Florida's Fixed Rail Systems Ranked By Ridership
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The following is a list of all local rail transit systems in Florida, ranked by ridership. Here's an interesting fact. The Skyway does not come in last place.
Read More: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2014-oct-floridas-fixed-rail-systems-ranked-by-ridership
There seems to be a disturbing ridership trend with SunRail. It has been dropping monthly and is now hovering around 3500 per day.
What's really interesting is how our Skyway is held up as a $200 million waste of money. But a $600+ million rail system with about the same ridership is considered a great success.
Quote from: tufsu1 on October 13, 2014, 08:07:16 AM
There seems to be a disturbing ridership trend with SunRail. It has been dropping monthly and is now hovering around 3500 per day.
What's really interesting is how our Skyway is held up as a $200 million waste of money. But a $600+ million rail system with about the same ridership is considered a great success.
Best to check on the SunRail numbers again when the I-4 rebuild gets going.
4,100 riders a day is not to shabby for the skyway.
Seriously-not amazing, but not a complete disaster either, especially considering nearly nothing feeds it
How are these numbers measured? Daily or weekly? The first one seems weekly but the others seem daily. This could have been clearer.
My friends in the Tampa area have told me their streetcar is considered a local punchline similar to the Skyway; ie, that it's an expensive tourist shuffler that doesn't go anywhere and that nobody uses. Those numbers do appear to be pretty low.
Similarly, it's kind of a different beast, but friends in Orlando have long expressed skepticism about Sunrail. This isn't entirely due to the assumption that Floridians will never embrace commuter rail (though that's part of it), but also because they think the stations aren't in the best places to be used. I guess we'll see how it develops.
Considering Sunrail is really an I-4 construction mitigation project it certainly hasn't reached it's stride. Also, it is going to take some time to get local buses to where they feed the system at a high level. This will take more then buses showing up at stations, it will take remote park-n-ride lots, advertising, close headways and some promotional 'deals'.
Streetcar in Tampa is something of a joke. While there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with the cars, track or overhead, they horribly overbuilt the stations and street furniture that got 'attached' to the streetcar price tag. The thing was done as a tourist attraction and it literally goes from Ybor City (Latino Land) to the cruise terminal (Ship Land). A tiny extension into downtown did little more then allow a few dozen lunch hour folks get to the restaurants in the attractions area; more money spent apparently for no result.
Like the Skyway the streetcar goes from nothing to no place but you can't get anywhere in between. Unlike the Skyway, the system will handle modern streetcars or light-rail vehicles and can be expanded into the surrounding residential/suburbia for a mere fraction of the cost of our concrete wonder. The Skyway connects virtually all of downtown west of Main Street to the South Bank or seldom used Convention Center, it is hardly tied to the bus network at all and the new so-called 'BRT' will compete with it, JTA's 'promises' notwithstanding. The Tampa Streetcar is in a worse position in that it skirts downtown rather then passing through it. Unlike the Skyway, that streetcar can attain exclusive right-of-way and move out at 40 mph on railroad track, completely apart from automobile traffic.
This is the key to the Skyway, be it elevated streetcar or monorail. Decide on the mode and get either single beam monorail (much cheaper) or a streetcar platform (cheaper yet) to the stadium (sell that as the Randolph Eastside Extension) to Forest Street and to San Marco at Atlantic. Then watch the development explode.
Lastly the one thing that hurts the streetcar the most in Tampa is a at-grade crossing of a CSX branchline... CHA CHING! Over $½M in 'insurance' gets added to the costs every year. The fact that this was bungled at the start has seriously hurt the several propositions for area light-rail. "It's another streetcar," shouts the "No Tax For Tracks" bunch, none of which can stop shrieking long enough to take a serious look at the $Billion dollar+ development the streetcar brought with it, or the potential for much, much, more with the further development of modern streetcar/light-rail.
Hopefully the leadership and various other media of Jacksonville will be wise enough to actually study this site as well as sites such as the Facebook Group (please join us) at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/221427744536172/
Or
http://www.lightrailnow.org
Or
The International: http://thecityfix.com
Or
VIA Metropolitan Transit San Antonio, TX
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Results of streetcar economic impact study
Posted: 6/30/2014
VIA Metropolitan Transit released the results of a study that examined the economic impact a modern streetcar system would have on the local economy, and the conclusions show that the investment of $280 million in the system will see a return of billions over the next 25 years.
The study was conducted by the SABÉR Institute of St. Mary's University and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce under the supervision of Steve R. Nivin, PhD, who is the director and chief economist for the institute.
"The streetcar project is not a stand-alone project. It's part of a comprehensive transportation plan that has an economic impact," said VIA Board Chairman Alexander Briseño. "This is an investment that's worthwhile. It's one that's important for the community and the future."
According to the study's report, the construction of the streetcar system itself will support over 4,080 jobs with incomes and benefits totaling $206 million. This will have an overall impact of $489 million on the regional economy. Once the system is built out it will attract seven million square feet of new development with a taxable value of $756 million, and the new businesses in the area will employ almost 8,500 full-time equivalent positions earning wages and benefits of about $387 million.
New businesses along the streetcar corridors will boost the local economy by $1.3 billion, and the construction of these new businesses will have an impact of about $1.8 billion. The property taxes generated from the new developments will amount to $265 million, which will be new revenues helping to support the basic services provided by the City of San Antonio, Bexar County, and the San Antonio Independent School District.
In addition to property taxes, sales tax revenues from the new businesses will be nearly $53 million, and the sales taxes generated from the construction of the new developments will be about $4 million.
"We're not talking about the needs of the people today; we're talking about the needs of the people of the future," said Briseño. "We need to provide options and alternatives. This system, as part of that comprehensive transportation plan, provides one of those alternatives."
There is no question; "BRT lite isn't a good fit in Jacksonville."
We need streetcar's and their development dynamo!
Tacachale, the numbers are weekday.
Sunrail ridership is why I'm highly skeptical of commuter rail in Jax. Definitely need something that will be a political success first before going for projects that will result in empty trains and naysayers being able to be correct and win PR arguments.
Quote from: simms3 on October 13, 2014, 02:23:01 PM
Sunrail ridership is why I'm highly skeptical of commuter rail in Jax. Definitely need something that will be a political success first before going for projects that will result in empty trains and naysayers being able to be correct and win PR arguments.
Yes, that all-important first leg needs to be in the right place and go from somewhere to somewhere, or the naysayers will jump on it.
Quote from: spuwho on October 13, 2014, 08:15:53 AM
Quote from: tufsu1 on October 13, 2014, 08:07:16 AM
There seems to be a disturbing ridership trend with SunRail. It has been dropping monthly and is now hovering around 3500 per day.
What's really interesting is how our Skyway is held up as a $200 million waste of money. But a $600+ million rail system with about the same ridership is considered a great success.
Best to check on the SunRail numbers again when the I-4 rebuild gets going.
agreed
^^^And so are people going to revert back to automobiles once I-4 is widened/improved?
Sunrail seems like it was built as a permanent solution and alternative to the car. It has park n ride and it hits most if not all of the major employment centers. All systems in the US can see spikes or declines when other forms of transportation improve/recede, so I wouldn't expect that to be different for Orlando.
If Sunrail is effective and works, it will see upwards of 10x the ridership it's seeing now, sustained, after a certain relatively short time frame (10-20 years?) with or without an improved I-4.
If it's a $600M+ "failure", per se, then it will remain relatively flat, like Nashville's Star or the system in Austin, which has dismal ridership, imo. Or really a host of other systems that don't have nearly the ridership they should because they truly are trying to "force" a mode into cities not built or planned for them and inhabited by citizenries either over them from living in previous locales, or averse to them to begin with.
I doubt Sunrail will see 10x in 20 years. Tri-Rail only gets 15k and its been around since the 1980s. Sunrail will be lucky if it can draw 15k/day in 20 years.
^^^See, to me, for $600M++ that's a waste. A $600M road improvement likely benefits more people than a $600M commuter rail system, in this case. 4,000-15,000 people max in the grand scheme of things is not enough cars to take off the highway to benefit the automobile users in a material/noticeable way, so essentially a $600M rail improvement at $40K-$150K per person if Sunrail gets up to 15,000 riders, or at minimum $6K/person for at minimum 100,000 highway users daily (probably double that).
Transit ridership reports for the entire state of FL make me shed a tear :(
I wouldn't expect any rail system to result in streets carrying less cars if we're not placing a building moratorium around those roads. The major benefit Sunrail brings is its ability to stimulate transit oriented development and dense infill that increases local tax rolls. Sunbelt commuter rail systems don't move that many people because their headways are limited and most don't even run on the weekends. For all it's faults and bad press, the Skyway probably has higher potential for ridership increases than Sunrail because its headways make it a more reliable mode for those who do use it frequently.
Quote from: Tacachale on October 13, 2014, 09:51:09 AM
My friends in the Tampa area have told me their streetcar is considered a local punchline similar to the Skyway; ie, that it's an expensive tourist shuffler that doesn't go anywhere and that nobody uses. Those numbers do appear to be pretty low.
Tampa's TECO Line Streetcar makes the Skyway look like the NYC subway. It's horribly run with crazy operating hours. It also doesn't serve downtown or most of the urban neighborhoods surrounding it. It's strictly a tourist train. Nevertheless, it has helped spur over $2 billion in infill development along it's path.
Streetcar and LRT systems under 10,000 average daily weekday boardings (Q2 2014)
9,039 - New Jersey RiverLine (Trenton to Camden)**
8,523 - Cleveland RTA Rapid Transit Blue and Green lines
8,300 - Oceanside Sprinter (suburban San Diego)**
5,900 - Tide Light Rail (Norfolk)
2,900 - MATA Trolleys (Memphis)
2,400 - South Lake Union Streetcar (Seattle)
600 - TECO Line Streetcars (Tampa)
** - uses Diesel Multiple Units (DMUs) on freight rail lines.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_rail_systems_by_ridership
^^^Right, it's not a system born out of necessity. It's an economic development engine. But I would argue that any truly necessary rail system takes cars off the road. In a city of 840,000 people, there are nearly a quarter million people using a light rail system (unlinked) every day. There are no highways, only city streets. The city itself would have traffic worse than Manhattan after 3 PM if it didn't have that rail system (not to mention the nearly 600,000 daily bus trips, unlinked).
I think that's the difference between Sunbelt cities and established cities, where one group of cities is trying to advance forward, and in the meantime it's more about creating something a little cooler and driving real estate development, whereas in other cities already "there", it's a total necessity born out of cities that literally cannot hold as many cars as their population suggests.
I never knew San Francisco was considered to be a Sunbelt city:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Belt
Excluding the Bay Area, here's the Sunbelt's most utilized fixed transit networks:
Average weekday ridership (Q4, 2013)
221,200 - MARTA (Atlanta) - heavy rail
198,800 - Metro Rail (Los Angeles) - light rail
168,200 - Metro Rail (Los Angeles) - heavy rail
120,100 - San Diego Trolley (San Diego) - light rail
93,200 - DART (Dallas) - light rail
72,700 - Metrorail (Miami) - heavy rail
43,900 - METRORail (Houston) - light rail
41,800 - METRO Light Rail (Phoenix) - light rail
35,300 - Metromover (Miami) - people mover
20,600 - RTA Streetcars (New Orleans) - streetcar
16,500 - LYNX (Charlotte) - light rail
My point was that it wasn't. You had made the statement earlier that no rail system truly takes cars off the road unless they quit building roads, but I was just pointing out that there are two kinds of transit cities - those where transit is necessary and does take cars off of roads (I'm calling SF an "established" city), and those where transit isn't really necessary for the vast majority of people and is used as an economic development tool (Sunbelt cities).
Quote from: simms3 on October 13, 2014, 07:06:05 PM
^^^See, to me, for $600M++ that's a waste. A $600M road improvement likely benefits more people than a $600M commuter rail system, in this case. 4,000-15,000 people max in the grand scheme of things is not enough cars to take off the highway to benefit the automobile users in a material/noticeable way, so essentially a $600M rail improvement at $40K-$150K per person if Sunrail gets up to 15,000 riders, or at minimum $6K/person for at minimum 100,000 highway users daily (probably double that).
Transit systems benefit more than just the people who ride them. But you still bring up good concerns.
Quote from: simms3 on October 14, 2014, 12:22:42 AM
My point was that it wasn't. You had made the statement earlier that no rail system truly takes cars off the road unless they quit building roads, but I was just pointing out that there are two kinds of transit cities - those where transit is necessary and does take cars off of roads (I'm calling SF an "established" city), and those where transit isn't really necessary for the vast majority of people and is used as an economic development tool (Sunbelt cities).
Don't think he's responding to you. Ennis is just surprised by what he found when he researched the numbers...I too was surprised when I first looked up the "Sunbelt"
Quote from: simms3 on October 14, 2014, 12:22:42 AM
My point was that it wasn't. You had made the statement earlier that no rail system truly takes cars off the road unless they quit building roads, but I was just pointing out that there are two kinds of transit cities - those where transit is necessary and does take cars off of roads (I'm calling SF an "established" city), and those where transit isn't really necessary for the vast majority of people and is used as an economic development tool (Sunbelt cities).
Oh, I understood what you were saying. I was just surprised that San Francisco was considered a Sunbelt city. With my roads comment, it wasn't that we stop building roads, but the development that springs up along their path. If we really want to alleviate traffic congestion, we'd add extra road capacity but limit the potential for new autocentric development popping up to suck the extra capacity away. However, we'll never see that because for the "most" part, we build roads to stimulate economic development, not alleviate congestion.
Quote from: thelakelander on October 13, 2014, 09:53:58 PM
I wouldn't expect any rail system to result in streets carrying less cars if we're not placing a building moratorium around those roads.
Hey guys! It's been a long time since I posted here.
In general, Florida is averse to transit, but I think that's also true nationwide.
Even in places like DC (my near-decade home now,) there's a ton of traffic on the roads. Now, SOME of those people have no choice, living in an exurban or suburban transit desert...but SOME of them, despite living near one of the most comprehensive and premium integrated transit systems in the country, just don't want to give up their private motoring utopia...even if that means sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an equivalent transit trip. I personally think that they're all nuts, as one can read, nap, zone out, etc...versus cursing at the car in front of you, but everyone has their preferences.
I think the DIFFERENCE up here versus the Floridian mentality at large involves 'magical thinking,' where, despite all mathematical evidence that you can't build more roads to relieve traffic, and that the very form of suburbia is physically driving even more traffic, there's this intractable belief that if Florida just builds more roads and wider roads and further out, everything will be fine. Everyone will get their piece of paradise. Of course, that's been debunked several times over, to the point where we KNOW for certain that wider roads and more of them just means more traffic (and especially without a grid.)
Up here in DC, where there's still a sizable population that prefers driving to transit, there's at least the acceptance that we can't build our way out of traffic, and that we're going to have to rely on both transit and density to power the future growth forward (I'd venture to say that's a Northeastern/BosWash/Pacific Coast belief, in general.) Now, there very well be the idea that "transit is great...for OTHER people" up here (see: traffic,) but there's certainly a further evolution of what's what. There's a vision of the way forward and the way after the prominence of the car.
I will say this: any transit that a municipality implements should feature exclusive right-of-way, and especially if it's a high-density corridor. We have streetcars. They totally set off a speculative gentrification of H Street BEFORE the line was even built. And they sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic like a common bus. So, just as a general rule, go for exclusive right-of-way as a "get" or a "standard goal" versus griping over technology (i.e streetcar versus BRT and so on.) Get that transit into its own ROW and generate consistent speed.
And I note this as well: every fixed rail system in Florida is basically a failure, with perhaps the notable exception of Miami's Metromover (and that's debatable: it's free and only that many people take it? It's FREE and SURROUNDED by density.) I think PART of that involves an aversion to transit, a preference to the comfort of the private car versus transit. And I think PART of that involves the magical thinking regarding roads and growth (my sister is moving to Houston, speaking of magical thinking.)
...but I think what bedevils Florida's rail systems, and transit in general there, is a lack of comprehensive coverage with regards to premium nodes. The Metrorail connects to buses that sit in traffic. The Skyway connects to nothing. So the expensive investment doesn't provide the comprehensive coverage that might induce modal change. Which is to say that if Miami built 75 miles of exclusive lane BRT versus 25 of Metrorail, there'd be a lot more coverage and a lot more usage. Indeed, Montgomery County up here is in the planning process to build 80 MILES of BRT, just because they got the 'coverage' memo.