Arlington’s Streetcar of Desire (Guest Post)

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How would you like to buy an expensive toy for some one percenters, many of whom don’t even want the toy? If you live in 49 of this country’s states, the Federal Transit Administration let you off the hook. But if you live in Virginia you might be asked to shell out $65 million dollars to help out that impoverished region known as… Arlington County.

Let’s back up a bit.  To give a brief summary for newcomers, the Arlington County Board has been trying to force a streetcar onto its residents that will serve the dual purpose of providing a massive taxpayer-funded boondoggle while creating a traffic nightmare for anyone who has to travel it during their commute. One of the first steps in helping to push this effort through to redistribute wealth from the rest of the country to the fourth wealthiest county in America was to request federal funds. Thankfully for the rest of America the federal government smelled the rotten fish in the freezer.

In an April 12 report, the Federal Transit Administration denied Arlington’s application for the Small Starts program saying that the almost five-mile-long streetcar line likely would cost closer to $310.1 million, and could rise as high as $402.4 million including $71.8 million in contingency funds — double what county officials had predicted.

Not to worry, as Arlington has generously asked for a wealth transfer from the rest of its less wealthy Virginia neighbors (with the exceptions of Loudon and Fairfax counties, and Fairfax will be footing part of the bill) into its pockets.

Virginia will increase state funding for the controversial Columbia Pike streetcar project by up to $65 million, the state transportation chief told officials in Arlington and Fairfax counties this week, allowing the streetcar line to be built at least a year faster and without federal funds.

Thankfully Virginia is in great fiscal shape and can afford to throw money around, right? Maybe not.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe unveiled a raft of cost-cutting measures Wednesday, including up to 565 layoffs, in response to a projected budget shortfall that he blamed mostly on reduced federal spending.The steps are intended to partially address a previously announced multi-year deficit of $2.4 billion. In a news conference, McAuliffe (D) called the budget cuts “the most difficult part of my job so far” and said the situation could grow more dire.

How unpopular is this project in Arlington? Last spring one of its biggest advocates on the County Board, Christopher Zimmerman, stepped down, and a special election was held to replace him. What interestingly escaped most of the press’ interest is that after pushing hard to force taxpayers to pay for an unwanted mass transit system, he left the board to go to work for Smart Growth America, a non-profit dedicated to convincing taxpayers to buy unwanted mass transit systems. In the special election that was held to replace Zimmerman Arlington amazingly voted in an Independent in John Vihstadt, mostly out of opposition to the street car. To give you an idea of how significant this is, in Arlington you could practically run Mickey Mouse with a (D) after his name and coast to election, as evidenced by what Northern Virginia sent to represent itself in Congress for 35 years.

Much of the county board’s arguments in favor of this project are based on a 2012 study. So I did something crazy and radical – I read the study. The first warning sign came in the first chapter of the study, Purpose and Need. Among a number of bullet points it stated that

“Technical Memoranda provided in Volume II include(s): 

?? Environmental Justice

As a rule of thumb, I’ve found that any time you see a term used to describe a cause followed by the word “justice” (such as Climate, Social, Department of) you can safely assume that justice is the last thing that is an objective. But in the study’s defense, when the topic is addressed later on it rates every alternative on this subject as not having any adverse impact.

The second chapter discusses alternatives considered, and notes that:

The use of an electrified streetcar would require placement of an overhead contact wire system;

Don’t overhead wires pose some risks? Portland has seen how easily an outage can shut down sections of the streetcar (and the road that follows it). Meanwhile, Tucson has come to realize that overhead electrical wires can create a fire hazard. Raising ladders and pumping water hoses near live electrical wires don’t mix well. Part of the economic growth that will create all of the additional tax revenue that the county is promising the streetcar will generate will come from bars and restaurants. But as Tucson has learned,

The proliferation of new restaurants has raised concerns due to their high risk potential for kitchen fires. Just this summer. a small Tuscon restaurant fire required the attention of nine units and 23 firefighters.

The sources expressed concern that future buildings will not pass Fire Marshall inspections due to the time it would take to access the building.

One Tucson fire official said he was dismayed that the city had not given consideration to potential rescue services.

Unfortunately, nowhere in Arlington’s study do these risks get addressed.

The next section addresses environmental consequences. While the study does acknowledge that the streetcar would have the greatest impact on auto traffic of all of the alternatives, the study downplays the overall impact:

Intersection performance in the Streetcar Build Alternative would see slight changes relative to the No Build Alternative. The LOS at most intersections would not change, and some would see improvement. In both the 2016 and 2030 am peak-hour, only one intersection would see a delay increase by more than 10 seconds.

For an outlook that optimistic the study doesn’t seem to take into account what actually happens in the real world. In Toronto he city has seen delays caused by streetcar passengers, and how drivers react to streetcars might be less than desirable. And going back to Tucson, it’s pretty easy for unpredictable factors to snarl a streetcar.

Luckily, this is probably not one of the risks we need to worry about.

I figured that when the environmental study got to air quality the streetcar would take a hit. Traffic delays during construction? How about extra time spent by cars sitting in the traffic that they had forecasted? Perhaps not…

Although traffic delays are expected to increase slightly at selected intersections due to the addition of streetcar service the differences in CO concentrations under the No Build and Streetcar Build Alternatives would be insignificant. Moreover, the CO concentrations under all western terminus Design Options of the Streetcar Build Alternative are predicted to be equivalent to the No Build Alternative.

In fact, if you look at table on page 69 of this chapter, the streetcar’s pollution levels are just as good, if not lower than each alternative. Granted, the study is assuming greater mass transit use to take some cars off of the road, but seems to forget that with growth comes more cars on the road, and all the more to sit in traffic. I only read these few sections of this chapter, which was pretty lengthy. I was more interested in the next section…

Chapter 4 contained the financial analysis, and of course, the most damning part of this exercise. The original projections called for a cost to build of $245 million. By May of this year that cost had risen to $358 million. You may recall earlier in this post how the federal government rejected this project when they were forecasting it to “only ” cost $310 million. So what happens if we apply the same cost overrun ratio to the operations and maintenance (O&M) costs to keep the streetcars running once they’re built? Using the “medium” build alternative (since it was the only one that the study hashed out in detail) and taking their base year cost of $25.568M and a 3% inflation rate (which the study also did) across the 30 year expected life of the street car we’re looking at $1.2 billion dollars in operations costs. Of course, that $1.2B number is spread over a 30 year period and not being charged as an up front cost. And when the $1.2B is added to the initial $245M projected cost the overall cost will be $1.461 billion. But look what happens if that same 31 percent cost overrun gets applied to the O&M tail of the project – the $1.2B price tag jumps to $1.77B, giving us a new total cost for the street car $2.135 billion. Of course, my projections are just that – projections. But it is difficult to have confidence in a board that forced Arlington taxpayers to pay one million dollars for a bus stop.1 I could take these multipliers to apply a more pessimistic view of the additional tax revenue that is to be generated by the streetcar as well, but I think the point has been made.

Beyond the study there are also more interesting facets to the story. A large factor in John Vihstadt getting elected to the County Board in the special election is the generally low turnout that those elections have. In the spring election the voters passionate about the street car came out in force, while most of solidly Democrat Arlington County stayed home. That won’t be the case come November, as Democrat Alan Howze will benefit from the tailwind of being down ballot from the statewide elections.

Howze has made an interesting appeal to Arlington voters on this issue. Even though his own web site shows support for the street car, Howze has adopted the tactic of suggesting that the public be allowed to decide on the streetcar’s fate via referendum. Of course, in the event of his election the board would not have enough votes to bring this about (the three Democrats on the five member board are solidly behind the streetcar), so it’s a good way to pretend to oppose an unpopular issue. Another odd position that Howze took to throw out some blue meat to his base was to suggest that the streetcar be powered with 100% renewable energy. Of course, minor details like how to accomplish that or what it would cost are less forthcoming.

You also may have noticed that there are five seats on the board, and I mentioned that there are three Democrats, one Independent, and I didn’t mention the party affiliation of the fifth member. That seat would belong to Libby Garvey, Green Party Member, and steady opponent of the street car. Lest you think that she’s a GINO2, Garvey is not exactly a conservative, although standing by her principles has not been well received by the Democrats in the county. But this begs an interesting question – how often do you hear about a member of the Green Party opposing a mass transit initiative? Maybe the rest of the Democrats should be asking the same questions that she is?

One last note, you might be wondering what difference this election can make given that the majority of the board will still be pushing for the streetcar regardless of who occupies the last seat. This is true, but two of the Democrats who support the streetcar are up for re-election in 2015. And if there is one thing that makes politicians nervous it’s the notion that they might actually be held accountable for their decisions. And if we fail to do so, then we Arlingtonians get the tax bills and traffic jams that we deserve.

To end on a lighter note, although I can’t find the original tweet, David Burge, aka @iowahawkblog, summed it up best saying something to the effect of:

“What unions and city politicians want: Expensive mass transit systems. What people who actually live in cities want: Uber”

Follow Brother Bob on Twitter and on Facebook.

Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog

1 Opponents point out that the one million dollar figure is an exaggeration and that the stop “only” cost $965,000. And going forward Arlingtonians will only have to pay the bargain price of $470,000 per bus stop!

2 Green In Name Only? Sure, why not.

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When I was little we had trolleys (streetcars) all over southern California.
Instead of keeping them up and adding more cars as needed, they were all torn out and replaced by buses.
Now the country is moving back to trolleys?
Why?
Part of their bad rap was how UGLY they were.
How cramped they were.
How noisy they were.
How much room they took up.
How dangerous they were when cars and trucks shared the same cross streets with them.
A five-mile long route costs how much to transverse via public transportation?
$1?
$1.50?
$2?
How long and how busy and how many deaths before a new $310 million trolley pays for itself?
The guesstimate is 16,000 boardings per day.
Or, at $2/ride, 16,000 rides/day, NO depreciation or upkeep whatsoever = 26 and a half YEARS before it is paid for by ridership.
Trust me, these things will go out of style before that!

65 million ?? That is like 8$ dollars a person in VA
How dare those rich people that already pay by far the most in taxes demand help from the state

In an April 12 report, the Federal Transit Administration denied Arlington’s application for the Small Starts program saying that the almost five-mile-long streetcar line likely would cost closer to $310.1 million, and could rise as high as $402.4 million including $71.8 million in contingency funds — double what county officials had predicted.

It would cost three times that. Or more. You can’t even get a health care website for that.

There’s some perspective for you.

Hey folks – it looks like I didn’t upload the entire post properly – I’ll fix it in a little while when I get home. In the meantime you can read the entire post at my site