Passenger Trains > "Falling ridership hits transit agencies in New Mexico"

 https://www.abqjournal.com/1348325/falling-ridership-hits-transit-agencies-in-new-mexico.html 
  
"...The popularity of the Rail Runner has been in decline for some time. Passenger trips have now fallen for nine consecutive years, or roughly 36% overall from their peak of 1.2 million in 2010...."

Bus ridership in the service area over the last year is off even more sharply.

Non traditional commuting patterns and cheap gas are the underlying causes.

Posted from Android

what is a "non-traditional" commuting pattern?

66

Read the entire article. It means city-focused "9 to 5" jobs, which many service sector jobs do not conform to.

Posted from Android

i RARELY click on links that i am not familiar with...............

66

The Albuquerque Journal has been publishing since the 1920s. In English, as we  speak it here, with no need for passports, either.
This state entered the Union in 1912 with Arizona,  is the fifth largest in the US, with only about 2 million citizens. Abq has about half million people, the state a largely poor, Los Alamos-Sandia Labs/militarybase/petroleum/ranch-based economy surrounded by five more prosperous states and bordering Mexico.
Public transit here is still mostly a novelty, as travel distances are on a much larger scale than smaller, more populated Eastern states. Owning a vehicle is really a practical  must.
The Rail Runner started in 2006, connecting large Abq with state capital Santa Fe, makes sense except it is about ten years too early, population-wise.Some 60 urban and regional feeder bus routes from 14  RR stations have been suppying RR riders for the past few years, especially to/from scattered towns never having such.service before.
Service has quiet cars but does not run 24 hours,  begins early morning, pauses afternoons, ends before midnight, only runs a trainset every couple hours on weekends, does limited skip-stop runs  weekdays. 
The route is scenic, mostly follows the green Rio Grande Valley, runs through 4 Native American pueblos, climbs the high mesa lands, runs in the I-25 median outside Santa Fe, giving views of mountain ranges behind nearby Los Alamos and Mount Taylor, 60 miles west..

 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/19 23:15 by Abqfoamer.

Abqfoamer Wrote:
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> The Rail Runner started in 2006, connecting large
> Abq with state capital Santa Fe, makes sense
> except it is about ten years too early,
> population-wise.Some 60 urban and regional feeder
> bus routes from 14  RR stations have been
> suppying RR riders for the past few years,
> especially to/from scattered towns never having
> such.service before...

Yet ridership is going down.

Maybe if the normal planning period had been in place instead of Gov. Richardson's ramrod, maybe people wold have figured out that it was not needed.

Then why comment on them?
goneon66 Wrote:
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> i RARELY click on links that i am not familiar
> with...............
>
> 66

Lurch_in_ABQ Wrote:
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>  https://www.abqjournal.com/1348325/falling-rider
> ship-hits-transit-agencies-in-new-mexico.html 
>   
> "...The popularity of the Rail Runner has been in
> decline for some time. Passenger trips have now
> fallen for nine consecutive years, or roughly 36%
> overall from their peak of 1.2 million in
> 2010...."

I figured it was because the dining car was removed or Anderson was in charge. Market forces, imagine that.

Posted from Android

santafedan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Then why comment on them?
> goneon66 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > i RARELY click on links that i am not familiar
> > with...............
> >
> > 66

BECAUSE i asked a question regarding a post from somebody on a DISCUSSION BOARD.

i can discuss somebody's post WITHOUT clicking on a link...............

66

Duna Wrote:
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> RailRunner should never have been built. Shut it
> down.

Rail Runner from the start was testing the limits of what sort of development (or lack of) that commuter rail could be successfully implemented in. We found out (even if many already suspected) that commuter rail does have such limits. New Mexico has a problem. RailRunner will continue to suck up the state's limited resources until something decisive is done.

I'm not going to point specific fingers, but this thread has made me just utterly sad for the stupidity of some members, both those who simply come on here to attack others (often with vitriol towards railroads as if being anti-train makes them somehow cooler) and those who use a compter to explain that they don't know how to Google and don't know how to understand what links are viable or not (holy moly - if you don't know how to Google a term or how to go find an article on yourself that you're worried about the link on yet in 2019, give it up at this point).

 

One of the early funding assumptions for Rail Runner was a proposed tax on parking in Santa Fe. Limits on parking, and increases in parking costs would drive more passengers to rail runner.

The politically powerful state employees didn't like that, nor did the parking lot owners,merchants, etc.

The funding stream from parking etc taxes dried up.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> One of the early funding assumptions for Rail
> Runner was a proposed tax on parking in Santa Fe.
> Limits on parking, and increases in parking costs
> would drive more passengers to rail runner.

Can't blame them. The parking tax would had to have been quite high to carry that white elephant.

gbmott Wrote:

> >
> “Non-traditional commuting patterns” is a term
> frequently used by professional transport
> planners...
>
> Gordon



Yes, as a professional planner, I know that.

But a commuting pattern is not a job, now is it?

That is my point.

A "balanced" funding solution will always seem unfair to somebody.  That's how subsidies work.

In NY, the downstate Metropolitan Transporation Authority relies on bridge and tunnel tolls, rail, subway, and bus fares. And, a slice of the state income tax / tax on non-resident workers, real estate transfer tax, a 0.25% sales tax surcharge, etc. Much to the irritation of people who both live and work in the outer counties, and have little to do with the city. Or so they think.

Governor Bill wanted a commuter rail system to burnish his credentials as an environmentally sensitive leader. A lot of good that did him or the state...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/19 08:38 by Lackawanna484.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One of the early funding assumptions for Rail
> Runner was a proposed tax on parking in Santa Fe.
> Limits on parking, and increases in parking costs
> would drive more passengers to rail runner.
>
> The politically powerful state employees didn't
> like that, nor did the parking lot
> owners,merchants, etc.
>
> The funding stream from parking etc taxes dried
> up.

That certainly is an important facet to understanding what happened. 

I don't think the whole ABQ area has the density to support it. I doubt Rail Runner had much impact on developing travel patterns to justify it years later. But they are now stuck with it, so do whatever to the schedules, residential feeder buses, and corporate shuttles to make it work better.

Posted from Android

As WALSTIB has shamed me into needing to post something of value, I would agree that in a blank-slate, let's start again world, Albuquerque is not a place I would personally have put heavy-rail commuter trains. I am also aware that the last five years or so have been hard on a large amount of transit systems throughout the entire country, with falling ridership due to a number of reasons (among them, people seeming to just having accepted longer driving times and higher amounts of their income going to gasoline).

I agree with Joe, and think the only way to mitigate both Albuquerque, and other cities with newer systems that are now losing ridership, is for those cities to encourage growth around the transit stations. One thing we know is population continues to grow and those people will need somewhere to live. If urban planners can make it more financially rewarding to build along existing transit that will obviously make poorly-justified transit lines gain further usefulness down the line. (Yes, I'm stating the obvious, but sometimes it needs to be stated.)

Duna Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> gbmott Wrote:
>
> > >
> > “Non-traditional commuting patterns” is a
> term
> > frequently used by professional transport
> > planners...
> >
> > Gordon


> Yes, as a professional planner, I know that.
>
> But a commuting pattern is not a job, now is it?
>
> That is my point.

Yes, I agree.  But the commuting pattern is influenced by the job -- or at least by how the job is performed.  In recent times the way the job is performed (work-from-home, etc) has changed even though the job content may have not.  I think we are arguing symantics.  I think the point that was trying to be made is that one of the factors in RailRunner's ridership decline is that there are simply fewer people commuting in the traditional sense.

Gordon



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/19 10:02 by gbmott.