Warren Buffett and Barack Obama see trains as a green wave back to the future, but an emerging fleet of intercity buses is passing them by.
"Entrepreneurial immigrants from China and recently privatized British transportation companies have developed a new model for intercity bus operations that provides travelers with faster service at dramatically reduced fares," Randal O'Toole says in a new study for the libertarian-leaning CATO Institute.
O'Toole's findings come as debate continues over Gov. Rick Scott's approval of the controversial SunRail commuter train for CentralFlorida. The governor green-lighted the venture, estimated to cost $2.6 billion, after turning down $2.4 billion in federal funding for a high-speed rail project that would have linked Orlando and Tampa.
At the time, critics of high-speed rail said large buses can make the 100-mile intercity run faster and far more cheaply.
Sharon Calvert, a founder of No Tax for Tracks in Hillsborough County, said luxury buses provide efficient transportation at consistently lower costs.
"A family of four can ride for the price of one bullet train ticket," she said.
O'Toole, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based CATO, amplified on Calvert's point in his study, "Intercity Buses: The Forgotten Mode."
"New-model bus companies save money by selling tickets over the Internet and loading and unloading passengers at curbsides rather than in expensive bus stations. They speed service by running most buses nonstop between major cities rather than making numerous intermediate stops," O'Toole stated.
"Some companies distinguish themselves from their competition by providing leather seats, free wireless Internet, more legroom, and -- in a few cases -- onboard meal service and movies."
In Florida, upgraded RedCoach buses are picking up business with intercity routes serving Tampa, Orlando, Miami, West Palm Beach and Tallahassee. College students are flocking to this low-cost alternative to flying, and doing so in comfort with wi-fi and luxury seating.
BUSES MEET OR BEAT TRAINS ON EFFICIENCY
While train promoters brag about speed and safety, O'Toole found that next-generation buses meet or beat trains -- without gobbling up government subsidies.
Timing the New York-Washington run, O'Toole clocked Amtrak's time between 3.15 and 4 hours versus intercity bus service that runs 4 hours and 4.15.
"The lowest Amtrak fares of $49 are more than three times the typical Internet bus fares of around $15," he said.
Nationally, intercity bus fares averaged about 13 cents per passenger mile in 2001, the last year for which estimates were available.
"These should be typical of old-model bus fares today, while new-model fares average about 7 to 10 cents per passenger mile," said O'Toole, author of the book, "Gridlock: Why We're Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It."
"Despite the fact that subsidies fund more than a quarter of Amtrak's operating costs and all of its capital costs, Amtrak fares grew from 25 cents to 31 cents per passenger mile," he related.
Buses score even better on safety and the environment.
From 1999 to 2008, motorcoaches sustained 0.3 passenger fatalities per billion passenger miles, compared with 1.4 for Amtrak and 1.1 for urban transit buses.
And despite rail's claims to fuel efficiency, buses leave a comparatively smaller carbon footprint.
Diesel-powered Amtrak trains produce roughly 2.5 times as much carbon emissions and use 2.8 times more energy than buses.
"The most efficient Amtrak trains were about 9 percent more efficient than the least-efficient intercity buses, but were still estimated to produce twice the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions per passenger mile than buses," according to a 2007 study by the American Bus Association.
The performance gaps are growing ever-wider as new technology -- some of it from overseas entrepreneurs -- drives America's latest generation of intercity buses.
O'Toole reports that bus companies from China and Britain are buying up existing U.S. carriers and upgrading them with new equipment. Domestic operators have done the same with BoltBus, Megabus, Greyhound Express and Crucero (49 percent owned by Greyhound) -- bringing lower fares and faster service to metro regions around the country.
ARE BETTER BUSES THE ANSWER IN ORLANDO?
In Florida, former Winter Park City Commissioner Beth Dillaha said she believes similar efficiencies can be obtained with buses in and around the sprawling Orlando metropolitan region.
"I believe the [Orange County] Lynx bus system is superior to rail for its lower costs and ability to adjust to new routing when growth areas change," said Dillaha, who campaigned against SunRail.
"When in Italy several years back, we took buses much of the time.The buses were very high-tech, clean, comfortable and cheaper," she recalled.
Though bus systems do not require government purchase of transit corridors -- and the political baggage that often accompanies such acquisitions -- Lynx still has no dedicated funding source and continues to scrape by, while SunRail has been promised more than $1 billion from state and local agencies.
Critics say that even with its financial advantage and subsidized fares, SunRail will actually exacerbate congestion on Orlando's street grid. According to some estimates, SunRail trains will block traffic at street-level rail crossings 4,000 times a day.
"Many have advocated for funding Lynx first, before initiating yet another mass-transit project with no funding source. Why not excel at one thing rather than doing several things poorly?" Dillaha asks.
"Lynx has been treated like the red-headed stepchild, which is wrong given that Lynx transports about 80,000 riders daily. Compare that to the paltry 2,300 projected for SunRail and its a no-brainer as to which transit system is superior."
George McClure, a member of the former Winter Park Commuter Rail Task Force, agrees.
"At a fraction of the cost of SunRail, Lynx could add more express buses beyond the two routes it already runs and serve the east-west needs as well as north-south," he stated in a June 30 e-mail to Gov. Scott.
MOVING MASS TRANSIT WHERE THE PEOPLE LIVE
But Matthew Falconer, an Orlando businessman and former candidate for Orange County mayor, doubts that Lynx can function efficiently with its current model.
"The problem with Lynx is that almost all of the routes go through downtown Orlando when much of the need does not go to downtown. People who live in Bithlo and work at Disney cannot make it to work on time by changing buses in downtown," Falconer said.
"Most of the Lynx routes are simply high-traffic roads that do not enter neighborhoods or reach major employers," he added.
Falconer believes the best model is a semiprivate system of private-sector jitneys. He points to Miami-Dade County, where 15-passenger vans have been used by businesses to shuttle workers from their neighborhoods.
"The solution, I believe, is to partially subsidize this service from the Lynx budget. These vans can also move schoolchildren around during the day for special education and events," he said.
But Lynx is going the opposite direction, purchasing $600,000 double-long buses.
"Lynx operates at 8 percent capacity now and they are just spending money to use federal funds on these buses," Falconer contends.
"The difference is pure ideology," he added. "Progressives want people to live in urban areas and use mass transit and their transportation model is institutional. Free-market people meet the demands of the marketplace with custom solutions."
TAKING HART IN HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, MAYBE
Necessity may be the mother of invention in Hillsborough County, whose HART bus system is exploring new models in the aftermath of voters rejecting a rail proposal there last year.
"A more cost-effective system is being implemented that will go down almost the same north-south route the light rail was planned for. HART is looking at its routes and making changes to better serve where the demand for service is," says Sharon Calvert, who helped lead the successful No Tax for Tracks campaign.
Working with neighboring counties to extend service, HART is also looking at bus routes along the shoulder of I-75 and downsizing some of their vehicles.
"Buses can take advantage of new technologies and increased energy efficiencies as bus fleets completely turn over about every 18 years.Rail is replaced about every 30 years so you are stuck with the technology for decades," Calvert notes.
Calvert believes the push for rail isn't actually about transportation as much as it is about land development. And publicly funded rail systems allow developers to expand without having to pay road concurrency charges related to their projects.
"SunRail is a perfect example -- it saves Florida Hospital and Orlando Regional Medical Center millions of dollars through concurrency avoidance they would have had to pay for road improvements as both build their new medical campuses," Calvert said.
Meantime, critics say taxpayers should be on the lookout for new transit-related charges, such as mobility fees, miles-traveled fees or others that politicians and special interests will pursue in search of additional revenues for rail.
HART, too, is proposing to raise its property tax rate to cover perennial budget shortfalls, and Calvert, like Falconer, recommends that regional transit systems should look at privatizing or contracting out some services.
"Jitney and shared taxi services that use shuttles like those used at airports are another form of entrepreneurial transportation service that should be allowed to compete," she says.
"Private bus service with zero subsidies moved more people last year than Amtrak, which we subsidize with $1.5 billion annually," Calvert notes.
LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD FOR THE BEST RIDE
Financier Warren Buffett made headlines last year when his Berkshire Hathaway holding company paid $26 billion to take control of Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Buffett has said he foresees a dynamic and profitable future for U.S. railroads.
But the shrewd investor is talking freight, not passenger, trains. As most everyone knows, from Amtrak's national system to local commuter lines like South Florida's Tri-Rail, hefty government subsidies are required to keep those trains running.
Ultimately, the bus-vs.-rail debate boils down to competition, and the market-oriented CATO says government unlevels the playing field by doling out more than $10 billion in high-speed passenger train grants -- all in corridors already supplied with intercity bus service.
In a textbook example, O'Toole describes what's happening on the Seattle-Portland run.
"The administration gave the Washington Department of Transportation a grant of $590 million to increase train speeds from 53.4 mph to 56.1 mph, reducing trip times by 10 minutes, for a total travel time of 3 hours and 20 minutes."
Amtrak's four trains run daily, charging single fares of $50.
"Meanwhile Greyhound offers one nonstop Portland-Seattle trip a day, which takes just 3 hours and 15 minutes for a $35 fare. It would probably offer more nonstops if it did not have to compete against Amtrak trains, which received $14.3 million in operating subsidies in 2010." O'Toole said.
The CATO study concludes:
"Outside of California, none of the high-speed rail projects now under way will produce trains that go significantly faster than buses, and California has yet to raise most of the funds it needs to complete its project.
"Obama's high-speed rail plan would create a more heavily subsidized system that, even with subsidies, will cost travelers more to use and offer little more convenience than a relatively unsubsidized bus system."
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 559-4719.
