Mayor Reed Wants High Speed Rail to Savannah (Atlanta, Dallas: costs, ticket)

[FlyiMetro]

Originally Posted by RoslynHolcomb

This popped up in my Twitter feed this afternoon. Frankly Reed was such a good surrogate for the president I assumed he was angling for a cabinet position. Apparently he's looking for transportation help. Good on you Mr. Mayor. Presumably those of you with more savvy about trains than myself can explain the up side of a bullet train to Savannah.

Reed Not Joining Obama Administration; Wants Rail To Savannah

This will NEVER happen, not in the State of Good Ole Georgia. It will never happen.

[RoslynHolcomb]

Originally Posted by researchnerd

Exactly. How about commuter rail to Cherokee and Gwinnett that thousands of people would actually use every day?

Unfortunately those people don't want to pay for it, so it's a non starter.

[RoslynHolcomb]

Originally Posted by FlyiMetro

This will NEVER happen, not in the State of Good Ole Georgia. It will never happen.

I'm sure you're right, but politics has been known to make some strange bedfellows. A red state budding on blue with a high unemployment rate. An opportunity to get votes in three regions of a very large state. Certainly I'll be be amazed if Georgia doesn't get a lot of money in the next four years. Much like Pennsylvania got in the previous four. The governor will have to navigate a fine line, of course, but Ichoose to believe he's up to the challenge. He won't be the first southern governor to denounce federal spending in public while lining up to hovel as much of it as possible his way behind closed doors.

[researchnerd]

Originally Posted by RoslynHolcomb

Unfortunately those people don't want to pay for it, so it's a non starter.

The riders would gladly pay the fares. In terms of construction, there needs to be federal, state, and local investment and a successful public/private partnership. It would create thousands of jobs, jumpstart local businesses, and increase tax revenues as well as property values. Many other metro areas can do it...why can't Atlanta?

[AnsleyPark]

Originally Posted by researchnerd

The riders would gladly pay the fares. In terms of construction, there needs to be federal, state, and local investment and a successful public/private partnership. It would create thousands of jobs, jumpstart local businesses, and increase tax revenues as well as property values. Many other metro areas can do it...why can't Atlanta?

Because with a few exceptions, such as Reed, we do not have the political leadership necessary to pull this off.

[RoslynHolcomb]

Originally Posted by researchnerd

The riders would gladly pay the fares. In terms of construction, there needs to be federal, state, and local investment and a successful public/private partnership. It would create thousands of jobs, jumpstart local businesses, and increase tax revenues as well as property values. Many other metro areas can do it...why can't Atlanta?

Because they don't want to. The counties in the metro do not want to cooperate sith Alanta, it's past time for Atlanta to stop acting like the crazy stalker ex-boyfriend and get on sith it. They had a chance, they shot it down on to the next. Sounds like the mayor is interested in achieving the possible, or at least that which wasn't thrown back in his face.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by researchnerd

The riders would gladly pay the fares. In terms of construction, there needs to be federal, state, and local investment and a successful public/private partnership. It would create thousands of jobs, jumpstart local businesses, and increase tax revenues as well as property values. Many other metro areas can do it...why can't Atlanta?

Those counties have to be willing to work together with Atlanta, Fulton, and DeKalb to build this system. Unfortunately Cobb, Cherokee, and Gwinnett want nothing to do with the above referenced counties. Instead they want to run their own half-a$$ transit systems. A metro wide commuter rail system will require all counties involved to work together, either voluntarily or forced by the state. Until those unde the old dome grown the balls to force all these counties to work together nothing will get done about congestion outside of the MARTA paying counties, which will hopefully include Clayton soon.

[gtcorndog]

Originally Posted by researchnerd

The riders would gladly pay the fares. In terms of construction, there needs to be federal, state, and local investment and a successful public/private partnership. It would create thousands of jobs, jumpstart local businesses, and increase tax revenues as well as property values. Many other metro areas can do it...why can't Atlanta?

So lets do some math here. California is going to spend $50 million per mile on their proposed high speed rail project. Using that number as a baseline, lets assume that the cost of construction here is 40% of that of California, we'll say $20 million per mile. I think that is a reasonable and low-end estimate for cost. So, for a line that would be about 250 miles (Atlanta to Macon to Savannah), we come to a cost of about $5 billion.

I think the most optimistic figures on ridership would not be over 1,000 per day, so that would be a high end estimate of 365,000 per year.

Financing a $5 billion project at 5% intrest on the bonds would be an annual debt payment of $250 million.

$250 million / 365,000 riders = $685

In order to reach a breakeven point on the debt to finance this project, each rider would need to generate $685 in fares.

Heck, even if Reed gets his way and his begging for federal scraps is successful and the Feds, pay 40% of the cost to build the line, you are still going to need to generate $410 per rider ignoring the substantial operating costs associated with such a line.


I think these are reasonable numbers and if anything project costs at the low end.



Now lets look at operating costs. Traditional HSR has operating costs of $.40-$.50 per passenger mile. For the purpose of this analysis, I'll say this line is run super efficiently and somehow it is run with $.30 per passenger mile (40% lower than most other HSR systems in the World. How much would it cost to operate this line each year?

365,000*250*.30 = $27+ million per year to operate. I think this number is WAY low given the low end assumptions I've used, but I'll ignore that. The operating costs alone would require at least a $75 contribution from the fare to cover the operating cost.


So...

In total to cover the costs, we'd need somwhere between and $485 and $760 per rider to break even.

What do you think is a reasonable fare that people would pay for this route? I just searched and found a round trip Delta fare for this route at $260. Lets assume people are willing to pay a 25% premium to ride the train (another generous assumption IMO), that means people would be willing to pay $325 for a round trip on this line. That would mean that on every passenger, the rail line would lose (and be subsidized somewhere between $160 and $435 per rider.

Heck, even when you increase the assumed ridership to 1,500 per day (WAY on the high side IMO), the line would still lose between $80 and $240 per rider. That would be the best case, everything goes on the low side of the budget, ridership is way higher than a reasonable person would project situation.

Who still thinks this makes any sense?

The idea that this line will spur business development is stupid since there isn't much business travel between Savannah and Atlanta anyways. You are connecting a major city to a small port city. You are not connecting two business hubs.

Feel free to respond with your analysis... I'll wait.

[tikigod311]

This proposed line to Savannah would be nice in a sandbox, where money doesn't matter.

It essentially is a nice toy, but there is no meaningful justification for the cost.

I hope this is just a distraction and we can concentrate on things like the Beltline and if we just HAVE to do high speed inter city rail... go north towards the Carolinas, maybe Chattanooga.

[RoslynHolcomb]

You do understand this is about politics not feasibility, right? This wouldn't be the first "Bridge to Nowhere" nor would it be the last. It's essentially about what the administration is willing to spend to turn Georgia blue. Most of the metro is already Democratic. Again, you would presumably have a Republican governor, several Congressional delegations and three mayors asking for this. Is it worth $5 billion to turn Georgia blue? Dunno, it might be when you consider the jobs created. Even with low ridership, which I don't think is necessarily a given, it's bound to spur interest in other states. You know how competitive states can be. If Atlanta had HSR can Charlotte and Dallas be far behind? I'm syre the numbers make no sense, but in my experience, they don't have to. I'll be very surprised if a Democratic president isn't willing to spend money for a chance to break the "solid south" once and for all.

Originally Posted by gtcorndog

So lets do some math here. California is going to spend $50 million per mile on their proposed high speed rail project. Using that number as a baseline, lets assume that the cost of construction here is 40% of that of California, we'll say $20 million per mile. I think that is a reasonable and low-end estimate for cost. So, for a line that would be about 250 miles (Atlanta to Macon to Savannah), we come to a cost of about $5 billion.

I think the most optimistic figures on ridership would not be over 1,000 per day, so that would be a high end estimate of 365,000 per year.

Financing a $5 billion project at 5% intrest on the bonds would be an annual debt payment of $250 million.

$250 million / 365,000 riders = $685

In order to reach a breakeven point on the debt to finance this project, each rider would need to generate $685 in fares.

Heck, even if Reed gets his way and his begging for federal scraps is successful and the Feds, pay 40% of the cost to build the line, you are still going to need to generate $410 per rider ignoring the substantial operating costs associated with such a line.


I think these are reasonable numbers and if anything project costs at the low end.



Now lets look at operating costs. Traditional HSR has operating costs of $.40-$.50 per passenger mile. For the purpose of this analysis, I'll say this line is run super efficiently and somehow it is run with $.30 per passenger mile (40% lower than most other HSR systems in the World. How much would it cost to operate this line each year?

365,000*250*.30 = $27+ million per year to operate. I think this number is WAY low given the low end assumptions I've used, but I'll ignore that. The operating costs alone would require at least a $75 contribution from the fare to cover the operating cost.


So...

In total to cover the costs, we'd need somwhere between and $485 and $760 per rider to break even.

What do you think is a reasonable fare that people would pay for this route? I just searched and found a round trip Delta fare for this route at $260. Lets assume people are willing to pay a 25% premium to ride the train (another generous assumption IMO), that means people would be willing to pay $325 for a round trip on this line. That would mean that on every passenger, the rail line would lose (and be subsidized somewhere between $160 and $435 per rider.

Heck, even when you increase the assumed ridership to 1,500 per day (WAY on the high side IMO), the line would still lose between $80 and $240 per rider. That would be the best case, everything goes on the low side of the budget, ridership is way higher than a reasonable person would project situation.

Who still thinks this makes any sense?

The idea that this line will spur business development is stupid since there isn't much business travel between Savannah and Atlanta anyways. You are connecting a major city to a small port city. You are not connecting two business hubs.

Feel free to respond with your analysis... I'll wait.