Every big transportation project starts with a cost estimate. The tedious debate on whether the project costs too much, or is just right, is a proxy fight over whether it’s a good project or not. The estimate spirals upwards, which breeds cynicism among opponents while providing an opportunity to revisit all of the old arguments. Since those arguments were never really about fiscal return on investment, no one has actually changed their mind.
It’s a pattern that’s repeated through Sound Transit 1, the Monorail, the Deep Bore Tunnel, Sound Transit 2, and now the Center City Connector. For Sound Transit 3 and High Speed Rail, the cycle may just be beginning. Some overruns and delays were worse than others: Sound Transit 2’s slippages appear to be an order of magnitude milder than Sound Transit 1. Some of those projects survived, while others died. Among all of those, only ST1 has actually been around long enough for many people to find it indispensable.
Amid this sea of misdirection, sophisticated observers should keep a few points in mind.
- The primary value of cost (and ridership) estimates is to compare the relative impact of different courses of action. The main drivers of absolute costs (and revenues) are much larger economic forces that no model can hope to capture, but the relative costs of different projects are likely to remain more consistent.
- If a booming economy raises project costs and revenue without raising anyone’s tax rate, that is flimsy grounds to reconsider the project.
- Absolute costs have almost no political valence, at least within an order of magnitude. It is hard to imagine a voter that opposed the $54 billion* ST3 package that would have voted for it at $30 billion. Both are colossal amounts of money and the $24 billion difference provides no useful context.
- A good project is still a good project if the cost grows 20%; a bad one is bad at any price.
- Given the above, civil servants, consultants, and political appointees that cut corners in the model to embellish a project’s estimate are not only exercising poor ethical judgment, they are also storing up trouble for the project’s future while doing little to help it in the present.
- At election time, the alternative to a measure is not your preferred configuration of projects, but lower taxes.
Obviously, one can take this line of thinking too far. It is absolutely worthwhile to look at what other jurisdictions are paying for infrastructure and ask why your costs are out of line. This exercise, if done in a constructive spirit, can point out dodgy estimates and identify opportunities for savings that allow more service delivery.
Costs do matter to voters at very coarse scales. If we could get all the benefits of ST3 for a total cost of $100 per person, anyone opposed to the project would probably be trolling.
Ask a Frenchman if he wished that taxes had been a little bit lower in the 1980s instead of having the TGV system today, and you will rightly invite ridicule. That said, more taxes are fine until they’re not — there’s a point where they lead to ruin. But we are nowhere near that scale. Washington’s Gross State Product is $477 billion. In current dollars, ST3 plus top-end HSR estimates come out to about $62 billion combined. Spread over 30 years, that’s 0.5% of GSP** — not negligible, but not ruinous for truly transformative infrastructure investments.
Ultimately, I want the Northwest to provide rapid travel options both within and between dense and vibrant cities. While mostly a quality of life issue, mobility also enables economic growth. This is worth almost any price, and setting arbitrary cost thresholds makes no sense at all.
* I am on record as thinking that the $54 billion figure is a bogus method of accounting, and $20 billion is a more meaningful way to communicate the true cost. Nevertheless, that is the headline number that voters had to consider in 2016.
** assuming farebox recovery, two Federal governments, Oregon, and BC contribute virtually nothing. Obviously, the 0.5% figure is napkin math.
Along these lines, what happened to the “three blocks in three weeks” construction time for streetcar track construction to minimize impact, or have streetcar construction times also ballooned along with costs?
Thanks, Martin. Long overdue. But based on past transit campaigns, some suggestions. Early in the campaign, tell the taxpayers as much as you can about the work ahead, especially conditions that might raise the price over nearby examples. Portland’s flat. Vancouver BC already had a tunnel under Downtown.
Fewer (meaning none) lines and dots, unless trackways and stations will actually look like that, and more section views. With anatomically correct rocks, underground water, and slanted lines which a lot of things really do look like in side view after skill-saw or blast them.
Also, be as detailed and specific as possible about what you want to accomplish. Take passengers where, why, and how fast, and until what you’ll want to do next? Also, serious estimates of future possibilities and probabilities to be ready for, good and otherwise.
Also, fall-backs in case……the more experienced the voter, the more they appreciate being told what they need to hear, rather than hope to. Making themselves good role models for younger voters, in addition to what to avoid doing. And personally becoming.
Mark
Before there are projects and cost estimates, there has to be some healthy system visioning of choices. Advocating for everything project by project — even a mega-project — is a very amateurish way to build and operate a system.
My issue with an inter-city HSR is the lack of systems planning. Selling it as faster travel to Portland or Vancouver doesn’t get me excited when Puyallup or Marysville can take as long to reach, and Bellingham or Olympia seems almost silly to visit on transit.
Develop a plan that enables both shorter-distance trains and longer-distance trains and I might be interested. Develop a plan that can gradually be implemented (like start with single track sections or design for slightly slower — but still fast — speeds) and I might be interested.
Otherwise, I can’t get excited about the public at large paying for a system that primarily benefits occasional business or recreational travel.
This is an important commentary given the “furor” surrounding the cost overruns of the Center City Connector, which always seemed to be political concern-trolling. I live in Lisa Herbold’s district, and I’m pretty upset with her treatment (the Mayor’s, too) of the effort under the banner of “responsible use of taxpayer dollars” — either the project is worth finishing or it isn’t.
I was just blasting across the French countryside at 185 mph on one of their Thalys trains and I found my mind wandering back to Seattle and how we can’t even commit to connecting our two separate streetcar lines. We should be embarrassed.
Who wants to go south on Broadway, west on Jackson, and north on 1st, when they can take Madison RR or another east-west route straight to 1st? How many people on Westlake Ave really really want to go to 1st Ave? What evidence is there that many people want to make such a specific trip?
RapidRide is a joke. Every time I’ve ridden it I’ve been disappointed. I actually got off the D once and walked faster than the bus.
But joining our two existing lines together into something marginally useful apparently is beyond the comprehension of this city government. They are stuck in a 1950’s past where buses are the only option and GM is still the corporate king of America. Well GM isn’t king anymore, and bus only solutions will leave this city behind.
Connect the two streetcar lines, then see what you want to do next. But having two disconnected lines that don’t connect through the most important part of the city speakers volumes about how functional our government really is.
I’d really like to take the streetcar from King St. Station to South Lake Union.
Mike, you know as well as I do that the point is not to ride from Westlake and Mercer to Broadway and Mercer but from Broadway and Mercer to the Ferry Terminal and from Westlake and Mercer to Pioneer Square. It’s to connect First Avenue’s many attractions to two sections of near-downtown. If the existing streetcar tracks weren’t already there and reservations for buses could be obtained of course doing it with articulated trolleys would be “good enough”.
But they (the sections of streetcar track) are and they (reservations for bus lines) emphatically aren’t except on Aurora, then connecting the two lines along First Avenue makes sense. Especially if the lines are eventually extended both north and south along First to Seattle Center and past the Stadiums to Starbucks.
Again, yes, we could do those things with buses, but it is always an order of degree harder to get reservations in crowded areas for buses and even harder to maintain them because the “way” is essentially the same as that for cars. With streetcars you can cobble the way or even leave the ties exposed in order to enforce the reservation.
C’mon, Mike. This is why we’ve got a whole planet under Seattle to bore a subway through. So nothing interesting or enjoyable gets in the way of somebody in a hurry to get someplace ugly and boring.
Which will save you a lot of tunneling by going surface across Texas and through Lynnwood. and Pierce County between I-5 and Snoqualmie Pass.
On the serious financial side, even though, against all evidence such as average STB commenter, the American Psychiatric Association says Asperger’s Syndrome doesn’t exist, there are people who’ll visit a city specifically to ride the streecars.
And be honest. Has Australia ever lost a war?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLbhhdoCdl0
So People of Australia…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D-LmRNdQiQ
Can we have the last verse of your national anthem to sing with proper reverence? Nobody here even knows the third verse of ours, let alone real outcome of major 1812 battle. So only right that our school children will solemnly honor the last wishes of a dying agriculturalist.
Also, can we have about ten more cars from Melbourne?
Mark
Interesting op-ed piece. I don’t agree with several of the assumptions made, but still an interesting piece.
“Washington’s Gross State Product is $477 billion. In current dollars, ST3 plus top-end HSR estimates come out to about $62 billion combined. Spread over 30 years, that’s 0.5% of GSP** — not negligible, but not ruinous for truly transformative infrastructure investments.”
This isn’t a meaningful context of any sort. Frankly, it’s rather a silly exercise. Plus the math* is dubious anyway since the GSP figure is not static.
*the (assumed) napkin math
$62B/30 yrs = $2.07B/yr
$2.07B/$477B (GSP) = .43%
Why isn’t it a meaningful context? 0.5% of GDP for a major infrastructure program is totally reasonable and does not destroy economies
I think it’s meaningful. It’d probably be slightly better to use Puget Sound Area Product as the denominator, instead of GSP, but since the Puget Sound Area is most of the state’s economy, the final number isn’t going to more than double.
Where’d the $62B come from, though?
Oh, that includes HSR. Sorry, missed that the first time.
I would call citing Washington’s gross state product here a misleading point. It’s only three counties paying for this. Adding the whole state makes it a meaningless and inaccurate comparison. Furthermore, comparing the impact of something by the percentage of “all the things” it amounts to doesn’t seem right either. You could say the same thing about climate change legislation, and claim that it’s not worth doing because it only reduces global CO2 by 0.004% or whatever (bogus numbers, but you get the point).
Oh, I missed the HSR bit too. My bad.
Exactly.
Is the point of this that we put too much emphasis on costs (because opponents are only trolling anyhow, because once people get used to spending a few billion, any number of billion will be OK to them? Since “those arguments were never really about fiscal return on investment” anyhow?) I’m not sure I’m getting your point at all here.
Even $1B is a shit-ton of money. Give some thought to what we could do for transit service today, or teacher pay, or homelessness, or mental health, or sidewalks, with that much money. $54B is almost an unthinkable about of money around this region, especially with all the needs we’ve just given up on. To suggest we put too much attachment to money suggests you’re not living in the same world of public sector needs that the rest of us are. There is always an alternative use that needs to be considered, including, yes, leaving it in people’s pockets. In the rarefied world of tech, where hedge funders subsidize ongoing operating losses for “successful” companies (Uber, Amazon), maybe money doesn’t feel like a real constraint. But in real life, the problem here is that voters don’t care *enough* about cost.
We should continue to expect public agencies to prove that what they’re proposing is worth the expense, that it’s better than the alternative investments, and that they’re competent and trustworthy to deliver what they’ve proposed. When they don’t they should be held accountable because we chose to leave other needs unmet based on their advice, and because they’ve lowered trust to fund future initiatives that will also be important. I agree, nobody expected the great recession, so for things like that we will need to roll with the punches, but that’s not a good reason to set aside due competence and due diligence. If people are wide-eyed over a mega project or campaign, that’s all the more reason to get the costs right.
+10
Quasimodal is hot again.
Yes, the SLU and First Hill streetcar lines were pretty dumb. They are already connected by the transit network of Link and many bus routes. Suppose Chris would like to take transit between IDS and SLU; routes 40, 62, and 70 do that today and the agencies aim to improve them. We should consider the opportunity cost of the 1st Avenue ROW, the local capital, and that the needed CCC streetcar service subsidy may not be covered by its farebox revenue (and continued ST2 and Metro contributions). Mayor Durkan is pausing the project to make sense of it.
Quasimodal, I hope nobody is arguing that $54 billion is a trivial amount of money. But public projects have their categories.
Better example than education for an alternative use might be highways. Or alternative modes of transit.
Schools, for example, can be examples of things that need transportation of one kind or another. But better not be in competition. Best school system, or mental health system in the world can’t exist at the expense of the sewer system.
Mark
The central city connector is a complicated question
1. Are the ridership estimates accurate? I’m not convinced either way. Most of the benefit is better downtown to SLU service, but the part of the track that goes through SLU will remain slow.
2. Given that MOST of the Move Seattle rapid ride projects are likely to get axed, is there any higher priority project we could save by sifting streetcar money over to it? I.e. would you rather have ccc or the rapid ride version of 44?
Let’s not kid around. SDOT and Kubly really screwed up Move Seattle and some hard choices have to be made at this point. Apparently, Durkan was very correct in firing him…
Long term I question whether we should be investing in streetcars and rapid rides in the city core, or whether it is smarter to contract with sound transit for additional light rail lines. We don’t even have the maintenance facilities to add more buses.
It becomes useful context when voters are made aware of what their actual out of pocket expense will be (e.g. car tabs, property tax). And instead of the “latte a day” math put it in terms compounded expenses over time like say investing in an education fund, mortgage payment, etc. It would also be useful to point out how $24B dollars might be important to future funding of less glamorous transit expenses like bus service hours.