Somebody asked me the other day why, with all these companies so anxious to build roads for which they can toll drivers, doesn't a company offer to operate a transit line? My first response was that this would never work and even after further reflection I'm still not sure. It seems to me that there are several things working against transit.
When companies talk about building High Occupancy Toll, or HOT, lanes for local jurisdictions they usually offer some tangible benefit such as the ability to get from point A to point B much faster but for added costs. If a private company were to take on the operation of a bus route they would have a hard time promising less congestion and a faster ride. That might be different if the company were able to build a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that included dedicated lanes. For that faster ride commuters might be willing to pay a premium. The problem there is that the premium might be rather extreme. As we all know, there is a very specific subsidy paid for transit. Yes, I know that there is a more hidden one for roads as well but we'll discuss that later. A for-profit, private company is not going to offer service for less than it costs to operate for very long. The builders of the Dulles Greenway did but only because it was cheaper for them to build the road to the west well before the massive sprawl migration took place. Once that came they knew that they would be able to make their money back in short order.
Allowing a private enterprise to build a rail system would make even less sense although in a city where another option didn't exist it might be intriguing. Once again, the issue is going to be that local and state governments that build and operate rail services do so with the blessings and the financing of the federal government. Even though the percentage that the feds are willing and able to pay for these projects these days has fallen substantially as a percentage from days past it still makes a big difference. Look at the "go/no go" that the Dulles Rail Project went through when there was a question about how much the feds would kick in.
Metro is losing millions of dollars every year because it doesn't take in as much as it costs them to put on their show. Oh, you argue, but Metro is a bloated agency that has many more employees than it really needs and is still paying the price of a terrible collective bargaining agreement signed many years ago that gives far too much to certain employees who can never be fired. While I agree with all of that, I'm still not certain that a private company could run, for lack of a better English term, cheaper enough to make the numbers work. Even transit all across Europe that runs efficiently and with room to spare and with ridership levels like they have in New York runs at a deficit. We (and those across the pond) simply won't pay what it would really take to operate transit at a profit or even a break-even level. And just imagine the public uproar if a for-profit company had problems with break downs and such similar to what Metro experiences. We would always assume that the problem was that they were cutting costs to make more money. Now, without that kind of negative motivation, we just assume that the managers there are incompetent.
The issues are these: (1) Could a private enterprise build and operate a transit service at a profit? (2) Could such an operation work in conjunction with any existing governmental transit operations? (3) Would we feel confident in riding transit that was built to make a profit or would we assume that any deficiencies were fiscally motivated?
What do you think?
Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.
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