By James Pilcher
The Cincinnati Enquirer

With one sentence, Hamilton County Commissioner John Dowlin summed up both positions in Wednesday's debate over Issue 7 and the light rail system it would help fund.

"We don't even agree on the facts or on what facts to use," said Mr. Dowlin, one of three panelists to present positions against the Nov. 5 ballot issue that would raise the Hamilton County sales tax by a half-cent.

Indeed, the 2 ‡-hour debate at Xavier University included several sharp exchanges over everything from the impact of the proposed plan on air quality to how to calculate the percent of transit ridership.

The event, sponsored by the Xavier student environmental group EarthCare, was the first of four official debates between the two sides of Issue 7, placed on the ballot by the Southwestern Ohio Regional Transit Authority.

If passed, the ballot initiative would cover the local portion of the 30-year $2.7 MetroMoves plan, which includes a proposed 60-mile light rail system that would cost $2.6 billion and another $100 million in expansion and improvements to the existing Metro bus system.

One of those exchanges came after a question over air quality, with Glen Brand of the Sierra Club, speaking for the pro-light rail side, claiming that the system would pull enough cars off the road to eliminate hundreds of thousands of tons of air pollution from the skies.

That brought a quick response from County Auditor Dusty Rhodes, co-chair of the Alternatives to Light Rail Transit, the committee campaigning against Issue 7.

"Maybe we ought to go to the Draconian measure of limiting each family to one car," Mr. Rhodes said. "That's the road we're heading down now. It's like if you don't live where and how they want you to live, you'll be thrown in a gulag."

Each side had a three-member panel, and after each panelist gave a presentation, they took questions from the audience of about 60-70 students and local residents.

Another point of contention arose over the issue of how many riders use mass transit or light rail in other cities.

Stephan Louis, chairman of the Alternatives to Light Rail Transit, said that the light rail system will only reduce the amount of vehicle miles traveled in the seven-county metropolitan area by 1 to 2 percent.

"That's just not worth it, and those numbers are the same or even dropping in other cities," Mr. Louis said.

Light rail advocate John Schneider said that Mr. Louis was distorting that number by including the entire region, even though mass transit is only available in parts of Hamilton County.

"He's twisting the numbers," Mr. Schneider said. "When you look at the one place where transit is readily available in our region, downtown Cincinnati, the market share is more like 30-35 percent, which is a significant number."

Those disagreements continued throughout the debate, with the pro-Issue 7 side claiming that all the opponents wanted to do was build more highways, and the anti-tax panel saying light rail was old-fashioned technology that would not have any impact on traffic or air quality.

E-mail jpilcher@enquirer.com