Blogpost #2

County Board Chair Jay Fisette sent a letter to the Sun Gazette which was published Tues, Aug 12, as Letter: Revised funding plan for streetcar best for Arlington.  The URL for it is: http://www.insidenova.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-revised-funding-plan-for-streetcar-best-for-arlington/article_8e3290b6-221d-11e4-87b1-001a4bcf887a.html#user-comment-area

The comment I posted follows, there are also two other comments on the Sun Gazette site with similar opinions: 

Chairman Fisette’s letter, above, suggests that everything is swell with the ZimTrolley because the County has shaken down the state for lots of subsidy to pay for it, and it will do great things for the County in the future. I accept neither his assertions about the financing nor his assertions about the value of the trolley.

Fisette’s Assertions about the Value of the Trolley: Fisette says “Our funding plan leverages transportation-dedicated funding to build a streetcar system that will serve generations of Arlingtonians, allow us to build it faster, and generate a substantial return on the investment for use on schools and other community needs well into the future.” The Trolley Troika members have convinced themselves that ZimTrolley will be hugely attractive, that squads of yuppies will pay large rent premia to be near it, and that the County can extract big payments from developers who want to rent/sell to the yuppie hordes which will go to affordable housing, schools, and everything swell.

It’s always a danger to assume that current trends will continue unchanged. Everyone who looks ruefully back after having bought at the top of a bubble will tell you this! In this case, the Trolley Troika seems to assume that the same sort of attraction will bring free spending renters to a trollified Columbia Pike as came to the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor for the Orange Line. At this point, I’d like my readers to go take a look - then come back! - at the photo of the Toronto Spadina streetcars (LOTS of them) stuck behind a fender-bender (scroll to August 22 at http://www.thestar.com/photos/toronto_star_photo_blog/2010/12/2010-and-rick-eglinton.html), the one which the SunGazette has not chosen to run and of which Chairman Fisette said “That picture drives me nuts.” The Portland trolley averages seven miles per hour.

A trollified Columbia Pike will have at least four formidable future competitors in the struggle for yupster dollars, each with far better transit: Silver Line Tysons, Red Line Bethesda, gentrifying areas in the District, and the R-B Corridor itself. The yuppie hordes question itself is pretty fraught: I work in a Federal agency, and we are allowed to hire one person for every three who quit. Defense cutbacks have been huge, and DoD is trying to move activities out of center Washington anyway. Will there BE hordes? Arlington office rental vacancies are 20 per cent just now, if that gives a clue. Will it get better? It always has, but as the mutual funds say, past performance does not predict the future.

In my college economics class, prof talked about ‘value added manufacture’. This means you take steel and concrete and electricity and with it you make something which has more value and utility than the raw materials. My view is that the ZimTrolley is value SUBTRACTED manufacture: you take steel and concrete and electricity and you are making something which has less value and utility than the raw materials. It do very little for rental attractiveness, it will slow general traffic on the Pike. Bonus problem: streetcar tracks hurt cyclists, a lot - http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=187985

In recent days there have been a number of articles in the Post and Wall Street Journal about the competition between Uber and Lyft to produce the next great car sharing app. It’s going to be car pooling. Forget the slug line! In ten years, in Baileys, you will punch in on your phone where you want to go and where you are. In five-ten minutes you are in a car with three others, zooming towards the Pentagon, or Crystal City. The parking lots have re-worked their charging structure: driver pays $20 if he drives in alone, $15 if he drives in with two, $10 if he drives in with three or more. Everybody with a rank lower than general looks for car poolers! EZPass, by the way, will be charging you ten bucks to drive down Columbia Pike, or ten for Route 50. I’m retired by then, and I also have to pay EZPass ten bucks if I drive Columbia Pike at rush hour, so I am motivated to rearrange my schedule and do my Pike errands at 11, when the toll is $3. And the ZimTrolley, if it hasn’t been abandoned and the tracks pulled out leaving hundreds of millions of dollars of debt behind, is still poking along at seven miles an hour. All twelve passengers have seats, though...

In an Uber-Lyft car pool world, none of the prospective tenants will want to pay a premium for living on Columbia Pike, living out Braddock or Lee Highway is just as good, so the value of the rental properties along the Pike goes down to take account of this. The extra tax revenues which the Trolley Troika think they will get because of ZimTrolley are not there, tax revenue is no greater than they’d have gotten without it.

Here’s a bonus bunch-up photo, because I found it when I was looking for the Spadina fiasco:
http://www.blogto.com/city/2013/02/what_made_st_clair_streetcars_bunch_up_like_this/

Fisette’s Assertions about the Financing:

I’ve said above why I think ZimTrolley is a bad thing to do and ought not be built. Now I’d like to do a little deconstruction on Chairman Fisette’s financial piece. I’ve had a general under-which-shell-have-they-hidden-the-pea reaction to the dizzying array of financing pictures the Troika has presented over time as the predicted cost has tripled, but let’s look at the current letter. Broadly, he says:

- ZimTrolley will be built be using other people’s money
- and anyway, it is money which can only be used for transportation, so ZimTrolley is the only thing we can do with it
- and having spent this money we will get back lots of nice extra taxes with which we can meet other public needs in future

So, in order:

- ZimTrolley Will Be Built Be Using Other People’s Money

Fisette: “The transportation surcharge, put in place about six years ago, remains unchanged. Local businesses will NOT pay more taxes under the new funding plan” This kind of refutes itself: the County got businesses to acquiesce to this tax surcharge. If the most urgent use of the tax surcharge is this impending white elephant, it should be repealed. There are many other transportation initiatives we could undertake, and if the tax surcharge is consumed in ZimTrolley, they will either go undone or be built with other taxpayer dollars.

Fisette: “ It is also important to note that that ZERO homeowner-financed General Obligation bond funds will be used to build the streetcar.” We are all paying lots of money and are being threatened with loss of park amenities to clean up after the last fifteen thousand people worth of apartments this Board has approved. There are huge “homeowner-financed General Obligation bond funds” being asked for now, and the need for them is due to the Board’s expansionist program. I assume that the 25 thousand additional people contemplated in the Columbia Pike plan will require taking even more of Arlington’s remaining park land for infrastructure of one sort or another?

The ZimTrolley will cost lots of money to keep running, if built. Is the plan to extract this from local businesses and landlords? It is unheard of for transit to pay for itself in the US, the only question is how big the subsidy will be. Even if we extract the money to subsidize ZimTrolley from local businesses and landlords rather than from homeowner taxes, that money will show up in what they charge for services and rents.

We are all paying lots of money and amenities to clean up after the last fifteen thousand people worth of apartments this Board has approved. I assume that the 25 thousand contemplated in the Columbia Pike plan will require taking even more of Arlington’s remaining park land for ?

- and Anyway, it Is Money Which Can Only Be Used for Transportation, So Zimtrolley Is the Only Thing We Can Do with it

There are a number of potential transportation projects which would actually make things work better in Arlington, unlike ZimTrolley. Here are a couple: Please go read http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/23527/a-wye-is-out-but-a-second-rosslyn-station-may-make-more-blue-line-trains-possible/ and then come back, I’ll be waiting. A Blue line stub at Rosslyn would enable the existing tunnel under the river to be devoted entirely to Orange and Silver trains, but passengers on the Blue line could make the transfer to Orange or Silver on foot. Better still would be a second tunnel under or bridge over the Potomac, carrying Blue line to Georgetown and M Street, and beginning the new loop line: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/21020/metro-maps-out-loop-line-between-dc-and-arlington/
Both of these projects have real benefits to South Arlington people, unlike the illusory developer benefits of ZimTrolley.

One of the ongoing themes of Arlington public life is the persistent belief of South Arlingtonians that they are getting the short end of the stick from the swells in Country Club Hills. This belief has persisted because they aren’t wrong! A plausible transportation project which could ameliorate this some would be to put Rte 50 into a trench like that in which 66 goes through east-of-Sycamore Arlington. You’d get immediate relief for the long lines of cars which wait to cross south to north every morning, and maybe you could put a deck over it, build the new elementary school, and save TJ Park and the County Fair. And you would greatly lessen the barrier function of 50 in our community.

- and Having Spent this Money We Will Get Back Lots of Nice Extra Taxes with Which We Can Meet Other Public Needs in Future

Discussions of Columbia Pike’s glittering future feature apartment blocks. LOTS of apartment blocks. Residential does not pay for itself through taxes, this is why Manassas is perennially strapped and Arlington is perennially flush. As discussed above, I don’t think there will be a big premium for Columbia Pike rents over other rents, even if ZimTrolley is built. Jack Herrity, the long-time central figure on the Fairfax County Board used to say that residential paid about two thirds of its way and industrial/commercial paid about a third more than it consumed in taxes.

ZimTrolley is not in Arlington’s long term interest, no matter how its finances are tweaked and primped.