Mayor Dave's Light Rail Sleight of Hand

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz fundamentally believes that people should live in dense urban clusters and the New Urbanist Theory he believes is absolutely positive that light rail transit is the most efficient method for buzzing people around the human beehive. Mayor Dave is also an astute politician who knows the game of politics is about money, as is evidenced by this passing budget item on this evening's Common Council agenda.

Madison City Council Agenda July 5, 2005: 100. 01418 Amending the Capital Budget to use $300,000 of new Federal EDI funds for the Wexford Neighborhood Center Project (project 45 in the Planning and Development 2005 Capital Budget) and to create a new project 46, "Streetcar Study" in the P&D 2005 Adopted Capital Budget and transferring $300,000 of budgeted General Obligation from the Wexford project to the Streetcar Study project. Sponsors: Mayor Cieslewicz, Kenneth Golden, Tim Bruer, Robbie Webber and Judy K. Olson

Dave’s New Urbanist worker bees have found a way to shift $300,000 of Federal Tax Dollars to pay for his obsession with building light rail in Capital City. It’s a very slick shift because Mayor Dave wants to say the street car study won’t cost city taxpayers anything because it’s paid for by “federal dollars”. The Wexford Neighborhood Center still receives its $300K, but on paper the money now comes from “municipal taxes”.

Mayor Dave and his worker bees are liberal idealists and proud of the fact. The problem with true visionaries is that they often ignore real facts when those facts don’t support the dream. Even if the Mayor reads Rail Disasters 2005 (PDF) he would most likely find the reason for all the light rail failure in big American Cities as flaws in the overall urban design planning. Mistakes of planning his administration won’t make. This 29 page pdf file has the actual numbers on 23 major US cities with rail transit and the picture isn’t pretty unless you enjoy operating deficits.

“Using newly available data, this Rail Disasters 2005 grades rail transit systems based on their ability to increase overall transit ridership in their urban areas. To score an A, both transit ridership and transit passenger miles must be growing faster than driving, while F means that transit is stagnant or declining. The report shows that, of twenty-three urban areas that had rail transit in 2003, only three score better than a D.”

“When Congress first provided money for transit, it was exclusively for capital projects; cities were expected to raise the money needed for operating costs. … Not wishing to lose any federal funds, cities chose rail transit because of, not in spite of, its high costs. Once a few cities built rail transit, other regions became concerned that they weren’t getting their “fair share” of federal funds. This led to the current stampede for rail transit.”

Mayor Dave doesn’t want to miss his “fair share” of the federal pork, especially since he really needs the cash to build his model city filled with shiny new little trains.