Thanks, Bob. I first asked Sam to ask for the cost of the most productive bus lines about a week ago at the Columbia Crossing Task Force meeting. My goal was for Trimet to give him the real numbers, which I think will show bus to be less expensive than rail to operate, contrary to the answer given at the meeting. If I caught it right, it was a classic case of distortion by answering a closely related question, instead of the one actually asked (or intended by the context of the question.) The costs given was system wide, but system wide includes lost of low ridership and thus high cost bus lines. All MAX lines are high ridership, so they should be compared to high ridership bus lines. For instance, the Interstate ave. MAX line should be compared with the Interstate bus line that it replaced. Or MAX should be compared to the top few bus lines.

As to the streetcar, I am trying to get them to cough up data that they probably already have as a result of their model that Chris mentioned. My suspicion is that they are intentionally not producing this data, especially since any good model would have this data.

One further item: A friend of mine, that used to work in the planning department of a government agency, said that he routinely saw the staff deceiving the elected officials. Add that to the pretty certain staff deceptions about the tram and it is reasonable to suspect that this is another case of deceiving the elected official ( although, admittedly not by his own staff.)

As to your ballpark estimate of streetcar cost - thanks (that was good thinking) - I somehow missed that approach that puts the streetcar cost at about the same level as taxi fare.

Thanks
JK