Testimony before the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners
Regarding the revised IGA for the Milwaukie Light Rail Project
August 22, 2012
John A. Charles, Jr.
President & CEO
My name is John Charles and I represent Cascade Policy Institute, a non-partisan policy research center.
The Clackamas County Board seems to think that the financing agreement signed with TriMet in 2010 is a binding contract. However, TriMet itself has already breeched the contract, as follows:
- The Clackamas County Commission formally endorsed the “PMLR Locally Preferred Alternative” (LPA) on July 24, 2008. That endorsement was for a light rail plan including 1,000 parking spaces at the Park Avenue station and another 1,000 spaces at the Tacoma Street station.
In addition, the LPA offered a possible alternative alignment, known as the “Minimum Operating Segment”, terminating at Lake Road in Milwaukie. If this plan were chosen, the Tacoma Street station would include 1,250 parking spaces.
- The LPA with 1,250 – 2,000 committed parking spaces was endorsed by the County Commission when it signed the IGA in 2010.
- The project now being built has changed dramatically. The Park Avenue station includes only 350 parking spaces and the Tacoma Street station 320 spaces. This will lower the expected ridership of the project by a wide margin.
The entire 26-year experience with TriMet’s light rail system shows that outside the Portland city center, light rail is largely dependent on park-and-ride lots for ridership. For example, the Gateway Transit Center has had a chronic parking shortage for decades because it is the closest parking lot to downtown on the east side. On the Westside, the Sunset Transit Center has only 587 spaces. Since this is the closest Westside TriMet lot to downtown Portland, it is usually filled to capacity every weekday by 7:00 a.m. TriMet would have higher ridership on the Westside MAX if it had built a much larger parking lot.
- By under-building for parking on the PMLR line, TriMet is asking both Clackamas County and the City of Milwaukie to absorb the many downsides of this project – including the taking of homes and businesses, loss of express bus service to Portland, and the cannibalization of other public services – while offering no transportation benefits compared with existing bus service.
Since TriMet has chosen to begin construction on a different project than the one promised, the Clackamas County Commission is free to opt out of previously made commitments, and should do so. The PMLR project never made any sense from a transit standpoint, and is clearly a step backwards for express bus commuters on HW 99e, who will be forced to transfer from the fast bus to the slow train in Milwaukie if this is built.
Regardless of how the project was perceived in 2008, public sentiment has changed. The County’s most recent “Community Services and Issues” survey, conducted by Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall during late February and mid-March, asked respondents for “the most important issues” facing the county. Supporting light rail elicited only a 3% positive response, while 5% of respondents stated that “stopping MAX” was important to them. Overall, many other issues are of greater concern to county taxpayers, including the economy, road maintenance, education and law enforcement.
Recommended Course of Action for Clackamas County:
- The BCC should formally state that the IGA with TriMet is no longer binding because TM is building a different project than the one promised in 2010 and 2008.
- The county’s plan to sell bonds should be abandoned and the entire PMLR project de-funded.
- The terminus of the line should be moved from Park Avenue to Tacoma Street, and the parking facility at that station should be increased to 1,250 spaces, as originally anticipated in the EIS. That would be financially feasible with savings from shortening the line.
Conclusion
It is clear that the September 18th ballot measure requiring a public vote on rail expenditures is going to pass easily. Instead of fighting the obvious, the BCC should use this vote as a mandate to protect county taxpayers from a bad deal negotiated in a different era.
Fortunately, it’s not too late to make this move; the single most expensive property scheduled for condemnation on the entire PMLR right-of-way – the Beaver Heat Treating facility on Moore Street – is still standing. This one property alone is likely to cost more than the entire $19.1 million IGA that is being discussed tonight. If the BCC does the right thing, the family-wage jobs at Beaver Heat Treating and other businesses in the ROW will be protected, and we won’t throw scarce tax dollars down a rat hole.
However, the window of opportunity is closing, because TriMet knows that the faster they destroy private property, the more difficult it becomes politically for elected officials to do the right thing. I encourage you to reject the proposed amended IGA, and to terminate the County’s interest in this project immediately.
