A transit advocate on the Charlie Brennan show just claimed that there has been a 20% increase in transit ridership in the last five years. That is true – but only because the caller conveniently selected one of the worst years ever for Metro. Here’s the whole story, from page 78 of the Metro 2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report:
| Year | Ridership |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 52,186,468 |
| 2001 | 50,971,127 |
| 2002 | 47,661,333 |
| 2003 | 46,025,179 |
| 2004 | 45,644,096 |
| 2005 | 46,505,507 |
| 2006 | 48,585,648 |
| 2007 | 50,943,196 |
| 2008 | 53,766,733 |
| 2009 | 52,768,856 |
So, between 2000 and 2009, Metro ridership increased by just over 1%.
I’ve been involved in a lot of campaigns over the years, and have been outspent on more than a few occasions. But I can remember no more cynical a campaign than Advance St. Louis and its effort for Proposition A. Here’s just the most recent contributions:
| Date | Donor | Industry | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/4 | Columbia Capital Management | Finance | $5,000 |
| 4/2 | Cits for Modern Transit | Advocacy group | $9,275 in-kind |
| 4/2 | Don C. Musick III | Construction | $25,000 |
| 4/1 | Siemens | Rail equipment | $15,000 |
| 3/31 | Northside Regeneration, LLC | Developer | $5,000 |
| 3/31 | Amalgamated Transit Union | Union | $5,000 |
| 3/30 | Mercy Health System | Employer | $20,000 |
| 3/30 | BJC Health System | Employer | $75,000 |
| 3/29 | Drury Displays | Advertising | $15,000 in-kind |
| 3/27 | St. Louis Rams | Sports Team | $10,000 |
| 3/25 | Gillig | Bus manufacturer | $10,000 |
| 3/25 | Graybar Electric | Contractor | $5,000 |
| 3/25 | Ironworker’s Union (IMPACT) | Union | $20,000 |
| 3/25 | Centene Management | Healthcare | $25,000 |
| 3/24 | HOK | Architect | $10,000 |
| 3/24 | Express Scripts | Healthcare | $25,000 |
| 3/23 | St. Luke’s Hospital | Healthcare | $10,000 |
| 3/23 | Laclede Gas | Utility | $10,000 |
| 3/23 | Wachovia Securities | Finance | $25,000 |
| 3/23 | Enterprise Holdings | Car rental | $5,000 |
| 3/20 | SSM Healthcare | Healthcare | $10,000 |
| 3/16 | Ameristar | Casino | $5,000 |
| 3/16 | Cits for Modern Transit | Advocacy group | $10,000 in-kind |
| 3/13 | Stifel Nicolaus | Finance | $10,000 |
There are many, many more, but I’m exhausted, and the point has been well made: Proposition A is supported by a well heeled, self-interested group of transit industry firms and low wage employers, all of whom have a financial interest in this tax increase. If it passes, we’ll all be a little more poor, and these powerful companies will continue to abuse the tax paying people of St. Louis county.
Nick Kasoff
As 24th State reports, Charlie Dooley and Metro knowingly overspent on light rail, and knew it would lead to massive budget deficits that they’d have to shore up through higher taxes:
We open new lines, and what is the first thing out of this [CMT's Tom Shrout's] mouth? We need to find a way to fund what they built. Pardon me for being naive, but wouldn’t it have made sense to figure out how we were going to fund the existing system prior to them building it?
Good question.
Later, 24th state writes:
The entire campaign is designed around guilt… The critics will scream that we are punishing the poor, but it is Dooley and Nations who are doing the punishing. They have allowed this sorry state of affairs to exist. These people built the Metro knowing it would lose money and require federal funding. Whether through shortsighted planning or greed at the money involved, they built Metro to lose money.
Apparently, Charlie Dooley and Metro don’t respect the pocketbooks of voters. We’re all merely sheep to be fleeced. They do what they want, they ‘live beyond their means’ and we’re all supposed to pay for it all or risk being demonized as not caring about the poor.
——
24th State also has a great chart that demonstrates the utter failure of mass transit in the US, primarily as a result of the expansion of light rail, which is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive…so much so, that it is essentially bankrupting a dozen US cities.
US cities on the chart below have an average budget deficit of $139 MILLION. NOTE: “% Operating,” refers to the amount of operating costs covered by ticket fares. Notice St. Louis’ Metro only has 21% of its revenue from ticket sales. If normal businesses (notwithstanding Government Motors and other nationalized businesses) ran their businesses this way, they’d be out of business.
Lucky for Zombie Industries like light rail, groups of wealthy special interests ( who benefit from tax payer subsidies and revenue) can lobby leaders like Charlie Dooley and repeatedly bring new taxes on the ballot to prop up their zombie cash cow.
With an average budget deficit of $139 MILLION (mostly as a result of light rail), Mass Transit systems accross the country are unmitigated DISASTERS.
Friends,
CBT needs your help PRONTO to defeat Proposition A. PLEASE! Tell everyone you know to donate to Citizens for Better Transit. We desperately need to raise money in order to have a chance of defeating Prop A.
PLEASE MONEY BOMB OUR CAMPAIGN AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO SO AS WELL.
BTW: The Post-Dispatch just wrote about our campaign. Help us stop this bailout and 100% tax revenue increase for Metro!
Thank you,
John Burns
CBT
Location: 41 South Central Avenue, Clayton, Missouri…St. Louis County Administrative Building.
BRING POSTERS AND FLYERS AND YOUR LOUD VOICES!!
***
STAND UP AGAINST MASSIVE TAXATION BEING LEVELED AGAINST ST. LOUIS COUNTY FAMILIES! STAND UP AGAINST GOVERNMENT WASTE! STAND UP FOR A REFORMED MASS TRANSIT SYSTEM!!
***
TELL CHARLIE DOOLEY AND CO., THAT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! TELL HIM YOU’LL VOTE NO ON PROP A THIS APRIL 6TH!!
Another day, another 30 second spot full of lies from Citizens for Modern Transit. Shame on the Post-Dispatch for publishing, without any comment or analysis, such blatant lies. Simply put, it would take at least 4 hours to deliver 10,000 people to the stadium for a game.
Fortunately, they allow reader comments. Enjoy!
http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/uncategorized/2010/02/whos-for-transit-contd/
February 15th, 2010 at 10:26 am
You need to back up your assertion with some numbers. I saw your comment to a post on the St. Louis Urban Workshop and did the numbers. You tell me where I’m wrong….
2009 average attendance = 41,000
20% of 41,000 = 8,200
MetroLink 2-car train capacity = 356 x 2 (for one train in each direction) = 712 (and there are likely quite a few more than that, but this is official stated capacity)
8,200 passengers / 712 passengers per train = 11.5 trains needed
2 trains every 15min = 86.25 minutes to transport 8,200 passengers.
Again, I’m sure that there are more people on those trains than the stated capacity. Even so, I calculate 1hr 26min. And this would be 57.5 minutes with the old 10min schedule. With fans leaving the stadium across a time period of 30 minutes or more, depending on the score/weather/etc. it’s seems easy enough to transport that many passengers. Plus, quite a few go downtown early to eat, or stay downtown afterward, further spreading out demand.
First, the 2nd advertisement says that Metro delivers “10,000 fans” to the stadium, not 8,200. Second, there seems to be some variation as to the capacity of these trains. I’ve seen anything from 176 up to your 356. I don’t remember where the figure of 200 came from, but Metro’s own site says “72-seated passengers and more than 100 standing passengers.” Now that I think about it, that must be for a single, which they never run. So if we say 400, then we’re talking 25 trains, not 50. At six trains per hour in both directions, we’re now talking “only” two hours and ten minutes, assuming that all trains in both directions are completely full. But of course, we know that trains going east aren’t nearly as full as trains going west. If we assume that the eastbound line carries half as many passengers as the westbound line over the period in question (it probably isn’t even that much), we’re still talking three hours before the last passenger is carried on the westbound line.
You are right that, to some extent, arrivals may be staggered. But departures are not. When people get out of a game at 10:00 on a work night, all but the most hardy partiers are going straight home. And the person who doesn’t get back to North Hanley Station until 1:30 am (10:00 + 3 hour wait + 1/2 hour trip) is never going to ride Metrolink again.
Aside from that, however, is the question of whether special event ridership is even a suitable justification for such a large expenditure. Most baseball games take place during times when the highways are not crowded, and most people who ride Metrolink to the game are driving to a station. So instead of paying twenty bucks for parking, they park for free and pay $4.50 for a round-trip Metrolink ticket. How many of these riders would ride Metrolink if they charged $10 to park at North Hanley on game days?
More important is, how many of these riders would take Metro to work if it increased their commute time from 1/2 hour to over an hour? I used to commute on the now defunct St. Charles county express bus to Met Square, and that was reality. I hate driving. But there was never more than a dozen people on that bus.
So now we get to my ultimate point: There are people out there who need transit, and who use it daily. We should design our transit system to provide them with the best possible service. That means full funding for the bus system, and improving bus service with technology that is in place in other cities. In order to do that, we must not expand light rail at all.
Speaking for myself (Nick Kasoff) – and I must say that because there are others in this group who would not agree – if they had put forth a small operating levy, with no funding or promises for light rail expansion, I probably would not be actively opposing it. Light rail is a poison pill for Metro, and is destroying the system for those who need it most. That’s why I believe that anyone who really cares about transit should be working against this proposition.
February 16th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Please stop the light rail expansion NOW!
February 16th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
I want the service to remain. I think that Miss Cleo is a dirtbag! Psychics lie! I rather have my air nice and clean. No way in the world would the North Hanley Station charge $10.00 to park. It is time to have Nick Kasoff’s fantasyland to be torn down. Light rail is NOT a poison for Metro. Light rail trains can run up to speeds of 55 miles an hour. However, buses are not polluting as much as they used to. And there ARE some routes that where the buses are FULL!!! Take a look at MetroBus route #34! That is a full bus! There is Transit Oriented Development! If we tear down Nick Kassoff’s fantasyland, we could put corporations in it’s place. There are those who are in wheelchairs that needs good service! It is time to TELL THE TRUTH!!! I am NOT joining Citizens for Better Transit. Citizens for Modern Transit is telling the truth. CMT is not an orgnaization with psychics. The park ‘n’ ride lots are FREE! Maybe in your stinking fantasyland it costs money to park in the park ‘n’ ride lots. If propositon A fails, service will be cut in half on all modes. Making it HARDER to get to work! I am not donating one cent to your stupid organization!!!
Yes, there are some routes where the buses are full. That is why I support a fully funded, efficiently operated bus system using 21st century technology to provide excellent service to those who live in the transit accessible areas of our region. Every time we spend a stack of money on light rail, we starve the bus system that so many people depend on.
Citizens for Better Transit supports bus rapid transit, a 21st century system that provides service levels approaching light rail, at a fraction of the cost. And BRT is flexible, allowing us to change the routes as demand shifts in our region. Learn more about bus rapid transit at the website of the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute.
Bus rapid transit benefits transit users by providing great service, flexibility to meet future needs, and affordability to preserve the solvency of our transit agency. In contrast, light rail is expensive and inflexible, and has bankrupted our transit agency. So why is Citizens for Modern Transit controlled by light rail fetishists? Could it be because the vast majority of money for these expensive campaigns comes from the very companies who will make millions of dollars from new light rail lines, but wouldn’t earn a cent from bus rapid transit?
If Metro had put an operating levy on the ballot, instead of a combined levy with a promise for massive expansion of light rail, I would not be part of the campaign against it. But the very need for additional operating funds today is the result of the huge cost of the Cross-County Extension, and these fools are promising more, more, more. That’s why anyone who cares about the future of transit in St. Louis should vote no. Tell Metro to go back to the drawing board, come up with a proposal for an operating subsidy, and a plan for implementing BRT in St. Louis. That is what we need, not a big tax increase to build a bad transit system.
It’s no wonder that many in St. Louis think “light rail is good, buses are bad.” We have a bus system that hasn’t changed since our grandparents rode it. Elsewhere, 21st century technology has greatly improved the bus experience for millions of riders. But not in St. Louis. Bus riders should demand that Metro focus resources on them, and quit squandering our money on light rail.
February 17th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Still, Prop A would also help support the buses including Bus Rapid Transit and it would help expand Call-a-Ride. Did you attend any of the workshops? It seems that you don’t bother to look at Metro’s plans to have Bus Rapid Transit and look at their light rail part so you can accuse them. Maybe it is time I take a hammer and break your crystal ball! It takes money to build light rail and it takes money to build BRT. I am not saying buses are bad. Both light rail AND bus transit is good. So is Call-a-Ride. Light rail is electric. In San Francisco, they have light rail, streetcars, cable cars, and trolleybuses! Los Angeles has Bus Rapid Transit along with light rail. Yes, it’s true that with light rail, you have to install track, ramps and sometimes, high-level platforms to get wheelchairs onboard. Bus Rapid Transit uses articulated low-floor buses. But you have to build stations with elevators at some places to get the handicapped to and from each stop. And by federal law, all your stations have to be ADA accessable for the handicapped! Maybe in your stinking fantasy world, Bus Rapid Transit arrives with a wave of a magic wand. But this is the REAL world! It takes MONEY to build new lines. No matter if it’s a bus line, BRT line, or light rail line!
A ten mile light rail line, by Metro’s own figures, would cost $600 million. A BRT line, again by Metro’s own figures, would cost $30 million. If you can’t see the difference, perhaps it isn’t me who lives in a “stinking fantasy world.”