Continue reading »]]> TV News Channel 3 reporter David Bailey dealt a heavy blow to The Rapid this week when he started questioning how The Rapid is spending money. Bailey is the first local reporter to critically analyze how The Rapid operates and the result is stunning. Peter Varga, the head bureaucrat at The Rapid, was interviewed for the story but was completely speechless when confronted with how wantonly The Rapid wastes money – waste that we’ve been pointing out for years. After a long period of complete silence in the face of Bailey’s questions, Varga walked out of the interview.

This just goes to show how The Rapid has been treated with kid gloves by the local media. Varga was completely caught off guard by serious, probing questions about how The Rapid wastes taxpayer dollars. In the face of basic questions on The Rapid’s spending, Varga sits silent, unable to speak.

View the video report by clicking here.

Stop asking uncomfortable questions

Continue reading »]]> Last year we definitively showed, using The Rapid’s own data, that The Rapid’s buses actually add pollution to the environment, contrary to the statements that The Rapid’s staff makes about the bus system being “green.” In the last year, the data The Rapid reports to the federal government has been updated. How much better is The Rapid doing?

It’s actually doing worse. In 2010 (the latest year for which the data is available), The Rapid used 1,123,100 gallons of diesel fuel and 11,300 gallons of regular fuel to provide 32,481,817 passenger miles of bus service. The Rapid’s vehicles traveled 4,647,290 miles to provide this service. Using these numbers, we can come to several conclusions:

1. The Rapid’s buses get, on average, about 4.10 miles to the gallon. In the previous year, this was about 4.17 miles per gallon. The Rapid’s buses are getting less fuel efficient.
2. The Rapid emitted 0.774 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per passenger mile. In the previous year, this was 0.762 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile.

In other words, The Rapid’s pollution record is getting worse. The average SUV emits 0.66 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile and the average car emits 0.56 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile.

This doesn’t sound like a big difference, but when added up, this means that The Rapid emitted 25,423,731 pounds of CO2 that year to provide its service. If all of those passengers had been transported in SUVs, then 21,437,999 pounds of CO2 would have been emitted. This means that The Rapid’s buses actually added 3,985,732 pounds (that’s nearly four million pounds) of CO2 to the environment. If every bus passenger had been transported in a car, over seven million pounds of carbon dioxide pollution would have been reduced.

How can this be? We’ve demonstrated (again using The Rapid’s own data) that The Rapid’s buses operate, on average, 89% empty. Because of this drastic under-utilization of its buses, The Rapid wastes a whole lot of fuel driving around very large, mostly-empty buses.

Continue reading »]]> We have previously pointed out that The Rapid spent $250,000 of public funds on a single piece of art for its headquarters. We recently noticed, when browsing The Rapid’s annual audits (which we post on our site, The Rapid does not make these available on its site), that The Rapid has in fact spent over $368,000 on art for its headquarters. This is funded 100% by public funds (taxes). We wonder why The Rapid raises taxes nearly every two years to “expand service” when they so casually waste so much money on things that do nothing to improve service.

Check out a screenshot of The Rapid’s 2011 audit below:

Continue reading »]]> The one statistic that creates the most controversy when we point it out is the fact that The Rapid’s buses operate, on average, about 90% empty. The Rapid’s supporters (including the Grand Rapids Press uncritically regurgitating misleading data released by The Rapid) do everything they could to “refute” this number, but the fact is that we use The Rapid’s own data. How do arrive at this number? It’s easy, just look at the information that The Rapid is required to report to the federal government each year. This data is stored in the National Transit Database. You can access the entire set of data by clicking here.

The set of data you want is listed under Annual Databases. 2010 is the latest year available as this article is being written, so we’ll use those numbers. Click on the RY 2010 Database link to see the various areas of data that are available. From there, we are interested in the Revenue Vehicle Inventory spreadsheet. This spreadsheet doesn’t look very easy to use because each transit agency is represented by a number, not its name. The Rapid is transit agency number 5033. How do we know that? Check out The Rapid’s 2010 National Transit Database profile here. The Rapid’s ID number is 5033.

We then scroll down to number 5033 in the “trs_id” column on the spreadsheet. The first thing you’ll notice is that there are 41 lines of data relating to The Rapid’s buses. We are interested in the lines that say “MB” in the second column (MB means bus, although you’d have a hard time figuring that out from the database files). Only looking at the MB column limits us to The Rapid’s fixed-route bus service. We’re not looking at The Rapid’s paratransit or van pool service.

Looking further to the right, we see the two columns that interest us. Columns “S” and “T” tell us the seating and standing capacity of the buses The Rapid operates. To make it fair, we need to do some math so that all buses are counted and averaged on a weighted basis. Basically, this means that if there are 25 buses with a capacity of 75 and five buses with a capacity of 91, we need to weight them appropriately. When we multiply all seating and standing capacity by the number of buses, we get a total fleet capacity of 10,580. The Rapid has a total of 129 buses in operation. We then divide 10,580 by 129 to get an average bus capacity of 82.02 (this was 80.48 in 2009). To make this easier, we’ve highlighted the spreadsheet and added columns to add it all together. Download it here.

How do we know how many people are on The Rapid’s buses, on average? Download and view the 2010 NTD Fact Sheet on The Rapid here. Check out the row near the middle of the page called Mode: Bus. This breaks The Rapid’s services down into the various modes of transit. We’re interested in the Bus information. Look to the right and make a note of the Annual Passenger Miles and  Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles columns. If you divide Annual Passenger Miles by Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles, we get 7.39 (this was 7.37 in 2009). That’s the average number of people on a Rapid bus at any given time.

With these two data points, we can determine that average capacity utilization of The Rapid’s buses. Average bus capacity is 82.02 and the average number of people riding Rapid buses at any given time is 7.39. We divide 7.39 by 82.02 and and we come up with 9% of the average Rapid bus being occupied at any given time. Therefore, The Rapid’s buses operate 91% empty, on average.

(Note: This article has been updated to show that The Rapid’s buses are 91% empty. A prior version said 89% empty. We made a small math error in the original article that was in The Rapids’s favor. The correct number is 91% empty.)

Continue reading »]]> On April 22 of 2009, just two weeks before the millage election to raise property taxes to fund the $50 million Silver Line bus in Grand Rapids, the unelected board of the Interurban Transit Partnership (The Rapid) suddenly changed the route. This is only vaguely referenced in the minutes of that meeting.

Mr. Varga [CEO of The Rapid] noted . . . that staff has received some suggestions for changes to the route alignment that has been reviewed internally and by City staff. . . He reminded the board that by having already submitted an LPA [Locally Preferred Alternative] to the FTA [Federal Transit Administration], that was accepted by them, any significant changes in the cost or scope of the program, could result in failure to get approval from the FTA.

Mayor Heartwell commented that we have had discussion, involving many entities, regarding alignment changes and noted that process is important when dealing with this issue. He noted that a resolution was developed that we will take to the PTT [Public Transportation Tomorrow Task Force] to evaluate and bring back to the ITP Board regarding consideration of alternate routes for the Silver Line.

A motion was made by Heartwell, supported by Holt, to adopt the resolution regarding further evaluation of the Silver Line routing. Motion passed unanimously.

The resolution itself is not in the minutes and not available on The Rapid’s web site (unsurprisingly).

The Grand Rapids Press reported the next day on The Rapid’s sudden change in plans after so much planning:

Now Rapid staffers are exploring the possibility of stops near Wealthy Street and Division near Logan, and considering whether the current plan to use Lafayette Avenue through Heritage Hill is the best way to access Michigan Street NE.

The vote came after Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell introduced a resolution that was not on the agenda. Among other things, the resolution says the board is aware of alternative routes being studied by Rapid staff and believes they warrant serious consideration and input from all “constituents.” Heartwell said he developed the resolution after talking with residents from the Heritage Hill neighborhood and representatives from Grand Valley State University.

“The interest here was in being fully transparent before the election,” Heartwell said. “We didn’t want to go into an important election, then suddenly afterwards make a change.”

What really happened behind the scenes? How “transparent” was this process?

A local resident who was concerned about this change filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the City of Grand Rapids to get more detail on the process behind this sudden change. Those emails were made available to Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility this year.

We now understand that the Heritage Hill Homeowners Association (HHA) held the Silver Line hostage through threats of opposing the millage and through a potential “veto” as part of its historical status. The leadership of HHA claimed that they supported the Silver Line, just not in their back yard. Mayor Heartwell went to bat to ensure that the HHA was satisfied, despite, as City Commissioner Roslyn Bliss put it, “honking off” Grand Valley State University because the Silver Line would no longer run to the new health sciences building on Michigan Street. The route was subsequently changed, almost overnight, as a result of these threats. The Silver Line route was moved from Lafayette Avenue to Ransom, just outside the boundaries of Heritage Hill.

Not only did the Mayor go to bat to appease HHA, he later called it an exercise in democracy. How this can possibly be considered an exercise in democracy is beyond us. The Rapid’s board, itself an unelected body, was dictated to by a single neighborhood association. Yet, just two weeks later the voters of the six cities sent a clear message to The Rapid: “NO SILVER LINE.” What has been the Mayor’s response to this? The Rapid is trying again this year for the same plan, while doubling the requested tax increase. Apparently, voters saying “NO” isn’t important to The Rapid’s unelected board. At the millage kickoff event this year Heartwell called those who oppose the millage “anti-community.” Somehow, when Heritage Hill residents oppose the Silver Line in their back yard, it’s “democracy in action.” When voters across the six cities say no to the wasteful and redundant Silver Line, they are “anti-community.”

Voters should ask themselves: Taxpayers in six cities (Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Walker, Wyoming, Kentwood and Grandville) are being asked to pay for the Silver Line, but who is really calling the shots here? Certainly not those who live outside Grand Rapids.

(To view the Silver Line’s “new” route, just outside of Heritage Hill, please see a Google Map by clicking here. The blue line is the Silver Line Route and the green box is Heritgage Hill’s boundaries.)

Below is a review of the timeline of events, with links to relevant emails (click on the date to view the original email):

• March 18, 2009. HHA president Michael J. Clark sent a letter to Peter Varga, CEO of The Rapid, demanding a change in the Silver Line bus route. The letter says, in bolded words, “While the concept of the BRT [Bus Rapid Transit/The Silver Line] is greatly applauded, the proposed route to use Lafayette NE is strongly opposed by this neighborhood and therefore, the board cannot support your request as presented at this time.”
• April 2, 2009. HHA president Michael J. Clark sends another letter to Peter Varga, stating: “With the alternative proposal presented to the Association Board members on April 1, 2009, we are in full support of the project. The specific route adjustment follows Jefferson to Ransom, Ransom to Crescent, Crescent to Bostwick, and Bostwick to Michigan Street. This new alignment removes the buses from the residential streets of Heritage Hill and instead uses the more appropriate non-residential streets. This revision reflects the desires of the residents and neighbors of the Historic District and we believe this new route will have no significant negative impact on the Heritage Hill Historic District.” (Emphasis is in original).
• April 17, 2009. HHA president Michael J. Clark sends another letter to the board of directors of The Rapid complaining that they want assurance that the route of the Silver Line will be changed, prior to the May 5 election. “The Heritage Hill Association currently finds itself in the very unfortunate position of potentially opposing the upcoming May 5th millage. . . At the subsequent meeting of April 1st . . . [HHA] happily accepted a route change suggested by the RAPID that would take the Silver Line off residential streets and specifically off Lafayette Avenue NE. * * * We have now been informed that the PTT will not present its findings until May 7th and that the route change(s) will not be voted on by the RAPID Board of Directors until its May board meeting. * * * [HHA] recognizes that as the millage vote is now less than two weeks away, action must be taken.” (Emphasis added).
• April 17, 2009. Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen emails Rapid CEO Peter Varga to complain about the Silver Line route: “I was disappointed to hear again, today, that the issue of the Silver Line route running on a Heritage Hill residential street will not be officially acted on until after May 5.” He later, in the same email, states: “It is important to resolve this as soon as possible – near or after the election is too late, in my opinion.” (Emphasis added).
• April 19, 2009. Grand Rapids City Commissioner Rosalyn Bliss asks Mayor Heartwell to consider a resolution at the upcoming City Commission meeting to support the Silver Line millage. Mayor Heartwell expresses concern that the vote would not be unanimous and he specifically mentions the Lafayette controversy. Bliss then replies to Mayor Heartwell: “It has gotten a little ugly. Peter [Varga] came up with an amended alignment that satisfied the HHA Board but honked off GVSU (it comes up Ransom rather than Lafayette, serving GRCC and Spectrum well but hitting two blocks away from Cook DeVos Center). The HHA is threatening to oppose the millage if the ITP Bd. doesn’t act in advance of 5/5. . . If HHA opposes, even if the millage passed (and it might not with their opposition) the State Historic Commission could deny the approval killing the ENTIRE project.” (Emphasis added).
• April 19, 2009. Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen again emails Peter Varga: “A group of folks met, today, to discuss the Lafayette Avenue route situation. I agreed to try to convey to you, Heritage Hill’s interest in getting a commitment from the ITP board, this week, to avoiding residential streets in Heritage Hill and on the Silver Line route.”(Emphasis added).
• April 21, 2009. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell emails Peter Varga with proposed resolution language, to be voted on at The Rapid’s board meeting the next day. The resolution clearly misrepresents the situation. Heartwell admits that the resolution may “be more than the ITP Board will be willing to say. * * * Resolution – The ITP Board of Directors is aware of the staff recommendation of an alternative route to the current proposal and believes it may have merit for both environmental and ridership reasons. Further, the Board strongly believes in the process of route evaluation established through the Public Transportation Tomorrow Task Force. Therefore, the ITP Board directs staff to explore other route options in keeping with this established procedure.” (Emphasis added).
  Why would the ITP Board be unwilling to discuss what is going on behind the scenes?
• April 21, 2009. Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen emails Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell: “I’m not really sure what Heritage Hill will approve but I know there are some who want to find a compromise. I’m willing to argue for your proposed language at the HH meeting tonight (7pm).”
• April 21, 2009. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell emails the president of The Rapid’s board, Don Lawless: “I received, last evening, a proposed resolution from the HHA. I have redrafted it and shown the draft to Peter and Jim Talen.” (Emphasis added).
  Now apparently the Heritgage Hill Association is dictating resolution language to The Rapid’s board.
• April 21, 2009. That evening, Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen again emails Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell announcing that the Heritage Hill Association has OK’d The Rapid’s board resolution. The final resolution reads: “Resolution – The ITP Board of Directors is aware of staff proposals for alternate routes for the Silver Line to the current proposal and believes these proposals warrant serious consideration and input from all constituents including potential environmental, historic preservation, and ridership interests. Further, the Board strongly believes the process of route evaluation established through Public Transportation Tomorrow Task Force. Therefore, The ITP Board directs staff to explore other route options in keeping with established procedure.” (Emphasis added).
  It’s a slap in the face to voters to say to them that the process is open to their input, yet one neighborhood association is dictating policy to a government body – and that government body is bending so quickly and easily. One could say that The Rapid’s board is even cowering. Two weeks later, constituents said NO to the Silver Line bus tax increase. Clearly that didn’t matter much.
• April 22, 2009. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell emails Rapid CEO Peter Varga and Rapid Board President Don Lawless: “I responded to Jim Talen’s email expressing appreciation (you were copied) but I wanted to ‘converse’ with the two of you off-line.” (Emphasis added).
• April 22, 2009. Rapid Board President Don Lawless emails Mayor George Heartwell, Rapid CEO Peter Varga, and Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen: “Thank you for all your hard work and support for the SilverLine. I will rely on George to present the resolution language and will ask for support from the board.”
• April 23, 2009. Rapid CEO Peter Varga emails Jan Earl of the Heritage Hill Association and Mayor George Heartwell: “I thank you all for listening and participating in a positive way towards a more reasonable solution. A very healthy exercise in democratic behavior.” (Emphasis added).
  Just how democratic is it that a single neighborhood association overrides months of work and dictates to a government body how to word a board resolution – under the threat of “vetoing” the entire Silver Line project?
• April 28, 2009. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell also emails Jan Earl of the Heritage Hill Association: “The efforts in the last few days before the ITP meeting are truly an illustration of democracy in action.” (Emphasis added).

So now we see how “transparent” this process was. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell, along with Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen, worked very hard to ensure that the wishes of one powerful neighborhood association were followed – and the details kept as vague as possible for public consumption. This was to the point that the neighborhood association dictated to The Rapid’s board of directors how it would word a resolution and that it would vote on the resolution before the election… or else HHA would veto the entire project. This was also despite the fact that this last minute route change “honked off” Grand Valley State University. Democracy indeed!

Voters should understand that their will isn’t very important. Voters said no to the Silver Line in 2009, yet The Rapid didn’t get the message. Apparently voting isn’t much of an important exercise in democracy – unless you live in a special interest neighborhood and have influential friends!

All of the original emails (many more than quoted above) are available by clicking here. All of the emails have also been uploaded to a third party web site, available here.

Continue reading »]]> Two staff members at The Rapid have responded to our “Myths vs. Facts” report. When reading through it, we’re reminded of the phrase from the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and her companions are frightened by the display of power from the almighty Wizard, and then they’re told to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. You can read The Rapid’s response to our report by clicking here.

Their response can be summed up in two images from The Rapid’s 2009 National Transit Database fact sheet:

Pay no attention to the tax dollars behind the curtain

Pay no attention to the spending behind the curtain

The Rapid wants you to ignore capital spending, because somehow that’s special spending. Even though that amount comes from your tax money in the form of state and federal gas taxes and vehicle registration fees, $16 million of spending isn’t really spending at all, according to The Rapid. This Enron-like accounting standard should make any taxpayer laugh, but The Rapid is serious. In effect, they’re saying “You shouldn’t count capital spending when determining the cost of The Rapid.”

What is capital spending? It’s the money spent on buses, other vehicles, buildings, and other tangible large-ticket pieces of property – like $250,000 pieces of art, for instance. The folks at The Rapid only want you to count the money they spend on operating expenses, such as fuel and wages.

One other point we’d like to make is that The Rapid’s staff uses an odd measure of bus capacity utilization. The Rapid’s report authors claim they don’t know where we get the bus capacity of “74.” Well, perhaps they aren’t aware of the data they report to the National Transit Database, which lists the capacity of all of their buses. The NTD lists the seating and standing capacity of each bus. When you add this together and average the result by the number of buses that The Rapid has, you get a result of a capacity of 74 per bus. This has gone up over the last several years because The Rapid keeps buying buses that are bigger than the ones they are replacing. They also state that 24 people per hour use their buses. Using this logic they say that their buses are 60% full. But that makes no sense because passengers aren’t sitting on the bus for an hour at a time. The average bus trip is about 3.7 miles. To determine the average number of riders on the bus at any given time, we use the standard practice of dividing the number of passenger miles provided by the number of revenue miles provided by the bus system. This gives us a rock solid number of 7.3 average riders on the bus at any time. The Rapid’s staff is purposely using the wrong data in attempting to “debunk” our report.

Continue reading »]]> In today’s Grand Rapids Press, we are told that The Rapid does a better job than the Lansing bus system (CATA) because of two rather oddly-chosen metrics of performance:

Specifically, The Rapid’s operating cost per bus hour is $78.22 and $6.15 per bus-mile. While the average among peers is $101.41 per hour and $7.53 per bus-mile.

And in Lansing the Capital Area Transportation Authority (CATA) averages $105.54 per hour, and $8 per bus-mile. In Ann Arbor, the average is $102.53 per hour and $8.08 per bus-mile.

Yet, in preparation for this article, we sent the Press much more detail on an analysis between The Rapid and CATA. Our source for this data is the National Transit Database, a federal program where all transit agencies must report their operating statistics. The NTD publishes a whole lot of very specific data, as well as “fact sheets” which summarize the operations of each transit agency. 2009 is the latest year of data available. You can see the fact sheets for the two transit systems here: The Rapid and CATA (Lansing).

We also publish all of The Rapid’s historical fact sheets on our web site, here.

From these two fact sheets (as well as fuel usage data published in the NTD), we can come to several conclusions:

• CATA (Lansing) spends less and carries more passengers than The Rapid
• CATA transported 23% more passengers on 17% fewer buses than The Rapid
• CATA recovers 24% of its costs through fares while The Rapid only recovers 10% of costs through fares
• CATA has 47% more average passengers on their buses at any given time
• CATA pollutes 26% less than The Rapid too (see our story on The Rapid’s pollution record here)

Below is a chart summarizing these findings between the two systems:

It’s one thing to say it costs “x” dollars to run a bus per hour. It’s much more meaningful to learn how much it costs a transit system to provide service to each passenger. When we look at the stats, it’s clear that The Rapid has a long ways to go to improve things.

The folks at The Rapid keep pointing to a report issued by a company called HDR Engineering, which purportedly shows that The Rapid is doing a good job. It’s important to note that this is a company which designs and builds transit systems. The Rapid has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with this company. What do you think their answer is going to be when asked if The Rapid should build more transit systems?

Furthermore, HDR has a history of misleading municipalities. See here and here.This company seems to have cherry-picked other transit systems to compare The Rapid to. For instance, it compared The Rapid (with operating expenses in 2008 of $25 million) with Louisville (operating expenses of $53 million) and Flint, Michigan (operating expenses of $15 million). We have a hard time seeing how these systems are “peers.”

In fact, after reviewing this report, we noticed a gigantic glaring error. The report says that in 2008 The Rapid recovered 26% of its operating costs through the farebox. Yet, when you look at the data from the National Transit Database, we see that this is falsely inflating the truth, that The Rapid recovers much less. Check the column on the far right, “Farebox Recovery”:

Click to view full size

When you look at the source data (the same source HDR allegedly used, from 2008), you see that the real fare recovery is 15%:

When we corrected the HDR report, we saw that The Rapid is actually below average in it “peers.” The below chart summarizes 2009 data, the HDR report uses 2008 data.

And, when you add in all costs of doing business, The Rapid only recovers about 10% of its cost through fares.

Maybe The Rapid should ask for its money back.

Continue reading »]]> In honor of Earth Day 2011, ITP Watch is releasing the results of our analysis of The Rapid’s environmental impact. The Rapid and its supporters have long justified repeated tax increase requests by pointing to The Rapid’s environmental benefit. For example, The Rapid’s web site, under the “The Rapid & the Environment” page, says the following:

For every passenger mile traveled, public transportation produces only a fraction of the harmful pollution of private vehicles; only 5 percent as much carbon monoxide, less than 8 percent as many volatile organic compounds, and nearly half as much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

Using data that The Rapid reports to the federal government, we can now demonstrate that this is categorically false. In fact, we have calculated that The Rapid contributed 40% more carbon dioxide to the environment than if every single Rapid bus passenger had been transported in a car – to the tune of seven million extra pounds of carbon dioxide. Even more shockingly, The Rapid pollutes more than if every single Rapid bus passenger were transported in an SUV!

How can this be?

According to The Rapid, its average bus only gets 4.45 miles to the gallon.  The Rapid’s buses carry an average of only 7.3 passengers at any given time (about 90% empty, based on the Rapid’s average bus capacity of 74 people).

Using data The Rapid reports to the federal government each year, we can calculate that The Rapid’s buses emit 0.76 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger mile.  As a comparison, the average SUV emits 0.56 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger mile and the average passenger car emits 0.54 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger mile.  (For an explanation of why passenger miles are the preferred method of fairly comparing modes of transportation, please see our full Myths vs. Facts report).

The Rapid: not so green.

This means that The Rapid is in no way reducing pollution. Because of The Rapid’s low capacity utilization and its buses being larger than needed, a lot of fuel is being used to move around a comparatively low number of people. The buses are so empty that they are less efficient than if SUVs were used to transport every single Rapid passenger. The Rapid’s buses are a net adder of pollution to the environment. In fact, we were shocked to calculate that The Rapid’s buses added over seven million pounds of carbon dioxide to the environment, compared to the amount that would have been emitted if every single Rapid bus passenger had been transported in an average midsized car.   The reality is that The Rapid’s passengers produced 40% more CO2 emissions than if they had ridden or been transported in cars. The Rapid’s web site falsely claims that its services reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50%.

This result, admittedly somewhat counter-intuitive, is due to several factors. The largest factor is that The Rapid is buying bigger buses over time, yet the number of passengers filling those buses is low. A second factor is that autos are getting more efficient over time. According to data released by the US Department of Energy, transit buses have gotten 75% less energy efficient since 1970.  Conversely, passenger autos have gotten 30% more energy efficient in the same period. The chart below demonstrates this trend.

It should be noted that the above chart actually overstates the efficiency of The Rapid’s buses. The Rapid’s buses are carrying fewer passengers than the national average, making the pollution and energy efficiency picture worse. Between 2005 and 2009, The Rapid’s average bus capacity has grown from 70 to 74.  For some reason, despite low capacity utilization, The Rapid is scrapping older, smaller buses for even larger ones.

The Rapid has purchased five hybrid-electric buses and falsely claimed that these would double the gas mileage of a regular bus.  However, as The Rapid now admits, these buses only get 0.68 miles per gallon more than a regular bus – all for the additional cost of at least $200,000 per bus.  The hybrid-electric buses are still less energy efficient than SUVs.

Strangely, The Rapid claims that saving $4,000 per year in fuel costs by using these hybrid buses is worth spending more than $200,000 extra for each of these buses.  At that rate, it would take more than 50 years for the hybrid-electric buses to break even.

The bottom line is that The Rapid can’t reduce pollution in its current state because it keeps running very large buses with very low utilization. To make matters worse, the upcoming 31% tax hike on May 3 will add even more buses, many of them at non-peak times, compounding the problem.

You’ll also notice that a service called “Rapid Van” is referenced in the above chart. This is the Rapid’s van pool ride share service. This type of service, also known as a “jitney,” is far more successful at providing cost-effective mass transit. The Rapid Van service is dramatically better at reducing pollution than The Rapid’s fixed-route bus services, yet The Rapid only spends 0.5% of its annual budget on this service.  For more information on jitneys, please see the section of our Myths vs. Facts report titled “MYTH: Using the Rapid is the only way for many people to get to work.”

For citations and links to the documentation used in this report, please see the pollution entry on The Rapid Wiki.

Continue reading »]]>

The Rapid's FOIA Bomb

Today Jeff Steinport, co-founder of Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility (KCFFR) and manager of the group’s ITP Watch project, filed a Freedom of Information Act appeal with Don Lawless, the chairman of the Interurban Transit Partnership board (also known as The Rapid). This appeal is a result of The Rapid’s vindictive and illegal response to Steinport’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request relating to The Rapid’s operations and expenses.

The original FOIA request from Steinport asked for information on The Rapid’s ridership on a per-route basis, the amount The Rapid spends with several companies, and more detail on the proposed Silver Line bus route, which was rejected by voters in 2009. The original FOIA letter requested a waiver of fees because the information asked for was in the public’s interest and the public has a right to know how their money is spent before they are asked for a tax increase. State law provides for a waiver of such fees if the disclosure is in the public interest. The Rapid is requesting a 31% property tax increase on May 3 with much of the new tax increase going to fund the failed Silver Line bus route.

The Rapid denied the fee waiver request for no valid reason and proceeded to waste dozens of hours of staff time and nearly 1,700 pages of printouts. The resulting bill was for $450, just for asking for important information on how The Rapid operates.

“All government agencies have a procedure where they notify the FOIA requester that the cost will be over $50, yet the Rapid did not do this, contrary to their own practices,” said Jeff Steinport. “In fact, The Rapid is sending a message to taxpayers that they’d better not ask how The Rapid spends their money, and if they do, The Rapid will slap them with a bill for hundreds of dollars just for asking.”

The Rapid was judged the least transparent government entity in Kent County after a survey by KCFFR showed how little it made available online. The Rapid received a transparency score of “D-”, a result of virtually no financial or operational data being available to the public.

The appeal filed today demonstrates how The Rapid violates both the spirit and letter of state law and how The Rapid fears public disclosure of its spending and operations. “Taxpayers in Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Walker, Wyoming, and Grandville need to ask themselves if a government agency which consistently misleads the public and shows contempt for taxpayers deserves more money,” said Steinport.

For much more detail, read the full 21 page appeal here.

The appeal is also available online, posted on the Scribd web site.

Continue reading »]]> This week the non-partisan Kent County Open Government Project released their first annual survey of local government openness. Each major unit of government in Kent County was rated based on the amount of information made available to the public through its web site. The survey looked for important transparency topics such as availability of contact details for board members, availability of budgets and audits, meeting minutes, employee pay scales, and the availability of union contacts, among other subjects. Each topic was assigned a score and those scores were added up for each government unit. The score was then translated into a letter grade.

The City of Grand Rapids came out on top, with a score of 87% and a letter grade of A. On the other end of the scale, the government unit with the worst score was The Rapid. Unsurprisingly, The Rapid received a numerical score of 23% and a letter grade of D-.

Based on our experience, this is entirely warranted. The Rapid makes very little available to the public on its web site. We’ve had to resort to Freedom of Information Act requests just to get basic information from The Rapid, and even then, they add roadblocks to make it extremely expensive to get that data.

It’s unfortunate that The Rapid, which sees fit to spend $250,000 on a piece of art for its headquarters, can’t spend some money to make itself more transparent to the taxpayers who pay the bills. It’s extremely inexpensive to post information to the Internet these days, but our inclination is that The Rapid does this on purpose.