Music City Star Still Falls Short

The Middle Tennessee Regional Transportation Authority reported that ridership on its Music City Star commuter train showed a “substantial increase” in its latest fiscal year (which ended June 30, 2018). The agency claimed that the train carried 269,296 passengers in F.Y. 2018 vs. 258,360 in F.Y. 2017.

The Antiplanner isn’t sure why a 4 percent increase is considered “substantial,” especially since the population of Wilson County, which is served by the train, grew by 3 percent. At least it is bucking the trend of transit ridership decline, but that’s not necessarily a reason to celebrate either.

When the train was planned in 2004, it was projected to carry an average of 1,900 weekday riders in its first year and cost $3 million a year to operate (about $3.6 million in today’s dollars). In fact, more than a decade after it opened, it is still carrying less than 1,200 weekday riders, while its operating costs are at least $5.2 million a year (plus it cost about 40 percent more to start up than anticipated). High costs and low ridership mean the costs per rider are around 130 percent greater than expected. Fares, of course, are not, and covered only 17 percent of operating costs in 2016.
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There is also a discrepancy between the numbers that the RTA reported to the public and those reported to the Federal Transit Administration. According to the National Transit Database, the Music City Star carried 294,389 passengers in F.Y. 2017, or 14 percent more than it announced to the public. The Antiplanner would call that a substantial difference. While June 2018 numbers won’t be available for a couple of weeks, the database reports that the train carried 4 percent more riders in the first eleven months of F.Y. 2018 than the same months in 2017.

This isn’t the only transit agency that reports one set of numbers to the FTA and another set to the general public. But usually the public numbers are higher, not lower, than the FTA numbers. Why would the RTA tell the public that it carried less than 270,000 riders in F.Y. 2018 when it the final number that it will report to the FTA is likely to be more than 300,000? Whatever the reason for this mystery, Nashville and Wilson County should hardly be pleased that this boondoggle is still draining their economy of tax dollars.