Sound Transit has a feedback survey that you can take from now until Mar. 9, 2008.

I urge you to go take the survey, and answer politely but candidly. Help the Sound Transit folks realize that their own listed goals are unattainable. Here's the list:

Frequency: Fast, convenient, timely with more daily trips and expanded bus service.

Reliable Service:

Environmental Benefits: A system that protects air and water quality while at the same time offering real transportation options.

Affordability: People want a transit system that will use a limited spending budget to accomplish its transit objectives -- connecting the region and increasing commuter options.

Accountability: People want to know their dollars will go to cost-effectively delivering expanded transit service.

More Capacity in Congested Corridors: Continuing job and population growth will clog our roads and make it harder to get around--posing a real risk to our regional economy. People want transit investments that add to our people-moving capacity in the most crowded corridors and meet the region's needs on a long-term basis. This will keep our region moving and support the economy.

Incremental approach: In November 2007, voters in the Central Puget Sound region considered and voted against Proposition 1, the "Roads and Transit" measure to expand both roads and transit in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. Research following the failure of that measure shows that while the public strongly supports investing in transit expansions, voters appear to support considering separate measures for transit and roads. The public also appears to support voting on investments in a more incremental fashion rather than as part of a single large package such as Proposition 1.

It does take an traffic engineer or an MBA to see that these goals are not simultaneously achievable. To get even a limited light rail fantasy in place with Prop 1, nothing compared to the above listed goals, we were looking at $50 Billion or more. And given the state's budget crisis, not to mention the federal government's Social Secuirty, Medicare, Medicaid trillion dollar crisis, the money is just not there to build the rail fantasy. A fantasy that has an opportunity cost which ignores the fact that our goods and services still rely on roads, as do the vast majority of commuters.

Commute routes are varied, no longer confined to the proposed transit corridors. Sheer radius of the region is far beyond the commute range of what light rail with continuous construction would be able to provide for in 50 to 75 years. When's that train coming to Gig Harbor or Carnation? People like the convenience of their cars, and they like the fact the fact that maintenance and usage costs are based on their use, and not on mandatory central funding through taxes of rail services they may or may not ever care to use.

The goals state affordability, frequency, convenience, included expansion of bus lines, accountability and all to be delivered incrementally. One would have to be completely crazy, especially given the cost and time overruns of just the ST1 light rail from downtown to the airport, to really believe it is possible to satisfy all of Sound Transit's listed goals simultaneously.

In real engineering, we speak of trade-offs. But the list above has no such trade-offs. Simultaneously increasing commuter rail, light rails lines and bus service to a frequency that would make them truly appealing, is simply not possible at a reasonable cost. Just think back a few months ago to the amortized costs of the Proposed Prop 1. Even conservatively, costs would have been in the tens of billions. And that would deliver a system that really couldn't move all that many people rapidly, and with frequent schedules from say, Tacoma to North of Seattle on one very limited single trunk. On the throughput of the system, keep in mind that large portions of the ST1 system are at grade, with relatively short trains due to block lengths, etc.

And environmentally, the energy to operate trains has to come from somewhere. If every train is anything less than packed, suddenly that's a lot of wasted electricity moving around empty train cars. And that's energy that quickly adds up. Your auto is a lot more efficient than rail advocates would have you believe. And the future turnover rate for newer cleaner automobiles with better efficiency will be much greater than that of expensive rail cars that are paid for with taxpayer dollars. Especially when retiring Baby Boomers start looking for handouts.

Joni Earl and the Sound Transit folks have generated a list, but the list is really an improper reading of their surveys. Yes, Puget Sound voters do want more capacity in congested corridors, and they want that capacity to be affordable. But they want the capacity in the form of appropriate road capacity for a region of this size, and address of key bottlenecks. 405 through Renton anyone? I-5 under the Convention Center? And voters want proper utilization of the express and city bus systems where we've already heavily invested our tax dollars in bus right of ways, tunnels, HOV off ramps, etc. What voters don't want, is an unrealistic list that will lead to an ultimate price tag in the hundred billions, and with service to only a tiny <5% fraction of the Puget Sound population. Tacoma Link Light Rail is free for goodness sake, and it's still very underutilized.

Puget Sound Voters are smart enough to look to other US cities like Portland, Atlanta and San Jose, that have gone before us with transit experiments, and have little rail ridership and still massive road congestion problems to show for their investments. We are at a crossroads where we can follow the same foolish and misguided policies. Or we can try something different like Bus Rapid Transit, with a corresponding greater use of our transit dollars to support the roads which now and in the future still carry the vast majority of our goods, services and human transit.

Take the survey.