Category / Economics

by Adron

17% Service Reduction?!?! Seriously?

Ok, this sucks. Straight from Metro.

County Executive calls on County Council to enact two-year funding for Metro or face 17 percent service reduction

King County Executive Dow Constantine this morning asked the King County Council to make important decisions about the future of Metro Transit: approve a two-year, $20 congestion reduction charge to help maintain Metro service near current levels for two years, or begin the process of reducing the transit system by 17 percent.

The poor economy has hit Metro hard, causing a drop in Metro’s funding from sales tax. Over the past four years, Metro has cut costs, raised fares four times, dug deeply into reserves, found new operating efficiencies, canceled the purchase of replacement buses, and negotiated cost-saving contracts with its employee unions. These actions have generated nearly $400 million to narrow Metro’s budget gap for 2008-2011 and about $143 million annually for the years ahead—but Metro still faces an ongoing shortfall of $60 million per year.

The two-year congestion reduction charge would be $20 a year on vehicles licensed in King County. The proceeds would be used to preserve transit service while King County works with regional leaders, legislators and the Governor on a long-term funding solution for transportation needs.

In case the congestion charge is not approved, the Executive also asked the Council to authorize a reduction of about 100,000 annual bus service hours in February 2012. This would be the first in a series of reductions totaling 600,000 service hours that the Executive would ask the Council to authorize for the next two years if new funding is not approved.

These reductions would shrink the Metro system by about 17 percent, leading to the loss of an estimated 9 million passenger trips annually.Overall, a reduction of this size would affect 80 percent of Metro passengers—meaning four out of five bus riders would have to walk further, wait longer, make an extra transfer, stand in the aisle, or even see fully loaded buses pass them by.

Other areas have balancing budgets at this point? Why is Seattle still getting hit so hard? Can we stop serving the areas that barely use transit and bulk back up where we get real ROI already?! This is insane.

The other question I have though, is what in the world is this $20 congestion charge? How would it be applied? It appears that this isn’t a concrete idea or maybe somebody knows something more about it?

by Adron

Transporting the Smarts

While riding the bus recently, I was contemplating the absolutely gregarious myth that public transportation is for the poor and downtrodden.  Of course, this myth isn’t particularly held by those that actually know about cities, urban lifestyles, and other such things.  However there are a large number of people (namely on random AM radio talk shows) that hold this myth to be true.  They hold it as if it is some real redistribution of wealth, some hand out to the poor, or just some hand out in general.

As I sit here riding the #545 toward Microsoft, I realize just how objectively wrong they are.  There are approximately 60+ people on this bus as it travels across the bridge toward Microsoft.  These 60+ people have a median taxable income near the upper 93-95% bracket.  That means the following facts are true:

  1. These people are absolutely not poor, in any sense of the word.
  2. These people are in the bracket that pays the largest percentage of tax share to the Government.  In other words these people pay approximately 1.8-2.4x their costs incurred by the Government.

Think about that for a second.  These people are the bread and butter of America’s Economy right now.  The part of the economy that is actually creating jobs, not shedding them.  The part of the economy that is growing still.

In another part of town, Amazon has thousands of people coming in on busses and even walking to work (which I’d say is a better corporate citizen than Microsoft when it comes to environmental and economic activity).

Again, the facts for these individuals hold true also.  Amazon is growing massively.  They pay very well and need intelligent and highly skilled people.  Everyday they’re hiring more people.

Both of these companies have a large percentage of employees that use public transit to get to and from work, and in both situations both companies provide private transit agencies to get employees back and forth to the various areas of their campuses.  Both of these companies are prime examples of what should be encouraged and perpetuated in cities throughout America.  These companies are also prime examples of employers, that don’t require you to have a car.  Going car free with Amazon or Microsoft is super easy, and with either you could be an urban, suburban, or even rural person and get away with being car free.

So get rid of the myths if you hold them, you’re holding things that are not true in the least if you have that thought.  Public transit is vital to our most productive and growing industries.

by Adron

#545 Redmond Bound

Today the bus had wifi and I was seriously grateful.  I had a few key things I wanted to research before getting to work today and needed to send and receive a few e-mails.

Today I got to thinking about a number of transit related questions I haven’t verified or researched lately, the most important being a verification of transportation costs for multiple modes.  I’d like to get a baseline, and the extreme costs for $5k, $13k (cheapest option), $22k car (median family car), and $40k car (the cheap BMW or something) and pair that to the same trips on transit for the average commuter.  Then break that down to trips that are transit friendly and trips that aren’t.

The other cost factor I’d like to see is how much we pay the Governments of our respective areas for transportation, infrastructure, etc., and how much we paid out of pocket 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and about 130 years ago (when streetcars were taking off).  My hypothesis is that transportation is actually more expensive today in net societal cost than the disciplined approaches of yester year, but for about 50% of the population it is cheaper out of pocket.  I’ll get to the bottom of this eventually.  Anyone else have some opinions to interject, I’d love to hear others’ hypothesis on the matter.