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A SORTA Dilemma

By | | Transportation
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Cincinnati’s transit agency, the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA), is facing a dilemma common to many other transit agencies. Transit ridership is dropping, and fare revenue is dropping even more. Should it raise fares, which will accelerate ridership declines, or ask voters to approve more taxes to cover a $6.4 million budget deficit in order to maintain transit service?

SORTA’s problems have been worsened by the city’s decision to build an idiotic streetcar line. The city claimed the streetcar was built under budget, but that’s a distortion of reality. It was supposed to cost $110 million for 4.5 miles and ended up costing $148 million for 3.6 miles. Of course, the last approved budget before completion was $149.5 million, but it still cost far more than was projected when the city decided to build the line.

In any case, that’s $148 million that could have been used to ease SORTA’s budgetary woes today. On top of that, operating the streetcar costs SORTA more than $2 million a year, and fares cover only 14 percent of that. Counting some capital costs, the streetcar added $2 million to SORTA’s expenses in 2016, and probably even more in 2017. In short, the operating expense plus 10 percent of the cost overrun for the streetcar would have been enough to make up SORTA’s projected deficit. Continue reading →

Trolley Follies

By | | Transportation
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The Antiplanner’s recent review of a proposed streetcar in Fort Lauderdale compared data for a dozen streetcar lines operating in 2015. Left out were streetcars in Cincinnati and Kansas City, which began operating during 2016. Now the early results for those two lines are in, and–not surprisingly–they aren’t good.

When it was planned, the Cincinnati streetcar was projected to carry 4,600 riders per weekday (see p. 16). By the time construction began, officials reduced this to 3,200 trips per weekday, and by the time it opened they dropped it further to 2,600. Actual ridership in May, its ninth month of operation, was just 1,713 trips per day. Since the city was counting on fares to help pay for operations, the streetcar is expected to have a $474,530 deficit this year and will need even more money from the city next year.

The Kansas City streetcar, meanwhile, was projected to carry nearly 3,200 weekday riders at fares of $1.50 a ride. So the city was elated when ridership in the first couple of months was more than 6,000 trips per weekday. What they didn’t mention was that the rides were free, not $1.50. Judging by Atlanta’s experience, raising the fares to $1 would reduce ridership by 58 percent; raising them to $1.50 would reduce it even more. Continue reading →

Cincinnati Streetcars’ “Catastrophic Failures”

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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The Cincinnati streetcar–now known as the Cincinnati Bell Connector since Cincinnati Bell paid $3.4 million for naming rights–is barely six months old, and already is having problems. Four streetcars broke down in one day a few months ago.

Now the company that is contracted to operate the streetcar has warned that poor quality control by the railcar maker has resulted in “catastrophic failures” of three different major systems that cause regular breakdowns of the vehicles. Cincinnati Bell is upset enough to demand possibly illegal secret meetings with the city council over the streetcar’s problems.

Cincinnati once counted itself lucky that it didn’t order streetcars from United Streetcar, the short-lived company that made streetcars for Portland and Tucson, many of which suffered severe manufacturing defects. But it turns out the vehicles it ordered from a Spanish company named Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF), which were delivered 15 months late, weren’t much better.

Continue reading →