Coyote over at NW Republican (who we will forgive for the sin of being based in Oregon) has an excellent piece showing the obscene expense and absurd lies of the Light Rail crowd, regarding the MAX extension in Clackamas County.

But the same issues apply to Sound Transit…

By 2025, about 46,500 people are expected to board light rail every day between Clackamas Town Center and downtown Portland. About a third of those riders will travel within the section of the light-rail track that runs along I-205.

Do the math: 46,500 people, is Trimet speak for 46,500 boardings which is 23,250 people making round trips (you do have to get back home). 1/3 of those will travel “within the section of the light-rail track that runs along I-205.” 1/3 of 23,250 is 7,750 people that Trimet projects by 2025, according to this report. So our headline number of 46,500 is really 7,750. This is called “transit math”.
As a result of the project, cars will drive 125,000 fewer miles a week along the I-205 corridor, according to a study evaluating the environmental affects of the project.

Lets do the math again. 125,000 / 7 =17,857 miles per day. For 6.5 mile route, that is 2747 one way trips. That is equal to the capacity of one and one-half HOURS of ONE lane of freeway. Trimet just said that MAX will remove the equivalent of one and one-half hour’s worth of traffic from one lane. But Trimet forget to mention that about 2/3 of those people would have been on the bus if MAX wasn’t built, so the reality is that MAX is projected to remove 915 cars from the road – less than one-half of one lane for one hour. And at a cost of 1/2 billion. Had that money been spent on adding a lane pair, congestion would really be reduced. Adding a lane pair to 6.5 miles of freeway should cost no more that $65 million – a savings of 88% compared to MAX.

You just gotta love Fun With Math!