Passenger Trains > Commuter Rail Downturn

Last week I posted my observations about how empty SoCal Metrolink parking lots have become since 2019. The problem as I saw it was that workers never returned full time to Downtown Los Angeles, instead mostly working from home, perhaps commuting in a few days a week. Some agreed with me, others not.

The thread:  https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,6154924

Today in the Los Angeles Times there is a story about the hard times Downtown Los Angeles is seeing with large office vacancies and buildings being sold at bargain prices.  

Downtown L.A.’s cratering real estate market is changing — rich renters are buying their buildings

• Downtown L.A. office buildings are plummeting in value as vacancy rates soar, creating opportunities for major tenants to purchase their properties instead of renting.
• Entities like Capital Group, Riot Games and L.A. County are buying office buildings, converting record vacancies into ownership opportunities.
• Owner-users now account for nearly half of downtown office deals as investors capitalize on bargain prices triggered by the pandemic-era office market collapse.

Nearly 40% of the office space in the financial district was available at the end of last year, according to CBRE. Overall vacancy downtown has climbed from 14% in 2019 to 34%.

The article is behind a paywall so I am not going to post the link to it, but you can find it on the LA Times web site.

I have a hypothesis that ridership may not see a bump with higher gasoline prices. As fuel prices increase employers may be more lenient allowing workers to work from home. That will certainly cut into Metrolink's ridership. I don't see this as a unique Los Angeles problem and probably applies to every metro area with central business districts served by commuter rail  We saw the demise of the Northstar in Minneapolis and I would expect in the coming years there will be additional casualties.


 

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

I wonder if there are any good quality studies that have tried to answer the missing ridership question. Some folks cite WFH, others say that businesses are fleeing certain cities because of crime or taxes or whatever. However most "easy" answers seem incomplete. Like moving to a suburb might subject workers to even more congestion while placing the business away from important ammenities like lunch locations or an airport.

Of course most "Commuter" rail systems have done jack all to find new sources of riders, content to run half empty trains at the traditional peak times while the paltry evening and weekend trains are crowded with people looking to enjoy downtown ammenities. The urbanists def have a point about getting more redisential units in downtowns, especially in places where housing costs are high. If the bussinesses aren't downtown for people to commute to, it seems like a slam dunk to build more housing downtown and have those residents potentially reverse commute. 

Friends from Portland mentioned that while their core downtown is overrun with vagarants, multiple suburban communities transformed their own CBD's into alternate centers of gravity with high density housing and walkable ammenities. That allowed suburban busines relocation without the tradeoffs of the late 20th century.

Thanks for your post. Based on a radio interview yesterday on KSL with a Utah Transpiration Authority spokesman, ridership is up since the gas price increase on both the Front Runner and Trax commuter rail lines in the Salt Lake City area....

jeffgeldner Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for your post. Based on a radio interview
> yesterday on KSL with a Utah Transpiration
> Authority spokesman, ridership is up since the gas
> price increase on both the Front Runner and Trax
> commuter rail lines in the Salt Lake City area....


Adding to this-- FrontRunner is a newer commuter line done right...
- all day service, from 5 AM till midnight (except Sundays)
- departures on the hour, half-hour during peak times
- clean and safe stations, consistent law enforcement, on-board train hosts
- riders may conceal or open carry firearms on trains without a permit
- transit police cite people for smoking on platforms, enforce other quality of transit issues
- currently single track operation with rolling meets every 15 minutes
- future plans to double-track and electrify the line with additional route expansions

Meanwhile, Metrolink in L.A. has...
- inconsistent departures, large mid-day service gaps, and no midnight service
- service interruptions since they co-exist with Union Pacific, BNSF, Amtrak, Coaster, etc.
- on board personnel presence/supervision is sparse
- riders may not carry firearms, only law enforcement, so one can't protect themselves while walking between home/store/work and station
- many stations are in open lots with no real development, so it's tailored to the commuter mindset instead of transit oriented development

Gas prices are not just a driver of transit use, but overall usefulness, reliability and safety as well.

A recent article in the Miami (FL) Herald stated that automobile commuter traffic in the Miami-Dade metro area is up significantly since 2019.  The average commuter now spends 90+ hours in traffic each year, compared to 70+ in 2019.  The county leadership is exploring a new rail commuter line on the FEC / BrightLine tracks parallel to US 1, and expanding the Tri-Rail line on the west side of the metro area.

Reports suggest that auto commutes in Broward and Palm Beach County take slightly longer now than they did in 2019. That may change as the impact of new "office jobs" becomes more apparent. There is an enormous amount of new office construction in the 50 miles from Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach Gardens, some of it adjacent to the railroad stations.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article314388521.html

Thing is Metrolink will be fine, still sad Northstar's gone, it's not the end of commuter trains as we know it!

Posted from Android

I can tell you as a remote worker myself that the trend towards hybrid work is the leading contributor the dragging ridership on commuter systems more than anything else. There simply isn't demand in most cases, and it has been concentrated in the biggest cities in the country, like LA, NYC and Chicago. Although corporations have more leverage in the constant power struggle between executives and the rank and file, hybrid or fully remote work is now a cost of competing for talent in these larger metros. This is less the case in some other areas where on-site work has recovered more or has been collectively encouraged by local corporate leadership. South Florida is a good example and Tri-Rail's surging ridership along with that of Brightline's local business being so popular are proof of this. 

Todd and others are correct when they say it's high time for agencies like Metrolink and others to get creative and re-engineer their schedules and systems. Catering less to Morning and afternoon peak commutes and more to off peak services is definitely key - as well as implementing no-transfer run through services that use multiple lines. Figuring out what works here might take some study but that would aid in the pivot. 

MEKoch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What I am saying is not political.  It is
> economic reality.  The downtowns of these cities
> are finished until they clean the slum. 

Thanks for your comments. I have no problems discussing politics because I constantly fight the brainwashing from above, and try not to rant like a mental patient.

Without elaborating, San Francisco is taking baby steps to "recover" with a new pro-business mayor. Los Angeles (focus of this thread) has a mayoral election in 2 months. I didn't want to mention this, but these are "facts."

But past policy mismanagements have irreversibly destroyed commuter rail in some regions. RIP. What no one has mentioned is the psychological damage that mismanagement caused the past 5-6 years. I need to be vague to prevent more rants, but I will say just once that our natural need to socialize was weaponized against us, traumatic enough that people refuse to be in shared spaces anymore.

That means even with high gas prices and intolerable commutes on the roads, people are willing to suffer that over sharing spaces with others in offices, buses, and trains. It's more than just homeless and criminals, but take my psycho-babble with a grain of salt.

I visited Salt Lake City (and many other areas) during the pandemic (2020-2021), and got to see firsthand how other areas managed their cities in a crisis. So the above comments by jeffgeldner and F40PHR231 that FrontRunner is doing good don't surprise me. My bad for living outside the bubble and physically visit places, instead of throwing stones inside the glass house (bubble).
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/26 14:37 by cchan006.

"The article is behind a paywall so I am not going to post the link to it, but you can find it on the LA Times web site."

No such recalcitrance here.   Paywall bypass:

https://archive.ph/tDJdw


 

Metrolink was scheduled to work based on the siding spacing that existed when it started, with revisions as they became possible with added segments of second main track and sidiings.  It is far from optimum or a clean sheet of paper.
For example the single main track in the median of the San Bernardino Freeway: There is simply no room to extend any passing track opportunities there after we jammed in the short Fremont siding east of Cal State L.A.
And then there are two 7000 ft single track tunnels, and nobody with some hundreds of millions of dollars to make them two tracks.
As Director of Engineering at Metrolink I was rather jealous of the Utah right of way.

Commuter rail is based on the premise that people from a wide catchment area will seek travel to a central point. In many places that hasn't been a growth case for 20 years as so much growth is on the fringe of the metro. In NJ, that could be people living in Bergen County (on the former Erie Lines) and working in Bridgewater (on the CNJ) or Parsippany (on the Lackawanna).  No easy way to do this by bus or rail.  I'm sure Los Angeles has similar issues with people living in the San Gabriel area but working in Long Beach, etc.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Commuter rail is based on the premise that people
> from a wide catchment area will seek travel to a
> central point. 

That is mostly true for Metrolink.  Commuter rail falls down for intermediate points when there isn't last mile transportation to get employees to their workplaces.  Downtown or central point areas are typically well supported with transfer transportation, something that intermediate stations don't have.  Intermediate points are supported by buses, but it can often be a time consuming bus ride to the workplace.  Driving wins out or the worker moves closer or finds another job.

Frontrunner works better for a number of reasons. Its route is a spine and the way the metro area developed you are never far from a station.  One route services the entire region. Half the population is Mormon which generally speaking displays a civilized, courteous, and law abiding culture that is inviting for potential passengers.  Having a cooperating ridership that does not drive away customers like the train riding population we have in Los Angeles goes a long way. I hesitate to call these commuter trains as they function more like a diesel powered interurban service. Front Runner is also rather inexpensive to ride, much cheaper than Metrolink.

Looks at these dismal statistics for Metrolink when compared to Front Runner:

Metrolink daily ridership: 20,000
545 miles, 69 stations

Frontrunner daily ridership: 14,000
83 miles, 17 stations

 

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

Denver downtown and the suburbs office buildings are being returned to the lenders, foreclosed on, some being sold at drastic discounts, a couple conversions to apartments as well.

I was able to gather together with the help of ChatGTP Metrolink stats for the past 30 years. What is really crazy is the current ridership is on par with daily riders from 1995.  The service was primarily rush hour with a single midday roundtrip on the Antelope Valley, San Bernardino, and Ventura County Line and no weekend service. In 1995 Metrolink hosted 85 trains a day. Today they operate 180 daily trains.  They more than doubled the daily train count from 30 years ago and today carry fewer passengers. The last six months Metrolink has been averaging 18,900 riders a day.

The numbers presented are average weekday ridership:

1994-95: 17,261
1995-96: 21,207
1996-97: 21,704
1997-98: 25,700
1998-99: 26,851
1999-00: 27,049
2000-01: 31,519
2001-02: 29,966
2002-03: 34,324
2003-04: 34,961
2004-05: 37,304
2005-06: 43,611
2006-07: 44,592
2007-08: 43,276
2008-09: 43,452
2009-10: 44,390
2010-11: 43,853
2011-12: 42,388
2012-13: 42,359
2013-14: 42,180
2014-15: 42,165
2015-16: 41,186
2016-17: 40,955
2017-18: 41,974
2018-19: 42,939
2019-20: 33,612
2020-21: 8774
2021-22: 12,735
2022-23: 17,251
2023-24: 20,361
2024-25: 18,900

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

It doesn't help much, if you run Metrolink weekend service on the Ventura County Line at a much later time of day.
Leaving Oxnard at 1:24 pm. And get into LA by 3pm. Wont get anyone to ride. Its okay I guess to have Metrolink riders take
Amtrak Service from Oxnard to LA. But I think that is hurting Metrolink's ridership on that particular route. 

We have a couple of Colleges along the Ventura County Line, CSUN and Channel Island. And for the heck of it.
We also have UCLA, via a Bus connection. And I'm not seeing as many students taking Metrolink. As I am seeing them
taking the Surfliner Service. Specially at Northridge. I am seeing the ridership for the Surfliners climbing with College students.

To bad Amtrak doesn't have enough equipment to add more service. I can see Amtrak giving Metrolink a run for its money with ridership.
If Amtrak was able to add more service between LA and Santa Barbara. 
I wonder how long until Metrolink will actually start to make permanent cuts to its Service. 
 

Jerry Martin
Los Angeles, CA
Central Coast Railroad Festival

With California gasoline prices as high as they are, I'm surprised mass transit isn't increasing dramatically in use.

West coast commuter rail ridership seem a lot harder hit in Covid recovery than the northeast, which is overall back 80 - 90%, off peak leading the pack.  

The traffic in Southern California is worse than it has ever been, and it seems to get worse by the day.  Thus, I dispute that many people are working from home.  If they were, then they wouldn't be out clogging up the freeways. I also dispute that many people are leaving California.  Yes, there is a tiny trickle of people who are moving out of state.  But again, if so many people are leaving, why is the traffic getting so much worse?  I actually think there are far more people moving in to California than leaving.  FAR more.  As to why they are not riding Metrolink Commuter Rail, thanks to the Metrolink Board, there has not been any law enforcement on their trains for quite a few years now to weed out the scumbags and fare evaders.  So as Todd has more or less stated, riding their trains can be a real crappy experience.  As many issues as Amtrak has regarding customer service, I don't believe they tolerate nonsense on their trains and Amtrak Conductors still have a lot of leeway in dealing with unruly passengers.

Topfuel Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>  As many issues as Amtrak has
> regarding customer service, I don't believe they
> tolerate nonsense on their trains and Amtrak
> Conductors still have a lot of leeway in dealing
> with unruly passengers.

I used to ride the NJ Transit Newark City Subway on a regular basis.  Although it was a proof of fare operation, there were occasional violators.  But there was consistent enforcement.

The train (PCC or light rail) would stop just before it entered a station. The fare inspector and two NJT officers would board. All receipts would be checked. No receipt? With valid ID you would be given a ticket if there were no warrants for you.  No ID, or drugs, weapons, etc on you? Or a warrant, failure to appear, probation violation? Handcuffed to the fence until you could be sent downtown for processing.

Very civil process, but I don't remember any serious problems in years of riding the train. It was known as a place where you didn't screw around.  

Lackawanna484 Wrote:

> I used to ride the NJ Transit Newark City Subway
> on a regular basis.  Although it was a proof of
> fare operation, there were occasional violators. 
> But there was consistent enforcement.
>
> The train (PCC or light rail) would stop just
> before it entered a station. The fare inspector
> and two NJT officers would board. All receipts
> would be checked. No receipt? With valid ID you
> would be given a ticket if there were no warrants
> for you.  No ID, or drugs, weapons, etc on you?
> Or a warrant, failure to appear, probation
> violation? Handcuffed to the fence until you could
> be sent downtown for processing.
>
> Very civil process, but I don't remember any
> serious problems in years of riding the train. It
> was known as a place where you didn't screw
> around.  

I commuted on it daily for all of 2014 to Warren Street (NJIT). No stopping outside of stations. Fare enforcement was anything but consistent.  For the entire 4 month summer - nothing. In September, 2 days in a row, then nothing for a month, all done on the platforms.