Light rail is here but not necessarily here to stay.
After a sluggish start, light-rail transit has proved it can work in a moderate-size metropolitan area with widespread commuting patterns and considerably less traffic congestion than other California cities.But do Sacramento County voters like their 18-mile system so much that two-thirds of them would support renewal of a half-cent sales tax to continue operating light rail and buses?
Maybe not. And if not, the Sacramento Regional Transit District could be forced to cut back on the transit services it provides and even scrap planned expansion of its light-rail system.
Fortunately, Regional Transit officials have another 10 years before they could face cutbacks. Measure A, supported by Sacramento County's electorate in 1988, provides that a half-cent sales tax be collected and spent on transportation each year. Regional Transit gets about $16 million, or about 24 percent of its annual budget, from Measure A. But it expires in 2008, after 20 years.
"If we are not able to continue Measure A, that would have a fairly devastating impact on us," said Michael Wiley, assistant general manager for Regional Transit. "Without it, we'll be faced with some very significant service reductions."
Regional Transit officials are already trying to sell voters on the need for an extension of Measure A, or better yet, a permanent local funding source for the transit district. A recent Sacramento Area Council of Governments survey showed that public transit ranked just 12th on a list of 16 public concerns and that less than 50 percent of voters would approve an increase in the sales tax for transportation.
Sacramento's light-rail and bus systems are among the most efficient in the country when compared to similar-size metro markets, according to a recent survey by The Sacramento Bee. Its operations costs are below average, and its fares account for more of the operating costs than is true for many other transit systems. The transit agency wants to make sure voters are aware of its performance.
"Hopefully, we can continue to provide the increased level of service that voters approved in a cost-effective manner so they will see the benefits of continuing some level of local support," Wiley said.
Regional Transit wants to expand its current 18-mile system to 39 miles by the year 2004. And even if all the construction costs can be funded, the district could need an increase in its sales-tax share to pay for the higher operations costs.
But a Regional Transit committee concluded recently that because the region's transportation crisis is not in the critical stage - the city is the 24th-most congested city in the United States, according to the Texas Transportation Institute - residents may not go along with any request for a tax increase. And there's no guarantee they'll provide the two-thirds vote necessary under California law to extend the existing sales tax funds in 2008.
Yet community leaders want more.
"The biggest complaint we get is, `We want light rail built out to our area sooner than you're pro-ject-ing,' " Wiley said. "Clearly, the expectation was that we'd move ahead faster with expansion than we have."
Sacramento's funding predicament is rare. The Utah Transit Authority, like most U.S. transit agencies that operate light rail, has a permanent source of funding - a quarter-cent share of the sales tax collected in UTA's service district.
UTA officials say they can operate the 15.5-mile light-rail line now under construction indefinitely without a tax increase, although local opponents doubt that claim. A planned extension between the Salt Lake International Airport and the University of Utah would further strain UTA's operating budget.
Any other extension - several suburban spurs are being studied - would almost certainly require an increase in UTA's sales-tax share. And that could only happen with the blessing of local governments and, as in Sacramento, the approval of voters within the transit district.
Low riders
In many cities where light rail is introduced, critics argue no one will ride it. In Sacramento, at least initially, they were right. Regional Transit opened nine miles of its initial 18-mile phase in 1987, and an average of just 6,500 passengers climbed aboard each day. In 1988, after the 18-mile line was completed, still fewer than 10,000 rode each day.
"The first year or two, people were saying this city is not big enough for a system like this," said J.Y. Zeto, a former light-rail operator who now works as a fare inspector. "But they didn't realize how fast this city is growing.
"We started with 26 cars; we have 36 cars now. And now we're running four-car trains instead of three-car trains."
Partly to blame for the slow start, agency officials insist, was the economy and a delay in funding needed to pay for additional bus routes to fully integrate the system. Those bus connections were in place by 1989, and by September of '90 ridership jumped to 18,000. A resurgent economy in the mid-'90s helped Regional Transit surpass its 2000 ridership projection of 26,000 nearly five years ahead of schedule. The average daily ridership in '97 is above 28,000.
Double trouble
Regional Transit had to back-track and redesign portions of its system. Originally, only 37 percent of the 18-mile corridor had tracks going in both directions. The rest had only single tracks allowing for one-way travel, meaning trains had to sit and wait for minutes at a time for an oncoming train to pass. That frustrated some passengers and discouraged them from coming back.
"We've been adding additional track gradually," Wiley said. "It's added reliability and flexibility in the schedule and increased running time by about four minutes one-way."
Today, about 60 percent of the system is double-tracked, although delays still occur. Eventually, the agency plans to double-track the entire length of the system.
UTA will not have that problem. About 98 percent of the system will be double-tracked when it opens in early 2000. The TRAX bridge above I-215, for example, will be one-way only, but that distance is short enough that long delays should not occur.