Transport Economics again.

One of the more economically illiterate members of the Samizdata collective quoted this ridiculous passage from rightwing troll P.J.O'Rourke.

The Heritage Foundation says, "There isn't a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides." Heritage cites the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price.

With nonsense like that it's hard to know where to start. Steve Karlson of Cold Spring Shops, who cannot be accused of being any kind of left-winger, but who does know a bit about economics, points out the obvious mistake.

This comparison is a common canard from the highway lobby, particularly from those individuals who perceive the trolley service as "public," hence tainted with socialism, and the private owner vehicle as "private," despite the public spending on roads, which are congested in part because there's been little construction of new roads. The comparison presents the full cost of the trolley service, including some share of the spending on the permanent way (is it amortized correctly) with the incremental cost of another sport-ute, without contemplating the full cost of providing sufficient capacity for additional sport-utes.

Fortunately the Samizdata post is getting thourougly fisked in the comment sections the poster's fellow Libertoids.

It's actually very difficult to compare the economic efficiency of different transport modes because of the huge externalities, both positive and negative. The trouble with a lot of these externatilities are that they're so difficult to measure that it's tempting for those with vested interests or ideological axes to grind to pretend they don't exist. I remember reading that the increase in property values along the corridor served by the new light rail system in Dublin was greater than the cost of constructing the thing. But good luck expecting the road lobby to admit that.

It's also true that things are very different in most European cities compared with the suburban sprawls typical of large parts of America, a landscape created by and for the private car. The population density there is so low that it's very difficult for any form of public transport to be economically viable. The consequence (which never seems to occur to many Americans) is that it's simply not possible to survive in these sprawls without access to a car. That's not true of any larger towns and cities in Britain.

I have to keep repeating this. Public transport advocates such as myself are not anti-car. We just don't want them to be made compulsory, as has already happened in large parts of America.