ST2 Preview

During the run-up to the Roads and Transit vote, WPC completed a year long, six-part series of studies on the measure. WPC will continue that breakdown once the Sound Transit Board makes its decision to place a new ST2 proposal on the ballot. Here is a preview of that analysis:

 

ST2 proposal is on the “off-the-chart” side of inefficient

The agency says it will carry an additional 163,000 daily trips if ST2 passes. But Sound Transit also estimates that about two thirds of those trips will come from the existing transit system. That means only about 54,333 daily trips will be new.

 

Trips do not equal riders. Because daily trips can double, triple and sometimes quadruple count the same individual, the figure needs to be adjusted to estimate unique riders. The standard conversion factor is 45% (To look at it another way, 45% assumes slightly less than half of total trips in a day will be the same person making a round trip to and from work). So the number of new individual riders will be about 24,450.

 

Comparing new daily riders (24,450) to how much taxpayers must pay ($17.8 billion) shows that the cost is about $728,016 per new rider!

 

Using the most expensive market in the Puget Sound (Eastside King County), the average cost of a condominium is about $320,000. Sound Transit could purchase every new passenger a condominium within walking distance of their employment ($7.8 billion) and still have enough left over ($9.8 billion) to purchase 4,000 articulated buses ($4 billion), fully fund the 520 bridge replacement ($3.8 billion), and the tunnel option for the Alaskan Way Viaduct ($4 billion).

The new ST2 plan is redundant and will not have enough passenger demand to justify the cost.

 

Less is more?

Sound Transit is quick to claim that the new ST2 package is smaller than its version in Prop. 1. While the scope of projects is smaller, the sales tax rate is the same (.5%), it will be collected forever, and it allows ST1 taxes to carry over for ST2 projects, again in perpetuity. 

 

This means voters are getting much less for the same tax increase Sound Transit proposed in last year’s failed Proposition 1.

 

Another ST2 proposal violates Sound Move policy

With a new proposal, the Sound Transit board is violating its own promise to roll back Sound Move taxes. As part of ST1, which passed in 1996, Sound Transit said this:

 

Any second phase capital program which continues local taxes for financing will require voter approval within the RTA District. If voters decide not to extend the system, the RTA will roll back the tax rate to a level sufficient to pay off the outstanding bonds and operate and maintain the investments made as part of Sound Move.

 

Since voters already rejected ST2, Sound Transit must roll back ST1 taxes to O&M levels. If Sound Transit moves forward with another ST2 program that contains ST1 taxes, then Sound Transit is violating its own tax payer protection clause voters authorized in 1996.

 

New ST2 proposal still increases congestion on Interstate-90 (Part Iv: Light Rail and I-90)

By reconfiguring the center lanes, Sound Transit’s plan to place light rail on Interstate 90 will reduce overall vehicle capacity on the bridge by 15% during the morning peak commute and 8% during the afternoon.

 

Light rail will increase vehicle delay on the bridge by 27% during the morning peak drive and 24% during the afternoon peak.

 

ST2 will cause average westbound vehicle speeds to fall 21% during the morning peak commute and eastbound drivers in the afternoon would see a 17% decrease.

 

Freight vehicles would suffer the most.  During the morning peak drive, the number of freight trucks able to cross into Seattle would drop 24%.  Leaving Seattle during the afternoon peak drive, trucks would see a 19% reduction in capacity.

Comments

[fact checker]

This new limitless tax grab attempt by ST deserves to be shot down in flames. All cost overruns - relating to Phase I AND Phase II - would fall on taxpayers' shoulders if this thing is approved.

What this new measure would do is amend the 1996 local law voters approved by removing the build-out period revenue spending limits, and the bonding cap. That would give ST authority to spend limitless amounts of tax revenue on Phase I projects, and also spend limitless amounts of bond sale revenue on those Phase I undertakings. With respect to the Phase II projects, approval of the measure in November would allow ST to spend WHATEVER it might end up costing by way of bond sale proceeds and tax collection proceeds to complete the vaguely-defined projects.

Take the Sounder service component of Phase I as an example. There's about $1 billion budgeted, for some undefined amount of "new service." What that probably means is some more trains, but also more easement purchases from BNSF. If BNSF says "Hey Nickels, it'll cost you $2 billion just for the easements," Nickels and his buddies appointed to the ST board will simply sell $2 billion worth of long term bonds, and hand that over to BNSF. Nickels and the board would say "look, we have the voters' mandate (and some blank checks) to pay whatever it takes for new Sounder service. That means easements from BNSF, and so we paid what BNSF wanted. Everybody knew that might happen."

That is just one of the really bad implications of this ballot measure ST wants voters to approve.

[fact checker]

"Take the Sounder service component of Phase I as an example." --

SHOULD READ: Take the Sounder service component of Phase II as an example.

[afreeman]

I just posted this on the Times editors' blog in response to their Nickels/Sims "debate" on the ST ballot proposal. Don't have all day to be composing posts that get lost in a day so repeat my concerns here.

Faith-based decision making, the mark of the Nickels administration, is now safe enough to do openly. Or is it? To grasp, contemptuous Nickels to Sims (no angel himself, heard most recently to exclaim: it's low VMT not high mpg--forget the existing web on the ground, rip it all up and redo it as walkable density connected by linear strings).

Let's hope the readers and voters here are self-selective because it is scary.

Tying up more and more capital on an increasingly unknowable future fits right in with doing everything possible to make sure that only the well-off can live here. One unaddressed question is why the comparison of Seattle population gain over the last eight years to the net new housing units built in that period shows only 8/10 of a new person available to reside in one? This reflects vacancies and second home owners (who don't show up in the records used by the state in its annual estimates).

Second, third, & fourth home buyers are either already taxpayers (pay once no matter where they are except for property taxes) or live out of state with even less exposure. People will indeed have to be quite rich to have a residence here. And if its their only one, to subsidize homes for all the laborers who do the heavy lifting.

[fact checker]

Here's a reason "North King County Subarea" (read - Seattle) voters should reject ST2 v2: the streetcar thing that is part of the plan.

$120 million of ST funds would go toward a City of Seattle built and operated streetcar running from Union Station to the proposed Capitol Hill light rail station. Apparently that is a hard and fast number. So what's the rest of that streetcar line going to cost? Who would pay for it? Would it be financed via Seattle City general funds, some new general tax, diversion of existing taxes, an LID, what?

This is one of the problems Prop. I had last year -- the measure only partially funds projects that are VERY open-ended when it comes to ultimate costs. This streetcar project has not even begun to be scoped (engineering, cost, EIS, etc.).

This is another example of the "pig in a poke" nature of what got rubberstamped yesterday . . ..