Re: Northstar
Posted: October 14th, 2012, 9:42 pm
As much as I hate to say it, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that Ms. Meeks might not be wrong on this one. The problem is, you have to either do your business or get off the pot, and they chose not to do their business properly to start with, and now they've been dawdling on the pot.
This project was effectively killed when T-Paw cut it in half. The thing is, high-volume, high-amenity mass transit has no business going 40 miles into an empty area with 8-mile station spacing. The whole thing had been premised on the line connecting St. Cloud to the City, but by cutting it in half the project became a ponzi scheme tied to the growth of mid-density suburbs where there weren't any - and still aren't any.
Commuter rail makes sense when secondary cities provide a lot of traffic into specific primary cities in a dependable work-commute time window - Tacoma to Seattle, San Jose and Silicon Valley to San Francisco (and vice-versa, now), Riverside to Los Angeles, Newark to Manhattan - and where populations are so high that high-volume express lines supplement an already full-built-out metro and highway infrastructure, such as New York, Paris, Toronto, and to some extent, Chicago. We could have had the first scenario, somewhat, if the line went to St. Cloud, but we're nowhere near the second.
Hiawatha carries 32,000 riders daily in exchange for an operating subsidy of only slightly more than Northstar's operating subsidy for 2,000 riders. Notice she never brought up Hiawatha in her piece, because even she knows that Hiawatha is successful. Transit advocates look at Hiawatha and Northstar and say, "we should invest in urban and inner-suburban mass transit and not exurban high-amenity transit" but since her desire is to reduce transit altogether Hiawatha is a distraction.
The right thing to do with Northstar might be to dump in the funding to link it to St. Cloud; or it might be to call it a failed experiment and pack it in. Neither one is too likely - the first sounds wasteful given the line's awful ridership, but the second appears to be squandering the investment already made.
Given that, I think Met Council needs to try one last bold gesture to try and improve ridership. Here's what I propose: (1) an actual urban station that isn't downtown, in Northeast just north of St. Anthony Main, perhaps right against University Avenue. Don't make it a $12 million station, just build the equivalent of a light rail station that's 500' long. It should cost about $3-5 million tops. Reroute all buses that currently go on University and Hennepin in northeast to loop through the station. This drastically expands the destinations that can be reached quickly and effectively by the line, since this connects you much more quickly to all of northeast, to the University, and to the Midway. Nobody would take the Northstar to the U currently, for example. (2) more trips, both during the rush hours and not. Sure, it costs more and they'll run more empty in the short term, but the biggest complaint about commuter rail is that there isn't a train when you need it. So run eight trips in and two or three out in the morning, and eight trips out and two or three in in the evening. We easily have enough rail cars and engines for that, though it will tax the equipment more. Make sure the first ride in is *early* - like 5:30 AM - and the last ride out is *late* - like 8:30 PM or even later. Make it possible to use the line for more types of trips. Run the trains regularly throughout the day on Saturdays and somewhat regularly on Sundays. (3) make the cost of a ticket exactly the same as an express bus for all stops within the transit taxing district, except that rides between Fridley, Northeast, and downtown are regular-bus cost. Stops outside the transit-taxing district have a dollar surcharge.
Run this scheme for two years, at whatever it costs to run it. Collect lots of metrics on ridership patterns, and continuously monitor transfers. If this dramatically improves ridership numbers in two years' time, figure out what made the difference and invest in making it operationally effective: buy the locomotives to properly handle the load, rework stations, negotiate better contracts with the freight railroad, etc. Perhaps experiment with fare rises (though be careful).
If after two years operating with the above scheme it's still missing ridership targets, shut it down and cut the region's losses - sell of the rolling stock and mothball the stations for a time in the future when we can connect it properly to St. Cloud.
This project was effectively killed when T-Paw cut it in half. The thing is, high-volume, high-amenity mass transit has no business going 40 miles into an empty area with 8-mile station spacing. The whole thing had been premised on the line connecting St. Cloud to the City, but by cutting it in half the project became a ponzi scheme tied to the growth of mid-density suburbs where there weren't any - and still aren't any.
Commuter rail makes sense when secondary cities provide a lot of traffic into specific primary cities in a dependable work-commute time window - Tacoma to Seattle, San Jose and Silicon Valley to San Francisco (and vice-versa, now), Riverside to Los Angeles, Newark to Manhattan - and where populations are so high that high-volume express lines supplement an already full-built-out metro and highway infrastructure, such as New York, Paris, Toronto, and to some extent, Chicago. We could have had the first scenario, somewhat, if the line went to St. Cloud, but we're nowhere near the second.
Hiawatha carries 32,000 riders daily in exchange for an operating subsidy of only slightly more than Northstar's operating subsidy for 2,000 riders. Notice she never brought up Hiawatha in her piece, because even she knows that Hiawatha is successful. Transit advocates look at Hiawatha and Northstar and say, "we should invest in urban and inner-suburban mass transit and not exurban high-amenity transit" but since her desire is to reduce transit altogether Hiawatha is a distraction.
The right thing to do with Northstar might be to dump in the funding to link it to St. Cloud; or it might be to call it a failed experiment and pack it in. Neither one is too likely - the first sounds wasteful given the line's awful ridership, but the second appears to be squandering the investment already made.
Given that, I think Met Council needs to try one last bold gesture to try and improve ridership. Here's what I propose: (1) an actual urban station that isn't downtown, in Northeast just north of St. Anthony Main, perhaps right against University Avenue. Don't make it a $12 million station, just build the equivalent of a light rail station that's 500' long. It should cost about $3-5 million tops. Reroute all buses that currently go on University and Hennepin in northeast to loop through the station. This drastically expands the destinations that can be reached quickly and effectively by the line, since this connects you much more quickly to all of northeast, to the University, and to the Midway. Nobody would take the Northstar to the U currently, for example. (2) more trips, both during the rush hours and not. Sure, it costs more and they'll run more empty in the short term, but the biggest complaint about commuter rail is that there isn't a train when you need it. So run eight trips in and two or three out in the morning, and eight trips out and two or three in in the evening. We easily have enough rail cars and engines for that, though it will tax the equipment more. Make sure the first ride in is *early* - like 5:30 AM - and the last ride out is *late* - like 8:30 PM or even later. Make it possible to use the line for more types of trips. Run the trains regularly throughout the day on Saturdays and somewhat regularly on Sundays. (3) make the cost of a ticket exactly the same as an express bus for all stops within the transit taxing district, except that rides between Fridley, Northeast, and downtown are regular-bus cost. Stops outside the transit-taxing district have a dollar surcharge.
Run this scheme for two years, at whatever it costs to run it. Collect lots of metrics on ridership patterns, and continuously monitor transfers. If this dramatically improves ridership numbers in two years' time, figure out what made the difference and invest in making it operationally effective: buy the locomotives to properly handle the load, rework stations, negotiate better contracts with the freight railroad, etc. Perhaps experiment with fare rises (though be careful).
If after two years operating with the above scheme it's still missing ridership targets, shut it down and cut the region's losses - sell of the rolling stock and mothball the stations for a time in the future when we can connect it properly to St. Cloud.