THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR: When I visited my parents in South Jersey this weekend, I noticed that NJ Transit's light rail system is finally operating in their area.

...and surprise, surprise, the cars and local station appeared virtually empty. Texas Public Policy Foundation looks at the impact of light rail on America's cities and does not like what it sees:

Out of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas, 23 had rail transit in 2000. This study reviews those 23 regions and finds:

• Half of all rail regions lost transit commuters during the 1990s;
• Taken together, rail regions lost 14,000 transit commuters in the 1990s;
• Meanwhile, bus-only regions gained nearly 53,000 transit commuters in the 1990s;
• Transit lost market share of commuters in two-thirds of all rail regions in the 1990s;
• Per capita transit rides declined in half the rail regions;
• Transit’s share of total travel declined in a majority of rail regions;
• Sixteen of the 20 urban areas with the fastest growing congestion are rail regions –
and one of the other four is building rail transit; and
• By comparison, only three of the 20 urban areas with the slowest growing congestion
are rail regions – and only because all three have nearly zero population growth.

Based on these and other criteria, including cost effectiveness, safety, energy, and land use, this paper constructs a Rail Livability Index that assesses the effects of rail transit on urban areas. Every rail region earned a negative score, suggesting rail reduces urban livability.

Rail transit is not only expensive, it usually costs more to build and often costs more to operate than originally projected. To pay for cost overruns, transit agencies often must boost transit fares or cut transit service outside of rail corridors. Thus, rail transit tends to harm most transit users.

Rail transit also harms most auto drivers. Most regions building rail transit expect to spend half to four-fifths of their transportation capital budgets on transit systems that carry 0.5 to 4 percent of passenger travel. This imbalanced funding makes it impossible to remove highway bottlenecks and leads to growing congestion.

Rail’s high cost makes it ineffective at reducing congestion. On average, $13 spent on rail transit is less effective at reducing congestion than $1 spent on freeway improvements. Investments in rail transit are only about half as effective as investments in bus transit.

Rail transit also tends to be more dangerous than other forms of travel. Interstate freeways cause 3.9 deaths per billion passenger miles. Accidents on urban roads and streets in general lead to about 6.8 deaths per billion passenger miles. Among the various forms of urban transit, buses, at 4.3 deaths per billion passenger miles, are the safest; heavy rail averages 5.0, commuter rail 11.3, and light rail 14.8.

I understand that cities need public transportation to function, but why not purchase additional buses and build additional roads or widen existing ones, which would benefit not only the buses but also individual motorists. Unlike fixed rail lines, if a route doesn't provide enough passengers for a bus to make sense, it's easy to reassign them elsewhere.

The Texas Policy report is an 84 page Adobe Acrobat file, so I'm not going to say "read the whole thing". But just skimming it is pretty frightening in and of itself.