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Oregon: Study Finds Light Rail System Rarely Used
The Truth About Cars ^ | May 17, 2011 | The Newspaper.com

Posted on 05/17/2011 11:42:32 AM PDT by Qbert

A study released earlier this month by the Cascade Policy Institute questioned whether pricey mass transit options in Portland, Oregon are really being used by the public. The city has been a leader in securing funding for various forms of passenger rail and trolley systems. The Obama administration, for example, pledged $745 million in federal gas tax dollars to pay for the construction of a $1.5 billion, 7.3 mile light rail project connecting Portland to Milwaukie. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has singled out the city’s priorities as for praise.

“By adding innovative transit opportunities, Portland has become a model livable community, a city where public transportation brings housing closer to jobs, schools, and essential services,” LaHood wrote in March.

The Cascade Policy Institute wanted to verify the claim that the TriMet transit system was able to move more passengers than a standard bus line. The researchers did so by attending five special events where use of mass transit would make the most sense, including the final playoff game for the Portland Trail Blazers. The events were spread throughout the year to examine the effects of different weather conditions on transit use. City officials have never made a study of this sort.

“This is important because transportation planners at Metro, TriMet, ODOT and other agencies routinely make multi-billion-dollar decisions based on travel surveys, computer models or simply their own personal beliefs about how people should travel,” Cascade President John A. Charles, Jr wrote in his report. “They rarely have any direct knowledge of how people actually travel under specific conditions of time, mode availability, parking pricing and geographic constraints.”

The Cascade team counted a total of 47,666 individual attendees, noting how many headed toward the venue from a light rail station and how many arrived by automobile, bicycle or foot. At best, 21 percent arrived by rail to see the Trail Blazers. At worst, the opening of the Gresham Civic Station saw just 2 percent arrive by rail. On average, rail accounted for just 11 percent of the trips recorded.

“The field research shows that continued use of the phrase ‘high-capacity transit’ by local planners to describe the regional rail program is Orwellian,” Cascade President John A. Charles, Jr. said in a statement. “Light rail is actually a low-capacity system, and the streetcar is simply irrelevant. TriMet’s buses carries two-thirds of all regional transit trips on a daily basis, and that’s the service that should be recognized as high-capacity transit. Unfortunately, bus service is being sacrificed by TriMet in order to build costly new rail lines that carry relatively few people.”

A copy of the report is available in a 1.2mb PDF file at the source link below.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/cascademyth.pdf


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events; US: Oregon
KEYWORDS: lightrail; masstransit; raylahood; wgids
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To: razorback-bert; Yo-Yo

>>Wille has gone to the great roundhouse in cyberspace.<<

Nothing as grandiose as the great roundhouse in cyberspace. He’s over at Liberty Post. org pushing his Agenda 21 programs with B-chan.


61 posted on 05/17/2011 2:42:28 PM PDT by B4Ranch (Allowing to America is akin to injecting yourself with AIDS to prove how tolerant you are..)
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To: pnh102

Ironically, the Twin Cities wasted about this much on their light rail, instead repairing bridges.


62 posted on 05/17/2011 4:12:05 PM PDT by castlegreyskull
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To: Freedom_Is_Not_Free

I think we can agree that Sacramento’s light rail was botched.

Way back when Sacramento had a choice between joining BART and connecting to the Bay Area or having their own Toonerville Trolley the shortsighted pols - led by Anne Rudin and Phil Isenberg - chose light rail saying that BART would take jobs out of Sacramento. So, instead, there’s some 20,000 people per day commuting from Sacramento down the I-80 to the Bay Area and the ones who take the Amtrak (CalTrans, really) Capitol train have made it the second money-maker for Amtrak after the Boston-DC corridor.


63 posted on 05/17/2011 5:03:55 PM PDT by MeganC (NO WAR FOR OIL! ........except when a Democrat's in charge.)
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To: Haiku Guy

Oh, Lord, that is CUTE!!! (-:


64 posted on 05/17/2011 5:07:23 PM PDT by MeganC (NO WAR FOR OIL! ........except when a Democrat's in charge.)
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To: Baynative

No surprise here. The whole thing is billions of dollars for a private train set!


65 posted on 05/17/2011 8:36:39 PM PDT by tallyhoe
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To: Baynative

No surprise here. The whole thing is billions of dollars for a private train set!


66 posted on 05/17/2011 8:36:47 PM PDT by tallyhoe
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To: hellbender
Wonderful points.

Yeah, if rail was so nonviable, what about Vanderbilt, etc., etc., who made zillions running railroads?

Your point about walking to the train station is especially good.

67 posted on 05/18/2011 7:49:52 AM PDT by caddie
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To: Qbert
I view this report with suspicion.

I'm a skeptic of light rail in general, so Whenever I'm in Portland (or any other city that has a light rail system) I make a point of checking out those trains to see if they're being used.

Unlike, say, Denver or LA, in Portland I have found that the trains are generally carrying a lot of passengers, and there are lots of folks waiting at the stations.

Not saying that these "researchers" are lying ... but I suspect they're massaging their results to fit their pre-conceived notions.

68 posted on 05/18/2011 7:55:04 AM PDT by r9etb
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To: Qbert

Willie Green still sucks.


69 posted on 05/18/2011 7:56:40 AM PDT by Lazamataz (The Democrat Party is Communist. The Republican Party is Socialist. The Tea Party is Capitalist.)
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To: RinaseaofDs

Yes.

Public transportation is not about effective timely transportation.

It’s about creating a larger more powerful nanny state.


70 posted on 05/18/2011 11:02:56 AM PDT by NoLibZone (Until Reagan rises from the dead: Thank God McCain didnt win. Obama's better than some RINO.)
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To: Qbert

Doesn’t help that it only runs 4 times in the Morning and 4 Times at night


71 posted on 05/18/2011 12:57:05 PM PDT by dila813
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To: caddie
Some here think on a car means "freedom." In a way it does, but in a way our society has become enslaved by the car. One or two people in a two-ton hunk of steel sailing down the Interstate is astoundingly inefficient. Cars require enormous expanses of pavement, they require space for parking (meaning huge garages in cities). Most of that stuff is publicly financed. Is it really desirable to drive 30 mi. round trip to a big box store for hardware? Is that "freedom"? Those stores are only possible because of enormous public investment in highways. Why not patronize a hardware store in your home town, and save all that time spent paralyzed in a car seat, probably guzzling a fattening soft drink from the myriad of cupholders which infest modern cars. In a train, quite unlike either a car or a plane, you can actually get up and walk around. A train station can actually be located in the heart of a city--not so an airport.

Railroads did not die a natural death because they were inefficient. The govt. sabotaged them with taxes, regulations, and union favoritism, then the govt. "had to" take them over "to save them." Exactly what the govt. is now doing with the health care industry. First they cripple the private system, then that becomes the pretext for socialism.

72 posted on 05/18/2011 4:19:08 PM PDT by hellbender
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To: hellbender

The truth is that the government wanted to benefit the airplane companies, for military considerations, by boosting air travel over train travel, out of fear that airline makers couldn’t stay viable in peacetime.


73 posted on 05/18/2011 4:21:23 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: hellbender

I disagree very much.
Cars and motorcycles represent individual freedom and prosperity.
Public transportation represents the socialist quest to control the populace.


74 posted on 05/18/2011 4:23:26 PM PDT by nascarnation
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To: MeganC

Maybe because 99% of Americans actually use highways.


75 posted on 05/18/2011 4:25:15 PM PDT by Republic of Texas (Socialism Always Fails)
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To: hellbender

When is the last time you carried five pieces of plywood with you on the train returning home from the hardware store?


76 posted on 05/18/2011 4:26:41 PM PDT by NorseWood
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To: NorseWood

I’m not saying I would carry plywood on the train. I’m saying the train is perfectly capable of carrying plywood to your local hardware store or lumberyard (mine is only about 2 mi. away, vs. 15 mi. to the nearest big box), where you can pick it up. In fact, that’s how things were done until very recently.


77 posted on 05/18/2011 4:50:18 PM PDT by hellbender
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To: nascarnation
Did you actually read my post? I'm not defending publicly-financed trains to nowhere. I'm bewailing the fact that govt. killed our fabulous network of private railroads. Trains are the most efficient way of moving cargo on land. The only cheaper way of moving things is by boat. If someone is going the same place as thousands of other people, it makes no sense to ride a car with one or two passengers.

And don't kid yourself that our highway system and all the other infrastructure dedicated to cars wasn't heavily subsidized by the govt.

78 posted on 05/18/2011 4:55:31 PM PDT by hellbender
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To: Republic of Texas

>>>...99% of Americans actually use highways.<<<

Perhaps. But as the population increases and we’re not building a corresponding amount of highways or airports then how are these people supposed to get around?

Some years back when Los Angeles proposed their Metro Rail it got the same kind of opposition as I see here but when I have to go to Los Angeles now I fly into Burbank, walk over to the Metro Rail and 20 minutes later I’m at Union Station. The same trip with a rental car is nearly an hour during the day. The trains in LA any more are packed. And those are people who are not on the road so that frees up highway capacity for people like you.


79 posted on 05/18/2011 5:02:28 PM PDT by MeganC (NO WAR FOR OIL! ........except when a Democrat's in charge.)
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To: dfwgator
Interesting. The original motive for the Interstate Highway System was originally supposed to be related to national defense also. Now it is heavily used by everyday commuters and used by giant trucks which compete with the railroads while beating the pavement to bits and blowing small cars halfway off the road.

Ironic that Eisenhower, who pushed the Interstates, later bashed the military-industrial complex.

80 posted on 05/18/2011 6:07:26 PM PDT by hellbender
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