I disagree. People always say this about major infrastructure projects and in particular about public transit and rail. It is expensive yes, but the economic benefits associated with it are equally huge and very hard to quantify.
Here in London, the UK government has been heavily criticized for cost overrunning and major delays to
Crossrail, which is a modern railway line that runs from west of London in Reading all the way through major urban areas of London to the East. It has cost the tax payer GBP20bn (that's a whopping PKR4.15tn in today's terms, or more than half of Pakistan's federal annual budget). The cost increases and delays are far far greater than anything we've seen in Pakistan with metrobus projects or orange line. However, the need is so dire that there is no choice but to expand the rail network and improve transit times from the suburbs and outside London to the city. The city has become unlivable, and the government judges that crossrail despite running large operating deficits, will generate FAR more income in the city some GBP42bn it was estimated a while back.
Public transport networks most places in the world are run on subsidies, they are not there to make operating surplus or generate profit. They are a publicly funded merit goods in economic terms. Government's local and national everywhere in the world run deficits (operate at a loss), the point is for them to distribute funds in such a way to maximise economic benefit, boost economic growth, and to undertake highly beneficial large scale projects that the private sector can't or won't (e.g public transport networks, R&D and space etc.). If governments everywhere suddenly began to only spend what they earn in taxes (or even a surplus), the net effect is that they would be actively deflating and shrinking their economies. I can tell you that London operates a gigantic public transport network, and a very costly one, but if it shut down for a few days and the
losses to the economy are staggering, and equally long term without these projects your cities cannot expand, your economic activity will suffer, businesses suffer and flexibility of the labour suffers too.
I know I wouldn't be able to work where I do if the public transport network that I use daily were not in place. My journey would conservatively increase to 3-4 hours per day if I were forced to drive to work which doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of cars that would clog the city's roads.
And that's just London, our subsidies and operating losses aren't even that big. Take the light blue part of the charts of the other major cities below:
View attachment 684668
Also, the cost of not spending on rail and bus transit projects or their operating subsidies is at best a zero sum, you either spend there or you suffer economic damage elsewhere. Or you opt for the much worse alternative for major cities which is spending the amount you would have done on transit, instead on more roads and road maintenance. So at best it's a zero sum game, but more likely for major cities, the benefits of public transport are far greater than the overall cost. Public transport networks also account for less air pollution and road congestion. So everyone benefits.
Also, public transport systems are somewhat natural monopolies and economic theory that applies here has it that the subsidies involve are not inherently wasteful, they serve the purpose of improving access and capacity, as well as lowering fares, and the economic benefit is really very prevalent for the lower income groups so it's a pro-poor policy. One slightly
off topic paper discusses this a little. You can find a lot of academic papers on the subject of the benefits of costly public transport.
But IMO the best case for them is to look at what other major cities around the world are doing, they are all following this model and are benefiting, even our neighbours are also following the same path. In a country where people complain about nothing being developed, why can't we be happy when a road network, a metrobus or a railway is built and runs successfully? People complained about the metrobus, now everyone wants one, and understandably so, I think the same will happen with the Orange line, despite high cost of rail.
