OPINION:
Since 2020, Uncle Sam has blown more than $100 billion on trolleys, streetcars, buses and subways. This cash infusion has done nothing to increase the willingness of Americans to sit next to complete strangers in progressively dangerous metal tubes.
In a new study, Unleash Prosperity recounts the failure of the mass transit boondoggle to deliver commensurate value for this investment. Since 1920, the share of Americans embracing communal transportation modes dropped by 90%. That’s as it should be. Free people prefer personal transportation because it lets them go wherever they please, unconstrained by bureaucratic timetables.
Even in dense cities like Manhattan, the new report shows transit is a losing proposition. The legendary traffic snarls aren’t enough to give subway riders an edge over drivers. On average, it takes an extra 22 minutes each way to get to work in the Big Apple by subway than it does to make the same journey by car.
In the country’s top-50 urban centers, automobiles place 58 times more job opportunities within a half hour’s reach compared to what’s available by trolley, light rail or bus.
The economic gurus at Unleash Prosperity point out the supposed congestion relief and pollution reduction that comes from enlarging transit networks only pay off when ridership rises. But that’s not happening because low-income individuals are becoming more mobile — and that’s also as it should be.
In the 1960s, one out of five households were carless. That figure has slid to 8.5%, which means the less well-off are just as likely to drive to their occupation as any other tax bracket. Because cars are an equalizing force in society, public policy should stop diverting scarce resources to prop up alternatives that foster dependence.
“Ultimately, the federal transit program has become an unsustainable financial burden that has not met its objectives. Federal transit funding should be discontinued,” Unleash Prosperity’s report concludes. In its place, the authors suggest sending responsibility for transit decisions to state and local governments where it belongs.
It makes no sense to have the feds continue to micromanage inner-city services. The Constitution granted Congress authority to establish roads to make sure the mail arrives on time. In the Eisenhower era, this concept was expanded so that everyone in the country chips in to pave rural states like Wyoming and Montana in return for the benefit of being able to convey goods from coast to coast.
Bus rides in Boston are of no use to the taxpayers in Peoria who are footing the bill, but there are smarter ways to achieve transit’s stated objectives. The Energy Department looked at a program in Innisfil, a small town in Ontario, Canada, that provided vouchers to needy residents so they could go where they want, when they want, with Uber.
That subsidy proved cheaper and less polluting than running empty buses along fixed routes. Locals loved the new ability to get to the office or other appointments on time. The municipality appreciated an initiative that didn’t require huge up-front capital expenditures to buy things like buses and hire drivers.
Progressives pine for trolleys, but not out of pure nostalgia. They celebrate transit because it promotes reliance on government. Ontario’s experiment demonstrates antiquated thinking can be discarded in favor of solutions that promote independence.
What might seem popular to the denizens of a deep-blue city won’t go over well in a red suburb. Let states decide for themselves where their transportation dollars should go.
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