The transit infrastructure dilemma
Posted on April 15th, 2008 in rants, society, transportation, vancouver |
As we all know, transit in Vancouver is woefully underfunded. Unlike with BC Transit systems across the province, the provincial government isn’t required to give a penny to TransLink. As such, TransLink has to cover all operating costs with three options: fares, property taxes, and the gas tax.
Historically, the provincial government paid all capital expenses of building the two SkyTrain lines. However, with the Liberals in office, they’ve lessened the province’s bill by requiring TransLink to pay a portion of the construction of new rapid transit lines. For both the Canada Line and the Evergreen Line, it amounts to $400 million each. Huge expenses when you consider TransLink also has to pay other, less PR worthy capital expenses - such as the expansion and upgrade of our region’s bus network.
At the cost of about half a million each (standard low-floor diesel buses here), TransLink could have bought 1600 buses for $800 million. That’s more that the whole, existing fleet!
Anyways, I’m on this topic because I was thinking about the cost of our road infrastructure. We tend to think of roads as far cheaper, because it basically amounts to laying tarmac on the dirt. When we think transit, we think about either the vehicles or the new infrastructure (aka: railways) to be built or obtained. The problem with thinking this way is we remove the vehicles from the road’s equation. That is to say, we must also incorporate the cost of buying a car to drive on the road. Just as a railway is useless without trains, so too is a road without cars (not completely true, but let’s just go with it for the argument’s sake).
Now, let’s take the recent widening of Fraser Highway through Surrey from a variable two laned road, to a consistent four laned highway. The expansion has taken place over a number of years, with funding coming from all sorts of partners, but the total cost is $45 million. Now, for most that follow the news, seems like a fairly cheap price for what is a road expansion that spans across Surrey (total of 13km). Certainly, when the number is under a $100 million for roadway expansion; well that number is a whole lot smaller than the billion dollar + Canada Line.
But let’s factor in the car now. Let’s say about 60% of Surrey’s population owns and drives a car - this is factoring in both kids and transit users. That goes from 400,000 people to 240,000.
Now, let’s assume about 2/3rds of these drivers own used vehicles - about an average cost of $4000. The other 1/3rd own/lease new vehicles for an average of $20,000. So, 160,000 people at $4000 each comes to $640 million. The other 1/3 at 80,000 people times $20,000 each comes to $1.6 billion!
Total cost for the drivers: $2.16 billion.
And that’s the cost just every few years. Cars get replaced over time with new ones and the investment cycle restarts.
Now, obviously, this calculation is rather skewed. I mean, it’s not like I took the total cost of road infrastructure over the years. Especially in a place like Surrey, where you would probably go to multiple destinations that are already poorly served by other transportation options, a car seems like a good investment.
My runaround point here is that our perception of the costs of road infrastructure aren’t realistic. Now, imagine if the public put their money completely into public transit. That would mean that the system would have over $2 billion to play with for expansion - every couple years. That means we could have four new SkyTrain lines in a decade - four times the rate we’ve been building the system. That’s over 1,000 new buses every year. That’s 16 LRT lines!
Just imagine what the system would be like with that kind of annual funding. People wouldn’t need cars - you’d be able to get here, there, and everywhere - all on well funded public transit.
The difficult part is transitioning the funding mechanism from roads and personal vehicles to a public transportation system…
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7 Responses
Now this… is a perspective and idea I have not heard before. Brilliant.
Who wouldn’t want to stop sitting in traffic, never have to repair a car, never deal with insurance or collision repair/despair, or worry their son/daughter is going to die in a car accident?
If I picture your math correctly, that’s 16 LRT lines just for Surrey… we’re not even talking the other municipalities.
If we had 78% (assuming mode share of transit 11%, other 11%, therefore cars 78%, I don’t know the precise stats) of 2.1 million people contribute $2000 annually, that’s $3.3 billion a year. How about that now. :) I’d go for that!
Too bad we can’t produce buses and LRT out of thin air. Any stats on how long it takes other places to acquire LRT cars?
A couple points.
Translink could have bought 1600 busses for $800M, but you’re omitting operating costs involved in running the expanded fleet. In addition, with that amount of busses, you’d probably need to open up a couple bus maintenance centres, necessitating further capital expenditures.
I’m not sure what the operational cost per bus is, nor the capital cost of two maintenance centres.
About the cost of cars for consumers, you’re likely lowballing the number when you factor in the infrastructure required to maintain vehicles - essentially you can tack on a (rough) $4,000/yr cost per vehicle out there when you factor this in (e.g. insurance, gas, maintenance).
Still, the reason why it all works is when you run the time-cost benefit, people consciously make the decision to spend this money to save time. If a $4,000/yr cost allows me to save a thousand hours of time that I otherwise would have spent waiting/walking to bus stops/stations, I’d pay the $4k every time.
If transit gets good enough on a time-equivalent basis but ends up costing more than that when you amortize capital costs plus operating costs, there’s no point. As you probably know, this point is reached when it is either too expensive to drive, or driving doesn’t provide the time savings.
The province could re-allocate 100% of the health budget to public transit and there would still be an economic reason to own and operate a vehicle.
@ Erika. Yes the calculations were for Surrey alone. And as Sacha pointed out, I clearly forgot the cost of insurance and gas! So my calculations are probably rather skewed. But I think it’s a good guestimate. Thanks for the brilliant remark ;)
@ Sacha. You are clearly contradicting yourself. You say once the time:money ratio is gone from a car vs. transit, then the car loses. But then, at the same time, you say there will always be an economic reason to own a car.
I think you understand my point clearly enough and we do actually agree. What I was trying to calculate here was if all the money spent on roads and car infrastructure was put into transit (rail, road, water, etc.), what kind of system could we build. And from my calculations, with that much money just for capital expenses, we would undoubtedly have a public transit system where anyone could quickly, and comfortably get all across the region. Frequencies would be high enough that you wouldn’t have to wait longer than you do for today’s SkyTrain. There would be enough people at bus stops to warrant well designed “stations” with amenities. We could have tons of express routes, and new long distance travel options.
That’s the ultimate system. The one where a whole lot of people would likely voluntarily switch over to transit.
And frankly, it’s basically what we had before everyone switched to the car.
Yes, I completely forgot gas and insurance in my calculations, which would drive up the ultimate money total.
Paul - If you’re looking at absolute costs of car ownership, yes, add insurance/gas/maintenance. If you’re comparing opportunity costs (i.e. car vs. busses) then you’d have to subtract equivalent costs of the bus fleet. I have no idea how much it costs to insure a bus, nor how much diesel/maintenance they require. Something interesting to find out, I’m kind of curious myself.
My apparent contradiction with the time-to-money comparison is that there is a critical third dimension left out - location. I’ll illustrate with an example, using Surrey since you live there. Let’s pretend we spent $20 billion and get some form of public transport whereby there’s a station on every corner between the area covered by 112St-152St/Highway10-104Ave and that this system is good enough to get you anywhere in Surrey (west of 152St) or north of the Fraser River 10 minutes less than equivalent car driving time, not including walk/wait time.
You live on 132St/92Ave. Do you take car or transit to Central City to pick up 30 pounds of groceries for your family?
Oh, and “before all of this”, there wasn’t enough wealth floating around for people to purchase automobiles - it wasn’t until after WW2 that economic wealth began creeping into the domestic side of life and that’s when it eventually became economical to get “the family car”. Before, there was no option - take the public service. Essentially, we’re a heck of a lot richer today than we were 60 years ago and we have the luxury of having this discussion today.
Nice perspective Paul, I like it because its simple and adds a new point of view to the debate. You could take it a step further and add the extra social and health costs of our lovely automobile centred lives, but I think that would take away from its simplicity.
Sacha, ideally in this transit uber-network, lifestyles will have changed to the point where people don’t necessarily pick up 30+ pounds of groceries. By assuming the only part of one’s lifestyle to change is transportation, the equation becomes weighted toward car use.
Last time I came home with a couple pounds more than I could carry I figured out I was carrying 15 pounds. Had my boyfriend come with me, we might have carried 30. With a backpack it’s even easier. Besides, when a car is absolutely necessary, there’s such thing as taxis and car-sharing networks (except the latter doesn’t exist out here, though it should). The point of Paul’s argument is really that if enough people who COULD rely 100% on transit diverted their potential car costs toward a better transit network, we’d have the funds to make a very ship-shape, frequent, comfortable network.
I wouldn’t say we’re richer for sitting in traffic all day long. I would much rather walk home with 15 pounds of groceries in the sunshine than sit idling, crawling up a road in a car waiting to get through the intersection. When I’m walking, I’m always moving somewhere.