Clark County Conservative

Providing ‘Clarity’ for Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart

8 Comments to “Providing ‘Clarity’ for Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart”

1. 
   carolyncrain
   December 26, 2012 at 11:14 PM

   Lew is right Steve! No is NO.
2. 
   Debbie Peterson
   December 27, 2012 at 12:41 AM

   Steve, You are tap dancing around this issue. You know perfectly well that this vote is a referendum against Portland’ light rail coming into Vancouver. Starting early last year, when it was clear that no other M/O financing could be legally found, Tim Leavitt, Burkman, and Smith started watering down the November vote – Saying the vote only meant that folks didn’t want to FUND the project with sales tax. WRONG! This vote was the only chance folks had to say, “No” to light rail and the mischief that it would bring to this county. All of you – Leavitt, Burkman, Smith, Moeller, and yes, you, are being intellectually dishonest when you say you need clarity – when you obtusely say that this vote was only about funding. STOP IT! It is beneath your dignity to continue pushing this pitiful yet painfully expensive project on YOUR constituents, when they have spoken so clearly. If you, Leavitt, Burkman, Smith, and Moeller can’t respect, reflect and represent your constituents’ wishes you all need to resign your positions and appoint public servants that can.
3. 
   Robert Dean
   December 27, 2012 at 6:32 AM

   Steve, you once asked the CRC to provide a scientific study of our ability to afford light rail and its tolls. They didn’t do it. You were fine with that because you approved the FEIS without the study included. No clarity needed there.

   You once asked Oregon to pay their fair share by allowing an Oregon income tax deduction on tolls paid by Clark County commuters. They told you to take a hike.

   Clear enough?

   Sam Adams said “No tolls, no bridge. No light rail, no bridge.” You accepted that. Seems pretty clear to me, too.
4. 
   Robert Dean
   December 27, 2012 at 6:40 AM

   Lew, I was reading through your hyperlinks and saw that Jeff Hamm had stated that C-Tran would enter into a separate contract with Tri-Met drivers whereby we would pay their salaries but not their unfunded pensions. So we’ll have $4 billion light rail infrastructure sitting there waiting for the Tri-Met union to sign off on a perfectly reasonable contract offer? Hmmm.
5. 
   Friend of John Galt
   December 27, 2012 at 10:48 AM

   Trolley cars (now called “light rail”) were pulled up in most cities around the country by the end of the 1950s. They were inflexible, expensive to operate, and were unable to keep up schedules when there were traffic accidents (that busses could navigate around). In all cases, the removed trolley cars were replaced by bus systems — that were often mismanaged by the public agencies that took them on. In many cases, the busses blindly followed the same routes as the removed trolleys — not taking into account the expansion of suburbs and changes in traffic patterns. This led to a lot of underutilized bus routes.

   In the 1980s, new “light rail” (and some “heavy rail”) systems brought trolley cars back to many communities. In some cases, these new transit systems studied traffic patterns and created new routes that reflected the traffic patterns at the time they were designed. As such, these “new” trolley cars were “successful” — at first. But traffic patterns _always_ evolve over time. With new centers of business and commerce appearing off the rail routes — that become “impossible” to directly serve, requiring “feeder busses” — that make schedules excessively long as riders must make multiple transfers to reach a destinations. Proving, once again, that rail-based transit systems are inflexible and expensive to operate. Still, politicians in many communities continue to support these boondoggles simply because they pay off union supporters (where the unions provide funding to elect politicians) and they pay off rent-seeking crony “capitalists” who also provide funding to supporting candidates. The tax payer gets less than what they pay for — and worse, to meet budgets (resources are never enough) the accompanying bus transit systems are starved for capital improvement and operating budget since the rail systems absorb so much of the available tax money.

   IF (and I’m not convinced this is the case) Vancouver needs ‘improved’ transit, it can be provided with various bus-based transit solutions with users getting better service and tax payers receiving much more value for the funds extracted from them. Unfortunately, this solution does not result in the big payoffs to the rent-seeker crony capitalists and tends to have less payoff to the unions. Bus solutions also tend to be much less disruptive to ‘innocent’ businesses and residents along the various routes, as the destruction of properties for right of way and station construction is rarely required for busses that can travel over existing roads. For “express” service, only a limited amount of exclusive use lanes are necessary to avoid traffic congestion and provide service that is equal or _better_ than that which can be provided by rail-based transit.

   Indeed, in the San Francisco Bay Area, before BART was built, the AC Transit (serving much of the East Bay Area) had more than 50 local and express (commute hours only) routes serving the San Francisco transit terminal, reaching into the more established suburbs. Once BART was completed, the AC Transit routes that did not exactly parallel the trains continued to operate with nearly the same volume of business as before BART — only political pressure forced AC to reduce service in an attempt to force more riders onto BART trains. As usual, there were unintended consequences that the central planners did not anticipate. Riders would drive to BART parking lots (one promise was “free parking” at suburban stations — a promise that was eventually rescinded). But instead of riding BART, many riders chose to join “casual car pools” where strangers would pick up passengers near BART stations and DRIVE them to San Francisco using the “HOV” (carpool) Lanes (which required 3 people per car for routes feeding the SF-Oakland Bridge). This was so efficient that BART (eventually) had to react by requiring those using parking lots to enter the paid area of the station to record the parking space used to avoid a parking ticket. This, of course only caused casual car poolers to move their cars to surrounding streets in residential areas. The morning casual car poolers generally rode BART one way toward home in the afternoon at the end of the work day. I note that EVEN WITH TRAFFIC, the casual car poolers “beat” the BART train by 10 or 20 minuets in each direction that they had a ride with a motorist.

   Subsequently, BART has had to engage in very expensive line extensions to serve portions of their tax area where the initial service did not originally go… in part, because the feeder bus lines were so inefficient that they did not provide adequate schedules, with the required transfers. This is considered one of the most successful “new” rail transit systems in the whole U.S. It is a financial flop, requiring massive taxpayer subsidy — essentially taxing the poor and non-working through sales taxes (and real estate taxes that end up being paid by renters as well as home owners) to subsidize middle-class workers. (This is another big flaw in using trolley cars — it usually takes funding away from busses that are extensively used by “the poor” to subsidize travel by more well-to-do commuters.)

   There is no transit need in Vancouver and Clark County that can not easily be fulfilled by very modest improvements to the existing bus service (at far lower cost than even the most basic trolley car system). “Bus Rapid Transit” (using exclusive roadway/or restricted lanes during commute hours) can easily fulfill any unmet transit requirements and also meet any Federal “strings” (for improved transit) attached to funding for a new bridge (if one is truly required — see the Couv.com report on a low-cost alternative involving improvements to the freight rail bridge west of the Interstate bridge).
6. 
   Stephanie
   December 27, 2012 at 11:13 AM

   Before the November deadline, an initative petition for a citizen vote on light rail, was delivered to the County Auditor, Greg Kimsey/Elections. To date, these signatures have not been verified. I called and asked why this job had not been completed, and I was told that it was because of the general election. Well, it’s over a month later and still nothing has been completed on the signature verifications.
   It’s time to make some phone calls to the Elections Department and ask when they will complete the job. Perhaps Steve or Tim would like to use some of their influence to see if they could get the Elections people to step it up a little! ……do ya think?
7. 
   Stephanie
   December 27, 2012 at 11:20 AM

   Update on previous comment by me. I have seen a Receipt dated May 3, 2012, signed by Carrie Lewellen of the City of Vancouver, receiving 250 pages of initative petition signatures. The City has some tall explaining to do! Here we are , 7 months later and they can’t get the job done? Something doesn’t smell right!!!
8. 
   Jeremy
   December 31, 2012 at 12:26 AM

   I am curious to know if Steve would like a job as one of Jay Inslee’s captains in his cabinet?

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