Those pushing Proprosition 400 claim that light rail has been successful in other cities. Yet, they provide no numbers to substantiate this claim.

Rather than just tell people that light rail is “successful” and expect them to take it on faith, why don’t proponents show performance statistics?

Voters ought to see the financial and passenger data so they can decide for themselves whether these systems are successful or not.

I’ve provided a table of such performance statistics for the three light rail systems widely cited by proponents of Prop. 400 as systems we should aspire to imitate. The data are taken from the latest Federal Transit Administration statistics available.

These systems don’t look very successful to me. All lose money. All show taxpayers bearing a higher percentage of the cost than riders. None carry more than a tiny share of the traffic.

If these financial disasters and minuscule traffic impacts are the standard of “excellence” to which the Phoenix light rail will be compared by the auditors, the taxpayers can kiss their money goodbye.—

John Semmens Chandler