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Wednesday, October 26, 2011
News Q&A: What the Hell is Going on With TriMet's Budget?
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 4:10 PM
MERCURY: So this means big cuts, right? What is TriMet looking at cutting?
MICHAEL ANDERSEN: I think it's almost certainly going to involve service cuts. TriMet's basically got to choose whether to eliminate routes completely or cut service across the board. When you make service worse across the system, you make it worse for people who are trying to build it into their life. There might also be mid-year fare increases. And there's a continuing fight about LIFT services, they might reduce the area for where they do LIFT pick up.
Are there any ideas for revenue or ways to not cut service across the board?
Board Member Steve Clark specifically said that ending the operation of WES should be on the table. Right now, TriMet loses $18 per ride on WES, versus on the Green Line, they lose 92 cents per ride. I'm also writing about this guy's idea for a three percent tax hike on hotel rooms, which could generate $13 million in additional revenue for transit. Tourists are people who come to the city, benefit from the service, but don't pay any payroll tax. Another idea is there's about 3,000 parking spots in TriMet Park & Ride lots that are full every day. If TriMet charged each of those people $1 every day to park, they'd have $800,000 a year from that.
Is there any way TriMet can stop funding big capital projects and put that money toward service instead?
Most of the money for capital projects has to be spent on capital projects. However, starting in 2015, TriMet is going to be taking more money out of the general fund to pay off bonds for the Milwaukie Light Rail project. Its agreed to put itself more deeply in debt with money it doesn't have. If they wanted to stop that, they could, but that would mean not building a rail line they already have a bridge for. So for the most part, no.
Break down for me what's causing the budget shortfall.
TriMet identified three forces. Obviously there's a lot going on but here's what they identify as the variables: Slower wage growth than they were hoping for, higher costs of the union contract, and the allocation of less federal operating funds than in previous transportation bills.
The union issues here are confusing. What's going on with their contract fight?
There are two things moving at the same time. First, the union is fighting with TirMet over their current contract, which is what has the drivers pissed off right now. This year, TriMet director Neil McFarlane reversed past practices and froze drivers' wages and froze the level of their health care benefits at its 2010 rate. The other moving part is that TriMet and the union are in negotiations over the new contract and according to the union, TriMet brought a bunch of new stuff to the table all of a sudden without going through the proper process. A judge found that to be correct and, as a result, the final offer TriMet was able to make to the union wound up having to be more pro-union than they had wanted it to be.
What sort of things is the contract fight over?
It's a list of about 15 things, mostly relating to healthcare and retirement benefits. The thing that TriMet has to worry about most in the future is retiree medical cost. That's off the charts for any public agency in Oregon, I think. The management has decided to go after that in part because they haven't saved any money for the increasing medical costs. TriMet's broke, but they're going to become broker.
How do TriMet's benefits compare to other public agencies'?
It's really, really good. And that's part of the reason the agency can retain good bus drivers.
But it's also part of the reason why they're broke.
Yup. For example, TriMet's current deductible for unionized employees is $0 for the individual, compared to $1500 for the Lane Transit District in Eugene, $300 for employees at Multnomah County, $250 at Washington County.
That's all for now! If you have more questions about this morning's meeting, Michael lives on Twitter at @PortlandAfoot.
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Anyone who ever looked at the original projections of Mark Hass's choo choo train knew about the outrageous cost and operating expenses of this project. Hass even said at a Beaverton NAC meeting that no public funds would be used. What a waste of time and effort. I can only hope that this derails Hass's political career.
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Folks who currently wait an average of 20 minutes on the bus will continue to do so.
Whole bus routes w/ virtually NO stop i.d. no# (like the #71, 16, etc) will continue to not have any.
Bus stops in need if proper shelters will continue to be supplemented with a simple unmarked pole in the ground.
Buses will continue to be late half the time.
And they want to put part of the blame on unions? We're suppose to be heading in the OPPOSITE direction! Funny how there's never any discussion of budget cuts where it concerns defense spending, corporate spending, political fund-raising, prison-building, or mega-church construction. Only cuts and slashes when it comes to public transport, public education, social services, health care, and job creation.
And many idiots out there still wonder/mock what the Occupy movement is about.
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Or they could put in an rail district: all property within 1 mile of the MAX has to pay 1% property tax.
Yuck. Don't give me any more of this "different colors of money" junk.
Pretty sure if TriMet weren't so hell-for-leather bent on building the orange line (why not just delay it until the economy bounces back?), they could avoid cutting bus lines and raising ticket costs.
Oh, and yes - how about turnstiles on MAX? How difficult could that really be?
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Yes, it will cost a lot of money upfront. But the retrofitting would pay for itself sooner than any small $.05 increases would in the same amount of time.
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1) What would it cost to retrofit our current MAX system with turnstiles, fences, etc? (Keep in mind how very open our system has been designed.)
2) How effective would this new system be at preventing freeloaders (e.g. people hopping over the turnstile)?
3) What percentage of MAX riders currently are freeloaders?
4) What percentage of those current freeloaders would choose under the new system to buy a MAX ticket, rather than find some other option?
I certainly don't have the answers to those questions, but I kind of expect people who think turnstiles are the solution to at least have a good guess. In my thinking it over, it's not at all obvious that turnstiles would be good for the bottom line.
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I do like the hotel tax idea. Out of state visitors won't mind too much- the novelty of no sales tax is still fun for them.
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Well, I have an answer for at least #2 - An in-train turnstile system like other cities have would be about 100% effective at enforcing fares.
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I still don't see how any turnstile system could be "about 100% effective". How do you allow people to exit the train easily? How do you prevent people jumping the turnstile? One answer could be hiring people to look out for this, but doing that would probably wipe out a lot of the savings. So how do these systems you're referring to work?
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They basically base their long-term projections, however, on the past. In my opinion, this is a big problem, because as you may have heard it isn't the 90s any more. Not just because we've lost that American vim or anything like that. Because our aging population is making the population dramatically less productive per capita. This isn't something you hear about in the national media, because TriMet's payroll tax funding structure is so unusual. It's a local problem that local elites haven't yet grappled with.
What happened here, I believe, is that the professionally forecast short-term projections caught up with the pulled-out-of-a-hat long-term projections and for various reasons found them ... wanting.
That said, of the three causes identified, the union-friendly legal ruling has a much bigger impact on TriMet's budget -- probably more than twice the size of the slow wage growth.
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http://portlandtransport.com/archives/2010…
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Thanks for reminding me Sarah.
But lots of folks, that work at Trimet, do deserve six figure salaries for sitting in offices and going to meetings all day long, gawd, how did I turn out so stupid anyway?
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