Austin wasteful spending to suport ineffective rail transit.
The letter below to the Statesman Editor was published 7-13-2010 in a slightly edited form. The actual published letter follows this submitted version.
Urban Rail
City Council recently authorized a $100,000 consultant study (Wear 6-24-2010) to determine how to fund downtown train trolleys. Yet, the city has not completed comprehensive studies to determine trolleys’ true costs and effectiveness.
The City has substantially underestimated costs at $1.3 billion for construction and $25 million annual operations. Daily 2030 rider estimates are highly inflated at almost 35 times Cap Metro’s current commuter train experience. Even this inflated ridership requires annual tax subsidies of more than $5,000 for each average, daily, round-trip rider in 2030; more than $15,000 in early years of operations. Considering more realistic costs and ridership, annual tax subsidies will likely be similar to the $40,000 per rider now being experienced by Capital Metro’s commuter train.
As demonstrated by many cities, poorly used rail transit cannot be corrected by adding more of it.
Projected City revenue shortages don’t support priority, basic city services. Austin should not spend precious tax dollars studying how to wastefully spend tax money providing insignificant amenities.
Jim Skaggs
Statesman Letter to Editor, published July 13, 2010
Urban Rail
Re: June 24 article “City ponders how to pay for rail.”
The Austin City Council authorized a $100,000 consultant study to determine how to fund a proposed urban rail system. Yet the city has not completed comprehensive studies to determine the system’s true costs and effectiveness.
The City has substantially underestimated costs at $1.3 billion for construction and $25 million annual operations. Year 2030 estimates of about 13,800 weekday round-trips are highly inflated at 36 times the 380 on Cap Metro’s commuter train. Even this inflated ridership requires tax subsidies of more than $10 for each ride or $5,000 annually for each daily round-trip rider. Considering more realistic costs and ridership, subsidies could approach the current $80 per ride of Capital Metro’s commuter train.
Projected City revenue shortages don’t support priority, basic city services. Austin should not spend tax dollars studying how to wastefully spend money providing insignificant amenities
Jim Skaggs