Posted on 12/17/2009 2:14:07 PM PST by CedarDave
It's birthday time for the Rail Runner Express commuter rail service — today marks the first anniversary of the train's service between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Officials say that since the Santa Fe service started, the train has carried 1,372,000 passengers, a daily average of about 4,400.
But fares still don't account for much of the Rail Runner's operating budget. Rail Runner spokeswoman Augusta Meyers said out of last fiscal year's $21 million operating budget for the train, about $1.9 million came from ticket sales. Most of the money, about $17 million, was from the federal government's Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
But Richardson is touting its success in eliminating "22,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions" and reducing "energy consumption by 2.26 million gallons of gasoline" (calculated they say from energy formulas).
Guess the libs (er, progressives) don’t have the ability to divide the tons of CO2 supposedly “saved” by the differential in cost vs ticket receipts to calculate true cost of this abortion. (And this indeed is an abortion....)
For libs, we can do the above and get “tons per dollar spent”..
Now, read carefully....we could also invert the quotient and get - wait for it - dollars per ton.
Either number would be embarrassing to anyone with a high school education - which is why it’s not embarrassing to a liberal.
Oh, and BTW, it cost nearly one-half billion dollars to build, required construction of 15 miles of new right of way including building up a 750-foot high escarpment with a 3.3% final grade. It was the most expensive capital “improvement” project in the state’s history with most of the money diverted from highway funds, including rebuilding original portions of I-25 from ABQ to Bernalillo which parallels the RR.
But the socialists in Santa Fe just love it.
Is there something wrong with my math? $1.9 million/1.3 million riders = $1.45/rider?
hh
Okay, so how much would the fares have to be for this to break even?
A little quick math here:
1,372,000 passengers a year
$17,000,000 taxpayer cost per year
Each time a passenger rides the train, the taxpayers LOSE $12.39.
If someone is riding both ways daily (to and from work) it cost the government approx. $25.00.
Ping to a train thread.
I looked it up online. The fares run from $1 to $9 depending how far you are riding.
They lose over $12 each time someone rides. Great deal. Pay $1 for something that costs over $13.
And none of this takes into account the contruction costs.
It takes me just about 50 minutes to drive to Santa Fe. My understanding is the average transit time is 1 hour and 40 minutes from downtown Albuquerque.
$1,900,000 fare revenue divided by 1,372,000 passengers equals $1.38 per ticket for a 70 mile ride.
Sure looks to me there were 1,000,000 free tickets to make it appear the expense made sense.
Socialism works great until you run out of other people’s money.
I did not read the whole story, but how much did the Feds spend to build this rail system????
It’s worse than that. $7 is the maximum one way fare; $9 dollars is the maximum round trip fare. Since most riders travel only 4 or 5 zones, they would pay only $8 maximum for the round trip. And there are discounts on top of that for seniors, monthly passes, internet ticketing, etc.
I believe that most public transportation systems strive for 40 to 60% farebox recovery. 9% is way beyond just a little milking of the taxpayers. The only good thing is that most of the taxes are now being paid by the four counties that the train passes through and not the entire state.
Most of the money came out of federal and state highway funds; I’m not sure of the percentages. You can click on the Richardson’s Railroad keyword and read the info in the articles there (the ABQ Journal will let you view a short video and then go to an article; no need to subscribe).
There was some bait and switch going on. However, no money came from federal transit funds as Richardson wanted this as a hurry up project so he could use it for his presidential resume and the application and waiting period for fed funds would have derailed that. But more importantly, the federal application would have required a cost/benefit analysis which they knew would not pass to be eligible for federal funding; it would cost too much and serve too few people to meet minimum criteria.
When they estimate expenses, is that just current operating expenses, or does it include interest on the debt involved in building it?
The numbers are bogus unless they include paying down on the capital investment as well as current costs.
I did a quick search; most funds were state at the expense of our deteriorating road system.
Critics Say Rising Rail Runner Tab Slows Road Work (NM-Richardson's Railroad)
From that article:
Mike Gibson, executive director of the Associated Contractors of New Mexico, said civic and business groups he's talked to— especially in the southern part of the state— are concerned the Rail Runner is siphoning money from roads.
"I realize the vision of the governor and the lieutenant governor and the Legislature on Rail Runner was something good," he said, "but when you start looking at the total amount, for every two dollars of highway and roads there's one dollar for rail, and rail is only going to service a small portion of this state."
And then the RR only carries 4,400 passengers per day vs. 20,000-30,000 or more vehicles on a highway.
Good question, maybe Rogle knows.
NM list PING!
(I guess I’ll take on keeping of the list from greyfoxx39; please let me know if you want to be added or removed.)
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