OK, so 88% is probably for the funded projects. I suppose to get to 95% they still need the second platform at Centralia, etc.
The "etc." is a pretty big thing. There's been rough estimates of more than another Billion needed to cut more time out of the Seattle-Portland route. I'm hoping that there's some poor soul in the back room at the WSDOT who's steadily working on details of the next set of projects, so they'll be closer to "shovel-ready" if or when funding arrives.
That could be when another Stimulus falls from the sky. Or if even $3 or 4 Billion a year for rail, like fiscal 2010, could get thru Congress. Maybe two of the maximum $25 million TIGER grants every year, one for Washington and another for Oregon, with matching funds from Washington and Oregon, could move things along over a span of years.
Sounder could help a bit. Canada could help at the Vancouver end. Oregon keeps working toward serious south-of-Portland upgrades; a draft EIS or something is promised by year end (yeah, right).
I badly mis-over-estimated how close to positive returns the corridor is and will be after the upgrades kick in. My bad.
But let's look again:
Cascades frequencies will increase by two trains, from 5 to 7, (counting the
Coast Starlight), for a 40% capacity gain. On Time Performance improves from 73% to 88%. New-n-better signaling for safety n speed. Two shiny-n-new trains and the others repolished; 8 new-n-improved locomotives. Restored to glory King Street Station in Seattle, with track improvements. New stations coming for Tacoma and Tukwila. Run time 10+ minutes faster due to new by-passes at Point Defiance and Vancouver, WA, and five new sidings. Trip time reduced by an hour or so when measured by the "I just missed the train, when's the next one?" gap between departures.
Looking at a WSDOT report using 1991-2011 data, over the 17-year period ridership on the corridor increased an average of 9.5% a year. (Here WSDOT explains that it includes the
Starlight in these calculations. So now I'm saying "a 40% increase in capacity" when before I'd said 50%.)
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/C3FC25A6-7CC6-4BA2-B6CB-B36792B55382/0/amtrakcascadesoverview.pdf
By 2010 and 2011, ridership was totaling about 850,000 altogether. Recently Amtrak's Monthly Reports credit the
Cascades with 780,000. So it looks like Amtrak also includes the
Cascades stretch of the
Coast Starlight.
(Hey, isn't
the Starlight getting robbed by this reporting, which removes the lucrative 300-mile Portland-Seattle segment from its results? Does the Sacramento-San Jose get credit to the Capital Corridor? The San Luis Obispo segment to the
Surfliner? With this bookkeeping, no wonder the Western trains are shown to lose so much money. LOL.)
As I was saying. The
Cascades Corridor is down 70,000 from its peak years, due to construction delays or Bolt Bus or what. When the new-n-improved kicks in, will the
Cascades bounce back with immediate growth to the 850,000 they got 5 or 6 years back? Then resume the 9.5% growth trend? Or grow 9.5% from the depressed 780,000 it got in 2014, or worse, the 690,000 it looks to get FY 2015?
A quick bounce back to the peak 850,000 would mean about 150,000 pax added right there.
Then moving from a restored base of 850,000 at the historical 9.5% increase, gets 80,000 more riders, then another 80,000 puts us over 1,000,000 riders.
Operating 40% more trains will add something to the costs, but not 40%. Then the bounce-back revenue increase starts to cover that extra cost.
Added revenue will soon start to eat away the subsidy on this corridor. Not to mention help from another $1 million off a modest $1 per ticket price rise.
Most of the added riders and revenue will come from the Seattle-Portland stem, of course, helping Wash State. In that 2011 report, the Washington segment got 590,000 pax while Oregon and B.C. got another 260,000 (more than I'd have guessed, actually).
But the two added trains should allow another frequency or two south to Salem and Eugene, with that added revenue helping Oregon. Riders going capital-capital Salem-Olympia, or Eugene-Vancouver or Eugene-Seattle, will greatly benefit from the improved on time reliability, the new-n-shiny, and the added frequencies on the stem also.
Back in the day, farebox recovery on the Washington segments climbed from 54% in 2009, to 64% in 2010, to 66% in 2011. Get a 10-point jump on the farebox share and 2 points each year thereafter? Why wouldn't legislators be willing to invest in more of the same? (Crazy is why.)
Now I'm predicting ridership to grow at least 75,000 a year for the first four years or so. The subsidy will subside every year. Then I expect that WSDOT and ODOT and, most of all, the state officials, will be pressured to invest in next steps.
So I'm still very optimistic about this corridor after summer of 2017.
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