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 Dec 2014 Mike Arnold on SMART the Boondoggle If they can come close to the Average weekday Ridership by mile of 27 for the Capitol Corridor (San Jose / Oakland/ Sacramento) then they will have the equivalent of 526 roundtrips (terminal to terminal). This takes only 48 cars off the freeway per Peak Hour. |
SMART takes only 126 cars off
HWY101 during the weekday commute.
(details)
The
EIR Peak 6
Hours (3hrs morn, 3hrs evening) |
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They tell us that "Annual
Rail Fare Revenue will be $3 mil while operating cost will be $9 mil giving
an annual loss of $6mil". SMART's
1,392 Peak Time Boardings will make little dent
in the current 39,000 out-of-County daily commuters coming to work IN Marin.
But SMART will have redirected $590 million away from a comprehensive
Express Bus System & 101 Freeway expansion to Richmond Bridge. |
The
Sierra Club sponsored a debate between the PRO and CON factions of
SMART. The PRO argument amounted to no more than one statement: "If you care about Global Warming you need to support SMART". But it is the opposite that is the truth.
This applies even more in Sonoma
than Marin
Each Household in Marin has spent $709
on average on SMART through June 30, 2016 Mike Arnold: SMART will increase congestion in downtown San Rafael and this will back-up traffic onto 101 during the peak commute hours. The congestion impacts will be more significant if they extend the rail to Larkspur. Traffic on 2nd and 3rd street will be impacted by crossing gates. And it will take 6 subsequent traffic light changes before SEQUENCING takes affect again. Did the MTC even consider these impacts when it reassigned $20 mil. in RM-2 funds from the Greenbrae Interchange project to SMART? Under the general heading of “connectivity” MTC (via Kinsey) rationalized making it much more likely that the FTA will award the $16MM in federal funds. (Still waiting on this.) Meanwhile millions of $'s continue to get diverted from more worthy (but less popular) transit systems, that utilize hybrid technology and are currently taking far more riders than SMART is envisioned to ever take. Btw, what is the cost of relocating the downtown transit center and who is going to pay for that? (This will be necessary if SMART is awarded the federal dollars.) This is years and years of bad news for San Rafael. What the public hasn’t yet realized is how brittle SMART’s financial outlook is. No one will bail them out when the next recession hits, reducing their key revenue stream and reducing ridership. That’s when the real fun and games begin. Watch for the begging for an additional quarter cent begins. If the BOS puts on another tax measure for transportation it ought to be opposed under the argument “these people aren’t credible and will do what they want, just like they did when the stole $8mil. from Marin Co to bail out SMART.” Will it be enough to keep them from obtaining a 2/3 vote?
They don’t have
money for shuttles --- they’ll be going after MC
transit district to re-route buses
(they won’t take many passengers and Diane Steinhauser
knows it) they don’t have money for stations: --
SALES TAX |
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 EVERY
MINUTE 146 women become pregnant who did not plan or wish it |
News, Meetings, Announcements | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finally Hwy101 Expansion Costs are available. It is expected that the freeway lane's cost to be not more than $15 mil. / mile (excluding Novato-Petaluma narrows). This equals $750 mil. for 50 miles from San Rafael to Cloverdale. But one freeway lane offers at least 6 times more person-miles per route mile than rail. Which is $125 mil for the freeway Vs $200 mil for the rail per the same person-miles. (One HOV(carpool) lane in places "conducts" 40,000 commuters per day with Express Bus, which would be 8 times SMART ridership). The added flexibility of HOV lanes plus bus makes freeway expansion by far the better alternative. Instead of a railway from Sonoma to Marin Civic Center, another freeway lane would offer over 9 times more passenger-miles (later plans include rail to Larkspur or San Quentin), but to quote straight out of ABAG's Briefing (Pg16): "without development that is sufficiently intense to support the rail system, it will not succeed". A SMART commuter rail doc called "SMART FACTS" refers to 2 cities as good rail examples:- St Louis and Portland. Click here for the facts on Portland and St Louis. They also quote a study by the Texas Transportation Institute (which I cant find) but here is the damning data Texas has on rail:- http://www.tppf.org/transit/transit.html Also they say the $ |
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| Is light rail popular
elsewhere in the U.S?
-No Is there a cheaper way to get people out of their cars? -Yes Will light rail improve air quality? -No How long will the increased sales tax be in place? -Forever Is light rail less expensive than building freeways? -No Here is the Mis-Information SMART rail from Sonoma justifies itself with: "Upon arriving at their destination stations, riders would be willing to take either shuttle buses (provided by employers) or transit, or would be willing to walk 1/2 mile to their workplaces." "Current congested conditions on the US 101 corridor during peak hours would persist indefinitely". If they don't build another freeway lane that is. The railway is feasible if:-"A high concentration of jobs/major employers are within walking distance (approximately 0.5 miles) of a station; There is a high concentration of jobs/major employers for which shuttle services would be convenient (within approximately 2.5 miles); and there is severe traffic congestion affecting travel times by car." This attempted justification of a rail system becomes null and void by the alternative of an Express Bus System plus another freeway lane at the NARROWS. (as in Portland). There is adequate space to widen the freeway from Civic Center to Santa Rosa. (Other rail systems like ACE-San Jose were built where there was little space to widen the freeway. Metrolink-LA shares existing rail track.) |
A BART Director & County Supervisor on RAIL
County unveils plan for reducing traffic ABAG,
Marin County, Sonoma County,
City of San Rafael, SMART
MTC |
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| SMART supposed Benefits |
The Truth |
| Reduce congestion on 101. | nowhere on 101 will there be any effect with a max of 1,392 peak time commuters per day MAYBE leaving their cars at home. Currently there are 39,000 Marin worker commuters from out of county per day combined with the Novato commuters on 101 (and the 1000's of pass thru commuters per day). |
| Utilization of an existing resource. | but still costing $548 mil (prob. more) and $10 mil/yr . |
| Link to multimodal alternatives (e.g., bus, bike, pedestrian). | and as Sonoma & Marin is not like a metropolitan area, most will drive/bus to/from the stations |
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Faster commute. Greater time utilization. Santa Rosa to San Rafael morning commute: 70-80 minutes. The same trip by train will take no more than 55 minutes. |
Not if
you examine the national data on wait time + interconnect travel time. 55
mins + 20 mins aver. drive to station + wait time + 15 mins aver. from
station to work. Extra freeway lanes and busing to relieve this congestion would not exist because money to do so would have been taken away by over-expenditure on rail. Rail, which costs more than 2 freeway lanes providing 5 times MORE passenger-miles. source http://www.marincounty.info/CarTransit/RailvFreewy.htm |
| A
Feasibility Analysis of San Antonio VIA's Light
Rail Plan It is estimated that light rail would
remove no more than one out of every 250 cars.
It would be an unprecedented waste of scarce
transportation dollars for this rapidly growing transportation corridor.The
Illusion of Transit Choice (pdf) A decade
in which every metropolitan area that built or expanded rail, lost transit
market share, should have ended the debate |
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. - Aldous Huxley |
25 years later, Santa Clara County's VTA light rail among the nation's worst
In
Sacramento the percentage of those who use
light rail is only in single digits yet it represents about 50 percent of
the region’s overall transportation budget. Light rail generated $6.3
million in fares in FY 1999, compared to operating costs of $17 million. Its
cost $20 to $30 million a mile. For that money per mile you could buy 60 to 90 buses, clean fuel,
low air pollution buses, that don’t have any infrastructure, don’t have
tracks to run on, have fairly low capital and operating costs, and you can
make them go wherever you want them to go. In
Sacramento, “light rail is a huge expenditure” which diverts 40 to 50
percent of all available transportation funds into “a very limited system.”
Estimated costs for one six-mile stretch of light rail into south
Sacramento are $200 million, money that’s not now available for fixing
roadway problems and for more effective buses.
SMART also erroneously says "births minus deaths will account for 50% of the bay Areas growth in the next 20
years". It is a well known fact that, even with increasing life expectancy,
reduced births make
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