Sunrail ridership down, Looks like an Epic Fail (Orlando, Spring Hill: home, tax)

[WithDisp]

Originally Posted by Spring Hillian

I was in S. FL last December. Didnt look like a failure to me.

... to understand if a rail system was a failure or not you'd have to be a government agency fiscal bookkeeper.

Thousands ride the Hogwarts Express every day, but it doesn't make it a viable public transit system.

1. Is SunRail significantly removing cars from the road?
2. Is SunRail creating more traffic than it alleviates?
3. Is SunRail costing the public taxpayers far more (3x or more per fare) than it brings in?
4. Does SunRail give people of considerable poverty some access to workplaces / or from the other standpoint does the rail allow a cheaper labor pool for those seeking employees in the city core.
5. Does the SunRail alleviate the drunk driving accidents along its path?
6. Does SunRail's use grow, not shrink.


I don't have the answers to all these questions, but it's what I would demand of local governance to answer to assess the value of the project. I'm quite confident though-on all counts SunRail is a very limited use failed attempt at a public transportation system off the bat- and as the case should really be the target of the next 10-15 years of development, or scrapped.

[Spring Hillian]

I dont think any of those questions could be answered after 4 months of operation.


/

Originally Posted by WithDisp

... to understand if a rail system was a failure or not you'd have to be a government agency fiscal bookkeeper.

Thousands ride the Hogwarts Express every day, but it doesn't make it a viable public transit system.

1. Is SunRail significantly removing cars from the road?
2. Is SunRail creating more traffic than it alleviates?
3. Is SunRail costing the public taxpayers far more (3x or more per fare) than it brings in?
4. Does SunRail give people of considerable poverty some access to workplaces / or from the other standpoint does the rail allow a cheaper labor pool for those seeking employees in the city core.
5. Does the SunRail alleviate the drunk driving accidents along its path?
6. Does SunRail's use grow, not shrink.


I don't have the answers to all these questions, but it's what I would demand of local governance to answer to assess the value of the project. I'm quite confident though-on all counts SunRail is a very limited use failed attempt at a public transportation system off the bat- and as the case should really be the target of the next 10-15 years of development, or scrapped.

[WithDisp]

Originally Posted by Spring Hillian

I dont think any of those questions could be answered after 4 months of operation.


/

These questions should be posed prior to the implementation of such a system, and can be measured from day 1- with quantifiable data.

Some restaurants and stores don't last 3 months in a given location- they're not able to spend immeasurable amounts of tax dollars however to stay afloat.

I'm fine with the investment in public transit- but if we find it causes more harm than good, I'd like to see it remedied or removed. If we don't gather the data, it can safely be assumed the powers that be don't -want- us to know.

[Pete C]

So this is what qualifies as an "epic fail" these days? Even the linked article didn't paint it with such an utterly exaggerated brush. I'd hate to see what you'd call something that has actually failed.

[runswithscissors]

Come on All Aboard Florida!

Destroy the entire East coast so MIAMI can maximize the hedge fund guys' project with the Panama Canal and PRETEND there's going to be PASSENGER RAIL instead of admitting the truth. FREIGHT. Especially after the alibi about passenger rail FAILS and they default on the 1.5 Billion dollar taxpayer loan. For EMPTY passenger trains zooming through our communities at 120 MPH. Allegedly. Knocking everything down in sight with "eminent domain".

And I hope all of ya'll who "BENEFIT" at both ends of this boondoggle pay the 20 Million per year operating expense - did they ever decide where they were getting that overrun? Because those of us "in the middle" get ZERO from it but a bunch of aggravation and property value destruction.

[idr591]

Originally Posted by Spring Hillian

I was in S. FL last December. Didnt look like a failure to me.

Lol. So based on your vacation in south Florida you have decided that trirail is fiscally solvent?

From sun sentinel : "Tri-Rail may be breaking ridership records, but it's on fiscal life support. Since its inception, Florida's only commuter rail service has been operating hat-in-hand, relying on the collective charity of annual contributions from the state and the three counties in which it operates. "

Charity is an interesting choice of words. I do not think taxpayer dollars should be referred to as charity.

[kyle19125]

Originally Posted by tworent

If it loses money and is subsidized by tax dollars its welfare if they raised the prices to cover the cost then it would not be welfare.

Mass Transit is not, and never has been considered "welfare". It's part of the transportation infrastructure of this country with funding coming from the US and State Department of Transportation. Utilizing your "logic", new roads (toll or conventional) as well as bridges and tunnels would be considered "welfare" as well. The notion that transportation and infrastructure need to be profitable is at best bizarre.

[kyle19125]

Originally Posted by WithDisp

The discussion had gone on for YEARS prior to SunRail coming to be.

The biggest draws of Orlando traffic-

Disney World, Universal, Downtown, The Airport, Millenia/Florida Mall, UCF, International Drive.

The places of large interest that SunRail serves-

Just downtown.


Why? ... because it was expensive to implement, and rather than plan and build a rail from the ground up- they leased tracks from a private company who is the only one getting a sweet deal on SunRail.

SunRail is a commuter rail in a city that has no common commercial core.
From the younger person point of view, I can understand the desire to rail to work- and the possibility of that being the case, however this could have been done NOW- but was purposively not.

How can they open a station at desolate Orange & Sand Lake when they could have routed tracks 2 miles east to serve MCO?!

Easy, poor planning and a lack of concern in general over ridership. I think the process was so rushed because of Orlando leadership's penis envy of other large cities, and this was a half-baked attempt to show the rest of the country that the city is a "big boy" now.

[Spring Hillian]

Originally Posted by idr591

Lol. So based on your vacation in south Florida you have decided that trirail is fiscally solvent?

From sun sentinel : "Tri-Rail may be breaking ridership records, but it's on fiscal life support. Since its inception, Florida's only commuter rail service has been operating hat-in-hand, relying on the collective charity of annual contributions from the state and the three counties in which it operates. "

Charity is an interesting choice of words. I do not think taxpayer dollars should be referred to as charity.

I didnt mention its financial status. I said it looked successful due to ridership.
If it is loosing money they need to figure out why and correct it.

[EditorJul]

For anyone who wants to know about what an Epic Fail looks like regarding a mass transit system, may I present ODU's Maglev train:

Progress on ODU maglev still bumpy [Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen]
ODU's Maglev at an uncertain future - CNN iReport

My brother was a student there during the "fun" of this project. So bumpy that it wasn't safe to carry passengers. Possibility of killing people with pacemakers who rode on it or walked under it. Only one station built (so if it could actually run, you would get on board, go in a huge circle of campus, and get off at the same station). By the time the system was ready to test, the track had degraded so much that track had to be torn down and rebuilt. No money to rebuild, so other sections of track were auctioned off so that they could get enough working stretch of track to show that the unit would actually move.

This, folks, is what an epic failure looks like.

And yet I am hopeful that all the failure of that project might provide valuable research data to someday create a system like this. In the meantime….I'll just ride the Peoplemover and Monorail at Disney.