Snohomish County Council chairman Gary Nelson, one of the three people who wrote the opposition statement to $17.9 billion Proposition 1 for the voter guide, called me after reading the story I wrote for Tuesday's paper.

He wanted to elaborate on the concept of "subarea equity," the Sound Transit policy that says all the money collected from a subarea (Pierce is one subarea) will be spent to "benefit" that area. Not spent "in" the subarea, but to benefit. The board, which includes Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, Tacoma City Councilwoman Julie Anderson, Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow and Lakewood City Councilwoman Claudia Thomas, decides exactly what benefits an area.

UPDATE: Sound Transit spokesman Geoff Patrick said opponents are wrong about a couple things: First, Pierce County got the 9 Sounder commuter rail roundtrips they were promised in the 1996 ballot measure. (They said Pierce was promised 15 trips, but will get only 13 with the addition of ST2.)

The Sound Transit board has decided that the entire cost of all 20 regional express bus routes that start outside King County benefit only that county. For instance, the full cost of the Tacoma-Seattle Express benefits only Pierce County, not King County. And the entire cost of building and operating Sounder commuter trains from Lakewood and Tacoma to downtown Seattle benefits only Pierce County. (UPDATE: Patrick said this is mostly true. He points out that Pierce transit riders also will "benefit" when the ride on 55 miles of light rail that they didn't pay to build.)

Nelson wanted to point out that his county is getting the short end of the stick from the combined Sound Transit measures, the 1996 measure, plus the one on the Nov. 4 ballot. But Pierce County is even worse off, he said.

Snohomish pays 13 percent of the local taxes and gets back only 8 percent of the benefits, Nelson said.

Pierce County contributes about 17 percent of the taxes to pay for Sound Transit, but gets back only 6 percent of the benefits if you look at boardings. That is, if you look at how many people get onto a regional bus, Sounder commuter rail or Link light rail in 2030, when it's all built.
The chart supports opponents' contention that "We're all paying to build light rail for Seattle." (UPDATE: Patrick said Pierce paid nothing for the first segment of light rail and in ST2 is paying only for right of way purchases and engineering for the portion from Federal Way south.)

Here's the chart that Proposition 1 opponents Jim MacIsaac and Emory Bundy sent me. I've asked Sound Transit to respond.

King County pays 60 percent of the taxes and gets 85 percent of the benefit.

And here is McIsaac's explanation of how he put the chart together.

Joe --
This was a preliminary exercise to express User Benefits by subarea in terms of systems boardings locations. For example, a Sounder boarding from Tacoma to Seattle is returned the same day by a boarding in Seattle to Tacoma. I contend that system benefit for that round trip goes 50% to Tacoma (Pierce) and 50% to Seattle (North King).

[More:]

Actually if economic benefits were to be explored, Seattle avoids the need to build a parking space; conversely Tacoma supplies a park-ride space (for the vast majority of Sounder passengers). In addition, Seattle gains the economic benefit of an employee. On the other hand, the Tacoma taxpayer/rider gains the benefit of a highly publicly subsidized transit trip and free parking versus the expense of driving by auto and paying for parking.

The first four of the five columns were summarized directly from Sound Transit's Sound Move and ST2 Financial Plan estimates. The 2030 User Benefit's column shows my preliminary estimate of proportional benefits based on the assumption that benefits accrue equally to each end of the trip. I am still awaiting a Station Boardings report from Sound Transit that it says will not be completed until October 24. After receipt I will prepare an updated report on user benefits by user trip ends.

Jim

Here is more on the topic from MacIsaac:

Colleagues --

Subarea equity is a very distorted program of Sound Transit. It presumably equates subarea investments to subarea tax revenues. But coming out of the starting blocks in 1995, that equation has been overtly misappropriated. Costs and benefits of each Light Rail, Sounder and Regional Express Bus route that has one end outside of the Seattle/North King subarea has been allocated to the suburban ends of the routes -- no benefit is allocated to the Seattle/North King subarea.

The major folly of this method of subarea benefit allocation is that all benefits of any regional transit route with one end outside of Seattle are designated as 100% benefit to the suburban end of the route. This first ignores that most routes provide two-way operations. Not only do transit routes bring people into Seattle, they also serve Seattle residents traveling to suburban destinations. But the even greater benefit omission is which end of the transit trip benefits from the transit trip. A major benefit at the transit trip destination end is reduction of parking spaces. A major detriment at the suburban end of the trip is a need to fund, allocate land area, and build park-ride lot space for the transit trips. Except at Northgate, Seattle does not allow development of park-ride lots for its residents traveling to a job outside of Seattle.

Another issue of subarea inequity is the allocation of federal grant revenue and bond revenue. Please see the attachment hereto. It shows the proportional results of revenues, capital costs and user benefits of the combined ST1 and ST2 programs from 1997 thru the assumed completion of the ST2 capital program in 2023. The 1st column shows the proportion of tax revenues collected from each subarea. The 2nd and 3rd columns show the proportion of federal grants and bond revenue allocated to each subarea. Note that the Seattle/North King subarea generates only 26% of local tax revenues collected by Sound Transit. Yet it receives 58% of all federal grant revenue and 34% of all bond revenue. 34% of the combined ST1 and ST2 capital investments go to the Seattle/North King subarea compared to its 26% of local tax revenues.

The Ultimate Subarea Equity Comparison
The ultimate test of subarea equity is the trip-end locations of riders served. The best estimate of subarea benefit is derived from transit boardings and alightings. I have not yet been able to acquire a combined ST1+ST2 operations plan that shows daily and peak hour boardings by station and line volumes between stations. So I have prepared a rough estimate of "potential" system benefit for each rail and bus route based upon the ends of each bus route and each rail route segment. For example, 95% of all Sounder North riders travel to/from Seattle. So I assigned 48% of Sounder North benefit to Seattle and 52% to Snohomish County. For the future light rail investment allocated to the Snohomish subarea, I assigned 50% of its benefit to Snohomish, 40% to Seattle/North, 5% to South King and 5% to East King. Similar allocations were made for all Regional Express Bus routes.

This approach has likely significantly underestimated boardings/alightings in the Seattle/North King subarea versus those in the suburban subareas. The preliminary proportional 2030 system benefit estimates are shown in the 5th (right side) column of the attached table.

Note that at least 52% of all ST system service benefits accrue to the Seattle/North King subarea. That is double its local tax contributions to the system development and operation. The Snohomish and Pierce subareas receive less than half the proportional benefit versus their local tax contributions. East King benefits are 30% less than its proportional tax contributions; South King benefits come in 15% less than its proportional tax contributions.

There is little doubt that the Sound Transit regional transit investments are Seattle-centric and largely benefit Seattle. Not only do I question the inappropriate magnitude of the Sound Transit capital investments versus lower cost-intensive alternatives, but I seriously question the subarea equity to be derived from the investments. Furthermore, I seriously question the unserved regional transit needs of the region that are totally unaddressed by the Sound Transit investment programs.

Jim