The fraudulent Seattle Monorail Project discovered months ago that it was falling far short of its inflated revenue targets, but fortunately the problem has been solved. How? By revising the projections of future revenues -- based on assumptions that are even more wildly optimistic than the wildly optimistic assumptions that failed to predict the current shortfall:
Yesterday's report, by consulting firm ECONorthwest, said car-tax income should grow an average 6.1 percent per year in Seattle. Currently the car-tab taxes are coming in one-third less than monorail backers had planned. But a 6.1 percent growth rate would eventually plug most of the hole in monorail revenues.6.1%, 4.8% who cares, it's only 1.3% off, right? Yes, but:The figure is higher than what Sound Transit forecasts to help fund its light-rail project. And it's also more optimistic than the monorail's own prognostications last year. The new report assumes car values will rise faster than inflation and, as the population grows, more people will own cars.
The report was reviewed by four of the state's best-known economists, who suggested a more cautious figure of 4.8 percent. However, the panel said ECONorthwest's findings were reasonable.
Another question is how many years residents must pay the tax of $140 per $10,000 of car value. If the latest predictions turn out wrong, the tax would go on longer than the roughly 25 years mentioned in last year's pro-monorail campaignStarting with current revenues of $26 million a year, a difference between 4.8% vs. 6.1% annual growth compounded over 25 years amounts to a cumulative difference of $243 million. Sooner or later, we'll be talking real money!
Can the monorail be built even in the face of such a large potential deficit? Nobody really knows, because
The true costs won't be known until next year, when two teams place bids to construct and operate a monorail system connecting downtown to Ballard and West Seattle. The monorail agency has already proposed reducing four miles of the 14-mile line to a single track shared by northbound and southbound trains.The Seattle Monorail Project is a vast moneypit of unbounded depth. It needs to be shut down as quickly as possible and some of the folks who have been deceiving the public probably deserve to be in jail. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 22, 2003 07:00 AM
I'm not pro- or anti- monorail (don't live out your way), but Seattle could learn from Baltimore's Light Rail experience.
Single-tracking saves some money up front, but it doesn't work well. Scheduling is much more restricted when northbound and southbound trains have to shuttle on and off the same track. Travel times are longer. The system is much more adversely affected by problems and even routine maintenance, leading to delays and cancellations. Unpredictability kills ridership; who wants to risk being late for work or picking up the kid?
"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right"
OR
"If it's not worth doing right, it's not worth doing at all"
Single-tracking violates both these aphorisms. Get another plan.
Posted by: AMac on December 22, 2003 07:11 AMWhy would anyone expect car prices to grow faster than inflation? Car production is (a)getting increasingly automated, (b)can be done almost anywhere in the world, and (c)is highly competitive. Sounds to me like a recipe for long-term price deflation.
Posted by: David Foster on December 22, 2003 08:14 AMYou usually have to wait until a construction project is well underway before the cost over runs become apparent, but this time the citizens of Seattle have lucked out. The Monorail project, which is really just a bloated amusement park ride, is based on financial quicksand. Pull the plug on this turkey without delay.
Posted by: Bill K. on December 22, 2003 08:27 AMNo matter how bad the Monorail seems, Sound Transit is orders of magnitude worse, run by unelected commissars (that is, their reelections do not depend in the slightest on Sound Transit's performance) and unwilling to stand for re-election now that the dishonesty of their 1996 cost promises are clear. I actually voted FOR the Monorail because the Sound Transit commissars universally denounced it. The City Council did their best to kill the Monorail, not through any knowledge of cost/benefit - they just knew that Sound Transit, dishonest as it was, was the politically correct stampede of the year.
So count your blessings that the Monorail actually has some transparency built into its 'process'. Sound Transit was done in secret, the cost overruns grudgingly revealed after the non-bid contracting process failed, when the Board could not bully a real-world contractor.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on December 22, 2003 09:13 AMMonorail! Monorail! Monorail!
Mono... D'oh!
Posted by: Skep on December 22, 2003 09:50 AMHas McDermott weighed in with any conspiracy theories for the Monorail funding shortfalls? Earth to Jim, put on your tin foil hat.
Posted by: Gary B on December 22, 2003 10:28 AMI agree with Insufficiently Sensitive. I support the Monorail because I hate the way Sound Transit has been rammed down the voters throats. And even if the monorail turns out to be a glorified amusement ride, it will be one that I will enjoy taking. Who will want to ride from downtown to somewhere in Tukwila 5 miles from the airport? That isn't even a good amusement ride, let alone a reasonable commuter route.
Posted by: Wilinsky on December 22, 2003 04:19 PMThe monorail might be a glorified amusement ride, but it doesn't go anywhere near my house, which means I'll hardly ever ride it, yet it could still cost me several thousand dollars over the next few decades. That's a pretty expensive cheap thrill.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on December 22, 2003 05:06 PMIs there, a chance, the track, could bend?
Posted by: Spoons on December 23, 2003 07:05 AMIs there no one in Seattle with the get and go to get an initiative going to kill off this thing or at least prevent the authority from relying exclusively on a car tax to fund it?
Posted by: B Traven on January 16, 2004 02:42 AMSurely those who voted for this thing must be
renters with no cars in their garage. Didn't think there were so many suckers in the city of
Seattle, and it appears we poor souls who voted
against it will be stuck with it for 30 years.
Damn Right. This monorail project is a bottomless money pit, bound to enslave tax-paying citizens for the next 30-40 years. Most of the people paying for this "toy" won't even use it, since it only services a limited area of Seattle. With the economy trying to recover, the last thing we need in this day and age is some government entity vacuuming up 1.7 billion
dollars from local citizens. Consider a modest tax to improve the bus system instead.
Nuff said!