Hampton Roads Transit is claiming success six months after opening its light-rail line in Norfolk. The line is carrying an average of 4,642 riders each weekday, which is far greater than the 2,900 that had been forecast.
“Crowds” of as many as dozens of people look bored and apathetic at the opportunity to take free rides on the opening day for Norfolk’s light-rail line, August 19, 2011. Flickr photo by D. Allen Covey, VDOT.
The only problem is that, back in 2003, Hampton Roads Transit confidently predicted the 7.4-mile-long line would carry 10,400 riders each weekday in its opening year. Deft last-minute re-predictions of much lower numbers allow the the agency to claim success when actual ridership is less than 45 percent of the original prediction.
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Needless to say, the Norfolk line also suffered a huge cost overrun, costing about $320 million instead of the $198 million that had been predicted in 2003. It was supposed to open in 2008; instead, it opened in 2011. These problems cost the transit agency head, Norfolk city manager, and several other officials their jobs.
So it is no surprise that the current transit agency head wants people to think the light-rail line is a success. Thanks to credulous reporters whose idea of investigative journalism is to reprint transit agency press releases, many members of the public will soon forget about these cost overruns and ridership shortfalls. But it is interesting to compare the Norfolk numbers with Houston, which also has a 7.4-mile light-rail line. Only Houston’s carried more than 35,000 riders a weekday in 2010, or more than seven times the ridership of the Norfolk line. In its first year of operation, Houston’s carried more than 34,000 riders per weekday.
Or compare Norfolk with the Buffalo light rail, which is almost synonymous with “failure” partly because Buffalo’s total transit ridership–bus and light-rail together–declined from 36 million trips per year just before the light rail opened to 26 million trips per year by 2001, and ridership has hovered around that number ever since. Although it is only 6.2-miles long, the Buffalo line carried 21,500 riders per weekday in 2010, well over four times as many as Norfolk’s.
The real question is: if Hampton Roads Transit ever really thought that its light-rail line would only carry 2,900 riders per weekday in its opening year, why did they build it?
You could write the same story about the Phoenix light rail.
You could write the same thing for just about any project. This just in: Predicting the future has a crap shoot element to it. The toll roads in Austin had a $2 billion accounting error in cost recovery, so it’s gonna take a little longer (2x) to get the government loaned cash back. All the speculative housing development in 2007 seemed to fail in future reading as well. Not that I would call the Hampton project a success, but meeting ridership projections is never the best barometer of success due to lowballing, highballing, errors, etc. The best measure of relative success would be is productivity improving, particularly for projects that happen in defiance of logic. Yes, “Why did they build it?” But they got a light rail now, might as well use it.
Gee!! Phoenix light rail is only a few 100 riders short of their 2020 daily ridership number after only a few years of service.
We never see stories on highways or roads that have huge cost overruns as well being late in opening.
More so, we never see what the real cost per mile per vehicle is for building these roads, maintain them and rebuild them.
Buses are great in many places, but they come with high operation cost as well using up resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.
Math shows that LRT will carry riders a lower cost for operation than a BRT. BRT will win hands down for up front cost of building any line, but looses to operation cost as well development.
People prefer steel wheel over rubber wheels for transit.
Because the US imports oil from off shore, its sends billions of dollars to other country who now own a good portion of this country now.
Time to get the fact right.
drum118,
Thank you for joining the conversation. Here are a few responses.
In 2004, Valley Metro predicted that the Phoenix light rail would carry 49,900 riders per weekday in 2020. In 2010 it carried 38,030. While impressive, it is more than a few hundred short of 49,900.
The reason we don’t see stories about highway cost overruns is because they are rare. On average. highways go about 8 percent over predicted costs; rail transit goes about 40 percent over. The BIg Dig of course went way over, but that was a city beautification project, not a highway project — it added almost no new highway capacity.
When you add the costs of maintenance to the cost of operation, buses are less expensive per passenger and per passenger mile than light rail.
It isn’t obvious that people prefer steel wheels over rubber tires. What they seem to prefer is the increased frequency that transit agencies run trains at over buses. But to the extent that people do prefer steel wheels, I don’t think taxpayers should be asked to subsidize snobs.
This blog is about getting the facts right by looking up the actual numbers. I hope you will continue to join in the conversation and present more facts.
O’Toole, you have no interest in improving public transit service or facts.
Highwayman, let me just say you have no class at all. I see your type occasionally day to day, they have no lives, they have decided their problems are my fault and there is no reasoning with them. They are takers and losers.
Mattbo2, you’re either an idiot, a liar or a crook!
O’Toole is a fraud, you guys want double standards between roads & railroads.
The street in front of your home doesn’t exist on a profit or loss basis!
“Math shows that LRT will carry riders a lower cost for operation than a BRT.”
But the World Bank says otherwise. Unless you have a lot of passengers, and taking into account all costs (you can’t brush them under the carpet), buses are much less expensive.
Though you’re not counting the costs of streets.
“Because the US imports oil from off shore, its sends billions of dollars to other country who now own a good portion of this country now.”
If oil consumption is you major concern, buy trolleybuses.
This just in: Predicting the future has a crap shoot element to it.
This is why most hard science disciplines are transitioning over to projections. One good thing that came out of military planning…
DS
Does anyone want to start a pool to see when the first mugging, armed robbery, vandalist graffiti, and eventual train crash takes place.
Does anyone want to start a pool to see when the first comical stereotype argument gets trotted out, like it always does here? Oh, wait: too late. Never mind.
DS
Lazy Reader? More like lazy commenter today.
If you move the goalposts far enough, they all look like successes.
mattb02 wrote;
Highwayman, let me just say you have no class at all. I see your type occasionally day to day, they have no lives, they have decided their problems are my fault and there is no reasoning with them. They are takers and losers.
THWM: Matt, it would have been a good idea to look in a mirror before writing that.
I’m just calling a spade, a spade.
You think $? for roads is fine, though having public funding for public transit is problem.
O’Toole is a fraud, and he knows it too!
Always follow the money. While the TEA PARTY is trying to save our country, the politicians are only concerned with saving their jobs, and influence over where the money flows.
So if you don’t build a road to a house, then how do you get the stuff to build the house there. How do you get the sewer, water, cable TV, electricity, phone, internet, mail, gas, school bus and tax assessor to the house?
There are lots of homes not connected to the road system. And they certainly pay the price in market value and don’t have heavily subsidized public transit. But that is just the facts.