BIG NEWS! Construction of Utah's FrontRunner commuter rail expansion is complete. The tracks now run from Provo (45 miles south of Salt Lake) to just past Ogden (45 miles north of Salt Lake), for a total of--you guessed it--90 miles! The southern segment took about four years to build and cost $890 million, including new vehicles purchased. But hey, it takes large investments like this if you want high-class public transportation systems, especially when projections say that by 2015 a total of...8,000 PASSENGERS PER DAY will ride FrontRunner South (according to this Salt Lake Tribune article).
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| Map of the FrontRunner South route |
No, I must have misread that. Surely I missed a zero in there somewhere. Or perhaps the 8,000 is per hour of operation?
Unfortunately, that's the figure. Along the entire 90-mile route, they expect a total of 14,000 passengers per day in 2015. So before we even start talking about operating costs, this thing has a ridiculously long way to go before it pays off. I mean, 8,000 riders per day would mean a cost of $4,450 per rider per year for 25 years just to cover expenses to this point. Add in those operating costs (labor, maintenance, diesel fuel, etc etc) and it's pretty clear that FrontRunner South is an economist's nightmare.
The question, then, is how in the hell was this thing approved? Making things even crazier is the fact that Utah County residents (who are more likely to burn an Obama effigy than recycle) voted to increase their sales tax to fund this as well as some LRT projects that are completely within Salt Lake County. So on the plus side, this means that capital costs were financed by 80% local money and only 20% federal. At least they're wasting primarily their own money.
More than anything else, I think this stands as a perfect example of just how much of a "bright and shiny object" rail projects are in the U.S. (Europe isn't completely immune, case in point: Edinburgh). We're seeing it with expensive streetcar lines (Washington DC, Portland, Charlotte) and light rail projects (Portland again, Salt Lake again, Seattle) as well. So I don't think the voters in Utah are particularly stupid; in fact, I was one of them. But the appeal of sexy projects like FrontRunner often outweigh their practicality by far. I'm definitely not the first person to state this (read Jarrett Walker's blog and book for a much more eloquent and informed analysis of this type of thing), but this has to be a passing phase, right?...Right?
This blog is great, by the way. Would love to guest post about Boston's public transit. The title would be "How the MBTA cut service and increased fares in 2012, 2013, 2014......2020" Is there any system in the US that is sustainable? Boston's system is far from bright or shiny. It's the oldest in the country and has some of the oldest trains and rails still in operation. I just read that 30% of the annual operating expenses here are covered by fares, the rest by the state. So fare hikes are pretty useless and oppressive, right?
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