Off the Rails 2

Rail transit is finally getting the attention it deserves in Washington, DC. Early this month, Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) released a report describing billion-dollar boondoggles. While the star is California’s high-speed rail, many of the projects criticized by the report involve rail transit, including Honolulu’s rail project and Maryland’s Purple Line. The projects are not only billions of dollars over budget, many of them are years behind schedule.

As a starting point, Ernst used a one-page Department of Transportation “annual report” of federally funded projects that the Biden administration had refused to release, but which was recently released by the Trump administration. The list included five Federal Aviation Administration-funded projects that had no cost overruns, three Federal Highway Administration-funded projects whose cost overruns averaged 75 percent, three transit projects whose cost overruns averaged 80 percent, and three Federal Railroad Administration-funded projects whose cost overruns averaged 395 percent.

I’m sure it is only a coincidence that the name of the report, Off the Rails, was also the name of a 2023 report I wrote about Minnesota’s rail transit boondoggles, one of which currently has an $800 million cost overrun. Ernst specifically calls out this project as one that should have been included in the DOT report but was not.

Of the projects in Ernst’s report, the one (other than California high-speed rail) with the greatest cost overrun is the Honolulu rail line, which is also expected to be completed 11 years late. The report didn’t mention that operating the Honolulu rail line last year cost taxpayers more than $70 for every passenger it carried. On a percentage basis, however, the Maryland Purple Line wins, as it had a 130 percent cost overrun compared with 94 percent for Honolulu.

Read the rest of this piece at The Antiplanner.

Randal O'Toole, the Antiplanner, is a policy analyst with nearly 50 years of experience reviewing transportation and land-use plans and the author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future.

Photo: cover artwork from Off The Rails report.