One of the major problems with urban planning is that planners are unable to learn from their mistakes or the mistakes of their peers in other cities. Transit planners say it will take eight years to plan and build the light-rail line, which is insane in itself since they could start running a limited-stop bus there tomorrow. By 2019, seven years after it opened, ridership was down to 4,641 trips per weekday.ĭespite this complete failure by every possible measure, Hampton Roads Transit wants to extend it by 2.2 miles to a local mall, which Norfolk planners want to convert - with the help of tax-increment financing and other subsidies - into a high-density, mixed-use development. In fact, not only did it do poorly in its first year, it only went downhill from there. This made it appear to anyone who didn’t look closely at the numbers that the line was doing well. In a typical transit-agency lie, Hampton Roads Transit later reduced that projection to 2,900 trips per weekday, and then claimed that was the “original” projection. In fact, it carried less than half that, just 4,900 riders per weekday in its first year, and took eight months to reach 1 million riders. That would be about 1 million riders in less than four months. The original projections estimated that the rail line would carry 10,400 riders per weekday in its opening year. The article claims the light-rail line carried its first million rides “five months ahead of original projections,” but that’s a transit agency lie. As noted in this article in The Virginian-Pilot, it opened 18 months late after a 60% cost overrun. The Tide, Norfolk’s light-rail line, has been open to the public for ten years. Photo by Dean Covey, Virginia Department of Transportation.
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