Florida's Fixed Rail Systems Ranked By Ridership

[thelakelander]

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

[simms3]

^^^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.

[thelakelander]

I never knew San Francisco was considered to be a Sunbelt city:



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

[simms3]

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).

[ProjectMaximus]

^^^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.

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"

[thelakelander]

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.

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.

[AaroniusLives]

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.