Why Not Urban Transit?

David Luberoff, executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, addressed the June 2005 meeting of  Move Massachusetts, as reported in notes of the meeting taken by the Association for Public Transportation.  He also had an op-ed article in the Boston Globe on May 23, 2005, concerning the Green Line extension.

The introduction was the statement of his "agenda", quoting from the Globe, "David Luberoff has a … sweeping agenda … transit priorities should shift from emphasizing the downtown core to increasing poor people’s access to jobs in the far suburbs." 

He proceeds to criticize the existing transit plans, principally those included in the Memorandum of Understanding concluded by the Conservation Law Foundation and the Executive Office of Transportation and Construction prior to initiation of the Big Dig.  These include (but are not limited to) the Red Line/Blue Line Connector, the extension of the Green Line beyond Lechmere, and restoration of the Arborway streetcar line to Forest Hills.  His criticisms are based on assertions that:

• The air pollution reductions are not significant.
• The public investment (i.e. cost per new rider) is too high.

In the matter of air pollution reduction he famously argues that replacing about one hundred high polluting automobiles with Priuses would achieve the same end.  This is based on numbers that I have not reviewed and for the sake of the discussion I am willing to accept his conclusion.  This is similar to an argument that is often made against transit investment (his second point), namely that it would be cheaper to buy every commuter an automobile than to build the … whatever. 

It is worth remembering that there was the Boston Transportation Planning Review some thirty years ago that re-evaluated all the highway plans which concluded that they could not work due to congestion.   There was no way to accommodate all the vehicles that these highways would attract, even if they didn’t want to park in Boston and it would be worse yet if they did.   Air pollution was a secondary matter.  Costs were considered and it was then deemed more effective to invest in public transportation.   Some of this investment has since taken place.

Regarding cost per new rider or benefit from time saved, Mr. Luberoff doesn't think it worth-while to invest in core-oriented transit.  We ask:

• What is the benefit of the Big Dig per new driver or for time saved per driver?
• Has Mr. Luberoff done a similar analysis of costs and benefits for transportation of the poor to the far suburbs that he professes to favor?

It may be true that there is significant job growth in the "far suburbs" that Luberoff is rightly concerned about.  Providing any form of public transportation in that direction is likely to be highly inefficient and expensive because of the low densities involved.  Existing commuter rail would be adequate for the line-haul portion of the trips but collection in the city requires the same transit investment that Luberoff decries.  Distribution in the suburbs will require a whole new set of vehicles, be they mini buses or glorified taxicabs that would be extremely expensive. These vehicles would make one or two trips each day in each direction and would be unused the rest of the day. 

The goal of public transportation properly is to take people where they want or need to go.  It is achieved only imperfectly in the Boston metropolitan area, but the ridership on transit and commuter rail lines speaks to the fact that there is high demand.  Commuter rail ridership appears to be constrained by the lack of parking at the stations as well as limited rolling stock.  The parking problem could be ameliorated by establishing passenger pickup and distribution systems in the suburbs which no one will do because of cost.

Population has been returning to the cities, notably to Boston, over recent years.  Mr. Luberoff states that in the Silver Line corridor, " … black population is diminishing while that of rich whites is increasing."  So what?  Whites ride transit too.  If transit exists for the purpose of reducing congestion, then the color (and economic class) of the riders is irrelevant.  If it exists to redress economic inequity, then the whole transportation planning process has to be started over again and it can’t possibly succeed because of the fact that the "rich," if they want to live near transit, will displace the poor for whom it was planned and built.