For years, modern rail systems, such as light rail and subway, have earned an excellent reputation for speeding up trips within a city, reaching the outskirts of a city and, most importantly, being a catalyst for the economy.
During the past few years, Wake County commissioners have been ambitious to combine 14 miles of light rail and 17 miles of commuter rail to ease Wake County’s rapidly growing congestion. Other counties in the Triangle area are making efforts to connect to each other by putting more rails in place. In Nov. 2011, Durham County and Orange County put up a referendum that would allow county officials to collect half-cent sales tax to support the expansion of the rail-based public transit. Voters in Durham County approved the referendum in 2011 and Orange County approved it a year later.
But skepticism and questions arose around these projects. Does every city need a rail system? Even though driving is the most traditional way to commute, officials say North Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, especially in the Triangle region. David King, general manager of Triangle Transit, said that the region is expected to grow by 1.5 million people in the next 20 years.
That might seem like a legitimate reason to build rails in the long term. But even adding 1.5 million people to the Triangle is still far behind other metropolitan areas like Philadelphia-New York-Boston, which has a population topping 10 million. A massive railway system is more justified in areas where people live in compact buildings such as apartments in skyscrapers.
But the Triangle area is a very decentralized. It may be difficult to get sufficient daily users once a rail system is in place here. According to North Carolina Department of Transportation, more than 97 percent of all North Carolina residents owned private vehicles at the end of 2011. North Carolinians are used to driving as a way to commute. Given that people live in spread-out areas, it’s impossible for light rail to reach every corner of the region. Suppose people who do not live near the stop have to drive their cars or take the bus to a nearby parking lot and take the train. In those cases, is it not less convenient for them to take the rail than to drive directly to the destination?
Statistics from metrobit.org, a nonprofit dedicated to the research of public rail transportation, show that daily rail users in Madrid, Spain total 1.72 million. In New York City, the total is 4.49 million. But the populations of Madrid and New York are 3.23 million and 8.24 million respectively. From these statistics you can see that the ratio between daily users and the whole population is approximately the same in both metropolitan areas. If that same ratio is extrapolated to the Triangle’s population, now and in the future, it seems likely operation of the system might be in the red unless mass subsidies come in.
Even for “super metropolises,” rail systems are still not a panacea. Beijing and Shanghai dwarf all other cities in the world in term of subway network length, and the Chinese government pours tons of subsidies into their daily operations, through the population of the two is more than 20 million. With more rail construction going underground, residents in the two giant cities bemoan the skyrocketing prices of real estate. Thanks to the subway reaching every corner of the city and suburban area, millions of migrants flock into the cities to try to get a job and settle down. Developers are lured there to build skyscraper apartments along the subway lines, but that hardly meets the demand of the fast-growing population. The result is that many middle-class families are unable to afford a tiny, compact apartment without spending their lifetime income. Despite those housing prices, these two cities are still planning to expand the subway lines to more than 345,000 miles by 2020.
Officials in North Carolina should be able to learn lessons from other cities in the world to determine whether or not the Triangle region can offer an efficient and effective rail system.
