That's what John Niles, a transportation consultant, tells me in the e-mail below.

Niles declares that he is a volunteer advisor to the campaign that is opposing Proposition 1, the $17.9 billion ballot measure for Sound Transit.

I offer up Niles' observations and a couple of attachments for your perusal because I don't have time to go investigate how much Portland, Denver and all those other cities spend on their light rail vs. buses.

Here are a couple pdf's that Niles sent.

One is a spreadsheet,

the other is the Washington Policy Center's take on things.

Joe, thanks for your new story on Prop 1. I'm a volunteer advisor to the No campaign, with a day job as a transportation policy analyst.

I noticed these words in your new story: "Light rail is expensive to build but cheaper to operate than a fleet of buses." The second part is simply wrong as a generalization, despite being mouthed continuously by the Yes campaign and by Sound Transit.

This claim of light rail being cheaper to operate per passenger than buses is true in some cities, like Portland, but not in others, like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

[More:]

I prepared the attached table of cost numbers chart to confirm the Washington Policy Center analysis of last April that found light rail transit operations cost 12 percent more per boarding in aggregate than for buses in 2005 across six western cities. That report is also attached.

My spreadsheet results in the attached from the same database 2006 show this: San Jose, LA, and San Francisco light rail has higher per boarding cost than for buses in the same agency, and Portland, San Diego, and Sacramento lower . WPC had the same result with 2005 National Transit Database numbers.

In addition, I added three more transit agencies, and found that light rail is lower cost per boarding in Denver and Salt Lake City, but higher in Dallas.

Notice, too, that King County electric trolley bus has a lower operating cost per boarding than light rail in six cities. Electric trolley buses are a clean, green, inexpensive alternative to light rail, used to replace Seattle's street trollies in the late 1930s and early 40s.

King County's ordinary clean diesel buses cost less per boarding than light rail in Dallas and San Jose ... data do not reflect the impact of the new hybrid diesel-electrics which might drop KC Metro buses lower yet.

The overall conclusion from these data is that light rail in big cities like LA, San Francisco, and Dallas is more expensive to operate than buses in the same city.

This is the counterpoint to the Prop 1 Yes campaign and Sound Transit observation that in Portland, light rail operates at lower cost per boarding than buses.

Like many things, bus vs light rail depends on details specific to particular agencies.

Please call or write to get more details if this is something you are interested in. I have the attached as a spreadsheet and can rearrange the order to show different issues about cost.

John Niles