You Call This Success?

Yesterday, someone told the Antiplanner that rail advocates in their city cited five rail transit lines as successful examples of commuter rail. These five–Utah’s FrontRunner, Dallas-Ft. Worth’s Trinity Railway Express, the northern Virginia Railway Express, the Puget Sounder, and Denver’s Eagle 3P project–are all examples of transit agencies spending gobs of money on projects that accomplish very little.

Here is an alternate view of each project. Unless noted, transit data not taken from the briefing paper are from the National Transit Database published by the Federal Transit Administration. Data on the percentages of commuters riding transit are from the decennial censuses.

FrontRunner: From 1999 to 2011, the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) spent more than $1.7 billion (in 2011 dollars) in capital expenditures on its commuter rail lines. It now has two lines: Ogden to Salt Lake and Provo to Salt Lake, over which it runs 27 trains each way each weekday. Although some trains run through from Ogden to Provo, counting the Ogden-Salt Lake and Provo-Salt Lake trains as separate trips, there are 108 trips per day.

UTA claims 13,000 riders per weekday, or about 120 per train, which means that each of UTA’s 11 trainsets (11 locomotives, 22 cars) could be replaced by three 55-seat motorcoaches or two 80-seat double-decker commuter buses. A total of 33 motorcoaches would have cost about $15 million, or 0.9 percent of the capital costs of the commuter trains. Even if twice as many buses would be needed for the busiest times of the day, the capital costs would be a tiny fraction of the cost of commuter rail.

Fares in 2011 covered just 12 percent of operating costs. The annualized costs of running the trains (including capital costs amortized over 30 years at 4 percent interest plus operating costs) is about $140 million per year. This means that the annual cost of the commuter trains per round-trip rider is about $21,500. As the base price of a Toyota Prius is $24,200, FrontRunner’s cost is nearly enough to buy every round-trip rider a new Toyota Prius every year.

In 2011, FrontRunner used more than 4,500 BTUs of energy and emitted 328 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger mile. These are slightly more than a typical SUV and nearly three times as much as a Prius.

UTA also has several light-rail lines. While total transit ridership has grown since building these light-rail and commuter-rail lines, the region’s population has grown as well. In 1990, before UTA built any rail, transit carried 3.5 percent of the region’s commuters to work. In 2010, only 3.1 percent of the region’s commuters took transit to work. This can hardly be considered a great success.

Trinity Railway Express: From 1994 to 2011, Dallas-Ft. Worth transit agencies spent $680 million on capital expenses for a commuter train between the two cities. The trains cost about $37 million to operate in 2011, of which fares covered $10.3 million or less than 28 percent.

The agencies claim weekday ridership of 7,600, which means about 3,800 round trips per day. Amortizing the capital costs over 30 years at 4 percent and adding to the operating costs results in a total annualized cost of nearly $77 million. This is about $20,000 per daily round-trip rider, which is only enough to buy every rider a new Toyota Prius every five out of six years.

The operation includes 22 trains per day each way, or 44 trains per day total. At 7,600 riders, that’s less than 175 riders per train, all of whom could comfortably fit on four luxury motorcoaches or three double-decker buses. The operation requires about nine trainsets, which means they could be replaced by about 36 to 40 motorcoaches costing less than $20 million, or less than 3 percent of the capital cost of the trains.

The trains used about 3,300 BTUs per passenger mile, slightly less than the average car but mrs than twice as much as a Prius. In 1990, Dallas-Ft. Worth were served exclusively by bus systems that carried 2.8 percent of the region’s commuters to work. By 2010, the region had light-rail, commuter-rail, and a streetcar, yet transit’s share of commuters had fallen below 1.8 percent.

Virginia Railway Express: Of the five examples, this one has the lowest capital costs and the highest ridership. From 1992 to 2011, VRE spent just over $505 million on capital expenses, which amortizes out to about $29 million per year. The agency spent $57.5 million operating its trains in 2011 and collected $32.4 million in fares, or about 56 percent of the operating costs.

Unlike the FrontRunner and Trinity systems, which run trains both ways during most of the day, the VRE runs most of its trains inbound in the morning and outbound in the afternoon. This makes for higher average passenger loads, but also requires more trainsets–about 20 for 20 round-trips per day. The 9,200 weekday riders works out to about 230 per train, or enough to fill five luxury motorcoaches or 3 double-decker commuter buses.

The annual cost per round-trip rider is about $9,000 per year, which means VRE would only be able to buy its customers a new Toyota Prius about every three years. The trains use a little over 1,600 BTUs per passenger mile, about the same as a Prius.

VRE spends about 40 cents per passenger mile operating its trains. By comparison, a commuter bus service run by Martz out of Fredericksburg, Virginia, costs only 22 cents per passenger mile. Maryland Transit also runs commuter buses that cost an average of 22 cents per passenger mile.

VRE serves commuters going into Washington, DC, which also has a Metrorail system and commuter trains from Maryland. In 1990, 16.0 percent of the region’s commuters took transit to work. By 2010, this had increased slightly to 16.8 percent. However, only 3.5 percent of transit commuters took Virginia or Maryland commuter trains.

Considering that the trains effectively lose about $55 million per year and buses could operate for about half the cost, VRE can hardly be called a success. Still, it is the least unsuccessful of these rail lines, which is no doubt due to the fact that Washington has more jobs in its core than any other American city other than New York and Chicago. Central DC has twice as many jobs as central Seattle, three times as many as Denver’s core, five times as many as Dallas-Ft. Worth’s, and eight times as mantas Salt Lake City’s.

Sounder: From 1999 to 2011, Sound Transit spent more than $1.5 billion (in 2011 dollars) on capital expenditures for its commuter trains. In 2011, it spent nearly $32 million operating those trains, collecting just over $8 million in fares, enough to cover 26 percent of the operating costs. Although the briefing paper claims 11,300 weekday riders, in 2011 it carried an average of just 9,800 weekday riders. The annualized cost of capital and operations works out to $24,300 per weekday rider, enough to buy each rider a new Toyota Prius every year.
It cialis canadian seems there’s no end to the benefits that it has to offer also. It ought to be taken at whatever point you like you are a risk to https://pdxcommercial.com/order-6808 purchase cialis physically generally everyone around you; you ought to be maintained a strategic distance from if taking this ED drug. Best Ways To Be Beautiful Pray. purchase levitra online Prosolution Plus men enhancement dietary supplement is canadian cialis backed up by science too.
Like the VRE, the Sounder operates primarily inbound in the mornings and outbound in the afternoons. In 2011, Sound Transit ran 9 trains a day each way on the Seattle-Tacoma line and 4 trains a day each way on the Everett-Seattle line, for a total of 26 daily trains. This means the average train carried 377 riders, enough to fill 7 luxury motorcoaches or 5 double-decker buses. Sound Transit needed 11 trainsets to fulfill these schedules, so they would require about 77 motorcoaches or 55 double-decker buses to replace them. The cost of these buses would be about 3 percent of the capital cost of the trains.

Sound Transit happens to operate more than 250 buses in commuter-bus service. These buses cost about 44 cents per passenger mile to operate, compared with 51 cents per passenger mile for the Sounder.

The share of the region’s commuters taking transit to work has grown from 7.8 percent in 1990 to 8.8 percent in 2010. However, only 4 percent of transit commuters take commuter trains.

Eagle P3: Denver’s Regional Transit District signed a “public-private partnership” contract to build two commuter rail lines and a portion of a third. The agency claims that such a partnership saves money, but in fact it is costing taxpayers a huge amount. The real reason for the public-private partnership is not to save money but to circumvent RTD’s legal borrowing limits.

In 2004, RTD asked Denver-area voters to approve a sales tax measure in order to build several new rail lines. Included in the measure were the “East” line, which was projected to cost $554 million; the “Gold” line, which was projected to cost $336 million; and the “Northwest” line, which was projected to cost $462 million. Opponents of the measure predicted that the lines would end up costing much more, but RTD claimed its cost estimates were accurate.

Soon after voters approved the measure, RTD admitted that costs had risen dramatically. The East line was now expected to cost $1,170 million; the Gold line $517 million; and the Northwest line $723 million. RTD was not dissuaded by the cost increases; since voters granted the agency an indefinite tax increase, it could absorb any increase. However, the agency was under political pressure to complete the lines as quickly as possible. Moreover, the voter-approved measure placed a cap on how much RTD could borrow at any one time.

To build the lines as rapidly as possible while not exceeding its borrowing cap, RTD signed the public-private partnership contract for the East and Gold lines and part of the Northwest line. Under the contract, the private partner would borrow the money, and RTD would repay it. Thus, the public-private partnership was merely a legal gimmick allowing RTD to ignore its borrowing cap.

The lines that were estimated in 2004 to cost about $1.1 billion (counting half of the Northwest line estimate) are now expected to cost $2.2 billion. When all finance charges are included, the cost balloons to $7.1 billion. RTD claims that the public-private partnership will save taxpayers about $300 million in construction costs, but in fact those costs remain about the same as the agency estimated after the election but before it signed the contract.

The ballot measure approved in 2004 included only one bus-rapid transit line, which happens to parallel the Northwest corridor rail line. The latest projections are that this bus line will have negligible cost overruns, will cost less than half as much as the Northwest rail line, and will attract nearly ten times as many passengers as the remaining portion of the Northwest rail line.

For example, building a commuter-rail to Longmont is expected to cost around $700 million and attract, at most, 900 riders a day; the bus-rapid transit to Boulder will cost under $300 million and attract up to 26,000 daily riders. Naturally, some say the rail line shouldn’t be built at all, but the same analysis would have shown (and, where the analysis was done, did show) that buses were superior to rails in all corridors.

In 1990, before it opened any rail lines, RTD carried 4.7 percent of the region’s commuters to work. By 2010, when two light-rail lines were operating, this had declined slightly to 4.6 percent.

Other cities: Commuter trains in several other cities have proven to be disasters. Portland opened a commuter train in 2009 that cost nearly 60 percent more than its original projections. Ridership ended up being well below projections: in 2011, it carried an average of less than 1,450 trips per day, and fares cover only 6 percent of operating costs.

Austin opened a commuter-rail line in 2010 that was two years late and more than 100 percent over its original projected cost ($140 million vs. $60 million). It carries less than 1,500 trips per day and fares cover slightly more than 10 percent of operating costs.

In 2007, Nashville opened a commuter-rail line at a relatively low capital cost of about $40 million. Yet ridership has been pathetic: by 2011, it carried fewer than 1,000 trips per weekday and fares covered only about 15 percent of operating costs.

Commuter trains in major urban areas such as New York and Chicago carry hundreds of thousands of people per day. Yet even these systems are far from financially healthy. Chicago’s Metra Rail says it needs nearly $10 billion to bring its system up to a state of good repair, and only has less than $3 billion of it. Nationwide, the Federal Transit Administration says that older rail systems in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and a few other cities have a $60 billion maintenance backlog, and most systems are declining faster than existing maintenance budgets can keep them up.

Conclusions: Commuter trains really only make sense serving places with large numbers of jobs concentrated in one urban center. The only places like that in the United States–New York, Chicago, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia–already have commuter trains. The concept is doomed to failure everywhere else.

Rail transit is far more expensive than buses, and it usually ends up costing much more than the initial projections. One hidden cost is the cost of rehabilitating rail lines, which must be done about every 30 years and costs nearly as much as the original construction cost.

There is no reason to expect that trains can attract more riders than buses; transit riders are more sensitive frequencies and speeds than whether the vehicle they are on has steel wheels or rubber tires. Since buses can be as comfortable as trains, cities and transit agencies considering commuter trains should make a thorough examination of the alternatives.