ART shortcomings mirror fears of former resident in California

Please allow some remarks from a visiting bullet-train state resident about your new bus system:

In different parts of the Dec. 4 edition we get two different prices for the Albuquerque Rapid Transit system — $126 million (Road Warrior, A8) and $119 million (“Game Changer,” Business Outlook). Either way, the sum given is probably an estimate by a government functionary — these are traditionally quite errant — that purportedly covers easements, materials, labor, etc. After it’s built, let’s see what the audited figure says it cost.

Neither piece got into the continuing costs of operating the system, or who will pay for that, or examines the effect planning and construction have had on existing businesses along Central. A visitor driving along the avenue can readily see the difficulty of patronizing those businesses. Further, it wasn’t clear from either piece what exactly would be “rapid” about this system, given the plethora of stops it will make as it courses up and down the spine of Albuquerque. Likely, those topics were outside the purview of these articles and have been covered in your previous reports.

One piece noted the capital funding comes from the federal Treasury, and in the rich tradition of popular media, this is presented as though it were some kind of free money. Note, every soul living legally in New Mexico — one of the lowest per capita income states in the nation — forks over cash to the federal fisc, in comparatively larger volumes than their neighbors. You’re paying for this, in more ways than one.

And unless Albuquerque has suddenly become like Shanghai and sprouted rapid transit riders in exponentially greater percentages than anywhere else in this country, ART riders will likely be few, generally more affluent than the people paying to build and operate the system, and heavily subsidized. Very heavily. But let’s be charitable and suppose the mayor and council members all will ride it constantly to their many engagements.

All this strikes a nerve for us Californians. Our brilliant leadership is pressing ahead, just as heedlessly, with a bullet train connecting north and south. The costs are in another dimension compared with what you’re paying — and yes, our politicians note some of it will be that “free” federal money — but the idea is the same:

“If only,” the politicians intone, “we could get people out of their cars …” They never realize it, but they lost the war back at “if only.” For almost everyone in the car-friendly USA, cars are far more efficient than any other transportation. These are the nice progressives. The less nice ones scrap the “if only” and proceed straight to imposition of their vision on everyone else. That’s where you are heading, just as surely as we hapless Californians.

In Shanghai, apartment buildings rising 50 and 60 stories, many in rows of five or six in one stretch, line the main boulevards, housing hundreds of thousands of people; jammed subways and buses carry those people into the heart of the city and back. When Albuquerque matches that density, this is going to be one dandy little bus system.