The Search for the Holy Rail

IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO: The CEO of a large corporation calls a meeting of the board of directors to deal with a crisis: The business is losing four dollars for every dollar earned, much of the capacity goes unused, and the customer base, never large to begin with, is eroding at an alarming rate. The board huddles and after a lengthy session the solution emerges: Expand.

Hard as it is to imagine that any business would “solve” a problem this way, the description accurately sums up the state of rail transit in this country. In all but a handful of American cities where it exists, transit ridership is flat or declining, cars run half-empty, and the system hemorrhages money. Take Baltimore, for example.