A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities
A few decades ago two governments pursued vastly different strategies to manage transportation. Seattle invested huge money in new highways, spending billions of dollars. Vancouver, BC invested in a
A few decades ago two governments pursued vastly different strategies to manage transportation. Seattle invested huge money in new highways, spending billions of dollars. Vancouver, BC invested in a bus system and did not build new highways. Whereas Seattle has at least 4 highways feeding downtown Seattle, Vancouver has 0. Today the results are obvious. Seattle has many roads, yet the appetite for even more roads is not satisfied. Vancouver built a bus system that moves a large percent of the population now and has spent far less money doing it. The numbers support the long-term economic impact. Currently Washington and Sound Transit spend over $6B a year on transportation, while British Columbia and the Vancouver Regional Transportation Authority (GVTA) spends $2.5B. Whereas Sound Transit only gets $14M in ridership fares, GVTA gets $300M. Sound Transit touts their ridership of over 1 million a month, GVTA gets over 26 million a month.
The primary difference has been spending on mass transit infrastructure. Whereas it is Washington State policy to require local transit authorities to derive all taxes locally through the sales tax, British Columbia used fuel taxes and property taxes to fund mass transit. The money Washington State spends on road construction goes to mass transit in British Columbia. The GVTA spends twice the money each year to provide convenient service with peak hour buses coming less than 10 minutes apart. Sound Transit has far less frequent service, the impact being far less ridership. People will ride buses if they are a viable option; so far our state’s transportation strategy has not allowed it to be a practical solution. The net result is costing the citizens of this state over $3 billion a year. We do have more people, which accounts for some of the spending, but does not explain close to all of it. The difference is only going to grow as the cost of building new highways grows at a dramatic rate.
Mass transit is not an environmental issue; it is an economic issue, both for taxpayers and citizens. As Tip Johnson pointed out, not only is the cost high for government, but also for individuals. A portion of the money spent on our failed transportation strategy should go towards development of a world class bus sytem, the rest would be better served going somewhere else.
The primary difference has been spending on mass transit infrastructure. Whereas it is Washington State policy to require local transit authorities to derive all taxes locally through the sales tax, British Columbia used fuel taxes and property taxes to fund mass transit. The money Washington State spends on road construction goes to mass transit in British Columbia. The GVTA spends twice the money each year to provide convenient service with peak hour buses coming less than 10 minutes apart. Sound Transit has far less frequent service, the impact being far less ridership. People will ride buses if they are a viable option; so far our state’s transportation strategy has not allowed it to be a practical solution. The net result is costing the citizens of this state over $3 billion a year. We do have more people, which accounts for some of the spending, but does not explain close to all of it. The difference is only going to grow as the cost of building new highways grows at a dramatic rate.
Mass transit is not an environmental issue; it is an economic issue, both for taxpayers and citizens. As Tip Johnson pointed out, not only is the cost high for government, but also for individuals. A portion of the money spent on our failed transportation strategy should go towards development of a world class bus sytem, the rest would be better served going somewhere else.
