The little engine that couldn’t make me young, handsome and rich
The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University has released a “policy brief” that casts doubts on the ability of railroads to increase population density and change land use:
In general, all these comparisons showed that investments in commuter rail had small, but generally positive, impacts on nearby areas.
The problem is that the “small, but generally positive” effects were brought about by billions of dollars in investments.
I made a similar though entirely unresearched argument about railway awhile ago about the limits of trains as a general social policy tool. One point I made, however, about railway driving up household incomes, is only partially sustained by the brief.
Household incomes in some areas always served by commuter rail are higher than average household incomes in the region, but incomes are lower than the regional average in some areas that gained service as well.
My retort is that the incomes will increase over time in areas that have railway stations. Well, it’s more of a hypothesis than a retort, really.
I certainly wouldn’t regard the Rappaport brief as the definitive document on whether we should expand rail service, but it is certainly worth spending a few minutes on.
