Letters To The Editor
The Tampa Tribune
Tampa, Florida

Dear Editorial Staff,

This letter is in response to your Tampa Tribune Editorial of November 9, 1998 – "Only roads or more transit options?" Unfortunately, the editorial does your readers and our community a disservice by adopting a consistent, marked bias for rail, rather than affording a balanced and objective critique of transit options in general. And in so doing, either through inadvertence or design, your editorial staff mislead and serve as reckless "cheer-leaders" for social tinkers and the minority rail fringe in their hubris driven crusade to coerce Taxpayers from the convenience and freedom of "evil" private automobiles into the inconvenience and inflexibility of government's "good" anachronistic rail mass transit. Never mind that there is no objective evidence that any such multi-billion dollar undertaking is worthwhile, or that the taxpayers of Hillsborough/Tampa will use or ever receive their money’s worth from light rail.

In the interest of bringing balance to the Tribune's reckless commentary, I respectfully submit that four threshold questions need to be answered before we move forward on rail transit.

Has it worked elsewhere?

• No. The evidence from other cities is overwhelming.

• In Portland, Ore., national "poster child" community for social tinkers and light-rail fanatics, traffic volume on the adjacent freeway is up 70 percent since before light rail opened. Even 12 years after opening, Portland's light rail carries a third fewer riders than were projected after five years. For example, Portland's doctrinaire, light-rail proponents blithely ignore a 35 percent fall in the percentage of people taking transit to work. In contrast, during the 1970s prior to building its light-rail system, Portland relied on bus-fare reductions and bus-service expansions to attract riders, and the percentage of people using transit to get to work actually increased. Finally, as costs soared and disgusted Voters realized that light rail's claimed benefits of traffic relief, pollution reduction and time savings do not exist, on November 3, 1998, nearly a week before the Tribune's enthusiastic  "Railetorial", Portland's $475 million South-North Light Rail bond measure was defeated. Voters rejected the 16-mile long proposed line by a margin of 52% NO to 48% YES. Total construction cost was estimated to be $1.6 billion, not counting ongoing operating losses. This was the third election loss in a row for the ill-fated project. Oregon and Vancouver, Washington voters both rejected their shares of funding in previous elections.

• In Buffalo, ridership fell 68 percent short of projections, and overall transit ridership is less than before light rail.

• In Los Angeles, over the past 13 years transit ridership has dropped 25 percent. During that period, Los Angeles and the nation's taxpayers have spent more than $5 billion to open two light-rail lines, a subway and six commuter rail lines. Still annual debt since exceeds bus and rail-fare revenues, and will increase to $400 million by 2004. Construction of three lines on which more than $300 million has been spent has been put on hold indefinitely. An organization representing Los Angeles' large low income, transit-dependent population has successfully argued that funding is inappropriately being taken from fare increases and bus-service reductions to fund rail construction.

• In Denver, November 4, 1997, despite a massive, government funded PR effort on its behalf, and obviously flawed  "main-stream" media polls proclaiming victory, 58 percent of disenchanted area voters rejected the Transportation District's bid to develop regional light-railfor their 2020 transportation plan via a sales tax increase from 0.6 cents to 1 cent. The defeat threw area central planners into a huge funding hole with respect to the Denver region's 2020 transportation plan. About $3.5 billion of the proposed tax was slated for the cost of building the system and billions of dollars more were needed to pay interest onbonds.The federal government requires transportation improvementplans put together by groups like DRCOG to be "fiscally constrained."  In simple words, the region either must come up with the money to build transit projects in its plan or scrap them.

• Insignificant. The figures from the Texas rail studies provided by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (Houston – Dallas) estimate that DART rail lines will likely reduce air pollution in the region by an infinitesimal 0.0001 percent.

• Decidedly not. U.S. Department of Transportation research indicates that busways are one-fifth the cost of light rail per passenger to build and operate. Busways can carry as many riders as light rail and as fast. Yet, almost without exception, U.S. cities have chosen rail. Why? Part of the problem is that the alternatives studied have too often been under-designed and overly expensive express alternatives that would provide inferior service levels. Another may be that innovative technologies have been routinely excluded. These factors, combined with the inexplicable "evangelical" zeal and "political" popularity of light rail among local officials and civic leaders, have created an environment in which light rail can become the de-facto choice even before the analysis begins. Amazingly, light-rail’s consistent history of economic failure has not prevented local civic leaders and transit officials from declaring their systems a success, as if success consists of the construction alone. But a successful rail system is more than a monument to the appropriation of taxpayer’s hard-earned money. And surely it must do more than serve the arcane agendas of elitist central planners, social tinkers and political opportunists for whom, all too often, meaningful reduction of traffic congestion is less than an afterthought.

• No, and not likely. Under the guidance of Project Director Robert W. Poole Jr. of the noted Reason Public Policy Institute, Dr. Peter Gordon, noted Professor of Planning, Development and Economics at the University of Southern California and researcher on urban transportation policy and related matters for over 25 years, produced in June of 1998 a study and critique specific to the   proposed light-rail component of the Hillsborough/Tampa 2020 transit plan titled: "A Transit Plan For Hillsborough County: A Reality Check." Dr. Gordon’s Hillsborough transit study is available for reading or "downloading" from the Internet at this location. [NOTE: You will need Adobe Acrobat software to view and/or print this study. If you don't have this software, not to worry,  you may  get your free download here]. Step by step, Doctor Gordon's methodical scholarship explores and de-bunks the myth that traffic congestion has been (or will be) reduced in any city that builds rail – Tampa in particular. His data do indicate, however, that traffic congestion nationwide has declined in two cities; one of them is Houston, Texas where they have continued to build highway capacity and Dallas where ridership on the Area Rapid Transit system is above projections. Yet even in the Dallas best case example, rail-transit still fails to remove cars from the road. Ridership on DART's (Dallas) directly operated bus and light-rail services is up only 15 percent since before light rail. This analysis is based on passenger miles, which counts riders based on their entire trip, rather than based on each individual "leg" of their trip – the "leg" is a dishonest artifice frequently employed by transit advocates (rail and bus) to artificially inflate ridership data. Since transit's total share of travel in Dallas County, light rail and bus combined, is presently less than 2 percent, this means that at best, light rail transit has attracted a minuscule "0" percent of travel. Even with the 15 percent increase in Dallas overall transit usage, ridership remains at least 5 percent below 1991 levels.

Does this mean that we should not build rail in Tampa/Hillsborough? Not necessarily, but it does mean that we absolutely must do a better job of planning and reviewing the alternatives than other cities have done. And the review must be open, honest, ruthlessly objective and devoid of politics. Any analysis should include a substantive bus alternative - one with service levels at least as high as proposed for rail, and with dedicated rights of way. Finally, it should also include an alternative that would allow competitive contracting to the private sector, which other cities have used successfully to reduce costs.

Whether or not we build rail should depend upon three final criteria.

The first has to do with reducing traffic congestion. Rail's success is not demonstrated by the number of people on the train, rather it is demonstrated by how many cars it takes off the road. That number must be material.

The second test is financial - whatever rail accomplishes, it should do so for less than any other alternative.

The third criterion is just as important - the alternative finally selected must be the result of objective and rigorous planning and studies, whose design and processes are not skewed for or against any of the alternatives.

 Perhaps we can agree that Tampa/Hillsborough residents have endured more than their fair share of government buffoonery and Taxpayer financed boondoggles in recent years? Perhaps we can also agree that your readers deserve journalistic objectivity and professional skepticism rather than bias, manipulation and pandering to the anti-democratic philosophical agenda of social "engineers" and rail fanatics in their dishonest, economy wrecking, multi-billion dollar rail conspiracy.