Randal O'Toole: "Debunking Portland: The Public Transit Myth"
Portland officials spend more than half the region's transportation funds on transit, but that doesn't mean Portlanders ride it. In fact, since Portland began building rail transit in the 1980s, transit's market share of commuting has actually declined from 9.8 percent to 7.6 percent, mainly because the high cost of rail in a few corridors forced the transit agency to reduce bus service in some parts of the region and prevented improvements in others.Read the whole thing.
Never mind that an $8 million study that already concluded the same thing; said study being resoundingly trashed at the polls by a paltry 70% NO vote back in 95 or 96.
The city of Vancouver is locally, and bizarrely, fixated on 2 goals: becoming the second largest city in the state (as if that mattered or made any difference) and ramming loot rail down our throats.
What we need down here are additional bridges; Portland has 11 bridges crossing the Willamette River; Clark County has a population of over 410,000; a population that has doubled over the past 20 years; and we had 2 bridges then... and 2 bridges now.
Loot rail will do nothing to address congestion; it's already wasted $58 million, and the local criminals running this effort want to milk us for hundreds of millions more.
Posted by: Hinton on August 18, 2007 11:51 AMWe don't need more...we already have enough...we have to use it more judiciously.
Didn't people's mom's tell them: just because there is a box of cookies in the cabinet, doesn't mean that you have to eat them all.
Posted by: John Bailo on August 18, 2007 01:37 PMGet rid of all transit.
Build more and more roads everywhere.
Eminent domain will come in handy to help pave over the region....unless someone files an initiative to stop that (ouch)
Posted by: Bill Anderson on August 18, 2007 01:51 PMBRT: Bus Rapid Transit. Point-to-point. Just like Boeing's Dreamliner.
It's why BA is kicking Airbus booty: Because travellers/passengers/commuters don't want to have to get on a bus to go to the train to get on a bus to go wherever (or a plane to a plane to a plane). They ALL want to go point-to-point.
BRT allows for scaleability based on ridership, distance, weather, construction, etc, etc. Loot rail does NONE of those things.
Please. Think with your head. And your wallet. Loot rail is just communism in another form.
Posted by: cmiklich on August 18, 2007 02:10 PMAs usual your side loves to engage in hyperbole. Instead of debating, accusing your opponent of taking an extreme position, then take the opposite one. I guess it worked for you in high school.
Posted by: Manco on August 18, 2007 02:34 PMIt's too bad we spent a trillion or so in Iraq instead of WASTING it over here.
Posted by: WVH on August 18, 2007 02:34 PMhttp://youtube.com/watch?v=AportXHv7jg
A study in the politics of transportation spending.
Saturday, August 18, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Some things in politics seem to be inevitable--and one of them is that any road or bridge tragedy will be followed by an argument to raise the gasoline tax. That's what is now happening in the wake of the terrible Minnesota bridge collapse, but that state's transportation and tax record shows precisely why voters are skeptical.
The gas tax pleas are coming from the usual suspects, in both Washington and St. Paul. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, as a way to prevent future bridge collapses. His wing man, Alaska Republican and former Transportation Chairman Don Young, agrees wholeheartedly.
As it happens, these are the same men who played the lead role in the $286 billion 2005 federal highway bill. That's the bill that diverted billions of dollars of gas tax money away from urgent road and bridge projects toward Member earmarks for bike paths, nature trails and inefficient urban transit systems.
In Minnesota, meanwhile, politicians and editorial writers imply that the bridge collapse is somehow the fault of those like GOP Governor Tim Pawlenty who believe in the "motto" of no new taxes, as a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune put it. Mr. Pawlenty has been skewered for his veto earlier this year of a 7.5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase (from 20 cents a gallon currently). Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, has told her Gopher State constituents that if President Bush weren't keeping us in Iraq, bridges wouldn't be falling down.
Mr. Pawlenty has been wavering, first saying after the collapse that he was open to a tax increase but more recently showing more reluctance. Democrats in the Legislature are also demanding a sales tax hike to raise another $1.5 billion. What's never explained is why the gas-tax revenue they already raise is so poorly spent.
Minnesota's transportation auditors warned as long ago as 1990 that there was a "backlog of bridges that are classified as having structural deficiencies." In 1999 engineers declared that cracks found in the bridge that collapsed were "a major concern." Bike paths were deemed a higher priority by Congress, however, including its powerful Minnesota Representatives.
As recently as July 25, Mr. Oberstar sent out a press release boasting that he had "secured more than $12 million in funding" for his state in a recent federal transportation and housing bill. But $10 million of that was dedicated to a commuter rail line, $250,000 for the "Isanti Bike/Walk Trail," $200,000 to bus services in Duluth, and $150,000 for the Mesabi Academy of Kidspeace in Buhl. None of it went for bridge repair.
Minnesota's state budget is also hardly short of tax revenue. The state spends $25 billion a year, twice what it did 10 years ago. The Tax Foundation reports that Minnesota has the seventh highest personal income tax rates among all states, the third highest corporate tax rates, and the 10th highest taxes on workers.
The Legislature started the year with a record $2 billion budget surplus, and the economy threw off another $149 million of unexpected revenue. Where did all that money go? Not to roads and bridges. The Taxpayers League of Minnesota says the politicians chose to pour those tax dollars into more spending for health care, art centers, sports stadiums and welfare benefits.
Even transportation dollars aren't scarce. Minnesota spends $1.6 billion a year on transportation--enough to build a new bridge over the Mississippi River every four months. But nearly $1 billion of that has been diverted from road and bridge repair to the state's light rail network that has a negligible impact on traffic congestion. Last year part of a sales tax revenue stream that is supposed to be dedicated for road and bridge construction was re-routed to mass transit. The Minnesota Department of Economic Development reports that only 2.8% of the state's commuters ride buses or rail to get to work, but these projects get up to 25% of the funding.
Americans aren't selfish or stingy, and they can see for themselves that many of our roads need repair. Minnesota in particular is a state that has long prided itself on its "progressive" politics and a willingness to pay higher taxes for good government. Minnesotans already pay twice as much in taxes per capita than residents in New Hampshire and Texas--states that haven't had a major bridge collapse.
We suspect most voters would indeed be willing to pay more for better roads and bridges, if they had any reason to believe that is where the money would be spent. But they have long experience with politicians promising them that new taxes will go to such projects only to see it diverted for parochial ends. A new Survey USA poll finds that 57% of Minnesotans oppose higher gas taxes. Mr. Pawlenty can follow their advice, or Mr. Oberstar's.
"Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc."
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on August 18, 2007 05:24 PMCommon sense - where is it ? Vote NO on the RTID and have this boondoggle redone to a more tolerable package instead of a mortgage on our futures !
Posted by: KS on August 18, 2007 05:50 PM"Yup.
It's too bad we spent a trillion or so in Iraq instead of WASTING it over here.
Posted by WVH at August 18, 2007 02:34 PM"
This is not my comment, I request you trace the offender. You know my IP address. This does not reflect my sentiment. In fact, I favored the action in Iraq. My quarrel is that the troop surge should have come after entry into the country to make the society secure. Whoever you are, you cretin, you have committed the cardinal sin of blogging and used another's moniker. I hope that you are banished.
Posted by: WVH on August 18, 2007 09:03 PMI think I'd be better off with a lot of things I don't want to pay for.
Posted by: pudge on August 18, 2007 10:31 PMI'm not taking you up on the bet, I think you'd win because the odds are probably in your favor.
If it is a Sound Transit IP, they should be fired.
Not because they used my moniker, but because they are an idiot. When this much money and risk is at stake the society needs people working at the project whose mental facilities are firing on all cylinders. I wouldn't trust this cretin with taking care of a fish.
O'Toole is not a Portlander, but (according to his own web site's bio) is based out of the small town of Bandon, Oregon, population 2,833, and a 246 mile drive down the coast and over a mountain range from Portland.
While light rail and transit are not an automatic success by themselves, they are not the universal failures that Mr. O'Toole's tales portray.
His "facts", such that they are, do not add up to the results of widely accepted scientific studies and surveys, such as the recent American Community Survey by the US Census Bureau (2005).
That survey shows that Portland is in the top 10 for US cities for transit commute share. The City of Portland has a transit commute share of 13.3%, and a bicycling commute share of 3.5%. The margin of error for the various subgroups is quite low as this was an extensive survey.
Portland commutes times are lower than the national average, and although the population is growing, the vehicle miles driven per capita remain steady (bucking a national trend of increasing VMT) while transit daily rides have grown faster than population growth in all but one or two years over the last 20 (when light rail was introduced.)
This is not to say Portland is without problems. What works here may not work other places, and not everything about transit here is a complete success. But it is clear that Portland's transit use significantly exceeds that of other cities its size (and even some larger cities) and that light rail has been a component of this success.
The Seattle region in particular currently has transit ridership that exceeds Portland -- it should, because the area has a greater population density and a larger overall population -- and care must be taken that light rail projects do not diminish bus service on the remaining routes, but Light Rail is not an inherent evil and properly implemented can reduce long term operating costs and significantly increase ridership.
- Bob R.
The arguments against light rail transit seem to be about personal use (I don't want to have to go far to use it...so if it won't be good for me I"m against it all together). The cost is often used too...but what is the cost of our current congestion? Folks here argue sometimes for more buses..but simultaneously say buses don't get used as is. Really, by extension, it comes down to more roads, more roads and more roads. However, it's hard to find a place where that has ever worked (hint...read up on Bernoulli's principle).
This benefits the few at the expense of the many (if one uses other cities as examples...where the transit systems, in place for awhile, provides much larger cities with less congestion than our area has).
So my comment above was one of slight hyperbole...on purpose...to show the absurdity of the get rid of light transit argument.
Portland's congestion exceeds that of Seattle's in study after study, and Seattle doesn't have a foot of operating loot rail while Portland has an extensive, time and money-wasting system up and running.
Where Mr. O'Toole is from is irrelevant deflection. You do nothing to dispute his many disheartening facts, and that is the issue.
Clearly, the idea that cost somehow shouldn't be the determining factor; cost to build, cost to operate, cost per passenger; is absurd on it's face.
Loot rail does not relieve congestion, yet it costs billions. To that end, yes, it IS "inherently evil," and those who actually believe it accomplishes something positive besides vacuuming up scarce transportation dollars for little return may certainly feel free to move to any of those utopias that currently have such a system in place; and they should also feel free to do so without taking my wallet with them.
Posted by: Hinton on August 19, 2007 05:24 AMNo, I'm against it because it is the least effective solution.
When the train breaks down (frequent mudslides render the North end Sounder train irrelevant as a reliable commuting option), do "they" send another train to pick up the passengers? No. They send a bus.
Conversely when the bus breaks down, do they send a train? No. They send another bus.
Trains are unscaleable. Fixed. Unalterable. They are not scaleable for population density or for any other factor. MOF, because of the tremendous following distances required, they can NEVER carry the population that just ONE LANE OF FREEWAY TRAFFIC can. Bus after bus following mere feet behind each other (instead of miles) can carry FAR MORE PEOPLE than a train.
Like the rails themselves, train advocates' thinking is narrow and fixed.
Trains were an excellent step up from the horse and buggy. They are over 200 years old and serve very little useful purpose for commuting.
Even in NYC, an overwhelming MAJORITY of commuters commute by bus and car. Trains (subways) carry little more than 1/3. This in a city with densities 20x Seattle's.
Stop the insanity.
Kill Sound Transit.
So for multi billion dollars we get:
- a system that does nothing to provide a real alternative to congestion
- a system that doesn't link the largest regional centers
- a system that takes people off of cheaper, more flexible busses and puts them on to an inflexible, very expensive system
- a slow system (why use LR when you can drive to a place faster?)
- a system that ignores our geography and topography, which adds billions to the price
We are paying billions of dollars not for a transportation project, but a SE Seattle urban renewal project. This was shoved down our throat by politicians while many geographers and transportation planners warned them that this would be a large mistake.
Posted by: AP on August 19, 2007 10:42 AMIn the next three years, GM and Toyota and BMW and others will have groundbreaking new technology for their cars: hydrogen fueled, or hybrid gas-battery. The Volt is slated for 2010 and will get 150 mph. Yes, that is the spec.
It is far more important for people to have money in their pockets to replace their private automobile at this critical time then to be taxed out of their paycheck for a choo-choo train that most will never use...or for roads to nowhere.
We need to replace aging gas guzzling cars with the next generation of clean cars, that can be up to 5 times more efficient!
Solving environmental problems will not come from Olympia -- but from your local Chevy dealer!
Posted by: John Bailo on August 19, 2007 10:42 AMThe one area of mass transit, buses, heavy or light rail that never gets its due is the subsidy given to riders. Roads are fully paid by those who use them through taxes and license fees. It is a lot of money, but people generally think that the convieniece of road travel offsets the costs. I think those who praise mass transit, light and heavy rail particularly, would not be so lavish in their praise if they paid the full cost through fares. If you asked them if they are willing to spend, let's say, $20 for a one way trip from the airport to downtown I doubt if there would be nearly as many supporters.
http://www.transact.org/ANTC/1_28_04_jobs_alert.asp
The Portland airport light rail line (MAX Red Line) gets over 8 million annual boarding rides. The full cost of constructing the line, including vehicles, amortized over 30 years, with interest, is well under $1 per boarding ride. The normal operating and maintenance cost per boarding ride is under $2. Thus, the total cost per boarding ride is well under $3. An All-Zone fare is currently $2, although there are also discounts and monthly and annual passes. The truth of the matter is that over the lifetime of the system, light rail requires much less subsidy than critics suggest.
- Bob R.
Posted by: Bob R. on August 19, 2007 05:24 PMLight Rail Trains do not deliver anywhere near the capacity of new lane miles for their cost. And they only serve a small subset of the population.
There must be some psychosis whereby a large number of today's left leaning transit planners were deprived of toy trains as children and now they need to act out their missing childhood experiences on regional transit.
BRT would serve far more people, for far less cost, and allow us to simultaneously improve our majority road transit infrastructure, and replace any aging and dangerous portions before we have a MN event here.
But that would not fit the transit utopia narrative, and it wouldn't console all those who never got to play with a train set when they were young.
Posted by: Jeff B. on August 19, 2007 11:52 PM