This is worse than the average for all transit modes. When all transit modes are considered, riders pay about one-third of the costs. Light rail compares even more unfavorably with auto transportation where, according to another Arizona Department of Transportation study, private passenger vehicles currently pay more than 100 percent of their share of the cost of the road system. Light rail's inefficiency and unfairness aren't offset by effectiveness. In no city in America did light rail transit account for as much as 1 percent of the urban person-miles of travel.
Light rail is touted as a means of reducing urban traffic congestion.
The claim is that it will lure drivers out of their cars and, thereby, reduce traffic congestion. If all of the light rail passengers had been driving their own cars, light rail would, on average, be removing three cars in 1,000 from the roads. However, studies have shown that about 80 percent of new light rail passengers were former bus passengers. Taking this into account, the real impact on traffic is for light rail to remove less than one car in 1,000 from traffic. The projected performance of a prospective Phoenix light rail system would likely be somewhat worse than average.