Or at least break even, without relying on government subsidies? Every commuter rail I’m familar with (admittedly, not all that many) requires massive amounts of money from the government in order to stay afloat. Is this the case with all public transportation?
The last time I took Amtrak on the San Diego - Los Angeles line, I got into a conversation with an employee who told me that it was one of the few profitable runs in the system. Some people actually do use it to commute to downtown L.A. from points south, so I guess you could call that a commuter train that turns a profit.
And I think the same is more or less true of the Boston–Washington, DC corridor as well.
So it can happen.
I suspect that commuter rail could make a profit if the competing methods of transportation weren’t also heavily subsidized. For some reason, some people think the government should make rail pay for itself entirely, but don’t object to spending government money on roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, and airports. If transportation was a truly free market, I think rail would be a cost effective solution for many people.
Yes, but doesn’t the money for all that stuff come from gasoline taxes, which is a rough equivelent to a user fee?
I think it is possible to cover Operational expenses through the farebox revenues, although in reality no big pure commuter system does this (because fares have to be kept at a somewhat reasonable amount). I think the NYCTA does cover 60-65% (at least a few years ago) of its operational expenses, and that was among the highest percentages in the country. Someone mentioned the NE corridor - that percentage was given by the NJ Journal as 7% profit last year, but my fellow railfans on railroad.net have strong opinions that that number is bogus.
Now as to Capital costs (infrastructure and rolling stock), you can pretty much forget it - that’s gotta be subsidized to a very large extent (BTW, Amtrack, which is not [really] a commuter railroad, was supposed to cover its operational expenses in 2003 - it was never expected by Congress to cover its capital costs). How the systems are subsidized are up to the local and state governments, but here in NY bridge and tunnel tolls are a significant part of the revenue stream [and this I do not complain about - I do support strong commuter rail systems, as well as a good highway system].
Other countries I don’t really know about - hopefully they’ll check in - but can anyone explain what’s up with the UK and it’s messed-up privitazation attempts (at least it seems kinda messed up on this side of the pond). And for the antipodes, whats up with TransRail NZ?
Good point. I watched a tv show a while back that said that if drivers were tolled for the real cost of highways and such, the cost of public transit would be very competitive.
A safe driver, at 65mph, requires something like 100ft. of freeway. I pulled that figure out of my head, but it is a large number compared to a train.
I’m slightly drunk, and rambling.
Sorry. 
Peace
mangeorge
Amtrak loses money because the folks in Congress insist that their favorite rail lines in their districts remain up and running whether or not a demand exists. It’s a bureaucratic mess. When Amtrak parts ways with the feds in 2003, I have no doubt they’ll close the unprofitable lines and within a few years, end up in the black.
Commuter rail systems run by local governments are unprofitable mainly because they are a support system for overpaid union laborers and a feifdom for third tier political hacks, their friends, and relatives. There’s no incentive for these systems to be lean and mean when Joe Taxpayer is footing the bill. Is there any reason why you and I should pay a middle-manager in a local transit authoriy $100,000/yr with a 75% pension? Understandably, politicians are reluctant to yield these “vital” agencies to private contractors. They might gasp save money and improve service!
In every instance I researched, privatization reduced passenger or freight costs and improved service at a lower overall cost. Interestingly, freight-only rail systems, which are not under the government thumb, are quite profitable.
Here are some links:
Rail privatization is spreading: http://www.ncpa.org/pi/internat/pd040899h.html
A blueprint for sustainable passenger rail service: http://www.rppi.org/transportation/ps235.html
You might want to search google with: privatization commuter rail
Japan Rail was privatized in 1987, splitting into JR East, Tokai, West, Shikoku, Kyushuu, Hokkaido and Freight. They’ve been doing pretty well, although they’ve been having trouble paying off the huge debts that had built up while the company was government-run. You might find more information in this book over at Amazon, but I’m not about to shell out the $90 for it.
There are also a large number of privately-run lines (Including all of Tokyo’s subways) that seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.
–sublight.
“Commuter rail systems run by local governments are unprofitable mainly because they are a support system for overpaid union laborers and a feifdom for third tier political hacks, their friends, and relatives.”
Um, no. They’re unprofitable because their purpose is to provide an alternative to driving, and luring people out of their cars with cheaper fares is considered more important than having equal debit and credit columns in the public ledgers. You could eliminate all the graft, corruption, laziness, etc. in public transit agencies and they STILL wouldn’t run a profit. NOR SHOULD THEY. Public parks, firefighters, or police aren’t expected to cover their budgets solely with the fees and fines they collect, because they are considered public services and not businesses and because nobody would tolerate $1000 fire calls or $10 to use the public swimming pool in their own town.
Metra in Chicago runs a very efficient network that carries nearly 300,000 people every weekday. It’s considered by many inside and outside the industry to be the best-run commuter rail operation in the country, and it has a spotless reputation of being free of graft or inefficiency. Metra jobs are NOT patronage jobs because Metra isn’t controlled by the city or county administrations. That said, it STILL runs at a loss. The reason is simple: if the fares were raised to the point where Metra broke even, it wouldn’t be carrying nearly 300,000 people daily! You’d win the battle (the Holy Grail of a balanced budget) but lose the war (the purpose of a transit agency being to MOVE PEOPLE).
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- Uh, I’ll disagree with that. The reason that US commuter railways run at a loss is that they are less efficient than ordinary cars, in terms of both service (most people don’t like them) and actual cost (which is huge). They can’t charge actual fares, because people wouldn’t pay them. If I remember right, in the US, the only Amtrak line that has ever turned a profit is the New York-D.C. run. As far as new urban light-rail systems go, they are far more expensive than adding highway lanes and/or busses and they move far less people. Amtrak has done this on many of its older western “routes”, because it couldn’t afford to keep running empty trains. I don’t know the US figures on older urban light-rail systems but most every newer one built has been a spectacular waste of money. If you don’t judge a mass transit system by its cost-per-rider, what else can you judge it by?
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- Over the last few years the St Louis region put in a light-rail system. When it was being debated if this was a wise use of money or not, people against it provided actual data of other cities showing the enormous amounts of money it had cost them. People supporting it talked about “estimates of the value it will add to the region”, that value being apparently not the same kind you can carry around in your wallet. Which was really sad, because St Louis only had a few problem areas that slowed busses down, such as getting across the bridges and a few major intersections during rush hour. They could have built a “bus bridge” on an old rail line bridge, added bus lanes at the problem intersections and seen large improvements for a lot less money, but no. City and county leaders wanted a TRAIN, and they didn’t stop until they got one. Now they talk about what a “success” it is because people ride it, but they remain silent on its cost. The train goes by major public areas such as the sports sdadiums and the airport, but largely aviods the business districts where most uneducated non-professionals would be able to get jobs. It was never planned to go near the poorest areas of St Louis, and poorer areas that it did have stations near elsewhere have been razed and redeveloped into housing the previous tenants can’t afford, so basically, the poorest people are still riding busses. The Metrolink doesn’t stop anywhere near where most of them live, and it doesn’t go anywhere they regularly need to go. - MC
Seconding Sublight on the Japanese train system - although part of the profit may come from the way commuter trains are packed to over “200%” capacity at peak times.
Instead of making the commuter runs a pure passenger play, the trains would have a better shot at making a profit if allowed to carry freight.
Open the options for extra revenue.
Trains will almost always loose compaired to roads when it comes to off peak hours. The biggest advantage is they can get many cars off the road and move more people faster during peak (rush hour) times.
Up to a point the more people who use a train system, the faster they will get to their destination (due to more trains, express trains - again up to a point). The roads have a opposite effect - more cars on it = longer time to get where you are going. This is one of the basic principals used to determine the cost effectivness of differing modes of transportation.
As for the bus - If you had a totally dedicated bus lane it would act more like a train (more people who used it would shorten travel time. But people just don’t like the bus - it has a low-class ring to it while the train (subway maybe but not commuter rails) doesn’t.
The trains have to run at unprofitable times to draw in more people. A less % of peak commuters would use the train if they knew they had to wait till 4pm to get a return ride home just incase they had to leave early.
- Ship freight on a light-rail train? How many packages do you think need to be shipped across town? As for Amtrak (the US national passenger rail service), the regular “freight” lines allowed Amtrak to nationalize passenger service because they didn’t want to do it anymore anyway - they found that it was the lowest-profit aspect of US railway operations a long time ago. Railway companies are big and quite rich; if they’d have wanted to continue passenger service, you’d have heard about the legal fight (imagine the government passing a law barring them from transporting, oh, for example, automobiles).
- Uh, the problem with this reasoning is you’re assuming that building roads would cost more money, but the train is already built and paid for, and that’s the problem with it. If you have the choice to build more highway lanes or build a light rail system, you will find that the highway lane costs far less at the outset and to maintain and carries many more people per hour. The other advantage with building more roads is that you can target problem areas by adding more roads only where they are most needed. Trains do not have that capability, the railway has to be connected from one end to the other, and often it ends up running alongside already-existing roadways—a total waste of money. - MC
I personally believe that even a commuter rail that seems to be unprofitable because they have to state a loss in their bilances are “profitable” in some way. The fares they collect from passengers are their only direct income, but the governemnt that subsidies them gets other advantages from them, like less traffic chaos on the roads, less costs because of environmental damages used by cars, traffic advantages for the industry based in the region etc. If you put these effects in your calculation as well, which are of course difficult to estimate but they exist without any doubt, I think a commuter rail can bring the state more money than the governemnt has to subsidy it.
I defy anyone to show that the addition of a commuter rail line has improved traffic flow in any significant way.
MC I was talking about traffic studies only not cost analysis. I agree that cost is a BIG factor. Traffic flow analysis basically uses the theory that people will use the shortest route to where they are going. If you graph travel time vs number of people using that method you will get a + slope for car (more people = longer travel time) and a negitive slope for the train (more people = shorter travel time). Where the 2 lines cross will be the distrubution of people using cars and trains. If you can artifically increase the # of trains you effectivally shorted train travel time and shift the line so more people will take the train and fewer cars will be on the road.
- that last part about fewer cars will be on the road to make travel time = bwetween rail and road again.
Evilhanz- the LIRR sometimes goes on strike. The normallyh 6:15 - 9:30 NYC rush hr will go to 5:30 - 10:30am during the strike.
So the removal of a commuter rail system did increase traffic flow.
Love to stay and chat some more but I have to catch a train. (really)
There are at least two big structural problems that commuter rail faces economically. The first is that private autos are tremendously subsidized. And no, gasoline taxes don’t pay for it all. Who builds, maintains, plows (in snowy areas), and polices local roads (everything except state & federal highways)? That’s all local property taxes paying for it. Uncompensated auto accidents, loss of land for roads and parking are a couple other costs. You could also throw in the costs of hospitalizing kids with asthma attacks due to smog and the costs of overseas adventures like the Gulf War, but even without those costs, the subsidies are big. The U.S. Congress’s Office of Technical Assessment (not exactly eco-radicals) found subsidies of $3-$7 per gallon of gas in 1994. (see http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/articles/subsidies.asp)for instance. Seems strange to me that commuter rail has to turn a profit while town public works departments completely sponge off of my hard-earned tax dollars (speaking of patronage pits…(not that I don’t think there’s a fair amount of useless salaries at my local mass transit agency))
The second problem is that the costs that drivers do bear are mostly fixed – buying the car and insurance – while costs of taking the train are paid each trip (or possibly each month with a pass). So there’s extra incentive to drive, even when the most efficient solution for both the individual and society as a whole would be taking the train. It makes it difficult for commuter rail to compete pricewise.
Nonetheless, commuter rail does have an impact. Like k2dave said, just look at what happens when a rail line goes on strike.
Again, Japan. Specifically, Tokyo. If the 10 million+ commuters travelling from the suburbs to city center every day all had to use the few available highways (only 2-3 lanes), the entire city would come to a standstill. In addition, there simply aren’t enough parking spaces for that many people, even if they all carpooled.
Still, in this case there was a fairly well-developed rail system in place before the highways were built, so I don’t know if it fits your criteria.
–sublight.
A 20-mile car trip can cost $2 just for the gas, considering how poor a gas mileage you get during rush hours. I’m not familiar with US commuter trains, but do they cost much more than this?
Also, cost of car ownership is not constant. By commtuing by train you cut down the mileage significantly, with correspondingly lower maintenance and depreciation costs.