Public transit advocacy as an effective cause area

[Eevee🔹]

Link post

Land use reform is currently a cause area funded by Open Philanthropy. However, promoting housing production alone will yield limited economic growth, as a lot of the gains would be offset by harms from increased traffic congestion. Reforms are also needed to enable cities to build out rapid transit networks so they can support the resulting population growth.

According to the Transit Costs Project, “solely building more housing in congested, high-demand cities like New York and San Francisco carries a benefit of 1.4% of GDP,” whereas building both housing and rapid transit would grow the U.S. economy by 10-13% ($2.5-$3.3 billion per year), or 7-9x what housing alone would yield.^[1]

The main obstacle to rapid transit expansion in these cities is the exorbitant construction costs. For example, it can cost upwards of $2 billion per kilometer ($3.3 billion per mile) to build a subway line extension in NYC, whereas other cities across the U.S. (like Boston) and in other countries (like Istanbul and Barcelona) regularly build subway lines for less than $360 million per kilometer.^[2] The high-cost environment makes it difficult for transit agencies to justify and secure funding for new construction projects. For example, the New York MTA recently had to suspend construction on the Second Avenue Subway because congestion pricing has been paused and it was relying on that $1 billion/​year funding stream.^[3]

The cost issue is especially acute in NYC but is by no means limited to it. Other cities like London, Hong Kong, and San Francisco are also affected by high costs.^[2]

TCP has proposed a raft of strategies that transit agencies in high-cost environments can use to get their costs down. These strategies include building up transit agencies’ in-house expertise and capacity, especially their capacity to review designs; promoting standard design systems for stations; discouraging overbuilding (such as station caverns that are 2x longer than the stations themselves); and promoting information sharing among infrastructure agencies and the public.^[1]

The problem is there are very few organized groups advocating for this. There are the Transit Costs Project and the Effective Transit Alliance in NYC. But at least within NYC, most public transit advocacy organizations don’t really focus on getting construction costs under control. Meanwhile, the debate about congestion pricing in NYC (where I’m from) has been highly polarized, with opponents citing the MTA’s inefficiency as a reason not to give it additional funding. Tackling construction costs could help bring proponents and skeptics of public transit together by enabling transit agencies to deliver more value for each dollar paid by taxpayers.

Other than this, I would expect the political tractability of transit expansion to be similar to that of building more housing. NIMBYism is an obstacle to transit as well as housing, and the coalition in favor of public transit expansion is a bit broader as it includes more of the progressive left.

1. ^

   Goldwyn, Levy, Ensari, and Chitti (2023). “Transit Costs Project: Executive Summary.”

2. ^

   “Data—Transit Costs Project”

3. ^

   Einiger (2024). “MTA stops construction on Second Avenue subway amid congestion pricing pause.” ABC 7 New York.

[Jeff Kaufman 🔸]

other cities across the U.S. (like Boston) … regularly build subway lines for less than $360 million per kilometer

Huh? Boston hasn’t built a subway line in decades, let alone regularly builds them.

It did recently finish a light rail extension in an existing right of way, expanding a trench with retaining walls, but (a) that’s naturally much cheaper than digging a subway and (b) it took 12y longer than planned.

[Larks]

Interesting idea!

One additional possible thing to address would be the very high US labor costs. Quoting from the excellent Transit Costs Project, but I recommend reading the whole thing:

High-cost, low-productivity labor can substantially raise construction costs. In our American cases, we found that labor costs consumed a greater percentage of construction budgets than in our non-American cases because of strict overtime rules, local union agreements that limit the available labor pools geographically, and an unwillingness to address staffing and labor agreements. In contrast, in our interviews with experts outside of the United States, none mentioned labor as a factor, even in high-cost countries like Britain and the Netherlands.

When we examined the data on labor costs, we found that in New York labor costs reportedly accounted for 40- 60% of the overall construction costs. In contrast, labor amounted to 20-30% of the overall cost of construction in Italy, Sweden, and Turkey. Reducing American labor costs to their Italian, Swedish, or Turkish share would cut labor costs by a factor of about 3, and overall project costs by a factor of about 1.5.

The report makes it clear that the problem isn’t that American workers are highly paid—American software engineers are also highly paid, yet US software firms are very profitable—its that the rules make them very unproductive. It suggests that if you could get rid of these rules—e.g. by using non-union labor—you could pay the workers just as much yet reduce costs dramatically.

[Jeroen De Ryck 🔹]

I’m wondering if advocating for cycling infrastructure could be more beneficial here. It’s much cheaper and faster to develop, faces less opposition and cycling also has health benefits for the user and less externalities than public transit.

[Pat Myron 🔸]

Bus routes also seem cheaper, quicker implemented, lower profile politically, and more historically ridden than rail: https://​​www.researchgate.net/​​figure/​​1-US-transit-ridership-by-year_fig1_367860713

[Eevee🔹]

Cheaper yes, but buses (even bus rapid transit, or BRT) don’t scale as well to large numbers of passengers. This 2009 study compares BRT, regular buses, light rail, and mass rapid transit (MRT), and finds that MRT has the lowest cost per thousand passenger-mile:

In concluding, the author concludes that, on average, “BRT can outperform LRT in providing a moderate to high level of service capacity at a moderate level of capital and operating costs in neighborhoods with moderate population and job densities.” While MRT are the most expensive to build, they can achieve over five times the capacity of BRT or LRT, and are associated with the largest positive impact on property values in the vicinity of stations.

Also you have to actually implement BRT to reap most of the benefits, which means no sharing lanes with other vehicles.