Residents of Lake Oswego, Portland’s wealthiest large suburb, have hired one of the state’s leading (and most liberal) political consultants to oppose a planned streetcar between downtown Portland and their community. Who has the bucks to hire Bergstein? One of the names mentioned is Elaine Franklin, wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Packwood. As Bojack says, “this might be more fun than we first thought.
Why is this even an issue when TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, is nearly broke? The Federal Transit Administration is giving TriMet “only” half the cost of a ridiculous (and ridiculously expensive) light-rail line to Milwaukie, a suburb whose residents soundly trounced funding for light rail the last few times it was on the ballot. As a light-rail pioneer, TriMet is used to getting the feds to pay for 75 percent or more of its light-rail boondoggles.
To make up some of the difference, TriMet is asking voters for permission to sell $125 million worth of bonds (to be repaid by property taxes) to buy new buses. This is really just a ploy to support light rail, as transit agencies almost never borrow money to buy new buses. But the agency lost the last three times light rail was on the ballot, so it hopes voters might think buses are worth funding instead.
TriMet says it also has other “targets” (read: taxpaying victims) that it hopes will help pay for the $1.4 billion rail line, although it won’t say exactly who those victims will be. Update: TriMet now says it intends to make up the difference by borrowing against future federal grants, though it is questionable whether this meets FTA funding guidelines. At best, it means the transportation projects that would normally be funded by those future grants will not be possible.
It is hard to believe that the FTA funded even half of this turkey, which Portland planners predict will have almost no impact on transit ridership, congestion, energy consumption, or air pollution. Just coordinating traffic signals in the same corridor would probably have a much greater effect on travel times and pollution.
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Meanwhile, a former TriMet planner named Jim Howell complains that the agency has been cutting bus service in its desperation to fund more rail lines. Howell notes that one route has lost nearly two-thirds of its ridership due largely to service cuts. Howell claims to support light rail, but thinks most of Portland’s lines are poorly planned. (But, as Joel Kotkin says, they are only poorly planned if you assume the goal is to serve transit riders; if your goal is to reshape the city through densification, maybe they are not so poorly planned.)
Despite all its money problems, TriMet continues to plan new rail lines, including the streetcar to Lake Oswego. To tell the truth, I feel a bit of schadenfreude here. Back in 1998, when light rail was on the ballot, Lake Oswego was the only suburb to vote for it. Why not? TriMet wasn’t then planning to build one to Lake Oswego, which meant no threat from densification.
Lake Oswego and the even wealthier but unincorporated community of Dunthorpe, through which the streetcar will pass, didn’t care about light rail as long as it was goring someone else’s neighborhood. But now that it is literally going to pass through the backyards of some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the state, they want to stop it. Or anyway, stop that one line. It is still okay to run light rail to Milwaukie, Vancouver, and other places because who cares if those areas are densified?
At the same time, this is a classic divide-and-conquer strategy on the part of TriMet and the Metro planners who are trying to run the entire Portland area. Vote against light rail? We’ll build it anyway. Don’t want it through your neighborhood? Tough. Won’t pay for it with your property taxes? We will take it from your taxes anyway through tax-increment financing. Want to fight it? Good luck when you are just one or two neighborhoods against the entire Metro government and light-rail mafia.
In the end, I have to say “Good luck” to Franklin, Bergstein, and the other streetcar opponents. Anything that can throw a monkey wrench into TriMet’s grand plans can only be a good thing.
Have you been keeping up on the dismal state of the WMATA? It is really getting decrepit.
Have you been keeping up on the dismal state of the WMATA? It is really getting decrepit.
One of the many reasons why I jumped ship.
I think what Portland is doing is great. It is a fine example of federalism. It would be better without state and federal subsidies, but transit is hardly a service that moderate subsidies makes a difference in its accounting.
Portland has received huge accolades from NYT, Boston Globe, SF Examiner, and other bastions of liberal thought. If that is worth the investment, then Portland should feel proud. If Portland expected it to grow the economy, then time will tell. Either way, planners can spend a generation touting Portland as success or explaining its results away.
TriMet now says it intends to make up the difference by borrowing against future federal grants, though it is questionable whether this meets FTA funding guidelines. At best, it means the transportation projects that would normally be funded by those future grants will not be possible.
That’s interesting, I never knew such a thing was even possible. I’ve always thought the feds were very specific with what federal funds could be spent on (e.g. capital expenses for specific projects). That raises an interesting question as to how TriMet and Metro will project the expected amount of federal funds they will be able to obtain to issue bonds against and how much will actually be available to repay those bonds. Seems like, along with the inherent tendency for rail transit planners to underestimate costs on average about 40%, uncertainty in future federal funds received could lead to similar overly optimistic forecasts, thereby compounding the enormous debt and financial burden to the region. Seems like any kind of shortfall would be enormous considering the funding gap TriMet is trying to bridge and the high likelihood that MLR will probably end up being closer $2 billion (based on past cost overrun trends, such as those studied by Flyvberg et al.).
Doesn’t Dunthrope already have a streetcar going through its backyard?
http://www.oerhs.org/wst/index.htm
http://www.oerhs.org/wst/schedule.htm
My bias towards this project has nothing to do with rail or bus — which is becoming such a tired argument — it is rather that it might not be faster or more frequent than a bus line along the adjacent proposed (and existing historic) line (highway 43).
http://deadhorsetimes.blogspot.com/2010/06/lake-oswego-streetcar-we-should-desire.html
I wouldn’t buy into ROT’s claims that rail in Portland is a boondoggle. It’s not, and I would argue the Blue Line is evident of a solid investment that beat all kinds of expectations.
http://maxredline.typepad.com/maxredline/2010/09/how-green-is-thy-valley.html
TriMet is pushing ahead with the Portland/Milwaukie light rail project, unsurprisingly enough. Faced with a budget shortfall and with riders protesting bus service cuts and ridership price hikes in demonstrations outside Portland City Hall, TriMet and their buddies over at Metro have essentially adopted the Rahm Emmanuel approach: “F**k ‘Em!”
WS – you are absolutely correct: light rail has not been a doggle of any sort; it has been a boon to gang-bangers and other criminal elements. I really like the way that Beaverton Round has been “developing”, don’t you? Why, despite massive infusions of tax dollars, it’s only gone bankrupt a couple of times, so it must surely be counted among the Blue Line success stories.
What does the Round have anything to do the Blue line’s pretty darn good ridership numbers? I’ll answer that: nothing.
“…I would argue the Blue Line is evident of a solid investment…”
One: Government can’t “invest” money; since it has no money of its own, it can only transfer wealth. That is not investment, which is “the investing of money or capital in order to gain profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value.” Two: Judging by this rubric, nothing TriMet does constitutes investment. It’s simply, and often wastefully, spending wealth transfers.
Investment involves setting aside existing money to create wealth in the future; investment is NOT borrowing to spend.
Frank, that’s semantics, you just hate railroads & mass transit.
Wendell Cox has talked about roads being an investment.
And you, Andrew my boy, semantic simpleton, king of the non sequitur, just hate logic and proper grammar.
Why do you want a proverbial gun to the head of railroads & mass transit?
There isn’t one to roads, nor should there be.
So how do you justify your logic Frank?
Andrew my boy, you need to enroll in a remedial reading class at your local community college. Show me one sentence—nay, one WORD—in my comment that even intimated that I “hate railroads & mass transit”. You can’t.
I take it back. You need more than reading intervention; you need to be in a special education class. My high school students make more sense than you and write with more coherence to boot. Either you’re quite literally retarded, or you need to put the bottle down. Maybe both.
Now STFU and quit spamming the board.
You still didn’t answer my questions Frank.
Why do you want a proverbial gun to the head of railroads & mass transit?
There isn’t one to roads, nor should there be.
So how do you justify your logic Frank?
I didn’t answer your question because it’s a loaded question.
Ignore.
It’s not loaded, though it is point blank.
O’Toole has even admitted that, roads are there regardless of economic conditions.
So Frank, why do you think there shouldn’t be the same protection for railroads & mass transit?
Frank:
I do don’t need textbook econ 101 definitions or responses. I am not here to argue semantics.
And Frank, no, highwayman’s point is not a non-sequitor. You’re applying the world investment only against transit. Why?
Let us note that when Frank spews bile and invective, the board is silent.
When Dan makes fun of tortured logic and unsupportable ideological positions, insecure little men flock like flies to s— and hand-flapping ensues to try to run him off the board.
Jus’ sayin’.
Folks notice standard-issue ideologue behavior.
DS
Dan: I learned it by watching you. (And you’re consistently silent on THM’s low-wattage spam, swearing, and smears by the way.)
WS: “I do don’t need textbook econ 101 definitions or responses. I am not here to argue semantics.”
Which one is it? Do? Don’t? You might not be here to argue semantics, but you are misusing an economic term. It’s as simple as spending/borrowing ? investment, and it can be applied to any government reallocation of wealth, be it transit, subsidies to biofuels or wind power, or paving roads in national parks. (Here, the topic is transit, so staying on topic, I used that as an example.)
The non-sequitur, you would have realized had you read more closely, is that by using the economic definition “investment” and pointing out its misuse somehow indicates that I “hate railroads & mass transit.” That simply does not follow—nor is it factual.
Frank said: Which one is it? Do? Don’t? You might not be here to argue semantics, but you are misusing an economic term. It’s as simple as spending/borrowing ? investment, and it can be applied to any government reallocation of wealth, be it transit, subsidies to biofuels or wind power, or paving roads.
THWM: What a about defense spending or the war on drugs & etc?
Frank I have no problem if you just want to drive all the time which is important to you.
Though at the same time don’t attack other types of transportation that are important to other people & their infrastructure.
Frank, please just calm down & be reasonable.
Frank:
“And you, Andrew my boy, semantic simpleton, king of the non sequitur, just hate logic and proper grammar.”
“Andrew my boy, you need to enroll in a remedial reading class at your local community college.”
Are you conflating the highwayman and me? Up until this post, I hadn’t addressed this thread.
Also, I am not your “boy”.
Otherwise, I think your ad hominem bile speaks for itself.
the highwayman:
“O’Toole has even admitted that, roads are there regardless of economic conditions … why do you think there shouldn’t be the same protection for railroads & mass transit?”
There should. Unfortunately in the US, the political class decided to allow the massive private investment in many of these systems to be thrown away and the backers financially ruined through the subidization of the road system, a decision that is ultimately costing us billions to rebuild small portions of what used to exist here and there.
Its funny that what passes for free enterprise transportation economics is that roads must be there regardless of economic necessity or utility and maintained on the public dime, but railroads must be self-supporting. Yet railroads and rail transit give everyone a right of passage through buying a ticket, while you cannot use the roads without government permission and massive personal investment in an automobile unless all you want to do is walk or bike.
Andrew: “Are you conflating the highwayman and me?”
No. The Highwayman’s first name is Andrew. At least, that’s how he signed his early
postsspam here.And my “ad hominem bile” should speak for itself. THM is the village idiot who spreads defamatory smears across this blog like manure on cattle pasture. His bare assertions, misrepresentations, and foul language mar the board.
But I’ve got him on ignore, so I don’t have to read his tripe any more.
I am not “Andrew”, “highwayman”, or “Andy Steahl”. I am just responding to the preposterous comment by Dan at #19.
At the very least, Dan, can you please stop mocking racial dialect speech?
Some people say you work for a government. If you don’t desist from racist comments, I will try to find where you work and file a civil rights complaint against you and your racist comments. You might have a First Amendment right to make racist comments, but I wonder if your employer might be interested in your racist speech while at work and on a government computer.
It’s ok Frank, I’ve known that you’re ignorant for quite a while, though I do like to through reality in your face to remind you of it.
Frank you can evade reality, but you can not evade the consequences of evading reality.
Andrew said:
the highwayman:
“O’Toole has even admitted that, roads are there regardless of economic conditions … why do you think there shouldn’t be the same protection for railroads & mass transit?â€
There should. Unfortunately in the US, the political class decided to allow the massive private investment in many of these systems to be thrown away and the backers financially ruined through the subidization of the road system, a decision that is ultimately costing us billions to rebuild small portions of what used to exist here and there.
Its funny that what passes for free enterprise transportation economics is that roads must be there regardless of economic necessity or utility and maintained on the public dime, but railroads must be self-supporting. Yet railroads and rail transit give everyone a right of passage through buying a ticket, while you cannot use the roads without government permission and massive personal investment in an automobile unless all you want to do is walk or bike.
THWM: That’s the irony, here we have so called “libertarians” defending big government, while people like you & I want a more open market place.
I swear I am not creating sockpuppets to illustrate my point. But I reiterate my past assertion that someone may be using this board to test characters – for a screenplay, script, literary work.
But back OT: I wonder if those in suburbs that aren’t rich will be calling for more transit when gas is $5-6/gal ? What then? Scrambling to obtain transit?
DS
Wraiths! Cretins!
Dan comes here with nothing but ennoblement on his mind, and the lot of you cast him out with accusations of racism and rhetorical inconsistencies!
If I weren’t in such a livable state of mind right now, I’d soundly thrash each one of you. But as it turns out, there is a buffet of pork niblets (pried from the flesh of Klamath County red wattles) sitting near the business end of my feed-hole.
So I’ll enjoy my local dining experience tonight with other community seating aficionados, and I’ll try to forget this Saarlac Pit of unreason. Clearly, the comments section here is a platform for pollinating cockroaches.
I refuse to be ensnared.
Best Regards,
Iced Dan