Sound Transit's Prop. 1 spends much, delivers little

ON Nov. 4, voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties will again decide on whether to expand Sound Transit's regional mass transportation system. The new Sound Transit proposal (ST2) would add 36 miles of light rail, expand the Sounder commuter rail by four daily round trips between Tacoma and Seattle and expand the Express bus system by 17 percent.

Sound Transit estimates the cost would be about $22.8 billion over the next 30 years.

The agency's officials also estimate that if ST2 passes, it will carry only 0.4 percent of all daily trips and 2.4 percent of all daily work trips by 2030. Sound Transit officials also show ST2 would only reduce the region's carbon-dioxide emissions by about 1 percent.

There is no doubt mass public transportation is part of the solution to reduce traffic congestion, especially in dense population centers. But Sound Transit's plan would disproportionally spend large amounts of public resources on a transit program that will serve less than 1 percent of all trips.

Public-sector spending decisions typically are based on perceived value and whether taxpayers believe they are receiving a proportional benefit for the money spent. In other words, the social value of $22.8 billion should be equal to its economic costs. The difficulty is defining the social value. Is a transit system that carries less than 1 percent of all daily trips worth more or less than doing something else with $22.8 billion?

In Sound Transit's case, there is a large space between costs and benefits because the agency's goal is not to reduce traffic congestion or to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. In fact, Sound Transit's only official objective is simply to collect taxes and build a mass-transit system, regardless of costs or performance.

In other words, there are no performance measures or benchmarks as a condition to Sound Transit's taxing authority. Oh sure, Sound Transit officials do have some limitations on how taxes can be spent, but in terms of measuring success, they are only judged on building and operating a transit system. It doesn't matter to Sound Transit how few people they serve or how few pounds of carbon dioxide are reduced. So it is not surprising that Sound Transit's own analysis shows how poorly it would perform in these areas.

Spending billions of dollars in public money on a transportation system that has no relationship to market demand or other performances goals is only a public construction and employment program. In fact, supporters tout job creation as a benefit of passing the measure.

As with any public-works project, spending public money to create jobs is not economically efficient and does not lead to a net social benefit. Sound Transit officials would only shift $22.8 billion from one sector of the economy to another.

In economic terms, offsetting the temporary growth in the construction industry and the permanent expansion of government with the losses in other sectors would not simply be a neutral shift of resources. It is well understood that the value of money is always worth less in the hands of government because public-sector costs are generally higher and the spending is not based on economic forces.

Either way, while Sound Transit officials are spending $22.8 billion in the name of transportation policy, traffic congestion will continue to double or triple over the next 20 years.

Whether or not Sound Transit's ballot proposal passes, policymakers should change the current system in which transportation spending is based on other agendas and instead apply a performance-based policy where value and effectiveness determine where spending takes place.

In business, measuring performance is a way of life. It is viewed as an indispensable tool that shapes decisions about how resources are distributed. In the public sector, however, performance measures are treated as an inconvenience, because they can oppose how policymakers want to distribute resources.

In Sound Transit's case, the agency exists only to build a mass-transit system, regardless of objective public need, costs or performance.

While the legislative process should have the final authority, basing transportation decisions on anything other than measurable outcomes inevitably leads to a fragmented collage of spending that has no relationship to relieving traffic congestion.

Performance-based policies that tie spending to specific benchmarks, like traffic-congestion relief, is the key to allocating transportation resources in a strategic and efficient way. Otherwise, government agencies such as Sound Transit will continue to propose plans that have no relationship to the one solution citizens want most, traffic-congestion relief.

Michael Ennis is director of the Center for Transportation at Washington Policy Center, an independent, nonpartisan policy-research organization in Seattle and Olympia. For more information, go to www.washingtonpolicy.org