As the self-licking ice cream cone that is the Seattle establishment congratulates itself on coming up with a consensus (that is, if you dont include downtown, the Rainier Valley, the UW, or Tukwila) light rail plan, it my be worthwhile for THE REST OF US who will wind up paying for this fiasco, to have another look at the economics here.

Human beings really dont do well with big numbers and $2.3 billion is big money by anybodys standard. Lets bust it down into more manageable chunks of $100 million per mile. Now whether $100 million a mile is a good or bad investment depends quite a lot on what you can do with the money. Before we start this scenario, we need to remember that this is CAPITALIZATION money. That is, this just BUILDS the light rail, it doesnt OPERATE it. Thatll cost more. If Sound Transit can operate according to plan, they estimate that a light-rail can reduce passenger seat mile by about 4% from what they are paying for passenger seat miles on buses.

But lets take a different scenario. Instead of digging tunnels with that $100 million, lets do this instead:

Take $50 million and invest it in a well-diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds. Your financial advisor will tell you that you ought to be capable of pulling 5% per year out of the earnings of this, forever, without loss of value to inflation. That is, it returns about 8.5%, you take 5%, the other 3.5% covers that years inflation. You can pull out (current value) $2.5 million per year forever. With that $2.5 million/year, we can hire 50 bus drivers at $50,000/year.

Take the next $22 million and buy buses. Those honkin big articulated buses cost $435,000 each. You can now buy 50 buses, one for each driver.

Take the last $28 million and invest it too. This is your capital replacement fund. It will throw off $1.4 million per year. For the first five years, use the money to buy bus shelters, benches, etc. Then use it to replace buses at the rate of 3 buses per year.

This gives you 50 buses and drivers to cover ONE MILE. That allows you to have a bus every 105 feet along the route. That gives you the personnel costs for the drivers (personnel costs are typically over half the operating cost of transit). Nobody will ever have to ride in a bus older than 17 years. For the marginal operating cost of fuel, maintenance, liability, you can have RIDICULOUSLY frequent bus service at HALF the operating expense of light rail without tearing up the city for five years.forever.

Light rail is a ridiculous waste of taxpayers money. I understand why the building contractors like it. I understand why the construction trades unions like it. I understand why the city likes big construction projects. But its nineteenth century technology, at ridiculously high prices. Itll disrupt traffic for most of a decade, and then not significantly improve it, at enormous taxpayer expense. Time to pull the plug.

-- Craig Carson (craigcar@crosswinds.net), November 18, 1999

Answers

Once again Craig you do Beautiful work, when can you start on the federal government. But if not light rail and no more buses (not %) what can be done about traffic congestion. Just a couple of thoughts I had. How about demanding all state workers to live within 5 miles from where they work, that would take 1 out of every 22 (highest in the nation)cars off the road. What about off hours for large trucks that would take 2/3 of the traffic off here in Redmond. Certainly Metro needs to be overhauled (electric buses, streamlined routes). Industry Voluntary flex hours. I have more unpopular ideas but this is enough for now.

-- ERAmerican (william.reagor@guidant.com), November 18, 1999.

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math. Seen on a bumper sticker

Local MVET to pay for LINK, same thing apparently.

-- (zowie@hotmail.com), November 18, 1999.