Urban transit was: The Case of the Outsourced IT Survey

Morten Reistad

People just don't consider the cost of these mammoth highway systems and their maintenance, together with the opportunities for tapping the public till. It takes much less to maintain an operate a railway system. A good example appeared in greater Boston about 40 years ago, when the MTA took over a recently abandoned commuter rail line out to the west. They turned this into the Toonerville Trolley, otherwise known as the Riverside line, and populated it with a few PCC cars (a marvelous design in themselves 1). The result was a hit and heavily used by all, including myself.

The alternative would probably have been to open up route 9 to multiple lanes, with the attendant emissions and accident problems, at a large multiple of the rail line cost.

Things weren't free on that line - you had to even pay a premium. However it compared favorably with the cost of driving and parking, i.e. a slight premium over just driving, and an improvement when considering parking.

The problem is that light rail systems have to be fairly comprehensive. There is little point to a line from the city to a suburban station without the further service from there to the door, or nearly so. The major savings come when the car is completely obliterated. My daughter and her husband live in NYC, and have eliminated one car completely. The need to get to other places prevents eliminating both cars, but 50% savings is not to be sneezed at. So the loss leader lines are needed to feed the money making lines.

1 An offshoot of the PCC car was the trolley bus, which was also efficient and not limited to the rails in the street. It had about twice the service life as a smelly bus, but was largely eliminated by General Motors and their bus salesmen after WWII. However GM buses copied the general arrangement of the PCC cars for many years after.

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