It took over a decade, but people across the country are finally beginning to figure out how the light rail scam works.
Consultants who stand to profit from building rail lines quote ridiculously low cost estimates, then later the cost triples, quadruples or worse. Politicians feign shock and the companies laugh all the way to the bank.
Parsons Transportation Group, the same company that designed our rail line, tried this scam most recently in Southern Nevada, but this time, it didn’t go so well.
In December, Parsons attempted to convince taxpayers that a 33-mile line that would connect Henderson and North Las Vegas would cost a mere $713 million, or $22 million a mile. That didn’t jibe with what citizens were reading on the Web, and they questioned the costs. Rather than act as a mindless cheerleader for rail, like the media in most cities, the Las Vegas Review-Journal took a good look at the estimate, calling it “absurdly low” when compared to actual costs in other cities — which run as high as $80 million a mile.
Parsons quickly revised its projections upward by $400 million in response and was eventually forced to admit that with inflation factored in — these consultants often “forget” to factor in inflation — the real cost would be between $2 billion and $3 billion. (Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, an unrelated company that did the estimates for our mass transit project, conveniently “forgot” to figure in inflation, too.)
Within a month, the Vegas light rail plan was dead.
Charlotte wasn’t so lucky. We’re one of the cities that deliberately closed its eyes and bought the scam. In the late 1990s, consultant Parsons Brinckerhoff claimed that we too could have rail for a mere $29 million a mile, and that the South Boulevard rail line would come in around $230 million. Some city council members who doubted those numbers raised $5,000 and brought in their own consultant, Wendell Cox.
Using costs of other lines across the country for comparison, Cox predicted our rail line would cost over $400 million and have far lower ridership and much higher subsidization costs than predicted. The powers that be treated Cox like a mental defective and laughed him out of city hall. Cox and those who hired him were small-minded and lacked vision. As it turns out, Cox was almost dead on. It now looks like his estimates were actually a little low.
In 2003, Creative Loafing reported that the last time Parsons Transportation and Parsons Brinckerhoff worked on a large-scale project together, they were responsible for an 80-foot sinkhole along Hollywood Boulevard, thousands of lawsuits totaling over $1 billion, and a trail of fraud and corruption so long that even the FBI couldn’t untangle it. Parsons Brinckerhoff, the firm that told voters in 1998 that our mass transit plan would cost about a billion dollars — it is now forecast to cost over $6 billion and counting — is the same firm that conspired with Massachusetts officials and the Federal Highway Administration to hide the true $14 billion cost of Boston’s Big Dig from the public, bond investors and Wall Street.
This alarmed us here at CL, and three years ago, we demanded to know why these firms were hired to do work here and how we’d keep them from robbing us blind. Didn’t this stuff turn up in the background check of these companies? And shouldn’t we double check their cost estimates?
Through a spokesperson, Charlotte Area Transit System CEO Ron Tober told CL at the time that he was aware that there were problems on both the L.A. Red Line Project and on the Big Dig, but claimed that he was not aware of the details of those problems.
Other city and town officials who sat on the committee that vetted the companies told us they looked at the companies’ “vision for the future,” not their past histories.
And three years ago, after we ran all of this by him, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory told CL he would demand answers. But weeks later, McCrory laughed at CL for asking questions about the competence of our rail contractors in an interview with WBT radio’s Keith Larson. Needless to say, the mayor never delivered those “answers” he promised us.
Now the nine-mile South Boulevard light rail line, which was supposed to cost $230 million, is at $427 million and costs are forecasted to go higher, though how much higher nobody knows because the city is still trying to untangle the mess. It appears that Parsons Transportation Group has fraudulently billed the city, and expensive new engineering snafus are turning up on a daily basis.
Now McCrory is outraged and he wants answers. He’s demanding that someone bring him a damn report, NOW. Somebody better explain how this could have possibly happened, he fumed for the cameras last week.
For over five years, we tried, Mr. Mayor, and you mocked us. Cox and your fellow city council members tried, and you wouldn’t listen.
But might we make a suggestion? Forget that report and try Google. It worked just fine for the people of Southern Nevada.
The future of rail here is pretty predictable, based on what’s happened elsewhere. After massive cost overruns, the line will be completed only to open to ridership that’s significantly less than what was originally forecast. The cost of subsidizing the line, meanwhile, will be far higher than forecast. The line will then suck so much money out of the system that bus service or other planned corridors will have to be cut.
It’s a pattern that Professor Bent Flyvbjerg at Denmark’s University of Aarlborg has made a career documenting. Flyvbjerg has a word for the bureaucratic and engineering phenomenon that has led to these problems across the globe: “lying.”
Got a story idea? E-mail Tara at tara.servatius@ creativeloafing.com.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.
As usual great work, we will soon see all king of taxes leveled across the board in order to maintain this money pit, as in other cities additional taxes in your car registration, tolls, property, gasoline, and even water and telephone will be tapped in order to upkeep this unnecessary light rail train, (Singular Train as in One)
These close minded idiots need to get fired or retire. Ron, Pam, Pat, all of you. We need fresh young people that have enough sense to listen to others and not treat their citizens as slaves for the system. Get real idiots. We, the people of Charlotte, are paying for these rediculous ideas and useless efforts.
This information is to add with Tara’s great article. Following questions and facts have been presented to Mayor Pat McCrory, City Council members, Ron Tobor and City Officials. Officials take Mayor Magoo’s insight to “Pass the Buck and allow the taxpayers take it up the backside.”
September 6, 2006 was reported that cost of South Corridor Light Rail would oversee $426 million dollar budget. Again, costs have gone up. All major construction projects that occur in the states have been hit significantly with higher cost. If the project were managed by proper planning and insight, Charlotte would not have this predicament. Fed’s do not help with cost overruns ever been very few exceptions. The extra cost usually falls upon local taxpayer, unless the state will participate. Look at I-485 that shows the answer.
In 1999, Parsons Transportation Group was paid $38 million dollars to design Charlotte’s Light Rail. This project was supposed have nine subcontractors and did not. The City is seeking reimbursement and will not know amount until end of the project, unless a possible agreement is worked out. City’s engineering department has been asked step in with Charlotte Area Transit System. When the design consultant is fired halfway through any project usually, cost will become even higher. Why city officials are having, the city engineering departments take over. In time, the charlotte taxpayer will feel this. Again, if proper planning was done this would not have happen.
Officials claim that the half-cent sales tax will cover extra cost. The half-cent sales tax handles the operations of the transit system well as capital cost. In the event of rail, construction cost overruns will eventually lead to reductions in bus service, fare increases, and running buses a lot longer before replacements were originally planned.
City Attorney Mac McCarley said, “Some of the errors won’t show up until we hit them at that phase of the construction. We just can’t speculate on a number today.”
Our city council members and transportation officials have shown incompetence towards this project from the start. They rather point fingers at one another than take any responsibility for their votes and actions. Sure, our city officials do not want to admit with any more mistakes or estimate errors. They look foolish enough and more than likely city is in deep doo-doo. We ask, what other incompetence will become known from our city officials.
Background:
It will be a comfort for the citizens of Charlotte to know that our transit projects are using same people, who have been involved with both Boston’s Big Dig and Los Angeles sinkhole disasters.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas were having difficulties before the Big Dig became bad. With inquiries and scandals, Parsons Brinckerhoff was able to become serious player through years in transit engineering. In 1995, a sinkhole of 80 feet swallowed part of Hollywood Boulevard and cause serious damages to buildings well as surrounding area. Lawsuits hit company totaling over a billion dollars in damages. Consequences were that the project was not at all done correctly, unlike Boston’s Big Dig.
Interesting that Charlotte’s Transit chief Ron Tober worked in Boston where the Big Dig occurred. Mr. Ron Tober has been connected with Cleveland, Miami, and Seattle. These cities light rail projects have become questionable. One asks will these same factors occur again with transportation plans for Charlotte.
Ron Tober as the Transit Chief of Charlotte Area Transit System believes city will receive federal funding. However, Mr. Tober has stated that competition has intensified by other cities and federal criteria stricter. City of Charlotte and Charlotte Area Transit System executives are looking at how to obtain private sources for cost. By using companies help, obtain cost
CAT’S’ made it clear in“2003” the construction on the light rail line would have little effect to the tracks already laid for the trolley. CATS’ called it cosmetics construction to different areas of the track line that would be removed. CAT’S’ explained that different locations of light rail line would require the removal to add additional track connections required. CATS’ is now tearing up a majority of the track line, which has cost millions to the taxpayers and is a waste. Various city council members seem not to care they just shrugged it off as they usually do.
Charlotte city’s rail-transit project is half-billion-dollar project. It has been a major concern for taxpayers from the start. Businesses along the construction of light rail project have reported significant profit lost due too many construction delays. Thus far, several businesses had to cut back and permit some employees to go. One business owner believes the city takes always what they desire and will come back for more, until nothing is left!
The difficulties that have caused these delays are poor planning and cost increases. Because of these factors, it is requiring high capital costs from the taxpayer. This has been a recurring record from these types of projects. Instead of light rail opening in April then was August 2007, now it suppose to open late November 2007.
One questions, about the final out come for Charlotte – Mecklenburg Taxpayers and transit cost. Selling point with light rail is the federal government would help pay for it, still comes from our taxes. Point, people that run these transits projects are not accountable like they should be. They are not elected to their position. They have one goal light rail. UNC Charlotte professor David Hartgen, released a look of Charlotte’s Transit well as N.C. Transit systems. Professor Hartgen feels that smaller percentages of transit cost come from rider ship. A reality check needs to be made from city and transit officials of Charlotte. Taxpayers are supporting around 85 percent for every bus trip. Charlotte Transit feels more like 75 percent every bus trip. Comes down that taxpayer is holding the bag. Remember taxpayer are subsidized each trip. Charlotte is already known as second congested mid-sized city next to Austin, Texas. Once light rail is, operational on South Blvd. it will become a traffic haven of congestion. This will spread causing more problems for motorist but our city officials do not want to believe so. This has been the case in many areas that light rail has been placed. Citizens in Miami felt that rail had too many stops causing travel time take even longer.
Elizabeth Dole has withdrawn her support for Light Rail / TTA. Senator Burr and Senator Dole have sent a letter to TTA indicating that North Carolina Senators are not supporting $810 million dollar commuter rail – transit project for Triangle. Letter against rail-transit project was sent to Senator Elizabeth Dole, from Rep. Skip Stam and signed by about 15 GOP House Members. Interesting that Senator Dole has stated this about Triangle Light Rail and not on Charlotte’s Light Rail. Costs are stilling climbing on Charlotte’s Light Rail. Senator Dole shows no concern for Charlotte’s Taxpayers!
To bad, Charlotte did not have a better fight!
Safety Concerns:
Construction is not only concern for light rail.
Our city has allowed our public safety take a back seat to the bureaucratic correctness of development. The same applies with Homeland Security. Charlotte is a seating duck to a chemical attack. Terrorists could use a train that is carrying chemicals and release it upon Charlotte. Even worse are the many train cars that already sit on the tracks by schools and parts of our city. Through out the world their have been all kinds of train accidents that have occurred with chemicals.
Colonel David Hunt a military consultant to President Bush and various media outlets. Spoke in Charlotte after the terrorist attacks that took place in London, England, which involved their commuter train. In the Q&A section, he was asked about if Charlotte leaders should be concern about light rail and rail. Colonel David Hunt replied most defiantly and was concern about the cities plans for rail. Several city council members were upset with this type of question. If terrorist attacked a train accident, or us happen that involved toxic chemicals people would not have a chance. Just think, if this would happen near a school or downtown, what the out come would be!
Mayor Pat McCrory and city officials have heard these concerns and nothing has changed. This is what occurs when heritage and democracy have gone. Officials seem to look over issue and want to band-aid city problems by different committees. Mayor Pat McCrory an elected official is accountable to the citizens of Charlotte, still has not enacted to any of these matters.
“Ask, who will pay the price? Charlotte-Mecklenburg Taxpayers, that’s who and hopefully not with their lives.”
Peabody / President of Take Back Charlotte Mecklenburg
Mark A. Palmer / Spokes person for Take Back Charlotte Mecklenburg
How about taking a 1/100000 of the cash and pave 7th street between kings and eastway sometime this decade! SHEESH!
Heck, we don’t even need to look beyond the end of our noses or venture outside the county.
I rode the “rail” in SLC and people said then nobody road the “rail” into the ghost town that is SLC.
What’s money?
Right on Tara. Light rail, bad arts funding packages, an empty uptown basketball arena. Pat and Pam must go. But wait until I sell them all these musical instruments.
Once again when a great thing like having a light rail and a new arena is talked about,trust Tara to whine about the “government waste”.I happen to support our politicans who are working to make Charlotte a 21stcentury city and not 19th,like Tara wants!
Mr. Neal must be smoking something illegal.
All Charlotte wants to become is an Atlanta wannabe and trust me that’s not the 21st Century unless that’s the definition of the crime and gang rate increases. Wahoo!
Miss Servatius,
I applaud your determination, perseverance and intrepidity. I am not, however, shocked or even surprised at the lack of fortitude and integrity on the part of the mayor, the city council and the more mainstream media.
The worst-case scenario to all of this is that the mayor and council members who pushed so hard for all of this are somehow finding their lives enriched as a consequence. The best-case scenario is that they were and continue to be stupid — to the point of not being able to see the big picture. Light rail won’t make Charlotte **cool**, but will only serve to drain the city’s coffers and force more tax hikes.
Since those of us with an eye on fiscal responsibility couldn’t keep the light rail project from wasting our tax dollars, I chose to vote with my feet. I moved my family to Cabarrus County. The mayor and his council cronies will no longer have the privilege of wasting MY tax dollars.
Regards…
I found a job in Raleigh, I’m getting the hell outta here, buncha money hungry wierdo’s here anyway. CYa!
The Romance of the Monorail
The mass transit technology of Tomorrowland finally reaches today.
By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Friday, Nov. 1, 2002, at 1:28 PM ET
There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which a smooth-talking huckster named Lyle Lanley, patterned after Music Man charlatan Harold Hill, persuades Springfield’s gullible townsfolk to build a $3 million monorail. The transit system debuts to tremendous fanfare—Star Trek icon Leonard Nimoy shows up for the christening—but the euphoria is short-lived. Minutes into the maiden voyage, a brake line snaps, and the cartoon passengers nearly suffer a violent fate. The show’s core joke is easy to get: How could these rubes not have realized that “monorail” is synonymous with “boondoggle”? One-track trains, after all, are a relic of the same Tang-fueled, Jetsons-era futurism that predicted the rapid rise of hover cars and holographic spouses.
But a decade after “Marge vs. the Monorail” first aired, monorails are no longer mere punch lines. Las Vegas is spending $650 million on a seven-mile monorail designed to ferry gamblers from one end of the Strip to the other. On Election Day, Seattle voters will decide yea or nay on a proposed $1.7 billion, 14-mile expansion of that city’s one-mile monorail, a leftover from the 1962 World’s Fair. And in northern Delaware, transit planners are championing a 15-mile monorail as the best solution for alleviating the region’s traffic jams and worsening air quality.
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The fad may provoke laughter in those who chiefly associate monorails with Disney World, but the technology’s history is longer and more distinguished than most people realize. A suspended version known as the “Swinging Railway” has been gliding through Wuppertal, Germany, since 1901, and monorails flourish in such metropolises as Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore, and Sydney. Just a quick I-5 jaunt from Seattle finds Vancouver’s SkyTrain, originally built as a gimmick for the 1986 Expo but later expanded deep into the suburbs. The line now handles nearly 150,000 boardings each weekday.
Why, then, is America a virtual monorail abstainer, save for the occasional theme park or zoo? The nation’s automotive fetish is an easy culprit, but Walt Disney deserves a fair share of the blame, too. In 1959, the “Happiest Place on Earth” unveiled a miniature monorail that snaked along the park’s edge. Visitors dug the ride, but they also figured that such trains would never work outside Mickey’s domain—if it was in Disneyland, well, then it must be a kiddie thing.
The monorail’s image wasn’t helped by two successive World’s Fairs—Seattle in 1962 and New York in 1964—that featured monorails as futuristic centerpieces. The technology just couldn’t shake the stereotype of being too fanciful for real-world straphangers. For the “Train of Tomorrow—Today!” tomorrow never seemed to come.
A few decades and massive gridlock later, folks are wising up to the monorail’s many perks as they grope about for mass-transit alternatives. New underground subways have been dinosaured by dizzying construction costs, not to mention the legal and engineering headaches of digging through built-up cities. This is a lesson that Los Angeles learned the hard way with its superexpensive Metro Red Line, which hasn’t helped a whit in lessening rush-hour congestion on the city’s freeways.
Light-rail options are the current vogue, hailed as low-cost and easy to build. But laying trolley tracks on busy urban streets is more labor-intensive than it sounds. A separate lane must be created, electric wires must be hung to provide power, and streets often need to be widened to accommodate both trains and autos. There’s also the issue of providing crossing points for pedestrians and vehicles. No matter how many safety precautions are put in place, sooner or later an unlucky driver or walker gets smooshed.
True, monorails cost more than light-rail systems: Estimates in Seattle range upward of $124 million per mile. At least for short-haul routes, however, that’s where the disadvantages stop. Monorail tracks are prefabricated and can be erected relatively quickly: Simply dig a hole every 120 feet or so, plop down a column, and lift the track into place. Because the systems operate above traffic, collisions with errant motorists are never an issue. The trains are automated, saving millions in labor costs in the long run. And rubber wheels mean that Simpsons monorail salesman Lyle Lanley spoke the truth when he sang, “It glides as softly as a cloud.”
This is not to suggest that Seattle’s monorail plan is faultless or that any auto-jammed city need only go monorail to solve its every transit headache. They fit best in still-nascent cities where the columns won’t disrupt bustling sidewalks and where commuters aren’t too wedded to the freeways already.
A big knock on monorails, favored by opponents of the Seattle initiative, is that they’re eyesores that cast shadows upon sidewalks and obscure views. That critique was valid during the monorail’s World’s Fair heyday 40 years ago, but today’s tracks and columns are far less obtrusive. Some monorails get by with tracks just a shade over two feet wide. Support columns are thinner than ever and can be designed to blend into the surrounding environment. Besides, if you want a lovely view in a monorail town, simply fork over your fare and watch the scenery zip by at 50 miles per hour. It’s a heck of a lot more entertaining than slogging through a city center via light rail.
As crazy as it may sound, that fun factor counts for something—a lot, in fact. The goal of mass transit is to convince people to abandon their cars, which feature such enticing accessories as CD players and elbow room. Light rails are too buslike to impress most commuters, too squished and close to the ground. Monorails, by contrast, strike a chord with travelers. There’s something about the sleek designs, the pillowy rides, and the panoramic views that just enchants. Monorails have their own fan club, which claims more than 2,500 members who swap monorail toys and trinkets. Modern light rail can claim no such devoted fan base.
So, maybe the technology isn’t quite as lampoon-worthy as The Simpsons would have us believe. Forget about Disneyland, the World’s Fairs, and remember that snappy number from “Marge vs. the Monorail”: “Is there a chance the track could bend?/ Not on your life, my Hindu friend.”
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Forget either political party. Both are in cahoots, completely brain dead, and only political friends like Mr. Neal think that trains are new and exciting. I am just waiting to find out that like our brand new and not so improved coliseum, there are special exclusive rail cars that are for the privileged class of downtown (yes, I said downtown) bankers and elitists to get back and forth from their exclusive neighborhoods and not have to bother with the masses in traffic. Meanwhile, nobody else rides it because it just goes back and forth and forth and back.