Nashville’s commuter train, the Music City Star, is “really taking off,” at least according to an op ed in the Tennessean written by the transit agency CEO, Paul Ballard. Actually, the best that can be said for the train is that Ballard hasn’t been fired over it yet.
The Music City Ripoff.
Starting the commuter train cost taxpayers $41 million and operating it cost $3.3 million in 2009. But Ballard points to a 24 percent increase in ridership in the last twelve months so that the train is now carrying an average of 1,225 trips per weekday.
The problem is that 124 percent of nearly nothing is still nearly nothing. Ballard’s agency had predicted that, by 2012, the train would be carrying 1,900 trips per weekday. Unless it gets a 55 percent increase in ridership next year, it’s not going to make it. Apparently, Ballard defines “success” as “we’re still losing more money than we predicted we were going to lose, but not as much as we used to lose.”
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Trains magazine reported (subscription required) in 2008 that the Star had fallen so far short of its ridership goals that it required a bail out from the state of Tennessee. No doubt this op ed is a part of the agency’s PR campaign to get continued bail outs from the state and cities along the route to support the train.
Of course, 1,225 trips is just 612.5 round trips, meaning the transit agency could have carried all those people on just ten or fewer luxury, long-distance buses. Those buses would have cost just $5 million, not $41 million, and they probably would have cost less to operate as well, especially considering the trains used on the Music City Star were old when the agency bought them and will have to be replaced soon.
Just what is the cost per rider? The annualized value of $41 million (figured over 30 years at a 4 percent interest rate) is almost $2.4 million a year. Even with recent ridership gains, the train’s operating costs are still at least $3 million a year more than fare revenues. The result is an annual cost of nearly $9,000 per daily round-trip rider. That’s enough to buy every rider a brand-new Prius every 2-1/2 to 3 years. Wouldn’t that be better for the environment than continuing to run some of Amtrak’s cast-off Diesel locomotives?
I like choo-choos.
Let’s build more!
.
Here is a simpler way of looking at it.
The rail line operates during a 90 minute period at rush hour paralleling I-40, so it provides an effective addition of 1000 vehicles capacity to I-40, or about 30% of a lane’s capacity based on running three trains of two cars each. IIRC, I-40 is a six lane road here, so the Music City Star was a cheap way of adding 10% to rush hour road capacity with the ability to easily expand by adding cars and extending service hours.
Right now, the train is running roughly 2/3 full.
In my mind, the question is not shuld we be buying Priuses for the riders on a 5 year cycle to save money, but did the corridor require transportation capacity expansion, and was removal of 10% of the traffic in the peak direction using a train the cheapest option, or should the road have been expanded an additional lane instead? It seems obvious to me that if the road required expansion to meet the demand now being provided by the train, that 30+ miles of urban/suburban feeeway were not going to be expanded with a lane in each direction for $700,000 per mile.
Until we ask the real questions – was capacity expansion required and what is the cheapest way to provide it, everything in this blog post is worthless and distracting drivel that fails to address the real question. It doesn’t matter that we could buy 600 Priuses or 10 luxury buses if there was no room on the road for them to move. If 10% more capacity was needed with the ability to quickly scale up to 30% (one lane couplet) just by adding cars to the trains currently running, then the $50 million spent building and operating the trains is a real bargain compared with the probable cost of $1.5 billion or more to expand I-40 for 30+ miles by a lane in each direction to accomplish the same goal.
Randall, you are way more intelligent than this, and you should be the one pointing out such elementary investment tradeoffs in infrastructure capacity that so dramatically impact the cost to taxpayers. Come on man!
Andrew, I take it that you’ve never driven I40 from Nashville out to Lebanon (what is still more or less BFT). Not to be twat but how about instead of taking all that time to type away and poo-poo, why not just put that time into sorting out your own capacity question?
Also, I have no idea where you came up with $1.5 billion for 60 lane miles of freeway. Care to share? Off the top of my head that would be in the neighborhood of $25 million per lane mile. And considering 20-25 miles of that is east of the airport are relatively unconstrained and no big impediments, that seems like a pretty steep price. More so when you imply it would have to be done all at once. Why not in build the lanes when capacity is actually needed? Or do you really think that I-40 in lil’ ol Nashville is over capacity for 30 miles?
I think this is a bit of a non-story.
$41m is peanuts. It would just about pay for the champagne at the high-speed rail launch ceremony.
They took over an existing rail line, and made it work. Good for them.
They are talking about linking to the local airport. If this doesn’t cost too much, that would be a good idea.
prk166:
I have driven I-40 east of Nashville.
I assumed a cost of $50 million per mile, averaging in costs of urban vs. suburban vs. rural construction, and considering the likely costs of interchanges and major structures. The terrain is hilly east of Nashville, so significant civil works would be needed. Adding a lane in each direction on US202 outside Philly cost $50m per mile IIRC.
Its true you might not need all 30 miles at once. I personally don’t know what precisely is needed, but assume the train line was built with some sort of relief in mind vs. adding to the road. I think that is a reasonable guess. Adding 30 miles of extra lane capacity is hardly an unheard of improvement, and when done it is usually part of a total reconstruction, because you might as well do it all while you have the road partially ripped up.
$50 million would not even buy you a rebuilt interchange on I-40.
So again, the question is what sort of road improvements were needed, how much they cost, and could the train obveiate making some or all of them?
Francis some things to keep in mind are that:
1, O’Toole is a fraud
2, DMU’s would be better here than locomotive hauled trains
highwayman, just saying something doesn’t make it so. Please explain why you allege O’toole is a “fraud.” Most of us outgrew knee-jerk name calling after kindergarten.
Thank you.
Hugh Jardon:
highwayman, just saying something doesn’t make it so. Please explain why you allege O’toole is a “fraud.†Most of us outgrew knee-jerk name calling after kindergarten.
Yes, Highwayman, Hugh is right about this. I am absolutely certain that Randal is NOT a fraud. Randal may be wrong by believing in and advocating a philosophy, libertarianism, that grossly confuses and overrates the relative importance of “markets” in human ethics and morality, and that greatly overrates the “values” indicated by the market, but he’s no fraud.
I know. I’ve spent time with Randal and his partner, and can report they are both very nice people, and Randal says what he believes. Again, of this I have absolutely no doubt.
As for DMUs being a much better fit on the Music City Star route, I 100% completely agree with Highwayman. Here is the body of an email comment I sent to the Nashville reporter who wrote an ealier story about the train in The Tennessean that parallels the editorial that The Antiplanner links to above:
Mr. Cass:
re: Your Music City Star article
As a transit planner and consultant for 30+ years, my main criticisms of the Music City Star are (1) too infrequent to be truly useful for all but a handful of downtown Nashville workers; (2) lack of midday and weekend services; and (3) for the volume of riders, the line is far too expensive to operate, e.g., with very thirsty older locomotives that are also very expensive to maintain.
My suggestion for a “quick fix” would be to borrow the cheaper to run “RDCs” that currently operate in Denton County, TX (http://www.dcta.net/) while that system is waiting for their modern equipment from Europe. Ideally once the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has approved “positive train control” signaling that allows mixing of lighter passenger cars with freight trains, buying some cars similar to Denison or Austin (see http://www.capmetro.org/metrorail/). For the current operating budget and some additional capital improvements to allow midday passenger service and to purchase cars that get 2-3 mpg rather than loco-hauled trains that get 2-3 gallons/mile!
Ideally, the service should operate from 6am-10pm 7 days per week, every hour at a minimum, with more frequent service during peak periods if demand warrants, and perhaps to 1 am or so on Friday and Saturday nights. Of course, this level of service would be impossible to afford with locomotive-hauled trains…
Just because commuter trains historically operated during the weekday rush hours only, THAT is NO reason to continue obsolete traditions, given that MOST travel these days do[es] not occur during weekday rush hours…an all day service also makes it feasible to travel to non-downtown destinations more readily AND provide timed connections to suburban buses (which are likely only hourly on the outer ends of the route), compared to the downtown-only orientation of the current Music City Star timetable (the only times when there are sorta enough riders to fill up large commuter rail cars).
To clarify a bit more about my feelings about Randal’s ideas (not Randal himself!):
“It sounds like Stanley Fish to me!”
For a full explanation of what I mean–exactly what Stanley Fish has to to say about the above near ad hominem––see Dr. Fish’s wonderful NYT article on this very topic: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/when-harry-should-avoid-meeting-sally/?hp.
Ooops…only way through is link on the upper right hand side of the main NYT page at http://www.nytimes.com/.
Wow. From 843 daily boardings to 1,225 in just over a year. Is it safe to call this the Music City Miracle?
Antiplanner wrote:
“especially considering the trains used on the Music City Star were old when the agency bought them and will have to be replaced soon.”
Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge has this to say:
“The Music City Star regional rail service is currently served by three rebuilt Amtrak EMD F40PH locomotives and eleven former Chicago Metra coaches, all of which are standard gauge. The coaches are bi-level gallery cars with seating on both levels.[2]”
If the vehicles have been rebuilt, why do they need to be replaced soon?
It’s also worth noting that the service has 32 miles of line. So that’s $41m/32 = $1.3m/mile. That’s a bargain. Now all they have to do is find some more passengers.
Fortunately I did not outgrow childish name calling, highwayman is big doody head.
The Virginia Railway Express recently announced that it is serving 20,000 person trips per day on its two lines that run from Northern Virginia to D.C.:
Region’s traffic woes lead to boost in VRE use.
msetty wrote:
Yes, Highwayman, Hugh is right about this. I am absolutely certain that Randal is NOT a fraud. Randal may be wrong by believing in and advocating a philosophy, libertarianism, that grossly confuses and overrates the relative importance of “markets†in human ethics and morality, and that greatly overrates the “values†indicated by the market, but he’s no fraud.
I know. I’ve spent time with Randal and his partner, and can report they are both very nice people, and Randal says what he believes. Again, of this I have absolutely no doubt.
Mr. Setty, my respect for you just went up several notches.
Bottom line is, regardless of the back-slapping going on, this train isn’t needed. Nashville doesn’t have much of a traffic problem.
Mr. Setty, O’Toole gets paid to promote a falses premise and you damn well know that!
Highwayman:
Mr. Setty, O’Toole gets paid to promote a falses premise and you damn well know that!
Of course, I “know that.” Sheesh, isn’t essentially that what I said in my preface to my previous comments??
Don’t you simply get the fact that O’Toole clearly believes what he says, and he honestly disagrees that what he believes is a “false premise?” I don’t see him as “evil” for stating what he thinks.
I violently disagree with Randal’s ideas, but all that means is that we disagree, not that I think he’s evil or we literally would kill one another. As I think I’ve demonstrated numerous times on this blog, I’m willing to fight him in the “war of ideas,” so please don’t underestimate my willingness to fight on that front.
I would also likely agree with you that the Koch Brothers–who finance the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation–among a hundred other pet right wing causes, are self-serving hypocritical bastards, but obviously people like Randal don’t agree.
America may have gone a long ways towards Corporatism, but we’re still an order of magnitude away from Nazi Germany who hunted down, killed and committed genocide their enemies, a lot of extreme leftist rhetoric aside.
And for another thing, I don’t think the very peaceful “Occupy Wall Street” folks want to see denizens of the financial world literally die, just see their wallets and financial stashes are a lot closer to what it used to be pre-Reagan, well before most of them were born.
O’Toole saying socialism for roads is good & then saying that socialism for railroads is bad, is absolute bullshit! O’Toole isn’t stupid, just crooked & evil!