Agenda Item # 3.2 - Joe Thompson | Received 08/22/20228/18/22, 6:17 PM
Letter: It's time to privatize transit - Gilroy Dispatch I Gilroy, San Martin, CA
LETTER TO THE ELITOR
Letter: It's time to privatize
transit
By: JOE THOMPSON M August 18, 2022
RE
CCEIWLEID
AUG 2 2 2022
GILROY CITY CLERK'S OFFICE
*J0 040
Regarding more public sector rail transit boondoggles feasting off taxpayers forcing up gas taxes and auto
fees so that politicians can crow "success" about boondoggle monstrosities like County Transit, Caltrain,
Amtrak, etc., thanks for considering transport options, one of my favorite subjects.
The late Secretary Mineta said, in 1996 while I was doing post-doc study of transport law and policy at the
Institute which now bears his name, "The crucial question in transportation today is: What should
government do, and what should it leave to others?" He was right then, and he's right now, God bless his
soul.
Private or public? Capitalist or socialist? What does history tell us? In his immortal "How We Built the
Transcontinental Railroad," Grenville Dodge recalled Lincoln's advice to him at the White House in 1864
when Dodge insisted that the TC railroad be government owned. Lincoln was right then, but we have not
learned from our history.
THE rzILROY
GILROYH DISPATCH
BEST OF 2022
VOTE
During WWI, the Wilson Administration nationalized the railroads, bringing chaos, and stopped traffic dead in
the tracks, so in 1920 we de -nationalized the RRs. But we didn't learn from our history.
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8/18/22, 6:17 PM Letter: It's time to privatize transit - Gilroy Dispatch 1 Gilroy, San Martin, CA
In 1970 Congressmen stood on the floor of the House and proclaimed that Amtrak "would be self-sufficient
in three years." Never happened; deficits have only worsened. On Sept. 11, 2001 we had Amtrak, but what
was the airport security like? Traffic World reported that Amtrak's subsidies by Sept. 11, 2001, in $100 bills,
was a stack higher than the World Trade Center Towers had stood. And still we have not learned from our
history.
Promoters of the CAHSRA Bullet Train, including Hon. Rod Diridon, who ► debated on Prop. 1 before the
election in 2008 said that we didn't need to worry about UPRR's eminent domain authority being superior to
CAHSRA's eminent domain authority, they would make Gilroy the South Bay Hub, and go on BNSF's tracks.
Of course, to do that you'd have to move Gilroy to Stockton. And still we have not learned from our history.
It's high time that we privatized socialist transit, all modes, and returned to our free enterprise roots in
transport in the USA and boondoggle capital California. Caveat viator.
THE
BEST OF
GILROY
2022
GILROY- : DISPATCH
VOTE
Joe Thompson
Past -President, 1999-2001, 2006, Gilroy -Morgan Hill Bar
Assn.
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JOSEPH P. THOMPSON
Attorney at Law
952 School Street, #376, Napa, CA 94559
Telephone (408) 848-5506
E-mail: TransLaw@PacBell.Net
SHORT VERSION:
Joe Thompson is a graduate of the Santa Clara University
School of Law. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme
Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, all U.S. District
Courts in California, and before the California Supreme Court. He is
past -president (twice) of the Gilroy --Morgan Hill Bar Assn.
LONG VERSION:
Joe Thompson is a member of the Transportation Lawyers
Assn., and serves on TLA's legislation (past Chair), intermodal,
arbitration, and freight claims committees. He is a member of
Transportation & Logistics Council, Inc. He has served on the
Executive Committee of the Santa Clara County Bar Assn.'s Debtor -
Creditor -Commercial Law Section. He was a member of the
Association for Transportation Law, Logistics & Policy, and a
candidate for the American Society for Transportation and Logistics.
He served on the Government Review Councils of the San Benito
County and Gilroy Chambers of Commerce, and was a member of the
Gavilan Employers Advisory Council. He was appointed to the San
Benito County Citizens Rail Advisory Committee, San Benito County
Citizens Transit Task Force, and served on the Steering Committee of
the Safe Kids Coalition. He was a member of Citizens for Reliable and
Safe Highways, and the Conference of Freight Counsel. He received
the National Directors Award for the best transportation research
paper in the U.S. in 1997 from the AST&L. During Governor Pete
Wilson's administration, he participated three years in the Regulatory
Reform Roundtable. He is a 1966 graduate of the Motor Carrier Fleet
Safety Supervisor School at U.C.-Berkeley, and was employed as
dispatcher and supervisor by Pacific Motor Trucking (1964-1970), and
as clerk by Union Pacific Railroad (1970-1980). His articles have been
published by Transportation Law Journal, Western Growers
Association Magazine, and Transportation Lawyer Magazine and
Salinas Californian.
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Taxpayer;
For
Whom
The
Bell
Tolls
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8/18/22, 6:26 PM Dying Transit Industry Grasps for Solutions I Cato at Liberty Blog
DECEMBER 8, 2021 2:26PM
Dying Transit Industry Grasps for Solutions
By Randal O'Toole
Your industry gets government subsidies equal to two-thirds of its operating costs and all of its capital
costs, and still most people refuse to use your services. Do you:
a. Increase operating subsidies so you can give away your services for free?
b. Spend more on capital improvements that haven't attracted more customers in the past?"--"--"---
c. Penalize American who aren't using your services?
d. Redefine your mission so that you appear relevant even if almost no one uses your service?
(----
w about e. All of the above'? l hat appears to be the transit industry's solution to the fact that,
except in New York City, almost no one rides transit anymore. Data released by the Department of
Transportation early this week, for example, reveals that October transit ridership was barely more
than half of pre -pandemic levels even as driving has returned to nearly 100 percent, flying is 80
percent, and Amtrak is 72 percent. Even in New York, transit ridership remained less than 57 percent of
pre -pandemic levels.
To get riders back, transit agencies are trying a variety of strategies:
Free fares: President Biden is going to Kansas City this week to promote free transit. Since taxpayers
are already subsidizing so much of the cost of providing transit, why not just have them subsidize all of
it? Kansas City adopted free fares last year and ridership increased a little bit. But Kansas City
residents still travel by car more than 500 times as much as they ride transit, so what is the point of
free fares?
Capital projects: Meanwhile, transit agencies all over the country are gleefully anticipating their share
of the billions of dollars of transit funds in the recent infrastructure bill. Portland, whose last light -rail
line cost $1.5 billion and yielded zero net new riders, wants to spend billions more on its next light -rail
line. Denver's Regional Transit District wants to build a rail line to Longmont even though its own
analysis found that it would end up costing $65 per rider. St. Louis wants to build a new light -rail line
even though its transit system carried fewer riders in 2019 than it did before it started building light rail
in the early 1990s.
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8/18/22, 6:26 PM Dying Transit Industry Grasps for Solutions I Cato at Liberty Blog
Penalize the competition: Automobiles are faster, more convenient, less expensive, and —in most urban
areas —greener than transit. The obvious solution, if you are a transit agency official, is to make driving
slower, less convenient, and more expensive. fr , U
"It's too easy to drive in this city," says Los Angeles Metro CEO Phil Washington, referring to the city
that is often ranked as one of the most congested in the world. Washington's solution to declining bus
ridership is to convert many of the lanes on major streets to exclusive bus lanes, thus increasing
congestion and, he hopes, forcing a few people out of their cars. Cities all over the country are
proposing such "bus -rapid transit" projects, which sound good on paper until you realize that most of
them will make congestion worse, not better. Other proposals call for reducing the amount of parking
available to drivers, forcing them to ride transit instead.
Change the mission: Transit is sold to voters based on its ability to reduce congestion, save energy,
and protect the environment, but it can't do any of those things if hardly anyone rides it. A recent
report published by the American Public Transportation Association urges transit agencies to "define just ridership." I�•
success as more than
"Think of transit less as a business and more as an essential
service," says the report, encouraging agencies to focus on "socially equitable transit access." But
essential and equitable for whom?
Supposedly, many "essential workers" during the pandemic had low incomes that made them
dependent on transit. In fact, in 2019, only 5 percent of workers whose incomes were below $25,000
a year commuted to work by transit. During the pandemic, the percentage of all workers taking transit
declined from 5 percent to 3.2 percent. Meanwhile, most of the subsidies to transit come from
regressive taxes such as sales or property taxes. This means the 95 percent of low-income workers
who don't use transit are disproportionately paying for transit rides they aren't taking. This is the very
definition of inequity. 5
The one thing all of these strategies have in common is they increase subsidies to transit. That's
exactly the wrong prescription for an industry that is so obsolete that, according to researchers at the
University of Minnesota, people living in the nation's 50 largest urban areas can reach more jobs on
a bicycle than by transit in trips of 50 minutes or less.
The reality is that alternatives to transit are a lot less expensive and far more effective at solving the
problems that transit no longer addresses. Improved traffic signal coordination, which most cities have
failed to install partly because of anti -automobile mentality, will relieve more congestion than all of the.
light -rail lines in the world. Making automobiles just one percent more energy efficient will reduce
greenhouse gases far more than spending tens of billions on transit. Helping the last few low-income
families who don't have cars obtain automobiles will help them out of poverty by giving them access
to far more jobs than transit can reach.
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8/18/22, 6:26 PM Dying Transit Industry Grasps for Solutions 1 Cato at Liberty Blog
Despite receiving more than S50 billion in subsidies per year, the transit industry was dying before the
pandemic and the pandemic has just about killed it off. It's time to stop subsidizing an obsolete
transportation system.
RELATED TAGS
Tax and Budget Policy, Transportation
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