Light Rail Schizophrenia

[birdy]

Why is something so popular in deployment so villified in the planning stage?

Today's paper had a news article that the mayor of Albuquerque is being targeted with robocalls because of his support for a light rail system.

Light rail is a huge hit in Dallas and Phoenix, neither of which is very "green"

I figure the professional politicians know what they are doing when it comes to campaigning, at least. Obviously this is a big negative, yet there is no reason to think that a system would be any less popular in Duke City than elsewhere.

How could something so popular be so unpopular? Usually people either want a project, or they don't.

 

[AlanB]

Some people just don't understand and object.

Some just see a dollar sign and object, even though they don't realize just how big the dollar signs are on other things, like the highways.

Some just don't like change.

And there are probably a few other reasons that I'm not thinking about right now.

 

[JayPea]

I don't know the logic behind it, but there are some folks who claim light rail systems lead to more development along the routes, leading to more congestion, especially in suburban areas; at the same time leading to the further decay of the downtown core.

As for me, I live in a town with a population of 2900 and the nearest city fighting a light rail controversy is 60 miles away. So for me, it's not exactly high on my list of things to worry about. :lol: And if I did live in that nearest city (Spokane), I'd be all for it. Spokane isn't nearly as congested as big sister Seattle but it's getting a whole lot worse than it was.

 

[MattW]

Yep, just go ajc.com search "rail" and you'll get the whole ball of wax of mayor franklin and the nimbys vs. the DOT, Amtrak, NS, and the "people."

Short story, there's a 4.3 stretch of right of way called "The Beltline" that branches from north of the Atlanta Amtrak Station and ends up near the CSX Hulsey Intermodal yard (this is the continuance of the WYE tail 19/20 use when terminating in ATL). Amtrak, DOT, State etc. want to acquire the right of way as part of SEHSR to run trains directly into downtown instead of skipping off the north side. The nimbys and Atlanta's mayor shirley franklin want to block this instead turning it into a park and "transit corridor" with light rail! Explain the difference between 2 (4) HSR trains per day making some racket once, and a rail system operating continuously creating a little racket all the time! Hopefully the state will win especially since Perdue has recently signaled his support for High Speed Rail. I'm taking a vaction soon and I plan to use some of that time to write letters to Perdue, my GA legislators, the General Assembly at large, mine and Atlanta's representatives, and GA's two senators voicing my support for more rail options. Sorry I've kind of derailed this topic, but I get fired up when I see what kind of rail Georgia "could" have.

 

[George Harris]

Why is something so popular in deployment so villified in the planning stage?.
How could something so popular be so unpopular? Usually people either want a project, or they don't.

Real simple: There are some people and agencies out there who make it their life's work to oppose any passenger rail of any kind any where. I will avoid going into the conspiricy theories of who funds these people, but you can draw your own conclusions. For one of the more virulent and well funded anti-rail activists, google Wendell Cox and see what he spews out. These people appear to have developed a mastery of the skewed and selectively plucked statistics. He has been one of the primary authors of a 300 plus page slick paper opposing the California High Speed Rail. One of his statements is that the projected run time San Francisco to Los Angeles of 2 hours 42 minutes cannot be met and the actual time will be more like 3 hours 40 minutes. There are some basic math errors in his analysis, but if you don't check, you don't catch it.

 

[birdy]

Well, the organized opposition of Libertariansm "Small-footprint" type enviros and the usual collection of NIMBYs I understand. At least they have a point of view. The fact that this is a robocall campaign suggests to me that there is considerable hostility from the general public. Yet, all indications are that the general public would ride the train a lot. The system in Phoenix carries a million passengers a month. The Goldwater Institute is apoplectic.

Matt: I hope you get your system. Atlanta to Charlotte (via Spartanburg S.C. ) on a "true" HSR seems like a no-brainer if there ever was one. It passes through some ultra-conservative anti-government political districts, but as an outsider, I kind of like the idea of putting a system in those areas. Besides, the politicans change and the area needs the rail anyway.

Atlanta is infamous for its transportation issues. I would think that the success of MARTA would give some credibility to rail initiatives.

 

[Spokker]

Charlotte's LYNX is a good example of a light rail success story. Vilified from the start and after a few shaky first weeks detractors were trashing the line relentlessly. Once gas prices went up people sure were glad it was there. It hit its 2025 or 2030 targets way ahead of schedule.

In the midst of a recession light rail ridership is holding steady, despite the fact that people are losing jobs. It's too bad great systems like this can't be bailed out. It's clear they are a true public good.

 

[AlanB]

And despite that success, trust me it still has plenty of detractors who not only oppose any further expansions, but want the existing ripped out and shut down.

 

[birdy]

Gross Receipts Tax (Sales Tax) in Santa Fe is holding steady since they installed Railrunner, easily the most marginal system in America. They do everything they can to discourage use by tourists, since they don't operate the train on Sundays.

Hearing that people want to actually get rid of a successfully deployed system is really shocking to me. I would think that people would conveniently forget their opposition.

 

[George Harris]

Hearing that people want to actually get rid of a successfully deployed system is really shocking to me. I would think that people would conveniently forget their opposition.

Birdy,

Read what I wrote above. The funded opposition is not philosophical, and not general public. In fact, "robocalls" proves the opposite of general public opposition. The funded opposition is primarily from those that have pocketbook issues. The usual suspects, oil companies and automobile manufacturers and associated businesses, of course, buy some of it can be from surprising sources. San Francisco Int'l Airport objected strenuously to the BART extension to the airport, and as operated even now it is less convenient if you are coming in from the south than the previous bus from Caltrain setup. Why? Revenue from parking lots and garages is a big part of the airport authroity's income. Passengers arriving by ublic transit cut into that. At least you can carry luggage on BART and on Caltrain. The Samtrans bus routes that serve the airport prohibit you carrying luggage beyond the basic backpack plus laptop onto the bus.

 

[birdy]

Hearing that people want to actually get rid of a successfully deployed system is really shocking to me. I would think that people would conveniently forget their opposition.

Birdy,

Read what I wrote above. The funded opposition is not philosophical, and not general public. In fact, "robocalls" proves the opposite of general public opposition. The funded opposition is primarily from those that have pocketbook issues. The usual suspects, oil companies and automobile manufacturers and associated businesses, of course, buy some of it can be from surprising sources. San Francisco Int'l Airport objected strenuously to the BART extension to the airport, and as operated even now it is less convenient if you are coming in from the south than the previous bus from Caltrain setup. Why? Revenue from parking lots and garages is a big part of the airport authroity's income. Passengers arriving by ublic transit cut into that. At least you can carry luggage on BART and on Caltrain. The Samtrans bus routes that serve the airport prohibit you carrying luggage beyond the basic backpack plus laptop onto the bus.

Well, now you are getting into conspiracy theories. Fine, but where is your evidence? Anyway, even if the robocalling were the work of devious oil companies, the fact that it works (I suppose) suggests that there are plenty of average Joes who don't pay attention to this much, would ride if there were a system, yet who get riled up on receiving a robocall, as if it were some kind of divisive social issue. That's the part that makes no sense to me.

 

[George Harris]

Hearing that people want to actually get rid of a successfully deployed system is really shocking to me. I would think that people would conveniently forget their opposition.

Birdy,

Read what I wrote above. The funded opposition is not philosophical, and not general public. In fact, "robocalls" proves the opposite of general public opposition. The funded opposition is primarily from those that have pocketbook issues. The usual suspects, oil companies and automobile manufacturers and associated businesses, of course, but some of it can be from surprising sources. San Francisco Int'l Airport objected strenuously to the BART extension to the airport, and as operated even now it is less convenient if you are coming in from the south than the previous bus from Caltrain setup. Why? Revenue from parking lots and garages is a big part of the airport authroity's income. Passengers arriving by ublic transit cut into that. At least you can carry luggage on BART and on Caltrain. The Samtrans bus routes that serve the airport prohibit you carrying luggage beyond the basic backpack plus laptop onto the bus.

Well, now you are getting into conspiracy theories. Fine, but where is your evidence? Anyway, even if the robocalling were the work of devious oil companies, the fact that it works (I suppose) suggests that there are plenty of average Joes who don't pay attention to this much, would ride if there were a system, yet who get riled up on receiving a robocall, as if it were some kind of divisive social issue. That's the part that makes no sense to me.

Birdy: No conspiricy theories. The two items I mentioned are or should be public knowledge, the SFO position on the BART extension in particular was well publicised. As to the other: There was an article in one of the rail transit related publications a few years ago titled "Who funds Wendell Cox" that listed, from public record. several oil and automobile related businesses.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

And don't even start on National City Lines. Yech.

 

[jis]

San Francisco Int'l Airport objected strenuously to the BART extension to the airport, and as operated even now it is less convenient if you are coming in from the south than the previous bus from Caltrain setup. Why? Revenue from parking lots and garages is a big part of the airport authroity's income. Passengers arriving by ublic transit cut into that. At least you can carry luggage on BART and on Caltrain. The Samtrans bus routes that serve the airport prohibit you carrying luggage beyond the basic backpack plus laptop onto the bus.

This is the thing I don;t quite understand. It seems to me that airports have a tendency to over-stress the possibility of losing parking revenues. For example, the quite convenient connection to Newark International Airport via NJT or Amtrak has not had any significant effect on parking revenues and has indeed added to the income of the PANYNJ through the AirTrain access charge from EWR station to the airport. And to boot that had to reintrodice bus service from NWK to the airport because of additional demand. So it is not like anyone lost out anything.

 

[AlanB]

San Francisco Int'l Airport objected strenuously to the BART extension to the airport, and as operated even now it is less convenient if you are coming in from the south than the previous bus from Caltrain setup. Why? Revenue from parking lots and garages is a big part of the airport authroity's income. Passengers arriving by ublic transit cut into that. At least you can carry luggage on BART and on Caltrain. The Samtrans bus routes that serve the airport prohibit you carrying luggage beyond the basic backpack plus laptop onto the bus.

This is the thing I don;t quite understand. It seems to me that airports have a tendency to over-stress the possibility of losing parking revenues. For example, the quite convenient connection to Newark International Airport via NJT or Amtrak has not had any significant effect on parking revenues and has indeed added to the income of the PANYNJ through the AirTrain access charge from EWR station to the airport. And to boot that had to reintrodice bus service from NWK to the airport because of additional demand. So it is not like anyone lost out anything.

Yes, but one has to wonder what would happen if they stopped charging the $5.50 that they do charge to ride the monorail. A charge that they were never supposed to have in the first place when the got permission to build it.

And even with a $5.50 charge, I have to wonder how many people take the train rather than pay the long term parking fees of $16.00 per day.

 

[George Harris]

It seems to me that airports have a tendency to over-stress the possibility of losing parking revenues. For example, the quite convenient connection to Newark International Airport via NJT or Amtrak has not had any significant effect on parking revenues and has indeed added to the income of the PANYNJ through the AirTrain access charge from EWR station to the airport. And to boot that had to reintrodice bus service from NWK to the airport because of additional demand. So it is not like anyone lost out anything.

Yes, but one has to wonder what would happen if they stopped charging the $5.50 that they do charge to ride the monorail. A charge that they were never supposed to have in the first place when the got permission to build it.

And even with a $5.50 charge, I have to wonder how many people take the train rather than pay the long term parking fees of $16.00 per day.

Having been through there exactly once out and once back, The Newark monorail looks and acts like it was designed by somebody that had never done that sort of thing before. It could have been much better done for little or no additional cost. I ahrdly know where to begin on the list. Most amusement park rides are done better.

 

[jis]

Having been through there exactly once out and once back, The Newark monorail looks and acts like it was designed by somebody that had never done that sort of thing before. It could have been much better done for little or no additional cost. I hardly know where to begin on the list. Most amusement park rides are done better.

You could start with the lack of reliability, but I digress....

It was a typical PANYNJ goofball waste of money just because they had scads of it from ticket tax. Eventually they will get around to extending PATH to EWR (the airport), which is what they should have done in the first place. They still talk about extending it only to the EWR train station, but they are nuts if they thing that the dinky monorail will be able to realistically carry the offered traffic.

I have been given to understand by people who were involved back then that back when the terminals (A, B and C) were built the wisdom of the day was the airports do not need heavy rail, so they made sure that was cast in concrete by not leaving enough clearance to build anything but this dinky toy. Of course casting idiotic ideas in concrete eventually leads to additional cost when the idiotic idea falls way short of real requirements. We are slowly but surely approaching that turning point at EWR.

As for the $5.50 charge, I have not been able to find any documentation that suggests that at any point they were not planning to charge it. However, I would be happy to be disabused of that impression. I believe they were all along planning to charge something to offset the perceived loss of income from parking.

 

[PRR 60]

As for SFO and BART, the airport was sufficiently enamoured by BART's plans to contribute $200 million of airport funds to the project. The frequency and destinations served to and from SFO by BART, including the decision to drop direct service to and from Millbrae, is controlled by BART, not the airport.

Perhaps taking notice of NJT, BART is now planning to bump the present $1.50 surcharge for fares to or from SFO to $4 on July 1. Not only will this soak airline passengers using BART (typical - let's rip off people who have no vote in the area), but it is also going to hit the roughly 1000 airport workers who commute to work using BART every day. SFO has responded by threatening to run free shuttle buses from CalTrain / BART at Millbrae to the airport. It would save each worker $4 a day. The ride is about 2 miles, at most.

I love a good inter-agency tussle. Stay tuned.

 

[George Harris]

I have been given to understand by people who were involved back then that back when the terminals (A, B and C) were built the wisdom of the day was the airports do not need heavy rail, so they made sure that was cast in concrete by not leaving enough clearance to build anything but this dinky toy. Of course casting idiotic ideas in concrete eventually leads to additional cost when the idiotic idea falls way short of real requirements. We are slowly but surely approaching that turning point at EWR.

While talking about airport access: when you look at how far the trains are from the terminal at JFK: That was the decision of the airport authority, not the rail system designers. They were concerned about how detrimental to the appearance of the terminal buildings the rail line would be. Go figure. From my couple of visits there, I feel like JFK defines ugly in an airport.

 

[Bob Dylan]

:lol:

I have been given to understand by people who were involved back then that back when the terminals (A, B and C) were built the wisdom of the day was the airports do not need heavy rail, so they made sure that was cast in concrete by not leaving enough clearance to build anything but this dinky toy. Of course casting idiotic ideas in concrete eventually leads to additional cost when the idiotic idea falls way short of real requirements. We are slowly but surely approaching that turning point at EWR.

While talking about airport access: when you look at how far the trains are from the terminal at JFK: That was the decision of the airport authority, not the rail system designers. They were concerned about how detrimental to the appearance of the terminal buildings the rail line would be. Go figure. From my couple of visits there, I feel like JFK defines ugly in an airport.

For sure JFK has to be one of the ugliest! :angry: Welcome to America eh?

 

[jis]

While talking about airport access: when you look at how far the trains are from the terminal at JFK: That was the decision of the airport authority, not the rail system designers. They were concerned about how detrimental to the appearance of the terminal buildings the rail line would be. Go figure. From my couple of visits there, I feel like JFK defines ugly in an airport.

I agree that unlike Newark, JFK looks like a weed that has grown organically rather than an airport that was planned or designed by anyone. Though on the matter of AirTrain integration with terminal buildings, one must say in the defense of PANYNJ that they have got that right in the only terminal that they wholly own, that being terminal 4, where the AirTrain station is right inside the terminal building and nicely integrated with both arrival and departure levels.

[QUOTE='PRR60]Perhaps taking notice of NJT, BART is now planning to bump the present $1.50 surcharge for fares to or from SFO to $4 on July 1. Not only will this soak airline passengers using BART (typical - let's rip off people who have no vote in the area), but it is also going to hit the roughly 1000 airport workers who commute to work using BART every day. SFO has responded by threatening to run free shuttle buses from CalTrain / BART at Millbrae to the airport. It would save each worker $4 a day. The ride is about 2 miles, at most.
[/QUOTE]I believe NJT does sell discounted monthly tickets for EWR for folks that work at the airport. NJT mostly acts as the bagman for PANYNJ in collecting the surcharge, and while at it they overcollect a bit and pocket the difference too. Best to buy a ticket to North Elizabeth or Newark depending on the direction you are coming from, hop off at EWR and buy the $5.50 ticket for the AirTrain at EWR to pass through the AirTrain turnstile. That way you can even make use of ORT tickets, of which there is none for tickets to/from EWR.

 

[DET63]

One of the "alternatives" to light-rail (or any other kind of rail) transportation is "Bus Rapid Transit." BRT is being promoted in Oakland as a much less expensive alternative to the BART-Oakland Airport people-mover.

 

[p&sr]

One of the "alternatives" to light-rail (or any other kind of rail) transportation is "Bus Rapid Transit."A much less expensive alternative...

A BUS by any other name is still and always a BUS.No fun at all.

Why not just have people WALK from BART to the Airport? That would be much less expensive still. Just extend the existing elevated walkway from the Coliseum, to go a little bit farther west...

Or they could provide bicycles (with little trailers for luggage), free to use on the Walkway and locked in there so they cannot be removed. Still a LOT less expensive than some stinking BUS system!

 

[George Harris]

One of the "alternatives" to light-rail (or any other kind of rail) transportation is "Bus Rapid Transit." BRT is being promoted in Oakland as a much less expensive alternative to the BART-Oakland Airport people-mover.

And you will find these are generally promoted by the gang of "usual suspects" that are against any rail system anywhere of any kind. Look at the various anti-rail report authors and the names of the "foundations" they are attached to, and then check on proposed rail projects in any other US city and you will see the same names and foundations writing the anti-rail documents. "bus Rapid Transit" is one of their favorite ploys.

 

[DET63]

Bus rapid transit at Wikipedia:

Bus rapid transit (BRT) is a term applied to a variety of public transportation systems that use buses to provide a service that is of a higher speed than an ordinary bus line. Often this is achieved by making improvements to existing infrastructure, vehicles and scheduling. The goal of these systems is to approach the service quality of rail transit while still enjoying the cost savings of bus transit. The expression BRT is mainly used in North America; in Europe and Australia, it is often called a busway, while elsewhere, it may be called a quality bus. 

[Emphasis original.]

See also Comparison with light rail