The Triangle’s two metropolitan planning organizations have joined forces to bring an ambitious mass-transit system to the region that could cost $2 billion, but critics say the new proposal is worse than a previous rail-transit plan that failed because of lack of federal commitment.

The Special Transit Advisory Commission approved nonbinding recommendations for the new plan Feb. 4. The details of the plan have yet to be hashed out, but taxpayers could contribute $2 billion or more for the system via a half-cent sales tax increase, an annual $10 vehicle registration fee, and state and federal dollars to supplement the overall cost. The plan also calls for $600 million in taxpayer financing.

In addition to other initiatives, the plan would beef up bus services and create 56 miles of rail lines by 2020 connecting cities throughout the Triangle.

“It will improve air quality, lower congestion on the roads, encourage business, and give people a choice — you can be a two-car family or a one-car family,” said George Cianciolo, a commission cochairman and pathology professor at Duke University Medical Center. “The Triangle will stop growing out and start growing in around areas that are served by transit.”

But transit experts say the plan goes farther down the wrong road than a plan backed by the Triangle Transit Authority that fell through two years ago.

“They’ve proposed an even more glorious mess,” said David Hartgen, retired professor of transportation studies at UNC-Charlotte. “This proposal is a significant threat to the region because it reintroduces the idea that you can have something for nothing.”

New plan

Plans for a 28-mile, $810 million transit line collapsed in 2006 because the TTA could not prove a good enough cost-to-benefit ratio to warrant federal funding. The new effort, spearheaded by the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro and N.C. Capital Area MPOs, goes well beyond the TTA’s original vision.

In early 2007, the two MPOs joined forces to create the Special Transit Advisory Commission, a 29-member body composed of Triangle residents. The commission, which began meeting in early May, is responsible for submitting transit recommendations to the MPOs, which will then decide which details to incorporate into a long-range transportation plan.

David King, general manager of TTA, estimated that the commission’s final report would be sent to the MPOs by late March. “These 29 people have worked hard, been conscientious, and taken their jobs seriously,” King said.

Citizens can comment on the recommendations through the commission’s Web site, but the public’s response won’t be integrated into the final version sent to the MPOs. “There won’t be enough time for us to take the public input and incorporate it,” Cianciolo said, “so we’ll let the public look at the report, make comments either by email or letters, and all of that information will be sent to the MPOs.”

Commission members

The Capital Area MPO appointed 17 members to the commission, while the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro MPO appointed 12 members, according to public records.

Several of the commission members are former or current elected officials, including former Raleigh Mayors Smedes York and Tom Bradshaw. Others are associated with environmental groups, including the Sierra Club.

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker is an ex-officio member, as is Mack McKrell, a Cary resident who is described only as a “long-time regional transit user.”

Joe Bryan, a Wake County commissioner and chair of the Capital Area MPO’s Transportation Advisory Committee, said that members of his MPO worked to appoint “a broad mix of people, not necessarily those who were just transit cheerleaders.”

“There wasn’t any formal, written-out, specific criteria for choosing the commission members,” he said. “There was a significant effort to make sure that the committee had really good leadership experience and was broadly diversified.”

Transit benefits

Supporters of the new recommendations say the proposed transit system would reduce congestion, improve air quality, and stimulate the economy. Local leaders have looked to Charlotte’s recently completed light-rail system for inspiration.

“One of the things we have going for us is that obviously transit has worked very well in Charlotte, where the rider numbers have been well beyond their initial expectations,” Cianciolo said. “People are ready for transit for a lot of reasons, but there has been an economic stimulus driven by the high cost of gasoline.”

Others give a less glowing report of Charlotte’s transit system. “It was advertised as reducing congestion — it hasn’t,” said Hartgen. “It hasn’t helped the street system. In fact, it’s worse because the at-grade system requires roads to be shut off as trains come through.”

“I don’t see anything in the current proposal that suggests the problems the previous TTA proposal had — problems like high cost, limited ridership, no effect on air pollution — will be solved,” he said.

While Cianciolo said that rail transit would reduce traffic on the roadways, Hartgen said he has never seen a transit line that reduced congestion. “For those who do divert from cars to public transit, the road system is filled by others taking their place,” he said.

Depending on the corridor, it’s “probably foolishness to think that transit will reduce congestion, particularly for a region like ours,” King said.

“Part of the calculus, it seems to me, is how much can transit be a magnet for some growth that will be transit-oriented growth and take some pressure away that would otherwise be there on the highway system,” he said. “It’s more about taking the edge off the congestion than it is an absolute reduction in congestion.”

Another benefit of a rail transit system would be to give commuters back some of their time, Cianciolo said, by freeing them up to pursue other activities while traveling.

“One of the things people have to understand with trains is that it may not get you there faster, but it gives you back your time,” he said. “You can actually be doing something, such as using a laptop or phone.”

Controlling air pollution is another goal of the regional transit system. King said that transit has a positive effect on air pollution, but how positive depends on many factors.

“When you crank your car up in the morning, as a polluter it’s worst for the first mile or so, and as it warms up it gets pretty efficient,” he said. “So the extent to which you can get people service by walking or biking to trains, then your air quality benefits are much better.”

But Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and a specialist in transportation issues, said that most rail transit lines “use more energy per passenger mile, and many generate more greenhouse gases, than the average passenger automobile.”

He said that technical alternatives — such as powering public buses with hybrid-electric motors, building new roads to ease congestion, and encouraging citizens to purchase more fuel-efficient cars — would do more to reduce carbon dioxide outputs than rail transit would.

Funding considerations

Although the commission “was not designed to look heavily at financing,” Cianciolo said he hopes the federal government will fund 25 percent to 50 percent of the project and state government an additional 25 percent.

“Realistically, even 25 percent might look difficult,” Cianciolo said about the federal funding, “but with this plan being a truly regional plan, the people in finance on the commission thought 25 percent was realistic.”

In light of the failed TTA rail project, Cianciolo thinks planning as a region is important for generating public and financial support. “That’s the point we’re going to make to the MPOs — you’ve got to think big enough that it has a chance to succeed,” he said.

But O’Toole said that squaring away state and federal money is a gamble. “The feds have the money to start one new transit project per year,” he said. “You’d have to get in line behind 30 other cities that are trying to get their projects funded. That’s true at the state level, too. Charlotte wants money, and other cities want money for their pork-barrel projects. Meanwhile, what kind of shape are your bridges in?”

Hartgen estimated that final costs would be double what the commission projected. He said commission members are hoping for a change in the administration in Washington, D.C., to “wiggle the money from similarly inclined officials.”

“We would all like something for Christmas that we cannot afford,” Hartgen said. “Most of us learned that lesson, but Raleigh and Durham haven’t. They’re going to their government parents and asking.”

David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.