Rail dysfunction

The New York Times explains the dysfunction of infrastructure consenting and delivery in California. 

The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex. SNCF, the French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system.

The company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF.‌

The company‌ ‌pulled out in 2011.

“There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”

Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018.

Politicians decided to route the thing to meet political constraints rather than engineering constraints. Then they decided to start building it in the middle, where there were no people, so you couldn't build one leg and build out from a working section.  

You can't outsource your way out of that kind of problem. You can ask experts who are skilled in delivery to come in and help, but if you make it impossible, it just won't work. 

In New Zealand's case, contracting in expert rail builders wouldn't be enough. You'd have to outsource the entire consenting and planning structure around it at the same time. 

Meanwhile, NZ's Rail and Maritime Transport Union says it's impossible for KiwiRail ever to be profitable. 

Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) general secretary Wayne Butson said it was “nuts” that KiwiRail was an SOE.  “If you have a look at the SOE Act, it’s very clear: it has to be an entity that’s able to make a profit. KiwiRail is not going to make a profit, not in my lifetime – and probably never, I would speculate.” 

If rail can't pay its way, it should be shutting down unprofitable services. But the roading network should also have to pay its own way, including a return on capital.

Train sets

There's one good thing we can say about Labour's $100m light rail plan for Christchurch: at least it isn't a $1b light rail plan. Otherwise, it's not so hot. 

I'm blogging from Hong Kong, where I'm attending the Mont Pelerin Society's meetings and greatly enjoying their fantastic rail service. Commuter rail and an extensive and efficient bus network are pretty critical to this place's working: there's no way this many people could move around without it. The city is dense and compact. Christchurch is, well, the opposite of that.

Liberty Scott provides a few bullet points on Labour's current plan:

• Christchurch last had the remnant of a local rail service in 1976 when a once daily, yes once daily, service between Rangiora and Christchurch was scrapped because of lack of patronage.  The last regular service (as in all day service like in Wellington) was between Lyttelton and Christchurch, which ended when the road tunnel was opened in 1972 (the rail service only had an advantage over driving over the Port Hills).  Before that, other services were discontinued during the 1960s as bus services proved more cost effective and car ownership rose.  Christchurch's population grew by over 50% in the period between the end of these services and the earthquake.

• It won't unclog Christchurch's roads.  The Press report says Labour intends the system to accommodate 10% of commuters from the north to central Christchurch.  Phil Twyford says there are 5000 - yes 5000 commuters making this trip (10,000 trips), so it is $100 million for 500 commuters.  That comes to $200,000 per commuter, before any operating subsidies are considered.  In other words, the price of a Porsche 911 for each commuter.  Taking about 400 cars off of Christchurch's roads every morning isn't going to "unclog" them,  it hardly makes a difference.

• However, what it might do is encourage more people to live further away from the surrounding suburbs closer to the city, because it subsidises living well outside Christchurch.  That's hardly conducive to reducing congestion, nor environmentally sustainable.  It would be far more preferable to focus on finishing renewing the local road network including marking out cycle lanes, than to incentivise living well out of the city.

• A commuter rail service to central Christchurch can't even go there, as the station is 4km from Cathedral Square, in Addington.

• The $100 million is to double track the line to Rangiora, and rebuild some railways stations, but not a new central station (which can't be anymore "central" than the old one on Moorhouse Avenue), nor new trains, although the ex. Auckland ones could be relocated, if a depot could be built, and sidings to put them on.

• The rail service would replace commercially viable and some subsidised bus services, but politicians don't find buses sexy.

• The service would lose money, a 1000 trip a day railway service is a joke.  Proper commuter trains in major cities carry that number on one train.  

• If there really is demand for more public transport from the northern suburbs, it could come from commercial bus service.  Clearways could be used for bus lanes and the hard shoulder of the existing and future extended Northern Motorway could be used for peak bus lanes too, if needed.  Trains only make sense if buses are incapable of handling the volumes of demand, and that clearly isn't the case.

• Christchurch was the first major city in NZ to scrap trams, because the grid pattern street network and low density of the city meant there were few major transport corridors to support high density public transport systems, like trams (and commuter rail).  It was also the first of the big four cities to scrap commuter rail altogether (even Dunedin had commuter rail services until 1982 to Mosgiel).   In short, the geography of Christchurch is as poorly suited to commuter rail as it is well suited to cycling.

Liberty goes on further - read the whole post.

I disagree with him a bit though. He should have used a Tesla S as alternative, not a Porsche. The numbers work out about the same, and the Tesla is electric.

Back when Mayor Parker was proposing train sets, the cost was higher. I'd then written:

The draft city plan has a $400 million rail line connecting downtown to the University campus. It's unclear that there's sufficient demand to justify such investment, but there might be on the City's creation of a proposed new international precinct downtown where international students would be invited to live. Those students currently live within walking distance of campus in a vibrant international hub at Church Corner and Riccarton where I can find great Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean food; Korean butchers and grocers; a Japanese bakery; and, all kinds of other diverse amenities (Korean and Chinese churches, etc). To the extent that the city is successful in moving all the students downtown, from where they'd need public transport to get to University, and so would need the $400 million dollar (more than $3k per household) rail line (or a far far cheaper designated busway), it would be by destroying an existing international hub.

Let's work through some numbers on rail. Suppose that the $400 million is financed through a 25 year bond issue paying 8%. For an annuity paying 8% to have a present value of $400 million over 25 years (in other words, for folks to be willing to give the City $400 million today in exchange for bonds), the annual payment has to be $37.47 million. The building costs alone for the rail line are then $103k per day for the next 25 years. And, suppose further that we're willing to subsidize each rail rider by $10 per ride. We'd then need 10,000 people riding the train every day just to cover the capital cost where we're willing to pay $10 per person per ride. By way of comparison, RedBus, which services most of Christchurch, carries 5.8 million passengers per year - an average then of just under 16,000 passengers per day. If a single rail line from downtown to the University carried as much traffic as the entire RedBus network, the effective per-passenger capital cost subsidy would be $6.50. If the train were running on a cost recovery basis, it would need to charge $6.50 per trip plus running and maintenance costs. If it covered only running and maintenance costs, the government would be kicking in $6.50 per trip. If it carried as much traffic as the entire RedBus network.

I was pulling punches there a little as I had the distinct impression that the University really kinda wanted that rail line and wouldn't appreciate staff saying otherwise; I was likely just paranoid.

When February's quakes hit, the bus routes changed quickly: the main depot was knocked out, so they ran temporary bus exchanges on Bealey Street and elsewhere. Road closures for repairs meant frequent re-routings. You can't do that with trains.

I also note that Labour's plan suggests some cost-sharing with Christchurch Council. Christchurch Council has no money for cost-sharing arrangements.

Previously:

• Light rail cautionary tales.
• Light rail disease

Light Rail - cautionary tales

I'd reckoned that if Christchurch City Council spent $400 million on a light rail line connecting campus to downtown, they'd need 10,000 people riding that line every day at $10 per person to cover just the capital costs if we use Treasury's recommended 8% discount rate on infrastructure expenditures; if Council's able to fund it somehow at 4%, you need 7,000 daily riders at $10 each to cover the infrastructure cost. The RedBus network carries 5.8 million passengers per year, or 16,000 per day. The draft plan suggested this route as the starting point for a larger rail system.

The December update to Council's planning documents says they'll be examining the feasibility of the  larger network. See page 110 here.

At a broadly estimated system construction and rolling stock purchase cost of around $1.5 to $1.8 billion at today’s prices (excluding ongoing operating and maintenance costs) for a staged, comprehensive city-wide network of five key routes linked to and through the Central City, a decision to initiate this project will be fundamental for the Council and equally importantly for Greater Christchurch.

Today's cautionary tale comes from Norfolk, Virginia.  They've a population of just under 250,000 for the city proper, but a total metro population of 1.6 million if we count the greater Hampton Roads area.

They put in a 7.4 mile starter light rail line for $320 million, or about NZ$400m - roughly comparable to what Council here wanted to spend on a slightly shorter line between downtown and the University. Norfolk's line, The Tide, has now been running for 6 months. They're getting an average of 4,642 riders on weekdays; they're forecasting it'll hit 7,200 daily riders within three years. They're claiming success against expectations of 2900 daily riders, but AntiPlanner puts paid to those claims; the initial projections said they'd get 10,400 riders on weekdays. And they're only charging $1.50 per adult trip. [HT: 36chambers]

Norfolk's Tide system connects a big medical centre complex, an art museum, the entertainment and commercial district, the courts, baseball stadium, Norfolk State University, and a couple of stations with park and ride facilities for mixed commuters in a metro region of 1.6 million people. It's a line roughly comparable to the Downtown to University line Council initially proposed as the start of a light rail network for Christchurch, but in a metro region that's more than four times bigger than Christchurch. And it's only forecast in three years' time to start getting the kinds of daily ridership numbers that might have a Christchurch line covering its capital costs (ignoring operating and maintenance costs).

Here's AntiPlanner on Norfolk:

Needless to say, the Norfolk line also suffered a huge cost overrun, costing about $320 million instead of the $198 million that had been predicted in 2003. It was supposed to open in 2008; instead, it opened in 2011. These problems cost the transit agency head, Norfolk city manager, and several other officials their jobs.

So it is no surprise that the current transit agency head wants people to think the light-rail line is a success. Thanks to credulous reporters whose idea of investigative journalism is to reprint transit agency press releases, many members of the public will soon forget about these cost overruns and ridership shortfalls. But it is interesting to compare the Norfolk numbers with Houston, which also has a 7.4-mile light-rail line. Only Houston’s carried more than 35,000 riders a weekday in 2010, or more than seven times the ridership of the Norfolk line. In its first year of operation, Houston’s carried more than 34,000 riders per weekday.

Or compare Norfolk with the Buffalo light rail, which is almost synonymous with “failure” partly because Buffalo’s total transit ridership–bus and light-rail together–declined from 36 million trips per year just before the light rail opened to 26 million trips per year by 2001, and ridership has hovered around that number ever since. Although it is only 6.2-miles long, the Buffalo line carried 21,500 riders per weekday in 2010, well over four times as many as Norfolk’s.

The real question is: if Hampton Roads Transit ever really thought that its light-rail line would only carry 2,900 riders per weekday in its opening year, why did they build it? 

And recall that where Norfolk's in a metro area of 1.6 million, Houston is 2.1 million for the city proper and a metro region of close to 6 million. Buffalo's greater metro population is also over a million.

I'd be putting money on a Christchurch light rail system being a worse debacle than the Dunedin stadium, but I hope I'm wrong.

Light-rail disease

Christchurch isn't the only victim...

Forget AIDS or SARS, there’s a new billion-dollar contagion popping up across the country. Symptoms include visions of grandeur, severe loss of reality and a propensity to enact massive tax hikes. It’s called LRTS: Light-rail transit syndrome.

And while the surest cure for this new ailment is a large application of public input and a quick dose of common sense, the antidote appears in extreme short supply.

Patient zero in the current Canadian outbreak of LRTS is southwestern Ontario’s Region of Waterloo, a high-tech hub as home to BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion and the University of Waterloo. The diagnosis was confirmed this June when the region, population 500,000, approved an $818-million light rail transit project.

Light rail transit is beloved by bureaucrats and planners for its sleek and modern look that provides the aura of a big-city amenity. Those susceptible to LRTS claim it can transform modest cities into booming metropolises by instantly boosting transit usage, curbing congestion, spurring rapid downtown development and attracting young mobile workers of the Richard Florida ilk.

But like any fixed-track mass-transit system, light rail is best suited to moving high volumes of commuters to and from dense downtown employment cores, as is the case in Calgary. It requires specific densities and geographies to work effectively and even large cities such as Baltimore and Buffalo have struggled with light rail. And it’s expensive.

...

For anyone wondering about palliative care for terminal cases of LRTS, consider an earlier outbreak on the other side of the Atlantic:

Edinburgh, Scotland, population 490,000 was infected by LRTS a few years before Waterloo Region. Its $870-million light-rail transit project was also presented to local taxpayers as the means by which their city would boldly march into the future. And it would be free — paid for by higher levels of government.

Today three-quarters of the budget has been spent but less than a third of the infrastructure is in place. With cost overruns entirely the responsibility of local taxpayers, this summer Edinburgh city council (after rejecting calls for a referendum) debated tearing up the whole thing and forgetting it ever happened. In the end they decided to shorten the route substantially. And they still need to come up with $438 million.

Don’t let Light Rail Transit Syndrome happen to you.

Christchurch light rail fans may wish to read the whole thing.....

The same disclaimer applies to this post as applied to my prior post on light rail.