I get exhausted writing these responses to confused articles, but Richard Morrill’s piece is such a doozy I just had to respond.

I find it nothing short of insane to spend far over half ($24 billion out of $38 billion in the November ballot package) of potential transportation investment (capital and operating) on trains which cannot possibly meet more than 1 percent of demand for trips, an amazingly small fraction.

Here and at other blogs, we’ve gone over the $38 billion stat ad nauseum, so I won’t bother to repeat the argument. But where does this 1% trip number come from? Sound Transit says “These investments will expand daily regional transit ridership to nearly 370,000 by 2030″, which is nearly as many riders as Metro’s 100 million a year. Even if you figure ST will only carry 370,000 riders on weekdays, that’s still about ten percent the population of the region. That number is just completely wrong.

There’s also a nasty class issue our leaders ignore. Who benefits and will be obscenely subsidized? Rich professionals, of course. And who pays? The more lowly workers in those scattered but necessary service, retail, manufacturing, construction, and transportation workplaces.

How do we know it’ll be the “rich professionals” that are subsidized? Even on my Microsoft Express bus a huge number of the riders aren’t professionals, but contingent staff.

We don’t need a six-lane Highway 520 or a giant new viaduct, or two additional lanes each way on Interstate 405, given the inevitable constraints on single-occupancy vehicle use in the not-very-distant future.

Are you sure about that, Richard? Everytime I sit in traffic for hours (even on the bus) I wish there was an actual HOV lane there, which has nothing to do with single-occupancy vehicles. And what does the Viaduct have to do with anything? Who is talking about that? RTID isn’t.

Oh well. Richard Morrill is battling strawmen with made-up statistics.