ALRT (Alternatives to Light Rail Transit) |
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Alternatives to Light Rail Transit - ALRT Contact: Stephan Louis (513) 351-2848 www.alrt1.homestead.com Members of ALRT support a network of modern highways and a well-run, efficient public transit system. ALRT understands that these are essential components to maintaining our regions livability and viability. Our organization consists of local citizens from all parties, private and public workplaces, union workers and business owners as well as numerous elected officials. We are all too aware that the continued rise in highway congestion and travel delays will, if unaddressed, strangle this regions future growth. We are dismayed by OKI, SORTA and Queen City Metro's preoccupation with Light Rail Transit (LRT) as "the" solution to these problems. Twenty-five years of LRT experience has shown that neither traffic congestion or commuter times has been reduced in a single city. We have little patience with LRT proponents who rationalize their position by saying; "Federal tax dollars are free" In truth, this proposal will cost us dearly for forty years. ALRT has carefully considered the "Final Report" by the OKI and compiled data from local elected officials, civic leaders, engineers and national experts on the subject. ALRT has studied light rail transit systems throughout the country. ALRT found in nearly every case that light rail transit failed to produce the benefits its advocates predicted and usually exceeded cost projections. As a result, ALRT has come to the unavoidable conclusion: Light rail transit costs too much and helps too few. 1. Light rail transit will NOT reduce congestion overall or in the I-71corridor. Advocates admit that light rail transit will not result in any measurable impact on congestion. By the year 2023, the initial 19-mile leg between Covington and Blue Ash has a projected rider ship of fewer than 12,000 daily riders. This will result in a reduction of 8800 auto trips per day, a fraction of 1% of corridor auto trips. The expected growth in traffic congestion will wipe out this miniscule reduction in one year! OKI's study makes clear that this project is guaranteed to fail in reducing congestion but succeed in wasting hundreds of millions of dollars. 2. Light rail transit is by far the MOST COSTLY project ever considered by area voters. It's at least six times greater than the stadium project costs. Billions of dollars would be required to build it. Tens of millions of dollars would be required annually to operate and maintain this mammoth pork barrel project. To put this into perspective, it's likely that the cost of removing 8,800 auto trips from area roads by 2008 will amount to over $250,000 per commuter! Like other cities with light rail, when the promises fail to be met, the taxpayers will be coerced into anteing up more local taxes because the federal government will not provide matching funds for cost overruns. Once in place, Hamilton County taxpayers are forbidden to back out of this plan without suffering severe financial penalties imposed by the federal government. Our only choices would be to continue to add more local tax dollars to feed this habit. Light rail transit will inevitably become a runaway train! Even the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) recently concurred with ALRT that light rail in Cincinnati costs too much and does too little. The indefinite subsidy to cover the cost of $15+ per passenger trip has caused the FTA to rate the I-71 corridor proposal in the bottom ten percentile of proposals being considered. Taxpayers are asked to pay billions of dollars for this? 3. Light rail transits systems are SLOW. Light rail transit typically operates at an average speed of 17 to 22 mph (more like the speed of a bicycle). The express bus that travels from the I-71 exit at Fields Ertel Road to downtown Cincinnati (Metro # 71) operates at twice that speed and that's during rush hour! 4. Light rail transit DOES NOT connect our neighborhoods, it divides them. Fifty to 150-ton trains would relentlessly pound their way through otherwise peaceful communities, day and night, sometimes at four-minute intervals. Bright lights, squealing wheels and loud horns would become the norm. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, light rail transit kills and maims more people per passenger mile than automobiles on urban freeways. It's no wonder why many local communities oppose light rail transit. The initial 19-mile leg of the proposed I-71 LRT plan would require more than 50 roadway crossings including Montgomery, Cooper, Plainfield, Hunt, Martin Luther King, Ridge, Galbraith, Reading, Pfeiffer, etc. Each crossing will close for 30 to 45 seconds every four minutes during peak hours. Light rail transit preempts carefully engineered & timed traffic light systems. It takes priority over emergency vehicles and our neighborhoods. It's simple to understand why light rail transit actually causes more automobile traffic tie-ups, further delaying daily commutes. 5. Downtown traffic will ultimately experience near GRIDLOCK conditions. Drivers will be forced to compete with 180 to 270 foot trains on narrow streets. With intervals as little as two to four minutes, cross traffic will no longer be able to drive uninterrupted. Light rail transit would occupy one full lane on both Walnut and Main Streets. In addition, all street parking on one side of both streets must be eliminated, jeopardizing many long-time retail businesses. This would render useless the current coordinated traffic lights and thereby creating traffic chaos in the downtown grid. 6. Light rail is a 19th CENTURY TECHNOLOGY. While the light rail vehicles are bigger and sleeker looking than the old streetcars, they offer nothing new as a transportation system. Streetcars lost out to the automobile over 50 years ago and current traffic patterns reflect modern lifestyles. Surely, as we enter the 21st century, we can do better than an antiquated light rail transit system. For more information go to: www.alrt1.homestead.com. Most of our information can be found in OKI's "Final Report", a $5 million study supporting light rail transit, commissioned by the proponents of light rail transit and paid for by You. Let the taxpayers decide what's best for Greater Cincinnati! There are alternatives to light rail that are less costly and will reduce traffic congestion and preserve our economic viability. While ALRT does not support any one particular alternative, the astronomical cost to build and operate a light rail transit system is counter-productive and fails the common sense test. |
The following statement was released on Monday, June 25, 2001 by a bipartisan group of more than twenty elected officials on the steps of the Hamilton County Courthouse: There are better alternatives to the transportation challenges facing greater Cincinnati than the light rail transit plan that has been proposed by OKI and SORTA. All of us agree that: 1) We unanimously oppose the present plans for construction of a light rail transit system in Hamilton County; and 2) We will work in a unified way toward the defeat of a sales tax aimed at funding light rail transit in Hamilton County; 3) We demand that SORTA not place a tax for light rail transit on the ballot; 4) We demand that SORTA and OKI more thoroughly explore alternative options for resolving Greater Cincinnati transportation issues. Individual elected officials and organizations present may have their own additional perspectives on this issue, which they will present separately at the press conference. |
An Honest Assessment of the MetroMoves Final Plan From ALRT - Alternatives to Light Rail Transit Website: www.alrt1.homestead.com ALRT is a citizen's anti-rail group, with members from many walks of life. ALRT does not oppose good public transportation, but we strongly oppose Metro's preoccupation with rail. We believe that rail's inherent inability to move people efficiently and its record of ongoing cost escalation will kill any chance of our ever having a really good public transportation system. Rail does not work well in cities of Cincinnati's size and configuration. Our publications are simple and may appear amateurish when compared to Metro's, as we do not use your tax dollars to finance fancy brochures and TV commercials that were created by advertising professionals. On the following page, ALRT will point out the flaws in the MetroMoves Plan by commenting on statements made under the various headings in the six page MetroMoves brochure. The MetroMoves headings appear in bold type. Making It Easier to Get Where You Need To Go Some pollutants such as Nitrogen Oxide and Carbon Dioxide will increase if rail is built. (Source: Department of Transportation document rejecting the original I-71 rail proposal) Trains require power. During hot spells, we are asked to conserve power, so it appears that we would need more power plants (coal fired in this part of the country) The MetroMoves Plan & The Regional Rail Plan What is convenient about a system that, in most cases will require a minimum of three separate trips plus walks to and from the origin and terminus of the trips: (bus to train to bus with a walk to and from the buses. What is efficient about it? Does it really ease traffic congestion when it only removes one or two automobiles (Metro won't dispute this) out of every hundred automobiles on the road? Won't it actually CAUSE congestion when 90 to 270 foot long trains cross streets every five minutes during rush hour? Won't the ninety-eight or ninety-nine out of 100 autos that are still on the road, combined with the trucks and buses that are waiting for the trains to pass increase pollution? Streetcars are another indefensible part of the plan, probably added in the hope that nostalgia will make the plan saleable. These streetcars will run entirely on the streets in Downtown, Over-the Rhine, Clifton and Mt. Auburn. Anything they can do, buses can do more efficiently. That, along with the fact that they seriously interfered with automobile traffic is the reason Metro's predecessor switched to buses 50 years ago. Like light rail, streetcars can only go where the tracks go. Neither streetcars nor rail can detour around accidents or civil disturbances. They simply stop. The Bus Expansion and Regional Rail Maps Take the time to look at the maps and figure how you might use the rail and bus combination and decide whether or not it would be of use to you. Very few people find that the proposal fits their needs, but nevertheless believe that others will find that it fits theirs. If you feel that it involves too many transfers and too much time lost, odds are that most other folks will feel the same way. This means low usage. The Benefits of MetroMoves No one would disagree that if we spend billions of dollars there will be some benefits, but Implementation of a rail as a part of the system would minimize those benefits. The inefficiency and high cost of moving passengers by rail means that we move fewer passengers for each dollar spent. As for curbing traffic growth, remember that statistics available to Metro show that rail will only remove one out of every one hundred cars from the road. Many of the rail passengers will be former bus passengers. Metro says that MetroMoves supports the local economy by returning $5 for every $1 spent. This is a highly debatable statement with no evidence offered to prove it. Until they do prove it, we must ask whether figures lie or liars figure. |
