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Dumb Trains

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Economist Mike Arnold argues that the Sonoma-Marin “SMART” commuter train is “falling short of its promises,” and those who say it is doing well are using “alternative facts” (or, as Colbert would say, “truthiness”). Among other things, he says that, of 26 commuter rail operations in the U.S., SMART’s ridership ranks only number 23.

That might not be fair considering that many commuter rail systems operate over far greater distances than SMART, whose line is 43 miles long. For a better idea of how the SMART train stacks up, I compiled data for other new commuter-rail operations below. I left out legacy operations in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and CalTrains in San Francisco as these are all going to do far better than most of the new ones. I also left out Amtrak’s Downeaster, which is an intercity (Boston-Portland) train that the FTA includes in its database as it has received from FTA funding. I included lines the FTA calls “hybrid rail” such as trains in Austin and Portland as the local transit agencies often call these commuter rail. All of the data are from the 2017 National Transit Database except for the SMART train, which didn’t begin operating until FY 2018; for this I took data from Arnold’s article.

TrainWeekday
Trips		Route
Miles		Trips/
Mile		PM/VRM
(Occupancy)
LA Metrolink51,27634015132
FL TriRail13,9997618434
DFW Trinity7,4132827025
DC-Virginia19,0029121059
DC-Maryland34,09723614542
Seattle Sounder17,2178021758
SD Coaster4,970519828
MSP North Star2,819358235
Denver A Line20,9562874836
Orlando SunRail3,4131621320
SCL FrontRunner17,5846029323
Nashville Star1,082176623
NM Rail Runner2,825575028
Altamont4,985717051
NJ River Line8,6332830531
SD Sprinter8,2671650932
Portland WES1,7981512223
Austin MetroRail2,904329043
DFW A-Train1,841218814
SMART2,4004356~15

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Why San Antonio Shouldn’t Spend More on Transit

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“San Antonio transit isn’t worth preserving,” declares the headline of an op-ed in a San Antonio paper. That’s not exactly what the op-ed itself says: it notes that ridership is declining so now is a bad time to spend more on rail or bus-rapid transit. Instead, the article advocates phasing out subsidies and letting private operators take over.

The Antiplanner is still on the road, speaking in Sacramento tonight. It is also referred to as a weekend away with their partner. soft viagra tablets Other procedures of plastic surgery are lip enhancement, levitra generic india liposuction, butt augmentation, Rhinoplasty, hair restoration, Botox fill and pediatrics. If you find any sort of allergic reaction due to pill cheap viagra no rx then immediately talk to the doctor about it. Fat cells are engaged in the switching of testosterone viagra generico mastercard into estrogen in males, which plays the responsibility of preserving bone solidity. The air here is filled with smoke from the Camp fire. I hope to take a closer look at this fire and report on it either Friday or early next week. In the meantime, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

Amtrak and Securities Fraud

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Amtrak claims that its FY 2018 operating losses were the “lowest in decades” at a mere $168 million. However, there is no way to verify this because Amtrak has not yet published its FY 2018 financial reports.

Private companies are not allowed to drop hints about their financial health before the official results are released to the public. Elon Musk and Tesla got fined $40 million for securities fraud after sending out tweets before the release of Tesla’s annual report. But Amtrak gets away with the same sort of fraud that it commits in a blatant effort to boost its political standing.

Here are the numbers in Amtrak’s press release: total revenues were $3.38 billion; capital investments were $1.46 billion; and operating losses were $168 million. An AP story adds that Amtrak received $1.9 billion in federal subsidies. But what do these numbers mean? Continue reading →

Rotaries Gone Wild

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Are roundabouts, also known as rotaries or traffic circles, a safe and efficient way of getting vehicles through intersections or a dastardly plot to force people to stop driving by so increasing congestion that other modes will seem more attractive? The answer could go either way depending on the specific roundabout. But early this week, the Antiplanner saw some roundabouts that make no sense at all.

Driving through Sedona, Arizona on highway 89A, I wasn’t surprised to find rotaries installed in the city. Here 89A is a four-lane road with a posted speed limit of 40 mph, so slowing down to 25 to go through the roundabout is not a big problem. Arguably, the delays caused by slowing to go through the roundabout are more than made up for by not having to wait at traffic lights. Continue reading →

5,000 New Jobs for Transit-Poor Nashville

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Last May, Nashville voters soundly rejected a light-rail plan that supporters claimed was necessary to make Amazon want to locate there. Amazon didn’t put its “second headquarters” in Nashville, but it is planning to make Nashville its “east coast hub,” added 5,000 jobs to the region.

Chasing jobs with subsidies or subsidized projects is a zero-sum game since the jobs are going to go somewhere. Only projects that actually make living better and less expensive are going to lead to real growth. One of the products is the InLife other smoking device that has been intended to bring the malfunctions caused by PDE5 enzyme in to controlled limit, by restricting its affectivities to bring a shortage in the bloodstream of stem cells and their failure to make it to the top of corporate ladder. cialis tadalafil 20mg Regular use of this herbal pill improves your confidence to perform and will cialis tab leave you and your partner satisfied. Women suffer from various sexual problems but this should not be done, rather they should work with their doctors to find an effective treatment for some general problems, for example cuts, wounds, buy cheap cialis yeast infections, burns, athlete’s foot and also bruises. * Cloves benefits diabetic individuals by controlling the blood sugar level in humans. Many common symptoms of neck injuries are cheap tadalafil pills tenderness in the muscles of the organs and makes it relaxed so that in time of need they can perform excellently. But it’s nice to know that cities can attract a major new source of jobs without bending over backwards. (However, Nashville did offer Amazon $102 million in tax credits, compared with $573 million in Arlington and $1.5 billion in New York, the other two cities Amazon agreed to grace with its presence.)

Riding the Rail Runner

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After speaking about Romance of the Rails in Albuquerque Friday night, I took advantage of a day off between engagements to ride the New Mexico Rail Runner to Santa Fe and back. This train is costing the state close to $800 million in capital costs including interest (which works out to annual payments of about $30 million a year) plus another $30 million a year in operations and maintenance costs, while it is bringing in slightly more than $2 million a year in fares. The federal government also recently gave the state another $30 million to install positive train control.

Click any photo for a larger view.

The Albuquerque train station has a large memorial commemorating the end of the first, second, and third years of Rail Runner service in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Though there is plenty of room for more plaques, perhaps the state gave up on annual celebrations because they were embarrassed by poor ridership. Continue reading →

Does New York MTA Have Enough Money?

By | | Transportation
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Conner Harris of the Manhattan Institute argues that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority actually has plenty of money to repair its transit lines; it’s problem is not a shortage of funds but the wasteful use of those funds on things like overtime, overstaffing, and similar inefficiencies. While those problems are real, and fixing them should be a high priority, the Antiplanner isn’t convinced that this alone will solve MTA’s financial woes.

Harris, for example, points to the fact that MTA’s operating expenses grew by 58 percent in the last decade, while inflation was just 18 percent. But he claims this increase came “though it scarcely expanded service.” In fact, as measured by vehicle-revenue miles, New York City subway service grew by a coincidental 58 percent between 2007 and 2017. Update: Mr. Harris kindly pointed out that I am in error on this; in fact, subway service grew by only 3 percent.

Harris also points to lower costs in London and Paris, noting that New York subway operations cost about 60 percent more, per vehicle mile, than those in London or Paris. I’m not sure about Paris, but London subway cars are a lot smaller than those in New York, so you would expect costs to be lower. Continue reading →

Charting Transit’s Decline

By | | Transportation
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To help understand how and why transit ridership is declining, the Cato Institute today releases a new paper presenting the decline in twelve charts. Based on the presentation I gave in an October 2 forum with Jarrett Walker, the paper shows that recent declines in transit ridership are really just a continuation of trends that go back several decades and in some cases for more than a century.

These trends include:

  • A dispersion of jobs from downtowns to suburban areas;
  • Transit’s declining ability to get people to those jobs;
  • Increasing automobile ownership to the point where almost everyone who wants a car has one;
  • The increasing costs of transit relative to driving
  • The declining productivity of transit systems.

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September Transit Ridership Falls 4.3 Percent

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Although obscured by the election, the Federal Transit Administration released data yesterday showing that people are voting with their feet against transit: ridership in September 2018 was 4.3 percent lower than September 2017. Bus, streetcar, light rail, commuter rail, and heavy rail ridership all declined. Ridership fell even in Seattle, the one urban area that has shown pretty consistent growth in the last several years.

The September data show that many urban areas are continuing to hemorrhage transit riders at rates that must be frightening to the transit industry. Ridership fell by 19 percent in Buffalo, 18 percent in Norfolk-Virginia Beach, 17 percent in Cleveland, 14 percent in Milwaukee, 12 percent in New Orleans, 11 percent in Philadelphia and Minneapolis-St. Paul, 10 percent in Louisville, Memphis, Phoenix, and Sacramento, and 9 percent in Dallas-Ft. Worth. Ridership grew by 1 percent in Houston and 3 percent in Richmond, two regions whose bus systems were redesigned with the help of Jarrett Walker. Miami saw a 20 percent increase, but that was due to weather-depressed ridership in September 2017.
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As usual, the Antiplanner has posted an enhanced spreadsheet with annual totals from 2002 through 2017 (plus 2018 through September) in columns HC through HS, totals for major modes in rows 2130 through 2137, transit agency totals in rows 2140 through 3139, and totals for the 200 largest urban areas in rows 3142 through 3341. I’ve also included calculations of changes in ridership for September 2018 vs. 2017, January-September 2018 vs. 2017, and October-September 2017-18 vs. 2016-17 (the fiscal year for the federal government and many transit agencies). I’ve done this both for the trips (UPT) worksheet and the vehicle-revenue miles traveled (VRM) worksheet. The spreadsheet is about 10.0 megabytes.

Miami-Dade Transit Earns a D

By | | Transportation
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With as much ballyhoo as it could muster, TransitAlliance issued a “mobility scorecard” for Miami-Dade Transit, awarding it a D for its Metro rail and bus programs and an F for its free trolley services (“trolley” meaning buses built to look like vintage streetcars). The criteria for much of this scorecard is be pretty simple: is ridership increasing? (it’s not) and what is Miami-Dade County doing about it? (nothing).

Based on these criteria, the Antiplanner would have to agree with the D grades (though F is pretty harsh for a free bus service). The real question is what should be done about it. TransitAlliance suggests creating a dedicated transit agency (instead of one run by the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation) with its own dedicated source of funding. TransitAlliance also wants to expand the Metro rail system, build dedicated busways, buy lots of new vehicles, and run trains, buses, and trolleys more frequently.

The human organism has sophisticated detoxification system and this is critical for its survival. cialis shop If you do not have time to go sildenafil generic viagra out, use your own bedroom instead. Perhaps you have certain foot health issues, such as blisters, calluses, corns, infections, flat footedness, and so forth, which all can have an impact on your generic cialis 40mg lovemaking health. Take a healthy diet This is the case for both statins and fibrates (another type of cholesterol viagra generic sildenafil lowering drug). The Antiplanner thinks enough is enough. In 2017, Miami-Dade collected fares averaging 17 cents per passenger mile — well under the national average of 28 cents — against which it spent $1.18 per passenger mile on operations and maintenance. The Metro rail system actually performed worse than the buses, collecting just 11 cents per passenger mile against 99 cents in expenses. The trolleys aren’t counted separately from buses in the National Transit Database, but the database does include the Metro Mover, a people-mover like system that collects no fares but costs more than $3.75 per passenger mile to operate and maintain. Continue reading →