[Roos_Girl]

No one should be surprised by this. Tax payers will be making up the difference forever, just like TriRail in South Florida that has run for over 20 years now without even breaking even. And they're working on expanding that waste of money now.

[ClearCase_guy]

I’m wearing my shocked face.

[NewHampshireDuo]

....bringing in $7.2 million while spending $34.4 million.

Bit of a gap there Buddy.

[clintonh8r]

Please tell me Mayor Buddy is a RAT.

[Ray76]

And that’s in a city. The jokers at AAF will never have enough ridership.

[mrsmith]

When vaudeville died the joke about the tailor who sold every suit at a loss but “made it up in volume!” didn’t die... it just went into politics.

[NohSpinZone]

Yeah, what he said.

[Iron Munro]

If light rail was really needed there would be an abundance of paying riders clamoring for the service and private enterprise would move in to meet the need.

Too many cities and other government agencies want light rail because they believe it puts them on the map as a more significant urban center.

And the large sums of money involved open the doors for plenty of graft, chicanery and sweetheart contracts resulting in generous contributions coming back to the politicians.

Every light rail system is built with politicians promising profitability right around the corner.

But they never seem to get to the corner.

[Popman]

Thankfully governor Scott rejected an even bigger boondoggle, the high speed rail line from Orlando to Tampa....

That would run in the red 100’ of millions...

[kingu]

System costs $38.20 per rider for the year, fares are $2-$4, with the average fare paying $2.22. The ‘anticipated’ riderage would lower the costs per rider to $32.00 for each person who gets on it.

I appreciate the newspaper doing some of the math for this so that people can see how much this stuff costs, but as normal, they don't break down the total costs per rider. The line would cost less if they simply handed a twenty to anyone who walked up to the station rather than running the trains.

[Olog-hai]

Another government-sponsored “startup” commuter service that uses proof-of-payment (or “POP”). Most of the time, there aren’t any ticket inspectors on board, so if you time things right, you can ride for free.

And of course that’s aside from all of the other Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations (engineers have to be certified for not only a particular stretch of railroad, but also for passenger operations versus freight), which extends from “crashworthiness” of the passenger cars to the emissions of the diesel locomotives (which are actually stipulated by the EPA—Tier IV emissions have to be at no more than 0.14 grams per horsepower-hour for hydrocarbons, for example); and after that, there are “track classes” that stipulate how fast the train can go (if you want to run a passenger train at 80 mph top speed, tracks have to be “Class 4”).

So much for an industry that was pioneered by the private sector and owned/operated (including infrastructure!) completely by the private sector for 130 years until the federal and state governments ate them away and continue to do so today.

[Repeal The 17th]

This runs from what?
Daytona to Orlando?
60 miles / 60 minutes?
You’d spend more time than that standing in line.
NO private entity would have ever funded such a project.
But when you are spending OPM (other people’s money),
I guess it made sense to the beaurocrats.

[FreedomPoster]

Rail: A 19th Century solution for 21st Century problems!

[BatGuano]

No surprise? Of course we were expecting this. A few years ago, our Men's club had a SunRail hype artist make a presentation that was full of hope and other BS. When the Q&A began, one of the questions was where did they get their expected ridership numbers from? The young smart ass said that the number would start out small but would eventually surprise all of us. That is not an answer. He also suggested that riders would ride bikes to the stations and then jump on the train! Florida heat and rain not in the plan? When asked how such low fares could produce sufficient income to “make this work,” his reply was “this is the government and the government is not in the business to make a profit!”
I felt like vomiting. The saddest realization for us is that “the money, $750 million had already been approved by congress and that we Floridians had to take it or LOSE it!”
Money that the government cannot afford to give, for something that we will not use and can't, in the end afford to pay for.
SunRail sucks, PERIOD. The only PERSON that I know that has used SunRail did so because there was a “free week” at the start of “service.”

[Islander7]

To make this a success, they need only to ban private vehicles.