A Mere $54 Billion for Light Rail

Seattle’s regional transit agency, Sound Transit, wants voters to approve a tax increase so it can spend another $54 billion on new light-rail lines. The agency’s first light-rail line went 86 percent over its original projections, but the agency assures the public that it has realized that voters are so innumerate that it no longer needs to low-ball the cost estimates in order to get tax increases approved.

To promote its plan, the agency has hired Peter “Paint Is Cheaper Than Rails” Rogoff to run the agency and get federal grants. Rogoff argued in 2010 that buses can attract as many riders as trains, and that “Bus Rapid Transit is a fine fit for a lot more communities than are seriously considering it.” Of course, he must believe that rail makes more sense than buses for Seattle, or he wouldn’t have taken this $298,000 per year job (a $118,000 increase over his previous job), right?

Seattle’s first light-rail line cost $3.1 billion in 1995 dollars, or $4.8 billion in today’s dollars for about 20 miles, for an average cost of $240 million a mile. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, out of nearly 1.6 million commuters, a respectable 160,000 took the bus to work in the Seattle urban area in 2014 but fewer than 3,000 took light rail while another 7,500 took commuter rail or streetcars to work. It’s possible that some survey respondents were confused and marked streetcar or commuter rail when they meant light rail, but it is still an insignificant number.

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Seattle’s second light-rail line cost a cool $2 billion for 3.1 miles, making it one of the most expensive lines ever. Seattle’s light-rail lines are so expensive because they are mostly or entirely grade separated from other traffic. That’s good for safety, but it means that Seattle has a very high-cost, low-capacity system. Grade separation doesn’t even improve the speed all that much: trains have an average speed of about 30 mph, fast for light rail but slow for heavy rail. In short, the region has spent a lot of money on light rail and not gotten much for it.

Sound Transit already convinced voters to raise taxes to build two more lines. The proposed measure would increase sales taxes, property taxes, and auto taxes a third time to fund 62 miles of new light-rail lines and enhancements of existing lines and lines under construction. Some argue that the plan won’t really cost $54 billion because that figure is in “year of expenditure dollars,” while the cost in 2016 dollars is “only” about $20 billion. Inflation won’t triple costs, so some of the difference must also be in interest and other finance charges. But even $20 billion is expensive for a few dozen miles of low-capacity-rail lines.

Prior to elections, Washington sends out a voters pamphlet that presents both sides of the issues. Unlike Oregon, where anyone can submit an argument favoring or opposing any ballot measure, Washington allows only one argument on each side–and the government agency proposing the measure gets to decide who writes the argument against it. Although opponents of the Sound Transit tax increase have organized a committee, Sound Transit picked instead Tim Eyman, an anti-tax activist popular downstate but unpopular in Seattle, to write the “no” argument. Opponents argue that this is a deliberate effort to sabotage their campaign. It will be interesting to see how gullible Seattle voters are.