There is an analogy here to the electric energy field, which preoccupied the Northwest during the 1970s. It seemed reasonable to expect utility professionals and their friends in elected office to address energy supply needs in a cost-effective manner. Definitive evidence demonstrated that specific efficiency measures could meet projected demand levels at a small fraction of the cost of new central generating stations-but the utility industry proceeded instead to develop nuclear power projects. The nuclear promoters heralded well-financed claims, myths really, that nuclear powerplants would be safe, non-polluting, and generate energy so cheaply that it would be hardly worth metering. The analogy with rail should not be surprising, as that episode was comprised of the same or similar companies and institutions that promote rail projects or, for that matter, highways.
Like the purveyors of putatively safe, non-polluting, cheap nuclear power, supporters of rail projects proceed by deflecting attention from the hard issues of costs vs. benefits, and whether there are better alternatives. They focus instead on polling-inspired, extra-rational, rail-promoting myths. Here are some examples from Sound Transit's play book:
One light rail line will supplant the need for 12 lanes of freeway. Fact: No light rail line in America comes anywhere close to equaling the number of people who routinely travel on a single, conventional freeway lane (each way). It is an absurd, irresponsible claim. But in Seattle it's been repeated so often, by so many, with no factual antidote by the daily press, that it's widely believed.
Rail in the downtown tunnel will vastly increase transit capacity. Fact: In the peak hour, today, 147 buses operate through the tunnel (total, both directions), with 63 seats per bus. Sound Transit proposes in its final environmental impact statement to have a maximum of24 trains per hour (total, both directions), four cars per train, with 72 seats per car. So there are 9,261 transit seats per hour on rush hour buses today, and in 2006 there will be at most 6,912 seats on rush hour trains, a25 percent loss. That diminished capacity will follow prodigious capital costs, years of devastating construction impacts, and permanent added congestion on downtown streets.
Huge capital expenditures in fixed-rail development will cause"transit-oriented development" to occur. Fact: A century ago, the Seattle area had a far more intricate rail system than anything anticipated today. By the 1930s the rail system was undone by the growth of auto ownership and modest population distribution. To imagine that, with vastly more widely distributed commerce and housing, and near-universal car ownership, a few rail lines will cause this complex, dispersed region to revert to 19thcentury settlement patterns, is preposterous.
Rail lines will induce economic activities in proximity to the stations that will be so valuable they will compensate for the cost of the systems. Fact: One can find shops and services developed near some transit stops, and sometimes more dense housing units. But it is standard that, after enormous capital investments and high perpetual subsidies to install and operate the lines, the marketplace does not respond as hoped. Instead, rail promoters appeal for still-more public subsidies to try to induce nearby economic development. Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, in "Reviving Transit Corridors and Transit Riding," Access, Spring 1994, pleads for hefty subsidies to try to stimulate the elusive"transit-oriented development" along rail lines in Los Angeles. That's what Seattle is planning, and Portland has tried.
There's no substitute for rail, and it's never going to get any cheaper, so let's get going. Fact: Europe has a splendid transit infrastructure developed in the pre-automotive era. Transit use is aided by severe land use controls, and communities far more compact than anything imaginable in spacious North America. Cars are very heavily taxed, and petrol is four-times more expensive. Yet over the past thirty years the use of rail, bus, and coach in the European Union has been static, while auto use has grown exponentially. Auto trips now surpass transit by a huge margin, and the discrepancy grows by the day. The data is summarized in"Modes of passenger transport," in The Economist, September 5, 1998. If well-established urban rail systems are losing ground precipitously in that setting, what is the prospect for new systems here?
Further, the "no substitute for rail" myth is premised on a luddite assumption that conventional 19th century rail technology cannot be improved upon in any fundamental way. Yet the new tools at our disposal include the cheap, light, reliable microprocessor; lightweight, strong, composite building materials; new propulsion systems, including the hydrogen fuel cell; immensely powerful communication networking capabilities; and more wonders on the way. These offer the building blocks of an urban transit system that could overcome the intrinsic limitations of the train: its self-encapsulating high infrastructure costs, high operating costs, inability to form a minimally sufficient network, and lack of customer appeal when compared with the automobile.
Absurd though they are, these myths that the self-interested sell to the right-minded are carrying the day. The critics lack remotely comparable resources to make their case. Acting as mere citizens, not so coherent as the vested interests, they are out-organized and vastly outspent. To return to the wisdom of economist Charles Lave,
"The idealists wanted to improve Los Angeles. They perceived cars as a problem, and were so determined to cure the problem that they talked themselves into believing it could be done. The profiteers are the engineering companies that go around the country pandering to the idealists."
But What's The Alternative?
Train advocates, when challenged, retort, "Well, what would you do about congestion? For starters, spend public resources, which are precious and limited, to optimal effect. That eliminates projects like Link and Sounder.
Sound Transit predicts it will have 37,000 "new riders" on its trains by 2010. It will cost roughly $175,000 in current dollars per auto removed from the daily commute-unless there are overruns, which will push the cost even higher. It is exceedingly easy to think of many opportunities to remove cars from the roadways for much less than $175,000 apiece, and much more quickly:
Vanpooling. King County METRO, a pioneer at vanpooling, is good at it. Its staff estimates $11 million is needed to garner the next increment of 5,000 vanpoolers. Assuming each new vanpooler represents one car subtracted from the commute mix, it would cost $2,200 per car-roughly one percent of what it will cost by Link and Sounder. Further, rail patrons will require heavy per-trip subsidies, while vanpoolers pay all their own operating and maintenance costs.
Commute trip reduction. About a decade ago, during a brief era between frenetic freeway building and the adoption of extravagant railbuilding schemes, some wise people intoned that the Seattle area "cannot build its way out of congestion." One antidote was a commute trip reduction (CTR) statute that required companies with more than 100 employees to institute various workplace measures-higher parking fees, subsidized bus passes, incentives for carpooling, guaranteed ride home (if the need arose to work late), that sort of thing-to reduce commute driving. Although the act was limited only to large employers and offered more threats than inducements, it has had a measure of success. At an operating cost of $3 million per year, or $30 million total over the decade, it has removed 18,000 cars from the commute mix so far-almost exactly the number Sound Transit trains might remove for $3 billion or so. Like vanpools, CTR has been doing a comparable job to Link and Sounder for one percent the cost, while radically reducing the need for operating subsidies. Are commitment to CTR, more support, broader application, and incentives rather than threats, could greatly expand its benign impact.
Get more work out of the buses. King County METRO, Pierce County Transit, and Snohomish County's Community Transit are pretty good bus systems for an American metropolitan area-and should be, since local taxpayers support them with a generous, annual subsidy of $350 million. But they have considerable underutilized capacity, and a substantial share of seats unoccupied, even during rush hours. Los Angeles provides an illustration of what could be done. Between 1982 and 1985, LA lowered fares from 85 to 50 cents, and obtained a 40 percent increase in ridership in a jurisdiction that already had the second largest number of bus patrons in America. (Subsequently LA started its rail projects, raised bus fares and lost more than a quarter of its transit patrons, but that's another story.)If metropolitan Seattle adopted similar fare reductions, and did only half as well as LA, that would remove considerably more cars than Sound Transit's trains will, far more quickly, and without the need for a $3 billion capital investment.
Carpooling. Average auto occupancy is 1.1 persons per car, so about 80 percent of car seats travel empty. That represents an immense resource and prospect-particularly with today's communications networking capabilities, technology that can make positive identifications for security purposes, and electronic fund transfers. If transportation managers applied these tools, and offered incentives to carpool, the benefits would be immense. Already, the Puget Sound Regional Council estimates that carpools will comprise 4.74 million daily trips by 2010,transit a mere 500 thousand, and Sound Transit rail a small subset of the500 thousand. A commitment of resources and a modicum of innovation, leading to a mere ten percent increase in carpooling, would enormously exceed all that Sound Transit aspires to do. In fact, it would come close to matching the entire congestion-relieving role of transit, which currently is subsidized at the rate of $600 million per year.
High occupancy vehicle lanes. HOV lanes can be very productive. For example, on Interstate-5 north of Seattle, during peak travel times the HOV lane carries over 6,000 people per hour, while the three single-occupancy lanes carry but 2,000 apiece. In Houston, the67-mile HOV network is very productive, and contributes to superior bus performance, added vanpooling and carpooling, at a highly advantageous cost.
On the other hand, a recent study by the California legislative analyst's office concluded that HOV lanes in that state are seriously underutilized, and do not appear to have a positive impact on carpooling. This is another example of the poor use of an opportunity. If there were greater rewards for carpooling, and networking measures to facilitate it, efficiency could be improved and congestion diminished. If a community subsidizes each bus trip by $3, and each train trip by $10, why not subsidize a carpooler by $2, if that will accomplish the desired result in a fashion that is more convenient to the user and less costly to society?
U-Passes. Under pressure to reduce traffic and moderate parking demands, the University of Washington instituted its U-Pass program. It provides a cheap, unrestricted transit pass, better bus service, and higher parking fees. It costs $8 million per year-but it cut auto commuting by more than 20 percent and spared UW the need to spend heavily for new parking structures. If every other institution of higher education in the metropolitan area did only that much-and the U-Pass managers could do much better, particularly if they gave more support to carpooling and cycling-that measure alone would remove more cars from the highways than Sound Transit's rail projects will.
Bicycle commuting. Thousands of Seattlites commute by bicycle, in spite of unsafe conditions, few good bicycle corridors, no incentives, and a dearth of shower and locker facilities. They pay for their own equipment and operating costs, and engage in an efficient, healthful mode of transportation. Think what could be accomplished if they were facilitated and encouraged! In Copenhagen, a huge city in a relatively severe climate, a substantial share of the workforce and shoppers commute daily by bicycle, aided by safe routes. In Seattle, each train rider will be lavishly subsidized, while cyclists get a handful of lane stripes, an occasional bicycle rack, and an annual thank-you on bicycle commuting day.
Parking reforms. Generally, employers go to immense expense to provide free parking for employees, while doing relatively little if anything to encourage and reward transit, carpooling, and bicycling. If commuters paid the true cost of their parking, or if other employees were given that full sum in lieu of parking, the impact would be significant. Ironically, while the energy and transportation-conscious are advocating for parking reform, Sound Transit has budgeted scores of millions of dollars for free parking lots and structures to induce commuters to drive to its train stations.
Flexible working hours. Years ago, the flexible working hours concept was pioneered in a large West German city, as an alternative to expensive new freeway construction. Before long, 40 percent of the workforce was on flexible hours, which facilitated more efficient utilization of existing roadways. The innovation spread to all of West Germany and Switzerland, improved worker morale, and saved immense sums of otherwise-needed transportation investments. Flexible working hours help people and congestion in the Seattle area, today, but the concept has never been applied so broadly or effectively as in Germany and Switzerland.
Congestion pricing. It is well-known and well-established in fields with costly infrastructure-like electricity, telephones, and even transit-that calibrated fare structures can benefit everyone. By using price signals to moderate peak demand, a portion of the load is shifted toward times of underutilized capacity, hence using the infrastructure more efficiently. Ironically, so long as freeways are free, they are destined to be used inefficiently. Drivers and taxpayers pay more-in congestion, and more construction-they just don't pay by the trip. Today, with electronic transponders available for cars, it is possible to automatically charge fees without having to stop people to pay tolls. There are some salutary examples underway at the present time. While there are equity issues and political challenges to surmount in order to introduce congestion pricing, there's no doubt that it can serve the interests of travelers and taxpayers alike, smooth the flow of traffic, and negate or lessen the need for costly new construction.
Properly price the automobile. This is mentioned last because it's probably the least viable, politically. But so long as auto-driving is heavily subsidized-largely by "externalizing" costs of pollution, land alienation, health effects, urban runoff-it will be used to excess. The authoritative report by the Aspen Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Avoiding the Collision of Cities and Cars(1993), concluded as follows: "So far, there has not been the political will to implement a coherent urban transportation policy.... Yet, herein lies our main hope of addressing all the externalities of an auto-dependent society: the environmental, energy, safety, and congestion problems, as well as those pertaining to the quality and equity of urban life. Surely, we cannot accept the notion that the only feasible approach is one that fails to get to the heart of the matter.... If we conclude too readily that it is politically impossible to implement adequate pricing and other strategies to affect behavior and change urban mobility structures, we encourage a rather dismal concept of leadership...."
The measures summarized above, and a plethora of others, are subsumed under the phrase, transportation demand management -- making sound investments to get more work out of the existing infrastructure. It's the equivalent of using energy more efficiently, so more work is accomplished at an advantageous price. As PSRC notes in its 1998 report, "The state's transportation plan relies on demand management policies to reduce by more than 20 percent the projected growth in vehicle travel by the year 2020....The funding for demand management programs is vastly inadequate compared to the results expected from it." And yet those poorly-supported programs would deliver immensely greater benefits, far more quickly and cheaply, than those proffered by Sound Transit.
