Urban transit carried less than half a percent of passenger-miles during the pandemic, yet received 65 percent of the COVID relief funds given by Congress to the Department of Transportation, says an article published last week by the American Institute of Economic Research. Similarly, Amtrak carried less than 0.05 percent of passenger-miles yet received 4.4 percent of DOT’s COVID relief funds. Meanwhile, zero COVID relief funds went to freight supply-chain systems, which proved to be the real transportation problem resulting from the pandemic.
The North Star commuter train. Photo by Jerry Huddleston.
Thanks to the influx of COVID relief funds, plus $40 billion more for transit in the infrastructure bill, transit agencies are seriously considering expansions of transit services that should be considered failures. For example, Minnesota’s North Star commuter train was expected to carry 3,600 riders per weekday in its first year of operation. It carried only 2,200 weekday riders in 2010, its first full year. By 2019, it was still only carrying 2,700 riders per weekday.
The pandemic totally demolished North Star ridership. Ridership in April 2020 was only 2 percent of April 2019. As recently as November 2021, the commuter train still carried only 11 percent as many passengers as it carried in November 2019.
Despite unfavorable results before the pandemic and even less favorable results during the pandemic, the state of Minnesota is seriously contemplating expanding the commuter-rail service. The Minnesota Department of Transportation published a feasibility assessment of such an expansion on July 31, 2020. Although this was well into the pandemic, the assessment didn’t mention the pandemic in any way.
I’ve already expressed the opinion that all of the $40 billion allocated to transit by the infrastructure bill will be wasted. But there are different levels of waste. Of that $40 billion, $1 billion will be spent buying electric buses that cost about twice as much Diesel buses. If such buses are purchased in regions that get most of their electricity burning fossil fuels, that expense will be a complete waste. If they are in regions that get most of their electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources, it will only be a partial waste.
However, any money spent on projects like the North Star, Nashville’s Music City Star, Dallas-Ft. Worth’s Trinity Railway Express, or Orlando’s SunRail will be a double waste. Not only will the money be wasted, but the trains themselves will spew out far more greenhouse gases and other pollution, per passenger-mile carried, than any automobiles they take off the road.
Rail transit systems are all very labor intensive, which makes them vulnerable to a loss of fares…By contrast Highway operations/maintenance are not as labor intensive, because it’s just a slab of concrete/asphalt. Maintenance, can be deferred for a time without slowing down traffic, because ridership declines place less wear and tear. Maintenance of infrastructure is proportional to use, maintenance of a highway system funded from user fees can fluctuate with user fees without any degradation; the less you use it, the less it occurs damage, plus improvements in material science lets us build roads with sturdier materials. Rail by comparison needs HUGE inputs of capital and labor to keep in a sturdy work ready condition, whether you use it or not. Thus road based transit systems which use vanpools and buses are more practical. Nationally, more than 20% of public school teachers with school-age children enroll them in private schools, Twice national average. In any case, the public employees’ willingness to pay full price or a sizeable chunk of their salary; for a competing product or service and forgo their employer’s product or service at a reduced price (or no cost) makes a strong statement about the low quality of said service. The question isn’t “Should public transit be free” Real question is “Why are they trying to give it away for free? If they cant even operate a system people are willing to pay for with modest fee that’s supposedly economical. LA’s transit ridership peaked in the mid 1980s after they started building rail…..
Buses, jitneys and vanpools: On demand transit along with greater cycle lanes.
the trains themselves will spew out far more greenhouse gases and other pollution, per passenger-mile carried, than any automobiles they take off the road.”
Not if they’re powered by electricity…..For reference sake
CO2 emissions quantity by source
– Coal: 414 kilograms per megawatt hour (Generation, Even factoring in transmission losses)
– Natural gas: 227 kg/MWh
A U.S. gallon of gasoline contains 114,000 BTUs of energy, or about 120 million joules and will produce 20 lbs of CO2 per gallon burned…With the engines thermodynamic efficiency of 33% and lower….a four cylinder with 500 miles of range, A chevy cruze with a 13.7 gallon tank emits average emits 0.235 kg per mile.
Where as a train even on coal powered, According to Roger Kemp, A UK train’s average energy consumption is 3 kWh per 100 seat-km [5o5x5m]. The government document says
that east-coast mainline and west-coast mainline trains both consume about
15 kWh per km (whole train). The number of seats in each train is 526 or 470 respectively. So the train will consume 8 MWh per voyage 500 miles…or about 16 kwh per passenger per voyage.The UK government report on the carbon emissions for homes on the average energy fuel mix. In 2020, these figures were 0.233 kg of CO2e per kWh of electricity. 7.5 pounds per passenger per trip. A train trip carrying 500 passengers emits less than 1 metric ton of emissions going 500 miles…..
A car trip carrying 5 passengers is 1.8 pound per mile,a 500 mile trip 912 lbs emissions or 182 lbs per passenger per trip
Northstar was originally planned to run from downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul. They cut it back to Big Lake because there were not enough projected riders. After years and years of us, pre covid ridership was less than 1/2 of what was projected. Remember, that projected ridership wasn’t enough to build to St. Cloud.
One of the worst things about Metro Transit isn’t just that it’s built useless turds like Northstar. It’s that it’s yet again pouring billions into a rail line for white middle class folks, the Southwest LRT line.
In the meantime, historically black North Minneapolis has more or less gotten bupkiss.
LazyReader,
In all the cases I named, the trains are powered by Diesel locomotives. Electricity doesn’t necessarily help. When you count the greenhouse gases produced by the electrical generating plants, electric-powered rail transit in Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Norfolk, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, and Washington DC all emitted more greenhouse gases per passenger-mile than the average car.
prk166 wrote, “In the meantime, historically black North Minneapolis has more or less gotten bupkiss.”
How can you say that? Under Metro’s “Regional Transit Equity” program, those low-income neighborhoods got 75 bus shelters to balance the $2-billion-plus cost of a light-rail line to one of the wealthiest suburbs of Minneapolis.
The two-page summary of the assessment, which is available from the first hyperlink in the 3rd paragraph, does mention the pandemic. It is dated at the end of July 2020, and notes that the downtown employment base was significantly reduced at that time, with Northstar reducing its service accordingly to two trains per day. It also speculates (correctly) that the employment base was unlikely to return to any great extent during 2020.
A year and a half on, there is no sign that employment will return to anywhere near pre-pandemic levels. I hope that these feasibility studies, like so many others, will be consigned to the dustbin of history where they belong.