When Orlando decided to fund and operate a commuter train, many residents probably thought they could take the train to major events. Orlando expects to attract 120,000 people to its fireworks show this July 4th, but none of them will take the train to the site.
We’ve all heard the claim that a rail line can move as many people as an eight- (or sometimes ten-) lane freeway. Not so much. Orlando’s billion-dollar commuter-rail line carries less than 2,000 people to work each weekday morning and home in the evenings. (Amortized over 30 years at 3 percent, it would have cost less to buy every single daily round-trip rider a new Prius every year for the next 30 years.)
The train doesn’t normally operate on weekends, though it has done so for smaller special events in the past. But this Fourth of July it won’t, says the city, because of “total train capacity, safety and security, hours of operation, pedestrian wayfinding and transport operations between the downtown stations and Lake Eola, and funding availability.”
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In other words, the train couldn’t possibly move enough of the people to the event to make it worth the risk and expense of operating it. Other cities considering commuter rail should learn this lesson: buses can usually move more people than trains.
To be fair, one wouldn’t expect SunRail to spend money on maintaining an excessive number of coaches for the one time a year such coaches might be used. Also it wouldn’t be worth it to spend money on signal and other improvements that would allow more frequent operation of trains. But if all the 120,000 people took a bus, and we only put 40 people on each bus because we want them to have a good riding experience, we would need 120,000/40 = 3,000 bus trips. Since LYNX only has 240 buses, every operating bus would need to make 12.5 trips to carry all these people, a process that would take hours.
Fans who attended the 2008 U2 concert at the Rose Bowl and decided to go “green” by taking a shuttle bus from Pasadena still remember the horrors of getting home after the show. Passengers endured 2 -3 hour waits because the organizers did not secure enough buses.
But if all the 120,000 people took a bus, and we only put 40 people on each bus because we want them to have a good riding experience, we would need 120,000/40 = 3,000 bus trips. Since LYNX only has 240 buses, every operating bus would need to make 12.5 trips to carry all these people, a process that would take hours.
First of all, why would you assume that all of the event’s attendees were using public transit? More than likely, most will be carpooling and a non-trivial share will probably be walking (or possibly biking) from nearby. A generous estimate might be that quarter of all attendees used public transit. That makes the problem much more tractable.
Secondly, it becomes even more so when you recognize that the capacity of their buses is not limited to 40 seats. Even a standard 40-foot bus could easily handle 15-20 standees if necessary. The available data on LYNX’s vehicle fleet (and this is a couple of years old already) indicates that it already has BRT hybrid vehicles with a seated capacity of 62 and room for another 56 standees. These are still probably a minority of their fleet, but can be very helpful during spikes in demand like this one.