COST Commentary: The article below reflects common deceptions (lies) by regional transit agencies to support their ambitions for implementing ineffective train transit systems and wastefully spending billions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds.

The City of Austin is now following a long history of similar practices by Cap Metro reflecting a lack of integrity, responsibility and competence. Their records are replete with instances of misleading and incorrect statements as part of deceptive campaigns to convince the public that train transit is an effective mode of public transit for the region. It is not. It is the least cost effective of numerous alternatives, it has no measurable positive impact on congestion or pollution and the wasteful spending of transportation dollars degrades bus transit service which serves the vast majority of transit riders who have no alternative.

Pudget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) says light rail will carry half of what Seattle’s Sound Transit told voters.

How many people will ride light rail? It depends on who you ask.

Two years ago, Sound Transit asked voters to expand its regional public transportation system (ST2). During the election, Sound Transit officials told voters the expanded rail portion (137 miles of light rail and commuter rail) would carry 310,000 passenger trips (page 5) per day by 2030.

Voters agreed and raised sales taxes within the Sound Transit district.

Since voters first approved ST1 in 1996, Sound Transit officials have a long and documented history of wooing support by overpromising the benefits of rail, while at the same time, lowballing its costs. As soon as voters approve the higher taxing authority, the agency’s promises begin to fall apart.

To their credit, Sound Transit officials admitted these mistakes afterwards and promised to clean up their act.

Or have they?

The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) recently adopted its regional long range plan called Transportation 2040. According to PSRC officials:

Transportation 2040 outlines a long-term template for how this region should invest in transportation to accommodate rising travel demand, while at the same time embracing the need to be flexible and responsive to the ways people – and the world — actually will change.
In this plan, the PSRC estimates the region will build about 164 miles (page 47) of passenger rail by 2040. Yet, this larger rail system will only carry about 164,400 passenger trips (page 71).

According to the PSRC, this means regional passenger rail will be 20 percent larger, but carry 47 percent fewer people than what Sound Transit officials told voters. To look at it another way, Sound Transit claims its rail system will provide 2,263 trips per mile, while the PSRC claims it will only provide 1,002 trips per mile.

Who is right?

I’ve contacted officials from both agencies and naturally they both claim their estimates are accurate. Sound Transit says the PSRC model mistakenly assigns potential light rail riders as bus riders.

On the other hand, PSRC officials claim each model is based on different long range plans and may not be comparable. For example, the Transportation 2040 plan includes widespread tolling and infrastructure improvements that were not considered in the early Sound Transit projections.

If Sound Transit is right, then I have to wonder whether the PSRC’s long range planning process has any meaning at all.

If the PSRC is right, then Sound Transit officials are once again misleading the public in order to win an election. Moreover, Sound Transit is a member of the PSRC, so I also wonder how Sound Transit officials could contribute to a plan that cuts their own rail ridership in half.

Does rail even matter?

The PSRC estimates the region will produce 18.9 million person trips by 2040. If Sound Transit’s model is correct, then their rail system will serve only 1.6 percent of all trips. If the PSRC model is correct, then the rail system will serve only 0.87 percent of all trips. Either way, we are spending billions upon billions in public money on trains that will mean very little to our overall transportation system.

Posted by Michael Ennis in Washington Policy Center, Washington Policy Blog at 09:53 AM in Traffic Relief, Transportation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 at 2:18 pm and is filed under News Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.