Carrying fewer passengers this year, Northstar commuter rail is slashing fares by as much as 25 percent in an attempt to attract new riders.
The fare reduction underscores the ongoing challenge the line -- now nearly three years old -- faces in persuading northwest suburban commuters to ride.
C'mon, Maple Grove! You need to do better! And step it up, Big Lake!
The report from the Star Tribune mentions another factor:
Ridership declined 2.8 percent through May of this year and is lagging even further behind expectations for 2012. Metro Transit officials blame it on a variety of factors, including the Twins' drawing fewer riders to Target Field, and say adjusting fares is part of the line's growing pains.So part of the problem is the vagaries of a baseball team? Perhaps a few ads featuring current Twins sensation Darin Mastroianni could sway the fickle masses.
Actually, a better explanation is available:
"You're not looking at a market that was suited to this," said David Levinson, a professor at the University of Minnesota.Yep. The same argument I've been making for a long time now. I know this is well-plowed ground, but let's go back to it for a moment. What's the problem? Well,
- The issue in the Twin Cities is that we have people coming from all directions to multiple destinations. We have two official downtowns and a de facto one on the 494 strip. We also have major corporations located throughout the suburbs. Many of the big medical device companies are located along 694 in the North Metro, while General Mills is on 169. United Health Group has facilities all over the west side of town. My office is in Burnsville. 3M is in Maplewood. A train that runs from Big Lake to downtown Minneapolis isn't especially useful to a lot of people.
- We have no geographical restrictions, either. Chicago sits on Lake Michigan. New York touches the ocean, as does San Francisco. We have rivers here and plenty of bridges, too. If you want to work in downtown Minneapolis, you might choose to live to the northwest. But you don't have any restrictions on where you live. You can't live on the northeast side of Chicago, because it doesn't exist. You can easily live northeast of downtown Minneapolis.
There will always be people who prefer to ride trains. There just aren't that many of them.
6 comments:
My take here is that, beyond the fixed capital issue, trains have the disadvantage that you've got to have about a ton of weight per passenger on each carriage just to keep it on the tracks, and you've also got a system that doesn't have the sense to stop when nobody's riding it. So physics and usage are strongly against this boondoggle.
Plus capital and other human factors. If only liberals would listen to science!
Liberals don't want to hear it, they had good intentions after all. The only way they can fill these cars is putting pre-paid hookers and free booze in "recreation" cars.
Indy,
That's some ace marketing, but I shudder to imagine what sort of hookers we'd get through government procurement....
Let's just go ahead and dispel some of these rumors, huh?
First, given an average occupancy of 1.1-1.2 people per car, I'd say automobiles lug around just as much, if not more, weight than a train. This notwithstanding that US carriages are near twice as heavy as those in other countries; this is a result of outdated FRA regulations - and yes, go ahead and complain about the overburden of regulation. In this case, you're right. This regulation increases fuel cost, increases acceleration and deceleration times, and actually leads to less safety than otherwise.
Outside of weight issues, there are two main problems with the Northstar line: its limited schedule, and poorly developed station areas.
The limited schedule is mandated by the track sharing agreement with the freight companies that own the track, and truly ought to be fixed. If frequencies can be raised, and spread through the day, the train will become a more viable, regularly dependable option.
As for the poorly developed station areas, the blame here lies on a combination of zoning restrictions, artificially cheap outlying land, and the lack of off-peak service. There's little reason to develop near the stations just now, since the train is only useful for commuting, and then only during restricted hours.
There are some liberals with good intentions and others who are bought off including union workers and contractors who get to build these overpriced monstrosities. Hiding behind green initiaves and other do good cliche's these wolves will get what they want by any means necessary. After the project is completed most of the time overbudget, they have no interest regarding whether or not the project was economically viable. They get their money and they are off to the next project, town or whatever. So what if they get to use a few well-intentioned pawns along the way, and so what if the taxpayers foot the bill on every step. The motto isn't "Build it and they will come," it's "Build it and we'll get paid."
Anonymous; it is absolutely true that my vehicles, at 2 and 2.5 tons approximately, do lug around more weight than a train does per passenger. That said, my vehicles also have the good sense NOT to go around empty 3/4 of the time, which is exactly what most public transit vehicles do. If you want a system that is convenient to riders, you need to run the trains or buses back outbound in the morning, back inbound in the evening, and at off-peak times.
So what you've got with transit is huge capital costs combined with a system that is designed to run empty most of the time. The end result is that your average bus passenger-miles per gallon of diesel is about 25--really not much better than what you'd get if you bought every commuter a Suburban.
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