In a triumph of bureaucratic innovation, Seattle officials tried to encourage the public to make use of a hugely expensive new transit system by banning all parking near the stations. In so doing, they provided a perfect example of government’s contemptuous, reckless and ubiquitous disregard for the people it’s supposed to serve and represent.

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The residents of the city tried to make sense of the puzzling and novel policy in July, 2009, after the long delayed completion of the most expensive light rail project in US history. The heralded debut of “Central Link,” following fourteen years of controversy, cost-overruns, false starts, embarrassing federal audits and back-to-the-drawing-board reconsiderations, left many locals deeply disturbed, even outraged, by the system’s bizarre attempt to prevent people from using their cars to connect with the trains. The much-ballyhooed boondoggle (just the first stage of a vast future system scheduled for construction over the next thirty years) cost $2.4 billion for a meager 14 mile line—an unprecedented public investment of $179 million per mile (or an astonishing $100,000 per yard). The thirteen gleaming new stations feature millions of dollars worth of eye-catching public art but not a single parking place, except for a few coveted slots at the Tukwila station currently marking the end of the line.

What’s more, the imperious executives at Sound Transit decreed strict limitations even for on-street parking anywhere within a quarter mile of the lavish new stations. Anyone who attempts to park a few blocks away from the light rail line and then to board a train to get to work downtown will face a fine of $44 and potential towing-- with additional charges, of course.

“Light rail was meant to be fed by people taking the bus, walking or biking,” sniffed Rick Sheridan, spokesman for the Seattle Department of Transportation. “It was not meant to be fed by cars.” He insisted that “Seattle planners” looked to light rail “with a long term eye.” Garages with hundreds of parking stalls “didn’t fit into the vision”, Sheridan told the Seattle Times. The grand-opening brochure for the system, festively titled “TRAVEL LIGHT!” featured the following arrogant explanation under the heading “Getting to the Stations”: “There is no parking. Our best advice is to take a bus, walk or ride your bike to the station… Riding your bike is a great way to get to the stations…We encourage you to bring a lock and park your bicycle at the staffed bicycle corrals at each station prior to boarding.”

Meanwhile, potential riders stewed over their inability to use the new system, despite a total cost for construction which amounted to more than $10,000 per city household. Jammie Hunter, a resident of south Seattle’s gentrifying Columbia City neighborhood, lives “about a mile away” from the nearest station, which she considers “a little more than walking distance.” She originally planned to drive to the nearby terminal, park on a neighborhood street, and then enjoy a breezy, high tech commute to downtown. But the parking restrictions (the city declared open war on “hide-and-riders”) made her plan impossible and left her clueless about getting to work, especially since the transit system cut back on existing bus service to try to force citizens to use the new light rail. “Why would you invest so much taxpayer money into public transit and take away parking?” Ms. Hunter asked the Seattle Times. “If they want to maximize ridership, that’s not the way to do it.”

Jerri White, another victim of the ill-conceived edicts of visionary planners, complained that her condition (arthritis and fibromyalgia) made it impossible for her to walk or bike the half mile to Rainier Beach station as Sound Transit suggested. As director of the popular social work agency Southeast Youth and Family Services, Ms. White, 53, said she’d probably begin taking her car to work since the new bus schedule left her old, convenient route suspended.

Apologists for the huge governmental investment (local, state and federal) in light rail, insisted that the inconvenience imposed on the likes of Ms. White mattered far less than the triumphal thrill of operating a spiffy new made-in-Japan train all the way from downtown to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEATAC), a route comprising the full 14 miles of the new line. By car, the trip from the airport to downtown was never a particular problem, demanding no more than half an hour even in moderately heavy traffic. The light rail system, on the other hand, will almost certainly take longer for most commuters: until its final segment is finished (with completion date optimistically projected for December, 2009), the line will stop well short of the airport terminal and travelers will need to trundle onto shuttle buses for the climactic leg of their adventure. In other words, a passenger hoping to get on a plane to New York or Chicago will need to take his or her luggage from home on his bicycle (or a bus), unload and board a Central Link train, ride the train for a few miles, then gather up the bags and board yet another bus, then unload again at curbside before schlepping your stuff up to the ticket counter to arrive in glorious discomfort.

No wonder the projections of ridership for this gold-plated new system remain distinctly modest: officials hope that within a year of the grand opening, they will welcome 26,000 passengers each day ---an insignificant blip in a Metropolitan Area of more than three million. Before the construction of light rail, only 3% of all Seattle-area commuters used buses or existing trains, and the other 97% traveled the congested freeways in cars. At best, planners claim that the new train system will raise the percentage of mass transit commuters to 4.5% -- and freely acknowledge that new light rail riders will include a large proportion of passengers who merely shift over from buses, providing no real reduction in the number of cars on the road. A major study by the Washington Policy Center in 2007 suggested that Sound Transit’s grand plans, featuring at least 40 miles of new track, would shift at most 0.4% of the cars off the highways by 2030. By that time, traffic delays in the region would more than double in any event, as population growth easily outpaced the very minor additional carrying capacity by the ambitious government program.

To adjust to these stark realities, the transit planners now regularly intone that they see the Central Link system and its already-planned successors as “an alternative to congestion, not a solution to congestion.” In other words, for the subsidized riders who hop aboard the shiny new trains, the system may save a few minutes a day but for the poor slobs stuck in gridlocked traffic (who aren’t willing or able to bike or walk to those gaudily decorated Central Link stations) the huge public investment does absolutely nothing.

NO USE FOR HOT LATTES AND HOT CHICKS

In this regard, the Seattle experience follows the dreary and dreadful pattern established by the 20 new light rail systems constructed across the country since 1980. Analyzing the six of those systems already operating on the West Coast, the Washington Policy Center concluded flatly: “Light rail does not reduce traffic congestion. In 2005, light rail systems on the West Coast served only about 2 percent of the work force in their service areas. On average, these systems only remove between 0.39 percent and 1.1% of cars from the roadway.”

Statistics from every region of the United States, in fact, show no evidence whatever that even the most costly and elaborate new rail systems succeed in reducing traffic or trimming commute times. Every year the Texas Transportation Institute issues a “mobility report” measuring the typical travel delays, excess fuel consumption, and congestion cost for commuters in the nation’s major urban areas. Amazingly, all five of the most congested and traffic-plagued cities either invested in gigantic recent mass transit experiments designed to reduce that congestion (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas-Fort Worth) or else they boasted older, well-established, vast rail systems much-praised by urban planners (New York City, Chicago). The rankings in this mobility report don’t prove that mass transit causes gridlock, but they likewise give no indication that these projects do anything at all to solve the problem. Of the fifteen cities with the worst delays, every one of them has invested huge sums in rail mass transit, without visible improvement on the highways. Ironically, Seattle already enjoyed a favorable rating in terms of congestion (number fifteen on the list) even before the opening of the most-expensive-ever new light rail monstrosity.

Even after these systems go into operation, they continue to bleed money. Downtown Detroit’s infamous “People Mover” train was completed in 1987, with officially projected daily ridership of 67,700. In the first year of operation, the system drew only 11,000 daily riders and today the patronage has slipped even further: with only 7,500 lonely passengers, or a mere 2.5% of capacity. The People Mover, in other words, serves less than one-ninth of the projected passenger load, with no impact whatever on traffic (Detroit ranks as 10th worst in the country). Meanwhile, the bankrupt city spends at least $3.00 to transport each of the passengers who contribute a fare of only fifty cents. As the Washington Policy Center aptly concluded, “light rail is expensive and it requires significant public assistance. On average, West Coast light rail systems need taxpayer subsidies to pay for 73% of operations and 100 percent of capital improvements each year.” If these ill-conceived projects were injured horses, merciful owners would shoot them to stop the pain; if they were private businesses, they’d close down to end the limitless losses. Continued...