Among the many wacky proposals for rail transit in this country is a plan to run commuter trains some 50 miles between Las Cruces, New Mexico (population about 100,000) to El Paso, Texas (population around 700,000). Such a project, if it did anything at all, would be most likely to drain jobs from Las Cruces to El Paso. So it is surprising that the main proponent of the project is a New Mexico transit agency, the South Central Regional Transit District (SCRTD).
SCRTD hired a consultant to do a feasibility study that — surprise! — concluded the train was feasible. Of course, to reach this conclusion, the study had to make some heroic assumptions:
- That the federal government would be willing to put up a large share of the capital costs, which it doesn’t want to do.
- That the state government would also be willing to contribute to the capital costs, which it doesn’t want to do.
- That BNSF would be willing to host commuter trains on its rail line, which it doesn’t want to do.
- That surveys of people who say they would be happy to ride the train (without telling them about the fares) really mean anything.
- That someone will be willing to subsidize most of the $15 to $20 cost per trip, when anyone who already owns a car could drive the distance for well under half that amount.
The feasibility study projects that the train will attract up to 7,400 weekday riders. That’s slightly more than the number who rode the commuter train between Dallas and Fort Worth in 2016. Despite average fares of just $4.31 per trip, ridership on that train declined by 12 percent in 2017. Just in case you are wondering, Dallas is twice as big as El Paso and Fort Worth is nearly nine times bigger than Las Cruces. If they can’t generate more than 7,400 weekday rides, how can Las Cruces get that many?
Closer to home, there’s the Altamont Corridor Express between Stockton (310,000 residents) and San Jose (more than 1 million). This train carries less than 5,000 weekday riders at average fares of $6.63 per trip. The Twin Cities has its 40-mile Northstar commuter train that attracts fewer than 3,000 weekday riders at average fares of just $3.18 per trip. Orlando’s SunRail commuter train — which just opened an expensive new extension — attracts around 3,500 weekday riders at average fares of $2.17 per trip — which apparently doesn’t cover the costs of the ticket machines, much less the train itself.
Then there’s New Mexico’s own Rail Runner, an embarrassingly expensive train between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Despite average fares of just $2.60, this carries fewer than 3,000 weekday riders.
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Clearly, rides on a Las Cruces-El Paso commuter train will have to be heavily subsidized, and even then the train isn’t likely to attract even half of the 7,400 riders claimed in the feasibility study. Even if it did attract that many riders, the study admits it would still need as much as $16 million a year to operate. For perspective, the total operating budget of the Las Cruces transit agency is currently less than $4 million a year.
While rail is ridiculously expensive, many commuter bus lines that carry around 3,000 to 6,000 weekday riders actually come pretty close to covering their costs out of fares. Martz Trailways runs commuter buses in the New York area and carries 3,100 weekday riders, collecting $19 million in annual fares on less than $15 million in operating costs. Loudoun County buses carry 4,400 weekday riders and collect $8.0 million in fares on $8.1 million in operating costs. The Woodlands (a suburb of Houston) transit carries 2,400 weekday riders, earning $3.9 million against $4.9 million in operating costs.
So a Las Cruces-El Paso commuter train is clearly viable if and only if:
- A Democrat wins the White House and Democrats take over at least one house of Congress;
- A Democrat wins the New Mexico governorship and the New Mexico legislature suddenly develops amnesia regarding the flop of the Rail Runner train;
- BNSF is willing to maintain to passenger standards tracks that, the feasibility study admits, currently support only “light” freight service;
- El Paso and Las Cruces taxpayers are willing to pony up well over $10 million (and probably more than $20 million) a year to support a train that will carry well under 1 percent of the regions’ commuters to work every day;
- No one in the entire two-state region is bright enough to say, “Why not buses?”
Some of these things might happen, but many will not. Yet SCRTD is still promoting the commuter train on its web site. Your tax dollars at work.
Amtrak serves Las Cruces. With a bus.
Yikes! It’s not just Las Cruces – El Paso, it’s Denver – El Paso according to the link. Just think of the billions in taxpayer money that would require, and the nearly empty trains that would result.
Define feasible or viable. In any business, you either have to sell 10,000 items for a dollar each or one item for 10,000 dollars or some ratio in between to cover your expenses; once you’ve worked those numbers, that’s defined as feasibility. The transit industry defines feasibility as being able to obtain funding from a secondary, tertiary even quarternary partner to cover expenses beyond what your fares otherwise couldn’t cover on it’s own, i.e. the Taxpayer, be it municipal, county, state, even federal.
In California their supposed car free future will cost state and federal taxpayers close to 400 billion dollars by 2040’s and probably over a trillion in lifecycle costs and WHY especially when in the not too distant future higher speed buses, smart highways or driverless automobiles will already be in service at a vastly lower price tag. Even when automotive fuels in Europe are 2-4 times the price what they are in the US, automotive use is still predominant mode of travel. While very light weight fuel efficient cars are less safe statistically, It’s a moot point, that doesn’t matter since Europeans are probably better drivers (getting a license is vastly more difficult in Germany or UK), vehicle speeds in villages and urban areas tend to be low (Less than 25 miles per hour). The environmentalist argument that makes rail doesn’t matter since it takes fossil fuels to make trains or cars. A peak oil disaster would affect both industries, though trains would have to resort to their antiquated industry methods of manufacture, cast iron, primitive steel, wood powered blast furnaces, etc.
I’m sure Republicans would love capital expenditure in Texas, they never say no to Pork……….
“You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.”
? Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
Based on the actual numbers of passengers between much larger cities, the estimate of 7,400 riders is not just fanciful or overly-optimistic – it is plainly fraudulent.
As taxpayer $ were paid for this study, they should be indicted for fraud. That would prevent more wasteful spending in the transit industry than anything else as they would finally have to tell the truth.
I’m sure Republicans would love capital expenditure in Texas, they never say no to Pork……….
Both cities in question–Las Cruces and El Paso–went for Clinton by huge (19% and 43%, respectively) margins. In this case Texas Democrats are the ones demanding the pork.
Few people want to openly oppose the deranged ideologues that drive worthless projects like the Northstar in Minnesota. You have a train line that barely serves a thousand individuals in a day. It runs smack dab next door to US 10 which serves anywhere from 45,000 to over a 100,000 in a day. And just a few miles away, serving the same corridor is I-94, serving 75,000 to over 175,000 in a day.
So we have a metro area of 3 1/4 million people with 2 major highways serving 150,000, 300,000 a day and yet these deranged ideologues scream high pitched bloody murder at the mere suggestion that spending tens of millions a year on a line that serves a mere thousand folks a day should end.
Too much of modern urban policy, including transit is driven by these zealots. If someone wrote a book on them they’d sum it well by titling it Zealots Gone Wild.