Proponents assume public transit adoption never seen anywhere

In its latest effort at spin, Parsons Brinckerhoff last week provided the public with the ridership forecast for rail transit. Parsons says that rail transit will increase total public transportation ridership by 70 percent over the next 25 years, or nearly three times the projected 27 percent gain in population.

This is not credible, and here's why:

There are no urban areas that have put in rail systems in modern times and increased public transportation ridership greater than the growth of population — let alone three times.

Review the U.S. Census data for those metro areas that put rail lines in during the 1980-2000 period. You will find that of all the metro areas with rail, only San Diego managed to even maintain the same growth in transit commuters as population. All other metro areas had less growth in transit commuters than population. A third of these metro areas had absolute declines in transit commuters.

Let's come at this rail forecast another way.

As part of the 1992 rail transit process, Parsons forecast that the then-daily bus ridership of 206,500 would increase to 249,000 in 2005, even if we did nothing (July 1992 forecast, pages 4-10).

Then in 2003, during the bus/rapid-transit process, Parsons forecast that the then-daily bus ridership of 186,000 would increase to 261,000 in 2025, even if we did nothing (July 2003 forecast, pages 4-10 and 15).

Now in 2006, Parsons forecasts that today's daily bus ridership of 180,000 will increase to 235,000 in 2030, even if we do nothing.

Note that all the above numbers are Parsons', not mine. The actual bus ridership has steadily declined since 1992, and Parsons continues to forecast increases of 30 percent without ever explaining the drop in bus ridership.

The significance of these "do nothing" bus forecasts is that the assumptions and computer models used for them are the same as those used to produce the rail transit forecast. Therefore, to find the latest rail transit forecast credible you would have to find the no-build forecasts credible. Unless you are unable to recognize shibai when it faces you, this is unlikely.

The other statement that Parsons made about the projections was "Rail transit can ease traffic because it's the only one of the major options that pulls cars out of the mix."

You have to parse the sentences to get at their meaning, since this statement does not say what it appears to say. It does not say that only rail transit can ease traffic; it said says rail is the only option to pull cars "out of the mix," whatever that means.

And when Parsons says "ease traffic," we know by earlier statement what this means: "By 2030 a rail transit line could ease traffic congestion by 10 percent overall. By then, however, traffic congestion will likely worsen, since 30 percent more people are projected to be on the island."

In other words, even if Parsons' forecast is right, traffic congestion will still be far worse than today even if they were to build the rail transit line.

However, there is the HOT lanes option.

We now have about 17,000 vehicles per peak hour coming into town from the far end of the Leeward corridor. Were we to build elevated three-lane reversible HOT lanes, that would remove about 5,500 vehicles per hour from the regular freeways, or at least 30 percent of the current traffic. That is triple the impact on traffic congestion than the effect that Parsons says rail transit would have. That would ease the traffic quite considerably and mean that it would take 25 years to get back to current traffic congestion levels — and that's only if we do not build any additional HOT lanes.

And this calculation does not take into account that buses and vanpools running on uncongested HOT lanes at 60 mph, no longer stuck in traffic, would greatly encourage some motorists to change to using express buses, since the HOT lanes would reduce bus travel time by about 20 minutes.

With Mayor Hannemann, Parsons officials and a majority of the City Council all spinning away with their pro-rail statements, how can we possibly expect fair treatment for the HOT lanes alternative?

Cliff Slater is a regular columnist whose footnoted columns are at: www.cliffslater.com.