Untested and unproven, you just have to build it

Mesa AZ - A Personal Rapid Transit system (PRT) is being pushed for by the creators of what is called SkyTran. It is a futuristic transit mode that utilizes small passenger pods on demand rather than running on a fixed schedule. Seeing the computer graphics of what the SkyTran system is to look like, I started humming the theme from the Jetson's.

Currently in Mesa, the city is in the midst of a long term transit analysis and exploring various transit options for the future. Supporters of the untested and futuristic concept, built by Unimodal, want it included in the analysis and as the focal point of the study. Mind you, the analysis will help steer the city's future transportation planning.

To include PRT as a focal point of the analysis is simply ludicrous. PRT systems are not designed for mass transit, period. They are incapable of handling large passenger loads and are more suited for places like universities and large company complexes with many buildings spread out over hundreds of acres.

Wild and unsubstantiated claims on the SkyTran website such as SkyTran being able to "totally eliminate commuter congestion in any city" is literally false advertising and a complete misrepresentation of the product. Another claim of "SkyTran can END road congestion, car accidents and automobile air pollution" also state the impossible.

Where are the actual studies proving these claims? Not in-house computer projections or "what we believe" press releases but the actual independently conducted case study that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that SkyTran will totally eliminate 100% of the traffic congestion in any city? I already know the answer, there isn't any such study.

The author of the azcentral.com article, Jerry Spellman who is a volunteer coordinator for Unimodal/SkyTran (and would make a tremendously successful used car salesman), touts SkyTran as the cure-all to Mesa's transportation problems. It can make a profit that can be shared with the city, Spellman proclaims. The same claims were made about the money losing Las Vegas monorail. Unlike the Las Vegas monorail however, Spellman wants the SkyTran system as the focal point of Mesa's transportation future. An untested and unproven mode of transportation that is full of the promises of Utopia if only it can be built.

Another claim from the makers of SkyTran is that people will be traveling around at 100 mph around the city. If you sent someone in one of the passenger pods for a 4 block ride, you would not get it to 100 mph. If you did, that person would be thrown back and whipped forward as there is insufficient space for speeding up and slowing down safely. You also would have hundreds of switches and sensors along the line to allow the PRT pod to bypass stations and other pods. One tiny error in any of the millions upon millions of calculations per second the system must do or a small system glitch, as the driverless pod is whipping around the city at 100 mph, could easily spell disaster.

The SkyTran website reads like a science fiction novel. Between the wild claims being made, bashing every other mode of time proven technology and fancy computerized graphics, one gets a clear vision of how Utopia is seen through their eyes. I really had to fight to convince myself that the SkyTran site wasn't a satire site but a real site aimed at convincing people that SkyTran is the answer.

"No ongoing taxpayer subsidies needed!" exclaims Spellman in his article. "A load of bull!", I exclaim here. As with the Las Vegas monorail, more tax money will have to be pumped into it as time goes on. Simply put, SkyTran will not even remotely pay for itself yet alone bring in the big profit that Unimodal states it will. There will be no sharing of the windfall with the City of Mesa.

To pay for the operation, you will either have to charge a ridiculously high amount to ride it which will keep most people off of it (and you still won't meet the operating costs as the higher the price, the less will ride) or you'll have to be subsidized by the taxpayer. That's basic Mass Transit Economics 101 in this day and age, Jerry.

Given that SkyTran is envisioned by Spellman as the central core of Mesa's transportation system, there is no way in hell that more tax money won't have to be poured into it. Your not going to be able to have SkyTran be the core system while charging $25 a ride. Your going to have to get the price down to existing transit fares which will mean a big drain on the SkyTran finances. To make up for the loss, you'll be heading to city hall to plead for more tax money to keep the system running.

What disturbs me the most is that the SkyTran sales pitch is exactly what tax and spend politicians love to bite on. Something unproven, sure to skyrocket in price and is touting the "green" message that these politicians blindly follow like mice following the Pied Piper. If Mesa doesn't bite on the SkyTran proposal, they'll start hitting up other cities to fund their PRT folly.

If SkyTran is all that it claims, where is the test line on company property to clearly show everyone the concept in a full scale working model? So far, all I see are visions of what it should be with wild promises being made. There is a huge difference between theory and reality. So many things work in theory but in reality they fall far short. In theory, even some of the greatest blunders of mankind looked great on paper but failed miserably when unleashed on the public.

This isn't the only PRT proposal floating around either. There are a few others out there by other companies. An ongoing proposal in Minnesota as well as one in Washington state to mention two I personally am aware of. Each one sounds the same however, build it and all your transit problems will be forever solved. None have been tested nor have any been willing to build a test line completely on their own dime to prove their claims. These companies all want to place it as a central core part of the existing transportation infrastructure. As I see it, this means that they have an escape if things go wrong and can unload the responsibilities onto the government if it goes belly-up.

Mesa politicians should not even think about including such an untested and unproven concept such as SkyTran into the transportation analysis. The residents of Mesa need to make that clear to their elected officials. If built, it won't save money, it won't be safer and it definitely won't cure your transportation problems. You'll end up with an expensive white elephant that even more of your tax dollars will have to be sunk into just to keep it running.

Chastain's LRT plan continues to get more holes

Kansas City MO - Clay Chastain's Light Rail Transit {LRT} plan took a couple of big hits on Thursday but were, as usual, brushed aside by Chastain.

First there was the consulting team which issued its report to the city council and showed that the city just can't afford Chastain's dream system.

Then the city council learned that there were enough valid signatures on a petition to force the city to toss the plan or send it back to the voters.

Chastain of course instantly went on the defensive. He claimed the consultant report was deliberately overstating the building costs so as to shoot his plan down. A bit paranoid? It seems so but Chastain has a long history of being paranoid when things don't go his way. It's always that someone is out to get him.

What needs to be focused on is this paragraph in the news story: "He said the Missouri Department of Transportation should contribute $100 million to operate light rail. According to figures supplied by MoDOT, that would eat up what the state spends on general transit for about 25 years."

In other words, Chastain not only wants to decimate the bus system in Kansas City but he wishes to decimate transit in the entire state of Missouri just so he can build his personal legacy line at taxpayer expense.

Also highlighted in the consultant's report was that many of the things in Chastain's plan had problems and could even violate the law. There has already been many other questionable issues regarding the constitutionality of how he plans on funding it so that didn't surprise me.

What amused me was that he thinks the state will just fork over the money needed to fund all transit systems for the next 25 years to operate his legacy line. He's Clay Chastain so the state is just going to bow down to his royal highness. The bulk of Chastain's plan for funding revolves around such thinking. He thinks Kansas City will automatically go to the front of the funding line with the Feds. He thinks the state will just hand over money because he needs it to run his LRT line with gondola ride.

This is sure to end up in court as Chastain has no qualms about suing to get his legacy line built, even if the people vote it down in the next election. He was all for the people prior to this since they blindly voted for what he wanted but as soon as they learned what was happening and don't want his plan, it's to hell with the people. Sadly, when all is said and done, it will cost the taxpayers plenty but it looks as though Chastain's plan is getting more holes in it by the day and less likely to be built.

Kansas City residents have a chance it seems to officially dump Chastain's legacy line and send the meddler packing back to Virginia. With enough valid petition signatures, there is no reason that a re-vote of the plan can't happen with the next election. Let's hope these people understand what they are voting for this time.

If Kansas City must have a rail line, do it sensibly. Build it for service, not development or prestige. Don't go for the bells and whistles as they don't do anything but drive the price up. While I still think Kansas City can't support a rail line regardless of building price, it might just squeak by if it is done with transportation in mind in an existing high ridership corridor.

Talk about chutzpah

Pittsburgh PA - The former Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAT) CEO, Paul "Captain Scuttles" Skoutelas, filed a federal lawsuit against his former employer late last week. He charges that PAT has illegally reduced his monthly pension by more than $3,000.

The key issue in the lawsuit revolves around a pension agreement that was not approved by the PAT Board and hence not legally binding. PAT reduced Skoutelas' pension and requested repayment of almost $65,000 in over payments. Skoutelas' attorney argues otherwise and states that a promise was made and must be honored.

The man that literally lived large on the taxpayer's dime and brought a whole new meaning to the term government waste is now experiencing the repercussions of his leadership and he doesn't like it. From day one, he spent money like Fort Knox was part of the operation. I mean, nobody needs an $800 desk clock but he deemed it a necessity when he first arrived along with a desk chair that cost well over $1,000, all on the taxpayer's dime of course. The wasteful spending just skyrocketed from that point on.

A costly move of the administration offices from a building it owned into leased office space in the high rent section of Downtown. Continuing to increase the funding of a proven failure of a marketing campaign. Nickel and diming the operating funds for everything from dinosaur books, greens fees and rented Christmas decorations for the office to hiring but not monitoring the spending of professional lobbying agencies acting on their behalf (i.e. reimbursing the lobbyist blindly). Greatly inflating inventory costs by having to have each bus order as different from the previous order as they could get it and with every option they could get. This is barely even the tip of the iceberg in terms of wasteful spending practices that occurred under the leadership of Skoutelas and directly led to the fiscal crisis PAT finds itself in today.

While PAT has never been a really efficient operation, the decade under Skoutelas was ripe with wasteful spending which set PAT up for fiscal disaster. More new ways to waste money were invented under the Skoutelas administration than occurred under all of the previous administrations combined. Skoutelas jumped the ship before the actual crash so he didn't have to deal with the consequences.

Skoutelas also introduced a controversial pension program under his watch at PAT known as the "Deferred Retirement Option Program" or DROP. The DROP program literally allowed key employees to double dip into the already underfunded management pension plan. He was also allowed to buy pension credit for previous service at PAT as well as his time with Lynx in Orlando FL to increase his overall pension.

Sadly, with the way the courts rule on such matters, PAT will ultimately be out the money and Skoutelas will get his full plunder. The riders and taxpayers will get punished in the end to offset Skoutelas' share of the PAT loot.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to sue your former employer for money when you yourself steered that former employer into a fiscal disaster which has left the public with 15% less service, threats of another 10% and a fare increase on the horizon as well as the loss of employment for many employees.

Hannemann: Rail transit is only way

Honolulu HI - With Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann's legacy rail plan being questioned, the Mayor dug in and tried to shoot down any thought of looking at alternatives.

Hannemann ranted, "There is no way we are going to change horses in midstream and now explore a busway as an alternative to light rail." He continued with "It will not be done. I will not allow that to happen."

This outburst only further confirms to me that the transit plan in Honolulu is strictly for the personal legacy of Mayor Hannemann rather than for the good of the residents that must pay for it. The Mayor has always fought any plan that wasn't rail and has long refused to even consider exploring what would work best. Even the routing would be challenged by Mufi if it didn't fit into his vision of how he wanted his legacy line.

While the brief description of the BRT plan leaves me with a lot of questions, BRT was never really properly considered initially. Only rail was. Even the routing is questionable as many questions are still pending as to if Mufi's plan will serve the most residents. Hannemann has pulled strings, called in favors and at times bullied to get his plan going. Even though the rail plan is still in question, Hannemann acts as though it is a done deal.

Council Chairwoman Barbara Marshall is unconvinced that Mufi's plan is the best because she doesn't believe all possibilities were given fair consideration during the early planning stages of the project. She is correct, they weren't. Mufi had already decided on rail and that was what he insisted be focused on.

Given that the line will require at least $5 billion dollars in taxpayer money (probably more when all is said and done), all alternatives need to be considered and the best technology as well as route chosen. Hannemann's refusal to consider anything but rail along the route he wants is a warning flag which proclaims that the project is a legacy project and doesn't serve the best interest of the residents.

Transit Funding vs. Other Public Projects

Atlanta GA - Susan Gast had a very interesting article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution regarding how the funding of public transit is viewed compared to funding for other government projects.

She is correct in her assumption that public transit operating funding is dimly viewed by politicians. In her article she questions why politicians often say that public transit doesn't benefit everyone so it shouldn't be supported while items like parks, roads and other infrastructure are (and let's not forget the $10,000 taxpayer funded BBQ pit at a senior center if your in Pennsylvania).

She does miss this fact though: Funding for transit capital projects which do little beside raise the cost of providing service is quite easy to obtain and politicians fight to get in line to hand that money out.

A big part of the answer she seeks comes from political legacy. Build a park, create a new highway and the politician, after they bite the dust and often before, can get a shiny brass plaque with their name on it for all of eternity proclaiming they were the ones responsible for this park or that road, etc.

Her example of Gwinnett County Commissioner Mike Beaudreau's comments reminded me of many politicians I have come across. They all have the same disdain for transit and fail to understand its benefits. They only embrace transit if they think it can further their political career or shut up some noisy detractors of their work.

The excuse that public transit is expensive and used by few is just that, an excuse. I pay for schools I don't use and know many others that don't have children to use the public school system but we still have to fork over money for the indoctrination centers. I pay for roads in the boondocks that are lucky they have 5 cars a day on them and I know I'll never have to use that road. I know many that haven't been to a public park in decades, including myself. Yet these all get funded with a smile by the politicians who proclaim "everyone benefits". Hardly.

A viable public transit system is an important part to the city economy. Without a good system, you will lose business. Not just a few lost sales from people that can't get to town to buy from the stores but entire businesses that pack up and move to somewhere that their capital is treated better. Far more people benefit from a viable transit system than just those that ride. Politicians are either too stupid to understand that fact or so dedicated to creating something they can hang a brass plaque on with their name that they ignore it.

Susan's article is very thought provoking and brings up an excellent point. After reading it, I was already going through the list of projects that my local and state politicians are rushing to give money to and very few of the favored projects benefited everyone. In fact, many were self-serving and benefited only the politicians and a handful of their contributors.

The "it must benefit everyone" argument is always applied to operating funding for transit by the politicians and rarely to anything else they rush out to give money to. While public transit does need to do a lot of house cleaning to make itself more efficient, it benefits far more people, including those that don't use the system, than the neighborhood taxpayer funded meth clinic or a new taxpayer funded road into a private housing development.

PAT is still finding new ways to waste money

Pittsburgh PA - A columnist piece in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review really should be a news item. Columnist Eric Heyl informed the readers on Friday that the Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAT) is still finding new ways to waste money and offering feeble attempts at justifying the waste.

What is it this time? Another attempt at nickel and diming the money needed to run service so it can be spent on anything but providing service. PAT placed an ad in the Pittsburgh City Paper for $1,400 which is little more than political butt kissing using money that is needed to run the service.

The full page ad declared in bold face letters "THANKS TO THE LEADERS IN HARRISBURG, WE CAN KEEP YOU MOVING."

It then goes on with "We'd like to thank Gov. Rendell, the lawmakers in Harrisburg, and all those who have worked together on the funding crisis," the ad states. "Their hard work and vision have made it possible for us to continue to offer our riders the dependable transit they deserve."

PAT's spinmeister, Judi McNeil, went into high speed spin mode to defend the ad saying that it was to publicly thank the politicians for their efforts in passing the transportation bill. She was also quick to add that the money for the ad came from advertising revenues and not taxpayer money.

I'm sorry Judi, the ad is a waste of money and shows exactly what I have been saying for years. PAT will find any excuse to spend money on anything but providing service. These politicians don't need to be thanked for doing their job. The same could have been done for free at the PAT press conference where they announced the funding deal. Instead, PAT just had to find a way to waste more money so they went out and bought a newspaper ad in a free tabloid style paper that is used more for lining bird cages and paper training the family puppy than it is used for reading.

Also Judi, that advertising revenue is supposed to go toward the operating fund. Whether you think so or not, the taxpayer still has to foot the bill for that useless advertisement since that is $1,400 more the taxpayer must sink into the system to keep service on the street.

While $1,400 isn't even considered chump change in the grand scheme of the total amount needed to run PAT, it clearly shows how the mind set of waste is ingrained into the transit system's administration. This is just like the $700 or so worth of dinosaur books PAT bought for the board of director's children several years ago. It is something to simply waste money on and does absolutely nothing to keep service on the street.

PAT earns itself yet another Lance for continuing to waste money and I'm tossing in another Lance for PAT's mouthpiece, Judi McNeil, for trying to once again defend the waste.

Pennsylvania eliminates senior ride restrictions

Johnstown PA - The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat has a story regarding a change in the Pennsylvania State law regarding the times Seniors are allowed to ride for free on the buses.

Prior to the law changing, seniors could not use their transit identification card during rush hours. The CamTran general manager, Rose Lucey-Noll indicated that was to spare larger operations the problem of over-crowding during rush hour. Actually she is partially wrong. The original law was set up in part for that but it also dealt with the payout to the transit systems from the State Lottery fund which funds the free ride program for Seniors.

For small systems, such as CamTran in Johnstown, it won't have much of an effect on rush hour ridership and is a welcome change since they don't have much of a rush hour to start with. Now with larger systems, it may create a small problem.

That problem will be that larger systems may still restrict travel times for seniors using the transit identification card because of rush hour crowds. This will create unneeded hassle for the drivers that have to enforce company procedure while the law has no restrictions.

Overall, eliminating the restriction on senior riding makes sense. Currently in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, there is the "third rush hour" which consists of seniors trying to get where they are going before the real rush hour starts in the afternoon. This mini-rush hour has created some problems as both PAT and SEPTA still are running in off-peak mode. By eliminating the restrictions, that mini-rush hour will disappear and the crowd will be scattered out. Seniors, for the most part, will tend to avoid rush hour travel anyway due to the more crowded conditions.

While this change in the law won't bring in any more money from the State Lottery fund because the formula used to calculate how much each transit system receives will not change, it will be beneficial to the many seniors that depend on transit service to get around.

Chastain insists his plan will work

Kansas City MO - Clay Chastain, the former KC resident that now resides in Virginia but still meddles in Kansas City affairs, insists his rail plan for KC is workable.

Once again however, Chastain pinned his belief about his rail plan on hopes and dreams rather than reality. At a meeting between Chastain and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Kansas City, Chastain did little to prove that his plan was workable beside suggesting more local taxes be imposed to pay for it.

Chastain told the committee he expected the pie of funding for public transportation to get bigger. “I think the pendulum of the federal government is swinging in the right direction,” Chastain said of the Democratic shift in Congress.

In my experience, the Democrats talk a good game but fail to deliver on their lip service. KC won't see any more money under a government controlled by Democrats than it received under a government controlled by Republicans.

You can't build and fund anything just on the hope that someone in the government will take pity and hand you a big check to pay for it. Chastain just can't seem to understand that simple point. He wants KC to jump to the head of the line and not have to follow any rules or regulations that the rest of the country must follow.

Chastain reluctantly agreed that you can't decimate the bus system and expect the Feds to pony up the money. However, that won't stop him for pushing for his personal legacy line. Another threat of an expensive lawsuit was also issued by Chastain at the meeting if he doesn't get his rail line with gondola ride built as he wants it, proving he doesn't care if the bus system does get destroyed in the process.

Clay Chastain's rail proposal is the perfect example of a personal legacy project that he wants everyone else to pay for. It's his way or he'll sue to get his way.

Environmental Impact of Light Rail

Seattle WA - An article on the Crosscut web site brings to light an interesting slant to the rail debate. The environmental impact of building a light rail line.

The writer, Emory Bundy, does a rather good job in pointing out that building a rail line has a much more serious impact on the environment than the pro-rail and environmentalist crowd would have you believe. Remember, rail is sold to the public as being good for the environment but the environmental costs are completely ignored.

Bundy states: "As an offset, Sound Transit claims it will save 14,000 tons of CO2 annually by running light rail trains on electricity, sparing the region emissions that otherwise would be generated by automotive traffic. Even if granted, it would take 90 years from completion of the line to break even on the energy transaction. If Sound Transit should manage to cut tunnel-related greenhouse emissions in half, by aggressive use of hydro electricity and human labor, an implausible proposition, it still would take 45 years to break even."

That's a long time to just break even on the environmental carbon footprint but Bundy failed to mention that even in the time frame given, the line still wouldn't break even on the environmental costs. Why? Even taking the shorter of the two times, 45 years, the line would have been rebuilt several times over. Each rebuild making more of a carbon impact and adding more time before the line breaks even on it's carbon footprint. The number also doesn't take into consideration the day to day maintenance on the line which also will add to the carbon footprint. In short, the Sound Transit extension will never pay for itself environmentally but will continually add carbon debt that will never be paid off. And no, buying carbon credits from Ozone Al won't cover it.

Actually, this whole carbon footprint nonsense is just that, nonsense. I am pointing this out the way I am simply to show people that rail isn't as environmentally friendly as proponents like to make it out to be. Those who are rushing out to buy "carbon offsets" (I could do a whole series on that scam) for a trip to the store will be shocked to see that the environmentally friendly rail line they take to work isn't as eco-friendly as they thought. As green is one of the big selling points for expensive rail projects, the public needs to understand that it isn't as green as the proponents say it is.

Getting back to Bundy's article. Bundy should have just left the article as a relatively decent informative piece. Instead he turned a good and informative article into a joke by going off in the last third of the article about how everybody should be riding bicycles to work. Over the years, I've worked next to people that biked to work and let me tell you, they stunk from their sweat in the summer, looked like a drowned rat if it rained and on some occasions, looked like they stopped off to do some mud wrestling on the way in. I'd rather take the bus.

While Bundy does miss a lot of points such as not comparing the impact of road building to rail as well as making assumptions on demographics, he brings up some valid points. Rail won't really help reduce the problems that its proponents say it will. In Seattle's case, hydro-electric power helps but in other parts of the country, all rail does is move the pollution from one location to another; namely to a coal-fired power plant in an already near capacity electrical power grid.

I could go on for days as each item in Bundy's article brings up two or more items that need to be covered. Slapping a rail line down isn't as simple as it may seem. The same goes for a busway or highway as well. Rail however, has more of a direct negative financial impact to it due to its much higher cost and as shown by Bundy, rail also has much more of a negative environmental impact than the general public is led to believe.

Beside the major distraction of his bike speech at the end, Bundy's article is pretty good. It brings up some good and valid points about the environmental impact of rail that are rarely mentioned. Many of these things I have been saying all along but there was some new information as well as a new way of applying what I already knew to better counter the pro-rail environmental rhetoric.

Tacky Trolleys proposed

Winston-Salem NC - Winston-Salem is considering adding night time, weekend trolley service (with the tacky trolleys) to the city. The trolley service, tried once before during lunch hours and fizzled, is stated to help drum up business during the evening hours as well as spur the night life of the city.

Normally with such a news story, I would just read it, roll my eyes and forget it but a comment by the Art Barnes, General Manager of the Winston-Salem Transit Authority (WSTA), caught my attention. That comment was this: “just because something doesn’t work in one venue doesn’t mean you should give up on it."

Upon reading that comment, I immediately thought of all the waste done by transit systems and city leaders across America based on that very philosophy. Try, try and try again until the idea can be force fit into the fabric of the city just doesn't spell good fiscal management nor does it spell success.

I like Art Barnes and have corresponded with him in the past but his comment is a philosophy that I see practiced almost daily and I must disagree with him. The philosophy he states usually fails with costly results. The philosophy is almost ingrained into the thinking of public officials who give little thought about spending taxpayer money.

Just like with my local transit system who mastered the technique of trying to get a failed strategy to work and literally crippled the operation due to the excessive costs, the Winston-Salem trolley plan is similar. It is a plan that has failed in the past and should be left to rest in peace.

What we hear though is that "such trolley services have been successful in other cities". Wow, then let's jump on the bandwagon! What works in one city doesn't mean it will work in another city if tried. A point often ignored and ignored in this case as well. Lunchtime trolley operations work in other cities but failed miserably in Winston-Salem.

If the venture is funded strictly through private money, it's a whole new ball game but it won't be. What will happen is that more and more public money will have to be sunk into the plan if it gets up and running. The WSTA will most likely end up on the short end of the financial stick as money that should go for regular WSTA service on it's many routes will be siphoned off to pay for the night time tacky trolley operation that will not even come close to being cost effective.

The comment toward the end about extending the proposed service to colleges and having them pay for it is laughable as well. Oh you may get them to pay a small portion of the service but nowhere close to what is needed to run the service. Colleges will insist on free service for the students as well for a fraction of the actual cost of the service.

I say, let a proven failure rest in peace. Resurrecting a tacky trolley operation on the public dime, when it has failed before, will do nothing to improve business at the bars and clubs nor will it keep the roads free of drivers that have had too much to drink.