We Hear the Train a-Comin'

It's now June, and the Red Line's awful performance has pushed urban rail even further into the distant future:

http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000653.html

Still no acknowledgement that M1EK wasn't crazy all this time. Huh.

It's pretty pathetic.

I have lived downtown for the past 8 years and wish the train went anywhere reasonable at all hours (or at least later in the evening) so I'd be able to use it. I understand that wasn't necessarily the purpose in the first place, but even my friends who come downtown to visit/drink/sit at the pool/eat/spend the night can't use the train (and one lives within walking distance of another stop) because of the craptastic schedule. Not really sure who is expected to use the train, except for people who work 9-5 and never want to stay downtown for happy hour(s).

On the other hand, I did see a train the other morning with what appeared to be about 25 people boarding at the Convention Center stop. So what do I know?

Oh, and 25 people at the Convention Center is about what I saw too - that's what's getting the thing in the 800s of boardings/day. That's less than even one express bus load regularly delivers, and they run a lot more of those.

Makes sense- I don't know that it's completely irrelevant to supply transportation to partiers/diners/tourists though; Downtown Austin, for the time being, is still primarily focused on those types of activities and probably always will be. Running the trains in a way that would allow people to come downtown, eat, and get out doesn't seem like a stretch. Right now, you couldn't even use the train to come downtown for something like the Arts Festival that happens annually (ie, something without booze). You'd be stranded and screwed.

wattage, there's tens of thousands of employees down there during the day when traffic is actually bad enough to give the train a natural advantage. At night and on the weekends, your only lever is parking costs; everything else dramatically shifts to favor the automobile.

Again, in other cities with GOOD light rail lines, most of the traffic is commuting workers or students - we're never going to hit even 10,000 boardings per day by running this thing on the nights and weekends; the problem is the route, not the hours.

There's also a public safety benefit as it could take a few drunk drivers off the road.

Wes, again, doesn't help; if the 2000 LRT plan had been passed, it would help, because you could ride the train drunk back to one of the urban stations and then walk home. Nobody (well, hardly nobody) lives within walking distance of one of this piece-of-crap commuter-line's 'stations' or ever will.

The schedule is irrelevant - even very good light rail lines get most of their ridership from commuters, not partiers or tourists. The route is the problem, always has been; the 2000 light rail route would have 20,000 boardings per day even if it only ran during rush hours (more frequently, obviously). You could run a hundred more Red Line trains down those tracks and only get a few dozen more riders per weekday (no point in using it as drunken transport as you'll just have to get in your car on the other end - as you note, nothing within walking distance, unlike many of the 2000 stations).

It's now mid-May; and the peak trains (the ones with the best times) are half-full or less; I myself have observed 2 (TWO!) people getting off a southbound train at MLK at 8:02; the shuttles are empty (to the point where the downtown shuttles are likely to be abandoned completely); and yet, the silence is deafening.

A Train Business Directory shows over 150 locations near the Austin stations, including parks, convenience stores and the Highland Mall. See Austin.LightRailNetwork.com for more information.

I also THINK that it will be filled to capacity soon. It does serve a small population, relative to the size of Austin, but there are still many people who live in Leander who work downtown. I grew up in Leander, and at one point rode the express route to go to school downtown (this was ~10 years ago with a much smaller pop. in Leander). In the early mornings there were lines of buses pulling out every 5 or 10 minutes filled up. On the flip side, now I live downtown and work in Leander for UT, and I hope to make use of this route assuming it works with my schedule.

Granted, I'm only going on my experience, but I hope it does get much use by this minority so that newer, better and more useful routes like you mention are successfully implemented. As far as the 2000 number, who knows, you would like to think someone at Capital Metro looked at such demographic statistics, but I doubt they did. So, for what it's worth, I can sympathize with your cynicism, but I hope you're wrong for the sake of Austin's future transit systems.

There have never been buses pulling out every 5 minutes - there's a handful of trips leaving Leander every morning (a couple of them are 5 minutes apart; but then there's long periods with no departures).

I didn't mean to imply that they left every five minutes for the entire day , like I said, this was early in the morning, and also this was ten years ago, I would assume there are more people commuting from Leander to Austin now based on the population growth in that area.

In response to your other comment, I'm not arguing that there are not better routes that could have been developed. I agree that it is a serious omission to not have the route go through the center of town (Lamar) and limits the ridership. I'm just saying in my experience from 10 years ago, there were a lot of riders commuting in the morning from Leander, and I hope this proves to be successful so we can get routes that we both agree would be more useful and efficient.

I'll add, that riding the Leander express routes has never been anything but more pleasant than driving, which makes me wonder why they thought put the train on that route. I wish there were a train route which matched the #1 routes. That is a serious headache for many reasons and in my opinion much worse than sitting in traffic in my own car.

The 2000 light rail route would have run on the Red Line route to Lamar/Airport, then switched to the #1 route.

Now, thanks to the Red Line, we can never get that slam-dunk 40,000 riders-per-day service going. The city's urban rail proposal is a poor second compared to what could have been (what would have been in any city without Mike Krusee to screw things up for us).

And no, you can't get there from here.

I'm not criticizing the Red Line, but if you're right and the Leander station fills each train with commuters, what's going to happen to the people at all the other stations trying to get downtown? One of the scaling challenges I'm sure has been discussed by the planners. Just wondering how it'll be addressed.

Seth

Well, when I say they were filled up, I don't mean literally standing room only, they had the presence of mind to have just enough buses to there would be enough seats for the passengers coming on later on the line. There were (and still are) buses the go straight from Leander to downtown, and buses that went only from some of the other northern stations to downtown. I don't know how they could make the train that flexible.

I agree it's an issue, and there are many others. I'm not the Red Line's biggest fan, but I hope it works out, and I bet at minimum it ends up being a mediocre success.

I added a link to you, to what I think is a valid point that this line covers a lot of miles, but serves a very small number of people. My hope is that the urban rail plan will do what you advocate - serve the highest possible number of people with the shortest amount of track (which I think means starting with a line between UT and downtown).

However, I do think the Red Line will fill its small capacity. There are a half-dozen large office buildings on Congress between 6th and Cesar Chavez that are close enough, even if they are a bit outside the 0.25 limit. Plus, there are several hotels and restaurants even closer and I would expect some people that work there to be able to take the train.

Thanks.

As for the hotel/restaurant workers; one of the most effective narratives against some rail starts regarded commonly as failures is that they only carried people who used to take the bus. Hotel/restaurant workers already do that in large numbers; and it's unlikely most of them (or any of those currently driving) live in areas served by this commuter rail line anyways.

The key here is that existing express bus service departs from those very same two far suburban park-and-rides (neither one of which serves Austin residents in non-trivial fashion) and beats the train for almost every possible commute. If many people keep riding this after the novelty wears off, it will be a sad indictment of people's inability to read their watches (or of Cap Metro's ability to cancel express bus service without getting caught).

I guess I don't know enough about the issues to understand why it is such an indicator of failure if people are taken off bus routes in favor of trains. Is it more expensive to maintain than the buses themselves. Also, I'd argue that at rush hour, it takes longer than 50 minutes (last I checked a few months ago this was the approximate travel time) to go from Leander to Downtown. It takes 30 minutes with no traffic.

nausea, investing a couple hundred million bucks in capital dollars for a service that doesn't attract anybody who wasn't previously willing to ride the express bus is a waste of money.

If you're new here, consider that we had a proposal on the table in 2000 (forced early to the polls by Round Rock's Mike Krusee) that narrowly lost - that would have delivered something like 40,000 riders/day. Would have served the same suburban park-and-rides, but ALSO run through the actual urban part of the city - you know, where people actually want to go, and where some Austin residents could actually use it without having to drive to a park-and-ride. Like what Houston did; Portland; Dallas; Salt Lake; Denver; Minneapolis; Seattle.

And the biggest danger with this thing isn't the delay - it's that it now makes it impossible for us to build the slam-dunk 46,000 people-per-day 2000 light rail route. The city's urban rail proposal is better than nothing, and much better than the Red Line, but it doesn't hold a candle to the 2000 proposal - and is moot anyways; since people will see the empty trains (or express-bus-cancelling shenanigans) and decide, incorrectly, that "rail doesn't work".

Finally, no link after all this time? Ow, my feelings.

Don't forget who some of the big opponents were of the 2000 rail plan. "Costs Too Much! Does Too Little!" signs were in the windows at Gueros and Uncommon Objects on South Congress.

Seth

You really think there's 2000 people working within .25 miles of the Convention Center who also live close enough to one of the big suburban park-and-rides to make the ride make sense?

Really?