Let’s look at the facts. C-TRAN’s annual operating costs have more than doubled (up 112 percent) since 1996, rising from $17 million per year to $36 million per year. C-TRAN officials claim many of these higher expenses were out of their control, but 94 percent of the growth is attributed to annual labor costs, much of which is determined by agency leaders.
In fact, since 1996 C-TRAN officials have doubled workers’ average annual salaries. In 1996, there were only two C-TRAN employees who received more than $75,000 per year in wage compensation, for a total annual cost of about $163,000. By 2010, the number of these high-wage employees had grown to 21 and they now cost taxpayers more than $1.8 million per year.
More alarming is the fact that employee wages now represent 78 percent of C-TRAN’s total annual operating budget, which ranks the highest among all urban transit agencies across Washington state.
Instead of pledging to contain these costs, improve transit service, or increase efficiencies, C-TRAN CEO Jeff Hamm proposed a new accounting scheme. In a recent memorandum, his solution was to double-count some operating expenses for other transit agencies to make them artificially look worse than they really are, thus making C-TRAN’s pattern of out-of-control spending appear more in line with everyone else. The public deserves better.
It is true that the rapid growth in annual operating costs might be justified if passenger demand was growing proportionately. But for C-TRAN officials, this is not the case. In 1996, C-TRAN served about 6.1 million passenger trips. By 2010, C-TRAN transit services carried 6.6 million passenger trips, an increase of just 6.6 percent over the last 14 years. Excluding Sound Transit (because it was newly formed and not fully operational) and despite facing the same financial and economic challenges as C-TRAN, the average ridership growth for the other urban transit agencies in Washington was more than 35 percent over the same time period.
C-TRAN’s poor growth in demand stands in stark contrast to its explosive growth in total spending. In 1996, C-TRAN officials spent a total of $24.3 million to serve 20,722 passenger trips per day. By 2010, C-TRAN officials were spending nearly 80 percent more to serve only 21,947 daily trips.
Serving nearly 22,000 daily trips is important, but the fact is the vast majority of people simply do not use C-TRAN’s services. Residents living within the C-TRAN service area make an estimated 1.4 million person trips per day. This means residents pay over $40 million per year to C-TRAN officials who then spend it, serving only 1.6 percent of all daily person trip demand. And sadly, their current rate of spending is growing disproportionately faster than demand.
Public transit provides a vital transportation link to certain segments of the population, but it must be provided at a cost that is relative to its use. Despite how you feel about expensive light rail, or expanding public transit, officials at C-TRAN must first be judged on how they are spending what taxpayers already give them. And given a second ballot measure in just two years asking voters for yet another tax increase, C-TRAN officials will reasonably be challenged to justify the meteoric rise in annual operating costs and the significant capital expenditures amid the relatively slow growth in transit demand.
Throwing more public money into an inefficient transit program hurts passengers and taxpayers. Citizens want public transit. More than that, citizens want efficient public transit – a high-quality system that serves the most people for the least cost.
Michael Ennis is the transportation director at Washington Policy Center, a nonpartisan independent policy research organization in Washington state. For more information visit washingtonpolicy.org.
Read the op-ed in the September 7 edition of the Vancouver Business Journal for a supporting position of the C-TRAN measure.
