The Tide, The Virginian Pilot and Stuck On Stupid

The Virginian Pilot (slogan: “Dear reader, we hate your f***ing guts”) helped sell Norfolk on the “Tide.” The Tide (slogan: “if we have not run into you yet, give us time, we will.”) is a light rail system that just captured the title of “by far the biggest loser per passenger in the country.”

Determined not to let go of its record of supporting every money losing public project it can find, the Virginian Pilot (favorite prediction: Norfolk will be under water by next Tuesday because of Global Warming) is doubling down on stupid. Admitting that the Tide has captured the title of The Biggest Loser, the answer, according to the Virginian Pilot editorial board (political orientation: Stalin was a Right Winger) is:

No matter how you measure that, or how you excuse it, that's a staggering cost. Which is precisely why The Tide needs to be expanded.

They reason that if the Tide (known as the Ghost Train because no living person has been seen riding it) carries even one more passenger, the operating cost per passenger will decline.

Here’s how bad it is. The Tide’s operating cost is $12,374,424. Passengers put $687,892 into the fare box. If the Tide lowered its fares to zero, the loss per passenger would only go up from $6.63 to $7.02 a mere 6%.  That's not far from what's actually happening now since we hear reports that there are no ticket collectors on the Tide and you only have to pay if the cops catch you.

So they want the taxpayers to pony up a mere $327 million to extend the line three (that’s 3 with a T) miles to a shopping area in Virginia Beach with no, zero, nada residents. That’s a little over $100 million per mile. And who wants to bet that this boondoggle will come in at budget? The Tide was a mere $100 million over budget.

Being Stuck on Stupid is the default position for the declining number of Virginian Pilot employees.  I believe it's part of their employment contract.  This is the paper that asserted that its own employees being assaulted by a mob of black teens in Downtown Norfolk was not newsworthy while giving front page coverage to Denny Hastert's arrest.

The Virginian Pilot is wrong so often that it's actually become a valuable resource.  If anyone has any question on a public policy question they only have to wait for the Pilot's editors to pronounce on it and do the exact opposite.  Follow this simple rule and you can't go wrong.

When reality bites. The real cost of Norfolk's light rail revealed.

The local big-wigs have been proclaiming the overwhelming success of the their light rail system and have been pushing Virginia Beach to participate in the wonder of it all.

But the federal subsidy is ending.  The brokest government in the history of the world is ending its subsidy of The Tide, revealing - for the first time that I know of - that the fares collected from paying passengers covers a mere 14% of the cost of running the system.

Light-rail passengers are expected to pay $1.3 million in fares next fiscal year, which starts July 1. That covers only about 14 percent of the cost to run the 7.4-mile route that opened in August 2011

And without examining the numbers we can't be sure whether that 14% number isn't inflated.  Is that the cost of just the operation, or does that include the cost of maintenance and replacement of equipment that wears out?

The Virginian Pilot has been a cheerleader for this project, telling us how great the ridership is, that it's exceeded expectations and that the future looks bright.  But if Uncle Sugar in Washington DC or Uncle Bob in Richmond don't come through, the people of Norfolk are going to bear the full cost.  And why should the residents of Iowa or of Charlottesville be forced to cough up the cost of transporting Norfolk residents on a glorified trolley? 

The city has covered a significant amount of light-rail operating costs with millions of dollars in federal startup money. The city could have spread the federal grant money over three years but instead opted to spend it in two years...

In 2012-13, there is $4.6 million in federal assistance for The Tide; in 2011-12, there was $6.4 million. Only a residual amount of federal money, about $858,000, will be left to go toward the $9.1 million cost to operate light rail in Norfolk in the 2013-14 fiscal year,

 

The fact that The Tide has been subsidized by big grants from DC and Richmond were mentioned as footnotes in otherwise generous praise of this experiment in "back to the future."  Behind the scenes the backers always knew that it was never financially sound and could only succeed politically if they managed to rope other communities into joining the Tide Follies.   Today the out-of-town gravy train has stopped and the real costs are beginning to emerge.  In my opinion, that 14% number that the paper is using is actually going to shrink to less than 10%.  That means that the people of Norfolk are going to be providing transportation welfare to those who don't have cars or who live close to a Tide stop.