I did some extensive reporting on this mess in 2009. Please check those posts out for some detail on the proposed system. For more up to date information, my friends over at ITP Watch are doing a great job of keeping The Rapid on their toes.

• Rapid Silver Line – Another waste of money
• The Rapid Silver Line – More Concealment and Deceit
• Rapid Silver Line – Bus “Slow” Transit
• Rapid Silver Line Goes Down
• Rapid Silver Line: They Almost Got to Take Credit

Rapid FAIL Line

Rapid Silver Line: FAIL

It’s fantastic news for taxpayers and for fiscal sanity in the Grand Rapids area. Last night the expensive and redundant Rapid “Silver Line” tax increase request went down in flames. The overall vote total was 52% against and 48% in favor, but when looking at the six cities in the Rapid service district, we see that a majority of the cities rejected the request:

Grand Rapids – 53% yes, 47% no

East Grand Rapids – 64% yes, 36% no

Grandville – 36% yes, 64% no

Kentwood – 46% yes, 54% no

Walker – 32% yes, 68% no

Wyoming – 36% yes, 64% no

As you can see, Walker, Wyoming, Kentwood, and Grandville all soundly rejected the tax increase request and even Grand Rapids was closer than expected.

The pro-Silver Line people are predictably dour. The comments of Peter Varga, executive director of the ITP (Rapid), sum up their attitude perfectly. He said it was rejected simply because voters didn’t understand the request. Right. Voters heard from this blog as well as other groups (including our friends at KCFFR) who exposed the bad plan of the Silver Line. The Rapid folks tried their hardest to limit the information available on this request, but active citizens exposed the Rapid and let voters know the facts. This web site alone received thousands of visits from people searching for more information.

The message was clear:

• This new Silver Line was a duplicate of already-existing bus services
• The Silver Line would cost tens of millions of dollars (just for buses)
• The Silver Line would have cut off traffic on Division by shutting down lanes and dramatically increasing congestion
• The Silver Line was slower than existing bus services (see our previous posts on the issue)
• The claims of spurred development and “new jobs” were based on speculation and conjecture

In summary, bravo for the voters of the four cities who rejected this request. Make no mistake, they will be back, asking for more. Their next request will be for more than $100 million for an even more inefficient light rail line.

Just Say No to the Silver Line

UPDATE: For more up to date information on the Silver Line and The Rapid, please visit our friends at http://www.itpwatch.org.

The supporters of the proposed $110 million Silver Line bus system in Grand Rapids tout it as a “Bus Rapid Transit” line. The proposed route of the Silver Line is up Division from 60th Street, a jog around the hospitals around Michigan street, and back to the Rapid station. The total route, according to Rapid, is 9.8 miles. It will take 35 minutes for the new “Silver Line” to travel this route. An important note here is that, as we’ve previously pointed out, Division will be turned into an effective two lane road (one lane each way) so that these Silver Line buses can have their own dedicated lanes. This supposedly will speed these buses up because they won’t have to share these lanes with regular cars.

But wait, the Rapid already has a bus, route #1, that travels from the Clyde Park Meijer, down to 68th Street, up Division, and around to the Rapid station. The total distance for the current buses on this route is 12 miles, according to Google Maps. In addition, according to the Rapid’s web site, the buses on this route take about 33 minutes.

Let’s do the math. The Silver Line is supposed to take 35 minutes to travel 9.8 miles, with dedicated lanes on Division. The current #1 bus, traveling 12 miles, takes 33 minutes, sharing the lanes like every other vehicle on the road. The Silver Line factors out to be traveling at around 16.8 miles per hour. The current bus factors out to 20.57 miles per hour.

Huh? How do they call this Bus Rapid Transit? It’s Bus Slow Transit. It’s slower than the regular buses that take the same route now!

Don’t forget that these dedicated Silver Line lanes on Division will squeeze all current traffic on Division down to one lane in each direction. Traffic jam, anyone?

Be sure to cast your vote on this idea on Tuesday, May 5th, if you live in Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Walker, Kentwood, or Grandville.

See our prior posts on this subject:

• Rapid Silver Line – More Concealment and Deceit
• Rapid Silver Line – Another Waste of Money

The only detail the post card has on the Silver Line is as follows:

Silver Line is more like a light rail system than a traditional bus. A proven solution in other communities, it will maximize ridership opportunities, economic development, and travel-time savings. Silver Line vehicles will use:

• Dedicated lanes during peak times
• In-station fare collection to speed boarding
• Intelligent transportation system applications such as signal priority, allowing quick travel between stations

That’s it? Yes, that’s it. As previously stated, they don’t want you to understand all the details.

What is the Silver Line really? As we’ve previously reported, it is a Bus Rapid Transit line that will dedicate one lane each way on Division Avenue from 60th street to the Rapid Station for use only by these new buses. This means that Division will be limited to one lane each way for regular vehicular traffic during peak traffic hours (rush hour). You heard that right. Division will turn into a traffic nightmare, likely pushing traffic to side streets to find better ways to get where they are going.

They say that this new “traffic priority” system will allow for these buses to travel much faster than current buses (which already travel the same exact route as the proposed Silver Line). How much faster? Well, we don’t really see any improvement. The Silver Line’s route would be 9.8 miles long and would take the new buses 36 minutes to travel. Huh? Yes, that’s right, 16 miles per hour. We don’t honestly understand how they can call this a Bus Rapid Transit line.

But wait, it gets better! This whole project is a $70 million tax increase – all so that they can duplicate the bus route they already have. No kidding: they already have a bus that travels this route. There’s no reason to raise taxes by $70 million just to duplicate what’s already there.

If you are a resident of East Grand Rapids, Grandville, or Walker, you will see no benefit from this line at all. If you are in Kentwood or Wyoming and happen to live near Division street, you might be able to use this new line conveniently, but as said before, there already is a bus line on this route. Basically, very few residents of any of the six ITP cities will see any benefit, yet will be expected to pay for it.

In the same vein as the near-informationless post card, the Rapid’s pro-Silver Line web site lists one source for their claim that the “investment” in the Silver Line will create jobs and produce a return on investment through new development. They reference an article named “Bus Rapid Transit: A Powerful Real Estate Development Tool” by William Kaplowitz. They don’t provide a link to this article, nor the text of it. So we did a simple Google search and came up with the text of the article. Read it for yourself here. The article makes a couple of simple, poorly-documented claims about development, and that’s it. That’s what they use to try and get residents to raise their own taxes by $70 million.

What they don’t discuss is that most of the time this “new” development was already happening or happened only because government created tax incentives to do so. In other words, they confuse correlation with causation. Just because development occurred around same time as the bus system’s implementation, it doesn’t mean that the buses caused the development. For example: there already is a lot of development going on along Division. It is likely that the Silver Line people would say that the Silver Line caused that development if they try and tout the “benefits.” But once again, since there already is a bus line along Division, it’s hard to understand how new buses would suddenly spring up more development.

But this is how the ITP/Rapid works. They don’t release their budgets. They don’t make true ridership numbers (by route, etc.) easily available. They don’t release the true operational statistics of their system. They don’t release the minutes of their board meetings, as the City of Grand Rapids does. They operate as though they don’t need to be accountable. But they’re a publicly-funded body and they need to operate transparently. The Rapid operates secretively so that you don’t understand how they operate. It’s all part of their contempt for taxpayers and efficient operations.

Don’t forget for vote on Tuesday, May 5th if you live in Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Kentwood, Walker, or Grandville.

Read more on this issue:

• Rapid Silver Line: Another Waste of Money
• Rapid Silver Line – Bus “Slow” Transit
• ITP Watch
• ITP Watch: Rapid Silver Line Blog

The Rapid's Silver Line - Flushing Money Down the Toilet

UPDATE: For more up to date information on the Silver Line and The Rapid, please visit our friends at http://www.itpwatch.org.

The ITP/Rapid transit agency is again asking taxpayers for a tax increase on Tuesday, May 5th. Once again, they are using an off-election date to try and get as few voters as possible. If you live in Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Walker, Wyoming, Grandville, or Kentwood, you should vote no on May 5th.

The new “silver line” that is proposed is what’s called a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line. What’s that? Basically, they will cut off two of the four lanes on Division and squeeze regular traffic into one lane each way so that these new “rapid” buses get their own lanes. Did you think rush hour was bad before? If this passes, Division will be a traffic nightmare.

Some common-sense reasons to vote no:

1. This is a $70 million tax increase in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression – plus another $40 million in taxes that will be spent from the Federal and State governments – bringing the cost to over $110 million for buses
2. There is already a bus line that has the exact same route
3. The residents of Grandville, Walker, and East Grand Rapids will see absolutely no benefit for their increase in taxes
4. How many people do you think live and work right along Division Avenue? This is another waste of money on a ineffecient and inconvenient fixed-line bus system
5. As previously mentioned, the “Silver Line” will absolutely choke up traffic on Division during rush hours

UPDATE: (4/16/09)

Since this original post, I’ve had several people contact me with more information:

• The Rapid Silver Line will travel 9.8 miles from 60th Street to the Rapid Station near downtown. The total travel time is 36 minutes, which factors out to a whopping 16 miles per hour! Wow, Bus Rapid Transit, indeed!
• The Silver Line will eliminate crucial parking along Division that small businesses depend on.
• The pro-Silver Line web site names one source for their claim that this spending will result in a 400% return on investment. However, a quick search on the Internet reveals that this “source” is just a three page article with no data to back up the claim.
• The Rapid has supposedly done years of studying of this issue. Why don’t they publish any of that information on their web site? What do they have to hide? The Rapid has a history of not publishing data – they still refuse to publish their budget online.
• The Rapid claims that this project will create up to 189 direct and indirect jobs. This project is costing $110 million (assuming it comes in on-budget). This means that there is a cost of $582,000 per job! Where do I apply?

See our other posts on this subjet:

• Rapid Silver Line – More Concealment and Deceit
• Rapid Silver Line – Bus “Slow” Transit

For more info, visit the new ITP Watch web site: http://www.itpwatch.org

However, the bureaucrats at Detroit Public Schools are going ape because they say the numbers are “totally erroneous.” They say that they report a graduation rate of 67% to the state. So who is telling the truth? They both are. The difference is that Michigan school districts are only required to report the graduation rate of current seniors. In other words, they calculate it by taking the number of students who graduate from the 12th grade and dividing it by the number of students who started the 12th grade that year. The Education Week report takes the more realistic approach of taking the number of students who actually graduate from the 12th grade and divide it by the number who started the 9th grade. You see, many of the students who drop out do so before the 12th grade. Detroit Public Schools is misleading the public, as is the state of Michigan, by only reporting graduation rates of 12th graders.

So, we see that Detroit Public Schools is a failure by every definition of the word, yet they are still in business. Does anyone wonder why the enrollment at charter schools in Detroit is skyrocketing? Tens of thousands of students are stuck in a utter dismal failure of a school district because the cap on charter schools has been reached. Our governor continues to pander to the teachers unions and refuse to support lifting the cap. Meanwhile, another generation of kids is being denied an education, and consequently is comdemned to continue the cycle of poverty, crime, drugs, etc.

How about Grand Rapids Public Schools? The dropout rate at GRPS is slightly better – 52.8% of GRPS students actually graduate. Even more interestingly, the graduation rate of Godfrey Lee Public Schools (Wyoming) is only 37.8% and 49.1% in Kelloggsville Public Schools.The highest graduation rates in the area are at East Grand Rapids Public Schools (98.1%) and Forest Hills (97.9%). Unfortunately, charter schools are not listed in this report, but we do know that Black River Public School, a charter K-12 school in Holland, is ranked as the #2 school in the entire state by Newsweek.

• The Rapid’s tax increase passed (but at 58% Yes, compared to 66% Yes last time). Of the six cities in The Rapid’s tax authority (Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Walker, Wyoming, and Grandville), three of them voted NO on the Rapid – Grandville, Walker, and Wyoming. Fully half of the municipalities in The Rapid’s service area voted no. However, alas, it doesn’t matter how each city voted – the tax passes on a majority of the ccombined citizens of all six cities. So, in other words, residents of Grandville, Walker, and Wyoming, who never have had a choice about whether or not to be part of The Rapid, are subsidizing the majority of the riders in Grand Rapids. It’s like that giant sucking sound Ross Perot talked about – though the money is flying out of Grandville, Walker, and Wyoming into Grand Rapids. Hopefully the group that opposed The Rapid will continue to expose the gushing wanton waste in The Rapid’s budget.
• GRCC’s millage request failed. This was a surprise. The No votes won by a very slim margin. More on this later.
• Grand Rapids Public Schools’ request for a millage renewal on non-homesead property passed handily. It always does.

Now, for the fun part. Grand Rapids Community College’s millage request failed. The result? They say they’ll have to raise tuition 8%. If you are a resident of Kent County, you’ll pay $79.50 per credit hour instead of the prior $73.50 per credit hour.

Well, that’s unacceptable to the bureaucrats at GRCC. They have decided to call another election in August to have everyone vote on the tax increase again! Why? Because fewer people vote outside of the city in August elections, meaning that voters in the communities that voted no on the millage just two weeks ago are less likely to head to the polls in August. This outrage of blatant contempt and disregard for the citizens of Kent County is a disgrace. The trustees at GRCC need to be called to task for their behavior.

What’s this? Their contact information?

• Gary P. Schenk (Chairman of the board of trustees)
  Home 676-2490
  Work: 647-8277
  gschenk@grcc.edu
• Ellen M. James (Vice-chair)
  Home: 363-4286
  Home Fax: 363-4286
  ejames@grcc.edu
• Olivia Margo Anderson (Treasurer)
  Home: 243-7521
  Fax: 243-3064
  maanders@grcc.edu
• Richard W. Verburg (Secretary)
  Home: 534-8068
  Fax: 534-8068
  rverburg@grcc.edu
• Terri A. Handlin (trustee)
  Home: 235-1121
  Home Fax: 235-1121
  thandlin@grcc.edu
• Janice L. Maggini (trustee)
  Home: 538-8796
  Fax: 538-8796
  jmaggini@grcc.edu
• Dr. Michael A. Stearns (trustee)
  Home 363-2911
  Work: 365-6151
  Work Fax:363-9609
  mstearns@grcc.edu

If you live in Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Walker, Wyoming, or Grandville, you get the pleasure of voting on the bloated and wasteful Interurban Transit Partnership (The Rapid) tax hike of 18%. Some interesting fact on The Rapid:

• Rapid buses carry an average of only six people at any given time
• Even as the numbers of passengers has increased, the cost of The Rapid on a per-passenger basis is also going up, meaning the Rapid is getting less efficient with time
• The Rapid’s web site misleads the public by under-reporting revenue by $18 million this year alone. Why do they hide the real cost of The Rapid?
• The average transit bus gets only 3.65 miles to the gallon and spews 50 times more pollution than a car. Rapid buses add pollution to the environment, they don’t reduce it!

You can read more information on the waste at The Rapid by checking out the Rapid No web site at www.RapidNo.org.

All Kent County residents get to vote on the GRCC millage increase of 31%. The interesting part is that this property tax increase is permanent! It never expires.

Grand Rapids Residents Also get to vote on the Grand Rapids Public Schools operating millage. This tax is on non-homestead property only, but effects renters.

So, don’t forget to vote on Tuesday, no matter where you live in Kent County.

Only East Grand Rapids has a higher tax burden in Kent county than residents of GR. Does this sound like a good way to promote growth? Less money will be put to productive use so that the bureaucrats can keep their jobs and developers from outside the city can suck up our tax dollars to build overpriced new school buildings. Do they really expect bricks and mortar to improve our city?

However, as bureaucrats and politicians do, they ignore the fundamental conditions that are necessary for the creation of good jobs. That solution involves fewer bureaucrats and politicians, so that one’s out of the question.

Of the respondents that are actually going to stay in Michigan after college, 12% want to move to the Detroit area and 8% want to move to the Grand Rapids area. Notice we say “area.” We did a little analysis on the tax rate in Grand Rapids city and came to an interesting conclusion.

The city of Grand Rapids currently has a property tax millage rate of 26.6998 mills, which means that for every $1,000 of taxable value of a home, the owner pays $26.69. According to the US Census Bureau, the median home value in Grand Rapids is $91,400, which means that the owner of the median home in the city pays about $1,220 in property tax per year. The GR kleptocrats love to point to the fact that Grand Rapids has one of the lowest millage rates in the county. They’re right… but there’s a catch.

Grand Rapids residents have the privilege of paying a city income tax! The median household income in the city is about $37,000 and the average household is 2.57 people. For our purposes, we’ll make it three people. That means the average household is paying about $451 in additional city income taxes. If we translated that into mills for a $91,400 home, it would mean an additional ten mills, and suddenly we have an effective millage rate of 37.7 mills! That’s the dirty secret. Now suddenly the tax burden in Grand Rapids is higher than in the Northview, Forest Hills, Caledonia, Kentwood areas… and the list goes on. About the only municipality with a tax rate higher than in the city is for residents of East Grand Rapids who are also in the East Grand Rapids schools district.

So, back to cool cities. Instead of suggesting that taxes be lowered to attract those who are affected most by high taxes – the middle and upper classes – they want to spend more taxes on determining what’s cool. Bureaucrats are much better at determining what’s cool than the average folks who spend their money they way they want to. Sure.