The $60 car tab fee did not fail because Seattleites oppose light rail or transit funding per se; it failed because $18 million to study light rail is silly, car tabs are regressive, and the funding was vague. Seattleites in fact like the idea of having world class public transportation system and will continue to vote that way when presented with well-thought-out mechanisms.

We know from dozens of other municipal transit systems in North America, Asia, and Europe that light rail has a lower cost to operate and maintain over the lifespan of the system than do buses. The initial capital outlay is huge, and it takes a long time to grow the system sufficiently to develop a committed ridership, yes, but that does not make it a rip-off. It makes the cost benefit strictly a long-term thing. Short-term thinking hasn't gotten this region very far, has it: every so many years since at least 1926 long-term light rail planning gets brought up and never acted on or funded, thereby delaying its benefit and increasing its cost.

Light rail, furthermore, does not replace buses; any light rail system works in tandem with buses and commuter rail and bikes and cars. Every city that has light rail also operates buses. Including light rail in the mix has several advantages, which is why light rail is so widespread: where bus lines and bus stops lower property values and tend to drive businesses out, light rail tends to raise them and draw businesses in. Middle and upper class people will not give up their cars to ride buses, but they will do to ride light rail; this fact has a huge, real impact on congestion and pollution in cities with light rail. Riders will travel farther on light rail than on buses. Light rail is wheelchair-, stroller-, and bike-friendlier than buses, as well, because the trains are boarded and exited at platform grade and bikes are just brought into central sections rather than loaded on outside racks. There are numerous other advantages any quick perusal of the Internet will elicit.

Light rail is not a rip-off; it is a long-term, far-sighted investment in transportation infrastructure. It is costly to put in, very costly, but it is very cheap over the long haul and has real congestion and pollution benefits if we have the foresight (unlike our forebears) to learn about it and adopt this route. The way young people are voting should tip everyone off to the direction we are inevitably headed, in any case.

"where bus lines and bus stops lower property values and tend to drive businesses out,"

That has got to be one of the most ignorant, stupidest comments I have read anywhere. Where on earth did you get that blatant nonsense?

Have you ever been to Queen Anne? Ballard? West Seattle? Have you not seen all the new development at bus stops in those, and pretty much all other neighborhoods in Seattle? What on earth are you talking about?

Bus routes and bus stops attract development and business. The new Gates Foundation Headquarters on Lower Queen Anne is built right at a bus stop -- not at a light rail station. All the new development on Queen Anne Ave is on a major bus route with bus stops every few blocks.

Who is smacgry? Is he the guy who came up with this ridiculous idea of expanding light rail in Seattle with only Seattle taxpayers paying for it?

He is either a blithering idiot, or a not-very-creative liar.

What is his "well-thought-out mechanism" for paying for more light rail in Seattle? And while he is at it, how about he comes up with a "well-thought-out mechanism" for paying for a new seawall, and for the $1.6 billion in deferred maintenance and repairs on Seattle streets and bridges.

I'm sure everyone is dying to hear this genius's ideas.

http://gondolaproject.com/tag/urban-gondola/

Ballard to the U district would be a perfect place to install one of these.

I don't often see the South Lake Union trolley, but when I am stopped in traffic to let it pass, I see there are very few riders. So is anyone asking how the city is paying for it--especially before we go forward with more city-sponsored light rail?

I once was one of those who wouldn't dream of getting out of my car and taking transit, but a job without any parking meant I had no choice except to take a bus. Now I check bus schedules and use Metro to get to downtown, the U-district, and more rarely Bellevue or Tacoma.

Some folks just won't get out of their cars whether to take the bus or light rail. I've offered to ride with car-centric people (so they can get a sense of how easy it is and that the buses are not peopled with degenerates) with no success.

In a way paying for light rail (bonding with some tax structure behind it) is like running up your credit card by buying goodies we want to have instead of need to have (seawall, anyone?). With an excellent bus system we should both be satisfied and realistic. There are those who won't/can't get out of their cars. A pretty trolley in the neighborhood doesn't pencil out as a wise financial choice for this city. Period.

One of the reasons I voted against the car tab ballot measure was the inclusion of street car funding. I don't understand the infatuation some people have with street cars. We built one that connects south Lake Union to downtown, but other than giving us a few laughs over the SLUT acronym, what has it done for the City? The little data that I found on ridership shows that it is struggling to get up to 20% rider capacity. This does not sound like a huge success story that justifies expanding street car service in Seattle. If street cars are worth the big investment, we need to have the facts laid out to the voters so we can make an intelligent decision on this mode of transportation.

Japan has one of the best transportation systems in the world.
It uses high speed rail, light rail, and buses. The main difference
between it the Seattle concept of transportation, and that of
Japan is the fact that it is privately owned & operated verses a
tax-payer supported.
The only portion of the transportation system used tax funds was
through the government guaranteed selling of bonds to support the
new high-speed rail construction phase. Those bonds are being paid
back via the profits of their high speed rail system.

Their transportation system operates without any other government
subsidies.

pete1427, I love your point! If these light rail and streetcar dreams are such good ones, then let the private sector step up to construct and operate them. The fact that your post is the first time I've encountered this idea tells me that if it was such a good idea, the private sector would be clamoring to do it. The fact that I know of no private sector interest doesn't mean it's not out there, but if it's not, that very fact alone should give us pause. Seattle taxpayers should insist that backlogs of maintenance and repair be cleared before any further conversation, let alone action, resumes on the crazy streetcar and light rail issues.

1 of 5

The author of this piece ignores the glaring faults with Sound Transit’s financing plan. The commenter above touting the supposed benefits of light rail misleadingly suggests the nasty financing plan employed here is comparable to how light rail is financed in “dozens of other municipal transit systems in North America, Asia, and Europe.” Another commenter above also offers up a fundamentally false description of how Sound Transit finances megaprojects: “(bonding with some tax structure behind it) is like running up your credit card by buying goodies we want to have instead of need.”

Sound Transit’s actual financing plan is abusive and more than negates the kinds of benefits light rail provides to other metro regions. Moreover, as Sound Transit is completely unaccountable to the people living here, it continues to hide the full tax costs it intends to inflict for the next four decades just as security for the mountains of long term bonds it plans on selling.

The truth is that its peers use mostly federal dollars, and little or no new regressive taxing, to cover capital costs. In contrast, the new local taxing set to be imposed pursuant to the terms of 2008’s ST2 likely will be about $85 billion. Those new regressive tax costs likely will extend until about 2053. That abusive taxing scheme is a function of the security terms Sound Transit sticks in its bond sales contracts.

The capital costs of Sound Transit’s projects are supposed to be on the order of $15 billion, which means the $85 billion in taxes Sound Transit would need to confiscate to service its bonds is GREATER than the 5:1 ratio of tax costs to capital costs the monorail agency wanted to impose. The monorail authority’s state enabling legislation had the same structure as Sound Transit’s, and its financing plan was essentially identical to what Sound Transit has been planning to put into place since ST2 passed three years ago:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/transportation/article/Monorail-s-building-debt-costs-balloon-to-11-1176529.php

That’s one reason Sound Transit is playing coy about letting the public know about the tax costs of its debt financing. What Sound Transit has in mind makes what the monorail taxing district planned look cheap.

2 of 5

It’s been over three years since ST2 was approved and the public tax cost estimates still have not been disclosed. A story over a year ago said Sound Transit’s staff still wasn’t ready to disclose the extent of the regressive tax hit it would deliver if billions of dollars of additional bonds are sold:

*********************

A huge question is the long-term effect on taxpayers.

Sound Transit does have legal power to prolong taxes and issue bond debt indefinitely, so the costs stretch far into the 2040s or 2050s, instead of the mid-2030s time frame that agency managers described in the run-up to the 2008 vote.

However, financial officer Brian McCartan has yet to recalculate how the recession might push the agency to use more or longer debt financing.

*********************

http://www.seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012980341_soundtransit24m.html

It’s time to answer that “huge question”. CFO Brian McCartan has that information, he just doesn’t want to disclose it. That “more or longer debt financing” is punishing and unnecessary.

Sound Transit is using monorail financing on a grandiose scale. It’s way too early to tell whether this new effort to put another tax hike on a city ballot next year has traction, but its proponents can be shown to be the hucksters they are by asking them to estimate the tax costs of 2008’s ST2 . . . the response will be akin to the sound of crickets at night.

3 of 5

It should be noted taxing in the name of “transit” already is FAR too high around here, in comparison to peer metro areas. Sound Transit’s abusive financing plan in particular is unnecessary and without precedent. No other government leaders do what it does to the people and communities they serve in terms of regressive taxing. The fact that Sound Transit deviates in this key way from its peers makes it a huge, negative economic force in this state.

There are many examples of smarter, more frugal, and less abusive peers paying for buses and trains. The Twin Cities and Portland are two models Sound Transit could have emulated. Those metro areas’ leaders do a great job of providing transit – especially light rail – to people and businesses at NO regressive tax cost targeting people.

In the Twin Cities they built out a new light rail system from downtown to the airport (with a tunnel) in just a couple of years in the mid-2000’s. There was NO new local taxing for that. About the same population is served as in Sound Transit’s area (2.8 million) but just check out how no long-term bonding and no new taxing was used there for light rail:

http://www.metrotransit.org/facts-about-trains-and-construction.aspx

TriMet serves three counties around Portland. It only needs about $230 million in local taxing each year to provide expanding bus and rail systems and services to roughly the same population as the Sound Transit taxing area. The TriMet financing plan imposes taxes on businesses directly. The average family there pays $0 in direct taxes for transit each year. The way it was designed here though is nasty: Sound Transit and Metro taxes cost the average family of four here $500 every year, and that amount is set to increase for decades. The Seattle TBD added a car tab fees on top of that ($20 annually).

4 of 5

Metro, the transit governments in Pierce and Snohomish counties, and Sound Transit will confiscate something on the order of $1.5 billion in local tax revenue this year alone. All the peers do a great job of providing bus service, and expanding train systems, with far less annual local tax revenue:

- TriMet (Portland) - $233 million;

- DART (Dallas/Fort Worth) - $385 million;

- San Diego Metropolitan Transit System - $100 million; and

- RTID (Denver) - $241 million.

There is no excuse for that high taxing level; it’s many times higher than in the peer metro areas.

Not only are dedicated transit taxes too high here, they are the wrong kinds of taxes. The 1.8% sales tax for buses and trains, plus existing car tab taxes and Metro’s property tax, are designed to target people. That’s exactly what we don’t need now. Those regressive taxes act as an anchor on consumer spending, and it is consumer spending that pulls areas out of recessions.

Moreover, consider how much of the regressive tax revenue confiscated for “transit” is lost to the local economy, immediately. Sound Transit can’t ship sales tax revenue out of the local private sector fast enough. It makes huge payments to institutional bondholders, bankers, non-local contractors, and multi-national engineering firms. Vast sums are sent off to BNSF and Amtrak. Oversees contractors get hundreds of millions of dollars for railsets and tunnel boring machines. The size of Sound Transit’s payments to entities such as other local governments, state governments, and indirectly to unions are staggering – far larger than its peers make. That kind of taxing and spending is terrible for the local economy.

5 of 5

Want to elect smarter, more frugal individuals onto Sound Transit’s board to get better results out of that local government? Tough nuts. It was designed to be entirely unaccountable to people. That means its treatment of the public – especially in a financial sense – will deteriorate. Those features of Sound Transit are in fact directly contrary to one of the federal constitution’s protections for Americans – we have a right to vote for local government policy makers.

Public votes on tax hikes in the name of “transit” set bad policies. The proponents can lie with impunity – that’s just free speech.

Crossrip's analysis is the closest thing I've read to full disclosure on Light Rail (ala Sound Transits version of it) before now. Thanks for the jolt of reality.
Another inconvenient truth is the higher operating subsidy required of all taxpayers to support this folly. Just look at the Metro bus 194 to the airport as an example of public funds being poured down the drain in bucket fulls. The train replaced a bus with a better on-time performance record, a bus with a 25% faster time to the airport, and most of all one that cost half the current cost per rider of the train. Progress? Where? To be fair, I didn't include the cost of the train or the debt payments that last for generations. That would have make the train absolutely awful from an investment standpoint.
Now that wouldn't be very nice, would it?
Don't believe me, do the math yourself. Don't count on any of the local press (what's left) to tell the story. They are no longer reporters - just repeaters.

Ted,
The council is not planning on voting on any of this.
The Council also cut more than $250,000 in position adds proposed by the Mayor, reduced planned funding for possible 2012 ballot measures to assume that there will only be one measure on the ballot, and maintained separate Offices of Housing and Economic Development while achieving staff efficiencies that generate annual savings of over $400,000.
http://council.seattle.gov/2011/11/22/2012-budget-adopted-by-council/

It might be cheaper to restrict a lane during peak traffic times to transit only, throw as many busses at that lane as are needed to move masses of people to the "jobs" district, charge the benefitting jobs district with that cost, and encourage the jobs living in that district to relocate to where people actually live.
Beyond that, we are just encouraging an unnatural concentration of jobs without workers within walking distance, and a concentration of workers that do not live within walking distance of living wage jobs.

"reduce congestion"

Anyone who has looked at transit systems will understand that no improvements to transit ever in the long term "reduce congestion" short of decimating the reason for going there in the first place. Why?

*) For every thing you do to reduce congestion, ie add a freeway lane, build a light rail line, add bicycle cycle tracks whatever, you make the time to travel from A to B less. Then people who otherwise couldn't buy a house, move, change jobs and are traveling from A to B, move to C which is just a little distance farther away, but time wise is the same as before. Now someone buys their old place, and they move farther, doubling the number of users of the improved system.

With these new users of the system, congestion returns to it's old norm, plus adds some distance toward the new outer edges of the city.

Therefore if you want to instead move the most people the most distance for the least cost, you look at the long term energy cost and labor cost of an additional system. With Skytrain having a dedicated right-of-way and no surface component, Vancouver removed the driver and reduced the labor cost. With LINK, we added a system that requires a driver.

With the Seattle to Ballard route we need a new right-of-way in order for it to not create more congestion by taking over intersections or like the SLUT waiting at lights, that's a tunnel or elevated. We had an elevated system planned, but didn't have the financing (ie tax base of cars). Has that changed since the Green Line Monorail plan failed? Nope, in fact it's probably worse. Would a tunneled system have been cheaper? Looking at the Sound Transit budget for downtown to Northgate, it doesn't appear to be that way.

So what's left that we can afford? A surface system, the one option that creates more congestion than removes. Uck.

smacgry says
"Every city that has light rail also operates buses. Including light rail in the mix has several advantages, which is why light rail is so widespread: where bus lines and bus stops lower property values and tend to drive businesses out, light rail tends to raise them and draw businesses in."

In a good lie there is a lot of truth. Members of the 99% successfully sued in California almost a decade ago to correct thoughtless, ill-considered loss of affordable transportation approximating the flexibility of the cars that were beyond their means—buses. Now that class of rider may well keep property values affordable near popular bus stops and in the neighborhoods they serve. Far easier to prove is that new, dedicated tracks are intended to raise property values; one need look no farther than the Seattle City Council records of accomplished and planned Transit Oriented Development/Station Area Planning upzones to confirm that fact. The Assessor's records are needed to confirm the actuality in either case.

What remains unstated is who and what are raising property values via Track Oriented Development to serve. The two sides to the heavily weighted debate: Urban Land Institute spokesman at City Council— "don't just accommodate growth make it happen— we have your backs" vs. Australia's New City Journal— "general consumption is a function of living standards, not urban form. Since the world is far from putting constraints on consumption, calls for a transformation of settlement patterns are baseless."

Confirm ULI "Reality Check" here: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=2010827

Confirm "Consuming Australia" here: http://www.acfonline.org.au/uploads/res/res_atlas_main_findings.pdf

Where do these half-baked ideas come from?
Kyle Keith must not be much of an analyst if the first numbers he throws out there are a big fat lie. 12 minutes from W.Ballard to Westlake, via cutting into the twin bore tubes somewhere between Roosevelt and Brooklyn stations.
Jeeze, ST is saying 14 minutes from Northgate to downtown, and W.Ballard is another 4 stops after Brooklyn and closer to 4 miles, not 3.
Maybe that crap is OK for Sound Transit to throw out there to get a new line, but to do it through one of it's employees? C'mon guys.
BTW, how are you going to cut into the existing tubes without major,major shutdowns for a new cavern to cross the lines?
This thing doesn't even pass the giggle test.

Seems to me that in order to be against transit, one must assume that 5% of the world's population in the US will continue to be able to burn 20 to 25% of the world's oil. Not an assumption I am comfortable making. No doubt the planning and implementation of Sound Transit has been heavily flawed - tunneling under Capitol Hill instead of simply going up Eastlake was madness - but assuming that the era of Happy Motoring will just go on and on strikes me as delusional.

The fight over the merits of rail transit is almost a metaphor for the political polarization that threatens to destroy the nation. I can’t think of a local issue that has been more polarizing, subject to emotional rather than rational discourse, and seemingly exempt from normal cost-benefit analysis.
Like Ted (thanks for this piece) I believe that our investment in rail transit is a colossal “rip-off of public funds”, that will continue to suck away the resources needed for a fair and comprehensive transportation system. But the voters believe the myth of rail efficiency, so we have to make the best of a marginal investment. (scmgrp is factually utterly wrong about our rail system’s long run economioc viability—buses and carpools are vastly more efficient and socially fair. Part of our problem in comparison to some other less bad rail systems, is the absence of pre-existing rights of way). In any event let Sound Transit deal with rail. The city of Seattle should simply stay out of it, and fix our roads and bridges, which will continue to meet 95% of the region’s need for moving goods and people.
But if rail is marginal, streetcars are totally ridiculous, an indefensible throwback to an astoundingly disruptive technology (please see my comments on Dick Nelson a few days ago), supported I guess because they are cute and retro, by young folks who didn’t have to live through them!

TVD and DMorrill,
You miss two key elements in this discussion that I argue smacgry got right. The urban sprawl that gave us Ballard and Laurelhurst and West Seattle will be phasing out of the urban picture because the next generations(plural) will not be able to afford single-family dwellings, the environment will not be able to afford more herbicides for the lawns, and the cities will not be able to afford constant street maintenance. That 50s era model of living is passing and will be past, an artifact of a post-war economic boom the world had never seen before and will never see again. We can't afford thousands of furnaces and lawn mowers and concrete driveways and new plumbing and electrical systems. It's over and the transportation of the future will need to accommodate a new form of urban habitation.
Secondly, Morrill dismisses streetcars with the smarmy "cute and retro," but there's much more to our needs than just cost-benefit analysis--the avatar and saint of the technocrat. We have needs for aesthetic experiences, social experiences, comfort, a sense of the past and connectedness, even when, maybe mostly when, we are engaging in our everyday experiences with our neighbors. Isn't that what it means to be a community and not just a collection of isolated, lonely individuals seeking maximum personal utility?

I seriously doubt the TVD premise; there is almost no chance that Seattle will attempt a rail vote in 2012; the council majority has yet to pay for the new seawall and the other deep bore projects (e.g., utility relocation will be on rate payers; Mercer West? new Elliott connector); in addition, Seattle still needs significant additional pavement management and $1 billion for sidewalks on arterials that lack them. The renewal of Bridging the Gap could be attempted in 2015. The council majority has denied the mayor his rail planning funds. Instead, in the 2012 budget, they targeted one-half as much for planning on the weak extensions of the foolish First Hill Streetcar.

We need to escape modal envy. Transit should have service frequency, reliability, connectivity, span, and provide sufficient range. It does not matter whether it has rubber tires or steel wheels. The best bus routes have rail attributes: frequency, in-lane stops, low floor vehicles, fast fare collection, certainty. LRT is necessary in corridors where demand is greater than can be carried by bus cost-effectively; we have at least one such corridor between Northgate and Mount Baker via Roosevelt, U District, Capitol Hill, Broadway, and downtown. The complete line is expected to open in 2021. Look forward to it.

TVD is correct about the two streetcar lines, as they provide low benefits at high cost.

bkochis has his history about 100% wrong when he cites Ballard and West Seattle as "urban sprawl" - both of those neighborhoods were independent cities that were annexed to Seattle in the early 1900's.

The "50's model of living" had less than nothing to do with it, and those communities aren't going away (and neither are Bellevue, Redmond, Kent, or any of the other established suburban cities).

Streetcars might get a few more affluent white people to take transit than buses do, but the difference in ridership doesn't begin to justify the capital cost.

The Waterfront Streetcar line may readily extend north to Interbay & the shipping canal. From there under the bridge another mile reaches SPU. The canal there is narrow. Twin 16' tunnels are simple enough, simpler than a tallish, high-impact streetcar bridge. The north portals direct streetcar lines to Fremont & Ballard. This route design is worth public attention, but comes fouled with dirty politics.
City Hall is instructed to censor its consideration.
Forget I mentioned it...
makes too much sense...

This article seems to take the failure of the nebulous prop 1 as having something to do with the Ballard Spur proposal. I tend to think they are unrelated - streetcars are slow and fight with traffic, prop 1 had no clear agenda for voters to sink their teeth into. The recession is having a pro density effect, rental vacancy rates are below 3%, the cranes are back in Ballard. Ballard is getting the density that was planned for it without the transit infrastructure it needs to support that density. The idea of the Ballard Spur is to see if there is a way to value engineer something that leverages an existing north-south rail investment to serve areas where a lot of people live, but are isolated by geography and traffic. Other posters have inaccurately potrayed details of this (still under construction) idea. You can learn more here: http://m.facebook.com/#!/home.php?__user=1049854978&soft;=side-area

Hey Keith: Is it some kind of prerequisite to working for Sound Transit that you can not discuss in the open tax costs or financing plans for megaprojects?

What would be the best way to pay for this "spur", in your opinion? Hike regressive taxes on Seattle families, like Sound Transit does now? Or use a LID and matching federal funds so those impacted financially are the developers who would benefit?

Give us your views on those issues . . . talking about new megaprojects while ignoring who would pay is insulting.

Show us you have some credibility. You work for Sound Transit. Provide a link to a Sound Transit document showing the expected tax costs the public here would be forced to bear if the ST2 plan projects ever are built out. This is a two-way interactive comment thread Keith . . . let's see if you can respond in a cogent manner to this.

Thanks for your many comments.

The new lightrail proposal relates to the late Prop. One because it asks taxpayers to allocate fresh tax dollars---how many and how raised?---to
a lightrail add-on while existing transportation infrastructure requires
modernization and when Seattle taxpayers already are burdened with costs for a deep-bore tunnel, prospective seawall project, I-520 modernization, and Mercer Mess redo. Voters saw Prop. One as irrelevant to current
transportation priorities (with, in particular, its emphasis on cost-ineffective streetcars and bicycles) and a gratuitous new tax burden on voters already heavily taxed and hard pressed economically. The same could be said of Mr. Kyle's proposal.

Thanks for your many comments.

The new lightrail proposal relates to the late Prop. One because it asks taxpayers to allocate fresh tax dollars---how many and how raised?---to
a lightrail add-on while existing transportation infrastructure requires
modernization and when Seattle taxpayers already are burdened with costs for a deep-bore tunnel, prospective seawall project, I-520 modernization, and Mercer Mess redo. Voters saw Prop. One as irrelevant to current
transportation priorities (with, in particular, its emphasis on cost-ineffective streetcars and bicycles) and a gratuitous new tax burden on voters already heavily taxed and hard pressed economically. The same could be said of Mr. Kyle's proposal.

Crossrip - saying you have Sound Transit stuck in your craw would be the understatement of the century. I am acting independently of my place of work, Mr. Van Dykes intimation otherwise is baseless and irresponsible. This idea started because I live in Ballard and can see that our mobility is resticted by traffic and getting worse. A lot of people who live around here agree with me.
Apart from that, sorry, I don't feed trolls.

Crossrip is a lot of things (somewhat longwinded and repetitive leap to mind), but an internet troll isn't one of them.

The questions he asked you directly about your "proposal" are reasonable ones, and calling him names and refusing to respond to them doesn't do much for your credibility. At all.

This is a good addition to this discussion:

http://seattletransitblog.com/2011/11/30/brt-insincerity/

Bubbleator: OK... maybe troll was a harsh word. I found his dissertation on the financing of Sound Transit to be excessive and off topic. And again: I am not Sound Transit do not speak for the organization.

Regarding financing, yes -- its a big problem. One that I don't claim to have solved. Right now we are trying to gather data and discuss options.

This plan will have to manage the cost side - we are starting by working on ideas to make the line cheaper. The need for grade separated transit to Ballard and cross town north is obvious - there is an opportunity to do it cheaper and get it done sooner than a full separate north-south trunk if we act prior to North Link construction. That is what drives this project.

Regarding value: Congestion and car dependency costs Seattleites a lot of money. The estimates I've seen are each car removes $7K/year from the local economy and switching to transit would save $12k/year/person. This line would be a critical linking of dense neighborhoods that would make going car free more palatable for more people.

"transportation priorities (with, in particular, its emphasis on cost-ineffective streetcars and bicycles)"

Ted, how are bicycles cost-ineffective? I will await your answer before I dissect your assertion like a frog in high school biology.