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3) Light Rail Projects Cost Nine Times More Per Rider than Alternatives
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For the past fifty years, light rail projects have been the popular fad pushed by the green movement and urban planners. Anything to get people out of cars – which the left hates.
But tens of billions of taxpayer dollars later, in almost all cases these trains and trolleys costs are multiple times the social benefits. A study by economists Yadi Wang and David Levinson from the University of Sydney (Australia), examined the funds spent and ridership of the major mass transit projects from 1991 to 2018. It finds in almost all cases a systematic overstating the ridership and underestimating the construction and operating costs.
The study employs a cost-per-rider ratio to evaluate cost-effectiveness, and finds that alternatives like buses are nine times more efficient – and that’s a very low bar because buses aren’t very cost-efficient either. In some cases, leasing cars for free to the rail passengers would have been cheaper than building expensive rail systems in big cities.
So who keeps pushing these boondoggles? Construction firms, leftist big city mayors (who crave the “free” federal dollars), and labor unions are the biggest proponents of mass transit. Californians may be voting on a higher sales tax to pay for all the high costs of their transit systems. That should be an easy “ no” vote.
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4) School's Out... to Shelter Illegal Immigrants
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This story sums up Democratic priorities in the Biden era: James Madison High School in Midwood, Brooklyn (the high school Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders attended), is now a shelter for illegal immigrants, while the kids will have Zoom school instead.
And this just in: Montgomery County, Maryland canceled school yesterday because…it rained. Seriously! No wonder our test scores are in the toilet.
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Here’s our Wall Street Journal headline of the day:
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According to the story: “Many companies no longer utter these three letters: E-S-G.
Following years of simmering investor backlash, political pressure, and legal threats over environmental, social, and governance efforts, a number of business leaders are now making a conscious effort to avoid the once-widely used acronym for such initiatives.”
Pardon us while we at CTUP take a little bow for exposing the epidemic of ESG madness in corporate board rooms and helping create this healthy “investor backlash.” Last year we issued our Playing Politics with Pensions report where the big money management firms were exposed on the pages of ESG with F grades for their proxy voting in favor of radical ESG initiatives. Now these firms are sprinting away from the concept.
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Keep an eye out for our report in a few weeks on how state pension funds are voting on ESG.
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6) Sure, Our Politicians Will Change the Temperature Outside
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