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Home / Washington Business - May/June 2004 / Pros & Cons: Transit Investment Must Generate New Riders |
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Pros & Cons: Transit Investment Must Generate New Riders |
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Written On: May/June 2004 |
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Written By: By Rob McKenna |
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Rob McKenna is chair of the Metropolitan King County Council’s Regional Transit Committee, vice-chair of the I-405 Corridor Program Executive Committee, sits on the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) Executive Board and is former chair of the state Transportation Improvement Board (TIB). McKenna is also the Republican candidate for State Attorney General.
Fixing our overwhelmed transportation system is the top public policy challenge facing the Central Puget Sound region. Transportation dollars are scarce and it has taken over ten years just to get a nickel gas tax package through the state Legislature.
In this environment, it is critical that we maximize value and get the most “bang for the buck” from each new transportation investment, whether for roads, transit or ferries. While all projects can be evaluated in terms of costs and benefits, the key test for transit investments should always be the number of new transit riders produced. If a new transit investment is not moving substantial numbers of travelers out of their cars and onto transit (or into carpools and vanpools), then the investment is underperforming and not worth the opportunity cost.
My principal criticism of Sound Transit and some of its investments is that they simply don’t measure up in terms of new transit riders generated. In particular, expensive new train service will not capture enough of the travel market to make the cost worthwhile.
Commuter rail is a $1 billion investment for service between Tacoma, Seattle and Everett. According to Sound Transit’s own projections, that investment will yield only 13,000 passengers per day - the equivalent of three decent bus routes worth of riders. But even worse is that two-thirds of the riders on commuter rail will have already been riding buses before they switched to trains.
For a $1 billion commuter rail investment, we’ll see a net increase in regional transit ridership of 4,000 passengers per day — one bus route’s worth of riders, or about a 1 percent change. And the cost to generate that 1 percent increase in ridership? On Sounder North, the Seattle to Everett segment, the subsidy will be about $53.00 per rider, per trip. Along the entire line from Tacoma to Everett, the subsidy per passenger will average $38 per commuter rail passenger per day — forever. Compare that to the typical subsidy for a bus rider of about $4 per trip.
Sound Transit’s light rail investment doesn’t fare much better. The initial 14-mile line will run from South 154th Street, in Tukwila (about two miles north of the Sea-Tac Airport terminal) to the Westlake Center station in downtown Seattle. By the time the line opens in late 2009, Sound Transit will have spent $2.76 billion on it, including operating costs, a capital reserve and debt service, according to the agency’s own financial plan. That’s over $200 million per mile, even though the line will use the existing Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel and will spend $80 million to adapt it for rail.
Sound Transit estimates that, by the year 2020, ridership on the line will be about 42,500 passengers per day. Two-thirds of them will be switching from buses, and about 16,000 will be new transit riders. Many of those riders will be taking short lunch time jaunts in the Transit Tunnel.
Standing alone, 16,000 new transit riders may sound pretty impressive to some. Yet we’ll be spending $2.76 billion to buy a four percent increase in transit ridership by the year 2020! It will cost another $3.2 billion in capital costs alone to extend the rail line to Northgate and to South 200th Street in SeaTac. Those extensions may increase transit ridership another eight percent, if Sound Transit’s projections prove accurate. Total cost will be close to $6 billion in capital costs to yield a light rail market share of 6 percent of morning commuters across the Ship Canal, growing transit ridership about 12 percent. The subsidy will be over $24 per rider each day.
Contrast that staggering cost to King County Metro Transit’s most recent transit service expansion. Between 1996 and 2000, the King County Council added 424,000 new annual bus service hours to the Metro system, or about 20 percent more bus service. The annual cost will be about $40 million. New and restructured service increased ridership by 50,000 riders per day — a 20 percent increase. The subsidy per rider is about $4 per trip.
Can there be any question that expanding our bus system would be a much more cost-effective investment? New technology in vehicles and for bus-priority signaling can make buses quieter, faster and with lower emissions.
Billions in new railroad tracks should be avoided until the return on investment, measured by increased transit ridership, justifies the cost. Public transit funding, and public confidence in government transportation spending, are too limited to squander on investments that won’t pay back, especially when there are better investments that will get people out of their cars now.
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