Light Rail, One Year Later: A Train of Broken Promises

By Michael Ennis
Director, WPC's Center for Transportation

As our first year with light rail comes to a close, Sound Transit officials are certain to declare the experiment an unqualified success. Yet, a closer look at the actual performance shows citizens are not getting what they are paying for.

In 1996, Sound Transit officials promised voters they would build 25 miles of light rail for a total cost of about $1.8 billion, and they would be finished by 2006. In fact, officials were so confident in their conservative projections they called it, Sound Move, The 10-Year Regional Transit System Plan.

Fourteen years later, Sound Transit officials have reduced the planned line to 21 miles, and have only delivered about 17 miles for about $2.6 billion. The rest will not be finished until around 2020 for a total cost approaching $15 billion. In other words, Phase 1 is smaller, billions over budget and more than a dozen years late compared to what officials originally promised voters.

Here are some other promises from 1996 that Sound Transit officials have failed to deliver (quotes are from the Sound Move plan adopted in May 1996 and passed by voters in November 1996):

Promise: [Sound Transit] is committed to building and operating a ten-year system plan that can be confidently funded and completed as promised to the region's citizens.
Reality: Today, the initial segment is already four miles shorter, billions over budget and more than a dozen years late from what was promised in 1996.

Promise: If voters decide not to extend the system, [Sound Transit] will roll back the tax rate
Reality: Voters rejected an extension in 2007, but Sound Transit officials did not roll back taxes. Instead, officials pushed for a second measure the following year, which voters ultimately approved.

Promise: Light rail will carry 32.6 million riders per year, or 107,000 per weekday, by 2010.
Reality: Today, light rail carries 17,000 to 20,000 riders per weekday and will likely carry only 5.6 million riders for the year.

Promise: Sound Move is based on extremely conservative cost and ridership assumptions.
Reality: Despite claiming seventeen times that Sound Moves cost and ridership projections are based on conservative estimates, Sound Transit officials are spending billions more and carrying fewer riders than what they told voters.

Promise: Riders will pay more than half (53 percent) of the annual operating costs of light rail.
Reality: Today, Sound Transit officials say riders will cover only 40 percent, but actually are on track to recover far less than that.

Promise: The light-rail system will provide significantly greater reliability than all other types of public transportation in the region.
Reality: Today, the Central Link light rail segment has an on-time performance of only 71 percent, while other modes average above 90 percent.

Promise: Sound Transits initial light rail facility can carry 22,000 passengers per hour, per direction.
Reality: Today, the facility carries about 425 passengers per hour, per direction.

The regions light rail system is not living up to its expectations because Sound Transit officials deliberately overestimated benefits and underestimated costs to make the project appear attractive to voters. Once the agency won higher taxing authority, its promises fell apart.

Even the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) says passenger rail will carry about half of the riders from what Sound Transit told voters.

Even if Sound Transits ridership projections somehow come true, light rail will still only carry about one percent of all daily trips. Worse, Sound Transit says two thirds of these riders will come from the existing bus system.

For example, Sound Transit forced King County Metro to eliminate Route #194, one of the countys most popular bus routes. Sound Transit officials hope these displaced bus riders will be forced to shift to light rail.

The average cost for King County to operate a Metro bus is about $4 per passenger trip. The average cost for Sound Transit to operate light rail is $7.62 per passenger trip. So we are building a redundant system for billions in capital expenses that costs nearly twice as much to operate.

City and county officials recently closed the aging South Park Bridge, saying they dont have the $130 million needed to replace it.  The bridge serves as many daily travelers as the entire $3 billion light rail system.  Many regional transportation projects go unfunded while Sound Transit officials spend billions on a train few people will ever ride.

Our first year with light rail has proven to be a massive waste of taxpayers money.

Michael Ennis is transportation director at Washington Policy Center, a non-partisan independent policy research organization in Washington State.  You can reach him at mennis@washingtonpolicy.org.