Enough Boondoggles
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit magazine
Can we stop with the boondoggle tags already? It seems like every transit project these days is being labeled a boondoggle. Charlotte’s Lynx light rail line was called a boondoggle before it started — and still is by some. And now a recent news article labels the proposed high-speed rail line connecting San Francisco to L.A. the “Boondoggle Express.”
Come on.
So I did a little digging to see what a “boondoggle” really is. It actually is a plaited leather cord made as necklaces (or other things) by scouts. So how does the word come around to transit projects? It seems the term was popularized during the New Deal era as a term for government make-work projects for the unemployed.
According to www.dictionary.com, a boondoggle is “a project funded by the federal government out of political favoritism that is of no real value to the community or the nation.” Think on that one for a second. By calling these projects boondoggles, transit opponents are saying that they are a) politically motivated and b) have no real value to the community or nation.
Now I can sit here in incredulous disbelief at that thought, but having listened to and read enough material by transit opponents, I know that they truly believe in boondoggles. They truly believe that transit really is a crock. It won’t help their community and the money being spent on it is a complete waste.
Of course, a laundry list of facts and figures can be laid at their feet as proof of transit’s value, but this doesn’t seem to change a thing. Facts and figures can be shown that prove the lack of value transit has. Of course facts and figures are like polling results in an election — they can be manipulated.
It all comes down to belief. Do you believe transit projects are just a waste of time? Those who have and use transit don’t think so. Many places I visit can’t wait to get more transit once they get a taste for it.
It is that first transit project is always the hardest to get going. And it seems this is always when the boondogglers come out of the woodwork. Again, like with an election, it’s amazing how much spin gets put into the process.
Transit projects aren’t a boondoggle. They aren’t a waste of money on something that has no value to the community. Transit works. It’s being proven in locations across the country. Does it always work like we want it to? Nope. But also sometimes we have unreal beliefs of what transit should accomplish.
And beliefs are a hard thing to overcome.
Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,
June 27th, 2008 at 10:31 am
You want to talk about a boondoggle. Here in Wisconsin we are getting ready to spending $1.9 Billion on a freeway expansion project. Despite the DOT’s own documents saying the expansion won’t alleviate congestion for most of the route. Despite the fact that the future congestion estimates are based on $2.30 a gallon! Despite the fact that the SE has no congestion problem, as regularly reported and covered by the Texas Transportation Institute. That’s a boondoggle.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I think the boondoggle moniker is well deserved. A lot of money gets wasted. There isn’t a set of people who can act as guardians to make sure the money handed out is used to maximum impact. The name is a reflection of Transit Agencies who all want to reinvent the wheel on transit projects which drive costs up. One TA wants the system to do this and the hardware to look like that. The next TA wants the system to do this too, but only after it does that and the ability to do this and that which the third TA likes, but he doesn’t EVER want it to do this. And the hardware is too thin, or too thick or the wrong color and wants all that changed. In some cases you have union engineers at TA’s ordering around incredibly smart, talented and experienced vendor designers of all stripes who is trying to make a name for himself in the TA and hoping to join the very people he thinks he is smarter than in the private sector. Many times, the extra money to do this and that which is deemed by the experienced vendor designers as unnecessary, problematic or a waste of money are overruled. Vendors have trouble accounting for all the uncertainty and the risk and the menu of changes that have to be made. In the end, it is hard for vendors to make money and we aren’t a non profit organization like the TA’s.
Consultants in many cases are more of the same. They charge TA’s an arm and a leg, many times just rip off their previous work and make adjustments or worse, knock off others work. Then they have to be involved and earn their money. If they were to defer to the vendor too much, they wouldn’t be seen as doing their job. Too many cooks spoil the soup.
It shouldn’t be surprising that many times the best in the Industry isn’t the cheapest bidder. But short sightedness causes TA’s to go with the lowest bidder. I have seen that many times, then the successful bidder sees so many things as change orders, that the ultimate price paid is in excess of what the better supplier would have cost for a more reliable product. Oh well. Thats why mass transit with public money is a boondoggle.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Dear Concerned:
A lot of what you are saying is correct, but I will tell you that in many cases, there are truly intelligent people who do, in fact, make sure that the money spent on projects is, in fact, spent as wisely and effectively as possible. Sometimes, even often, they are forced by “protective regulations” to spend more than a private concern would, but that is generally because some earlier person in their position did so either very unwisely, or in a way which benefitted them personally (and some of them have done time for that). These situations force the implemtation of regulations to prevent its recurrence.
OK, the issue of unique designs being created for every separate system: I think this is a huge problem. In the 1910s, the railroads were taken over by the Federal Government under the (original) USRA, which promulgated standard designs for locomotives and rolling stock. Those standard designs were arguably the best thing that ever happened to the railroad industry. For transit, there is a near parallel with the PCC car, which served (and continues to serve) many systems for decades, mostly because it was, for the most part, done right the first time. What is desperately needed, IMHO, is a commission, similar to the PCC, to develop a standardized design for transit vehicles which can be used everywhere. Or maybe two of them. The DART articulated vehicle recently unveiled would NEVER fit through the Boston subways for example. But a car designed to fit in the Boston subways (which have fairly restrictive clearances) would work very well for many other systems. Standardization reduces initial cost, cost of spare and replacement parts, simplifies maintenance, and has many other benefits. I would only ask (being a designer) that it look good on top of all the other functional requirements. THAT would not be a boondoggle.
June 27th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Fred - Well put. All during the 1980s, I worked on new starts - Sacramento, Portland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Houston - and sat through public meetigs listening to NIMBYs complain electric light rail trains would be dirty, noisy, tie up traffic, kill their children, yadda, yadda, yadda…… Then, in 1990, I was assigned to an alignment alternatives study for what became TriMet’s Interstate MAX line. By that time, Eastside MAX had been open four years and people had taken trial rides on it to learn what light rail really is, and they liked it. Thus, aside from where best to put it, the question we were asked most often was, “How soon is it going to open?” And that’s about what seems to have happened in every new start city. Once the first line is finally opened after much struggle, the locals “get it” and want more. I think the anti-railers know this, and realize if they don’t kill that first line, the battle for that metro area is lost.
June 27th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Thank You, Mr. Schumann! “Boondoggle” irks me like calling rubber tire phoney replicas “Trolleys”.
Briefly, let’s be kind to the anti-transit crowd, the Road Gang, who are in the midst of the rudest of awakenings- A double whammy of high prices for gas, and vaporizing income for road projects due to costly energy-induced suburban property values crash.
Irrelevant highway projects must now be measured in light of imminent gas rationing. As an aside on the notion that “substitutes” for regular oil will bring down costs… It goes like this: Less costly fuels (if they actually can be scaled up to a meaningful level) are always going to be brought into parity with the price of oil. It will take decades (at flat demand) to reach output of substitute transport liquids sufficient to put downward pressure on the market price.
Electric private cars are out of reach for at least a decade; we need to maintain the US economy thru the Oil Interregnum, and public transport, rail infrastructure, vastly expanded in capacity & reach is what will do the job.
As for increased offshore, ANWR oil: straining output to the utmost, in the most ideally compressed timeframe, struggles to keep up with annual field depletion. The anti-rail, anti transit people are advised to move near the supermarket, work, etc. Or train & bus lines.
It is further suggested the gold & bullion crowd would be better off putting the wealth into local railway rehab, with local infrastructure for rail served warehousing and victuals distribution. Their offspring will appreciate food on the shelves more than dad’s lost gold, confiscated by the Feds, like FDR did…
June 27th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Fred—
“It all comes down to belief.” Definitely. Just because one says “boondoggle” ad infinitum doesn’t make it so. Up here in Alaska we hear “road to nowhere” in a similar context. It’s a label borrowed from someone else and used thoughtlessly to score a cheap shot. The point is, we should all do a little less labeling and take the time to understand what a given project will accomplish for what we are putting in to it. In the era of sound bites, we’d rather spend our time persuading others to accept our position rather than understanding if something is truly a good investment or not. Too often the tendency is to simply see a project as a competitor for what I want, a NIMBY, or something I am ideologically opposed to. The common denominator is “I”, “me”, “my”, “mine.” What is needed is for more of us to move that common denominator out of being the central determinator in our evaluation of everything.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Part of the reason transit projects are called “boondoggles” are that some are gold plated, costing billions of dollars when less costly alternatives would be just as beneficial. An example is the propoased BART extension from Fremont to San Jose.
How bad is the BART project?
It is such a stinker that transit advocate Michael D. Setty and “antiplanner” Randal O’Toole, who don’t agree on much of anything, both have written articles against the project. In fact, Setty’s article is titled “I Must Agree (Somewhat) with O’Toole in This Case” which emphasizes the point. See the following:
http://www.publictransit.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=155&Itemid=1
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=50
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=423
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=289
The “Santa Clara VTA Riders Union” [not affiliated with VTA] has a useful “BART to San Jose News and Hidden Facts on BART” page here:
http://www.vtaridersunion.org/bartsjx/
Also, transit advocates Bay Rail alliance are promoting a better, more cost-effective alternative:
http://www.bayrailalliance.org/caltrain_metro_east
Finally, for some general observations on VTA, see:
http://vtawatch.blogspot.com/
Local blogger Pete Campbell asks “Why not table BART, and ask the voters to amend the way that the sales tax revenues are distributed, with the cities receiving greater shares than the VTA?” I think that’s what all the people who voted against the 2006 Measure A were saying also.