Oct 10 2008
Ride the LYNX- You’re Already Paying for it!
Taxpayers are picking up more than 90 percent of the tab for a lucky few commuters riding Charlotte’s LYNX light-rail line, despite the trains’ limited public benefit for traffic congestion, air quality, or land use. That’s a key finding in a new John Locke Foundation Policy Report.
“When you combine both operating and capital costs, the total cost per trip on Charlotte’s LYNX line is about $6.90, and the weighted average fare is about 60 cents per trip,” said the report’s lead author, David Hartgen, Emeritus Professor of Transportation Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “That means the taxpayer is subsidizing about $6.30 of every trip taken on the LYNX line. Riders are paying just 8.7 percent of the cost.”
The John Locke Society
Public transportation is always a great idea… on paper. But transferring it from paper to reality brings a plethora problems. As convenient as this may be for Charlotte residents, is it really worth the total tax expenditures? And does it really help with traffic congestion?
Only about a quarter of LYNX weekday ridership is diverted directly from cars, and nearly 20 percent of the auto driver traffic using LYNX consists of vehicles with South Carolina tags,” he said. “About half of the LYNX ridership is prior bus riders. In short, the big winners are about 4,000 prior bus riders, 4,000 commuters living close to the line, and 400 South Carolina drivers.”
Sam, you ride the damn thing. What do you think?
I save about $100 a month by not having to drive all the way into uptown anymore and having to pay for a parking lease, so I am certainly not complaining that we have it. However, it should be privately funded and not having government pick up the bulk of the tab. If that were the case it would, of course, not exist. Even with the exceeded expectations of ridership due to the gas prices, it still couldn’t survive on its own without government subsidies and that is the case with most public transit. As far as traffic goes, no, it has not decongested our highways.