The P-I reported last week that "Sound Transit warned on costs"
A citizen panel has warned Sound Transit that the cost of running its regional transit system could rise more than the agency has predicted, and the higher costs could eat into the dollars spent to provide more trains and buses as the agency expands.Given that the "citizen panel" is handpicked by the Sound Transit board, which has the unfortunate habit of shutting out its most effective independent critics, we can safely assume that the panel's concerns are just the tip of the iceberg of Sound Transit's financial woes.
And "tip of the iceberg" would be too generous of a phrase to describe the negligible fraction of the region's commuters who are actually served by the boondoggle. The Everett-Seattle Sounder (which turns out to be less dependable than promised) congratulates itself for reaching 700 daily boardings (350 commuters a day). By way of comparison, the state DOT reports that the number of vehicles that use I-5 daily [large PDF, p. 73-75] is 139,000 near downtwon Everett and 225,000 through downtown Seattle. Imagine what the hundreds of millions of dollars that were blown on the Sounder could do if invested in improving traffic flow for the greatest number of commuters.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 18, 2006 03:27 PM | Email ThisWoohoo!!! My blood is boiling. Breath-in... Breath-out... Breath-in... Breath-out...
Posted by: C. Oh on January 18, 2006 04:25 PMKing County has a AAA credit rating!
Headlice has shown us that this is “the highest financial rating a county can attain.”
How about them apples?
Posted by: Amused by liberals on January 18, 2006 04:31 PM*One copy for the King County Executive
*One copy for the King County Council + unSound Transit
*One copy for the State AG's office... (drumroll please)
*And one copy for the Governor's mansion.
There. 95% of state's problems B-Y-E!
Posted by: A Watchdog on January 18, 2006 04:58 PMApparently nobody's noticed that I-5 into/out of Seattle crosses a lake, or bothered to notice the cost of real estate in Seattle. If you're hyperventilating over the cost of Sounder, get ready to go ballistic about making I-5 through downtown Seattle from Everett to Tacoma 6 lanes each way + expanding express lanes.
And it won't solve it. Look at I-90- they added 4 lanes of capacity. Still traffic jammed. Traffic, like gasses, expands to fill vacuums.
Posted by: eponymous coward on January 18, 2006 05:15 PMFollowing your logic, we should therefore start arresting single car commuters as they are just too expensive to accomodate. Why stop there, lets shoot 'em....or maybe forcefully relocate them to communes, Josef Stalin......hell, lets just gas em....
SEIG HEIL....
Posted by: THS on January 18, 2006 05:43 PMI'm not hyperventilating over the cost of Sounder, I'm outraged over the cost per passenger. Just the 360 million in ADDITIONAL costs discussed by the citizens' panel amounts to just over $1 million dollars PER RIDER, whereas if that money were spent on general purpose lanes, it would only amount to $3200 PER CAR (assuming that the 225,000 car throughput at downtown is carried by the two through lanes, for a total of 112,500 cars per day per lane).
If you think $1 million per rider is an acceptable cost for public transportation, I'd invite you to never be in the position of spending my tax money. Perhaps you could use a dose of reality as well.
Finally, you might try thinking out of the box for once - new lanes need not and cannot go through downtown Seattle except in the current right of way (under the current lanes), so they would have to go around it. There is room along the Aurora corridor for many more lanes - if the idiotic city council and mayor were not blinded by their vision of "open space" created by a tunnel that would forever limit throughput in the corridor. But of course, artificially limiting the utility of personal transportation is just is one aspect of their goal to bring about social change and egalitarianism rather than an efficient transportation system. You only need to review the resumes of the morons who have been selected as the 14 semi-finalists for the vacancy on the city council to understand where the current members' priorities lie.
Posted by: srogers on January 18, 2006 07:02 PMYou see, it's not about reducing congestion...it's about providing alternatives.
(Whatever the he!! that means...)
Posted by: South County on January 18, 2006 07:14 PMMonty Python was right--there really is a Silly Party and it's in charge right here in socialist Seattle.
Posted by: Burdabee on January 18, 2006 09:00 PMThe only people that seem to get a benefit from riding the train are the government workers that are all working in this area.
Could that be a coincidence?
Posted by: Ken on January 19, 2006 08:06 AMTo that whack job poster that noted the hundreds of thousand pf people that use the freeway in Everett vs. the 350 perfect people that ride the train what is your problem!@?!? They just have not understood the education correctly. We need MORE money for more trains and better public skools WHOA SORRY Joni Earl hijacked my mind there for a minute! I retract!! But maybe I should ride the train...mmmmmm kool aid
So lets all put our “commuting burkas” on and go to work and pay homage to the idol of transportation choices!
* - again my apologies to the 1 blogger and 1 poster at SP that expect us to vote for more liberal “transportation” ideas so Republicans will get more votes.
SOUND TRANSIT 2004 OPERATING EXPENSES
IN 2004, OPERATING COST PER BOARDING ON THE SOUNDER TRAIN WAS $19.40. THE DAILY COST OF A TWO-WAY COMMUTE WAS $38.80…MORE THAN $10,000 FOR ONE YEARS SERVICE.
THE ANNUALIZED CAPITOL COST PER TRIP IS $100.00, FOR A TOTAL OF $119.40. TOTAL ANNUAL COST FOR EACH DAILY COMMUTER IS $62,000.
TACOMA LINK COST $80.4 MILLION (32% COST OVER-RIDE)
IT IS NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK OUT THE ANNUALIZED COST BECAUSE OF SOUND TRANSITS ACCOUNTING PRACTICES.
OPERATING COST OF $4.0 MILLION, USING SOUND TRANSITS OWN NUMBER OF 740,000 BOARDING’S, WHICH AVERAGES OUT TO $5.41 PER BOARDING.
TACOMA LINK MAKES 62,500 TRIPS A YEAR WITH 740,000 BOARDING’S. THE CAPACITY OF EACH TRAIN IS 80 PASSENGERS, MAKING THE AVERAGE OCCUPANCY RATE OF 15% OR 12 PASSENGERS.
IN A PRESS CONFERENCE GIVEN BUY RON SIMMS & KEVIN PHELPS; THEY APPLAUDED SOUND TRANSIT FOR THE TACOMA LINK PROJECT AS THEIR” MOST SUCCESSFUL VENTURE YET “
TACOMA DOME “FREE” PARKING ANNUALIZED COST…$6.33 PER STALL PER DAY.
SO MUCH FOR "FREE"
Posted by: TACOMA PHLASH on January 19, 2006 08:53 AM
Even with higher ridership in 2005, operating costs per one-way passenger are likely to exceed $30, once final numbers for the year are tallied. And that doesn't factor in capital costs.
"The cost-per-rider numbers on that train are absolutely horrendous," said John Niles, technical director of the Coalition for Effective Transportation Alternatives (CETA), an anti-rail group. "Sound Transit would do better to put all that money into improved bus service."
How would you like to have your annual transportation subsidized to the tune of $60 per day plus having all your capital costs covered?
I would prefer bus rapid transit with dedicated resources (offramps, HOV lanes) myself as a rapid transit strategy 'round here, as Sane Transit has suggested. The point should be to give people who commute and don't NEED cars (because they are going from point A to point B and back 5 days a week) a way to do it without jamming up the road for those of us who don't have that luxury. I know I always do this whenever I can- why drive a car if you don't have to and can spend time reading work working on a bus?
That being said...
Finally, you might try thinking out of the box for once - new lanes need not and cannot go through downtown Seattle except in the current right of way (under the current lanes), so they would have to go around it. There is room along the Aurora corridor for many more lanes - if the idiotic city council and mayor were not blinded by their vision of "open space" created by a tunnel that would forever limit throughput in the corridor.
You haven't driven Aurora Avenue between the bridge and the Battery Street tunnel lately, have you? Lots of brand new condos going up flush to Aurora. You're going to condemn all those? And pay an outrageous amount to the owners for the lost value, AND remove brand new housing stock from Seattle, so we can drive more cars? Maybe we can replace the stock OUTSIDE Seattle. so we can have more commuters! Brilliant! Also, part of the reason the west side of Queen Anne is greenbelt is that the slopes aren't so hot for building purposes. And heck, maybe we don't WANT to look like Los Angeles- they have freeways, traffic jams and suburbs as far as the eye can see...
I'll grant that there's more development area in North Seattle, true...except, didja notice that Aurora goes through a cemetery AND a zoo?
The simple fact is that N-S freeway lanes in Seattle are going to be ridiculously expensive, no matter where you put them. Bridges over water. Expensive real estate/condemnation costs. Labor and cost of materials. Given that traffic jams are pretty much a lock for ANY good urban area (please name me an urban area comparable in size to Seattle that DOES NOT have them), expecting to build your way out of them doesn't work- all you do is encourage sprawl and perhaps temporarily increase supply. Like I said, if you LIKE LA and Orange County, go live there. I hear they even elect Republicans.
Posted by: eponymous coward on January 19, 2006 10:05 AM