Rail Isn't Worth the Wait - Reason Foundation

Excerpt: “Why does it take rail so long to make an impact? It simply takes much longer to create a rail network from scratch than to add to the existing road network, and steep costs make the wait for rail’s benefits even longer. Yes it costs much more to build rail than roads, but rail also has a long established reputation for cost escalation. Public officials quote one price, but then later on, costs shoot up. Sure, cost hikes plague all kinds of transportation projects, but rail projects, average cost escalation is roughly five times that of road projects. Officials often respond to cost hikes by simply cutting the size of the project.”

Georgia Must Put the Brakes on Commuter Rail - Georgia Public Policy Foundation

Excerpt: “Not only is the ridership projection changing, the assumption that the farebox will cover 45 percent of operating costs by 2011 is far higher than all new start commuter lines except Virginia’s. GRPP also estimates that the 770,000 annual rail trips will result in 21 million fewer vehicle miles driven by 2009, which suggests that every rail passenger would otherwise have been driving a single-occupancy vehicle. But the Regional On-Board Transit Survey by the Atlanta Regional Commission found that 65 percent of metro area transit users don’t even have a vehicle available for use; in Gwinnett and Clayton counties, that figure is 51 percent. Traditionally, new train riders are former bus riders, negating much gain in transit users.”

Realign Amtrak - American Enterprise Institute

Excerpt: “A whopping 50% of Amtrak riders use just 10% of the system. Amtrak is anemic in much of the country; only about 100 people board Amtrak in an entire day in each of a dozen states. A child with reasonable math skills could determine which trains should survive and which should go the way of the stagecoach. Cutting obsolete routes would also free up resources for critical infrastructure improvements such as fixing the dangerously outdated tunnels into and out of Manhattan.”