If there’s a bigger boondoggle than spending billions on new roads and highways, it’s building billions on mass transit where it is economically infeasible. Ken Reid (an advocate of more roads) has sent out an e-mail communique justifiably blasting the wastefulness of the Virginia Railway Express (VRE). Says he:
According to the latest data from the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission — which is supposed to oversee VRE and WMATA costs, but spends more time on pro-transit propaganda — VRE is only carrying about 14,529 average trips a day. This equates to about 7,500 actual physical passengers. 7,000 is about what four lanes of I-66 heading eastbound can carry in ONE hour. For this, taxpayers in the affected jurisdictions where VRE operates will have to pay $28 million a year.
$28 million a year could build ONE diamond interchange, thus providing true congestion relief. If we allow rail into the Dulles Corridor and Loudoun County, Loudoun residents, like those of Spotsylvania county, will be asked to fork out money to subsidize the select few and there will be less money for other needs.
But why stop our examination of the alternatives there? Imagine if we invested $28 million in, oh, say, promoting telework and hotelling programs, or traffic light sequencing, or better GIS tools to analyze the impact of land use decisions on the regional transportation network.
