highways is not commuter traffic -- it's trucks going from Boston to Washington or New York to Chicago. On local roads, it's also people going too and from locations within New Jersey. Another reason the rest of the country will look like New Jersey soon is that not only do Jersyites commute to cities, they commute to office parks, factories and other facilities in suburban areas. Small towns in New Jersey are home to a surprising number of pharmaceutical companies, oil refineries, chemical plants and the back-office facilities for Wall Street securities firms. Getting to these facilities during rush hour isn't too pleasant, despite the presence of local bus routes. The state can't just build more highways because there isn't much undeveloped land that hasn't already been set aside. In denser areas, the problem is being addressed. The Hudson-Bergen light rail line, just opened, will eventually go from a commuter rail terminal, past a PATH line and down through an area of the Hudson River waterfront home to dozens of new offices, now more attractive after Sept. 11. Condos are going up, and Hoboken is home to many new restaurants and bars. People can now take the train to entertainment, work, shopping and home without ever getting behind the wheel of a car. Will other secondary cities in the shadow of a bigger ones do this, or is their decline inevitable?

For people who are into this sort of thing, it's an intersting problem. Spending a billion bucks on a light rail line used by about 3,000 people isn't a good answer.

An aside: I made the assumption that you can derive the number of riders simply by cutting the number of trips in half. While this is probably true with commuter lines, it isn't the case with really good urban transit. An example: Yesterday, I went from home to work on the Metro in the morning, took Metro to Best Buy, then went home. I went out at night and came home on a bus. That's one person, four rides, one day.