Light rail works in dense urban areas - Seattle, New York, Boston, San Francisco. Less dense areas like Portland and Albuquerque, New Mexico? Not so much. It is a very visible public works project and has a certain "cool" cachet but it is a money pit. From The AntiPlanner:
Riding the Rail Runner
After speaking about Romance of the Rails in Albuquerque Friday night, I took advantage of a day off between engagements to ride the New Mexico Rail Runner to Santa Fe and back. This train is costing the state close to $800 million in capital costs including interest (which works out to annual payments of about $30 million a year) plus another $30 million a year in operations and maintenance costs, while it is bringing in slightly more than $2 million a year in fares. The federal government also recently gave the state another $30 million to install positive train control.
I love it - $60 million dollars spent each year and it brings in $2 million of income. What doofus signed off on that? A bit more:
Average weekday ridership in 2017 was 2,825, which means 1,413 round trips. Ridership peaked in 2011 and has declined by 37 percent since then. This compares with Albuquerque bus ridership, which peaked in 2012 and has since declined by 25 percent, and transit ridership nationally, which peaked in 2014 and has since declined by 8 percent.
Due in part to low ridership, the Rail Runner uses more energy and emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than driving an average SUV. This is typical for most commuter-rail lines that started up in the last two decades or so.
They could sell off the land and the equipment and still come out multiple hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the hole. Way to go bureaucrats!
The AntiPlanner is a great website. From their About page:
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Welcome to the Antiplanner, a blog dedicated to ending government land-use regulation, comprehensive planning, and transportation boondoggles.
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