Rep. John Ley - Should taxpayers be on the hook for TriMet's billion-dollar failures?

Portland’s transit agency is facing massive financial shortfalls—and now there’s a push to have Washington taxpayers help cover the cost. With declining ridership, rising operating expenses, and billions already spent, critics are questioning whether this is a bailout for years of mismanagement.

Washington State Representative John Ley joins the program to break down TriMet’s finances and whether Clark County taxpayers should be on the hook.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome back to the Lars, Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you on a Monday. Always glad to take your phone calls. That's what the Radio Northwest Network is all about. And now we're live on KRCW. So thanks for joining us that way as well. If you want to jump into the best conversation in talk journalism, it happens right here, every day at 866. Hey Lars. That's 866-439-5277. Send your emails to talk at LarsLarson.com. And if you're a naysayer, we always put naysayers right to the head of the line. Now I want you to consider something. Because this is true in both the Puget Sound region, Seattle and King County, as it is in Multnomah County and the city of Portland. You have failing transit agencies in both places. And I would defend that by saying they are failing because they have spent billions of dollars. That's both uh Sound Transit and TriMet. They spent billions of dollars in the last 20 years. And guess what? Their ridership per capita has been going not up but down. So you're spending a gigantic amount of money on something, and ridership is actually going down. And the extent to which the people riding the trains and to some extent the buses too are actually paying any fraction of the cost, it continues to shrink. And one of the people who knows that best is State Representative John Lee, who represents District 18, position number two, and he joins me now. And the key question for John, because these are the people he represents, should Clark County taxpayers be on the hook for TriMet's multi-billion dollar failures? John, welcome back.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Hey Lars, thanks for the chance to chat today, and it's a resounding absolutely no heck no. My constituents don't want to engage in any financial dealings with TriMet. I've been following TriMet for years. Last year they lost$850 million. The management team ought to be fired and uh total revamp of their system. I recently dug into some federal data. Then TriMet is required, all transit agencies are required to tell the Federal Transit Administration things. And in two years, 2023 and 2024, TriMet's max light rail costs per mile have gone up 75 cents.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

They're both 75% or 75 cents. I think you meant 75% in two years.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

You're exactly right. Sorry about that.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

If it had been 75 cents, John, I'd have said, why are we complaining? But no, it's they've jumped 75% in two years. Now, you know, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah, it's worse than crazy. It's insanity. Their bus costs are up 26%, which are still ludicrous in the same two-year period. A different aspect looking at that, every mile of Portland's max light rail, the operating cost is$34 a mile. Their bus costs are$19 a mile. Over here in Clark County, my C Tran buses per mile cost$14 a mile. And therefore, that light rail costs two and a half times what it costs my local C Tran bus company to run and serve people. Clearly, nobody wants to lose and waste that much money on any aspect of bringing light rail into Clark County.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

But that that is the excuse that TriMed wants to use to reach into Washington State and say once we get light rail to land on the north side of the Columbia River, even though it's only about 4,000 feet of light rail that lands there, and they have a hundred miles of track on the south side, TriMed then turns to Clark County and says, We want you to pay a gigantic chunk of the operating costs, including brand new trains and everything else, simply because TriMed has touched base on the north side of the river. Have I overstated that?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Not in the least. And other than maybe the distance the light rail will be coming into Vancouver.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

I said 4,000 feet. Am I overstating it or understating it, John?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

You're overstating it. The latest semi-version of the plan stops at the waterfront, as opposed to going to the library at Evergreen Stop. And so that is going to cut that distance about in half coming into light rail.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

So it's only coming 2,000 feet into the state of Washington?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Something on that order. Yeah, buddy, depending on exactly how they leave the uh light rail station at the waterfront. And by the way, the end of the line of that MAC station is going to be somewhere about 90 feet in the air.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

And they're going to have to have a giant elevator and a giant what?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah, something on that order. We still don't know what the revised plans are, other than they told the city of Vancouver that they're going to stop it initially at the waterfront. And so it's so ridiculous. You and I have talked many times that this now$15 billion program doesn't have the money to pay for it. And the easy cut is to kill the light rail component outright. That's two billion bucks gone. And then they are still, both Oregon and Washington, are left scrapping to try and find potentially eight billion dollars to finish this bloated project. And so the easiest thing, you get rid of the light rail, two billion dollars of it, and then you pair this back to just a bridge. Just a bridge, and that ought to be on the order of two billion dollars, as we talked about last time we chatted.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

You know what, John? The thing that I hope gets done, because this is the opportunity, Oregon has a governor's race going on right now. And you have Tina Kotek, the Democrat, who's been largely abandoned by her own party because she deserves it. Uh they've they've dumped her. The teachers' union dumped her, the other unions have dumped her. They're they're not they're not opposing her, but they're not supporting her either. And you've got uh at least a half a dozen very good candidates. I happen to have endorsed one of them. We're running on the Republican side of this, and you would hope that all the Republicans would start to say Tina Kotec needs to weigh in on whether or not she supports fleecing the taxpayers of another state for the operating costs for a system of light rail that is costing over a billion dollars a mile and only goes two thousand feet into Washington State, but they want to stoke Washington State for much of the cost for brand new trains and everything else simply because the tracks touch on the north side of the river. Make Tina Kotec answer that. She either supports it or she doesn't support it. And if she supports it, she's supporting a scam.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah, and the first thing Oregon voters needed to do is vote no on referendum number 120 on May 19th. Yep. And that will send an incredibly strong message, number one. And number two, the Portland metro area voters need to demand a revamp of entire TriMet Board of Directors. And they've done that.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

By the way, John, John, just so people in Seattle and King County, in Puget Sound, you ought to be asking the same questions. Light rail has become insanely expensive. In fact, I'm told that even though John and I have talked for the last year or so about the$1 billion a mile for light rail, it sounds like Seattle is going to be able to beat that number in the coming year. They'll have rail lines that are going to cost more than a billion dollars a mile, and that is just pure insanity. John, thanks for the call. Back in a moment, you're listening to the Lars Larson show on the Radio Northwest Network.