Seattle Sound Transit .... What a Boondoggle

It's stories like this that get one to realize that the local area is so blind to common sense and economics in pursuit of mass transit that the monorail program and other pie-in-the-sky transit programs should be cancelled forthwith. Regarding the Sounder train....

From the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002315528_soundernorth06m.html

Despite those tweaks, weekday ridership remained flat. Just 97,000 one-way passengers took the train last year — and 20,000 of them weren't weekday commuters, but sports fans on special trains bound for weekend football and baseball games.

Operating expenses per passenger topped $40 per one-way trip.

As P.J. O'Rourke once said about the S&L bailout, "What the fuck! What the fucking fuck!" OK, let's do the math. Each rider pays $3, with no discounts, for a one-way fare. This leaves the shortfall at roughly $37 per trip.

So I'm Joe Commuter and use the Sounder ..ohhh.. let's say 40 weeks a year. Thats 200 days or 400 rides. The government will lose, in one year, about $14,500 on just me(!).

And that's just from operating expenses. Capital costs over the last 18 months have been $385 million dollars. Using their own numbers of 97,000 trips per year for 18 months (that's how long it's operated) , that's $385,000,000 divided by 145,500 = roughly $2,650 more per rider.

But wait, it get's better. Only 160 people a day are considered commuters. Assuming that number is good for 50 weeks a year for 18 months and all commuters go roundtrip, that's 24,000 trips. If the gross cost is $40 per trip using the 145,500 number, then the operating cost per commuter per ride is about $242(!!!).

So, the average cost for 40 weeks of commuting by a single commuter is about $97000. And this is before taking capital costs into consideration.

Even you, my fine dyed-in-the-wool liberal buddies, have to see that this is insane. For that amount, why not just buy each commuter a new electric or biodiesel car each year? It'll protect the environment and save about 60% in costs!