New West Feature
New Mexico’s Rail Runner Express: Groundbreaking or a Boondoggle?
Times are uncertain for a subsidized commuter train that links Santa Fe with Albuquerque. Ridership improves when gas prices are high, but can the state afford to continue running the train?By Bobby Magill, 4-26-11
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| Photo by Bobby Magill. | |
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Riding the Rail Runner Express commuter train between Albuquerque and Santa Fe is a distinctly New Mexican experience.
As soon as the train doors close with a “Looney Toons”-style Road Runner “meep meep” chime, the crew warns passengers not to snap photos out of the windows because the train will soon cross the Tewa Pueblo and other sacred Native American lands in the Rio Grande Valley.
With a wave of GOP hostility toward commuter rail projects across the country, that experience is uncertain following the election last fall of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, who has long questioned the need and cost of the Rail Runner Express, the first inter-city commuter rail project in the Rocky Mountain region.
One of Democratic former Gov. Bill Richardson’s most visible legacies, the Rail Runner Express connects cities in New Mexico’s most populous region, ushering commuters from the state’s largest city to the state capital.
First running the rails to small cities south of Albuquerque in 2006 and expanding service to Santa Fe in 2008, the Rail Runner Express opened two years before Utah’s FrontRunner began serving the Great Salt Lake region in 2008 and likely decades before Colorado’s densely populated Front Range urban corridor will see similar service connecting its major metro areas.
Rail Runner’s trains, which bullet down the median of Interstate 25 south of Santa Fe, are a reminder to road warriors that even if you like the autonomy of a car, the train gets you there with free WiFi, a good view and at a lower cost than driving.
The commute from Albuquerque to Santa Fe on I-25 is about 65 miles and just under an hour behind the wheel, the roundtrip journey costing maybe four gallons of gasoline in a fuel efficient car.
On the Rail Runner Express, the same trip takes about twice the time at half the cost — $7 one-way, or $8 roundtrip.
The train began service with a plan to connect Belen, 50 miles south of Albuquerque, with Santa Fe. Soon, Taos, Las Cruces and other far flung cities in New Mexico began expressing interest in connecting to the Rail Runner.
“It connects a corridor which has so many different potentials for jobs, for tourism, for promoting a cultural corridor from Los Lunas to Santa Fe and beyond,” Santa Fe Mayor David Coss said.
That connection comes at a price.
Built mostly on an existing freight rail line with new track laid between the Tewa Pueblo and Santa Fe, the Rail Runner initially cost $400 million. Voters in four counties along the Rail Runner’s route approved a sales tax increase to fund 50 percent of the train’s annual operating costs, 25 percent of which are subsidized by the state, with the remaining cost covered by ticket sales, said Rail Runner Express spokeswoman Augusta Meyers.
As ridership dipped in 2010 and anti-tax sentiment swept across the country, Martinez, whose office declined to respond to numerous requests for comment, skewered the train on the campaign trail, questioning whether it should be privatized, sold off or scrapped.
Even as communities on the edges of the state pushed for extensions to its service, the train and its high costs have been derided by conservatives as a waste and a boondoggle.
“If I were governor, my concern would not be about my future, but about New Mexico’s fiscal future, and I’d go ahead and get the things off the tracks,” said Paul Gessing, president of the conservative Rio Grande Foundation.
He said privatizing or selling the Rail Runner isn’t a likely option because “no private company would want to get into the business of running a train like that on their own because the potential for profit is really not there.”
Despite Martinez’s skepticism of the train and conservative calls to kill the project, lawmakers left the Rail Runner alone during this year’s legislative session, which ended March 19.
“She was able to solve the budget issue without eliminating train service,” Gessing said, referring to Martinez. “It’s a tough decision for a politician to take something that’s already had a significant investment of $400 million and abandon that — just have those tracks sitting empty.”
State Rep. Larry Larrañaga, an Albuquerque Republican who served as New Mexico’s secretary of highways from 1982 to 1987, said that despite the tax burden the train’s detractors find distasteful, they’ve resigned themselves to the idea that the Rail Runner will likely remain on the tracks and to figuring out how to make it work best for taxpayers.
The state needs to study how the train can make more money and increase ridership in a region with a fraction of the population of other major metro areas in the region, he said.
“How do we make it a better mode of transportation?” he said. “We don’t have the population (of a Denver or Phoenix-sized metro area) to really sustain it. It’s a matter of economics, looking at how we increase the ridership, increase the fee to where it’s not such a big loss for the taxpayer.”
A study of the Rail Runner’s costs could be ready in less than two years, in time for a decision on the train’s future to be made during New Mexico’s next major legislative session in 2013, he said.
As Rail Runner critics look for ways to make the train less costly for taxpayers in a difficult economy, advocates of mass transit remain hopeful that the original vision of extending the train beyond its current termini can be realized.
“When I go out and do a lot of public involvement with my job, people (say they) want an alternative way to connect with the rest of the state, the biggest city in the state and the state capital,” said Tom Murphy, Metropolitan Planning Organization officer for the city of Las Cruces, which neighbors El Paso, Texas. “I think the desire is there. We have to find out if the desire is equal to the desire to pay for it.”
Planning for an extended Rail Runner Express falls to the New Mexico Department of Transportation, which is in the process of updating its long-range rail plan for the state, he said.
The current transportation plan, which was written in 2003 and looks ahead to 2025, calls for a passenger rail line serving Albuquerque and Santa Fe to begin service by 2008, a goal the state hit right on time.
NMDOT is developing the rail plan for both passenger and freight rail. The plan is required in order to receive federal funding for rail projects, and it’s expected to be finalized by the end of the year.
The plan will consider new passenger rail corridors extending to Taos, Raton (located on I-25 near the Colorado border) and Las Cruces, while considering another commuter rail project linking Las Cruces with El Paso.
“This is something we see as being needed, and we’re looking into ways to make it happen,” Murphy said.
As critics passionately point out the high costs of the Rail Runner Express and other high speed rail projects, defenders of commuter rail are equally passionate about the service the trains provide, particularly when fuel prices are high.
“I think those of us in the planning profession need to do a better job of educating everybody about the costs of all transportation,” Murphy said. “Transportation is part of the national infrastructure, and we need to invest in it.”
He said local roads are subsidized by local taxes just as the Rail Runner is.
“You can’t get to the interstate without driving on local roads first,” he said. “Every transportation system is subsidized. It becomes a matter of what type of transportation system is best for which type of situation.”
Meyers said the Rail Runner’s ridership numbers show New Mexicans turn to transit when gas prices are high, and they keep on riding the train when gas prices fall again.
The Rail Runner saw one of its greatest bumps in ridership during the first quarter of this year when gas prices began climbing well above $3 per gallon.
“Ridership increased 15 percent over the first quarter last year,” Meyers said.
The number of Rail Runner riders in March increased 15 percent over March 2010 ridership.
“Ridership isn’t declining,” she said.
Coss, the mayor of Santa Fe, said the he’s convinced that during her first months in office, Martinez has realized support for the Rail Runner is deep, even in a weak economy.
“I think scrutiny and adjustment is always appropriate, but I think what the governor and her folks have been experiencing, there’s pretty broad community support from the business community, Republicans, Democrats and environmentalists for the Rail Runner,” Coss said.
He said he is concerned the new administration may be motivated to eventually cut the Rail Runner’s service back.
“But we didn’t see it this legislative session,” he said. “I think we’re in the stage of implement and improve.”
Bobby Magill can be found online at www.bobbymagill.com.
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Comments
I say bring back the streetcar. Stop subsidizing jet travel.
Portland, Oregon is on the USDOT favor list and has spent billions to subsidize light rail riders to the tune of many thousands a year per rider. Now there is a move to build a $400 million 6 mile trolley to serve Lake Big Ego, a posh residential environment which is closing three public schools due to money woes.
You do have to wonder about spending priorities in these United States.
Our society installs these transportation corridors, and then uses land use planning to deny infill and corridor border use. Many times for wildlife or scenic or whatever. The political hamstring is a sure thing on any public project.
I like the idea of using the center land of a freeway. Or elevating the line over the freeway. Use the same rights of way. But never, ever, tell the voters that there is any hope of it ever being financially sustainable, and that it won't increase in costs per commuter mile and have to be fed tax money to stay running. Amtrak??
The greatest limit on American mobility is the mortgage crisis, and that is killing our economic growth opportunity. People can't move to where better jobs are because they are shackled to an upside down mortgage on a house. There ought to be a trade market for people who want to move to employment opportunity. An exchange for mortgages so that people at least can move to make a living, or a better living. I'll trade my 4 bedroom home in Scab Rock for your condo in Megaplex City. Maybe you can't sell your home, but you can exchange liabilities geographically, one would think. Some smart kid with a computer program will pull that off as a start up. That is the mobility that America needs right now. The fuel deal will kill itself. I will bet that GoldmanSachs is right now shorting oil because they know that an effort in export expansion in Iraq, more drilling in other places, a falling dollar, all will keep people out of cars, trains and planes this tourist season, and the fuel supply will grow and the speculators will have to dump margin calls. That will drop oil $15 a barrel. Our debt service and borrowing will devalue the dollar more, and we will have to learn to live with $90 a barrel oil. It was $70 not too long ago, and that was the real price and we saw fluctuations from there. Now the benchmark cost will be $90 due to dollar devaluation after the speculators are relieved of their dough by the short sellers and low demand. The whole of our economic costs will rise to cover the extra $20 per barrel of oil. Groceries due to truck delivery. All dry goods for the same reason. And imports will not be as cheap as they were due to shipping cost rises. But, American exports will gain in value due to the drop in dollar value. It will all work out, except for the political insanity of a polarized government of the socialist welfare state on one side, and the free marketeers of self sufficiency on the other. And until you can put some dough in the latter pockets, the former has not enough revenue to carry out their preferred policies without more borrowing which is going to be politically more challenging on a daily basis. Change is coming. And probably not the kind ObamaNation was selling.
Rail made sense for me when I lived on the Peninsula. I'd ride down the hill, grab a paper and iron, it was time-wise faster than the 101 or 280, and I could read or do late paperwork.
But to Fanta Se from the Q? Nah. Ride with someone else in a car pool from X to Y and the numbers look even worse for the train.
A boondoggle of epic proportions.
Puff piece or not, we are pissing away money on wars we don't want to win and can't win. We are pissing money away on generational non-workers who do not avail themselves to any number of trillions of dollars of "self help" tax spending on social programs and education, over 40 odd years since Lyndon Johnson tried to right the wrongs of yesteryear. All that has happened is we got more dependence, more government spending. Right here where I live we spend tens of millions for K-12 education, but only graduate 53% from high school. Is that because we don't spend enough?? Or is it so free and available that is has no worth??? Too cheap, too available, too easy, and nobody will use it, want it, avail themselves to it. Transportation, schools, food, housing, basic life support. All there to "pull you up by your bootstraps" and the job does not get done. No hunger for education. No hunger for a better life. No hunger for beauty and brightness. Nope, not in the American citizen victim classes. So all the energy and chance taking is by immigrants from Korea, India, China, Pakistan, Lebanon, Palestine, and even Mexico. The store on the corner, the gas station down the street, the "C" (convenience) store and gas station down the other street, the Mexican restaurants, the Thai and Chinese food joints. The mow and blow guys with a mower, a pickup, a blower, and a trailer to haul away grass clippings and leaves. Those people work, every day, and better themselves without the dole, the rent assistance, the food stamps, the free medical, and the endless litany of give away. Light rail, high speed trollies, all are a sham if you don't have several millions from which to glean riders. Sorry. Puff was the magic dragon. And US transportation is about cars, buses, and airplanes. That is how the country is laid out and serviced. That is what works. And when gas is $6, and diesel $7, we are broke on our ass and cannot afford capital expenditures anyway. That problem is about the other $14 Trillion we have borrowed to placate voters and steer them to voting for incumbents, and now the devalued dollar is biting our collective fuel ass. But don't worry, it will either get a whole lot worse or die of non-use, and oil prices will fall.
After a friend had surgery and could not drive, she was able to take the train for physical therapy and other health care in Santa Fe. A city bus meets each train to facilitate getting around Santa Fe.
Going out at night and want to drink with dinner or at the club? We meet a lot of people on the train doing this, they take the train and responsibly keep the roads safer by not driving after drinking. Wars subsidize the love affair with the car at much higher cost than taxpayer support for any train or other form of public transportation.
My county and others in Northern NM recently overwhelming voted in favor of a new tax for public transportation when other tax increases were voted down. The public in four counties already voted yes for public transit.
Short-sighted politicians without any vision put the kabash on rail connections time after time. Bill Richardson has indeed left a legacy we in New Mexico can be proud of with the RailRunner as well as the beautiful intersection of I40 and I25---the Space Port ---motion pictures and on and on---once the dust settles he will be known as one of the greatest governors ever!!!
Boondoggle.
Yer wrong as usual, about everything. Typical anonymous troll. Back under your rock now, that's a good cretin.
The only reason that I bother to engage you here is that I can't stand to see you, a trashy idiot flinging truth by emphatic assertion, bullying people who don't know what you really are. By the way, Alston Chase was just a poorly informed "philosopher" who, late in a marginally successful life, found he could fool the rubes by pretending to have the intellect and knowledge to pontificate, kind of like you, and evergreen magazine sucks.
OPM..Other people's money. As long as you ara spending other people's money, the nonsense continues. And when the money dries up, so does the nonsense.
I see the Jerry Franklin canopy crane lost its funding and is to be shut down. There will be other research programs cut. If there were gross improvements in the relationship of research and species vitality, where research did other than created a loss-loss ledger, those kinds of things would still have champions. Just denoting critter census data does little to advance the science. What I consider to be pissing money away is a means to a living for an academic. Welfare can come in many forms. If all you do it dependent upon government funding, for its survival, and yours, perhaps in times of financial duress, like now, is as good a time as any to find another field you can plow. Find another dead horse to beat. The mass transit deal with no real cost recovery just does not pencil at this time. WE have to live on less, do with less, and pay our bills.
Calling something this new a failure is absurd.
The issue we, as a country, have to face is how to pay for NEEDS and how to take the lobbyists out of the issue of financing WANTS. Certainly we need to do what we have to, to take care of NEEDS. And will.
Light rail, trolleys, are WANTS. And all rail transportation should be built to a national standard with a national plan of connectivity at some time, just like highways and freeways. Nothing should be built that can never be efficiently connected to the whole.
Anyone have an idea of how many fares, at what rate, result in ridership paying for the RoadRunner on a daily basis?? That is the number that is important. Can it support the DAILY cost of operation. The capital costs can be pissed away, if not built with borrowed money. IF built with borrowed money, can it pay the interest, and the daily costs of operations, including maintenance??? Ever???
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/running-in-the-red-how-the-us-on-the-road-to-surplus-detoured-to-massive-debt/2011/04/28/AFFU7rNF_story.html
It was your party who did it, your party who can't do anything right; so shut up.
Government needs to do only what it must, not what it "should," or God forbid, what it wants.
Faker,
I read that WP story and agree with most of it. Yes, it was partly Bush's fault, he made a lot of stupid choices in whom he selected to advise him. Add the wonks advising the Congressional leadership on how to retain power by buying votes, and yep -- BOTH parties have failed massively.
As for your cowardly chiseling, the fact is, I have my opinions and biases. I have a history, a context. Fine. If you don't like the conclusions I draw, that's your right. If you have complaints, then go ahead and write my editors. They love publishing hate mail.
But you probably never will -- while I at least I have the honesty and integrity to attach my name to what I write, you currently have neither.
2) Most arguments against commuter rail have long since been resolved almost everyplace except New Mexico.
3) The only thing wrong with the Rail Runner is that it's just a beginning.
• What alternative was there? Widening I-25 wasn’t a good choice for many reasons, including that that it cuts through the Pueblos north and south of ABQ. It wasn’t likely they would approve further degrading their homelands to accommodate more and more traffic by building a bigger and bigger highway.
I agree with one person that in general buses can be a good alternative to rail (I use ABQRide to get to work), but in this case we already had (and still have) a state funded commuter bus network in the area. If you look at commuter bus ridership vs. Rail Runner ridership, it shows what people prefer.
• NMDOT and MR-COG deserve credit for planning and building the Rail Runner project cheaper and faster than similar commuter rail systems. It was about 1/3 the cost and built in less than half the time than, for example, Utah's Front Runner.
• The construction was (mostly) paid for by New Mexico, not from the federal government.
• The start-up operating costs for the first few years were financed by federal air quality CMAQ grants, along with ticket revenues and state and local funding, but federal funding ended in 2009. New Mexico voters in the local four counties approved two gross receipt taxes that with ticket revenues pay for most of the operating costs, with the rest funded by state transportation dollars.
When funding public transportation has been placed on the ballot, New Mexicans have voted yes. In addition to the two Rail Runner taxes, ABQ residents recently voted to extend their transportation gross receipt tax another 10 years, and voted to increase the portion devoted to ABQride from 20% to 36%.
A subsidy to entice people to ride, by keeping costs down, is the usual EPA ploy for clean air or water. That it is an alternative to expanding a freeway is also a reason for a subsidy. This is the United States, and using tax policy to change social policy is a part of how we have become governed. If you like that, then wallow in the luxury. But never forget, government is only an extension of "the people", and when government becomes an entity unto itself, with taxation and spending part and parcel to social engineering, there are some serious potholes down the road to negotiate. This is not a racially and ethnically homogenous country like Japan of high speed rail and 25 million souls crammed into Tokyo and its trains, all without complaint.
The most interesting part of a place like Portland, OR, and its light rail radiating outward like a spider web from the central city, is that a working city core has produced an interest in urban living, which has put a ring of gentrification around the central city, and forced ethnic neighborhoods to areas further from the city core. In turn, the criminal element of the poor has turned light rail into a mobile crime vehicle, which is easily and cheaply available to access from the inner city to the 'burbs. Subsidized ridership at that. I am sure, in my own mind, that ridership is constrained by a common disinterest in getting mugged, stabbed, what have you, during your commute or while waiting for the next train. Just the implied threat of violence makes driving and parking costs bearable. I am sure that Americans are well aware that mass transit is a terror target, and use of it is a risk that you might opt out of. London, Madrid, Moscow, as proof of that targeting. Add the real risk of local criminality, and I would believe light rail is undersubscribed in its potential to move people in a clean, efficient manner. After all, using "clean" electricity produced by burning coal is a much better EPA transportation solution than driving an auto with a fossil fuel engine burning imported oil.
Social engineering is what our large central government is now all about. The whole of government spending is addressed to subverting free will. Tax "bad stuff,", and tax breaks for the "good things." Confiscation of wealth as an agent of social change. And spending that wealth on programs and constructs that are "good" for us. And light rail would be a "good" solution IF it paid its way.
Let's see; ABQDave says the Rail Runner project was built "cheaper and faster than similar... systems." He points out that it "was about 1/3 the cost and built in less than half the time than... Utah's Front Runner" and "construction was (mostly) paid for by New Mexico, not from the federal government." He points out that "New Mexico voters in the LOCAL four counties approved two gross receipt taxes" (and those are local taxes, Barebutt) and that those LOCAL taxes voted on by local residents combined "with ticket revenues pay for most of the operating costs, with the rest funded by state transportation dollars." It seems like the residents of those four LOCAL counties are a bit more enlightened than you, which might be because those four counties, which voted for public transportation, have one of the highest proportions of residents with advanced science and engineering degrees in the country. But (no pun intended), with all this local voting support, it doesn't sound like ABQDave is describing what you asserted was (and wanted other readers to believe was) a "social engineering" effort forced on people by a "large central government" bent on "subverting free will." It actually sounds like the only thing "bent" here is you.
ABQDave goes on to point out that when "funding public transportation has been placed on the ballot, New Mexicans have voted yes." He says that, in addition to the two Rail Runner taxes, "ABQ residents recently voted to extend their transportation gross receipt tax another 10 years, and voted to increase the portion devoted to (the local bus system) from 20% to 36%."
Barebutt, did you bother to read or consider any of what ABQDave offered or are you, as you and Dave Skinner always seem to be, so "bent" (gosh, ain't that the truth) on your own johnny-one-note dogma that nothing penetrates it?
Please define "paying its own way" as applied to transportation. And while you're at it, tell us if you think the automotive, bus transit and air modes "pay their own way" and how.
Our highways and airports, along with all the signals, personnel and maintenance that go with them, are publicly funded ("subsidized") and go pretty much every place; yet neither applies to our rails.
If our rail network were publicly funded (and actually went everyplace) like our road and air networks, we could all compare, rant, whine and finger-point in a more apples-to-apples than apples-to-oranges context.
Furthermore, the local tax, I think, is for operating costs, not construction. Construction was federal money.
As for subsidies, the crux is whether the subsidy is for something the payee uses. I use roads. I use airports. I don't use railroads. Even in the Runner universe, darn few people are actually using Runner.
It's probably certainly nice -- I loved using SP on the Peninsula, love New York subways, and enjoy the PDX trolley a lot.
But I was, and am, fully aware of the free ride I got, and won't ask others to give me one.
-- Busses last for maybe 12 years; trains for 30-50.
-- Similar ratio for roads vs. tracks.
-- Similar fuel economy ratio for busses vs. rail transit vehicles.
-- Rail moves many more people over the same amount of right of way.
-- Trains don't get stuck in traffic; at least hardly ever.
-- Trains ride quieter and smoother.
-- People like trains, dammit. What's wrong with that?
We need busses (lots of little ones in all our neighborhoods), but we need trains too, and most places outside New Mexico have known this for 10-20 years.
Adrian: So a little less than $10 million is chicken feed? And the issue is that the Federal subsidy does RUN OUT. And when it does will the fares pay the bills?? Is there a tax on pedestrians, like a shoes, socks, shoestrings, and shoe shine tax to pay the difference between actual cost and fare rates?? A user tax, as it were.
JW: we NEEDED trains when nobody had yet to invent the automobile (emphasis on "auto" and "mobile"), and laying tracks was cheap and the gummint would condemn land for and pay the rail road builder in government land on either side of the railroad. We have cars, trucks, and motor bikes today, and highways. We don't NEED rail as a people hauler because our population densities are not there to make that type of transportation equitable and efficient. You might WANT RailRunner, but you don't NEED it. And that is the whole of the problem in the US today. We cannot seem to limit ourselves to what we NEED, and we go without at times to pay for stuff we WANTED. I have a house full of it. And so does our government. Go to a surplus auction of government "stuff" someday. And you know they ain't selling but a teeny little part of all they have in storage. It costs them to sell the stuff, and it costs them to store it. A rock and a hard place. Ever see the pictures of the airplanes in storage in Arizona the Feds are warehousing?? And the WWII era freight and transport ships "mothballed", and now so rusted and fragile nobody will buy them to scrap due to environmental concerns with the asbestos, and ships have the curly fiber bad nasty kind around steam pipes and other very hot applications. That, and the solidified bunker fuels, and other PCB kind of lubricants. Nobody will "buy" the trouble, and you can be sure the Obama EPA would be right there to "save" the environment at the ship breaker's cost. So seaworthy ships are driven or towed to India and other third world countries and broken up on the beach, piece by piece. EPA be damned. Scrapping a ship in Asia is the same as selling China coal. The Earth's environment will get polluted, and some of it will make it to American shores and airsheds.
Our Nation needs to clean house, scrap a lot of stuff, and turn the guns to plow shares, and we no longer need to fertilize with bomb making materials, and should not, as the phosphorus gets into water and causes algae to bloom and use up the gases in sea water. And sell property. A 100,000 surplus structures I heard recently. Unused. Standing empty. Spend the money to take some in for the Treasury, and get rid of the warehousing costs. And, over time, insider theft will empty the warehouses anyway. The crooked supply sergeant is still employed with the military. And that, it appears, goes clear to at least light colonel in our past forces in Iraq. We neither want the stuff, nor do we need it. Just like light rail in places without population density to fully support that mode of transportation. Make a clear and concise determination of what you would like, and what you need to survive as a State, a people, and a country. The Entitlement Game has run its course. Now is the time to pay up or shut up, and goes for those who would like to ride light rail to their jobs or homes.