Dumb Trains

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.

Train	Weekday Trips	Route Miles	Trips/ Mile	PM/VRM (Occupancy)
LA Metrolink	51,276	340	151	32
FL TriRail	13,999	76	184	34
DFW Trinity	7,413	28	270	25
DC-Virginia	19,002	91	210	59
DC-Maryland	34,097	236	145	42
Seattle Sounder	17,217	80	217	58
SD Coaster	4,970	51	98	28
MSP North Star	2,819	35	82	35
Denver A Line	20,956	28	748	36
Orlando SunRail	3,413	16	213	20
SCL FrontRunner	17,584	60	293	23
Nashville Star	1,082	17	66	23
NM Rail Runner	2,825	57	50	28
Altamont	4,985	71	70	51
NJ River Line	8,633	28	305	31
SD Sprinter	8,267	16	509	32
Portland WES	1,798	15	122	23
Austin MetroRail	2,904	32	90	43
DFW A-Train	1,841	21	88	14
SMART	2,400	43	56	~15

It turns out the SMART train is actually worse than Arnold stated; only New Mexico’s Rail Runner carried fewer weekday trips per mile, and that’s because for most of its miles the Rail Runner is really an intercity train, not a commuter train. I suspect the SMART train will also perform poorly by another measure of productivity: the occupancy rate, or number of passenger miles per vehicle-revenue mile. We don’t have passenger-mile data for the SMART train, but I estimate the final total will be around 15, less than all but possibly one other train.

This doesn’t mean the other trains are a success. The table below shows financial data for the various trains. “Capital” is the total capital costs required to start up and, in some cases, maintain the service, measured in millions of 2017 dollars. “Fare/Trip” and “Operating Cost/Trip” is the average fares and operating costs per trip in 2017. “Capital Cost/Trip” is the total capital costs, amortized at 3 percent over 30 years, divided by 2017 trips.

Train	Capital (millions)	Fare/Trip	Operating Cost/Trip	Capital Cost/Trip
LA Metrolink	4,835	5.79	15.42	16.99
FL TriRail	1,638	3.00	21.34	19.44
DFW Trinity	1,435	5.35	14.52	34.60
DC-Virginia	954	9.04	15.82	10.32
DC-Maryland	2,187	5.71	15.47	12.00
Seattle Sounder	2,740	3.38	10.24	31.19
SD Coaster	1,404	4.04	12.41	48.84
MSP North Star	283	3.17	19.23	18.03
Denver A Line	3,451	2.92	5.65	25.12
Orlando SunRail	468	2.20	37.85	26.28
SCL FrontRunner	2,401	1.49	7.09	25.03
Nashville Star	48	3.12	14.45	8.25
NM Rail Runner	141	2.58	34.03	8.56
Altamont	350	6.85	16.61	13.62
NJ River Line	1,400	0.85	11.35	26.11
SD Sprinter	546	1.06	6.05	10.84
Portland WES	189	1.06	15.95	21.32
Austin MetroRail	170	2.39	26.37	10.43
DFW A-Train	597	1.41	26.79	59.83
SMART	428	4.34	42.05	29.95

Except for the SMART train, whose operating costs and fares are from the agency’s 2017-2018 year-end budget, most of these numbers are from the National Transit Database. However, the database only begins counting capital costs when transit agencies apply for funding from the FTA. In some cases this leaves out a substantial portion of the costs. For example, the database counts only $12 million for New Jersey’s River Line, when the real cost was $1.1 billion ($1.4 billion in today’s dollars). For this line, as well as lines in Austin, Nashville, Portland, the San Diego Sprinter, and the SMART train, I used the numbers reported by Wikipedia adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars.

The database also includes capital improvement and maintenance costs since the lines opened, which I didn’t include for the trains mentioned in the previous paragraph. Finally, in a few cases such as Denver, the database includes capital expenditures for lines that are not yet open, and so may overestimate the total for the existing lines.
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The first thing to note is that many regions have spent stunning amounts of money on their commuter-rail lines. At $3.5 billion, Denver is particularly surprising, as the already-opened A and B lines reportedly cost $1.1 billion and the not-yet-open G line is supposedly costing $1.0 billion; where did the other $1.4 billion go? Some of it is the adjustment for inflation, but inflation hasn’t been 64 percent in just the last few years.

Unlike most commuter-rail lines that upgrade existing tracks, Denver’s lines are all-new construction, which explains the high cost per mile ($123 million vs. $3 million to $40 million for most other lines). Personally, I’d classify Denver’s lines as light rail, not commuter rail, as they use short, electric-powered trains that mostly have their own right of way but often cross streets at grade level.

I don’t really consider New Jersey’s River Line a commuter train either, as it is run on light-rail schedules using Diesel-powered vehicles. If they were electric, it would be called light rail (and Wikipedia calls it light rail even if the FTA calls it hybrid rail). The same might also be said for the other hybrid lines (Austin, Portland, San Diego Sprinter, and Dallas A-Train), but they seem to be especially oriented to commuters.

Commuter trains or not, many of these cost extraordinary amounts of money for the few passengers they carry. I find it amazing that Utah would plonk down $2.4 billion for lines that carry fewer than 9,000 round trips per day, or that San Diego (North County Transit) would spend $1.4 billion on the Coaster, a true commuter train that carries under 2,500 round trips per day. The amortized capital cost of transit improvements that require new buses are usually around $1 to $6 per trip, so any rail line that costs more than $6 (meaning all of them) is a waste of money. But the ones costing more than $20 are particularly egregious.

Since most riders on commuter trains take daily round trips, my standard measure of value is how many Toyota Priuses could be purchased for the cost of the train subsidies, including the operating cost plus the amortized capital cost. For the cost of the SMART train, the Orlando SunRail, the San Diego Coaster, and both Dallas trains, taxpayers could have purchased one new Prius every year for each round-trip commuter. For the Virginia Railway Express and San Diego Sprinter, it would only be one Prius every three years per commuter. For the rest, it would be about one Prius every two years. This is a silly comparison because no one is proposing to use tax dollars to buy people Priuses, but it shows how wasteful these trains are.

Priuses are also greener than most of these trains. Only one train, the Altamont Commuter Express, uses less energy per passenger mile than a Prius. Two others, the Virginia trains and the Puget Sounders, are about tied with the Prius. Trains in Albuquerque, Dallas, Maryland, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, and Portland use considerably more energy per passenger mile than the average car. The North Star and Coaster are tied with the average car and most of the rest use a little less than the average car but far more than a Prius.

Many of these cities saw commuter rail as a cheap form of rail transit because they expected it would use existing tracks or a least an existing right of way. Yet most didn’t hesitate when the actual costs turned out to be much higher than expected. In virtually every case, this has turned out to be a huge waste of dollars.