Games Governors Play

First, a disclosure: I am no longer able to drive because of a medical condition. As a result, I must rely on public transportation, and in my job, that means I have to travel on buses, light rail, and inter-city trains all over Southern California. I obviously have a personal interest in the funding of public transportation at both the state and federal levels. That's why the information contained in this editorial in today's Sacramento Bee has me hopping mad.

Like a lot of states, California is in one big financial mess, and the red-ink goes for miles. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying desperately to cut the budget so that he won't have to break a very important Republican rule: Never, but NEVER, raise taxes. So far, he's taken the ax to education and state hiring, and now, apparently, public transportation is next. However, to accomplish the last item, he's taken a very interesting route: he commissioned a survey on the use of intercity rail, a survey that used, shall we say, some very interesting techniques.

Intercity passenger trains are the transportation success story of the decade in California. But you wouldn't know it if you read the seriously flawed audit just released by the governor's Finance Department.

The audit is an embarrassment. If the Schwarzenegger administration had set out to deliberately kill intercity rail, it could not have chosen a clumsier set of assassins.

Their survey of ridership on the phenomenally successful Capitol Corridor train service between Roseville, Sacramento, Oakland and San Jose is particularly galling.

Auditors chose last Labor Day weekend to conduct their counts. The Labor Day weekend is traditionally a low ridership period for intercity trains, but last Labor Day was the weekend the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco was closed for repairs, a fact that had been widely publicized for weeks. Cars could not cross the bridge to San Francisco; neither could the Capitol Corridor's connecting buses that run from Emeryville to San Francisco. Because San Francisco is the final destination for a substantial number of passengers, the Bay Bridge closure that weekend guaranteed low ridership. Yet nine of the 22 trips surveyed by department of finance auditors took place during that three-day weekend.

That was not the only problem with the survey. Like freeways, passenger trains have peak periods, specific times of the day and days of the week trains are most crowded. Of the 22 train trips surveyed, only three took place during those peak times. Freeways are not planned for slow traffic days but for peak periods; trains should be planned similarly. Train capacity needs to be determined by the busiest times. The auditors' methodology failed to do that. The result, intentionally or not, low-balls ridership. [Emphasis added]

I mean, really...that is so clumsy and heavy-handed that even Karl Rove would be embarrassed. That apparently doesn't faze the Governator in the least. Does he think that nobody would challenge a ridership survey taken on a three-day holiday weekend?

The officials of the Capital Corridor, on the other hand, have a different set of numbers, based on both ridership and revenues. Both show dramatic increases over the past ten years. Given the current price of gasoline for passenger cars, I think it safe to say that those increases will continue.

My experience over the past 18 months qualifies only as anecdotal, but I'm willing to bet that the Southern California ridership has also increased dramatically. It's standing room only on a lot of the Metrolink trains (Los Angeles MTA run trains to and from LA Union Station and the outlying cities) and AMTRAK (Pacific Surfliner) during peak commuter periods, and the times I've had to travel during the off-peak period I was hardly the only passenger.

Now, here's why that "audit report" is so important:

Using their flawed surveys, finance auditors concluded that rail equipment for the Capitol Corridor is currently underutilized. That conclusion is nonsensical, and its consequences are potentially devastating. The state is weighing whether to issue bonds urgently needed to buy new rolling stock to accommodate passenger growth. Because it takes three to four years after an order is placed before new coaches can be delivered, any delay could lead to severe overcrowding on the system – and soon.

If people have to stand one to two hours to commute between cities, suddenly the comfort of a single occupancy automobile begins to sound attractive, even with current gasoline prices. More cars mean more gas, which means higher prices, and means more wear and tear on the highways, and means more air pollution, which means more climate change. What part of that causal chain does our allegedly "green" governor not get?

Moron.