Sound Move has been touted by its advocates as being superior to bus service because its more efficient. They have claimed to the feds that, due to requiring fewer operators, light rail will be 4% cheaper to operate than the average MetroKC bus.

Now there are a NUMBER of things wrong with that. For one, the economic analysis implies that the buses to be replaced ARE average buses. They really arent. The light rail route goes through the densest areas, where the buses are most efficient. By eliminating these routes the AVERAGE passenger mile cost of the REST of the bus system goes UP. This has repeatedly happened when light rail has been built in the past. A second problem is that other routes are distorted to feed the light rail stations. This can only make them less efficient, assuming they are optimized for passenger transport now. A third problem is that Sound Transit implies that it can be used IN LIEU OF the bus service it is replacing. It really cant. With stations a mile apart, the buses will still have to be run along the light rail route to pick up people to get them to the stations. Since only 4 square miles of King County are within a quarter mile walk of one of these stations, you really arent going to be able to get rid of the bus service. You will now be paying for the bus service AND the light rail.

And if you look at Sound Transits own figures, things are going to get worse, not better, once Sound Transit is built, even in the unlikely event it comes in on time and on budget. Current MetroKC transit covers 21% of operating expenses from farebox revenue, about half the national average for a large urban system. When Sound Move is up and running ($4 billion from now) they PLAN to recover about 18% of the Sound Move O&M from farebox revenues; in Snohomish $17 million of $111 million (15%), North King County $23 of $162 million (14%), South King $23 of $162 (14%), East King $33 of $154 (21%), Pierce $32 of $232 (14%), overall $133 of $735 (18%). So we are going to pay $3.9 Billion for a system that runs at 14 mph, and will cost MORE to operate than the one being replaced. Oh, by the way, thats 1995 dollars. Every day that the system is delayed, costs go up. Its almost Thanksgiving. Time to kill this turkey. At the very least, LET THE RTA AREA FUND IT LOCALLY IF THEY WANT IT. don't give them a dime of state funds.

http://www.soundtransit.org/soundmove/sbprosum.html

-- Craig Carson (craigcar@crosswinds.net), November 24, 1999

Answers

Here here!! Now an initiative to get rid of the GAS TAX !!!

-- Jim Cusick (jccusick@att.net), November 25, 1999.

Craig, You seem pretty informed and I agree with your post. Maybe you could answer some semi related questions, maybe not. When I used to live and work in the Seattle-Tacoma area years ago, I heard there was an intentional effort in Seattle to discourage car use in the downtown area. To accomplish it, the cost of parking was prohibitive, if you could find a place to park. It's been a while since I spent much time there, but it sounds like an important place to spend transportation money. I'm from the other side of the state now, and don't like to see a dime of my money spent over there. Having said that, I think I'm having tunnel vision. What's your opinion?

-- Sig Landoe (slandoe@bentonrea.com), December 04, 1999.

" I heard there was an intentional effort in Seattle to discourage car use in the downtown area. To accomplish it, the cost of parking was prohibitive, if you could find a place to park." Seattle is schizophrenic in this regard, with conflicting policies that each serve different ends, and each cost the taxpayers money. You are right. There is an ongoing program to decrease parking through transport demand management involving a carrot (some tax breaks for companies that provide their employees with bus/ferry passes in lieu of parking and a stick (zoning regs and other "SmartGrowth" initiatives) favoring dense housing development with a minimum of parking. But this is in constant conflict with the desire to regain ascendancy over the suburbs which leads to such things as publicly subsidizing a parking garage for Nordstrom's to keep their flagship store downtown and the free parking being planned for this weekend in the hopes of luring back Christmas shoppers after Hizzoner totally screwed up the WTO police coverage and lost a week's worth of pre-Christmas revenue for downtown (not to mention the trashed stores). And herein lies the rub with excessive government. You REALLY DO WIND UP PAYING FOR DIFFERENT SETS OF SOCIAL ENGINEERS TO ENGINEER IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS. The ferries are a great example. The urban growth area boundary exists for the purpose of controlling sprawl in theory. So while money is paid to institute SmartGrowth initiatives to push for infill development in the urban area and more money is paid in subsidized housing to offset the economic effects of restricting development to the urban area, you are seeing people TAXED AGAIN to subsidize ferries so people can live in Southworth, Kingston, Bainbridge, and other areas outside of the urban growth area. Not only are you paying for government inefficiency, you are paying for one government program to fight another government program.

The reason this happens is that you have two interest groups pushing hard for "their" share of the action. As long as they can come up with a (taxpayer funded) program that mitigates the impact to the affected group, the bureaucrats really don't have to address the fact that they caused the problem to begin with.

The other thing that drives Seattle is MONEY for the Central Business District power brokers, and it has been that way since Yesler's mill. That's why they have not one but two sports stadiums in a place that is a logistical nightmare, and why Seattle get's a $2 billion public work's project (which is carefully steered AWAY from Southcenter to avoid taking sales away from downtown merchants) while poor little Tacoma get's a 1.6 mile downtown amusement ride. I have thought since the 60s that the rest of the state, and certainly the rest of the Puget Sound area, would one day wake up and make Seattle haul its own water, so to speak. Hasn't ever happened. Like Charlie Brown, everyone keeps running up to kick the football and, like Lucy, Seattle always leavs them flat on their backs looking like fools when they pull the football away at the last minute. And like Charlie Brown, they never learn.

-- Graig Carson (craigcar@crosswinds.net), December 04, 1999.