Public Transit's Real Enemies: Big Government, Big Unions

President Barack Obama’s call for $13 billion in initial payments on a new high-speed rail system in America is likely to turn into a massive and wasteful boondoggle without the fundamental reforms that Democrats almost surely will not deliver.

For example, until a recent expose in The New York Times, 95% of staff at the Long Island Railway were going on disability upon retirement (and of course, as public sector workers, they were eligible for full pensions as early as age 50, which is beyond the dreams of the average private sector worker). A preliminary inquiry has found that many of these workers received additional disability benefits totaling an average of $36,000 per year in addition to their generous pension benefits while getting other perks as well. Likewise, San Francisco’s inefficient, public sector monopoly rapid transit company, BART, is now running a large deficit. BART’S answer is to further cut service and raise prices (just the opposite of which any privately run entity would do.) This will have the effect of further depressing ridership and putting the system further into long term deficit.

After a 28% recession-driven increase in traffic last year, - ridership on the expensive BART rail line to the airport is only about 60% of the ridership that was projected to justify the massive and costly rail expansion.

The Bay Area’s liberal politicians and journalists will probably never hold BART accountable for its poor performance, but conservative, pro-market candidates could highlight the issue in their campaigns and they would find no shortage of receptive voters for their message.

The woeful tale of New York’s subway system illustrates that this waste is not confined to the Bay Area. Despite soaring fares (in 1947 fares were just 5 cents—now they are $2) no extensions have been built to the system in more than a half-century and much of the system infrastructure is still in poor condition The Second Avenue subway in Manhattan, first planned in the late 1920s, and the subject of a specific bond issue in the early 1950s, is still unbuilt and . Half-completed construction on the project was abandoned on several occasions.

Much of the excessive costs for public transport come from bloated staff numbers, excessive pensions and health benefits, and a complacent workforce that is not rewarded for success nor punished for failure. For example, in one recent year at New York City’s MTA transit agency, fringe benefits climbed 20% and employment climbed 5% while ridership declined by 2.5%. Such a performance would be unthinkable for a company being run on a for-profit basis.

To push back against the President’s plans, conservatives should support laws that would make it easier for private companies to compete in mass transit, including rail. Japan Railways was privatized in the 1980s in the wake of fraud and related scandals, and split into seven separate companies which are now publicly traded. It is now generally considered the world’s best rail system. Similarly, allowing private companies to compete for public transport dollars would reduce prices for consumers and open up a wide range of innovative travel options.

Conservatives can take a strong position for greater mass transit availability while taking a popular stand against the bureaucracy and public employee unions that cripple our current transit system. Additionally, because public-transit using voters tend to skew lower on the income scale, mass transit reform provides an excellent way to reach out to a group of voters that has traditionally been less receptive to the GOP message.

Transit reform need not be limited to mass transit. Conservatives could also attack bureaucratic taxicab licensing procedures that make it difficult for entrepreneurs to offer services and often make short taxi rides a staggeringly expensive proposition. With the exception of perhaps New York and San Francisco, where congestion could possibly be used to justify some restrictions on license numbers, there is no logical reason for restricting who can own a taxi or what they can charge. In New York, taxicab medallions often sell for more than $200,000, which gives rise to a whole collection of parasites feeding off of a corrupt system. By broadening access to the taxi business, and letting operators charge a market, rather than fixed rate, we can drive down prices and increase taxi availability. Even in many poor countries in the developing world, personal mobility is available at greater frequencies and lower cost than what we have in America -- whether by shared taxi, minibus, or even private for-hire vehicles that are readily available in an extremely open and competitive marketplace.

In contrast, the notoriously poor financial and operating performance of public transit agencies of all sorts is well known to those who study them. Unfortunately, this group includes too few conservatives because conservative politicians and public policy organizations have not, for the most part, invested in developing expertise in this area. A core audience of dissatisfied transit passengers is waiting for exactly the kind of reforms that conservatives could deliver in this sector. But to do so will require the conservative movement to branch out to new areas and court constituencies that it has all-too-often ignored in the past.