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It will take a couple of decades. Portland will probably be the first. After two decades of money growing on trees, 2014 was a budget shortfall year. They have a small surplus in 2015. The 2000+ growth of 14.5% cannot be sustained. Lower income persons are flocking to Portland because of the socialism at work there. In 20 years they will be ripe for failure. The commuter trains are not needed, only cool. There are no real traffic problems to cure like the NYC area. I'd say that they will be the first city to close commuter trains. As for ROI, there is none. Anywhere. Only the fantasy of ROI.
No ROI? That's an insanely untenable and hyperbolic position. Portland's Blue Line has attracted $6.6 billion of development within walking distance of the train stations and it would take a fool to believe that zero of it was a result of some developer thinking it was a good idea to build where people could easily get to their jobs. It's averaging 65,000 riders a day just for that one line alone, and ridership on that system is rapidly increasing. Portland's a very ambitious choice.
Given that the majority of the money supporting TriMet comes from payroll taxes, it would require employers deciding to leave the city in droves, I'm not sure what kind of event would cause that given the opposite seems to be happening right now. Employers there seem to be okay paying it over the last 20 years or so.
Probably SunRail in Central Florida. It's running on tracks that existed prior and largely does not follow the commuter needs of the area, which operates overall without a central jobs core. Operational hours are limited with Monday through Friday service only and trains running every thirty minutes from 5:30-8 and 3:30pm-6pm. Otherwise there are just two trains that run between 8am and 3pm, and the last train of the day is at 8pm. It doesn't service the Disney/resort area and does not service the airport. It cost over a billion dollars to create and is generating a whopping 4000 rides a day (around 2000 most likely if factoring roundtrips).
It will take a couple of decades. Portland will probably be the first. After two decades of money growing on trees, 2014 was a budget shortfall year. They have a small surplus in 2015. The 2000+ growth of 14.5% cannot be sustained. Lower income persons are flocking to Portland because of the socialism at work there. In 20 years they will be ripe for failure. The commuter trains are not needed, only cool. There are no real traffic problems to cure like the NYC area. I'd say that they will be the first city to close commuter trains. As for ROI, there is none. Anywhere. Only the fantasy of ROI.
The idea of commuter trains is also conserve energy. So why would any progressive city shut them down?
The idea of commuter trains is also conserve energy. So why would any progressive city shut them down?
He's stating financial shortfalls. I can see that actually, but not sure Portland would be first. However many lower income people may or may not be flocking to Portland probably won't have any impact on the bottom line of any transit system. In fact, more paying people only HELPS the bottom line, since operating a train is mostly a fixed cost and it'll run whether there's one or two millionaires on it or 300 people on welfare.....AND, the fares are the same for both types of people, so I'm not sure I understand what difference they would possibly have.
Isn't ridership growing quite a bit on most systems? Why would they shut down?
I know Chicago's L trains have gone from a ridershop 135,000,000 back in 1995 to 240,000,000 projected for this year, or a 78% increase in ridership with no expansions or new lines added.
One item in Chicago hitting bus ridership is the new bike sharing system Divvy that opened last year. So far ridership has been growing extremely quickly, with about 4,000,000 trips taken so far and the most recent months coming in at over 400,000 trips per month. Many of those were rides that people would have done on a bus, which is the normal transit here for shorter distances of a few miles or less.
According to national statistics through June, overall heavy rail, light rail and commuter rail was up around 2%-3% year-over-year.
Last edited by Chicago60614; 11-21-2014 at 10:35 AM..
It will take a couple of decades. Portland will probably be the first. After two decades of money growing on trees, 2014 was a budget shortfall year. They have a small surplus in 2015. The 2000+ growth of 14.5% cannot be sustained. Lower income persons are flocking to Portland because of the socialism at work there. In 20 years they will be ripe for failure. The commuter trains are not needed, only cool. There are no real traffic problems to cure like the NYC area. I'd say that they will be the first city to close commuter trains. As for ROI, there is none. Anywhere. Only the fantasy of ROI.
In regards to median household income growth for metropolitan areas during 2013, Portland was second. Don't let ideology get in the way of facts.
As far as ROI goes, there's a major building boom going on in the Lloyd District, where three different MAX lines roll through.
Last edited by SyraBrian; 11-21-2014 at 01:07 PM..
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