Rethinking Commuter Rail in a post Covid economy

[NorthShore]

This article (except below) has me thinking on necessity being the mother of invention, and steps being taken (perhaps some of which are long overdue) towards evolving commuter systems away from just rush service as its primary use. How must transit systems reinvent themselves to stay afloat, and be useful or relevant moving forward?

The agency’s goal? Thirty-five million rides in 2023.

Passengers took 74 million rides in 2019, but annual ridership fell 75% in 2020 and has yet to climb back above 25 million.

The growth that has occurred, though, caused Metra to draw $94 million less federal COVID relief funding than expected this year, said chief financial officer John Morris.

To gain back more revenue, upcoming Metra marketing campaigns could focus on wooing high school and college students, non-office workers and reluctant drivers, Metra board members said Wednesday.


“Our mission now — the shift — is to remind people we’re there, actively and specifically reminding everyone in the region that we’re there,” marketing executive Stanton Lewin said at Wednesday’s meeting of the Metra board of directors. “Then we can play all those roles that we need to play in their lives.”

On average, a weekday Metra train now serves 43% of pre-pandemic ridership.

To test new scheduling priorities, Metra retooled the train service on four lines — BNSF, Metra Electric, Rock Island and Union Pacific North — to include midday trains. Ridership on these lines in the middle of the day came closer to pre-pandemic numbers than any other line during the same time of day in December, Lewin said.

Keeping Metra trains accessible to college commuter students could also pull in high school students and their families, who also travel from the suburbs and might otherwise drive, said Romayne Brown, chair of the Metra board of directors.

Full article:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/1/18/23561316/metra-trains-new-rider-markets-youth-commuters-2023

 

[Willbridge]

This article (except below) has me thinking on necessity being the mother of invention, and steps being taken (perhaps some of which are long overdue) towards evolving commuter systems away from just rush service as its primary use. How must transit systems reinvent themselves to stay afloat, and be useful or relevant moving forward?



Full article:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/1/18/23561316/metra-trains-new-rider-markets-youth-commuters-2023

This is a subject that service/operations planners love to kick around. It depends on who, what, where the potential market is. In the case of commuter rail, it also depends on agreements for access if the line is shared with freight service. In the case of commuter buses, it also depends on access to bus only or HOV lanes that may be set up for traditional peak direction services only.

Another obstacle may be the internal accounting system. Ever since horse car days there has been a tendency to estimate costs in simple terms that are easily understood and provide false results. A lot of times that is a minor problem, because changes are minor. When a big service change comes, or a series of minor changes come quickly, the faults in simple calculations show up. I learned a lot about this during the energy boom/bust in Edmonton and Denver, where changes good or bad happened rapidly.

Providing a consistent headway for most of the day, with some less frequent early morning and late-night service as a back-up is attractive to transit dependent customers and can influence customers to become transit dependent (and spend their saved money on other useful things). On the other hand, if a route mainly serves high income areas with low local employment numbers, all-day service will accomplish little. For them, a back-up trip might be useful for going into town or returning late.

This is where accounting is critical. If the classic simple "cost per hour" is used to determine priorities, the all-day service will be penalized by the costs of split workdays, supervision, facilities and peak equipment expenses that the commuter services generate. That approach also makes the commuter route back-up trip a target for budget cutters, regardless of whether it is run economically with staff and equipment making an additional trip.

I didn't mention one other issue: elected officials and people who want to get elected!

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

I can't imagine the high school market being substantial enough to enhance ridership (as in suburban kids going to the few private schools in the City accessible by Metra).

If they want to increase ridership, more evening trains would be even more useful (at least on MED) than mid-day which is reasonably well served now. I.e. every 1/2 hour or 20 minutes through Kensington/South Shore.

 

[NorthShore]

I can't imagine the high school market being substantial enough to enhance ridership (as in suburban kids going to the few private schools in the City accessible by Metra).

It is interesting that ME still maintains a stop near Mt. Carmel high school with three trains daily to serve the school.

I suppose there might be a hope of attracting kids from suburban public schools to get around to jobs or visit friends after classes via trains which are poised as reliable transit (just as city kids commonly learn to do with buses and the L), if such is more practical than the traditional hourly headways geared at getting to/from downtown. Such couples nicely with the revised fare structures making shorter trips more cost effective.

 

[NorthShore]

Providing a consistent headway for most of the day, with some less frequent early morning and late-night service as a back-up is attractive to transit dependent customers and can influence customers to become transit dependent (and spend their saved money on other useful things). On the other hand, if a route mainly serves high income areas with low local employment numbers, all-day service will accomplish little. For them, a back-up trip might be useful for going into town or returning late.

This is where accounting is critical. If the classic simple "cost per hour" is used to determine priorities, the all-day service will be penalized by the costs of split workdays, supervision, facilities and peak equipment expenses that the commuter services generate. That approach also makes the commuter route back-up trip a target for budget cutters, regardless of whether it is run economically with staff and equipment making an additional trip.

I didn't mention one other issue: elected officials and people who want to get elected!

Isn't the marginal cost of consistent all day service relatively stable, with the real extra costs sunk on all the peak demand of rush? As such, might tgis sort of retooling, ultimately, result in a certain amount of cost savings, especially should midday service rise?

 

[Willbridge]

Isn't the marginal cost of consistent all day service relatively stable, with the real extra costs sunk on all the peak demand of rush? As such, might tgis sort of retooling, ultimately, result in a certain amount of cost savings, especially should midday service rise?

That's possible, if it's a budget cut. In the Edmonton energy crash the city council intervened by demanding that every route have cuts to be "fair" -- triggering some poor choices for the September day that we laid off 150 operators. Ridership losses were substantial. In Denver, RTD made the same percentage cut (!0%), but over two years, and we had senior leadership willing to switch from using system hourly costs (which hide the peak expenses) to a three-part costing formula: Annual Hourly expenses + Annual Mileage expenses + Annual Overhead expenses (a five-digit dollar figure times the number of peak vehicles) = annual cost of a route. Studies in both Edmonton and Denver showed that the annual cost per peak vehicle for overhead was more accurate than the old way of calculating operating costs and then just adding a percentage for overhead.

In budget-cutting scenarios there's an extra benefit to cutting peak service vehicles -- the equipment section will then gladly sidetrack costly units. In Denver's energy crash, we parked some of the Quebec GMC New Looks with their swamp coolers under a federal program to keep buses ready for a national emergency. Amtrak Unlimited members may have seen them lined up alongside the California Zephyr route.

Since I've only worked in cities that were growing, I've mostly dealt with shifting resources. In most cases (bus, trolley coach, and light rail) savings enough to boost midday service would only work out where three or four peak trippers were only making single AM and single PM trips each, with lots of deadheading. In two cases, Edmonton and Denver, there were less obvious small enhancements that were paid for by discontinuing redundant peak express routes when rail lines opened. These improvements included: earlier morning start times, later evening last trips, and improved Saturday service. Those are all things that make customers more willing to depend on public transportation and like midday service require no additional rolling stock or facilities.

[Note that due to the driver shortage, current schedules for Denver include some arbitrary curtailments that are undoing what we accomplished.]

And speaking of driver shortages, straight runs make the operators' lives far better than peak hour split runs. With the data that is around now, someone should be able to put a price tag on turnover.

 

[Anderson]

On a lot of routes, the answer of all-day "regional rail"-type service (probably hourly in both directions at a minimum, with some additional trains at peak times, and with service going into a respectable evening hour; half-hourly service would be better depending on demand levels, but running a commuter train for a dozen people would sadly be questionable vs a bus) is probably the best shot available on some of these routes.

[Honestly, the pity of light rail/heavy rail in the US is that you can't offer ancillary freight service in the off hours to businesses that might benefit from it given urban congestion issues.]

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

It is interesting that ME still maintains a stop near Mt. Carmel high school with three trains daily to serve the school.

I suppose there might be a hope of attracting kids from suburban public schools to get around to jobs or visit friends after classes via trains which are poised as reliable transit (just as city kids commonly learn to do with buses and the L), if such is more practical than the traditional hourly headways geared at getting to/from downtown. Such couples nicely with the revised fare structures making shorter trips more cost effective.

My guess is most Mt. Carmel pupils are City resident and the station has gotten more service lately with Woodlawn redeveloping (one could argue it also serves HP High too).