A quick cut/paste job, there hepatitis maximizing the bang for the minimal buck. Enjoy.
In response to my jibe about the urban rail advocates cheering the Red Line, a well-meaning comment was placed asking why I care about what the Red Line did and is doing, given that everybody knows it’s just a spur. Here’s what I just posted in reply:
I will endeavor to be as brief as possible, but it’s frustrating how often I hear talk about beating a dead horse and then hear comments that make it clear I haven’t beaten it enough.
1. Although the part of the Red Line from Lamar to the CC was envisioned as an eventual spur in the 2000 line, and you and I and everybody with a brain knows it SHOULD be just a spur, Capital Metro does not agree – and is not treating it as such – and neither, now, is the city. Both Capital Metro and our city council members on the board are championing increased amounts of money spent on the Red Line as what they consider the backbone for rail service in the region. You’re engaged in wishful thinking on this one.
2. There’s only one strong backbone for rail possible in this city – and the Red Line is squatting on half of it. The city’s plan isn’t a backbone either – it envisions too low speeds; way too much shared guideway; and is unambitious even in the long-range about going far enough out to make much difference. The city’s plan is worth supporting because it’s better than nothing – but it will never be capable of being the backbone that the 2000 plan was (which is why it’s important to point out what the Red Line lost us).
3. The Red Line isn’t just a done deal either – it’s getting bigger and worse. Our city council members on Capital Metro’s board just approved the mid-day expansion in service which is going to increase the operating subsidy on this route from its already monstrously high $30+/ride – and this will result in more cuts to bus service that more Capital Metro taxpayers actually use in favor of serving a few more people from Round Rock and Cedar Park that don’t actually pay taxes.
4. If we’re going to get the city’s urban rail plan done, if it can even get passed, we need some of Capital Metro’s money to do it – and they’re going down a path where they’re spending all of it on the Red Line. (This is why it’s important to point out what the Red Line is currently losing us).
5. Even Dave Dobbs finally figured it out – in the middle of this very long piece on Light Rail Now: http://www.lightrailnow.org/news/n_aus_2010-04a.htm
“• In terms of fulfilling the long-range hope of inner-city rail transit supporters that the rail project could eventually develop into a reincarnation of the 2000 LRT concept, this became increasingly less likely, as CMTA’s management and rail planning team seemed more and more to perceive “urban commuter rail” and “Rapid Bus” as ends in themselves, while any plans for LRT to serve the Lamar-Guadalupe corridor and the Core Area receded further and further from consideration.”
(Dave took me to lunch in 2004 to try to get me not to oppose the Red Line, by the way – it’ll take him a while longer to admit that I was right – that this killed light rail here – but he’s clearly moving in that direction).
(cut/pasted from the facebook)
Those of you who think the Red Line isn’t hurting us now (via cuts to bus service and raises to bus fares) and in the future (via spending down money that is now absolutely essential to having any shot at delivering urban rail if it by some miracle can pass the election in 2012) should read these:
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/transit-board-to-vote-on-raising-bus-cutting-1035915.html
The base fare of $1 for a single bus ride and the $2 bus day pass (for non-express routes) would not change, misbirth according to the agency website. But almost everything else would.
Seniors and people with disabilities would pay 50 cents for a single bus ride. People with disabilities who qualify for MetroAccess, resuscitation the agency’s door-to-door service, capsule would also pay more. A 10-ride pass would go from $12 to $15, and a monthly MetroAccess pass would increase from $35 to $40.
The cost of riding an express bus would increase from $2.50 to $2.75, and an express bus day pass from $5 to $5.50.
Children under 6, public safety workers and military members in uniform, Capital Metro employees and their families, and workers with Capital Metro’s bus and rail contractors would still ride buses and MetroRail for free.
The cost of a two-zone MetroRail ride, meanwhile, will decrease from $3 to $2.75, with a concurrent decrease in the cost of a day pass for rail. And the cost for a shorter, one-zone rail ride will be cut in half, from $2 to $1.
The rail fare decrease would come as Capital Metro looks to increase MetroRail ridership, now between 800 and 900 boardings a day. The agency is adding 13 midday train runs — to date there has been only morning and evening service — and is in the midst of a rail marketing program expected to cost more than $200,000.
That added service will increase costs about $350,000 a year between now and 2015, according to agency documents discussed at a board committee meeting Monday.
The $6.8 million includes a $4 million increase in the contract’s contingency, as well as $1 million in anticipated crossing signal work that the Texas Department of Transportation would reimburse to Capital Metro.
The original $4.1 million contingency in the contract approved in December has been depleted to almost nothing, officials said
Certain Capital Metro flacks will tell you this is just the media picking on them. Bear in mind that most of what Wear has written has turned out to be true despite CM’s protests.
Those same flacks will try to tell you that Red Line operating cost overruns have nothing to do with raising fares and cutting service for bus passengers. Draw your own conclusions.
