Blog note: this opinion piece dealing with a current county ballot measure, references a 2010 grand jury investigation. Ordinarily we do not publish articles trying to use recent grand jury reports to influence voters. This one is special because it references a 10-year-old report. Grand jury reports sometimes have long legs.
Proponents of Measure I – the SMART tax extension on the March 3 ballot – claim in their ballot argument, “Now’s not the time to pull the plug.”
Since the current tax doesn’t expire for nine years – until March 2029 – the statement is misleading. Voting No on Measure I does not “pull the plug” as they claim. It does, however, send the incredibly weak SMART board members a message.
That message is the same message that Marin’s Civil Grand Jury sent them in 2010. The politicians appointed to the SMART board are not sufficiently representing voters and taxpayers. They need to exert control over staff. Instead, the board rejected the grand jury’s recommendations. A total of 328 of the last 332 board votes have passed unanimously, including compensation increases for one of the highest paid transit managers in the state.
SMART’s proponents have never faced up to the fundamental economic principles of the passenger rail transit.
First, trains that fail to serve a high-density employment center have zero chance of impacting peak hour traffic. They simply don’t and can’t carry many commuters close to jobs that are dispersed across suburban counties.
Second, trains are expensive to operate. When they serve high-density employment areas and generate significant ridership, those costs are distributed across a lot of riders and so operating costs per rider are low. When ridership is tiny, the operating costs per rider are high.
When these principles are ignored, the rail system delivers few riders at high cost per rider.
SMART has now been operating trains for two and half years, which is plenty of time to demonstrate these principles. What is the record?
Ridership is tiny and declining a bit. While proponents tout the minor increases in weekday ridership, they ignore the total. Weekend ridership has declined by more than weekday ridership has increased.
As a consequence of SMART’s puny ridership, the operating costs per passenger of providing rail services are the highest in the nation. They are so high that it requires a taxpayer subsidy of over $100 per round trip.
The poor oversight of staff by the board has also led to an outrageous compensation for its General Manager Farhad Mansourian, a man without any transit management experience prior to being appointed in 2011.
The lack of oversight by the board has also led to mismanagement of the agency’s costs. SMART is now operating more trains than it can afford and is tapping into its financial reserves to fund operations, something no experienced transit manager would or should advocate in non-emergency times.
SMART’s GM has consistently stonewalled the public regarding key performance statistics like detailed ridership disclosures and the costs of operating so many daily trains with few riders. Recently, SMART staff rejected a request from the Press Democrat for daily ridership data, something all transit agencies collect and report. Caught red-handed, some data was finally released earlier this month. Ridership by train is still being withheld, which would show voters that taxpayers are paying for lots of empty seats, not lots of riders.
Voters need to send our “leadership” a message. Transparency and accountability are required before the tax is extended. Vote No on Measure I.
February 3, 2020
Sonoma Index-Tribune
By Mike Arnold, an economist living in Novato and treasurer of the NotSoSMART.org Committee
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