Atlanta Streetcar (Downtown Loop) progress (Sandy Springs, Roswell: pollution, estate, tickets)

[#1MARTAFan]

Originally Posted by MattCW

Ok, now go and breakdown the costs to move vehicles over the road so we can have a true comparison.

Here you go: The True Cost of Driving

Using the indirect costs for a 50 mile round trip commute (Similar to Lovejoy to Downtown commute), you come to a total cost to society (aka taxpayers) of about $5,000 a year.

This calculator accounts for:
accidents
construction
maintenance
parking
waste disposal
air pollution damagee
economic trade and natural resource use
road noise
CO2
water pollution
barrier effects to pedestrians
land impact use costs
roadway land value
congestion costs

All of those costs come to $5,000 cost to society per year.

The maintenance and construction costs of commuter rail come to $11,000 per year. Add in some of these other factors included in the car report and this number would rise significantly since commuter rail still pollutes some, still produces waste, has an impact on CO2, produces noise, has a barrier effect to pedestrians, uses land which has an impact cost and value costs.

$5,000 (all inclusive) < $11,000 (not all inclusive)


You ask... and I deliver

Thoughts?

[Galounger]

Originally Posted by #1MARTAFan

250,000 people represents just under 5% of the metro region. That is a small figure.


Well, lets examine this more with regard to commuter rail and the MMPT as has been discussed in this thread as bleed-over from other threads.

Lets look at the Griffin commuter rail line. Here are some assumptions I'll build off (based on figures taken from a 2011 study):

*Commuter rail to Griffin construction cost of $450 million. (I'll round this number down to $400 million to ensure my cost estimates are on the low side)
*20 Year operations costs of $400 million
*Approximately 3,600 daily trips (one way trips, not round trips) generated by a mature line once build-out is complete with rail stops in Morrow, Jonesboro, Lovejoy and Griffin.

So, $400 million/20 years = average annual expense of $20 million.

3,600 x 365 = 1.3 million daily trips

$20 million/1.3 million = $15.93 operating and maintenance cost per trip.

Add in $400 million in construction costs paid over 30 years via a 5%
bond, and you get $25 million per year in cost to construct the line.

$25 million/1.3 million trips= $19.03 construction cost per trip.

Add it the operating costs and the construction costs together and together and the total cost
per trip is about $34.30.

How much could you reasonably charge for a trip?
I don't think you could go over $10 per trip and still get the 3,600 trip per day number.

For every trip the the taxpayers are paying $24.60 in extra costs.

So, for a commuter who uses this 20 days a month, 2-ways (to and from work), the taxpayers are paying $972 a month in subsidies. This comes to over $11,000 a year.

Does it makes sense to pay $11,000 a year to get one car off the road?

These are the sort of real world, fact-based figures that we are looking at with regards to commuter rail.

The Seattle commuter train system is provided with 9761 riders a day for it's 82 miles of track. This isn't much better than the estimated 3600 riders for less than 50 miles of track to Griffin ( I estimated the Griffin line from road and rail maps. Tried but couldn't find any figures on track mileage.)

Yet Seattle officials consider their system to be a great success and are building three new train stations right now. If your figures and estimates quoted above are correct then they should be losing a great deal of money.

What gives? (I asked. Are express deliveries free of charge? LOL)

[#1MARTAFan]

Originally Posted by Galounger

The Seattle commuter train system is provided with 9761 riders a day for it's 82 miles of track. This isn't much better than the estimated 3600 riders for less than 50 miles of track to Griffin ( I estimated the Griffin line from road and rail maps. Tried but couldn't find any figures on track mileage.)

Yet Seattle officials consider their system to be a great success and are building three new train stations right now. If your figures and estimates quoted above are correct then they should be losing a great deal of money.

What gives? (I asked. Are express deliveries free of charge? LOL)

I don't know what their construction costs are to build that system in Seattle, but I can speculate.

Most importantly, you are talking about a decision (to expand the system) being made by either voters or politicians. Without taking this down the political route too far, I don't think either have a particularly good track record in making sound fiscal decisions. Secondly, people like the idea of mass transit. Believe it or not, I like the idea of mass transit. I do not like it's track record as far as operating efficiently. I don't think that most people understand how inefficiently most mass transit operates. Without this understanding, it is easy to support the idea blindly. I think if most people were told that every $2.50 trip on a MARTA bus or train actually costs close to $7 to produce, they would start to change their opinions. Then, you have a group of people that even when presented these facts let their love of the idea of mass transit override the facts. I think all of these things work against fiscal responsibility in planning and operating these systems.

Other easily identifiable factors that could lead to this decision include:

I used the average operations and maintenance costs as $20 million per year. I used this because it was easier to do than to find out how much of that maintenance is in the first 5 years versus years 15-20. I'm sure they are much higher in the final 5 years, so the expenses associated with operating and maintaining the line would be much lower now. This could make the expenses seem lower than they are initially. By the time the full costs are seen, the city/state has made such an investment, that they have to pay for the maintenance (or ignore it). For example, MARTA is sitting with $500 million in deferred maintenance that they continue to put off because they haven't planned on how to pay for it.

The costs to build the rail line might be lower in Seattle for other factors such as having cheaper ROW due to less existing traffic/congestion on the rail route.

I could continue to speculate, but I stand by the quick financial analysis I provided on the Griffin commuter rail route.


EDIT: Based on this link (http://www.soundtransit.org/Document...eport_2010.pdf), Seattle is losing a great deal of money on their commuter rail line. They took in $7.1 million in fares compared with $30.5 million in costs associated with the line. Their farebox recovery rate is an abysmal 23%, which is even lower than what I speculated would be the case on the proposed Griffin-Atlanta line (29%).

[MattCW]

You made some really big errors in all your assumptions. The driving calculator spits out $0.39 per mile, and since it's a roundtrip, using the 50 mile commute, that would be $0.39*50*2 (remember, round trip) or $39 per day. Done for 20 days, that's $780 per month, or $9,360 per year. For one person

Now, using your own figures for rail transportation, you ignore roundtrips until the end, then don't show your math. Starting with your assumption of 3600 daily one way trips, those people all have to go home so we're actually at 7200, one-way trips. Which times 365 (your own math) is 2,628,000. So $20 million O&M / 2.6M, is $7.61 per trip.

Bond financing /2.6M would then be $9.51.

So that's $17.12 per trip.

Ok, $10 fare (a bit low really, but we'll run with it).
So now we're at $7.12 per trip that has to come from somewhere.

Times 20 trips a month is $142.4.
Time 12 months is $1,708.8.

So the cost for one car to move over the road is closer to $9000, and the cost to move one person over the rails is around $1700.

Even if I'm not reading that driving site right (doubt that) and it IS already roundtrip miles, that's $4680. But I plugged 50 and 100 into the site, and the cost per mile didn't change, so I must assume that's in one-way cost. Even if the ridership is only 1800 on the commuter rail and the 3600 is roundtrips, that's still only $5,819 per year per person.

I'm not sure where you got only $5000 for driving, nor how you're pulling $972 per month out of the math unless you're severely low-balling ridership.

[#1MARTAFan]

Repost.

My bad.

[#1MARTAFan]

Originally Posted by MattCW

You made some really big errors in all your assumptions. The driving calculator spits out $0.39 per mile, and since it's a roundtrip, using the 50 mile commute, that would be $0.39*50*2 (remember, round trip) or $39 per day. Done for 20 days, that's $780 per month, or $9,360 per year. For one person

Incorrect. I used 25 miles each direction given that that would be about the 2/3 point for the rail line, thus giving a realistic average miles traveled. The line is just 38 miles long (from Griffin to Atlanta) It is 25 miles from Lovejoy to Atlanta and 18 from Jonesboro. I chose 25 miles since that would be a realistic average.

Now, using your own figures for rail transportation, you ignore roundtrips until the end, then don't show your math. Starting with your assumption of 3600 daily one way trips, those people all have to go home so we're actually at 7200, one-way trips. Which times 365 (your own math) is 2,628,000. So $20 million O&M / 2.6M, is $7.61 per trip.

No. The 3,600 ridership figure is not for roundtrips. It is for total boardings. Therefore, it is likely that 1,800-2,000 unique riders are using it each day since most will be taking it both ways (but not 100% would).


The rest of your statements are incorrect since the assumptions you made above are incorrect.

If you the correct numbers are used, my method is sound and accurate. The estimated farebox recovery rate that I am projecting is in line with other commuter rail systems, further supporting my methodologies as valid.

EDIT: Adding farebox recovery rates for some commuter rail systems:

CalTrain: 49%
MBTA: 44.8%
LIRR: 26.6%
Seattle: 23%
TriRail: 18.4%
DART: 12.5%
UTAH: 12.1%

Taken from various sources up to 5 years old, so I think these would be accurate in the 5% range.

[cqholt]

If building a commuter rail line saves 1 persons life that would have died in an auto accidents, its worth the cost.

[Zanarkand A East]

Originally Posted by cqholt

If building a commuter rail line saves 1 persons life that would have died in an auto accidents, its worth the cost.

Not to mention lessening the number of drivers, but saving lives is also a plus

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by Zanarkand A East

Not to mention lessening the number of drivers, but saving lives is also a plus

I was thinking to the fact that car accidents are the #1 killer of young people. I've lost a few friends to car accidents.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by #1MARTAFan

250,000 people represents just under 5% of the metro region. That is a small figure.

When you calculate it that way it seems so, but that's 5% of the total population and not the working population. There are 2 million working age adults with jobs in Metro Atlanta. The city of Atlanta itself is home to 479,000 of these jobs, or roughly 25%, and half of these workers (273,789) commute in. No other city or district in Metro Atlanta comes close to hosting that many jobs or commuters. Not Cumberland, Alpharetta, Roswell, Dunwoody, nor Sandy Springs. Even if you combined the working population of these districts together (It's just 271,573 between them all), it would not amount to the number of people working in the city of Atlanta...and those districts are all separated from each other by great distances.

So yeah, it's true that most working age adults don't work in the City of Atlanta, but as a employment center it is the largest single one in the entire State/Southeast and one of the largest on the continent. There is a need to move people in and out quickly. Highways and buses aren't enough to cut it. Solely on this point alone, we need to have rail based mass transit in Atlanta in and out side the city. This idea that we shouldn't just because most don't work in Atlanta proper is ridiculous since the same is true in EVERY city in the US, including NYC.