Editorials / Opinion

Rail transit is a religion around here, and those who publicly profane it are a small tribe. One such is James MacIsaac, a civil engineer and transportation consultant who lives in Bellevue. MacIsaac, 70, is retired. He doesn't need to make a living, and is free to bite the hand that feeds engineers like him.

Which can be a useful thing.

Here is the essence of MacIsaac's argument about Sounder North, the Sound Transit train that runs along Puget Sound from Everett to Seattle on tracks of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Of all Sound Transit's rail projects, Sounder North has the sweetest views. It also has the worst economics.

"Sounder North should be discontinued," MacIsaac writes. Why? Because in 2011 it served an average of only 515 people, round trip, a day, from Everett, Mukilteo and Edmonds to Seattle. Those riders could be served much more cheaply with buses. That should be of interest to the people who pay the 0.9-cent Sound Transit sales tax in southwest Snohomish County. They pay for Sounder North's trains.

People like trains. Ask them to choose hypothetically between a train and a bus, and they will choose the train — given the same origin, destination and start time. In the real world, however, that is rarely the choice they have.

Consider the commuter who arrives at Everett Station in the morning. Sounder runs four trains, at 5:45, 6:15, 6:45 and 7:15. An adult fare is $4.50. The train takes one hour to get to Seattle.

Sound Transit also has buses. Stopping at Everett Station, its 510 bus has 25 morning runs, beginning at 4:20 a.m. Its 512 bus has 14 morning runs starting at 5:25. Each goes to downtown Seattle for an adult fare of $3.50. These runs are scheduled to reach Seattle five minutes faster than the train.

The train brings commuters to the King Street Station. The bus lets them off at several places downtown.

What mode do commuters choose? From Everett, about 240 a day take the train. A direct comparison for the bus is difficult — do you count a bus run at 9 a. m.? — but the comparable bus patronage from Everett Station to Seattle is well more than 1,000.

Now, the cost. MacIsaac calculates the taxpayer subsidy per bus ride at $4.27 and per train ride at $39. He counts capital costs in one of several possible ways; Sound Transit does not count them at all — and they are high for rail service. Sound Transit calculates operating costs on Sounder North and South at $13 a ride. It allows that Sounder North is the weaker and has operating costs higher than that.

Why keep the train?

"It's a long-term investment," says Sound Transit spokesman Geoff Patrick. Years from now, he says, "People are going to say, 'I-5 is a parking lot. I really like riding the train.' "

The users do like it. Surveys say so. But the long-term future of roads is not necessarily gridlock. Roads can be expanded. Interstate 5 can have bus- and van-only lanes. Future urban interstates may have tolls, and flow unimpeded.

Railroads, says engineer MacIsaac, are good at moving thousands of people from point A to point B — if that is what thousands of people want to do, all at once. But in our low-rise urban area here, he says, the real task is moving people "from thousands of points A to thousands of points B" when they decide to be moved.

And at that, buses, vans and other rubber-tired vehicles are better than trains.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His email address is bramsey@seattletimes.com