Review of Greenlight Pinellas

Abstract

Under its “Greenlight Pinellas” proposal, the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA), which serves Pinellas County, FL, wants to switch its major funding source from a property tax to a sales tax at a rate that will more than double its local tax revenues, and use the added money to build a 24-mile light-rail line and expand bus service. This proposal is extremely and unnecessarily expensive given that buses can provide a superior service to light rail, carrying more passengers more comfortably to more destinations at a far lower cost.PSTA has already shown its inability to predict short-term travel patterns. Between 1991 and 2005, it increased bus service by 46 percent yet gained essentially no new riders and actually saw a 17 percent reduction in passenger miles. The result was that average occupancies of PSTA buses, which were already emptier than the national average, fell by 44 percent.Compared with bus-rapid transit, the proposed light-rail line would be so costly and attract so few new riders that it would be less expensive to give every new round-trip commuter who was attracted to the light rail a new Toyota Prius every single year for 30 years than to build the light rail. Yet the specific bus-rapid transit alternative that was nominally considered by PSTA is itself phenomenally expensive, costing nearly $50 for every hour of transit riders’ time that it would save.In addition, PSTA has failed to reveal the effects of the proposed light-rail line on traffic congestion. Light rail often increases congestion when it crosses streets and disrupts traffic signal coordination systems. Although Greenlight Pinellas documents indicate that PSTA calculated the effects of light rail on congestion, it did not publish its results, suggesting that it did not want the public to know that it would make congestion worse.As an alternative to light rail and a tax increase, this paper proposes that PSTA introduce eight new rapid bus routes that would provide better bus service to residents throughout the region. These new routes would be funded by contracting out all PSTA bus routes to private operators, which would save taxpayers at least 31 percent per route and probably more. This way, instead of spending more money on poorer quality transportation, as Greenlight Pinellas proposes, taxpayers will get better transit at no greater cost.