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Train Madness: Lavish Taxpayer Funded Parties & Fare Increases Inhibiting Ridership
As our very own so-called "SMART train" approaches it's debut later in 2016 it's worthwhile to take a look at what's happening with the train euphoria in other parts of the US - Seattle and San Diego - both of which have embraced rail as the supposed solution to traffic congestion at a cost of diverting billions away from maintaining roads, which get used.
Seattle Sounder Light Rail Spends $858,379 on Launch Parties
Many of us living in areas near SMART stations and transit corridors woke up one day to find we'd been designated by elected representatives such as Kate Sears and the San Rafael city council as "Priority Development Areas" (PDAs) targeted for "significant growth". Why? In order to qualify for grant funding to build capacity for the additional thousands of residents.
In September 2013 San Rafael city documents (see page 2) the Transportation Authority of Marin told San Rafael City manager Nancy Mackle that it estimated that Civic Center would have received about $800,000 in funds by becoming a PDA. This amount should contrast with the $25m+ required to reconfigure the adjacent Freitas Parkway 101 intersection which is at capacity. The $800,000 in PDA funding would barely pay for a fraction of the $25m+ infrastructure needed to handle the additional residents without causing traffic levels of service to drop below acceptable levels.
But in Seattle euphoric train supporters know just what to do with $800,000 - they threw parties costing $858,379 to celebrate the train's launch as reported here in the Seattle Times:
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transport...
The expenses broke down as follows;
- planning or logistics: crowd management ($209,436);
- police overtime ($29,520);
- event management ($260,200)
- An additional $130,198 was spent for an ad campaign on radio, the Web, print, billboards, movie screens and gas pumps.
Sacrificing Neighborhoods to Rapid Growth, Then Blowing the Money Offered for this Sacrifice in Just One Day of Celebration
How would Marin residents who spent months fighting to rescind PDAs feel if SMART were to have launch parties that blew the grant money in just one day of celebration? (A records request to SMART about launch party expenses seems apropo before and after the event).
San Diego Sprinter Raises Fares to Counter 4% Ridership Drop
The San Diego Sprinter and Coaster serves Oceanside and Escondido. It was launched with the same high hopes as SMART.
The San Diego Union Tribune reports that:
"The district’s systemwide “farebox recovery ratio” has hovered just above the legal minimum — between 20 and 25 percent — since 2006, according to the district’s financial report for the 2015 budget year. "
The farebox recovery ratio is the fraction of operating expenses which are met by the fares paid by passengers. It is computed by dividing the system's total fare revenue by its total operating expenses. The fact that San Diego's farebox recovery for systems serving a much larger population catchment than SMART is barely above the legal minimum should be setting off alarm bells.
No one should expect trains to break even - but the fact that this celebrated rail project has such low ridership that fares have to be increased should be a strong warning sign that rail is not the answer. People are not flocking to rail. It is not solving what it promised - to reduce traffic congestion. Per capita driving is actually on the increase in San Diego county despite the investment in rail.
Reviewing the Official Figures - What Impact Has Rail Had?
The Coaster opened in 1995 and the Sprinter opened in 2008 at a cost like SMART of billions. One might expect the impact to have been a shift from driving to transit, but precisely the opposite happened:
Transit Ridership in San Diego County Actually Dropped
1990: 3.2%
2000: 3.3%
2013: 3.10% (years after the Coaster and Sounder launched)
Conversely Commuting Driving Alone Continued to Rise
1990: 70.9%
2000: 73.9%
2013: 76%
San Diego Applies the The Ultimate Ridership Killer - Fare Increases
Faced with the need to survive instead of discouraging transit the train is increasing fares - serving to further diminish ridership. Even during economic growth years of 2014 - 2015 ridership dropped by 4% in a single year.
For the Sprinter, single tickets increase to $2.50 from $2. Breeze base fares would rise to $2 from $1.75.
What is happening is that trains are being offered as solutions to traffic congestion. But they fail to deliver on this promise, instead barely surviving and desperately cannibalizing transportation funding and pushing up fares reducing ridership - defeating the very objective they were launched to solve - reducing congestion.
Conclusion
We need to learn lessons emerging here from history and from projects that are close parallels - be it that they serve much larger population catchments - to our own train. We need to retain objectivity and data driven policy - and we need to be very wary of elected officials who have pushed for solutions that appear near certain to fail.
Who are these elected officials? I leave that to commenters to highlight - and help inform those making decisions in the upcoming local elections.
To others I would ask can we afford to continue to invest in transportation projects that under any scrutiny have no hope of achieving their stated goal of reducing traffic congestion?