The Times is getting in a dither over one thing, I'm getting in a dither over another. Why on earth did we have state transportation dollars go to bail Seattle out after they screwed up the WTO? We ought to charge them for use of the WSP AND the national guard.

Republican proposal would eat up State Patrol refund from WTO

by Dionne Searcey Seattle Times Olympia bureau OLYMPIA - The State Patrol says a Republican plan to pay for new road construction would take away state money the agency is owed for overtime during the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle.

The proposal from Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, would divert $45 million the governor wants to use for the State Patrol's operating budget and instead pay for road projects.

The Patrol was planning to use at least some of that money to upgrade a 25-year-old radio system, install video cameras in troopers' cars, and to recoup $2.3 million of overtime paid to hundreds of troopers who worked during the WTO ruckus.

Troopers from all over the state came to Seattle during the international trade conference, Nov. 30-Dec. 3, to help police control the chaos that broke out with street demonstrations. Some out-of-town troopers worked all-day shifts, racking up hotel bills and food costs. http://www.seattletimes.com/news/local/html98/wtoo_20000118.html

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), January 18, 2000

Answers

Mattinsky-

Here's another case where those "dedicated" transportation dollars got sent off to a non-transportation function.

-- (mark842@hotmail.com), January 18, 2000.

The real questions here should be how does the Washington State Patrol rack up $2.3 million in overtime pay in just 4 days? If the overtime was 8 days would the amount be $4.6 million? What makes it overtime instead of regular time? Why does the WSP think they need to recover these expenses from another source? Does Senator Benton actually think $45 million will get much road construction? It's no wonder why we refer to the alleged leaders in Olympia as morons.

-- James Andrews (jimfive@hotmail.com), January 18, 2000.

"Does Senator Benton actually think $45 million will get much road construction? " Actually, he's talking about using the revenue stream from this to sell bonds, that would ultimately be paid off by the $45 million a year. You could probably leverage this to a half- billion or so. That's 20 lane miles of freeway in most states, a little less than half that in the land of prevailing wage and sweetheart contracts. A freeway lane will give you about 50,000 passenger miles per route mile per day. An arterial lane about 20,000 passenger miles per route mile per day and cost significantly less.

So that would add a capacity of a half a million passenger miles a day, every day. By way of comparison, ALL of METROs buses provide 216,000 passenger trips per day, averaging 6.25 miles per trip, or about one-million three hundred fifty thousand passenger miles. That costs a quarter Billion dollars a year, with about one-fifth of that paid for with farebox revenue. Call it $200 million a year to move 1.35 million passenger miles by bus. $45 million a year for 30 years to carry 37% of that number on a freeway. It's just about a wash. Of course at the end of that time you OWN the freeway and only need to pay an annual maintenance cost that is currently about $6 thousand a mile to maintain that capacity.

In the last three years you have averaged $70 million a year in capital expenses for Metro above and beyond these operating expenses, mostly paying for replacing worn out buses with new $435,000 buses. Thesell be on the scrap heap long before thirty years are up. Average fleet age for Metro buses in 1998 was 7.9 years. Figure 17 years or less life expectancy. Count this in, and your cost goes up to $270 million for buses annually to provide the passenger miles that could be provided by about $100 million a year bonding authority in freeway lanes.

So its kind of like, do you want to spend thirty years renting capacity or thirty years buying capacity. You can either have rent receipts at the end of thirty years, or you can own the house. For the last 30 years weve just been renting. The pro-transit people say its more expensive to buy capacity and in any given year they may be right. But over the long haul, buying capacity is the only reasonable thing to do.

-- (craigcar@crosswinds.net), January 18, 2000.