Passenger Volumes Up for Amtrak Virginia Routes

[Blazeman]

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/06/18/a-bipartisan-push-for-rail-in-virginia-produces-ridership-successes/

[Hyperion]

I'm a big proponent of rail, and while these statistics in this article all show it's ridership is up (and when you're going from so low, that's not hard) -- the real question is: "at what cost?"

Take Lynchburg to DC.  Which the article touts as a big success.  It certainly gets more riders than I'd have thought at 20,000/month -- but that's only 250,000/yr.  And it cost the state $115M to upgrade the line enough for Amtrak to provide that service.  Not to mention any ongoing costs that the State may be incurring (and I'd be willing to bet that there's something).  But even looking at just the upfront costs, that's almost $500 of state funding spent on every person travelling that line in a year.  Even if we take it 10 years out, that's still $50 of capital outlay for every single person travelling that route over the next decade.

Oh, and Amtrak only charges about $30 for the trip.  So really a person doesn't even come remotely CLOSE to actually paying for their trip.  They're only paying about a THIRD of what it actually costs to provide them that service.

It's a 3hr car ride that would burn about 7 gallons of gas.  Virginia could provide a free rental car and gas to every single person making that trip and still come out ahead versus upgrading the rail line.  And, no, I'm not saying that's necessarily a better idea (traffic, pollution, etc) - just pointing out the economics that are involved.  It isn't as cut-and-dry as: "Look!  People DO ride the train!" 

It's going to take an exponential increase in passenger ridership in order for the economics to even begin to make sense given the massive capital outlays that rail infrastructure requires.   These "up 40%" and "up 60%" sound-bites are nice and all, but they're talking about going from 10,000/yr to 16,000/yr.   Yeah, the peanut butter gets spread a little bit thinner, but we're still talking about spreading a whole jar on a single piece of bread.  We need a whole loaf - many times the people that ride today - in order to spread that outlay money as thin as possible over as many riders as possible, to even get these costs anything approaching reasonable.

[Blazeman]

Mark: Your premise is sound. Different views on the debate of course.

Some see it as the role of the central government to promote commerce therefore subsidies to transportation are part of that. We are watching UP celebrate 150 years and that wouldn't have happened without subsidy of the federal government.

Same for air transport and barges. We all know about highways.

To your point, NYS&W in the early 50s still had to maintain commuter service in New Jersey even though losses were such they could have purchased a car for every commuter and been ahead on the ledger.

[conrail98]

And I'd argue the fuel taxes on those 7 gallons are about the same % as to the maintenance cost of the highways used as is the cost of ridership on the train is to its maintenance. Every industrialized nation in the world subsidizes transportation to some degree. Europe discourages driving by having fuel taxes at an obscene % of the cost of fuel. If the feds never gave any subsidies to the airlines, no one in this country would be able to fly because the costs would be astronomical,

Phil

[GaryHinshaw]

Interesting topic. Statements of fact about costs are fine and interesting (however uncertain those facts might be in some cases).  But please avoid statements about what government should or should not do, since that usually turns toxic.

Thanks,
The management

[Hyperion]

Gentlemen, I have a degree in Transportation Management and have worked in most every industry involving moving stuff in the country.  Trust me, I know very well that, and by how much, the government (at various levels) subsidizes all forms of transportation. 

I not only firmly believe that they should, as a benefactor of interstate commerce, but that they should do it at far greater levels than they do today (I think my latest issue of Time stated that we're only spending about 1/3rd of the % of GDP of the other Western nations on infrastructure).  I was not arguing that the money was not well spent -- only the government of Virginia and its constituents can effectively make that argument.  But only that the relative "success" of passenger railroading needs to be looked at as more than just the mere number of people that use it.  Especially when all too often that number is presented in the relative terms of percentages which are meaningless.  If I could build a golden monorail to the moon, I could maybe get a million people to ride it.  But that doesn't really matter if it cost a trillion dollars to build it.   There's a cost/benefit trade-off to everything.  It's not enough to simply say "Well, I moved some people".  It matters how many, how far but most importantly at what cost and to what ends.

But, if I were to give my opinion -- yes, $50/person subsidy ammortized over a full 10 years, is far too much to spend.  Numbers like that are only outpaced by those paid by Essential Air Service programs for rural airports.  That money could have been far better spent on infrastructure improvements that would have benefitted far more people than the relatively few people moving by rail.  Get that down to $5-10/person and you'll have something that's far more economically viable on a widespread basis, where the value that person brings to the economy by moving exceeds the costs to get them to their destination.

But the people of Virginia are certainly welcome to a different opinion.  Perhaps the desire to reduce pollution is worth the cost.  Perhaps the highways are congested enough that more lanes would have only made things worse.  Perhaps a highway expansion simply wasn't an option.  Perhaps they're willing to foot the bill now for the vision of a much-expanded future with many more trains per day which will substantially drop the average price per person (the article mentions a project to triple capacity at about 50% more cost, which would drop the subsidy down to ~$25/person over 10 years).  Maybe they wanted to become a leader in public rail transportation just because they could.  Or perhaps they just had a couple-hundred mil in their pocket they wanted to burn.  That's all up to them.  And more power to them to spend their money in a manner they see fit.

[Robbman]

I'm a big proponent of rail, and while these statistics in this article all show it's ridership is up (and when you're going from so low, that's not hard) -- the real question is: "at what cost?"

Take Lynchburg to DC.  Which the article touts as a big success.  It certainly gets more riders than I'd have thought at 20,000/month -- but that's only 250,000/yr.  And it cost the state $115M to upgrade the line enough for Amtrak to provide that service.  Not to mention any ongoing costs that the State may be incurring (and I'd be willing to bet that there's something).  But even looking at just the upfront costs, that's almost $500 of state funding spent on every person travelling that line in a year.  Even if we take it 10 years out, that's still $50 of capital outlay for every single person travelling that route over the next decade.

The state is paying $115 million to add service to Norfolk... the service to Lynchburg is an extension of already provided Amtrak services/routes.  The Lynchburg service required minimal investment (they built a stub track at LYH to layover an exisiting Northeast Regional train that used to layover in DC), there is no money set aside for an operating subsidy in our budget (there will be $25 million for 2013-2014, for the Norfolk train, as well as a second LYH and a Richmond train).  The Lynchburg service covers it's costs of operation... (It's $29 if you book a month in advance, $41 up to two weeks, $65 within two days...)

[Blazeman]

Well here's a so-called private operation run by FEC planned for the Sunshine State.

I would think there would be a request along the line for taxpayer money to get things going and before too long, despite their best intentions, a call for the public treasury to subsidize.

http://www.miamitodaynews.com/news/120705/story5.shtml