Today's Seattle Times has a guest op-ed by transportation consultant Jim MacIsaac -- "Don't believe the hype: Tri-county transit package is flawed"
If the roads-and-transit package is approved, it means Sound Transit's Sound Move (ST1) sales tax levy will be extended. By 2057, Sound Transit will have collected a whopping $141 billion in extended ST1 plus ST2 local tax revenues. In the combined RTID/ST2 package, only 10 percent of the total revenue is dedicated to roadsOn the other hand, MacIsaac reminds us, "ST2 light rail will have minimal impact on our region's traffic congestion".
Read the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Will at Horse's Ass today offers what is probably the best argument for light rail we're likely to hear: Light rail won't have any of the smelly passengers that buses have, or something.
Like I said, it's probably the best argument for light rail we're likely to hear.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 16, 2007 03:44 PM | Email ThisSurprised that ST doesn't go after him. Because they can't? That is what I think.
Posted by: swatter on August 16, 2007 03:40 PMIt doesn't make sense to use year of expenditure dollars like this, because as the cost of the components of the projects increase, so does everything else we spend money on, and our incomes too. The sales tax collected is a percentage, so the amount collected rises, but it's still the same percentage of what you're spending. Remember, a hundred years ago a $20,000 per year salary was a lot of money!
Sound Transit can't respond because they're not allowed to use your and my tax dollars to campaign - and I'm sure that if they did, you'd crucify them for it. At least I can point out MacIsaac's ridiculous math.
Posted by: Ben Schiendelman on August 16, 2007 07:00 PMIt doesn't make sense to use year of expenditure dollars like this, because as the cost of the components of the projects increase, so does everything else we spend money on, and our incomes too. The sales tax collected is a percentage, so the amount collected rises, but it's still the same percentage of what you're spending. Remember, a hundred years ago a $20,000 per year salary was a lot of money!
Sound Transit can't respond because they're not allowed to use your and my tax dollars to campaign - and I'm sure that if they did, you'd crucify them for it. At least I can point out MacIsaac's ridiculous math.
Posted by: Ben Schiendelman on August 16, 2007 07:00 PMAt $500 million per mile, that's a real raw deal for commuters. The money would be far better spent on roads, where then buses could benefit as well as all of the commuters, goods and services that form the vast majority of today's transportation.
Instead, we see Transit Utopians cling to their dreams of trains, even when the cost taxpayers outrageous sums, and end up with so little use.
The solution is to clean up the buses, introduce BRT technologies like boarding tubes, automated fare collection, etc. It's far cheaper to make buses more like trains, clean them up, make better use of HOV lanes, and have the flexibility to shift routes based on demand, than it is to build even one small segment of light rail.
We've got our token light rail to the airport now, and just like in Portland, it will be under utilized. That's enough squandering of public resources. Kill RTID and do us all a favor.
Posted by: Jeff B. on August 16, 2007 08:44 PM1) LRT will provide major new band-width to handle crush travel demand at rush hour in the region's most heaavily travelled arteries-- extending the useful service life of the highway grid and handling travel demand growth for decades to come.
2) The proposed plan will provide a safe, fast, reliable alternative to driving between the cities of the region where 75% of the popoulation lives, giving most people a choice of how to get around: drive or ride.
3) The system will return value to the economy in excess of its capital cost within five years of full operation, an incoming economic tide that will raise many boats.
4) It will reduce the cost of automobile ownership for many people by changing the nature of peoples' trips. Most users, instead of slogging 10, 15, 20 miles through rush hour traffic and incurring the related cost of fuel, wear & tear, etc, will drive a couple miles to the station and ride from there.
McIsaac is paid by Kemper Freeman to prosecute an ideological offensive against transit. He plays games with numbers just like every other political spinmeister. As someone with an engineering background, I can't understand why people in this area are so scared of having a rail system capable of moving large numbers of folks during periods of peak travel demand. It can only help us.
Posted by: shooter on August 16, 2007 10:10 PMI say pour it on, public urinators! They're getting mad as hell, and they're not going to take it any more!
Light rail has a capacity of around 20,000 passengers per direction per hour while a highway lane has a capacity of around 2,000 vehicles per hour. Note that capacity goes down as the number of lanes increase. Clearly light rail has much room to grow and is much more space efficient than road expansion. In the long term 50-100 years, it will be much more cost effective.
Regarding balance, what matters is the lack balance over the last hundred years. If one looks at the current value of all the roads and highways in the region, I suspect it will be much greater than any amount proposed to be spent on light rail. We have spent so much over the years on roads at the expense of transit. It is not surprising that so many people drive. That is what we have made it easy for them to do. It is past time that transit be made really good. It will take quite a while to catch up. ST2 is a start but it will take much more.
By the way, all the road construction so far has caused congestion. Any further amount spent on roads will only make it worse. You can't build your way out of congestion. Road or congestion pricing plus transit improvements are the way to go. Just look at what NYC is up to.
Light rail has a capacity of around 20,000 passengers per direction per hour while a highway lane has a capacity of around 2,000 vehicles per hour. Note that capacity goes down as the number of lanes increase. Clearly light rail has much room to grow and is much more space efficient than road expansion. In the long term 50-100 years, it will be much more cost effective.
Regarding balance, what matters is the lack balance over the last hundred years. If one looks at the current value of all the roads and highways in the region, I suspect it will be much greater than any amount proposed to be spent on light rail. We have spent so much over the years on roads at the expense of transit. It is not surprising that so many people drive. That is what we have made it easy for them to do. It is past time that transit be made really good. It will take quite a while to catch up. ST2 is a start but it will take much more.
By the way, all the road construction so far has caused congestion. Any further amount spent on roads will only make it worse. You can't build your way out of congestion. Road or congestion pricing plus transit improvements are the way to go. Just look at what NYC is up to.
The reality is that light rail, or sound transit, even with huge subsidies is still much more expensive than owning and operating one's own car. That has been roundly debunked many times. And those figures will only continue to diverge because cars keep getting cheaper and cheaper to own, whereas union maintained and leased transit trains are getting more and more expensive to own. Autos are here to stay, and due to technological advances, autos are becoming incredibly reliable. To the tune of 100,000s of miles, and much more than the service needed for transit vehicles. And the cost of maintenance is distributed amongst the populace as a whole, because we all service our own cars, and have an incentive to service them as best we can and for the lowest price so they will keep running. Transit trains come with extortion unions contracts and all sorts of pensions and other rising benefits that only inflate the cost, along with the interest on the massive bonds used to fund them.
Shooter totally ignores the $62K per year per passenger subsidy it takes just to pay the expenses on the Sounder Train to and from Tacoma. One could buy the passenger a cheap Toyota ULEV and a car lifetime supply of maintenance and fuel for that cost, and probably even have a lot leftover.
And, fuel will get cheaper despite what oil fear mongers say. It won't be long before hydrogen and other alternative fuels are making major inroads, because they will do the job for far less, and lessen our needs for foreign oil. Cars will evolve rapidly, but light and heavy rails take years to modify and evolve, because any change effects the whole system. In the Bay Area, trains for BART were only recently upgraded, and the system has been in operation since the 1970s. Autos turnover much quicker, because it happens one car at a time.
On top of all of the above, once you factor in driving to and from park and ride, and transit garages, plus train fares and bus fares, etc. its still more expensive to commute by train, and most who do choose transit, do so only when it is so convenient in terms of their proximity to the station, or because they want to take advantage of time lost driving. It's not because it is the obvious choice system, less expensive, etc. And it drastically limits the options of a person who has left their car home. Just look at the Sounder schedules vs. the bus schedules between Tacoma and Seattle. The Bus is FAR, FAR more convenient and timely than the train, and cheaper too. And it gets one much closer to the endpoints of their destination.
The reality is that only 1 to 2% of the populace will be served by light rail for decades to come, and that would be at a cost of Billions, that will deprive us from funding more roads and buses and maintaining existing roads and bridges.
It's a no-brainer, RTID/ST2, Shoot'er down.
Rich people stay at home and do what they want -- it's only wage slaves who have to slog around in traffic.
The first thing to do is to get rid of all the restrictions on business and all the red tape.
Posted by: John Bailo on August 16, 2007 11:53 PMWhen you add the insurance premiums and other fixed costs of a car, using light rail is not cheaper.
Two miles to a train station? Let's see, that means a station every 4 miles to get some coverage, but the number should be every 2 miles to account for living outside the radius at 4 miles.
That means the 'shooter' has a new invention. How do you get people onto the trains as the train shoots through the station, because we all know the time to start/stop and exchange passengers at each station is roughly 15 minutes? 15 minutes at 2 mile increments for 20 miles is 2 1/2 hours. You can quibble at the start and stop and travel times, as well as on/off times, but the 'shooters' utopia isn't going to happen.
Posted by: swatter on August 17, 2007 07:00 AMAnother good point. It would be one thing if we were talking about a heavy rail system that would of course cost much more than light rail, but might also have much shorter dwell times at stations, and also a much greater per train passenger capacity. As it is, we will be talking about a mostly toy system with a lot of grade crossings, and longer dwell times at stations, etc. It will take a long time to get from Seattle to Tacoma or vice versa. One would be far better off on an express bus, because let's face it, most people want to go from endpoint to endpoint and don't care about the stations in between.
Even if light rail was built, the bus would still be a better mode of travel for those who wanted convenience and cared about their time in getting to their destination
Say no to Billions for fixed route trains.
Posted by: Jeff B. on August 17, 2007 07:27 AMThose of us without backgrounds can see the folly of fixed rail/rapid transit/subways to solve the problems in the Puget Sound region. It first requires a look at how we ended up with the transportation network we have. We have lots and lots of hills; the biggest detriment is Lake Washington that runs what- 30 miles north to south exactly where a north-south freeway with east-west feeders should go. We have the cost of crossing several major water bodies either above or below ground. Below ground is real pricey and dicey with the geology of the area.
Plus, we have very undense population. I recently went to Seoul and saw a very successful subway/train system with megacondos near train stations (again, flat ground between Incheon and Seoul). But, it was the density that drives this system. Seattle and environs don't have that, and if you read Crosscut.com, you will find that people are whining now that population densities are just fine, thank you.
The main problem with Light Rail's plan is the fact that it takes longer because of the at grade crossings. Move it above ground or on dedicated lines where roads go above or below, and light rail could match Sounder speed, which I believe is around 60 mph. Of course, dedicated lines cost even more. Therefore, the reality is BRT is the most cost effective near term solution.
In my own world dominion, the way I would plan things is plan the arterials and rail lines before development occurs, instead of trying to retrofit. This is the biggest mistake planners make out here. There is rarely a city around here that plans growth properly. Because of that we all suffer the effects of poor planning. The cities let the pro-growth developers and non-growth activist drive them too much, while the silent majority is stuck with the bill.
It is time the silent majority to end its silence and speak out load. Developers should bear the brunt of impact on the system (e.g., need for new sewers, aterials, and other systems to extend the growth to their planned development), and it is time for elected officials to be realistic about the society. We don't want to live in some urban packed jungle. We like a sense of local community. Instead of concentrating on how to get everyone to a single place (e.g., downtown Seattle), the local leaders should concentrate more on how to get businesses to locate where the people live.
This is just my two cents.
Posted by: tc on August 17, 2007 08:46 AMThe main problem with Light Rail's plan is the fact that it takes longer because of the at grade crossings. Move it above ground or on dedicated lines where roads go above or below, and light rail could match Sounder speed, which I believe is around 60 mph. Of course, dedicated lines cost even more. Therefore, the reality is BRT is the most cost effective near term solution.
In my own world dominion, the way I would plan things is plan the arterials and rail lines before development occurs, instead of trying to retrofit. This is the biggest mistake planners make out here. There is rarely a city around here that plans growth properly. Because of that we all suffer the effects of poor planning. The cities let the pro-growth developers and non-growth activist drive them too much, while the silent majority is stuck with the bill.
It is time the silent majority to end its silence and speak out load. Developers should bear the brunt of impact on the system (e.g., need for new sewers, aterials, and other systems to extend the growth to their planned development), and it is time for elected officials to be realistic about the society. We don't want to live in some urban packed jungle. We like a sense of local community. Instead of concentrating on how to get everyone to a single place (e.g., downtown Seattle), the local leaders should concentrate more on how to get businesses to locate where the people live.
This is just my two cents.
Posted by: tc on August 17, 2007 08:46 AMI spent a week in D.C. several years ago, and I seem to recall that D.C. trains stop just long enough to let people on and off. A couple of minutes at most.
I was really amazed at how easy and fast it was to get around in D.C. on the trains. Granted, I was on vacation, so I didn't ride the trains during peak periods, but the trains were never crowded. The trains are clean and riffraff is heavily discouraged.
I don't know what it costs taxpayers in D.C. for their rail system, but it seemed very popular.
It would be interesting to see statistics on the effectiveness of the D.C. rail system.
Cost of Car ownership (gross average)
monthly payment: $200-$250 x 12 = $2400-$3000/yr
monthly insurance: $100 x 12 = $1200/yr
monthly fuel: $100 x 12 = $1200/yr
annual maint: +/-$1000/yr
Approx total: $5500-$6500/yr
Cost of ST (average household)
ST1 sales tax: $100/yr
ST1 MVET: $60/yr
ST2 sales tax: $125/yr
transit pass: $45/mo x 12 =$540/yr
Approx total: $825/yr (if you use it regularly)
Approx alt total: $285 plus occasional fares (if you don't)
There is certainly value to a person's pocketbook of driving fewer miles and incurring lower maintenance costs. How that value compares with $285-$825/yr is a discussion worth having.
Posted by: shooter on August 17, 2007 10:00 AMI agree somewhat with the analysis of cars versus non-cars, but that wasn't your analysis. I won't nitpick your figures at this time.
As far as my 15 minute figure, let's discuss. Unless these are supermachines, they can't start and stop on a dime without throwing the passengers all over the place. It takes time to start up and slow down. In your analysis, you used frequent stations (i.e. 2 miles drive to the station for all users) as your base. My 15 minutes included startup and slowdown for a 2 mile stretch. I doubt within 2 miles you can startup (accelerate) and slowdown (decelerate) and still get up to 60 mph without throwing the passengers into cardiac arrest.
Posted by: swatter on August 17, 2007 10:33 AM
Last year ST took in $256,000,000 in sales taxes.
There is a population within the ST district of about 2.58 million.
That's $100 per year for every man woman and child in the district, not $100 for the "average household."
Is your supposed figure for the "ST2" sales tax increase also woefully low because of your bad math?
Let's say households pay 60% of the sales taxes ST took in last year (and businesses paid the rest). That would mean last year households paid $154,000,000 in sales taxes to ST.
With a population of 2.58 million in the ST district, that is about $60 per year per man, woman and child. A household of three thus paid $180 in sales taxes to ST (at the .4% rate).
That's quite a bit more than your $100 per household figure.
The cumulative tax burden of ST1 and ST2 sales taxes going forward for this family of three would be $405 (2006$) per year if ST2 passes. That's the sum of $180 plus (1.25 x $180), because ST would be collecting a total .9% sales tax.
That figure doesn't include the car tab tax costs from ST1 and RTID, nor does it include the RTID .1% sales tax. My family has two cars, so now I'm EASILY over $500 per year to frigging Sound Transit.
I'd much rather keep that money - light rail would not add much from a macro-economic perspective (if anything), and I've got better uses for that big chunk of change each year.
Posted by: T. Cobblepot on August 17, 2007 11:39 AMTherefore, additional light rail can be added in the future - it is unfair to burden those who will not realize any noticeable benefits. Keeping a link to cross Lake Washington would be one worth building in the foreseeable future. How about some common sense, instead of greed and ambition used by the elitist local politicians ?
Posted by: KS on August 17, 2007 12:00 PMNot true. The price of a widget is a function of the market for that widget. The market price in the vast majority of cases is not elastic depending on factors such as changes in some widget manufacturer's tax burden.
Posted by: O.J. Sampson on August 17, 2007 12:45 PM1) The increased tax a business pays need not be passed on to customers, for example, it could just eat into the dividends paid to the owners of that business. That being said,
2) We are both right, with the reality somewhere between what the two of us are blathering about.
The reality is closer to what I wrote of course, but hey, your point is valid to some extent.
Posted by: O.J. Samspon on August 17, 2007 01:18 PMThe ST1 taxes were supposed to be reduced to cover debt service and O&M costs only after 2006 if ST2 was not approved. But Sound Transit committed both the ST1 MVET and the ST1 sales tax to secure the 1999 bond issue. Though by voter pressure the Legislature eliminated the MVET taxes in 2000, Sound Transit used legal means to maintain its 0.3% MVET until the 1999 bond series is paid off in 2028, after which the ST1 MVET tax will be eliminated.
Sound Transit is committing the ST1 sales tax to backing all ST1 bond sales thru 2036. Approval of ST2 will in effect extend the ST1 sales tax in perpetuity. ST2 sales tax revenues will be committed to backing all bond sales for ST2. As with the MVET, Sound Transit will legally claim that the ST2 taxes cannot be reduced until all ST2 bonds are paid off in 2057.
Between 2008 and 2057 Sound Transit will collect $64 billion in extended ST1 tax revenues and $77 billion in ST2 tax revenues, accounted in actual dollars collected. The RTID will collect $16.1 billion thru 2037 when its taxes end. The total is $157 billion, 10% of which goes to the RTID roads plus some transit program and 90% goes to the Sound Transit programs.
Why use real future dollars? Because that is what is used for disclosing costs for all public works projects through date of completion; e.g., the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the SR-520 bridge relacement, sports stadiums, and the RTID until Sound Transit took over its PR work. All projects are monitored in terms of actual revenues and expenses, not in backdated 2006$ as being promoted by Sound Transit.
Sound Transit likes to compare use of its backdated cost estimates to a house mortgage where most buyers only consider the immediate cost of the house. But what if the buyer has to pay that mortgage for 20 years before s/he are allowed to move in? The RTID and ST2 projects will not be fully operational until 2027. I contend that voters need to be informed that approval of the R&T package is commiting $157 billion in future taxes that may be much more cost-effectively spent on alternative transportation programs and/or other public service needs.
Sound Transit CAN respond to my facts disclosures because my fact-finding is no different from Sound Transit's fact-finding disclosures. And it is spending $millions to deliver its "facts" to the general public, whereas my work is only compensated by and occasional latte.
To Shooter @5, I have spent thousands of hours since 1990 in obtaining information and evaluating the regional transit programs. None of my work has been influenced by nor paid for by Kemper Freeman or anyone else -- it has been done pro bono for anyone interested. I have carefully used Sound Transit and RTID data in reaching my findings and conclusions, even though some critics contend that Sound Transit is over-estimating ridership and fare revenues and underestimating the growth in O&M costs.
I welcome knowledgeable debate -- not off-the-wall unsubstantiated allegations.
Posted by: Jmac on August 19, 2007 03:22 PM