Blue Line’s First Year

The cost information in Mark Stein’s article (“1 Year Later, Blue Line Is Having a Bumpy Ride,” July 14) is ambiguous. We question the assumptions behind Art Leahy’s (SCRTD assistant general manager) assertion that it costs 51 cents to transport a passenger 1 mile on the Blue Line train. Assuming that the SCRTD ridership figures Stein reports are for weekdays, the Blue Line data for the first six months of 1991 imply a total of 7.8 million boardings per year, or 3.9 million round trips. Accounting for capital cost of $877 million, operating costs of $38.6 million in fiscal year 1991 and conforming to U.S. Department of Transportation Urban Mass Transportation Administration assumptions of a 10% opportunity cost of social capital and a 40-year project lifetime, this implies a public cost of $34.13 per passenger-round trip of the Blue Line.

Your article indicates that the fiscal year 1992 operating cost estimate for the Blue Line is $44 million, which will boost the cost per passenger-round trip to $35.56 if ridership remains the same. The benefits accruing to society from use of the Blue Line do not merit a subsidy of $33.36 per passenger-round trip. The SCRTD lost 96 million annual bus boardings between 1985 and 1990: Ridership losses began the day the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission ended Proposition A bus-fare subsidies. The net effect has been to trade 96 million annual bus boardings for 7.8 million rail trips. If we continue to invest in fixed rail systems, taxpayers will ultimately spend billions of dollars on transit, only to discover that their investment has reduced transit use.

JAMES E. MOORE II

USC Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional and Civil Engineering

PETER GORDON, USC Associate Dean of the School of Urban and Regional

Planning and Professor of Economics