Quote from Railway Age:
Add Phoenix to the growing list of cities with a successful light rail launch. The 20-mile LRT line, which debuted late last December, averaged 30,600 riders per weekday, significantly above the 26,000 boardings per weekday anticipated by Metro.
Total January ridership was nearly 912,000,which was higher than the monthly total anticipated after one year of service, according to Metro Chief Executive Officer Rick Simonetta. Simonetta noted that Saturday ridership contributed to the overall number, with 10,000 more riders than expected. “We are very pleased with these numbers,” Simonetta told Metro’s governing board, noting that trains often were near capacity even outside rush hour peak loads.
Metro nevertheless is preparing for a ridership falloff when warmer weather arrives, though the authority is not certain how severe the impact might be.
Do you have any pix of this new train?
Here are a couple of pics, from February 2009. These are near the ASU campus in Tempe.
Blue Streak:
Charlotte is expecting a small drop in the March numbers because Wells Fargo (which bought Wachovia which was headquartered in Charlotte) and Bank of America (which is headquartered right across the steet from them in Charlotte) have eliminated hundreds of high end jobs in Charlotte City Center. However, Lynx is still running way above the planners' estimates and the design phase of the next light rail line and the commuter rail line are proceeding on schedule.
City after city is learning that the system works well.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
MP57313Here are a couple of pics, from February 2009. These are near the ASU campus in Tempe.
Who built those smooth-looking bumperless LRV's for the Arizona system?
al-in-chgoWho built those smooth-looking bumperless LRV's for the Arizona system?
desertdogMP57313 Here are a couple of pics, from February 2009. These are near the ASU campus in Tempe. The disconnected track in the foreground is ex-Southern Pacific and goes back even farther to its predecessor. Long ago it served a creamery and later on a nearby flour mill and an Arizona Public Service power plant. APS stopped burning fuel oil and the mill closed in the last decade. Much of the old track and even a set of crossing signals with gates remained right up to the time of light rail construction. Metro follows much of the ROW through campus and on down to Apache Blvd. before heading over to Mesa. John Timm
MP57313 Here are a couple of pics, from February 2009. These are near the ASU campus in Tempe.
To add to this, the route the light rail follows down Terrace Rd in Tempe, used to be an SP ROW where a portion of the old 'Creamery Branch' met up with the mainline at Normal Junction, MP 917.0. Many people don't realize that Terrace Rd was an old railroad ROW. The rail in the image above was laid sometime in the late 1800s.
Hello,
My wife & I will be in Las Vegas in November, I would like to drive to Phoenix to ride the Light Rail.
Can anyone please advise the distance & time involved driving via 93?
Cheers & thanks.
Andy,
Burlington, Ontario.
Many cities in Texas are saying no thanks to light rail. It is too expensive. Austin, Fort Worth, and San Antonio, which are three of the largest cities in Texas, have decided that the benefits generated by light rail do not justifiy the costs. Houston is reconsidering its plans to expand significantly its starter light rail system. They are going with commuter rail, in some instances, if it can be built along existing rights-of-way, and Rapid Bus Technology (RBT). Apparently the DOT is having some second thoughts about the cost of light rail. It has encouraged Austin, amongst others, to think RPT, which will start here in 2011 or 2012 if the transit authority can secure FTA funding.
Dallas opted for an extensive light rail system only to have it used by approximately three per cent of the Metroplex population. The subsidy required for each user is $3.22 per trip, which is more than double the farebox revenue. Interestingly, the HOV lanes in Dallas, which are operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit, carry twice the number of people as ride the light rail trains.
pcc4199Hello, My wife & I will be in Las Vegas in November, I would like to drive to Phoenix to ride the Light Rail. Can anyone please advise the distance & time involved driving via 93? Cheers & thanks. Andy, Burlington, Ontario.
John,
Thank you for responding to my enquiry/
Have booked at the Days Inn, Central & Camelback, as it is located at a Light Rail station.
Cheers.
Andy
This is a general note to people who post pictures to these forums. If you don't size the picture properly, it distorts the display, i.e. it is necessary to scroll along the bottom of the screen to read any accompanying text.
Sam:
That is not a problem with the posted pictures, it is a problem with the poorly designed website.
I had to scroll to the right to read your all text post.
Sam1 Interestingly, the HOV lanes in Dallas, which are operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit, carry twice the number of people as ride the light rail trains.
Interestingly, the HOV lanes in Dallas, which are operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit, carry twice the number of people as ride the light rail trains.
What are the miles and cost of Dallas's HOV lanes vs the miles and cost of light rail?
Patrick Boylan
Free yacht rides, 27' sailboat, zip code 19114 Delaware River, get great Delair bridge photos from the river. Send me a private message
gardendance Sam1 Interestingly, the HOV lanes in Dallas, which are operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit, carry twice the number of people as ride the light rail trains. What are the miles and cost of Dallas's HOV lanes vs the miles and cost of light rail?
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) operates 45 miles of light rail. It serves 35 stations with a total of 115 vehicles. In FY08 it accounted for 19.4 million passenger trips. The average week day ridership was 65,800, compared to an average of 29,400 on Saturday and 19,100 on Sunday. The average subsidy per passenger was $3.01 per trip.
DART and TXDOT operate 75 miles of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes in the Metroplex. They carried 48.1 million commuter trips in FY08 or nearly 2.5 times the number of people carried on the light rail system. The average subsidy per passenger was $.18. Yep, that's right: 18 cents verses $3.01 for the light rail.
I don't have the capital costs of building the light rail lines vs. the HOV lanes, and I don't have the time now to dig them out. But the subsidies tell the story. It cost considerably less to build the HOV lanes than to build the light rail infrastructure. The major reason is because the light rail system was built from scratch, although along abandoned rail lines for the most part, whilst the HOV lanes were developed on existing highways by using part of the center strip and making the other lanes a tad narrower. The advantage of highways is that they are shared access ways, which means the total cost is spread across multiple users, whereas a rail system tends to hoist a single user that has to eat all the costs.
At the end of the day, no matter how we shape the argument for light rail or public transit, most Americans prefer to commute in their cars. They can set the temperature to their liking, listen to the radio, chose their traveling companions, and avoid many of the undesirable incidents experienced on public transit.
I rode public transit for most of my working life. I still ride it to the University of Texas, where I participate in a continuing education program for seniors. Of the 1,500 people who participate in the program, maybe 10 use public transit. They drive for the reasons stated above.
In FY06, according to the Department of Transportation, only 4.3 per cent of Americans used public transit to get to and from work. Clearly, the percentages were higher in major metropolitan areas, e.g. Chicago, New York, San Francisco, etc., but for the most part Americans prefer to get to work in the family buggy. And they will continue to do so until the cost of driving (gasoline, congestion, etc.) becomes prohibitive, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon. And the flu threat is put to rest.
In your costs did you include the destination infrastructure to channel and park all those cars? After all, you include the cost of the stations and park and ride lots in the light rail figures.
It's still not a fair comparison because with light rail you are including the cost of owning and maintaining the vehicles. Have you taken into account the buses and rental cars that use the HOV lanes? How about the DOT cost of maintaining them (Where I grew up they require sand, salt, and snow removal.
I have no delusions that the costs will ever be equal or in favor of rail, but I also think your numbers exagerate the difference. The simple fact is that rail allows a more dense population. The ROW takes up only the width of two tracks and the vehicles don't require parking space. With short headways there is no way that a road can move the number of people that rail can move.
Picture trying to build something like Manhattan without the subway system.
I remember hearing all these same arguments when they were planning the DC Metro. Go there and try to take it away from them now...
Metroplex motorists drive to thousands of places for work, play, shopping, etc. In some instances, especially downtown, they pay a fee to park. In others the cost of the parking lots is embedded in a retailer's pricing structure or in the building owner's rents. Determining the cost would be nearly impossible. In any case, the cost of parking is paid for by and large by the motorists. And it is unlikely to account for the $2.83 difference between the HOV subsidies and the light rail subsidies.
For pay parking lot owners pay local and state taxes. If the cost of the parking is embedded in the owner's rents, the owner pays local and state taxes, assuming that he or she earns a profit. Transit agencies pay no taxes; they simply eat them.
If you think that the cost differences are exaggerated, feel free to offer some contrary evidence?
I have lived in Texas for more than 35 years, of which 31 were spent in Dallas. During that time we had two good snow storms and two ice storms. The streets were clear within a day. Ice and snow in Dallas are so rare that it does not have any snow removal equipment; it just waits a few hours for the snow and ice to melt.
Public transit is necessary in metropolitan areas. And rail borne public transit is appropriate in major metropolitan areas such as New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. But it not an optimum fit for most communities in the U.S., although many of them jumped on the light rail bandwagon because, well, it was the thing to do.
I campaigned for the implementation of the DART light rail system. Like most of the advocates I had no idea how much it would cost to implement and the magnitude of the operating subsidies. Neither did most of the other proponents. The last thing that they wanted to hear was a cost analysis.
My guess is that most of the people in Washington have no idea how much the Metro system costs them or the federal taxpayers. I doubt that most of the people who participate in these forums understand the costs. It takes a considerable amount of time to dig them out and understand them.
After I retired, I had the time to dig into the costs of passenger rail and transit rail. The cost and subsidy numbers blew my mind. This is why I concluded that the only place where rail is justified is in high density corridors or a metropolitan area where the cost of expanding highways and airways is prohibitive, and alternatives, such as Rapid Bus Technology, is not feasible.
Of all forms of public and private transport in the U.S., or most other countries for that matter, passenger rail, including transit rail, requires the largest capital and operating subsidies, which are paid largely by people who cannot or will not use the system. In a nation awash in debt, this should be cause for serious reflection.
Phoebe,
I've formed my opinion, I picture that Sam pretty much says public transit will never be as cost effective as private automobile except in very large dense populations, none of which actually exist on Earth.
Sam usually has some statistic available to support her claim, and will usually present it when asked, and sometimes even when not asked. I'm too lazy to look it up myself, and I bet most of us are just a lazy in that regard as me, so I accept her statistic, and pounce on every hole in her logic I can find.
You however believe that no rail route can go wrong. In my jolly trolley boy heart I want to agree with you, and it brings me great joy to hear you mention the great passenger loads in Charlotte, where they made a mistake by not building the light rail big enough for the demand. I wish every railroad had a problem with too many passengers, and I wish Phoenix well. Thank God I managed to mention Phoenix, so if I have to argue with the moderator I can claim we're still on topic.
Now I've got to cherry pick and complain about one item in your post.
Phoebe Vet The simple fact is that rail allows a more dense population. The ROW takes up only the width of two tracks and the vehicles don't require parking space.
The simple fact is that rail allows a more dense population. The ROW takes up only the width of two tracks and the vehicles don't require parking space.
I agree that rail right of way is generally less intrusive than superhighways, and I definitely think a well manicured straight as an arrow Pennsylvania Railroad or Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee line is far more attractive than any asphalt road, but rail or no rail, the vehicles do require a parking space. Trolleys must spend the night somewhere,whether you call it carbarn, terminal, or yard.
Because I am usually responding to something Sam said, it does appear that I am in favor of all trains all the time. I asure you it is not true. When Charlotte first began planning the 2030 transit project I was a skeptic. I stood on South Blvd, which parallels the Blue Line route and looked at the buses as they went by every 30 minutes or so with 6 people on them. I couldn't envision the train transporting 400 or 500 people every 7 1/2 minutes but they do and now the people in town are screaming that they want the next two lines built sooner than planned and polls are showing that there is substantial support for raising the sales tax another half percent to accomplish it. I don't think anyone in Charlotte, pro or con, has any doubts about the cost. If you drive South Boulevard, Park Road, or I-77 between 7:30 AM & 9:30 AM or between 4:30 PM and 7 PM, you will wonder why everyone doesn't take the train.
As for the parking, the rail maint facility where they are parked from 2 AM to 5 AM or when not in service is not in city center and is in fact right beside the bus maint facility.
Please forgive me if I'm quibbling too much.
If the trains originate fully loaded at the outer end rail maint facility and run with reasonably full loads inbound, gradually changing to reasonably full loads outbound, then spend the night at the maint facility, I'd say that we're getting ok use of the trolley parking lot. The best use would be if we got full loads both directions all day long, but I doubt there are very many places with such good reverse commuting.
If however there's a big gap in the changeover between passenger directions, you're left with the possibility that some of the trips to the trolley parking lot won't be carrying very many passengers, or you need to have a second trolley parking lot at the other, in this case city center, end of the line to layover cars.
Depending on your passenger loads and headways maybe the layover can be on a revenue track, for example New York uses some of its express tracks to store equipment off peak, instead of sending it all the way back to the yard.
Again I'm just quibbling with your remark that trolleys don't need parking space, and your acknowledgment that they do need space and your explanation that the trolley parking lot is not in the city center. The fact that the lot's not in the city center does not necessarily mean that it's operationally environmentally efficient, depending on the direction, timing, and balance of passengers.
Also there are ways to mitigate the impact of trolley parking space for balancing directions. If your double track line's stations are 2 tracks plus platform space for 2 tracks then your right of way's not going to take up much more space if you strategically put a few stretches of 3rd pocket track.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you are trying to say.
Charlott'e light rail system is new and in it's infancy. Only one line has been completed so far. The next two lines are in the EIS phase. An additional line is still undecided whether it will be light rail or BRT. The is also a Street Car component planned. That line is not under construction yet, though one segment of rail was installed during an unrelated scheduled street upgrade. The entire system is not scheduled for completion until 2030.
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=35.194914~-80.870127&style=h&lvl=16&tilt=-41.373968548669&dir=353.592165979137&alt=1390.77128088195&cam=35.182707~-80.868457&scene=21384509&phx=0.325318246110325&phy=-0.807763401109057&phscl=1.99526231496888&encType=1
The completed line is only 10 miles long and the maint facility is in the middle. The first revenue runs in the morning originate at that facility leaving in both directions. The trainsets are washed every night at the maint facility. At startup five additional trainsets are dropped at the south end of the line so that the trainsets can be doubled up during rush hour. They really need to be trippled during rush hour, but the platforms are not long enough. Prepositioning them in city center overnight would serve no useful purpose and would create a security requirement. Parking in city center is many times more costly that parking at the maint facility or at any of the park and ride lots.
My point was that 15,000 rides a day on that one line means thousands of cars a day that don't need to navigate city streets and don't require a parking space. Once the system is built out, it will be many times that. Buses would still have to navigate the city streets. There is a bus center at one of the light rail stops in city center.
gardendanceI doubt there are very many places with such good reverse commuting.
Don't know any trolley lines but the one commuter rail system that comes to mind that is balanced is Miami's Tri-Rail. When they get their maintenance facility built north of West Palm Beach then they will have a maintenance facility at each end a plenty of parking.
One thing (among many) that impressed me about Charlotte's CATS is the number of bus routes that feed each stop. I saw real, live people using the LRT + bus to go shopping for Christmas presents (this was Dec. 22). I think this makes it more democratic; public transit by LRV's or commuter trains is sometimes considered an upward transfer of money (i.e., sales taxes, etc.) away from the blue-collar to the white-collar and professional workers. The CATS setup seems determined to maximize the number of people who ride the LRT's during the day, not just at a.m. and p.m. rush hours.
Al:
You probably also noticed that right at or across the street from the I-485 park and ride there are 5 restaurants, 3 fast food outlets, 2 automobile dealerships, a 22 screen theater, and a pretty good size shopping center.
Phoebe Vet Al: You probably also noticed that right at or across the street from the I-485 park and ride there are 5 restaurants, 3 fast food outlets, 2 automobile dealerships, a 22 screen theater, and a pretty good size shopping center.
I sure did! I assume they were built during Charlotte's growth surge to be adjacent to the "beltway." But they were there before the CATS trains, right?? - a.s.
That is true, and one more exit around the beltway is the largest INDOOR mall in the area. One of the bus feeder routes for that LYNX park and ride loops around Pineville with a stop at the main entrance to that other mall. Both ends of the loop are at the park and ride. Another of the bus feeder loops runs around the warehouse district off Westinghouse Blvd, so warehouse workers can take LYNX away from city center during rush hour to where their jobs are.
Phoebe Vet That is true, and one more exit around the beltway is the largest INDOOR mall in the area. One of the bus feeder routes for that LYNX park and ride loops around Pineville with a stop at the main entrance to that other mall. Both ends of the loop are at the park and ride. Another of the bus feeder loops runs around the warehouse district off Westinghouse Blvd, so warehouse workers can take LYNX away from city center during rush hour to where their jobs are.
It is gratifying to me that CATS, despite the economic downturn, was able to get this system up and running in a first-class manner. By not cheaping out on new bus routes but instead linking to LYNX looks like a success. I realize there isn't much money to build anything new right now, but I wonder overall how many people are still opposed to the idea of LRT or commuter train? Does the Observer still take opinion polls about how the citizens feel about their public transit? - a.s.
Yes there are still a bunch of very vocal opponents. The discussion is ongoing again because the economy has caused a substantial dip in the sales tax revenue that is being used for construction. The operating budget is pretty much on budget, and the operating budget for the buses is over budget because of the gas prices. They were able to make up the operating budget shortfalls with a small fare increase from $1.30 to $1.50 and by reducing the frequency of service on a couple of the under used bus routes. They reduced the headway on LYNX from 7 1/2 minutes to 10 minutes. It has, however, seriously impacted the construction budget. The original plan was to build the next two lines simultaneously, but the economy is forcing them to decide which one to do first and it is not making people along the two lines happy. They are also saying if the economy doesn't recover in a reasonable period of time they may not be able to build the Silver Line at all. There is talk of putting another 1/2% sales tax on the ballot and it looks like if they do it might pass. Even though the decision hasn't even been made yet, the prospect is bringing the opponents of the "choo choo" back out of the woodwork. They are not against the tax, they want it spent on road building instead of LYNX. In the mean time the Purple Line is shovel ready and the Blue Line extension is in EIS Phase 2. They are trying to lengthen the platforms to 300 feet so they can run triple trains, but several of them are up in the air, so it's going to be tough.
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