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Sounder train is low on riders, high on cost (WA)
Seattle Times | 4/1/2004 | Eric Pryne

Posted on 04/01/2004 12:57:04 PM PST by connectthedots

If ridership doesn't improve, Sound Transit's operating expenses this year for its new Sounder commuter train between Everett and Seattle could add up to more than $38 for each one-way passenger.

Adults pay $3 for each one-way trip on the train. At current ridership levels, that amounts to a taxpayer subsidy of more than $35 for each passenger.

Sound Transit officials say the expenses per rider will come down as more trains are added to the route and more people learn about the system.

The current subsidy is just for operating costs such as train crews, equipment maintenance and insurance. It doesn't include any part of the line's estimated $393 million capital cost through 2009.

No commuter-rail system in the country comes close to breaking even. But according to statistics submitted by commuter-rail agencies to the Federal Transit Administration for fiscal 2002 — the most recent year for which information is available — none had an operating cost per rider as high as $38.

How projected cost per rider was calculated

The Sounder Everett train had drawn 18,529 riders this year through March 26, an average of 314 riders per weekday of service. That number was multiplied by the total number of weekdays in the year (excluding major holidays, when the train doesn't run). The result: 80,387 total weekday riders. Sound Transit had projected 150,000.

Sound Transit also has projected that special trains to Sunday afternoon Mariners and Seahawks games will draw an additional 25,000 riders. The Everett line's inaugural run was a Sunday Seahawks train Dec. 21 that drew nearly 1,300 one-way passengers.

If the Sunday service projection is met, total ridership for the year would be 105,387. The 2004 Sounder Everett operating budget is $4.065 million, which breaks down to $38.57 per one-way rider.

The Sounder Everett line began running just before Christmas. With the first quarter of 2004 drawing to a close, daily ridership has been averaging a little over half of what Sound Transit projected.

The 2000 kickoff of the agency's other commuter-rail line, between Tacoma and Seattle, was more successful. It began service with two inbound trains in the morning and two outbound trains in the afternoon, while the Everett line now offers just one train in each direction.

Sound Transit and outside transportation experts say that's probably the line's biggest problem.

The Seattle Times calculated the estimated cost per rider after the Sound Transit board last week approved the final piece of the Everett line's 2004 operating budget. Sound Transit spokesman Lee Somerstein said the calculation focuses attention in the wrong place.

"We really think looking at cost per rider today is unfair," he said. "We didn't build it for today."

The agency plans to expand service to four trains in each direction by 2007. The line's operating cost per rider will improve as more riders become familiar with the service and as more trains are added, Somerstein said: "When we're built out, we expect to be right in there with everybody else."

But he acknowledged the Everett line's 2004 ridership will fall short of the 175,000 passengers the agency had projected. Just 18,529 one-way riders had boarded the trains through the end of last week.

"No, we're not going to hit it," Somerstein said of the ridership target.

Thomas Heller, a transportation consultant and Sound Transit critic, said the agency is "setting a new 'gold standard' for subsidizing transit riders, ... and its contribution to solving congestion is infinitesimal."

The Sounder Everett line was the Snohomish County centerpiece of the three-county "Sound Move" transit package voters approved in 1996. That plan called for six trains in each direction, at a total capital cost of $89 million in 1995 dollars.

Money troubles and tough negotiations with Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which owns the tracks, delayed the project. An agreement with the railroad that provided for access and improvements to the tracks wasn't signed until last December, days before the first train ran.

As a result, the 2004 Sounder Everett operating budget wasn't completed until last week, when the Sound Transit board authorized payments of $826,000 to Burlington Northern Santa Fe to run the trains. That brought the total operating budget for the year to $4.065 million.

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Conductor Jeannie Delacour checks for passengers after the Everett Sounder train traveled to Seattle's King Street Station on a recent morning. So far, ridership on the run is well below projections, but Sound Transit is optimistic that usage will increase over the next few years.

So far this year, the Everett-Seattle train has carried an average of about 314 one-way passengers each weekday, with little variation from week to week in February and March. Ridership actually was strongest in January, when Sound Transit, hoping to attract new riders, didn't charge for the trip.

If weekday ridership continues at that level for the rest of the year, and if Sound Transit's ridership projection is accurate for special trains it plans to run to Sunday afternoon Mariners and Seahawks games, total ridership for the year would be about 105,000 — 60 percent of what the agency projected.

The operating expense per one-way passenger: about $38.50.

According to the Federal Transit Administration's National Transit Database, the commuter rail line with the highest operating cost per rider in 2002 was the Keystone between Harrisburg, Pa., and Philadelphia at $35.77.

Only one other line topped $20. Sound Transit's 2002 operating cost per rider for its Tacoma-Seattle Sounder line was $14.74. In 2001, that line's first full year of operation, the figure was $21.23.

Somerstein said it's misleading to compare Sounder Everett's startup operating costs with those of more established commuter lines. He pointed to Sound Transit's latest financial plan, which projects that in 2010, the line will carry 600,000 riders at an operating cost per rider of $13.41.

The agency's critics have questioned the validity of those projections.

Commuter rail's operating costs per rider generally are higher than those of other transit modes. In Washington, according to the National Transit Database, Metro Transit's 2002 operating cost per bus rider was $3.98. For Washington State Ferries, the cost per passenger was $11.20.

Somerstein said efforts to attract riders to the Sounder Everett line have been hindered by having just one trip in the morning and one in the afternoon, and by the morning train's awkward arrival time.

It pulls into Seattle's King Street Station at 7:54 a.m., which means most commuters can't get to downtown offices by 8. Sound Transit is talking with Burlington Northern Santa Fe about changing the schedule so the train arrives five or 10 minutes earlier, Somerstein said.

The agency also is advertising the line in Snohomish County media, he said, suggesting people consider riding the train to work and the bus home, or vice versa. "We're marketing it like crazy," Somerstein said. "We're doing the best we can with the hand we've been dealt."

Sound Transit plans to add a second round-trip train next year. For now, having just one train in each direction probably is the line's greatest handicap, said Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington.

The route's long-range success depends to a great extent on whether city officials in Everett, Mukilteo and Edmonds promote development around stations that support rail, he added.

Steve Polzin, director of public-transit research at the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research, said he doesn't know of any other commuter rail line that began service with just one train a day in each direction.

"You leave your passenger in a real funny situation," he said. "If you miss the train, how do you get home?"

What's more, Polzin said, "There's no economies of scale in a single train." Insurance, for instance, probably won't cost much more for two trains than it does for one, he said.

Commuter rail is expensive, Polzin said, and it must attract large numbers of riders to make economic sense. If it doesn't, he said, it's like a family buying a bus to go on vacation: "Everybody's comfortable, and you've got lots of room, but it's not real efficient."


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; US: Washington
KEYWORDS: lightrail; passengerrail; transportation
Another example of the stupidity of passenger rail.
1 posted on 04/01/2004 12:57:04 PM PST by connectthedots
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To: Willie Green
Thought you might want to read about one more passenger rail 'disaster'.
2 posted on 04/01/2004 12:58:11 PM PST by connectthedots
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To: All
Stick it to Soros!


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3 posted on 04/01/2004 12:59:52 PM PST by Support Free Republic (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!)
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To: connectthedots
Thanks for posting this. I have a liberal friend who swears this is the answer to every traffic problem there is....
4 posted on 04/01/2004 1:05:20 PM PST by luckymom
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To: connectthedots
The funny thing is the liberal solution to this problem is to throw MORE money at it.
5 posted on 04/01/2004 1:05:48 PM PST by freedomlover
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To: luckymom
I wonder if the Seattle P.I., a big supporter of rail, will sermonize about these inaccurate cost projections in the same may they criticized Bush for the erroneous projections on his drug benefit plan?
6 posted on 04/01/2004 1:08:02 PM PST by Steve_Seattle ("Above all, shake your bum at Burton.")
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To: connectthedots
I think every public transit plan should include funding for armed troops to round up passengers at gunpoint.
7 posted on 04/01/2004 1:12:53 PM PST by John Jorsett
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To: connectthedots
It pulls into Seattle's King Street Station at 7:54 a.m., which means most commuters can't get to downtown offices by 8.

That's a big problem with mass transit around here, not operating to what the consumer wants. For example, when I worked downtown I would take the bus, it was actually pretty nice. However one would have to leave work before 4PM or else you could wait 30 minutes for a bus.

That and there were dozens of buses running downtown when they should drop off people at a depot on the outskirts and have them all come in on a few busses.
8 posted on 04/01/2004 2:00:33 PM PST by lelio
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To: connectthedots
The 2004 Sounder Everett operating budget is $4.065 million, which breaks down to $38.57 per one-way rider.

Okay, call me a numbers geek (I work as an actaury). I'd like to know more about this -- I suspect that if someone picks up this rock, you'll find lots more nastiness underneath.

The article says the "operating budget" is about $4 million. That might be government-speak to avoide a big chuck of other expenses, which they'll throw into a category called the "capital budget."

When you amortize the capital expenditures, you might find the costs are much higher than $38 a rider.

And don't assume that the "operating budget" is accurate either -- public employers are just notorious for hiding some costs that should be in their operating budget, like a fair accrual for the costs of retiree health care and supplemental retirement benefits.

9 posted on 04/01/2004 2:01:04 PM PST by 68skylark
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To: connectthedots
Thought you might want to read about one more passenger rail 'disaster'.

Hey, ours here in Houston doesn't take a back seat to this ! Ours has had 31 wrecks since it's been operating, most since January 04. Over a 7 mile route !

Bet Seattle can't beat that !

10 posted on 04/01/2004 2:04:44 PM PST by jimt
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To: connectthedots
Hey, at least this Sounder train is atracting more riders then our "glorious" light rail system in San Jose. A system that could handle 30,000 plus, now only has 17,000 ridership (and dropping!). The Valley Transit Authority that runs it, is in serious debt. And what do the people here want to do with this system? They want to expand it even more!

Liberal idiots just never learn.
11 posted on 04/01/2004 2:28:49 PM PST by Simmy2.5 (Kerry. When you need to ketchup...)
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To: connectthedots
Yet another bludgeoning of public transportation by virtue of competition with the American automobile.

Even with gas at $2 per gallon, a large portion of the target market for mass transit will opt to leave when they want, stop when they want, travel with whom they want, express their individuality, perhaps enjoy the intoxicating horsepower and maneuverability of today's vehicles, and come back when they want, oh, and when the car's seats are fully utilized, do so at less cost.

Meanwhile, this same bludgeoning befalls the American taxpayers who desire to control their own destiny.

12 posted on 04/01/2004 2:32:49 PM PST by wayoverontheright
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