5/24/00 3: 05 p.m.
Give That Train a Green Signal!
Moore's wrong: Rail transit works.

By Paul M. Weyrich and William S. Lind

tephen Moore's op-ed, "Stop That Train! The failures of public transit," published by National Review Online, is likely to rile a good many conservatives. Why? Because they are riding the trains he wants to stop. As we pointed out in our study, "Conservatives and Mass Transit: Is It Time for a New Look?", many of the people who use high-quality rail transit are upper-income businessmen, just the sort of people who subscribe to National Review. Looking at Chicago's METRA commuter-train system — one of the best in the nation — we found that riders were overwhelmingly middle- and upper-class people, people who had a car available, and could drive, but preferred to take the train. For example, in Lake county, the mean earnings of rail commuters were over $76,000 — more than double the earnings of people from that county who drove to work alone.

Why are people who have cars taking the train instead? Moore says that the automobile is "one of the most liberating inventions in human history," but cars are only liberating, when there aren't very many of them. In most American cities, there are lots of them, which means that they get in each other's way to the point of creating massive congestion. As we wrote in the above study:

Not even a Mercedes Benz is a particularly nice way to get around when it can't move. In more and more of our cities, traffic crawling bumper-to-bumper or stopping altogether for extended periods has become part of the normal rush-hour experience. And rush hour itself grows ever longer, to the point where some places face "permanent rush hour."

The business executive who glances up from his Wall Street Journal to look at the unmoving blocks of cars on a parallel highway while he relaxes on a commuter train doing 79 miles per hour appreciates public transit.

Mr. Moore's solution is to build more roads. But exactly where are we to put them? Driving multi-lane freeways through dense urban areas is not only hideously expensive, it bisects, trisects, and dissects the city to the point where it dies. Not surprisingly, cities are not only rejecting new freeways cutting through the urban fabric, they are ripping existing ones out. In contrast, most cities have surplus rail lines or rail rights-of-way, left over from the days when most people and goods moved by train. Putting commuter trains on those lines or building Light Rail on the rights-of-way is less expensive than building new urban freeways and helps the city rather than destroying it.

Contrary to Wendell Cox, whom Moore cites, most cities that build Light Rail find transit usage increasing. St. Louis is a good example. Not only does the MetroLink Light Rail system there carry more riders than projected; bus ridership has also grown since MetroLink opened. Dallas's new Light Rail system is showing similar results. Moore might want to regard Cox's numbers with some caution, as Cox usually gets "facts" like falling transit ridership in cities that build Light Rail by choosing baselines from long before the Light Rail system was built — a technique any carnival side-show operator would view with admiration. When St. Louis's MetroLink opened, 79% of its riders were new to public transit. In 1997, only 9% of rail riders had no car, while 55% owned two or more cars. In St. Louis as elsewhere, people who can drive are choosing rail transit instead.

The fact, is, high-quality rail transit works. Many grass-roots conservatives use it, where it is available. It is encouraging that more and more Republican politicians are recognizing that their voters are on those trains — and expect a green signal.