One assumption about rail transit is that is cheaper in the long run because it is permanent, but as this article makes clear, that is just not true.
Subways Going Down The Tubes
Rail advocates sometimes claim that we can ignore the high cost of building rail lines, because “once they are built, they are there forever.” Yes, forever, or about 30 to 40 years, whichever comes first.
Which is why the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), Washington Metro, and Chicago Transit authority are all looking at roughly $10 billion each in rehabilitation expenses in the next few years, little of which is funded. Of the three, BART is in the best shape, saying it needs $11 billion for rehab, slightly less than half of which is funded. The remaining $5.8 billion is still a lot of money just to keep the system going.
The Washington Metrorail system needs $12 billion to rehabilitate its system over the next decade. Transit officials admit to having virtually no hope of raising that amount unless the federal government comes riding to the rescue. In the meantime, they are begging local governments to cobble together a $1.5 billion fund to just repair the system’s worst problems.
The latest is from the Chicago Transit Authority, which is supposed to be on the verge of collapse. The system is so poorly maintained that some trains are restricted to as little as six miles per hour. As if to one up BART and Metrorail, CTA says it needs $16.1 billion over the next decade to put it back in a “good state of repair.”
Meanwhile, the New York and Boston transit authorities say they have kept their systems up. But New York MTA is looking at spending nearly $2 billion a year on debt service on the money it has borrowed to maintain the system (see page II-2 of this 2.7MB pdf). Boston’s MBTA is spending one third of its operating budget on interest on its $5 billion debt.
