Vancouver — Streetcar Study Rail Transit Online August 2004 The city of Vancouver has authorized further study of a proposed streetcar line serving the primary tourist destinations of Canada Place, Gastown, Chinatown and southeastern False Creek, with an eventual extension to Stanley Park. It would be an extension of a popular heritage trolley line using two restored BC Electric Interurban cars operated during summer weekends and holidays by the city and the Transit Museum Society between Granville Island and Science World. The project would cost an estimated C$65 million and could carry up to five million passengers a year. The city council has endorsed the route in principal but must still approve construction and appropriate funding.

Streetcar Proposal Rail Transit Online August 2004 A coalition of seven citizen activist groups has proposed adding two downtown streetcar lines to Capital Metro’s transportation plan, which is centered on a 32-mi. (51.5 km) commuter rail line from Leander to the downtown convention center. The electric trolleys, running along Third Street and from Palmer Auditorium to the University of Texas campus would act as a downtown circulator and could stimulate redevelopment. The business, civic and environmental organizations behind the streetcar scheme want it added to a November ballot measure asking voters to approve the regional rail line, which would cost an estimated $60 million and $80 million. “People like streetcars,” Mark Yznaga, a board member of Liveable City, a local activist group, told the American-Statesman. “People will ride streetcars. We think it would really enhance the commuter rail project because it would give people a way to get around downtown.” The Capital Metro board is expected to officially place the commuter rail plan on the ballot at its Aug. 30 meeting but until then can add new elements. One board member said he liked the streetcar idea but indicated there wasn’t enough time to include it in the measure.

Chicago — Ogden Streetcar Study Rail Transit Online August 2004 The Chicago Transit Board on July 14 approved a contract with Parsons Transportation Group, Inc. to perform an alternatives analysis study for the proposed Ogden Transitway Project. The proposal is being driven by U.S. Rep. William Lipinski, who represents many of the West Side neighborhoods that would be served, and he prefers an electric streetcar line. The route would link the North Riverside Mall at Harlem and Cermak to the Illinois Medical District, downtown and Navy Pier through the Ogden Avenue and Carroll Avenue corridors. The nine-month study, which will look at cost options for various modes including bus rapid transit, is the first step in obtaining federal funding from the FTA’s New Start program. “The Ogden Avenue project could serve as a catalyst for further transit- oriented economic revitalization of the communities through which it travels,” said Chicago Transit Board Chairman Carole Brown. “This study will determine the best way to meet the future transit needs of the communities in these corridors

Ogden streetcar: trolley folly? Some call Lipinski’s dream a streetcar named redundant Chicago Business April 10, 2004 U.S. Rep. William O. Lipinski is bringing home $40 million to plan his transit dream, a $400-million, 11.4-mile streetcar line from Navy Pier to North Riverside Park Mall. But some call it a streetcar named redundant because it parallels part of the existing Blue Line. Mr. Lipinski, the ranking Democrat on the House highways and transit subcommittee, wants streetcars running mainly along Ogden Avenue as a tourist attraction and mode of local transportation. “I used to live in that neighborhood,” says the congressman, whose late father operated streetcars along Cermak Road decades ago. Some who live and work nearby, however, wonder what’s wrong with the existing Blue Line Cermak (Douglas) Branch. Several stops on the proposed streetcar route run parallel to the Cermak Branch, which hasn’t offered evening or weekend hours for about six years. The streetcar line would run along Cermak Road, Ogden Avenue, Randolph Street, Carroll Avenue, Illinois Street and Grand Avenue, connecting to some Blue Line stations. Mr. Lipinski believes the streetcar would accelerate Ogden Avenue’s revitalization. He put the project in his “member’s high priority list” after seeing cities such as Portland, Ore., and New Orleans use streetcars to build tourism and transit. “We have the opportunity to do something different,” Mr. Lipinski says. Ogden is wide enough to hold a streetcar line. Gladys Woodson, 58, lives two blocks from Cermak and Ogden. Without Blue Line service on nights and weekends, it’s tough for a one-car family on a fixed income to shuttle members to school, work, hospitals and other crucial destinations. “All the money you are investing in the streetcars — why not just open up the trains?” she asks. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) says it’s studying expanded Blue Line hours. About $40 million was earmarked for planning the streetcar route in the $275-billion federal surface transportation bill, passed by the House April 2. The total project could cost $400 million over six to seven years, Mr. Lipinski said. This money is for capital projects, while the Blue Line hours represent an operating cost for the CTA. “Like so many things in government, you can’t transfer funding from one need to another,” says MarySue Barrett, president of the Metropolitan Planning Council, a Chicago-based regional planning advisory group. Of course, the trolley would require an operating budget, too.

Out of Spotlight New York Times August 14, 2004 WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - April 21 was an unusually violent day in Iraq; 68 people died in a car bombing in Basra, among them 23 children. As the news went from bad to worse, President Bush took a tough line, vowing to a group of journalists, “We’re not going to cut and run while I’m in the Oval Office.” On the same day, deep within the turgid pages of the Federal Register, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a regulation that would forbid the public release of some data relating to unsafe motor vehicles, saying that publicizing the information would cause “substantial competitive harm” to manufacturers. As soon as the rule was published, consumer groups yelped in complaint, while the government responded that it was trying to balance the interests of consumers with the competitive needs of business. But hardly anyone else noticed, and that was hardly an isolated case. Allies and critics of the Bush administration agree that the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have preoccupied the public, overshadowing an important element of the president’s agenda: new regulatory initiatives. Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others. And most of it was done through regulation, not law - lowering the profile of the actions. The administration can write or revise regulations largely on its own, while Congress must pass laws. For that reason, most modern- day presidents have pursued much of their agendas through regulation. But administration officials acknowledge that Mr. Bush has been particularly aggressive in using this strategy. “There’s been more federal regulations, more regulatory notices, than previous administrations,” said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, though he attributed much of that to the new rules dealing with domestic security. Scott McClellan, the chief White House spokesman, said of the changes, “The president’s common-sense policies reflect the values of America, whether it is cracking down on corporate wrongdoing or eliminating burdensome regulations to create jobs.” Some leaders of advocacy groups argue that the public preoccupation with war and terrorism has allowed the administration to push through changes that otherwise would have provoked an outcry. Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, says he does not think the administration could have succeeded in rewriting so many environmental rules, for example, if the public’s attention had not been focused on national security issues. “The effect of the administration’s concentration on war and terror has been to prevent the public from focusing on these issues,” Mr. Pope said. “Now, when I hold focus groups with the general public and tell them what has been done, they exclaim, ‘How could this have happened without me knowing about it?’ “ The administration has often been stymied in its efforts to pass major domestic initiatives in Congress. Even when both houses have been under Republican control, Senate Democrats, using parliamentary rules, have been able to block legislation eagerly sought by the White House and business groups, including bills on energy, bankruptcy and medical malpractice. So officials have turned to regulatory change. Chad Colton, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, which approves all new regulations, defends the administration’s handling of new rules, saying: “The process is very open, very transparent. Some regulations we post get hundreds of comments, even thousands.” Mr. Colton acknowledged that most comments came from industry or from public interest groups. “But those groups represent consumers.” Clarence Ditlow, who directs one of those public interest groups, the Center for Auto Safety, said: “People in my line of work are frustrated. We try to work harder. But the amount of media attention and public attention to consumer issues has gone way, way down since 9/11.” Stuart M. Butler, senior domestic policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, while agreeing that the wars “push a lot of other issues off the page, literally and figuratively,” said, “It cuts both ways.” The White House “also can’t get traction on issues they care about, like Social Security reform, because of all the noise from the war in Iraq.” Bush administration officials and their allies say they use regulations because new laws are not needed for many of the changes they have made and going to Congress every time would be needlessly complicated. But Representative David R. Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the Appropriations Committee, said regulatory changes did not benefit from the “checks and balances and oversight” that Congress provides. New regulations first appear as notices of proposed rule-making in the Federal Register, which is published every weekday. Generally, government officials and others directly concerned with government business read this dense publication. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published the new rule on the public release of auto-safety information on July 28, 2003, but outside the industry hardly anyone took notice. In the following months, allies of tire manufacturers and automakers flooded the agency with comments, and all of them “contended that the release of early warning data is likely to cause substantial competitive harm,” the agency said. At the same time, consumer groups argued that the data “should be released because it is important to the identification of potential defects,” the agency added. When the agency published the final, revised rule on April 21, 2004, it exempted from public release warranty-claim information, industry reports on safety issues and consumer complaints, among other data, saying that releasing that information would cause “substantial competitive harm.” Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, filed suit, saying consumers needed the data to inform themselves about unsafe vehicles and tires. But Ray Tyson, the chief spokesman for the highway safety agency, said: “The suggestion that the American consumer is missing out is off the mark. I can’t believe this information would be of much interest to the general public.” A Pro-Business Tilt The overall regulatory record shows that the Bush administration has heeded the interests of business and industry. Like the Reagan administration, which made regulatory reform a priority, officials under Mr. Bush have introduced new rules to ease or dismantle existing regulations they see as cumbersome. Some analysts argue that the Bush administration has introduced rules favoring industry with a dedication unmatched in modern times. “My thoughts go back to Herbert Hoover,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. “No president could have been more friendly to business than Hoover” until the Bush administration. While John D. Graham, administrator of information and regulatory affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, does not dispute the administration’s pro-business tilt, he said there had been notable exceptions, which his office approved when government officials “provided adequate scientific and economic justification.” Examples, Mr. Graham added, include “stricter fuel-saving rules for S.U.V.’s” and “a 90-percent reduction in diesel-engine exhaust,” as well as “mandatory criteria for the lifesaving performance of side-impact air bags” in cars. But examples of countervailing, business-friendly changes abound, some that broke through the flak thrown up from the wars, and others that remain little known. The administration, at the request of lumber and paper companies, gave Forest Service managers the right to approve logging in federal forests without the usual environmental reviews. A Forest Service official explained that the new rule was intended “to better harmonize the environmental, social and economic benefits of America’s greatest natural resource, our forests and grasslands.” In March of 2003, the Mine Safety and Health Administration published a proposed new regulation that would dilute the rules intended to protect coal miners from black-lung disease. The mine workers union called the new rules “extremely dangerous,” while a mine safety administration official contended, “We are moving on toward more effective prevention of black-lung disease.” In May 2003, the Bush administration dropped a proposed rule that would have required hospitals to install facilities to protect workers against tuberculosis. Hospitals and other industry groups had lobbied against the change, saying that it would be costly and that existing regulations would accomplish many of the same aims. But workers unions and public health officials argued that the number of tuberculosis cases had risen in 20 states and that the same precautions that were to have been put into place for tuberculosis would also have been effective against SARS. The next month, the Department of Labor, responding to complaints from industry, dropped a rule that required employers to keep a record of employees’ ergonomic injuries. Labor unions complained that without the reporting, it would be difficult to identify dangerous workplaces. But the department, in a statement, argued that the records “would not provide additional information useful to identifying possible causes or methods to prevent injury.” The administration’s 2004 budget proposed to cut 77 enforcement and related positions from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, while adding two new staff members whose jobs would be to help industry comply with agency rules. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao explained to a House committee that the agency would “continue to target inspections based on the worst hazards and the most dangerous workplaces.” As the budget proposal was announced, President Bush and other senior officials focused most of their remarks on the large increases proposed for defense and domestic security. A Case of Tired Truckers In one little-known case, litigants say the administration managed to turn a Congressional mandate on its head. In 1995, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a startling study on fatal truck accidents. Thousands of people die on the highways each year in collisions with heavy trucks. The board studied 107 crashes in which the truck driver survived and found that more than half resulted from truck-driver fatigue. Nineteen of the truckers admitted to falling asleep at the wheel. As a result of that report, Congress the same year ordered the government to revise driving-hour rules for truckers. Under regulations unchanged since 1939, truckers could drive 10 hours at a stretch and then had to rest for eight hours. The rules, Congress said, were to be changed to “reduce fatigue-related incidents and increase driver alertness.” At that time, both the Senate and the House were under Republican control, and lawmakers began debating what to do. The truck-related accident death toll hit a new high in 1997; 5,398 people died. Congress went further in 1999 and created a new federal agency, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and the Clinton administration set a goal of reducing truck-related accident fatalities by half over the following 10 years. Consumer and driver-safety groups, including Public Citizen and Parents Against Tired Truckers, started lobbying the new agency to shorten the number of hours drivers could stay behind the wheel. But trucking industry officials argued that shorter shifts would disrupt delivery schedules, which in turn would raise prices on thousands of products delivered by truck. Last year, the Department of Transportation finally issued a new rule, saying in a prepared statement that it would “save hundreds of lives” and “protect billions in commerce.” The change would increase allowable driving time from 10 hours without a break to 11 hours. But after 11 hours, drivers would have to take 10 hours off instead of eight. Trucking companies said they were satisfied with the rule while truck drivers deplored it, saying the added hours of driving time would increase driver fatigue. Public Citizen and the other safety groups filed suit, saying the new rule, in all its detail, actually increased driving hours per week by 30 percent. The suit is pending. Joan Claybrook, the president of Public Citizen, said the new rule “does nothing positive, it does a lot of negative, and it’s a big waste of four years’ effort.” Courts Have Their Say For all the ambition behind the campaign to remake the government’s regulatory structure, courts have forced the administration to pull back a striking number of initiatives. Last August, for example, the administration relaxed its clean-air rules by allowing thousands of corporations to upgrade their plants without having to install expensive pollution-control equipment, saying that would allow plants to modernize more easily, leading to greater efficiency and lower consumer costs. Utilities had lobbied for change; environmental groups filed suit. In December, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit blocked the rule, at least temporarily, indicating that the court doubted the administration had authority to modify the Clean Air Act by regulation. In a case involving air-conditioners, the Department of Energy announced in May 2002 that it would weaken a standard issued during the Clinton administration to make home air-conditioners more efficient. The department did order an efficiency increase, but less than had been mandated under Mr. Clinton. An Energy Department official said: “This is not a rollback. It is an increase” in efficiency. Major air-conditioner manufacturers had lobbied against the improved efficiency standard, saying the new models would be unaffordable. Right away, the attorneys general from seven states, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California, filed suit to restore the old standard. In January of this year, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled that the Bush administration did not have the legal right to revise the efficiency rule. While the administration has had some successes in relaxing environmental rules, other changes have been stymied by the courts. A federal judge blocked a plan by the Department of the Interior to allow an energy company to drill for oil at one proposed location, adjacent to the Arches National Park in Utah, saying the government had not adequately considered the environmental impact of the plan. And an Interior Department judicial agency blocked a plan to develop the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. Still, the administration is pleased with its overall record of regulatory change. Mr. Graham, the budget office official, eagerly acknowledged that the regulatory tilt had been toward business. “The Bush administration has cut the growth of costly business regulations by 75 percent, compared to the two previous administrations,” he said. Representative Obey said he believed most Americans remained unaware of many of the changes. “Most people are busy just trying to make a living,” he said. “And with all the focus on Iraq and bin Laden, it gives the administration an opportunity to take a lot of loot out the back door without anybody noticing.”

Riding the monorail; Early ridership figures for Strip train aren’t meeting expectations Las Vegas Review-Journal August 14, 2004 Las Vegas Monorail officials tried valiantly last week to cast a positive light on their disappointing ridership figures. But no amount of spin can obfuscate the mediocre news. The monorail began service on July 17, and in the first two weeks carried about 30,800 passengers up and down the Strip each day. That’s more than 40 percent below the 53,000 people officials hope to eventually see riding the train daily. And it’s about 25 percent below the break-even figure of 40,000 daily riders for the $650 million project. “We are pleased,” said monorail spokesman Todd Walker. “We’ve just begun to market the system to the public.” One would think, however, that ridership numbers might spike initially given the novelty of the new system. And it’s sheer folly to believe that ridership will significantly increase when the hours of operation are expanded later this month from 8 a.m. to midnight to 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. All of this needn’t concern Las Vegans at this point. It may indeed be true that numbers will pick up as the system matures and officials provide more options for purchasing tickets. Besides, the monorail is privately financed, although the state backed the bonds used to build the project. But don’t be surprised if taxpayers are eventually asked to subsidize the monorail’s expansion to downtown or the airport. And if that happens, the ridership and revenue figures take on a whole other dimension.

Shortfall taking the free out of freeway Houston Chronicle August 15, 2004 Most Texas drivers don’t seem to realize it yet, but nearly every new or expanded freeway in the Lone Star State in coming years won’t be “free.” The state is running way short of the money it needs to meet the travel demands of its exploding population and sees tolls as its desperately needed cash cow. Talk about the rapid development of toll roads across the state could be heard almost everywhere at last week’s Texas Transportation Summit. The annual summit, held for the seventh time in this Dallas suburb, has grown into the gathering of the year for more than 1,000 elected officials and those in the transportation business. Participants faced this reality: the state and federal gasoline taxes haven’t gone up in more than a decade but population and vehicle miles traveled have skyrocketed. The 15 cents of the state gas tax that goes to highways is now enough to only fund the maintenance budget; federal dollars cover widenings and new highways, but there’s no expectation that more money is coming from Washington anytime soon. Last year, the Legislature passed a massive transportation bill allowing virtually every highway to be evaluated as a tollway. The Texas Transportation Commission, the governing body for the Department of Transportation, has slowly been setting the toll policies in motion. As word of TxDOT’s plans slowly trickles down to motorists, a grass-roots rebellion is under way. We first saw this in Harris County a few weeks ago when the department held public meetings regarding its proposal to convert an existing free section of Texas 249 to a toll road to fund its expansion to Tomball and Montgomery County. An estimated 1,500 people showed up at the two meetings. Speakers spent hours blasting the plan. Opposition brewing Several of you have called and written to express your opposition to turning Texas 249 into a tollway. “How can we combat this proposed change?” asked Mirna Hill of northwest Harris County. “My family and I use Texas 249 to get out of our area and head into town, or even to head to the mall. We don’t have a back way that is convenient without all the stops.” Ron Headley of Tomball echoed many readers’ comments: “We need the 249 freeway through Tomball as soon as possible,” he wrote. “However, if the difference between 249 being a toll road and not being a toll road is only a few years, I believe we should wait.” The greatest outrage thus far has appeared in Austin, where the local council of governments last month passed a $2.2 billion plan to build 11 tollways. More than 600 people greeted the decision with boos. Now, an anti-toll group has started a petition drive to recall Mayor Will Wynn. Dallas-Fort Worth is starting to enter the fray. The region proposed last week to put tolls on numerous future state highways, including a section of Texas 121 that is under construction. Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson told me the state isn’t turning back despite the bubbling opposition. But, he added, some modifications are possible such as creating a tolled express lane on Texas 249 in the Houston area instead of charging for the entire highway. “There will be conversions across the state,” Williamson said. “We’ve struck a path and we are going to go down it and see if it works.” The toll trend isn’t just alive in Texas. The U.S. Congress is expected to soon allow states to place tolls on all interstate highways. Better start saving those quarters.

Iron Horse Trail a boon for commuters, shoppers on bike or foot; District stepped in when residents rejected light rail The San Francisco Chronicle AUGUST 15, 2004 Some of the district’s projects aren’t bosky woodlands or recreational sites — they’re critical public infrastructure. Foremost among these is the Iron Horse Trail, a bike route between San Ramon and Martinez. “This was originally the right-of-way for the area’s main railway, and a lot of public works folks wanted to build a mass-transit light-rail system on it,” said Steve Fiala, the district’s trails development manager, on a recent bike ride down the Iron Horse. “But folks who lived along the right-of-way — and there are a lot of them — weren’t necessarily thrilled at the prospect of rail traffic rolling up and down their backyards,” said Fiala. “They just felt the area would be a lot better served by a paved bike and foot trail. They began organizing seriously about 20 years ago, and eventually the district got involved.” Ultimately the region’s municipalities all signed on to the bike trail idea, cashiering the light rail option. Paving on the right-of-way began in piecemeal fashion in 1986. Now, 18 years and $15 million in federal, state and local funding later, the trail is paved from Concord to Dublin, with the exception of a minor gap around the Pleasant Hill BART Station. That will be addressed later this year, said Fiala, making the trail a single 22-mile ribbon of asphalt and concrete wending past shadowed creeklands, pleasant suburbs and upscale malls. But a funny thing has happened from concept to execution. The trail was originally envisioned as a leisure activity resource — something that would be used by locals looking to get a little exercise on their road bikes or settle their meals with a postprandial stroll. Instead, said Fiala, “It has become a major commute route, a way for people who live between Martinez and Pleasanton to get to and from work. During rush hour, a lot of people tell us, it’s quicker to bike 10 or 15 or 20 miles on the trail rather than fight the traffic jams on (Interstate) 680.” An informal survey of riders and hikers seems to bear Fiala out. “I use it every day,” said Pete Nunes, who bike commutes between his home in a Concord trailer park to a Home Depot training class. “Without it, I’d have to go miles farther,” said Nunes. “It’d take me more than 30 minutes. With the trail, it’s less than 10 minutes. It’s essential to my life.” Joanne Rusca, who lives in central Walnut Creek, employs the trail to get to local supermarkets and malls. “Everyone around here uses it for shopping,” she said. “With the trail handy, it doesn’t make sense to use a car. The traffic and the parking are terrible. If you walk or bike, you can avoid all that.”

City looks at solutions for unwelcome parkers; New rules, more parking options could soon provide some relief Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) August 15, 2004 So just who are the unwelcome parkers on residential streets near Hiawatha light-rail stations in south Minneapolis? A license-plate survey by Metro Transit in mid-July gives a hint. Generally, “They are not suburbanites coming way in from the hinterlands - they are neighbors,” said City Council Member Gary Schiff. Most are city residents who live within 2 miles of the 38th, 46th and 50th Street stations. Early next month - perhaps not soon enough for some angry residents - the City Council will start deciding how to deal with these neighbors. Options range from “please-don’t-park-here” notes under windshield wipers to more pointed mailings urging parkers to use connecting bus routes to get-tough parking restrictions. Another option: “If we can track those license plates down, we could send them a personalized letter saying: While you are parking here, you are in someone else’s neighborhood,” said Council Member Sandy Colvin Roy. There is a reason for the delay in taking action. Officials wanted to allow eight weeks of light-rail service to see what day-to-day parking patterns would emerge. Some rail-related parking problems were expected. Comparable lines have 4,000 to 5,000 parking spaces - twice as many as the Hiawatha will have when the entire line opens in December. Two early decisions caused the parking deficit. One was a budget decision: A deck on the 550-space surface parking lot at Fort Snelling was eliminated to save $10 million. The second was a quality-of-life decision: The Minneapolis City Council prohibited park-and-ride areas along the line in south Minneapolis. Transit officials plan to build the Fort Snelling deck when funding becomes available. And the city backed off its strict prohibition, opting to allow a 195-space park-and-ride lot at the Lake Street/Midtown station. It will open this fall. But the council is disinclined to add other lots. In a decision that dates to the 1980s, the council wanted to put land near transit stations to better use. Members thought that parking lots would only invite new traffic to neighborhoods and then fill up anyway - sending the spillover to residential streets. By not providing parking, they hoped to encourage riders to connect with the rail line by bus, bike or on foot. Despite the lofty goals, the Hiawatha line opened in June with no designated parking between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling, and many rail riders are left to park on public streets. Many are unaware that it causes problems for residents. Anticipating this, the city took photos of streets near the stations before the rail line opened. Now officials are taking pictures, checking license plates and making visual inspections before rendering an opinion on the scope of the problem. A staff report, due by the end of August, will start a discussion with council members and residents about what to do, said Jon Wertjes, Minneapolis’ director of traffic and parking services. Early indications are that the parking is heavy on a few blocks near each of the three stations and that special events downtown generate the most parkers. Colvin Roy, who represents neighborhoods near the 46th and 50th Street stations, predicts that some action will be necessary because parking near the 46th Street station is making it difficult or dangerous for fire trucks and emergency vehicles to pass. How many people are taking connecting buses to the rail line won’t be known until the end of October, when Metro Transit plans to take a count. For rail riders who resist taking the bus to stations and persist in parking on residential streets, the city’s best option may be to create a restricted parking zone in which cars could be ticketed if they did not display a permit. That would require residents to buy permits to park on their own streets - a step that many see as inconvenient and costly. Another option: Prohibiting parking on selected streets between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., which would make the streets unattractive for commuters, Colvin Roy said. More rail-line parking is on the way. Soon , more than 200 spaces will be available at the Lake St./Midtown station. When the second half of the line opens in December, another 350 to 400 park-and-ride spaces will be available at Fort Snelling and 600 park-and-ride spots will flank the station at 28th Avenue in Bloomington. License-plate check On the morning of July 15, Metro Transit took a license-plate inventory of vehicles clustered on streets next to Hiawatha stations at 38th, 46th and 50th streets. Sixty-four “hide-and-ride” cars were identified. The conclusions: - - 64 percent were from Minneapolis neighborhoods within 2 miles of the rail station. In every case, frequent connecting bus service to LRT was available within a short walk. - - 9 percent came from St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood across the Ford Bridge - also served by connecting buses. - - Two suburbanites - one each from Eagan and Mendota Heights - could easily have pulled into the 500-space park-and-ride lot at Fort Snelling to catch the train. The survey, Metro Transit said, suggests that preventing light-rail parking could be as simple as tucking a schedule for connecting bus service under some windshield wipers. Light-rail parking update Metro Transit has updated plans for more parking at certain light-rail stations. Still left unaddressed is more parking availability for light-rail riders at stations in three residential areas: 38th St., 46th St. and 50th St./Minnehaha Park. - Lake St./Midtown: In about two months, 195 spaces will open on MnDOT property on the southeast corner of Lake and Hiawatha. The Met Council and the Minneapolis School Board are creating a lease for 50 spaces on school-owned land on the southwest corner. The spaces are expected to be available before year’s end. - Fort Snelling: An additional 350 to 400 spaces in a second lot will open in November. These will join 550 spots in Lot A. - Humphrey Terminal: A subcommittee of the Metropolitan Airports Commission has taken initial action to approve light-rail parking at the Humphrey station. The first-phase of the plan calls for 350 spaces within the Humphrey ramp, growing, as need-ed, to up to 800 spaces. - 28th Av.: 600 park-and-ride spaces will be available when the full Hiawatha line opens in December. - 38th St.: 13 short-term spaces available. - 46th St.: 11 short-term spaces available.

Builders’ fees may finance County transit South Florida Sun-Sentinel August 15, 2004 More buses, rather than wider roads, could soon be the focus of the millions of dollars that developers pay each year to Broward County to offset the traffic congestion created by their condo highrises and sprawling subdivisions. Acknowledging they have been losing the battle to expand roads as fast as new housing is built, officials have decided to direct the fees they collect from developers toward improving mass transit. Also, construction on Broward’s rapidly redeveloping east side will no longer be exempt from the fees. The switch from road construction to mass transit is a radical and untested move for Broward, but one that officials have been wanting to undertake for four years. They hope to plow $14.7 million over the first five years of the program into adding more bus routes and building new transit centers. “It puts in a whole new direction that will be preeminent across the country,” said County Commissioner Kristin Jacobs, one of the main proponents of the change. “We can’t keep chasing the car, but must think about how else we can move people around in this county. We needed to do something creative and different.” The plan must be approved by the state Department of Community Affairs before the county can begin redirecting the money. Jacobs and other officials feared that the county has been headed toward gridlock under the current development regulations. Developers building west of U.S. 441 were required to pay for new turning lanes and other road improvements if engineers concluded their projects would increase traffic on nearby streets. Projections have been that Interstate 95 would have to be widened to 16 lanes if it were to handle the amount of traffic expected in the next 20 years, and much of the new home construction is occurring on the east side in areas that have been exempt from the impact fees. County officials said redirecting the impact fees is one part of a broader effort to improve mass transit. Discussions have been under way about building light-rail systems along Interstate 595, between Fort Lauderdale- Hollywood International Airport and downtown Fort Lauderdale and within the downtown Fort Lauderdale area. With the impact fees, the county hopes to reduce the time between buses to 30 minutes on most routes. They also want to increase the number of bus shelters by one-third and build more neighborhood transit centers. The fees for a new single-family home will likely range between $591 and $967, but the county will reduce the charge if the project is designed to encourage transit usage or includes affordable housing. The county will supplement that revenue with about $4 million of tax money to pay for the program. The new regulations would not apply to the two most suburban parts of Broward: Parkland and the county’s far southwestern corner. The fees paid by developers in those areas would continue to go toward road work. The way the county dealt with the impact of new housing in the past was crafted after the Legislature approved the state’s Growth Management Act in 1985. Necessary roads, sewer, water treatment plants, parks and other types of government facilities must be paid for along with the new developments. Builders and local planners would calculate how much additional traffic would be spawned by each new subdivision or retail strip and compensate for it. Developers were initially skeptical of the idea of shifting the impact fees to transit expansion when it was proposed in 2000. Skeet Jernigan, president of the Economic Development Council of Broward, said he now supports the change, but said the development industry will be monitoring the county to ensure the money goes to expanded service rather than to cover the cost of what currently exists. “What the county is trying to do is new and unique and kind of experimental,” Jernigan said. “I’m reasonably comfortable that we have assurances that the road construction program that was committed to will be completed and that all we are doing is planning for the next phase, our future.”

REOPENED STREETCAR LINE BRINGS BOOST IN RIDERSHIP New Orleans Times Picayune August 16, 2004 More choose it for Canal Transit Adam Tracey’s ride to work is about 30 minutes longer these days, but it is also significantly cheaper. Tracey has been riding the Canal Street streetcar to work since the line opened in late April. “It costs $175 to park across the street from our office in the Central Business District,” said Tracey, who works at Peter A. Mayer Advertising. “I used to park in the French Quarter and pay $135 and walk, but the streetcar is only $55 per month.” He now parks his car for free near Jefferson Davis Parkway and hops on the streetcar for the trip downtown, flashing his monthly pass. It also doesn’t hurt that his company pays for RTA passes. “This is working,” Tracey said. “Why spend the extra money?” Tracey is one of many new riders that the streetcar has seen since reopening the line April 18. In May, June and July, the streetcar and the two express buses that serve Canal Street had about 260,000 more riders than the buses had during the same time in 2003. Gerald Robichaux, the RTA’s deputy general manager for operations, said he expected an increase in riders with the addition of the bright red cars to the fleet, but not to that extent. “For a transit industry to have increased ridership in this day and time is a tremendous boost to what we do,” Robichaux said. “The streetcar is an integral part in helping us make that leap.” Robichaux said he expected that some people would abandon their cars and hop on the streetcar to get to work. “I think in the long term we are looking at possibly moving our terminal at the cemeteries to Canal Boulevard or some other location that would offer more parking,” Robichaux said. Though the streetcar has been getting high marks from many of its riders, the line has had its share of delays and problems in keeping a consistent schedule, accommodating disabled riders and making dollar bills fit into the fare machines. The RTA has changed its schedule a couple of times to one that Robichaux said is more realistic, considering issues such as wheelchair access and slow fare machines. Still, Carol Anderson said she was happier on the bus. “It is faster, and it holds more people,” Anderson said. “I have to leave my house about 20 minutes earlier than I used to.” Robichaux said riders shouldn’t expect the streetcar to be as fast or keep the same schedule as the bus that previously served Canal Street. Riders can get down Canal faster riding the West End or the Canal Boulevard express buses during peak hours. Robichaux said he is looking at ways to reduce the long lines that often form as people try to fit their bills into the fare machine. “We are looking at installing a vending machine that can actually read the bill when it comes into box instead of just accepting it,” he said. “We are also looking at installing more machines that would sell tokens to riders.” Jamie Smith said that riding the streetcar has been a more pleasant experience overall than riding the bus down to her riverfront office. “Apart from the first week, I have not noticed any major problems,” Smith said. “The streetcar is certainly quieter.” Katy Medders’ car broke down about a month ago, but she said she is in no rush to get it fixed. Instead of driving, Medders has been riding the Canal streetcar to work each day. “I used to drive and park, but this is 10 times cheaper,” she said. “I can even put on my makeup on the way to work, but I draw the line at nail polish.” Robichaux said the streetcar’s benefits go far beyond the obvious impacts on riders. “It has also helped with the ambiance of the street and to enhance our downtown,” Robichaux said. “The downtowns that have recently come alive again, most of them have some rail or streetcar system that complements the downtown area.” Tracey said more streetcars in New Orleans would be a welcome sight. “I think this city needs more streetcars,” he said. “I have never seen an empty streetcar on this route.” Once school begins, the RTA also plans to print new schedules to accommodate students.

Throwaway Tickets Forbes August 16, 2004 Most discussions of business ethics focus on how businesses should act. But what should business ethics mean for consumers? Imagine that you are riding a Metro-North commuter train from New Haven to Grand Central and because the train is crowded, the conductor doesn’t manage to come around and punch your ticket. Since the tickets are good for three months, an unpunched ticket is money in the bank. What should you do? A starting point is to ask what people actually do. When we ask our students, they almost always say that they keep the ticket. One common justification for this behavior is that the conductor isn’t doing his job and it’s too much to ask me to find the person. Fair enough. But why not rip up the ticket all by yourself? At that point, an uncomfortable look comes over the student’s face. The idea of ripping up a perfectly good ticket is almost too painful to consider. But for some reason, the same student who would feel a duty to give back extra change to a cashier doesn’t feel a duty to give back an unpunched ticket to the railroad. Particularly creative students will suggest that they should keep the ticket but give the savings to a homeless person. This corporate Robin Hooding is hard to justify on ethical grounds. If you could embezzle from Metro-North and give the proceeds to the homeless, would that be justified? Another student will suggest that this free ticket makes up for the time Metro-North was late last January or for the time when he lost a ticket. In the giant accounting scoreboard in the sky the gift from Metro-North just washes out with the occasions that Metro-North has dinged him in the past. Does that mean that if you lose an airline ticket or your plane was late, you are also entitled to keep the Metro-North ticket — because in the transportation column, you are still in the red? Or if you had a tough childhood, are you entitled to this break from Metro-North to help even the score? Of course not. Then there’s the lottery justification. If conductors fail to punch 1 out of 100 tickets, Metro-North can protect itself by simply raising the ticket price by 1%. People who ride the train frequently are not really hurt by the price increase because they get 1% of their rides free and passengers get to experience the flutter of a small game of chance every time they ride. There’s a problem with this argument. You can’t say why the same logic does not apply to other business costs. If stores raise prices by 1% to reflect losses to shoplifters, does that give you the right to shoplift 1% of the time? After much debate with our students, we came to the position that train riders should act as if there is an honor system with ticket collection. If the ticket is not punched, you should discard it. Our recommendation to the train management is to go the whole way with an honor system. In many European countries — and on the trolley out of Hoboken, N.J. — there are no conductors. Passengers are honor bound to punch their own tickets. Instead of having conductors collect tickets 99% of the time, these systems have auditors who “trust but verify” 1% of the time. Moving to an honor system (backed up with stiff penalties for free riders) is not just an ethical improvement; it could save on labor costs and thus make train travel less expensive. As for the ethics case study, what do we make of the fact that most people’s actions aren’t consistent with what they consider to be ethical behavior? We’d like to think this is a result of their not having thought much about the issue. The most worrisome result is that this inconsistency causes some people to try even harder to find an ethical justification for their actions. And that leads to the worst possible approach to ethics, in which your actions determine your ethical reckoning. The reasoning goes as follows: “I am an ethical person. Hence, if I did something, it must be ethical. Let me find the ethical justification for it.” Better to allow the possibility that you made a mistake but will do better in the future. Some will argue that ethical decisions involving $17.50 don’t provide much guidance when it comes to problems at big companies. But if students are willing to sell their souls for a $17.50 train ticket, what does that predict about what will happen when the stakes are $17.5 million?

US transport security policy flawed, hears Senate Air Transport Intelligence August 17, 2004 US airport security is still hindered by inadequate assistance from the country’s anti-terrorist agencies, despite an investment and policy focus that has left other modes of transport dangerous unprotected from terror attacks, the US Senate was told today. The deficiencies are being noted by the US government Department of Homeland Security, and several studies are being evaluated and could be implemented by next year, the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation full committee also heard. However, the first Congressional hearing to review the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission’s investigation - which was commissioned by President George W Bush - concludes that little has changed in the almost three years since the attacks on 11 September 2001. The 9/11 Commission’s two leading figures, chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton, also note that the US government’s current security policy’s focus on commercial aviation leaves other modes of transport - namely cargo, maritime, mass transit and rail - undefended against terror attacks, that the federal government, not the private sector, should retain control of screening procedures. They also add that airlines and airports should shoulder some of Dollars 5 billion cost to develop the secure, in-line explosive security screening required at the country’s airports. “Because they will benefit, they should share in the cost,” says Kean. The Bush administration, for its part, accepts that changes must be made, and is already implementing some of the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission on 22 July, according to testimony from US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) undersecretary for border and transportation security Asa Hutchinson. Primarily, says Hutchinson, the DHS is addressing two of the Commission’s major concerns: that the USA’s security policy is not “multi layered” or broad enough to adapt to threats (only one level - airport screening - was adopted until 11 September, notes the Commission); and a rigid focus on commercial aviation that leaves other modes of transport undefended against terror attacks. “(W)e are confident that we can significantly protect against threats to the security of our transportation system - yet protect privacy and civil liberties - by continuing to evaluate vulnerabilities throughout the transportation system, prioritize the risks and focus resources accordingly, and implement layers of security across all modes of transportation- DHS as a whole, the (US) Department of Transportation (DOT), and transportation stakeholders have been working to provide seamless transportation security,” says Hutchinson. The DHS undersecretary also notes that the agency has established a risk-based process to determine threats against US transportation; is working on a new screening process which will eliminate all airline involvement in passenger screening; and has launched a pilot program at five airports (which will be expanded to nine) to test the viability of walk-through trace explosive scanners - all recommendation proffered by the Commission. However, the most concern among legislators and bureaucrats is cargo security. Legislators such as Senate committee member Senator Olympia Snowe note that “we must do better than inspecting just 5% of all passenger airline cargo”, and that even less screening of all cargo makes it “imperative (that) we focus more on non-aviation modes”. “When over 90% of our transportation security funding goes to secure aviation alone when we’ve appropriated just Dollars 500 million to help ports meet federal mandates that will actually cost more than Dollars 7 billion over the next ten years-and when a background-check program for hazmat’ (hazardous materials) truck drivers-is eight months behind schedule-clearly the status-quo is unacceptable,” Snowe adds. The US government’s own commitment was also called into question today after Kean notified the Senate that the 9/11 Commission’s mandate ends on 22 August, and that its staff is currently raising private funds to continue a nationwide roadshow “to educate the nation” on its recommendations. Senate committee chairman John McCain and committee member Bill Nelson said they will request more public funds when the Senate returns from recess in September. However, McCain notes that “that will require Presidential approval”.

Charlotte transit is well financed; Meanwhile, the Triangle’s rail project lacks broad support and strong tax revenue Raleigh News & Observer Aug 17, 2004 When it comes to taxes and transit projects, there’s a big difference between the political climates of Charlotte and the Triangle. It’s a difference that can be measured in dollars. Broad bipartisan support has given Charlotte a long-range, $2.9 billion transit plan and a sales tax — worth more than $50 million a year — to pay for it. As Charlotte seeks federal approval and 50 percent funding to build a 10-mile, $371 million light-rail line, its strong local financing is a solid selling point. The Triangle Transit Authority must rely on an anemic tax on car rentals to leverage its share of an increasingly costly commuter rail project. The rental tax generated $6.9 million in fiscal 2003-04, its third year of decline. With steel and other construction costs up sharply, the TTA says it will need more local money to expand service beyond the 28 miles of track and 12 rail stations it hopes to open in 2008. But transit advocates in Wake, Durham and Orange counties are not ready to push for a tax hike. “I’m not supportive of asking for any more dollars for TTA’s situation right now,” said Durham Mayor Bill Bell, a TTA trustee. “We’ve got to focus on dealing with what we’ve got, and try to make that work, first.” Charlotte’s money problems were largely settled in 1997, when a group of Democrats and Republicans worked together to sell state legislators on a local-option levy. In a referendum, Mecklenburg voters authorized a half- penny sales tax that the Charlotte Area Transit System will use to build and run an extensive transit network over the next 20 years. The rail project divided Mecklenburg Republicans, and some remain sharply critical today. “We’ve developed a right nasty clutch of opponents to anything transit, and they inhabit AM radio, and they are kind of like some of the factions in Iraq,” said Tom Cox of Charlotte, a Republican who chairs both the Mecklenburg County commissioners and the governing board of the Charlotte Area Transit System. If sentiments shift among elected officials in the future, Mecklenburg’s transit tax cannot be cut without another public vote. “The stability of that revenue stream is guaranteed by the good sense of the voters,” Cox said. Wake, Durham and Orange counties had less support when they received their transit tax authority from the legislature in 1997. Some Democrats opposed sales taxes they said would unfairly burden the poor. Support was scarce among Triangle Republicans, more conservative on tax issues than many of their Mecklenburg counterparts. Car tax compromise A 5 percent tax on vehicle rentals was accepted as a compromise that would have little impact on residents. Commissioners in the three counties endorsed the rental car tax, without a referendum. “There were stronger, better options for local financing, but politically, they weren’t going to get out of the chute,” said Wib Gulley of Durham, a former state senator who now serves as TTA’s general counsel. Triangle officials expected the rental tax to grow slowly each year. Instead, it peaked at $7.8 million and then fell victim to the economic slump that followed the September 2001 terrorist strikes. At the same time, project costs were rising. An early price range of $250 million to $400 million had been based on the bold hope of putting commuter trains on the existing tracks used for CSX and Norfolk Southern freight service. The cost bumped above $600 million after it became clear that the railroads would insist on TTA building its own 35 miles of track and a separate signal system. The TTA and Charlotte fiscal plans are bolstered by North Carolina’s commitment to pay a 25 percent share, a level of state investment unusual in federal transit projects. TTA planned to cover part of its cost with $28 million it expected to receive in a so-called “cross-border, lease-leaseback” exchange with an offshore lender. The lender would get the tax benefits of depreciating TTA’s railcars, stations and other facilities. Other transit agencies have used this financing mechanism in the past, with the federal government’s blessings. But the Bush administration ruled this year that it no longer would be permitted. Rail sections delayed The souring fiscal picture last month forced the TTA to postpone a rail station at Duke Medical Center in Durham and three stations in North Raleigh. They originally were to open in 2011, but TTA officials said it’s not clear now when they will be ready. That’s OK with TTA critics. “They ought to delay the entire system for 50 years,” said Michael Regan, a Raleigh City Council member who represents parts of North Raleigh. “Nobody I’ve talked to would notice if it got delayed, because they’re not going to use it anyway.” State Rep. Sam Ellis, a Wake Republican, says the legislature wrongly funded “this ridiculous train system” with money voters intended for building roads. He predicts the rail project will fail for lack of urban population density. Even before the recent TTA decision to scale back the project, a group of business and government leaders were plotting a push for new taxes to meet both road and transit needs. Anne S. Franklin of Raleigh, a TTA trustee, hopes to discuss these issues with legislators soon after the November elections. John D. Claflin, TTA’s general manager, would rather wait. He wants to get the tracks laid and the trains running before asking taxpayers for more money. “They’ve been told that this rental car tax is going to provide them with a rail transit system,” Claflin said. “Until we have that up and going, I would feel uncomfortable going back to them and saying that if you want a rail transit system now, it’s going to cost you a half-cent sales tax. It would be hard to swallow for the average citizen.”

City releases funds for streetcar project; First line would run along Fairview Avenue to Westlake Center SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER August 17, 2004 The proposed South Lake Union Streetcar and a potential network of streetcars in Seattle continued to roll along yesterday when City Council members approved releasing $2.4 million in state and federal money for preliminary design and engineering work. The council also approved $200,000 for a special benefits package to decide the best way to assess a tax on property owners to pay for the streetcar. Council members were careful to stress that no existing city general fund money can be used to pay for the project. But new revenues specifically devised to pay for the streetcar will be considered, they decided. “We want to encourage streetcar development while protecting Seattle taxpayers,” Councilman Richard Conlin said. The streetcar line that would stretch along Fairview Avenue through the Denny Triangle to Westlake Center is expected to cost about $45 million. Property owners along the route in South Lake Union have agreed to tax themselves to pay for about $25 million of the cost. State and federal transportation money will cover much of the remaining cost. The project is short about $2.5 million in construction money. Streetcar supporters hope to see the 2.6-mile streetcar line operating by 2006. Still unknown is how to pay for ongoing operation and maintenance of the streetcar and who would run it, since the city is precluded under state law from operating a transportation system. Arguments for and against the streetcar have been passionate on both sides. Some studies show initial ridership would be less than 30 people per hour. Some argue that a trolley isn’t essential, takes resources away from other neighborhoods that have transportation needs and doesn’t have a cost benefit to the city. But supporters say ridership projections are too low. The streetcar, they say, is the first in a network that could eventually connect to the University District, Central District and the waterfront. It also would take cars off the street, say supporters, and would encourage residential development. James Kelly, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, has pressed the council for weeks to approve the streetcar, saying it would provide economic stimulus. He says an eventual link to the Central District would boost that community. “I am elated and excited that the city has released funds to move this project forward,” he said. Jim Falconer, co-chairman of the Build the Streetcar Committee, said the next step is to figure out “how to build a streetcar that is consistent with guidelines set by the city that is still a viable project.”

Capital Metro presents details of rail plan; Voters would be asked to OK line with nine stops from Leander to Austin Convention Center Austin American-Statesman August 17, 2004 With the Capital Metro board vote to call a referendum on commuter rail two weeks away, the agency staff in its final recommendation Monday filled in some crucial details about timing, estimated costs, ridership and stations. Assuming the board members follow the staff’s advice — and all indications are that they will at the Aug. 30 board meeting — voters in Capital Metro’s service area will be asked in November to approve only a starter commuter rail line from Leander to the Austin Convention Center or, perhaps, to a point a few blocks west of there. If Capital Metro in the future wants to build a streetcar system downtown, or light rail elsewhere, or even more commuter rail lines — and two other commuter routes are in the long-range plan released Monday — board members say it would happen only if another election occurs and voters say yes. “I really want to move forward,” said board member Margaret Gómez, a Travis County commissioner. “Let’s get moving.” State law prohibits Capital Metro from operating passenger rail without voter approval. A much different and more expensive light rail initiative was narrowly rejected in 2000. The agency says the cost of the initial line from Leander, on track already owned by Capital Metro, would be $60 million for the nine planned stations, some additional track and an interim maintenance facility. Although those basic facts have been known, some details of items that will come on top of the $60 million were revealed Monday, along with ridership estimates and operating costs. Money beyond the $60 million includes a several-year, $35 million track upgrade nearing its end, a probable realignment of an out-of-the-way wiggle in the line near Round Rock, the permanent maintenance facility, signal costs and other possible stations as the line matures. Also not included in the $60 million is the upfront cost of the six self- propelled hybrid-diesel rail cars the agency thinks it would need initially to provide rush-hour service at 30-minute intervals when the line opens in 2007 or 2008. Those cars would probably cost about $3 million a year for a lease-purchase. Even including that lease cost, Capital Metro estimates initial annual operating costs of $5 million. Rail critic Jim Skaggs, one of the organizers of the opposition in 2000, doesn’t buy it. “The costs are outrageously low,” Skaggs said, citing annual operating cost several times that high for the Dallas-Fort Worth commuter line. However, that line has heavy rail cars, similar to Amtrak trains, and runs continuously through the day and on weekends. As for ridership, John Almond, Capital Metro’s chief rail planner, said initially it would be somewhere between the 1,700 or so bus passenger- trips on that corridor now and 5,000 a day. By 2025, after adding midday and weekend service, and increasing the rush hour frequency of trains, the staff estimates 17,000 trips a day on that line. Capital Metro says it can afford to build and operate all three commuter lines, along with 133 miles of newly created “rapid bus” service and expanded express bus lines, with its 1 percent sales taxes, with federal money and by increasing from 12 percent to 20 percent the portion of costs it recovers from bus riders. That last strategy would probably include fare increases. The Capital Metro staff recommends that four stations — in downtown Austin, near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in East Austin, at Highland Mall and near the Pickle Research Center — have extensive “circulator” systems near them. That could mean buses initially and, perhaps, trains later, in some cases. But board member Daryl Slusher, an Austin City Council member, said any such rail installations would not happen without approval by voters in a future referendum.

Lone monorail proposal tendered; Public won’t see it until October SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER August 17, 2004 Buried in thousands of pages of documents is the cost of building Seattle’s proposed new monorail, but the figure probably won’t be revealed for two more months. Fifty copies of the proposal were submitted yesterday to the Seattle Monorail Project by Cascadia Monorail, a team including more than two dozen companies. The material, said to include more than 100,000 pages, took a half-hour to load from two large cargo trucks and a smaller minivan, monorail spokeswoman Natasha Jones said. But the cost of the system — a major issue in the ongoing controversy about the line — won’t be revealed until October, after agency staffers evaluate the lengthy document and decide whether it meets expectations and can be built for the latest $1.6 billion estimate. Monorail officials said they want a chance to evaluate the proposal before its contents are publicly released. Deputy Director Anne Levinson said some information in the proposal, which is based around Hitachi trains, is considered proprietary to Hitachi and can’t be released because it would reveal Hitachi trade secrets to competitors. The withholding of some details brought criticism from On Track, a watchdog group monitoring the project. “What’s the big secret?” asked Fay Garneau, On Track’s co-chairwoman. “It’s our money. I want to know now what the bid price is, and then I want to know after it’s reviewed (by the agency) whether SMP feels it can be built and it’s agreeable and acceptable to them. I want to know at the beginning, not at the end.” Levinson said the bid amount, and other information about it, will be made public in October before the monorail agency board decides whether to accept the proposal. It will be evaluated by scoring how it meets several criteria, including cost, design, management, quality of service, how well it uses the work force and how easy it is to monitor. “This is not a bid process where they’re just looking at the cost,” said Jones, who said the bid will be evaluated by an agency team. She said the agency isn’t identifying team members or even how many there are. The team may make a recommendation on the bid to the board Sept. 8. Until 11 days ago, two teams expected to bid the work of completing the system design, building it and running it for up to seven years, but a second group, Team Monorail, dropped out of the running after it was unable to come up with the required $500 million performance bonds. The agency originally estimated the cost of the 14-mile system at $1.75 billion but later changed that to $1.6 billion, reflecting changes made to meet neighborhood objections and to deal with a tax-revenue shortfall. In other monorail developments: The Seattle City Council turned down a request by monorail opponents to pass judgment on a proposed monorail-killing initiative so it could be placed on the November ballot if a state appeals court approves it. The measure, which would prohibit building the new system in city streets, was ruled illegal last week by a King County Superior Court judge, but proponents of the measure have appealed. Initiative backers on the Monorail Recall Committee asked council members to formally reject the committee proposal. Under the city charter, that would have sent the measure to the county for placement on the November ballot while the committee and the monorail agency argue in court over the measure’s legality. Councilwoman Jean Godden, however, said such a maneuver would “confuse” voters. She and five other members voted against sending the measure on. The lone supporter of the move was Councilman Richard Conlin, who criticized the agency’s attempt to kill the initiative. “Let the courts decide and let King County fight it out,” he said. A hearing examiner ruled that an environmental impact statement on the proposed line issued in March was “legally adequate,” rejecting a contention by On Track that the document didn’t adequately address several environmental effects of the elevated line. Hearing examiner Greg Smith said the study’s approach “constitutes a reasonable discussion of mitigation measures and is consistent with (State Environmental Policy Act) Rules” and court decisions. The ruling was another victory for the monorail agency. On Track said it was disappointed in the ruling but hasn’t decided whether to appeal it. Though finding in the agency’s favor, Smith said it may need to file a supplemental study if the number of switches on the system increases from the original 28. The switches could be as long as 90 feet, increasing the system’s size at certain points, casting more shadows and blocking more views.

Arnold: Divert toll revenue to bridges; Proposal to switch funds from transit to cover estimated cost overruns gets hostile reaction The Daily Review (Hayward, CA) August 17, 2004 Bay Area voters may decide in November whether to reverse course on the toll increase that took effect last month and spend it on massive bridge construction overruns rather than dozens of transit projects. That’s if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has his way, and according to Bay Area politicians, that’s a big if. On Monday the Schwarzenegger team unveiled a three-part plan for tackling the Bay Bridge fiasco, which has seen the cost of a new eastern span zoom from $1.2 billion in 1997 to $5.1 billion and counting. State officials now say the bridge will not be ready until 2011, three months after holding firm to a 2009 opening date. For years Caltrans insisted cars would cross the span in 2007. Overall, the cost of seismically strengthening or replacing all California toll bridges has climbed from $2.6 billion to $8.3 billion in three years. The state has just two weeks to find up to $3.3 billion. Without it, California cannot pay for the remaining Bay Bridge contract, a $1.4 billion bid to build the elegant tower portion of the eastern span. Schwarzenegger’s team proposed an audit to find answers and passage of legislation in the remaining two weeks of the session. That bill would put the question to Bay Area voters whether to spend a third dollar — the recent toll increase — on the retrofit plan. The bill also would give the Metropolitan Transportation Commission power to set tolls in the future. The proposal received a chilly reception Monday from lawmakers in both parties who said it raised more questions than it answered. The plan and the reaction to it put into serious doubt whether a political solution exists or whether Bay Area commuters will be stuck with a $1.05 billion fishing pier instead of a landmark bridge. “It’s absurd. It won’t see the light of day,” said Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland. “This proposal says the Bay Area should subsidize the state transportation system. We’re not going to do that.” Perata pushed passage of Regional Measure 2 in March that raised tolls from $2 to $3 and paid for everything from ferries and historic streetcars to seismic repair of BART’s Transbay Tube. Perata said he plans to introduce a new proposal within a day. On the opposite end of the political spectrum, Thousand Oaks Republican Tom McClintock agreed that the bridge is a state responsibility. He suggested going back to the drawing board, redesigning the bridge and paying for it with tolls by those who use it. “You don’t start a project unless you have the money to finish it. That’s foolish. This program was ill-conceived and incompetently and recklessly executed,” McClintock said. “The legislators that voted for this boondoggle are responsible.” State officials said Monday the Bay Area is responsible for abandoning a simple Caltrans design in 1998. The elaborate tower proposal accounts for 53 percent of the overrun, said Sunne McPeak, who is secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing. Schwarzenegger officials blamed “Bay Area politics,” and the mayors Brown. Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown called the original Caltrans plan “a freeway on stilts,” adding momentum to the campaign for the single tower bridge. But MTC came to locals’ defense. “The Bay Area has paid for that decision now twice,” said MTC spokesman Randy Rentschler. “Now they want us to pay for it a third time and to pay for all the other cost increases we had nothing to do with.” Specifically, Caltrans has identified needing an extra $249 million on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and $577 million for the skyway portion of the Bay Bridge, now well under construction. Both projects are ahead of schedule and have experienced no reported major hitches. Indeed, half the overruns come from Caltrans overhead, contingency and estimating errors. With no legislative agreement, and questions about whether voters will even go with the governor’s ideas, it remains unclear whether the tower can be built. Caltrans has until late September, one month before the election, to award the bid. Officials Monday said they could not say whether they would ask for a second extension to award the bid, pending voter action, or reject it beforehand. Every day of delay costs the bidder, a consortium of American Bridge Co./Nippon Steel/Fluor Enterprises, money. Bid team officials did not know of Monday’s bail-out plan, nor if they can afford to cover the inflation by waiting longer. A re-bid would add time and cost beyond the latest estimates.

THE COSTS, BENEFITS OF METRO RAIL TRANSIT The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) August 17, 2004 THE BENEFITS of mass transportation are as obvious in Memphis as anywhere else, and they will become more obvious with any increase in air pollution, traffic congestion or the cost of fuel. The Memphis Area Transit Authority’s proposed solution is more rail transportation in the city. Next stop: a $400 million extension linking the trolley system’s Madison Avenue Line with Memphis International Airport. But can the city and state afford their 50 percent share of the cost? The federal government evidently believes we can. Last week the Department of Transportation, with encouragement from both of Tennessee’s U.S. senators and Rep. Harold Ford Jr., allocated $6.7 million in planning money for a centrally located transportation hub that would serve, among other things, as an airport rail terminus. The money puts Memphis a step closer toward construction of an airport-to-Madison rail link, which MATA president and general manager William Hudson said could be in operation in five to seven years. Two alternative routes are under consideration - both at street level and mostly sharing a common right-of-way with existing streets in the manner of the city’s recently expanded trolley system. One alternative route would extend from the Madison Avenue Line south at Pauline, eventually joining Lamar on its southeasterly path to Airways and then south. Another would extend the Medical Center route east to Overton Square and then south to the fairgrounds area, again following Airways the rest of the way. Only the Airways section would have its own right-of-way. Despite the federal funding, there are still hurdles to cross before the new line becomes a reality. The project’s environmental impact statement is still a work in progress, and its funding has not been approved. With at least $100 million in city money at stake, funding is “anything but a fait accompli,” Councilman Jack Sammons said Monday. “Mass transit is something we’ve got to do in this community, but we have to find a mechanism to fund it. We’re not going to take it out of property taxes.” In addition to the local share of construction costs, taxpayers also could wind up forking over millions of dollars in operating subsidies, the size of which would depend on ridership, which is not easy to predict. Would Memphians take to another rail line? Perhaps not immediately, but eventually, some advocates believe, they will have little choice in the matter. And when that day arrives, rail transit will be in place and waiting for them. Rail supporters can look toward Houston for some reassurance on the ridership issue. The city’s new $320 million street-level MetroRail line drew more than 3 million boardings in the first six months of the year. Houston also has provided the grist for an argument against rail, though. More than 50 collisions between cars and trains have occurred along the 7.5-mile line since it opened last November. As Memphis moves toward a decision on where to lay new tracks for a rail line - indeed, whether to lay new tracks at all - it can learn from the experiences of other cities, where new lines have failed or succeeded. The guiding principle should not be blind faith in the proposition that if we build it they will ride.

‘Creeps and weirdos’ label in ads earns GM dealers lemon award Guelph Mercury (Ontario, Canada) August 17, 2004 People who ride buses or other public transportation aren’t creepy, Transport 2000 says. The public transportation lobby group is giving a sour “lemon” award to General Motors dealers in Vancouver and Victoria for advertisements last year suggesting bus riders are “creeps and weirdos.” The ads were subsequently withdrawn. The award also goes to GM dealers in Halifax who ran ads in bus shelters depicting empty buses and encouraging bus riders to buy their own cars. “They were an insult to transit users, particularly the ‘creeps and weirdos’ notion,” Transport 2000 president David Jeanes said Friday after riding a train to Guelph from Toronto. He was here to present the organization’s spokesperson, Paul Langan, with an “orange” award for promoting public transit. Langan, a Cambridge resident, works in Guelph. Jeanes blasted the GM dealers for promoting passenger cars his group considers environmentally unfriendly, concluding the ads show the dealers’ distaste for “sustainable transportation” like buses and trains. He stressed public transit is better for the environment than cars and trucks and, as a result, improves quality of life in cities. “Public transit is not just for people who can’t afford something better. Public transit is better,” Jeanes said. Transport 2000 aims its “lemon” award “to people who have done bad things to transportation,” he explained. Past recipients include a former federal transportation minister, Benoit Bouchard, who cut funding to VIA Rail. He intends to send photographs of the award to the dealerships in question, assuming they wouldn’t accept and display a plaque in a dealership showroom. “We’re not quite sure what to do with the plaque,” Jeanes said. GM spokesperson Stew Low says the ad issue is dated. “We have already apologized publicly,” he responded. “From my perspective, it is an issue that has passed.” Jeanes presented Langan with the organization’s “orange” plaque for efforts to convince the provincial government to improve public transportation in southern Ontario, particularly VIA’s north main line between Toronto and Sarnia — which runs through Guelph and Kitchener. The track is in bad condition and the trains slow and infrequent, Jeanes said. Langan, he added, has also done much to raise public awareness of the need for improvements, including organizing a series of public meetings in recent months. “He has been successful in getting public attention,” Jeanes said. Further, Langan has presented federal Transport Minister Tony Valeri with a report of the findings from those public meetings. It urges Ottawa to spend $85 million refurbishing the north main line, recommends VIA Rail reduce fares to encourage more people to ride trains and suggests the line be expanded. “Paul is Mr. Southwestern Ontario, as far as Transport 2000 is concerned,” Jeanes said. “I’m very honoured,” Langan said of receiving the orange award. “Transport 2000 started in the 1970s. Some of these (colleagues) are my icons.” They include, he said, Harry Gow, Transport 2000’s founder and current executive director. Langan said Guelph is at an important junction, a rapidly growing city facing transportation issues in the heart of southern Ontario. He’s dismayed, he said, that some local elected representatives are suggesting new or expanded highways in the Guelph area, when improving public transportation is a better alternative. More or bigger roadways over the years have not ended congestion, as anyone who travels the Highway 401 east-west provincial corridor can easily attest to, he said.

Minneapolis light rail exceeds revenue expectations Metro August 19, 2004 Metro Transit’s Hiawatha light rail line generated more revenue than officials expected in its first month of service, but revenue per passenger fell short, according to data released this week. According to the financial summary, passenger revenue totaled $360,000 in July, which was $105,000 more than budgeted. Boardings were also higher than expected, with 462,463 rides, almost twice the anticipated 231,400. But the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that average per-passenger revenue fell from an expected $1.10 per ride to 78 cents per ride. Metro Transit officials attributed the drop in part to a much larger share of weekend and evening passengers than planners expected. Rush-hour tickets are $1.75, while non-peak rides are $1.25.

Knappster: ‘Freebie’ monorail starting to get expensive Las Vegas Mercury August 19, 2004 Most local media outlets have happily regurgitated whatever self-serving propaganda the PR machine of the Las Vegas Monorail has dished out since its inception. Many have bought into the transparent contention that this sleek doohickey is a miraculous freebie, a gift from the transportation gods, a project that isn’t costing taxpayers anything, despite the clear and obvious evidence that taxpayers have already subsidized the so-called private undertaking to the tune of millions of dollars. So it was refreshing to see my colleagues at the Review-Journal take exception to some of the latest offerings from the monorail spinmeisters. It’s nice to have a little company. In a brief Saturday editorial, the R-J expressed reservations about the rhetorical cartwheels and other expressions of glee emanating from monorail headquarters in recent days over the latest ridership figures for the futuristic contraption, figures which unfortunately show the monorail is falling far below its own ridership projections, and far below what it needs to break even. As the R-J sees it, such numbers don’t really justify the overt optimism being expressed by yarn-spinning monorail officials. Then the R-J wrote something that struck me as just a bit odd. The paper commented that we “should not be surprised if taxpayers are eventually asked to subsidize the monorail’s expansion to downtown or the airport.” We shouldn’t be surprised indeed, especially since the downtown leg of the monorail has already sucked up millions of public dollars and is anxiously awaiting millions more. As the R-J itself reported on July 25, the Regional Transportation Commission, a decidedly public entity, “will oversee the taxpayer-backed downtown extension”, which will cost an estimated $453 million. As far back as Feb. 5 of this year, the R-J detailed just where all that money will originate. Of the $453 million needed for the second leg, an estimated $178 million will come in the form of federal grants. Contrary to some opinions, federal grants are not free dollars that simply fall like leavs from the branches of a mythical money tree. Those are taxpayer dollars that otherwise might be spent on Nevada’s roads and highways. Admittedly, roads and highways aren’t nearly as flashy and futuristic as a monorail, but for those of who need to travel to a place that ISN’T a casino on the east side of the Strip, which are the only locations served by the monorail, roads and highways can come in mighty handy at times, quaint as they are. I suppose it could be argued that Southern Nevada already has more than enough roads and highways and that we don’t really need more federal funds for such antiquated transportation venues. So, in that sense, we might as well siphon off our federal transportation dollars for a shiny, newfangled monorail that will pour gamblers into our needy, underserved megaresorts and nowhere else. (Just for the record, the second leg of the monorail accepted its first $22 million in federal tax dollars back in December. Another $20 million slice will be carved out of the federal Highway Trust Fund this year to be designated for this Disney- esque charitable endeavor.) The R-J also reported in its Feb. 5 article that another $143 million for the monorail’s second leg will come in the form of federal loans, loans that will need to be paid back by…oh, who knows, and who cares? What’s more, up to $42 million of the second-leg funding could come from good, old- fashioned local sales tax revenues. That’s the same sales tax that you and I pay every day. Is it any wonder that the RTC board has decided to establish a $500 million line of credit so it can buy land for the monorail’s second leg? It happened back on July 9. Maybe you saw the story? That $500 million credit line represents the highest debt limit in the history of the RTC. (Remember the fuss over last year’s legislative tax increase? The approval of this spending spree, which is two-thirds as large as the controversial tax package, has generated almost no public outcry, even though these are public dollars.) The RTC freely admits it expects to spend $43 million in the coming fiscal year just to support the monorail. That’s public money — your money. It’s a lot to pay for a supposedly private monorail. So, the next time the monorail folks or any of their faithful and well-heeled flock tell reporters or any of the rest of us that this whole shebang is free, free, free, that it isn’t costing Joe Sixpack a dime, that none of us has anything to worry about when we see its pitiful ridership figures, and that we should all fall on our knees to give thanks for this charitable public service bestowed upon the unwashed masses by our generous, well- connected benefactors at Monorail HQ, please keep some of these widely reported numbers in mind.

Las Vegas monorail contractor suspended LAS VEGAS SUN August 19, 2004 An employee for a Las Vegas Monorail contractor was suspended Monday afternoon after he opened a set of doors about 25 feet off the ground, a spokesman for the monorail said this morning. The employee, a technician for Bombardier Transportation, the contracted operator of the system, was dispatched to the train — parked at the Las Vegas Hilton platform — after crews reported a maintenance light turning on about 2:30 p.m. Monday, Todd Walker, a spokesman for the monorail, said. The technician then overrode the system’s automated controls, which allowed him to manually open the automatic doors facing away from the platform, Walker said. The doors, which in automatic mode can not be opened manually, were open for less than a minute as the technician was preparing to take the train in for service, he said. “In automatic mode there are safety mechanisms to prevent this from happening,” Walker said. “Doors don’t just open.” The roughly 25 passengers inside were transferred to another car while the technician inspected the car. No one was injured, Walker said. The warning light was a false alarm, he added. The employee was suspended while Bombardier investigates the incident, Walker said. He would not speculate on a possible outcome of the action. “It’s inexcusable that it took place and we’re going to ensure that it doesn’t take place again,” he said.

Rail ‘support’ by Daugherty, Skaggs called disingenuous; Capital Metro board member says demand for 25 percent of the agency’s sales tax money is ‘unreasonable’ Austin American-Statesman August 19, 2004 No thanks, but no thanks, said Mayor Will Wynn and a Capital Metro board member today to a highly conditioned offer of support for the transit agency’s commuter rail referendum. Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty and retired high-tech executive Jim Skaggs, persistent critics of Capital Metro and its passenger rail plans, had released details Wednesday about what Capital Metro’s board must do in return for their endorsement of the rail plan. The proposal will probably go before voters in November. Among the seven conditions is a requirement that if voters approve the referendum, Capital Metro would redirect a fourth of the money from its one-cent sales tax to highway projects for at least three years. The agency could keep the money once it evaluates ridership and costs to see if the line is an efficient use of money. That quarter-cent of Cap Metro’s sales tax raises between $25 million and $30 million a year. Capital Metro board member Fred Harless, sitting in on a press conference today where Daugherty and Skaggs discussed their proposal, called that demand “extortion.” He later softened his characterization to “unreasonable conditions.” If voters approve in November, Capital Metro would spend $60 million on a 32-mile line from Leander to downtown Austin, running self-propelled train cars on the line during morning and evening rush hours. The agency estimates operating costs of about $5 million initially and believes the line could be in service by 2007 or 2008. Skaggs, looking at Capital Metro’s $114.7 million budget this year, reckoned that the agency can redirect $25 million to $30 million of its sales tax money to the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority for a toll road program. That would leave plenty of money to run both its bus system and the Leander train line, Skaggs said. Daugherty, responding to his Southwest Travis County constituents, opposed the authority’s initial toll road plan this summer. Harless said that Capital Metro has about $48 million in reserves available to build the line. And federal funding, assuming Capital Metro gets the typical match, would provide another $48 million, giving the agency a roughly $36 million cushion for the initial project, assuming it comes in at $60 million. But Harless said sending the sales tax proceeds to the mobility authority would leave Capital Metro unable to expand the rail system if it succeeds. “I was really kind of overwhelmed when I saw (their offer of support) in the paper this morning,” Harless said. “Now it’s come down to just a vendetta against Capital Metro. They just don’t like public transit.” Wynn, in a news conference minutes after Daugherty and Skaggs spoke, called their proposal “disingenuous.” “Commissioner Daugherty knows that Capital Metro cannot and should not accept those conditions for this plan,” Wynn said. “Don’t forget that these conditions are coming from a guy whose license plate reads, ‘No Rail.’ “ Conditional support Here are the conditions that rail foes Jim Skaggs and Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, founders of Reclaim Our Allocated Dollars, or ROAD, say the Capital Metro board must meet to earn their support for a commuter rail election in November: - The notice for the election — backup language meant to control the board’s future actions — should stipulate that Capital Metro will incur no bond debt to build the line from Leander to downtown Austin. - The notice should limit authority to the single commuter line, excluding funding for light rail or a downtown streetcar system. - The agency — before construction begins — must set “realistic and reasonable” performance measures for the Leander line, benchmarks set in conjunction with ROAD and other members of the public. - Capital Metro must continuously monitor performance of the Leander line for three years. If benchmarks are not met, the agency would refrain from holding an election for other rail lines and make adjustments on the Leander line. - If rail passes in November, Capital Metro for at least three years would allocate 25 percent of its sales tax revenue — more than $25 million a year — to the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority for its toll road project. If the Leander line fails to meet benchmarks, that allocation would continue until 2015. - If the referendum fails, Capital Metro would give the mobility authority 30 percent of its sales tax revenue at least through 2015. - The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, before the election, should incorporate Capital Metro’s new long-range rail plan and thus remove light rail from its 25-year plan.

Metro Plans ‘Brush-Up’ Training in Courtesy Washington Post August 19, 2004 Metro will give special training in customer service to station managers, train operators and others who deal with the public in the face of rising complaints about uncivil transit employees. “People complain about rude and discourteous behavior by station managers. That tells us we need to focus on it,” said James Gallagher, Metro’s deputy general manager for operations, referring to the special training, which is to start by Oct. 1. As the 28-year-old subway system wears out and service deteriorates, unhappy passengers are venting their frustrations at the most visible Metro employees. Those workers need “brush-up skills” in how to deal with it, Gallagher said. In July, Metro received 71 complaints about rail employees, compared with 47 in June. Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said yesterday that one station manager faces “very serious disciplinary action” after a pregnant woman and her husband complained that he screamed at them, brandished a broom and pushed the husband because they inquired about a broken escalator last week. “There have been some very unfriendly station managers before,” said the woman, Jade Lee Freeman, 32, who has been riding Metro regularly for six years. “But I’ve never dealt with somebody like this. I was terrified.” Metro officials said an investigation into Friday’s incident revealed mistakes on the part of the station manager. “He exhibited several poor behaviors,” Farbstein said. “For example, he was anything but polite and courteous. And as a result, it is being treated as a very serious disciplinary matter.” Public dissatisfaction with Metro appears to be rising after some recent events: Flooding at the Silver Spring Station hobbled the Red Line for nine days; transit officials caused severe crowding on late-night trains by shortening them to two cars; and a Red Line operator abandoned a packed train during rush hour because her shift had ended. “Train performance is going down, and people expect a lot from us,” Gallagher said. “We know we’re not delivering as good a service as we can. So we really have to emphasize customer service, because we know we’re going to have problems on the railroad.” The transit system is getting more selective about candidates for the 308 station manager jobs and this month rejected several because they were not suited to deal with the public, he said. “Being a station manager is a tough job. Lots of people are coming at you, and they want information, and, in a busy station, it’s constant,” he said. Farbstein would not identify the station manager involved in Friday’s incident at the Potomac Avenue Station. Metro had already decided to retrain its employees before the incident, Gallagher said. The station manager was suspended, pending the outcome of an investigation that was completed yesterday. He has worked for Metro for four years. Freeman and her husband, Robert, also 32, live in a Capitol Hill rowhouse three blocks from the Potomac Avenue Station. On Friday, they planned to take Metro to the Kennedy Center to see “The Producers.” The couple walked to the station about 6:30 p.m. and found two of the escalators operating in the up direction, away from the train platform, while the third escalator was not working and was being used as a staircase. Jade Freeman is two months pregnant, often nauseated and easily fatigued. She had a difficult time walking down the frozen escalator, lagging far behind her husband. When Robert Freeman reached the bottom of the escalator, he walked over to the station manager’s booth and asked if he knew that none of the escalators was moving in the down direction. “He said, ‘Yeah, but it’s easier to walk down than it is to walk up,’” Robert Freeman said. He said he countered that it was difficult for anyone who is elderly, disabled or pregnant. “He sort of waved me aside, and I was like, fine, these guys are unpleasant.” Metro policy dictates that when a station contains a bank of escalators, at least one should be moving in each direction. In this case, the station manager should have reversed the direction of one of the ascending escalators, Gallagher said. Robert Freeman said he passed through the fare gate and headed toward the platform. About that time, Jade Freeman had reached the bottom of the broken escalator and approached the station manager’s booth, unaware that her husband had stopped there moments earlier. “I asked him if the escalator was broken, and he didn’t say anything,” Jade Freeman said. “He pushed his seat back and threw up his arms, very annoyed. I put my ears on the little holes [in the plexiglass of the booth] and said, ‘Um, is the escalator broken?’ He got up and just started saying things. He wasn’t answering my question; he was throwing tantrums.” Jade Freeman said that after asking for the station manager’s name, she went through the fare gate and saw him repeatedly slam his name tag against the glass. He opened the door to the booth and stepped out, she said. Robert Freeman rushed back to his wife. “He was coming at me,” Jade Freeman said of the station manager. “He said, ‘Get the [expletive] out of my station.’” The station manager picked up a nearby broom, the couple said. “He turned to me and said, ‘You think you can come down here and harass me because you’re white!’ “ said Jade Freeman, who is Asian. Her husband is white; the station manager is African American. Then he tossed the broom aside and shoved Robert Freeman in the chest, the couple said. Jade Freeman called police on her cell phone. A criminal investigation continues, Farbstein said. “You don’t walk down into the Metro expecting to be assaulted by the guy who’s there somewhat to assist us,” Robert Freeman said. The couple took a cab to the Kennedy Center.

WEB RESOURCES CFTE Update August 19, 2004 Don’t be surprised when you see Wendell Cox and other transit critics touting an article from the July 2004 issue of the Regional Economist titled “Light Rail: Boon or Boondoggle” by St. Louis Fed economists Molly D. Castelazo and Thomas A. Garrett. Indeed, much of the information is directly comprised and cited from Cox’s Demographia website (www.demographia.com). Unfortunately, the report exhibits the typical errors made by transit critics. “It ignores many benefits of rail transit and understates the costs of automobile travel on the same corridors. Their study fails to reflect current best practices for comparing highway and transit investment cost effectiveness,” says Todd Litman, Director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. Litman also wrote a critique of this report, which is available below. On August 10th, 2004, authors Castelazo and Garrett presented their report at the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. Responses to the Report The good news is, this report did not go unnoticed by transportation professionals. In addition to having several transit professionals in attendance at the Federal Reserve Bank presentation, many others decided to author thorough critiques of the report. For the full story on this issue, visit Citizens For Modern Transit View the full story and responses from: Evaluating Public Transit Benefits in St.Louis: Critique of “Light Rail Boon or Boondoggle” By Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute White Paper by John Roach; Development Programming Associates, St. Louis Light Rail Transit: A Bargain Compared to Toll Roads By E. L. Tennyson, P.E. with editing and comments by Dave Dobbs, Texas Association for Public Transportation, publisher Why St. Louis’s MetroLink Light Railway Is a Mobility Bargain: A Response to Recent Anti-Rail Transit Diatribes Published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis By Lyndon Henry and David D. Dobbs August 2004 Comments on Light Rail: Boon or Boondoggle? By Haynes Goddard, Professor of Economics, University of Cincinnati

L.A. Looking Into Return of Downtown Trolley Line Los Angeles Times August 19, 2004 More than 40 years after the last Pacific Electric Red Car clanged to a stop in Los Angeles, city leaders are weighing a proposal to resurrect the trolley system with a five-mile loop that would connect downtown landmarks from Chinatown to Staples Center. The Los Angeles redevelopment board is expected today to approve a $100,000 study to determine the feasibility of building a system that would use replicas — and possibly even a few original trolleys — from the historic Pacific Electric Railway that ran from 1903 to 1961. Community Redevelopment Agency President Paul Hudson, the president of Broadway Federal Bank, said he would back construction of the trolley system if found to be feasible and if it would serve an important role in the city’s mass transit plans. “It would have a lot of cachet, having a Red Car trolley running through downtown,” Hudson said. “The fantasy or vision is it would be used almost like the trolley cars in San Francisco — not just for tourists but as a functional way for residents to get around.” Mayor James K. Hahn and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) are among city leaders backing the study who hope a trolley system can be built. As examples of systems using vintage trolleys, they cite those in San Jose, Portland, New Orleans, Tampa and Seattle. A $10-million, 1.5-mile Red Car line linking Port of Los Angeles tourist spots has been operating with some success for more than a year, having drawn 94,000 riders. The line uses three replica cars. “I remember with great fondness taking the trolley to downtown as a young girl, and I believe bringing it back would help to reestablish the area as the thriving cultural, social and business epicenter of Los Angeles,” Roybal-Allard said. But the proposal faces a rough ride at a time when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority already has a long list of expensive transit projects that are struggling amid cutbacks in state and federal transit funding. “It’s not on our radar screen,” MTA spokesman Marc Littman said. “Not that it is a bad idea, but it is not on our list of priorities.” Indeed, some officials asked the MTA for money to conduct a feasibility study in 2001, but the agency turned down that request. In the meantime, Roybal-Allard secured the $100,000 for the study from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The idea has been around since 1997. A group of trolley buffs and downtown business leaders formed the Downtown Red Car Advisory Group to push the proposal through the government bureaucracy. Ken Bernstein of the L.A. Conservancy, who serves on the advisory group, said the system would probably cost more than $40 million to build. In a letter of support, former State Librarian Kevin Starr wrote: “The Red Cars were to Los Angeles what the trolleys are to San Francisco and the El is to Chicago — both a means of transportation and a signature institution, one that helped the city to grow and to take its present form.” Henry Huntington established Pacific Electric Railway just after the turn of the last century. That system and the Los Angeles Railway once operated rail lines and electric streetcars that connected Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Ridership peaked in the 1920s. The trolleys began to lose riders as the automobile became the primary mode of transportation for many people. The last line, from Long Beach to Los Angeles, stopped running in 1961. In the redevelopment agency’s application for MTA money in 2001, a consultant drafted a conceptual plan, proposing a five-mile loop that would include stops for the Convention Center, Staples Center, hotels on Figueroa Street and Bunker Hill, the Music Center, the cathedral, City Hall, Chinatown, Union Station, El Pueblo, Little Tokyo and the Broadway district. The feasibility study would refine a possible route to include new landmarks such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, and would project potential ridership, costs and rates. It would also examine how the trolley would fit in with MTA plans, including an Exposition Boulevard light-rail system. The study would look at engineering and traffic management issues involved in building a street railway, and whether the initial loop could later be expanded, with lines serving the Exposition Park/USC area to the south and Echo Park to the north. The initial design includes four key stations along an 11- to 22-stop line, with steel-wheeled original and replica streetcars operated manually by one person, with power provided by overhead electric lines. The consultants envisioned 10 cars that would run 12 hours a day and as quickly as five minutes apart. While the consultants said the system might want to renovate one or two original Red Cars, they proposed using reproductions for most of the trolleys. The Central City Assn. has endorsed the concept. The association’s president, Carol Schatz, envisions a “fun” trolley system that would be a destination of downtown visitors in its own right. “It’s a terrific idea,” Schatz said. “When you look at cities that have been successful at bringing suburbanites and visitors from afar to their downtowns, most have a trolley system with historical designs.”

LRT revenues fare well in first month; Metro Transit releases detailed look at Hiawatha lines ridership information Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN August 19, 2004 Fares collected in the first month of operating the Hiawatha light-rail line came to $360,000 - about $105,000 more than expected, Metro Transit reported Wednesday. The earnings for July came from patronage estimated at 462,463 rides - nearly double the forecast ridership. The revenue report provided a detailed look at the time of day for ridership. Midday and evening accounted for 62 percent of the month’s total rides on weekdays, while trips during peak weekday commute times accounted for 38 percent. Overall, about 70 percent of rides were at midday, in the evenings or on weekends. State Sen. Dick Day, R-Owatonna, who this week called for close accounting of rail line revenues and expenses, was critical of the figures. “We know now it doesn’t help congestion,” Day said of the rail line. “People are riding it to have a good time around the countryside. It’s like an entertainment package.” Metro Transit officials consider the revenue figures good news but said that one month does not make a trend. Service began in late June on the first 8-mile phase of the line between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling. The final 4-mile leg through the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport and on to the Mall of America in Bloomington is scheduled to open in December. While passenger revenues were higher than expected, expenses also were higher than budgeted in July because the transit agency added trains and extended hours to serve crowds going by train to Minnesota Twins games at the Metrodome, acting General Manager Mark Fuhrmann said. Revenues had been expected to total $255,000 but came in at $360,000 because of the higher ridership. “We came out $40,000 positive on overall expense and revenue,” Furhmann said. By law Metro Transit must recover at least one-third of the rail line’s costs through rider fares. That target was met in July. Figures on cost per ride and subsidy per ride have not yet been released by the agency. The fare is $1.75 during peak hours and $1.25 at other times. The July fare revenues did not average even $1 per rider because Metro Transit allows free transfers between buses and the rail line, and also because riders are allowed to take multiple rides on one fare within two and a half hours of buying a rail ticket or bus ticket or using a transit pass. In July, a total of 151,000 tickets were sold at the ticket machines on the station platforms. Riders can also use bus transfers and one of several transit passes to get on board. Metro Transit estimates that 99 percent of riders paid as required in July. MORE INFORMATION Light-rail riders Hiawatha light-rail line ridership figures for July show periods of the day and the number of riders: Weekday morning peak: 42,941 Midday: 4,376 Weekday afternoon peak: 90,677 Evening: 112,698 Saturday: 67,820 Sunday: 43,951 Total ridership, July 2004: 462,463

Clover’s road to Rouen - Sydney plan to embrace le tram The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia) August 19, 2004 A FRENCH city better known as the home of the famous gothic cathedral, Notre Dame de Rouen, has provided inspiration for a new central Sydney transport strategy based around tram. Rouen, a city serving 390,000 people in northern France, has been studied by Sydney council staff while preparing a new transport strategy which is expected to be released in coming weeks. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore revealed she was considering three new tram lines for Sydney based on the historic European city’s “integrated transport” reforms. Rouen, where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431, installed a 15km long light rail with 31 stations in 1994 after concerns about road congestion and private car ownership. More than 30 feeder bus services are linked to the line. Rouen’s light rail has been judged a success because of its passenger numbers and the fact it has helped revitalise some rundown parts of the city. “The city council has looked at how light rail has operated in other cities and light rail is right up there in moving large numbers of people in a pleasant city environment,” Ms Moore said. “We would have to have an integrated plan that involved appropriate modes of transport and that is what cities such as Rouen have done — they have a range of public transport provisions. “We are saying the benefits [of light right] are compelling in terms of moving large numbers of people, in terms of pollution, in terms of making a global city work much better.” Ms Moore said Rouen had a “good approach” to transport. She said buses wouldn’t be removed from city streets but would instead be linked to the new light rail services. However she had concerns that the city was being swamped by traffic, including buses. “Traffic in George St is literally only moving 10km/h. Areas around Market St and Castlereagh St are clogged and there are increasing number of vehicles into the city and buses bumper to bumper,” she said. Ms Moore indicated one line could travel from Castlereagh St, down Oxford St and then to the Sydney Cricket Ground and the University of NSW at Kensington. A new city link would run from Central to Circular Quay, via Castlereagh St. Another line could run from Central, servicing the University of Technology and Sydney University and then on to Green Square, but the route of this line was less certain. The light rail system, while travelling on council roads, would also need to be supported by the State Government. And that approval seems uncertain, with Planning Minister Craig Knowles appearing to be supportive and Transport Minister Michael Costa against the idea.

ATHENS OLYMPICS: Gold for Athens traffic Expatica (NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR EXPATS IN GERMANY) 19 August 2004 ATHENS - Athens is experiencing a miracle of sorts now that the Olympics are underway. Contrary to expectations, all of the sports venues were finished punctually. The anticipated traffic jams have failed to materialise and both athletes and spectators are reaching the events quickly. Even the Olympic buses have not been affected by the Greek capital’s notorious traffic jams. Although the tram lines have reported a few accidents. Tram driver Michalis Dendrinos says the real reason for the series of accidents is the Greek mentality. “Greeks have not yet learnt to obey the rules of the road,” he says. He raves about Germany where he and his colleagues were trained: “People there stop at red lights and in front of tram lines almost as if they were showing respect.” Neverthless, a delighted spokesman for the city’s transport authority said: “We did not expect everything to run so smoothly.” However, the moment of truth will come next week when many Athenians return home from vacation. Greeks are quick to point out the chaos at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the lack of transport at the Sydney Games in 2000. “Many athletes in Atlanta missed their events because they were brought to the wrong venues,” the Athenian daily To Wima commented. “If that happened here, there would be uproar.” The traffic system was initially considered one of Athens’ weak points for staging the Games, but it has since turned into the Olympics 2004 trump card. Until recently, the streets beneath the Acropolis were chaotic. About 2.5 million cars and motorcycles literally crept through the city. Getting from one place to another was considered a feat of ingenuity which the strongest won. Rules of the road counted almost nothing. A government campaign urged the population to leave their cars at home and to use public transport for the duration of the Olympics. The motto was, “We will get gold with the train, the underground and the bus.” All experts are agreed that the gold medal should be awarded to the Athenian underground system. For a metropolis of 4 million, the network was not particularly widespread and was expanded from one to three lines to accommodate Olympic traffic. The underground now transports most Olympic visitors to the sporting venues. Traffic on tram lines, which connect central Athens with the seaside suburbs of Faliron and Glifalda, runs less smoothly. The tram began operating barely a month ago and has already had 25 accidents in 27 days. The cause is nearly always the same - pedestrians and car drivers crossing the tracks without care. Many Athenians obviously are still not used to that means of transport.

Mall visitors boost light-rail ridership; 31% INCREASE OVER JULY ‘03 REPORTED San Jose Mercury News Aug. 20, 2004 Riders are returning to light rail, but it’s where they’re headed that might be the big surprise: the mall. According to new Valley Transportation Authority figures, ridership climbed to nearly 566,000 in July — a 31 percent increase over a year ago. The biggest surge has occurred on weekends and holidays, when ridership has nearly doubled from a year ago. VTA figures show that many of those new passengers are bound for the Great Mall in Milpitas and the expanded Oakridge Mall in Almaden Valley. ``Most Friday nights, it’s the Great Mall and movies,’’ said Maria Eavela, 17, a senior-to-be at Piedmont High School who rides the recently opened trolley line in East San Jose nearly every day on errands, to work at Great America or to hang out at the mall. ``It beats the bus.’’ Maria’s trolley ride illustrates three main points in the new VTA numbers. Riders are headed to the mall; a part of the boost is because of the new extension on the East Side; and while light rail becomes more popular it may do so at the expense of bus ridership. Weekday light-rail ridership is up 25 percent from last year and — after three years of steady decline — there has been an increase in passengers for four consecutive months. The 6.2-mile extension through Milpitas and East San Jose has attracted 4,000 daily riders in its first four weeks of operation, nearly two-thirds of the 6,500 projected by 2015. On the flip side, rail ridership is still down considerably from the peak of the dot-com explosion when more than 777,000 trips were made in July 2000. Bus ridership continued to fall with 2.6 million for July, down from almost 3 million a year ago. Though initially light rail may take passengers off of buses, the VTA contends that as more people rely on rail, that will ultimately boost bus ridership because people will use buses to get to trolleys. The agency’s fare recovery — the percent of the cost of a ride covered by the fare — is among the lowest in the nation but has improved from 10 percent a couple of years ago to 13 percent now. But the spotlight is on light rail, where the county has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to attract riders. ``This is very positive and I think it will continue,’’ said Santa Clara County Supervisor Pete McHugh, a VTA board member. A noon-hour trip between the Great Mall and Alum Rock stations Thursday revealed a range of riders: teens headed to jobs; a young mom off to a doctor’s visit; a 33-year-old man testing bus connections and considering selling his car because the new line is so convenient; a 52- year-old engineer happy to be out of his car; a 46-year-old man in a wheelchair saving money by avoiding more expensive paratransit service; and — of course — those bound for the mall. VTA officials have monitored what riders are doing at the mall and say not all return with bags of clothing. ``They’re going to theaters, restaurants,’’ spokeswoman Anne-Catherine Vinickas said. ``The shopping mall has become a public gathering place, and they’re taking light rail there.’’

Metro wants feds to fund rail lines; Officials offer to finance final part of expansion if U.S. pays first two Houston Chronicle Aug. 20, 2004 Metro officials hope that by pledging to pay for all of the subsequent two lines — from Midtown to Hillcroft and downtown to the East End — with local funds, the Federal Transit Administration will agree to foot the bill for the first two. Typically, the cost of each rail segment is split between Washington and the local transit agency. Metro’s proposal is contained in thousands of pages it is sending to Washington today to meet an annual deadline for getting in the federal funding pipeline. Metro officials said that if the FTA agrees to the plan, the authority can complete all four voter-approved rail extensions a year or two ahead of the 2012 goal set in November’s referendum. Paying for the Westpark and Harrisburg lines with its own dollars would mean Metro could skip all the federally mandated studies, President and CEO Frank Wilson said. “All those years of planning, all that stuff you normally do, we wouldn’t have to do,” said Wilson, who briefed board members during Thursday’s meeting. “We’ll go right to design and build.” Metro will ask the FTA for approval to begin preliminary engineering next year on an extension of the Main Street line to Northline Mall and a Southeast line, from downtown to Long Drive at the South Loop. Draft environmental impact statements are being put together this year. Every August, transit agencies nationwide submit projects for review. The FTA rates each proposal based on criteria such as ridership, cost and opportunities for economic development. Metro must receive a “recommended&rdqu