Posted on 05/12/2015 5:41:16 PM PDT by Roos_Girl
The SunRail commuter train finished its first year of operation $27.2 million in the red, bringing in $7.2 million while spending $34.4 million.
The shortfall was covered by taxpayers through the state Department of Transportation, which oversees the system running from DeBary in Volusia County through downtown Orlando to south Orange County.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, chairman of the SunRail board, called the performance "good for a first year."
He predicted SunRail's losses would fall in coming years because the train would carry more passengers and advertising income would increase.
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
I’m wearing my shocked face.
Bit of a gap there Buddy.
Please tell me Mayor Buddy is a RAT.
And that’s in a city. The jokers at AAF will never have enough ridership.
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.
Yeah, what he said.
From what I understand, its pretty standard for public transportation systems to operate in the red with taxpayers covering the shortfall.
25% rider funding is generally considered a great success. The people mover in Detroit is about 3% rider funded with taxpayers picking up the other 97%.
Abquerque-Santa Fe NM line ended up generating $2.8M, costing $24.5M to run. Any line that says it is in the green is due to creative bookeing.
And....gotta cover the graft.
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.
Privately owned public transportation can’t do that and survive.
One of the nice things about Detroit is that there is privately owned competition like the Detroit Bus Company. It costs more but offers superior service. They advertize that open intoxicants are OK on their buses. LOL
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...
I can understand some taxpayer funding. It is getting people off the roads and making it better for those driving them. But 97% tax funded?!
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.
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 EPATier 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.
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.
Interestingly, that sentence was actually operative about 100 years ago...
There was a time when the land and equipment owned by the CTA in Chicago would purchase each and every rider a Rolls-Royce and a lifetime of gas for it.
Government will never allow privately-operated passenger rail of any kind. It was the first target of leftists going back about 100 years; Woodrow Wilson even nationalized all the railroads at one point, under the USRA.
I’m pretty sure most rails ban CCW. So most of us here won’t touch it.
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