Puget Sound Regional Council (MPO) Data Shows
From: Emory Bundy
Subject: RE: The Benefits of Sound Transit
Date: Friday, 10 November, 2000 16:59
I would like to weigh in on yet another way of making the
benefit calculation for Sound Transit's rail projects.
A. Sound Transit's plan wastes money and fails to address the
problems the region faces.
In 1996 there were 8,900,000 daily trips in this Sound Transit area.
Data is from Puget Sound Regional Council. In 2010 it is predicted
there will be 11,800,000 daily trips.
So the difference between 1996, the year we voted for RTA, and 2010,
when both rail lines are supposed to be completed, fully operating,
and up to speed, is 2,900,000 additional daily trips.
How many of the 2,900,000 new daily trips will Link light rail plus
Sounder commuter rail serve?
32,000 for Link and 5,000 for Sounder, IF Sound Transit's aspirations
are fully met. Those are the "new riders"--daily trips by people not
served by transit today.
So, 37,000 of the 2,900,000 new trips will be served by Link plus
Sounder if, perchance, Sound Transit performs as well as it claims it
will. That equals 1.1 percent of the ADDITIONAL trips added in our
region between 1996 and 2010. So we'll have 90 times more daily new
trips NOT served by Link and Sounder, between 1996 and 2010, than
those served. In short, as resources are squandered, billions in
long-term debt taken on, and markedly higher operating and
maintenance costs are imposed, our congestion and mobility situation
will be deteriorating at an alarming rate.
Or stated yet another way, Link plus Sounder will cost on the order
of $4 billion. If we entrusted 90 times that sum to Sound Transit,
and it continued to spend at its hoped-for level of efficiency, by
2010 our congestion would be no worse--and no better--than it is
today. For $270 billion!
The moral of the story is, spending such huge sums of money for such
pitiful benefits will doom this region to profoundly worse travel and
congestion conditions, as we get poorer. And it will deprive us, for
decades into the future, of resources that could be productively
applied.
B. A better way.
This is what Don Shakow, Dick Nelson, Ed Sheets, Dick Watson, Ralph
Cavanagh, Randy Pozdena, Daniel Malarkey, Steve Fitzroy, and other
expert, and public-spirited individuals have been trying to urge on
the transportation planners, the political leadership, the media, and
civic associations (most of all those in the environmental community)
for the past decade: A planning regimen, drawn from the lessons of
least-cost planning so successfully applied in the electricity
sector, in which there is a diligent effort to obtain the greatest
value for the investment, with environmental costs as part of the
equation.
This kind of thoughtful and responsible initiative has been resisted
by the rail-building aficionados. They have a romantic attachment to
urban rail projects, and/or a profound self-interest, notwithstanding
that they are promoting the most wasteful of all options, given
today's rail technology, and the attributes of the typical North
American city. There are, of course, beneficiaries; they form the
backbone of the promotional support system: With WPPSS, the
citizens and taxpayers took a terrible bath, for which we're still
paying--but someone got all those billions, others had the rewarding
experience of dolling out the money, and for others it was modestly
reflected in a stream of campaign contributions and other favors.
Most of us think that Boston's Big Dig is a disaster, having gone
from $2.5 billion to $15.5 billion, and counting. But, again, that's
from a citizen, taxpayer and community perspective: If you are the
senior staff of the project, the myriad vendors, or the political
board members, controlling and dispensing and receiving those immense
sums brings rich rewards. For them, the Big Dig is succeeding beyond
their dreams and aspirations: a mere $2.5 billion project has
blossomed many times over. That's the future Sound Transit, its
vendors, and political supporters look forward to. The putative
"very conservative," $1.67 billion cost of Link light rail will be
but the down payment. Already it's clear that Link will surpass $1
billion in overruns--and once the digging starts the expensive
surprises will accelerate.
C. Chuck Collins' plan offers a promising beginning.
The bus/vanpool alternative that Chuck Collins and his crew have put
together focuses on three issues: Number of additional people
served, cost-per-new-rider, and risk. That's the kind of hard-headed
planning approach we desperately need, and so far have lacked.
Collins, of course, is exceedingly well-informed about least-cost
planning, having been a charter member of the Northwest Power
Planning Council, when those concepts were first applied to regional
energy planning. For purposes of simplicity, I assume, he's elected
to offer a robust transit alternative, without the least-cost
planning verbiage. But it draws on those concepts and his
experiences, both as head of Metro Transit and as a member of NPPC.
His alternative (which Seattle Times editor Mindy Cameron refers to,
encouragingly, as Plan B) promises six-times more "new riders" as
Link rail, at approximately one-sixth the cost per new rider. It will
accomplish its goals more swiftly, and do so with minimal risk. It
will not entail the huge, long-term debt burdens. Sound Transit's
Link alternative will do one-sixth as much, more slowly, and carries
with it a prodigious risk, including cost overruns and billions in
long-term debt. In contrast, Collins' plan is conservative--it is
very likely its performance will exceed predictions--while, as we are
learning, Sound Transit has systematically understated costs and
exaggerated benefits.
If we have the good sense to abandon hopelessly expensive and
unproductive rail schemes, and go with Plan B, we'll have made a
major step forward. But the challenge is immense, and much more will
need to be done. By beginning to shift toward the sound criteria
that the Collins team recommends, other vistas of opportunity will
emerge, in fields as diverse as more aggressive investments in
carpooling, more U-Pass-type innovations, renewed emphasis on
employer-based trip demand reductions, telecommuting, new transit
technologies, bicycles, expanded HOV lane systems, congestion
pricing, and more efficient utilization of the prodigious investments
we've already made in roads, highways, and transit operations.
Given the challenges we're facing, the best is demanded of us. Sound
Transit represents the worst.
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