Hurdles For E-Trains
Light Rail Loses Its Green Luster
By Richard Martin, 11-09-07
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Backers of Northern Colorado’s ambitious FasTracks plans for light rail spidering out from downtown Denver cannot be pleased with the results of this week’s referendum in Washington State.
There, voters soundly rejected a long-term, multi-billion-dollar mass transit plan for Seattle that had as its centerpiece the Puget Sound’s first light-rail system. Surprisingly, Seattle, the greenest city in America by several measures, still has a comparatively rudimentary public transit system limited to buses, and Seattle drivers are accustomed to being snarled in traffic on one of the metro area’s innumberable bridges, overpasses and viaducts. Notably, among the groups expressing doubts about the “Roads & Transit” Proposition 1 were environmentalists like the Sierra Group.
“Puget Sound’s Big Dealers should stop trying to find and fund a Great Leap Forward,” wrote David Brewster, publisher of Crosscut and a big Prop. 1 booster, after the vote, “and focus on small, innovative, practical stuff that will make a difference.”
To be sure, Prop. 1 also included millions for road-building, a political compromise to get the measure on the ballot. Backers of public transport are now free to pursue a stand-alone light-rail option. But with FasTracks already slated to go over budget by some $1.5 billion, light rail supporters in Denver must pay heed to the growing disenchantment with electric trains.
In other energy news:
-- Saying “Climate change is our generation’s greatest environmental challenge,” Gov. Bill Ritter unveiled his plan to reduce Colorado’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by 80 percent by 2050. the plan calls for raising emissions standards on new cars (something the federal government has declined to do), cutting emissions from power plants owned by Xcel Energy Inc. and Aquila Inc., the state’s two investor-owned utilities, and adopting efficiency programs to reduce electricity demand while expanding renewable energy production. Needless to say, some found these prospects unpalatable: Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi called the Governor’s plan “fantastical” and “Orwellian.”
-- Even while making plans to cut Colorado’s reliance on climate-changing fossil fuels, Ritter is seeking middle ground with the oil and gas industry. Ritter won applause during a speech this week before the state’s Oil & Gas Association, when he said, “I understand the importance that this industry plays in the economic vibrancy of Colorado.” The conventional energy business generates about $23 billion annual revenue in the state.
-- An unfortunate trifecta of high energy prices struck this week as heating oil, diesel, and gas all topped $3 per gallon – the first time that’s ever happened, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Global economic uncertainty, the chaos in Pakistan, and continued high demand have conspired to keep oil prices above $90 a barrel, and one oil analyst told The New York Times that gas prices “may be the Grinch that stole Christmas.”
[End of article]If you build light rail to replace buses, think long and hard. And, if your choice is light rail, hope there is enough money to have adequate security. Portland has 30 cops for their billion dollars worth of light rail, and crime is increasing all the time. It is, of course, the non payers who cause all the problems. Now individual cities served in the 'burbs are having to put cops on the trains to keep order. Unintended consequences, unplanned costs. If it ain't broke yet, it don't need fixin'. A lot can happen between planning and ground breaking.
Comment By John D, 11-10-07Should get your facts straight. Prop 1 did not include millions for roads it included BILLIONS.
Also the comment about crime, the Gresham area has been a crime have from the 70's on, long before light rail came along. There is many areas of Gresham such as along Sandy Blvd you would not walk during the day and there is no light rail line anywhere near there.
Prop 1 failed because of concerns about the $8 billion worth of road expansion increasing global warming. Polling by the Sierra Club indicated that a transit only proposition would have passed.
With ever increasing gas prices, light rail is the way to go.
I think part of the problem is the tax transfer that takes place. There is no exemption from Washington S&U;taxes for these type of taxpayer funded projects. Part of the development taxes wind up back in the general fund to pay the S&U;taxes on project purchases. In other words, the special purpose taxes don't stay put funding the project. Another part of the problem is that these roads and transit measures all seem to run together as another one always seems to follow a previous one raising the question where did the taxes go from the last measure. Performance audits demonstrating fiscal responsibility to taxpayers might convince more pro votes.
Comment By N Nerode, 11-11-07This doesn't reflect an complaints about light rail.
The proposition contained a combination of a moderate light-rail expansion, and a very large highway expansion.
The road backers opposed the light rail, and many of the light-rail backers opposed the roads. The combo was DOA, while polls indicate that a light-rail-only package would likely have passed (narrowly).
Of course, it was also bad timing: putting a light rail expansion on the ballot while the first light rail line is under construction (causing disruption and negative feeling) but not yet open (which would cause people to think rather more positively of it) is just bad, bad timing. People hate to vote to expaned a system they haven't actually *tried* yet.
Denver is in a much better position, because (1) unlike Seattle, there actually is a functional and popular light rail line (more than one, to be precise); (2) unlike Seattle (and T-REX) the Fastracks proposals are not larded with highway expansion; (3) the Denver proposals require no tunnelling and few bridges, so they're a lot cheaper per mile than the Seattle schemes (which require really huge civil engineering).
To be clear, the writer's claim of "growing disenchantment with electric trains" is pure fantasy, and makes this article at best an opinion piece and at worst a hit piece.
Comment By bearbait, 11-11-07The Portland paper has a story on re-naming Interstate Ave "Caesar Chavez Blvd." It is just another shove it up your --- political hay deal not asked for by the people of those neighborhoods. The business community along the route say they have yet to recover from light rail running down the middle of the avenue and all the disruptions it caused during construction. Essentially, people quit going there to buy stuff. And have yet to return. Changing the name of the street will only add to the confusion and upheaval business has suffered on that route.
The construction phase disruptions, along with permanent change in routings and closed streets or whatever, do grievous harm to established business that have decades of investment in their local part of the city. Light rail forever changes how things work, and the business that suffers never, ever gains what it lost. That part of the deal is never explained by promoters.
Sadly many small businesses are not prepared. Being someone who helps small businesses, I don't care if it's road construction, a major disaster, or light rail construction, many small business owners are not properly equipped with emergency funds to get them through.
I can tell you many small businesses that not only survived light rail construction but boomed once it was done.
The biggest threats to small business owners right now is their tax dollars being used to subsidize their competition like Wal-Mart, Cabela's, IKEA and the like. The politicians see nothing but dollar signs in their eyes and will give anything to land one of these companies.
My question, then, would be why the "public good" is allowed to crucify, economically, existing business in the name of "improvement?" Nothing improves for those folks. If they are not prepared, it is because the government already takes an inordinate share of the proceeds of their doing business. Having access to their livelihood restricted or cut off is patently not fair, nor in the greater pubic interest. If the public wants and needs the right of way, and the business interruption, then the public should pay that very real cost to those impacted.
And you know, know in your heart, at the end of the new light rail will be cheap open land for all those businesses you named. This issue will be how to get back home again without being mugged or robbed along the way by the creeps who now seem to feel that public transportation is their feeding ground.
When I was a kid, Portland Oregon had an electric street bus system that was available, cheap and abundant. Most cannot remember those electric buses with the two spring loaded whips that stuck up in the air and contacted the overhead electric lines. But General Motors thought diesel buses were a better deal, for GMC, and prevailed on the corruptable powers that were and the electric trolley-buses were replaced by a large and dependable bus system fossil fuel driven. In a reinvention of the wheel, Portland now has both light rail and a small trolley system, all new, all costing billions, all subsidized by the Feds in the Federal budget, and fewer buses, and fewer riders as many buses have been replaced by the more inconvenient light rail.
You can phrase it any way you want, but boondoggles are boondoggles, and the public always pays. Where are the Bechtel, M-K, Halliburton protesters on the issue of who is making the big bucks building public transport on the grand scale? The process takes too much money from small business and the middle class, and it always ends up with incumbent re-election, funded by paybacks by the people getting the financial benefit of Congress doling out the pork. I guess that unprepared small business is just collateral damage in the process of making the REAL supporters of the liberal left, Megabusiness, well off and their stock (held in the most part by public and union employee retirement funds) valuable. Put quite simply, it is good business to elect public works promoting lefty spendthrifts. And it is good for the environment. ...the environment in Congress.
In the above discussions, what caught my eye is the subject of "domestic terrorism" that bearbait discussed. We are in Iraq fighting foreign terrorism while domestic crime runs amuck & is ever-increasing. Is this inevitable...an inbedded cost that must payed for unfettered freedoms? Is the American public, not yet, angry enough to demand solutions? So crime rates will dictate what transportation solutions we select? I wonder if, in lieu of spending 1.8 trillion $'s in Iraq, this money had been spent on fighting domesitic crime would we be better off? Of course, we will never know as domestic issues are not "patroitic flag waving issues".
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