Rail Transit Reduces Urban Livability!!!!

...Or so say opponents of Denver's light rail system in a report issued by the Golden, Colorado-based think tank, the Independence Institute. The author of the report, Randal O'Toole is a national opponent of rail transit and heads the institute's Center for the American Dream,

"set up to promote homeownership and automobile travel and to oppose so-called "Smart Growth" planning that emphasizes public transit and higher density housing."

The report calls the Denver area's light rail system the deadliest and the most wasteful in the nation. Charges the Regional Transportation District (RTD) vehemently denies. In an article in today's Rocky Mountain News, "RTD said the think tank misuses the numbers and twists them to fit its 'anti-transit agenda.'"

The report seems aimed at derailing RTD's $4.7 billion FasTracks program, which is,

...A proposal to ask voters in November to increase the transit sales tax from the current 0.6 cents to a full penny per $1. The proceeds would help finance a 12-year expansion of nine rail corridors - six of them new - and overhaul of the bus network."

RTD strongly reacted to the two main assertions of the report which relate to the Denver area--Safety and Efficiency. O'Toole's assertion that RTD runs the deadliest rail system is based on the six fatalities since the system opened in '94, a statistic which works out to be the highest fatality rate per passenger-mile. However, those figures only extend through 2001. Salt Lake City's light rail system has resulted in six deaths since its inception in 2001, a much higher rate, but SLC wasn't included in the study.

Further muddling the matter is the circumstances of the six deaths. Of the six, three were pedestrians and one was an passenger in an automobile that drove around a lowered crossing gate (seems to me that the driver is responsible for that one, not light rail). The other two? Suicide. That's right, one third of those killed by the train killed themselves. O'Toole said that he didn't realize that those figures were included in the data he analyzed, adding that they shouldn't have been included. Forgive me for being picky, but if one is making a large assumption based on six incidents, shouldn't one check the circumstances of those events?

The efficiency issue, RTD said,

reflected RTD's own mistakes in reporting its energy-consumption figures to the national database -O'Toole used.

Cal Marsella, RTD general manager, said his agency reported 37.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2002 when the figure should have been 13 million. The mistake is being corrected, he said.