Rail Runner To Reach 2 Million Rider Mark This Week (NM Richardson's Railroad)

The Albuquerque Journal ^ | June 2, 2009 | AP

[CedarDave]

The New Mexico Rail Runner is about to celebrate another milestone — 2 million riders in less than three years of service.

~~snip~~

Officials say the Rail Runner ... currently carries an average of about 4,500 commuters a day between Belen and Santa Fe.

[CedarDave]

Heavily excerpted as an AP article.

Not mentioned in article:

• Cost just shy of one-half billion dollars
• Max fare for the 200-mile round trip is $9; many discounts available.
• Taxpayers pay 90+ percent of train O&M
• Richardson spent money on building his RR to the detriment of widening to three-lanes I-25 from ABQ to Bernalillo which has not been improved since original construction in the 1970's despite the large residential development north of the city.
• Funds for the RR also came at the expense of other road construction projects in other areas of the state.
• North of Bernalillo existing I-25 highway capacity will not be reached until at least 2020.
• Richardson used the RR project to enhance his environmental credentials in his run for President in 2008 (little good it did him)

Click keywords Richardson's Railroad or Rail Runner for a history of the taxpayer boondoggle.

[CedarDave]

New Mexico list PING!

[Oldexpat]

The fare box probably doesn’t even pay their direct energy bills. Plus..just think of the number of employees with growing retirement and health care requirements.

[CedarDave]

Always forget to mention that you can read for free if you scroll to the bottom of the registration page.

[Little Pig]

I wonder how many riders any one of the 4 Boston T lines carries over a 3-year period? There are only a few cities that can successfully pull off a rail transit system, and they have to be in the center of a REALLY dense population cluster to do it. Boston, NY, Chicago; that’s pretty much it.

[Buckeye McFrog]

reminds me of the very expensive light-rail system in Pittsburgh (as seen in the movie Flashdance). It’s a perfectly fine machine, but since the Port Authority spends around 80 cents on every dollar paying for Union pensions and benes, it is badly understaffed, and consequently runs so infrequently with such overcrowding that you would not want to ride it.

[Osage Orange]

Well heck Dave......

The MSM/DBM isn't going to dig deep..if it exposes their bias..........

And the devil is in the details...............................

[rustyncrusty]

I hate to be the bearer of more bad news...but it appears there may be more in the future.

http://www.news-bulletin.com/news/89071-05-20-09.html

RnC

[CedarDave]

They have already announced the construction of another lane on I-25 Las Cruces to El Paso. And if you have ever driven I-25 south of Socorro you could drive blindfolded and not hit anyone.

We have to get rid of Teague and get conservative Steve Pearce back in office (he declined to run again for District 2 representative as he ran for Senator and lost to radical left-wing environmentalist Tom Udall).

[CedarDave]

Actually, all of the points mentioned (except maybe the last) were mentioned in newspaper articles during the past five years.

[rustyncrusty]

I’ve driven it many times. Just after they built the section south of Belen, we used it as a drag strip. It was really busy then!

RnC

[AlaskaErik]

It would be interesting to go back and read the cost estimates and ridership projections. If this project is true to form, it cost five to six times more than the initial cost estimate and ridership is half of what it was projected to be.

[Osage Orange]

Dave....

In my best Johnny Carson voice:

"I did not know that"

[CedarDave]

There is a demand by the Santa Fe liberals for more frequent service (they would like more mid-morning and late evening trains). And the trains are crowded; sometimes standing room only, especially on Saturday. However at the rock-bottom fares charged (Saturday day pass as low as $6), the more trains you run, the more money you lose.

[razorback-bert]

Maybe this next well will cooperate and I can take a day to go up and ride it.

[CedarDave]

You’d be ahead of me; I haven’t ridden it yet.

[CedarDave]

It would be interesting to go back and read the cost estimates and ridership projections. If this project is true to form, it cost five to six times more than the initial cost estimate and ridership is half of what it was projected to be.

You are correct about the cost; how about 5.3 times? From the ABQ Journal November 20, 2007:

Since it left the Roundhouse as a $90.2 million proposal in 2003, however, the Rail Runner has followed an erratic path. It has made unscheduled stops to load up additional money, dashed past lawmakers trying to flag it down for legislative oversight, and detoured around a $75 million federal grant. It is now struggling uphill, financially, to reach Santa Fe.

When the Legislature got on board in the hectic final hours of the 2003 special session, few members knew exactly what they were agreeing to. Gov. Bill Richardson's administration had quietly tucked the commuter train appropriation inside a nearly $1.6 billion road-improvement package.

Year by year, however, the Rail Runner has grown into a $475 million project. At the same time, much of the highway work authorized in 2003 remains to be done, including much-needed widening of I-25 from Tramway to Bernalillo.

Critics of the Rail Runner blame the train for at least some of the roughly $500 million shortfall that has stalled so much road work. "What we've had here is bait and switch," says Sen. Leonard Lee Rawson, R-Las Cruces.

Ridership is above projections on the Abq/SF segment; it is very popular and as I said in an earlier response the SF libs would run it 16 hours per day if they could. Of course, because it is already losing money, running more trains would only result in losing more money faster.