When is the rail runner going to be open to Santa Fe? (Albuquerque: transporting, neighborhoods)

[joe gagan]

trapped in nm, your points sound EXACLTY like the answer i gave my girlfriend the other day when we were talking about the railrunner. saying it will be good for tourism is like saying televisions will be good for elephants.

funny thing is, some of our household income has already come from this RR project.

[trappedinNM]

Originally Posted by joe gagan

trapped in nm, your points sound EXACLTY like the answer i gave my girlfriend the other day when we were talking about the railrunner. saying it will be good for tourism is like saying televisions will be good for elephants.

funny thing is, some of our household income has already come from this RR project.

funny thing is, some of my household income (taxes) has already gone to this RR project!

[DCTalk]

There will come a time very soon when NM residents in the ABQ-SF corridor will thank their lucky stars their leaders had the foresight to develop the RR. When gasoline climbs above $4/gal., frequent trips up to SF will get too expensive. Ridership will increase on RR, and as it does, the percentage of tax support funding can be reduced. Even if it never goes away, it is a wise expenditure of tax money. Petroleum based fuels will only get more and more expensive. Public transportation will become more of a necessity. It may be a hard adjustment for westerners. Here on the East coast, it's a necessity because of the masses of people and crowded roads and no parking. But excessive fuel costs will drive the move to public transport just as well. Enjoy RR now while it isn't crowded.

[domino]

That's great DCTalk, let's let the residents of ABQ-SF pay for this boondoggle. I would wager if the rest of the state wasn't kicking in, they wouldn't be willing to carry the costs.

[trappedinNM]

Originally Posted by DCTalk

When gasoline climbs above $4/gal., frequent trips up to SF will get too expensive. Ridership will increase on RR, and as it does, the percentage of tax support funding can be reduced. Even if it never goes away, it is a wise expenditure of tax money. Petroleum based fuels will only get more and more expensive. Public transportation will become more of a necessity. It may be a hard adjustment for westerners. Here on the East coast, it's a necessity because of the masses of people and crowded roads and no parking. But excessive fuel costs will drive the move to public transport just as well. Enjoy RR now while it isn't crowded.

I agree with you in one regard: mass transit requires "masses" of people. There simply is not enough population density right now to support the darn thing. The logical choice from a long-term "green" standpoint is to move the state capitol to Albuquerque.

[Zoidberg]

Originally Posted by domino

That's great DCTalk, let's let the residents of ABQ-SF pay for this boondoggle. I would wager if the rest of the state wasn't kicking in, they wouldn't be willing to carry the costs.

Given the counties served (Valencia, Bernalillo, Sandoval & Santa Fe counties) I believe we are not only talking about 842,000 of the state's 1.7 million residents (about half) but also much more than half of the state's tax revenue, and receivers of less than half of the state's overall transportation budget.

In other words, since NM is spread out and we have to build and maintain state roads through nowhere to get somewhere, the benefit is disproportionally borne by those who live in the sticks, and the expense is disproportionally borne by metro area taxpayers. That's ok with me, because maybe someday I'll want my load of oil, peanuts or chiles to use those roads and cost me less.

So, folks in the 575, you may hate the metro areas' uses of state money, but the fact remains that your tax burdens and benefits are better with us than without us.

[mortimer]

DCTalk warns:

> When gasoline climbs above $4/gal., ...

Don't stop there. One day, we will look back at $4/gallon or even $6/gallon as a low price.

> ... frequent trips up to SF will get too expensive.

At which point, people will cut back and *not* make frequent trips to Santa Fe. The assumption that people going to Santa Fe from Albuquerque only go to the square is false.

> ... excessive fuel costs will drive the move to public transport ...

At which point people will start to question why the money is being spent so inefficiently. Currently, public transit is not even on most people's radar so no one pays attention.

[Devin Bent]

Originally Posted by domino

That's great DCTalk, let's let the residents of ABQ-SF pay for this boondoggle. I would wager if the rest of the state wasn't kicking in, they wouldn't be willing to carry the costs.

Actually, that will probably happen, but it will be county residents that pay. I live a long way from the tracks, but I'll have to pay.

[GregW]

I live in southern New Hampshire and commute to Boston about 45 miles away. We use I-93 for the commute. This road is being widened to 3 lanes each way from the mass border to Manchester, NH a distance of 16 miles at a cost of $800,000,000! This is not likely to decrease any of the traffic congestion because it will only encourage more long distance commuting to the Rt 128 and I-495 beltway industries and offices. It will make the Manchester, NH airport accessible to the Boston travelers.

IMHO this is not worth that much money. Some folks seem to agree because they are talking about limiting the enlargement to four miles south of Londonderry and leaving one of the more dangerous stretches intact because the whole project would cost too much. If they are only going to do that much work they should just cancel the entire project but I doubt if the southern NH realtors would like that very much.

IIRC the Rail Runner will provide rail transport over a distance of nearly 80 miles between the state’s capital to south of the state’s biggest city for about $500 million. It is likely to reduce road congestion instead of increase it. This is not a bargain but does sound like a good thing to do.

FWIW - New Mexico and New Hampshire have about the same population but NM is about eight times bigger.

[mortimer]

GregW reported:

> ... I-93 ... being widened to 3 lanes each way ... 16 miles ...
> cost of $800,000,000! ... IMHO this is not worth that much money. ...

$50 million per mile then. B-b-b-but that's such a bargain compared to The Big Dig.

Proponents will tell you that cost per mile, _like_[cost_per_rider] is not relevant, but it is. These metrics are useful sanity checks when making comparisons between similar modes and between different modes.

> ... Rail Runner ... $500 million.

about $8 million per mile.

> This is not a bargain but does sound like a good thing to do.

This is a relative bargain when compared to new light rail projects that can run over $500 million per mile.

I like letting the taxpayers and riders/drivers know these kinds of numbers.

Again, I'd vote for a dedicated GRT tax in the effected counties to pay for it, but I don't think that you can rationalize making Doña Ana Co residents help pay for it like Bernalillo Co helps pay for roads down there.

Roads bring goods and services and people from all over use the roads all over. Only locals and possibly some tourists will likely use the RR. Any benefits from congestion reduction are likely to be vanishingly small.

Again.2, I'm confident that we'll see $7/gallon gasoline. Such a price might effect RR traffic to Santa Fe, but it will have a huge effect on the actual commuter part of the RR between Belen and Bernalillo.

When we see higher gas prices, the effect of RR on traffic congestion will pale in comparison to the effect of people simply *not* making the trip will have. Our largest source of fuel is our ability to use what we have more efficiently.