BIKE: Commuter Rail (was The Most Heinous Menace...)

[Mike Dahmus]

Well, I think this uses up my 2 posts for the day. So if anybody else 
wants to hear from me, they get to wait until tomorrow morning. Yay.

Phil Hallmark wrote:

>
> Mike,
>
> I see your point about how maddening it is that the commuter-rail 
> proposal serves the far-out 'burbs that do not financially support Cap 
> Metro. I also agree that limited run-frequency out to the 'burbs will 
> not be a great catalyst for Transit-Oriented Development. However, I 
> want to make a couple of points on this topic:
>
> Even if every single rider on the commuter train is from a 
> non-Cap-Metro service area, it actually DOES serve and benefit the 
> entire region in terms of less congestion and pollution.

Agreed, unless most of these train riders are already taking the 
183-corridor express buses. The differentiator will be: is this commuter 
rail better enough to pull away people who currently drive? I'll explain 
why not in detail over my lunch hour today on the commuter rail fact 
sheet (will be linked from this page: 
http://www.io.com/~mdahmus/trans/cm/) but in short: the problem is that 
the commuter rail line will be dropping off east of the convention 
center in a part of downtown where nobody works.

This necessitates shuttle buses to bring people even to 6th & Congress, 
much less to the capitol, UT, and medical complexes.

Experience elsewhere (South Florida being the worst recent example) 
shows that as soon as you require a mode transfer at the destination 
end, you lose nearly 100% of your choice commuters. IE: the car driver 
is going to decide it's not worth the trouble, since the 10 minutes they 
saved by riding the rail got eaten up by a 20-minute uncomfortable jerky 
bus trip.

>
> I think this is an opportunity for us to be magnanimous in the face of 
> suburban meanness/stinginess on the Cap Metro issue. I think once the 
> folks living way out there get a taste of express train service, they 
> might be willing to support Cap Metro in the future.
>
> A limited-stop commuter rail solution may not be the most-preferred 
> way to start, but I would wager (even in the face of your noted 
> perfect prediction record!) that once rail is introduced to the 
> region, it will crystallize broad-based support for more.

If the commuter rail dropped off at 6th & Congress, or near UT, or near 
the Capitol, I would agree with you, because that service would have a 
good chance of attracting a significant number of new transit customers 
instead of just pulling people off existing buses.

>
> This seems to me to be a fairly quick, cheap way to introduce rail to 
> the region. Not perfect, but perhaps quite sellable in November.

This plan is cheap in capital costs. It will kill us in operating costs 
(because it will fail to attract significant ridership away from the 
automobile), and will then require that a tax increase be passed for 
further transit investment, since it will eat up Cap Metro's current 
bankroll.

- MD