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Orange Line Blues
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2043 Reads
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I looked up the MTA's numbers for the Orange Line. We would have been better off buying every Orange Line commuter a Honda Civic Sedan. Let's do the math:
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Total cost of construction: $337.6 million.
Number of people who ride it: 7750 (assuming the "daily ridership" of 15,500 comprises 7750 people each making a round trip).
That means we spent $43,561 PER RIDER just to build this bad boy. That's BEFORE you pay the operating expenses for salaries, gas, maintenance, or personal injury defense lawyers. (And even if TWICE as many people ride it, the cost works out to $21,781 PER RIDER.)
We could have bought EACH passenger his or her own brand new Honda Civic Sedan for $14,560, and pocketed the difference.
Admittedly, buying each rider a new car wouldn't have reduced traffic jams appreciably, but then again, neither did building the Orange Line. Besides, if you were to ask everyone on the bus which he would rather have, and I'm guessing 99% would respond "new car," while the remaining 1% would respond, "What is the frequency, Kenneth?"
My point -- to the extent I have one -- is that we need to look at the COSTS of these projects before undertaking them, to see if they're justified by the benefits.
Anyone who claims the Orange Line is "worth it" because it supposedly reduces the number of cars on the road, or reduces pollution, should have to prove those assertions with actual numbers. This is too much money to spend based on blind, irrational faith in mass transit.
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| Posted by: WalterMoore on Monday, February 13, 2006 - 10:35 AM
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