By Norm Leahy

The Virginian-Pilot is on board with an expansion of Norfolk’s short, costly and scandal-plagued light rail line. But in a fine display of Babbittry, we’re not supposed to pay attention to the scandals, cost overruns, delays and such. Those petty concerns only get in the way of progress. And how to pay for it all? The paper manages to mention, in passing, that money for such an expansion may be hard to come by. But that’s a secondary consideration compared to the planning that needs to take place now for an even bigger, more costly system.

But before the planners, great and small, get too excited about adding on to their train set, Randal O’Toole has a few things about the existing rails that ought to be kept in mind. I’ll quote his post in its entirety:

Norfolk Virginia finally opened its light-rail line, and ridership “exceeds expectations” at 5,600 riders a day. Considering they run 212 trains a weekday, that’s just over 26 passengers per train. How many 40-passenger buses would have been needed to handle all that traffic?

Of course, the rail line exceeded expectations in many other ways as well. The 7.4-mile line was originally expected to cost less than $200 million. The final cost was at least $120 million over that. It was also supposed to be open for business in 2008. They exceeded that expectation as well. The original projection was for 10,500 weekday riders by 2021. They’ll have to double ridership to meet that. A lot of city and transit officials also expected the rail line would be a feather in their caps. Instead, they were lucky not to be tarred and feathered when they were run out of town over cost overruns.

Despite the underestimated costs and inflated ridership numbers, the Federal Transit Administration gave Norfolk light rail a “not recommended” rating in 2004. Too bad the agency changed its mind (or had its mind changed for it by Virginia’s congressional delegation). They could have saved taxpayers a lot of money on a truly wasteful project. But that’s the story of all light rail in a nutshell.

It’s also the theme of a classic Simpsons episode — “Marge v. the Monorail,” which gave the world this snappy tune. The mob (or in this case, the Pilot) has spoken!