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Posted on 06/17/2011 6:04:20 PM PDT by CedarDave
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - The Rio Metro board of directors voted Friday to eliminate weekend Rail Runner Express commuter trains in August.
The board, trying to balance its budget for next fiscal year, cited the loss of $1.2 million in federal funding.
(Excerpt) Read more at krqe.com ...
The poorly utilized weekday trains are often packed on weekends as Santa Fe traffic is jammed and the train offers a convenient way to get there with the downtown plaza just a few blocks from the station. If weekend service helps the farebox recovery and the bottom line, why not continue it? There will be an uproar from the SF business community on this as weekend service does a lot for their bottom line.
"Jethro" comments on the KRQE story:
How can this be considered a smart move? Cutting weekend service at the start of tourist season is STUPID!! Oh well, having the money pit called the FailRunner was stupid anyway. We can call it the Bill Retardson Express to Nowhere now.
Cut all services and shut the Failrunner down. What a waste of taxpayer money. Just think we could have sustained another 10,000 illegal aliens with benefits and wheels if only Retardson would not have done this deed.
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Just think one day in the future will even have modes of transportation that actually fly in the air and horseless carriages to go from point to point
/s
No one saw this coming
With a 9 to 14% farebox recovery (depending on whose counting)? Yeah, right!
Actually, it has been known for more than a year:
Is the Rail Runner running on empty? (NM - Richardson's Railroad)
Hi, wow you have been calling this a bad idea from day one. It sure looks like you were correct.
All this craze for the last couple of decades to build passenger rail systems - from high speed to heavy, from mono-to trollies... if it was truly such a boon to economies, then they would pay for themselves. Yet notice how many of these “projects” are in the red/fail...
Then again, one would think that Amtrak would be enough proof... How much has that cost taxpayers over the years?
People want the option of going WHEN they want, WHERE they want, in the company of WHO they wish;public transit is just the opposite.
Travel by train? Who wants to see poor people’s back yards?
We have been talking about a bullet train to connect L.A. to Las Vegas for a few years now. With the economy in a death spiral and the way Las Vegas is drying up, there won't be anybody that can afford to go to Vegas and no Vegas to see when we get there.
Dave I think you missed the point. State employees do not work on the weekend. The train is for them not the SF business or tourist.
As Susana said, she sees empty trains. So they cut out full weekend trains and run empty ones on weekdays. What's wrong with this picture??
If you're going to run it at all as a money losing (i.e. taxpayer funded) entity, look at how to minimize the loses. Of course weekend trains lose money, so do the weekday trains. So examine the proposed schedule changes (before the cuts), add in increase fares (which the board is loathe to consider) and see which service loses the least money. The Journal mentioned Sunday that of the 22,000 that attended last years Santa Fe folk art festival, 9,000 (41%) arrived by train. Though I find that number to be hard to believe (too high), it does show the RR can provide a service beyond abysmal daily ridership.
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