Sound Transit
recently completed the second of their 2-day presentations to the Expert Review
Panel (ERP) about the status of light rail. The ERP was created by the
legislature to provide an independent system oversight. Its web site
contains the following:
1) The legislature recognizes
that the planning processes described in RCW 81.104.100 provide a recognized
framework for guiding high capacity transportation studies. However, the
process cannot guarantee appropriate decisions unless key study assumptions are
reasonable.
(2) To assure appropriate system
plan assumptions and to provide for review of system plan results, an expert
review panel shall be appointed to provide independent technical review for
development of any system plan.
9) The expert panel shall provide
timely reviews and comments on individual reports and study conclusions to the
department of transportation, the regional transportation planning
organization, the joint regional policy committee, and the submitting lead
transit agency.
While it was apparently open to
the public, ERP events are pretty much held quietly and news coverage is
rare. The recent ERP review was preceded by a similar review in May.
While I didn’t attend either, the agendas for both meetings suggest they
were “limited” to Sound Transit presentations they wanted the ERP to hear.
Thus, its highly unlikely anything will come out of the review.
A more “balanced” approach would
have raised the following issues:
1)
ST Failure to recognize limitations for any
light rail system.
2)
Why ST is desperate for additional funding in
2016
3)
What a successful light rail (BART) can do.
4)
Why Prop 1 light rail extensions will
never have the capacity or accessibility to justify the billions spent to
construct light rail or the additional billions required to cover their
increased operating costs.
5)
Why the billions spent on Central Link
extensions to Northgate that will begin operating in 2021 will provide a 10th of the capacity that could be
achieved in a month by limiting one of the two HOV lanes to buses.
6)
How the hundreds of millions and years spend
on East Link could have been avoided 15 years ago by moving non-transit HOV
lanes to the I-90 outer roadway and initiating two-way bus lanes on the center
roadway.
7)
How the operating costs of Prop 1 (and
beyond) light rail extensions will require massive subsidies each year to cover
the shortfall with fare-box revenue.
One of the more “interesting”
items on the ERP web site is the latest Sound Transit Financial Plan showing,
with no ST3 tax hike, they would need to borrow $6.6B between 2015-2023 to pay
for their Prop 1 extensions. That’s in addition to their earlier $1.3B
loan that already requires they pay $50M annually for 45years to amortize.
If they do get the additional money to complete even their Prop 1
extensions, the additional money will be forever needed to cover the shortfall
between operating costs and fare box revenue.
As it was, the ERT review was
just another example of Sound Transit's ability to ignore the reality of their
light rail debacle.
No comments:
Post a Comment