Last December, at considerable expense, Seattle started a new streetcar line. (Which immediately acquired an unfortunate nickname.) The streetcar has been a great success — except that almost no one wants to ride it.
In fact, ridership is almost exactly where the city predicted it would be the first year — about 1,000 average daily trips, based on logs by streetcar drivers. Sounds high, but it breaks down to eight riders per one-way trip. Since some people get off partway, five or six typically are aboard.
During a recent midday stretch, six to 22 people were aboard the streetcar during a 2 ½-hour period, while a rush-hour sampling found 20 to 30 riders.
And passengers like [Jane] Nelson, who pay cash for the $1.75 adult ticket, are even fewer. Ticket sales cover 5 percent of the estimated $2.1 million annual operating cost, mainly because the overwhelming majority of riders use King County Metro Transit passes.
According to the Seattle Times reporter, Mike Lindblom, it cost $52 million to build the line.
There are vans that carry eight riders, in considerable comfort. (I haven't seen numbers, but I suspect that those vans use less fuel than a streetcar does.)
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(The article has comparable numbers for other forms of transit in this area. I knew that our buses were heavily subsidized, but I had not realized just how heavily.)
Posted by Jim Miller at May 27, 2008 01:56 PM | Email ThisI think that a network of carpool type vehicles coordinated with the help of some technology that I was experimenting with could be vastly more efficient, on demand, cheaper, and useful to the people of this state than current bus service.
The only problem? Starting a private bus company in Washington isn't as simple as one might think. In fact, it's almost impossible as of the last time I checked.
Posted by: Andrew Brown on May 27, 2008 02:06 PMNickels was finance chair of ST all through the 1990's, when huge financial blunders put it into a hole it never will come out of. Remember ST's promised to get the votes? Broken, each and every one.
Nickels used his power and pulpit to get the seattle monorail authority up and running in 2002 - and then once he know the revenues were 30% below expectations he didn't inform anyone for over two years that the taxes would have to extend out at least twice as long as Weeks/Horn and Carr said.
Following the Nisqualy Quake in 2001 what does Nickels do to move the Viaduct replacement project forward? Nothing. He just creates ill-will with every politico in Olympia by pig-headedly holding out for a gold-plated tunnel in a freakin' tidal zone. Then he calls for an advisory vote on two options that everyone hated. The guy doesn't have a clue. Have we made progress on the Viaduct since? No way.
For years there've been conflicts over how to rebuild the SR 520 bridge. What's Nickel's done to move that ball forward? Nothing. He's ignored the problem, and finally some mediators were called in by the state and they "sort of" have a kind of agreement about what to do. But everything is still up in the air, and the toll rates haven't been set.
Nickels was the individual most responsible for last year's landslide rejection of Roads and Transit. Good riddance - at least the public knows now that whatever Nickels thinks is a good idea is a sure loser. The guy has set our region back decades in the transportation arena.
Nickels couldn't budget enough for road repairs or bridge repairs, so he had to get the city residents to vote a new tax on themselves for basic street maintenance ("Bridging the Gap") in 2006. Bad planning for years cost his constituents plenty, and those taxes will be in place for a while. Oh yeah, now he wants to divert a pile of that money to make nice amenities for Vulcan Inc. in SLU - nice shifting of money after the vote, Greg.
Now he wants a vote on some ST2.2 plan that hasn't even been shown to the public yet? He's just "gathering data" - look how much good the data from the SR 99 Viaduct advisory vote did us (none). Whatever ST2.2 is, it will be Nickels' baby as he is the chair of ST's board. It will be wrong, because everything Nickels does in the transporation field is wrong. His record is perfect in that respect.
The SLU streetcar? At least it was paid for mostly by a LID. However, a bunch of Metro money had to be diverted to it, so the balance of the county's bus service suffered and will continue to suffer because of that largely-useless system that Nickels begat.
Bottom line - the man and the governments he runs CAN NOT be trusted.
Posted by: gribble on May 27, 2008 02:41 PMWhat is incredibly unfortunate is that people continue to vote for these leftist clowns who are throwing our money away trying to turn the clock back on history. They want to eliminate cars, except their own, and stop the engine of progress, fossil fuels. With the help of more leftist clowns in the media, more and more people are buying these failures as successes and voting in more leftist clowns.
Hasn't anyone else figured out who the real enemy here is?
Posted by: Reality on May 27, 2008 02:50 PMYou state that you suspect the eight passenger vans use less fuel than the street car.
I am not sure if you meant this as a joke, or were somewhat serious. You do realize that the streetcars run on electricity and that electricity (Seattle Light) is generated through hydroelectric dams. Therefore, unless you meant the initial fuel (carbon footprint) to build the streetcars and ship them here, or the fuel of maintenance trucks, your statement would be incorrect. The streetcars, themselves, have a zero footprint for operations, which is one of Nickel's talking points.
Posted by: tc on May 27, 2008 03:10 PMAndrew @ 1
I recently got back from a trip to Kiev, Ukraine. They had Park N Ride size vans all over the place. People would line up on a street corner, and another van came along every 10 or 15 min. Around subway stops, there would be half a dozen lines of people, one for each route. The little vans just kept coming, and the lines moved nicely.
Inside the vans were clean and well maintained. Passengers voluntarily passed money forward to the driver, making change from each other's payments.
It was efficient, convenient and friendly. And all private enterprise.
About a year ago I read that some enterprising Eastern Europeans tried informally doing something similar in NY. Everybody loved it. So the city shut it right down.
Yeah, you can't start a private bus company 'round here.
Hairy
Posted by: Hairy Buddah on May 27, 2008 03:12 PMWhen I look at power generation, I usually think at least nationally, because of all these grid connections. (And there is a good argument for thinking continentally, since the Northeast imports so much power from Canada.) And, nationally, most of our electricity comes from burning coal.
The electrons that move the streetcar don't care whether they come from a hydroelectric dam, a nuclear power plant, or a coal plant in the Four Corners region.
Posted by: Jim Miller on May 27, 2008 03:51 PMAs things stand, you basically have to a) live there or b) park downtown and ride the streetcar to the lake.
Posted by: Al on May 27, 2008 05:29 PMI thought not!
I think we should all start mailing bus schedules to his office on a regular basis.
Posted by: GS on May 27, 2008 05:59 PM"Cash fares on Metro buses cover 6 percent of operating costs."
6 percent!!!
That means that the "real" fare, one that would cover costs, on a metro bus (100/6) * $1.50 or $25 dollars!
And that's one way!
That means if 3 people in Kent shared a cab, which, the last time I rode one from Seattle cost $40. And they tipped the driver $10...they'd still be saving $20!!!
And that's at the artificially inflated monopoly prices of cabs.
That means, that if we gave them "cab passes" instead of "bus passes" we'd spend a lot less money, have better service...from the private sector.
(Oh, yeah, but I said that...on the record...in 1993...)
I want to see the cost per trip of that based on ridership of that puppy.
Posted by: gs on May 27, 2008 06:47 PMI'm not questioning your statement, merely looking for confirmation so I can focus my outrage on the good Comrade Mayor
Posted by: Andrew Brown on May 27, 2008 07:53 PMTrip 1 - He has a driver who drives from their home to a place each day just to pick up the Limo, for the good mayor.
Trip 2 - The driver then drives the Limo to the mayors home to pick up his highness.
Trip 3 - The Driver then turns around and drives the Mayor to work in this Limo
How many trips during the day - Don't know, but a Limo is a gas guzzling beast.
Trip 4 - The Driver drives the Mayor back home each night
Trip 5 - The Driver drives the Limo back once again to the garage
Trip 6 - The Driver drives home
So I suspect three times the trips that the normal person takes getting to and from work, in one heck of a gas guzzling beast.
Posted by: GS on May 27, 2008 08:09 PMI along with many others make it a point to avoid Seattle nor live within it's city limits. Unfortunately, the more the Wise leave, the greater the Vote of the Fools to keep electing these Criminals. It's like a Cancer, spreading it's Tax Grabbing Tentacles into your Sewer Bill, even when you don't live in Seattle, known as the Metro Tax which represents the far greater percent of the Bill.
The only way to begin to correct this, is to limit the Power of the Vote only to the True Tax Payers, the Tax Payers of the Private Sector. That way, the public employees would not be able to Vote for their own Largess at the Expense of those who produce the Wealth of this Nation. For it is the Private Sector that produces the Wealth of a Nation and it is the Government that spends the Wealth.
City owned transportation covered the rest of the city.
Don't know if the jitney system still works in SF.
Posted by: Snuffy on May 27, 2008 10:11 PMFacts like operating costs, ridership, etc. don't matter, just feelings. And when they make $52 Million mistakes, do they ever get shutdown so that good money doesn't follow bad? Not a chance.
There are plenty of simple ways we could solve transit right now. I've commented several times lately regarding van pools, and better, employer paid van pools financed and maintained by private industry sans the whole union driver and maintenance infrastructure. Glad to see Jim and others mentioning this as well.
But the left does not want real solutions to transportation. They just want to feel loved and important. Maybe we should all go give David Goldstein a hug so he can get over the emotional aspects of his light rail fetish and start to think clearly.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 27, 2008 10:33 PMWhy not our benevolent and accurate government.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 27, 2008 10:37 PMAnd even during rush hour, some buses are underfilled and some are overfilled, based on factos like how close the bus is to the preceding bus.
Posted by: Bruce on May 28, 2008 03:51 AMJust checking.
Posted by: swatter on May 28, 2008 12:06 PM
Yes, because losing 78% per ride is SO much better than losing 94% per ride. The financial black hole doesn't grow quite as fast, but it still grows...
Sheesh, sounds like some of the dot-bombs I contracted for back in the late 90s. Sure, we'll lose money on each transaction but we'll make up for it with volume!
Those streets that you drive your precious vehicles on (I won't stereotype that all of you drive gigantic SUV's to make up for your...shortcomings in other areas) are subsidized out the ying-yang.
Yet such costs for building and maintaining roads are NEVER factored into the costs of private vehicles vs. rail, or even bus vs. rail.
You guys wanna privatize everything? Fine, let Paul Allen pave your streets. How does that sound? What's that? Paul Allen is an incompetent boob? Exactly.
The government knows how to handle public facilities. Private industry DOESN'T. A little thing called EXPERIENCE. Don't forget that, jarheads.
Posted by: Scott Mercer on June 1, 2008 03:50 PM