Another Heritage Foundation anti-transit canard busted

On the nation's worst thought-out transit lines, such as New Jersey's River Line or any of the single-tracked light rails that dot our newer cities, it is often argued that it would be far cheaper to just buy everybody who takes the system a new car rather than go thorugh the expense, disruption and (gasp) taxation required of new infrastructure construction.

Tedious conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke, who if you didn't notice peaked around 1985, made an argument along these lines last month in the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, long a haven for nuts obsessed with the threats to the American Way of Life posed by Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, environmentalists, and did I mention Hillary Clinton?

Long story short, Janek Kozlowski of the U.S. military knocks over this ruse, which is propigated by the Heritage Foundation and other groups similarly opposed to government solving problems not experienced by the very rich:

"So, for the purpose of making an alternative point, let's treat Mr. O'Rourke's statements seriously: He says, for instance, that it would be cheaper to lease BMW SUVs for all of the folks who travel on Minneapolis's new light-rail system than it cost to build and operate the system. Well, I priced such a lease. For the 15,500 average daily riders the tab would run taxpayers $44 million a year. Each car leaser would pay an additional $2,800 a year for operating costs out of pocket. But wait! How will these cars get downtown? According to the Federal Highway Administration, highways cost an average $20.6 million per mile, while major urban interchanges cost $100 million per interchange. To replace the 12-mile light-rail system, Minneapolis taxpayers would need to build (conservatively) 12 miles of highway and one major interchange for both the airport and the Mall of Americas. Hmm, that comes out to $440 million -- before highway maintenance costs set in. Then where will all of these 15,500 BMWs park? In the new city parking lots! If built totally on the cheap, these single-level lots will cost taxpayers at least $31 million. Now, let's not forget that whereas a square foot of commercial space will bring in at least $50 in taxes per square foot, a parking lot at best brings in $3. Since our 15,500 BMWs will require almost two million square feet of parking, that equates to a loss of $91 million in tax revenue to the city of Minneapolis every year.

The rail line, which actually cost roughly $700 million, has a life expectancy of 50 years. Its operating costs are $13 million per year and farebox revenues are so far offsetting close to $10 million of that.

So how do these two options compare? Choosing the light rail's 50-year capital lifespan for both the light-rail and BMW options, and amortizing these capital costs over those 50 years, adding annual operating costs and subtracting annual tax revenue losses, and removing any effects of inflation, in present dollars light rail costs the Minneapolis taxpayers just over $17 million per year. But to get the same benefit courtesy of BMW and more highways, taxpayers would have to dish out $166 million per year."

That's a common debating tactic used by people who have more experience fudging numbers than your average citizen (WSJ readers may be another story). If you want to make the point that one project is more expensive than another, lump the entire cost of the project into one large sum, while paring costs from your preferred alternative.

There are plenty of "subsidies" going back and forth between government, tolls and free roads. A profitable toll road, like VA-267 to Dulles, requires hundreds of miles of free feeder roads to get toll-payers from their McMansions to the highway. So when anti-rail people whine about how their tolls are going to an unprofitable service, make sure that they understand all the costs, because the likely don't, thanks to our friends at Heritage.