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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"]You know, I used to have a dog like you.  My neighbor parked his new car in his driveway next to ours and the dog promptly went over and urinated on it." <A class="" title=OLE_LINK8 name=OLE_LINK8></A><A class="" title=OLE_LINK9 name=OLE_LINK9></A>CATS continues to break ridership records with each passing month in FY 2009 and October was no exception.  CATS served over 2.5 million trips with system wide average daily ridership reaching over 94,500 trips.  "The article was not an audit, it was a holiday puff piece, and it mentioned only a small percentage of the new development along the Blue Line.  People who think like you have, and continue to try to stop the project, but every time they manage to get something started, they get shut down themselves by the citizens, not the politicians.People along the Blue Line love it.  It is Tokyo crowded when there is a game in city center, and during rush hour weekdays.  I don't know what percentage of our citizens rides it, but I know it would be more if the trains had more capacity.  People in the parts of the city where future expansion is planned are loudly clamoring to speed up the project, but money issues make that impossible. [/quote] Untrained dogs don't appear to have any relevance to questions that I raised.  The media frequently runs stories about the benefits of a variety of activities with little substantiation for their asertions or a robust discussion of the benefits vs. the costs.    Unlike Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) does not make the numbers necessary to answer my questions readily available.  But with a bit of digging and iteration they can be estimated.  I would have thought, however, that people who support light rail systems would have the numbers at the tip of their tongue.  Quoting benefits without citing costs is being less than candid. For FY 2008 CATS had an average weekday ridership of 88,502, with an average of 14,700 or 16.6 per cent using the Blue Line trains.  These figures are found on the CATS's website.  CATS' management estimated that its system would hoist slightly more than 23 million trips for FY 2008 when adjusted for weekday vs. weekend riders. CATS' ridership increased 17.4 per cent during FY 2008.  Excluding the Blue Line, which had been in service only from November 2007 through the end of the fiscal year, the greatest increase in riders for existing services was on the express bus lines, which saw an increase of 17.3 per cent.  The light rail line showed the greatest increase in ridership because it was a start-up operation with only beginning service estimates. For FY 2008 CATS management projected an operating program revenue increase of 6.8 per cent and an operating program expense increase of 16.1.  Like many supporters of commuter and light rail systems, management is quick to applaud increases in riders and revenues but tends to say nothing, unless pressed, about increases in costs, which for some reason almost always outstrip gains in revenues and riders.  For FY 2008 CATS projected operations revenue support of $108,759,614.  This figure excludes fare box revenues.  It includes local, state, and federal support programs.  In addition, the system anticipated federal and state capital grants of $33,830,736.  If these numbers held true, each CATS rider received a subsidy of approximately $6.20 per trip.  If the capital supports are excluded, which would be more proper since they will be amortized over the life expectancy of the assets purchased with them, the subsidy based on operating supports alone is $4.73 per trip.  Thus, users who ride the train five days a week for 48 weeks a year get a nontaxable subsidy of $2,270.40 per year.  Nice work if you can get it.  The actual numbers are probably different from the budgeted numbers because of greater increases than anticipated in revenues, costs, and riders.  Nevertheless, they show that the system requires a significant subsidy.  It is considerably higher than the subsidy for DART.  In both cases, the subsidies are paid in large part by non-users.  The public should understand both sides of the accounting equation.  After all they are, for the most part, toting the note.
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