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Light rail costs too much, does too little

Nation’s Worst Transit Agency Counting on Gas Reaching $6/Gallon

Apr 16

2007

The board of directors of the nation’s worst-performing transit agency agreed that they recklessly approved spending hundreds of millions of dollars on BART and other rail projects without knowing where they would find the money to complete and operate the projects. But they expect “gas would be $6 or $7 a gallon in the next five or six years and there would be a much greater demand for BART.”

Since transit riders only pay a fraction of the operating costs and none of the capital costs of transit, even if demand for BART increased it would not magically generate funding for a $4.7 billion extension of BART to San Jose.

If gas prices don’t rise, they will be broke. If gas prices do rise, they will still be broke. Since it is the taxpayers, not the board, who must pay the cost, they don’t care. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

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Reprinted from The Antiplanner