# New Mexico Railrunner



## birdy (Jan 20, 2009)

The New Mexico Railrunner is meant to be a commuter rail line from Albuquerque, to the state capitol city of Santa Fe, sixty miles to the North. They don't bother to run the train on Sundays, so tourists are out of luck if they want to go home on a Sunday. Van service may readily be arranged from your hotel a day in advance, however, for about $25 one way. The Railrunner is $6 for a day pass. I presume they charge another dollar for the airport shuttle. When I took the 11:30 train from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, I brought my gps to get an accurate reading on speed.

The train which was a consist of a locomotive and four cars including a CMU, was full both ways, as the free rail travel was still available to Santa Fe residents with ID. The train reached very briefly a maximum speed of 83 mph, but it was clear that the engineer strived to maintain a speed in the high seventies. The train descended 2,000 feet from the 6900 foot state capitol to downtown

Albuquerque, 2000 feet over the course of the trip, and pulled into the downtown new Alvarado transit station, three minutes early at 1:00 p.m. Alvarado is named after the Fred Harvey era Alvarado Hotel, which was torn down in 1970. Much like Penn Station in NYC, the Duke City residents never got over the demolition of the old Alvarado. The new station is tastefully designed to resemble the old station.

The Alvarado station is an exceptionally well sorted transportation hub. Its quite easy to step onto a bus that will take you almost anywhere you want to go in the city, including the airport, 3 air miles away, per my gps. The terminal is shared with Amtrak and Greyhound. A free downtown shuttle is also offered. The connection to the airport is evidently very solid, and the Railrunner has already established a firm niche as the preferred way to get to the airport. I highly recommend that tourists schedule their flights to use the Railrunner. I elected to take the Rapid Ride express bus to the University neighborhood which is east on Central avenue. By 1:15, I was seated at a restaurant. The connection was that good. Around the Alvarado station are all the amenities of downtown, with a neighborhood that is half-way chi-chi and halfway threatening, not unlike a funky beach neighborhood. For Californians, think Ocean Beach, in San Diego. For out of state tourists with limited time or who are in a hurry to get to Santa Fe, I recommend the Atomic museum in Old Town, which should really be called the Atomic Bomb museum.

The Railrunner line would show the inquisitive traveler more about my poor state than a week in Santa Fe.

The traveler leaving from Alvarado heading north on the 4:15, would look out the right side and see the highly underrated Sandia mountains to the east of Albuquerque, a really impressive and exquisite mountain, particularly in the late afternoon sunlight. But the view would quickly give way to trailer parks and shack-like houses, and backyards with junked cars, a lot of them. Reminding us that for all its beauty, this is a state of great privation. The view then changes to horses along the bosque of the Rio Grande. Nice horses, too. Affluence and horse country. Then once again, the view turns to the Indian Pueblos, Santa Ana, San Felipe and Santo Domingo. With Santa Ana seeming to be the least traditional, and San Felipe and Santo Domingo more so. Here there is also poverty, but the the scene is mixed with hornos (outdoor adobe bread ovens) and ancient mission churches. The Pueblos are as poverty stricken as the trailer parks further south, but the Pueblos have their history, their attachment to the land and their families, and it shows from the train. Its hard for me to accept that our government would steal from the trust accounts from such impoverished people, but its true.

Descansos, the New Mexican tradition of building religious shrines at the site of the accidental death of a loved one can be seen, too often at the railroad crossings. Another passenger told me that he saw sandhill cranes here, but I didn't see them. Further up the line, I see a long abandoned strip shopping center, that was built decades ago. It has a faded but garish sign that reads: "see real Indians" There is no paved road in front of the building. In fact, its nowhere near a road. I surmise that it was a tourist trap on Route 66 before they routed it away from Santa Fe in 1937. The train pulls smartly up the La Bajada hill, really an escarfment, at 60 MPH. We wait for a few minutes on a siding for the Southbound train, and pull into town, with the snow-capped Sangre de Cristo mountains in the far distant north, and the Jemez mountains to our left.

This is the best possible way for a tourist to get a warts and all view of New Mexico, and the cheapest and best way to get to Santa Fe from the airport. The typical tourist might consider taking the train to Santa Fe in the afternoon, and then getting a rent-a-car to the hotel (try Enterprise) the next morning in Santa Fe, saving a days' rental on the car. A particularly unambitious tourist might forego a rental car and spend a pleasant weekend strolling around Santa Fe, with an undignified van ride back to Albuquerque on Sunday. The schedule of the Railrunner is a little thin, so consult the train schedule before making airplane reservations.

From a transportation standpoint, the striking thing about the new line is that it is so marginal compared to other potential rail projects, and yet so wildly successful. We have a lot of rail to lay in this country.


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## Ispolkom (Jan 20, 2009)

Thanks for the great, detailed report!


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## abqdave (Jan 20, 2009)

I tried to take the Rail Runner on the first Saturday it opened on December 20 (just before my LD Amtrak Trip to DC). It was so crowded I couldn't even get on the train. Now, even after the free period (first 3 weekends) is over, it is still so crowded it is standing room only http://kob.com/article/stories/s752378.shtml

The Rail Runner was originally expected to be a Monday - Friday commuter line with Saturday service just during the Summer and special events. That seems to be the default thinking for all new commuter rail and city transit service. I think it is safe to say everyone has underestimated the desire of people to have an alternative to driving.


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## birdy (Jan 23, 2009)

abqdave said:


> I tried to take the Rail Runner on the first Saturday it opened on December 20 (just before my LD Amtrak Trip to DC). It was so crowded I couldn't even get on the train. Now, even after the free period (first 3 weekends) is over, it is still so crowded it is standing room only http://kob.com/article/stories/s752378.shtml
> The Rail Runner was originally expected to be a Monday - Friday commuter line with Saturday service just during the Summer and special events. That seems to be the default thinking for all new commuter rail and city transit service. I think it is safe to say everyone has underestimated the desire of people to have an alternative to driving.


I know I did. The comfort factor of a full-size train is alluring to an aging population sick of the mindless commute. The next thing is Sunday service. Its being mightily resisted by state employees who work the train, but its a little ridiculous to have a $400 million transportation edifice sit idle on Sunday with some lame excuse that that is the time to "work on the tracks." I checked. A 9:00 a.m. Sunday train would very nicely evacuate the town of the weekend tourists and dovetail very well with Southwest Airlines schedule to Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix and LA. as well as US Air's flight to Houston. I expect a considerable number of locals would find that train attractive as well. Once the tourists figure out that they can fly into Duke City and bop over to Santa Fe on a long weekend without having to spring for a rent-a-car, that will cause a boomlet in tourism. Lots of tourists never leave the downtown area, especially for short trips.

After that, expansion of the system to Las Vegas, New Mexico 40 miles to the NE of Santa Fe, where the state already has rights to use the track. (I hear it described as the state "owning" the tracks, but it may only be an easement). This time I hope they improve the tracks to 100 MPH standard, allowing comfortable travel at 90 MPH. This would turn Las Vegas into a fairly prosperous bedroom community for Santa Fe, and possibly even Albuquerque. Of course, the population of El Dorado, (Lamy) 25 miles away, which is already a bedroom community for Santa Fe would utilize the service as pre-Railrunner experiments have already shown.


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## wayman (Jan 23, 2009)

birdy said:


> After that, expansion of the system to Las Vegas, New Mexico 40 miles to the NE of Santa Fe, where the state already has rights to use the track. (I hear it described as the state "owning" the tracks, but it may only be an easement).


It's full ownership. When NM negotiated to buy the ABQ-Santa Fe trackage, one condition of sale was that they had to buy the track all the way to the state line, all or nothing. BNSF just wanted to get rid of it, since they barely use it for freight any longer (if at all) so they were essentially maintaining it solely for Amtrak's Southwest Chief. Selling it entirely removed that burden from BNSF.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jan 23, 2009)

wayman said:


> birdy said:
> 
> 
> > After that, expansion of the system to Las Vegas, New Mexico 40 miles to the NE of Santa Fe, where the state already has rights to use the track. (I hear it described as the state "owning" the tracks, but it may only be an easement).
> ...


wayman, I'm not sure your statement by itself is evidence that the entire ROW is outright owned. My understanding is that railroads sometimes have easements rather than outright ownership of parts of their ROW.

That said, I certainly don't doubt that BNSF is not going to take action to limit the number of passenger trains that can travel over that track.

(I also thought BNSF retained the rights for telecom cables along this route.)


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jan 23, 2009)

birdy said:


> The next thing is Sunday service. Its being mightily resisted by state employees who work the train, but its a little ridiculous to have a $400 million transportation edifice sit idle on Sunday with some lame excuse that that is the time to "work on the tracks."


The MBTA is pretty fond of that work on the tracks excuse too, but they mostly seem to get away with it in conjunction with explaining why the trains stop running somewhere vaguely around midnight and don't start up again until somewhere vaguely around 6 AM. They do also occasionally bustitute on weekends if they need to do major track work.


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## printman2000 (Jan 25, 2009)

I received some information a few months back from someone in New Mexico. I got this info through a contact at TXARP.



> It is true that NM Governor Bill Richardson has purchased the rail rights, not the rail, from Albuquerque to Raton, thus preventing Amtrak from having the rights over that section of the rail. Amtrak is still running their passenger line, because they were there first. However, once NM starts running the Rail Runner on that line, it will very much so alter the schedules of Amtrak trains as well as BNSF. Neither Amtrak or BNSF is pleased with this, but they were paid enough by NM. BNSF still owns the rail and will have to maintain the rail. NM did purchase the rail, in fact built it with contract company Twin Mountain Construction, from 17 miles south of Santa Fe to Downtown Santa Fe itself. This rail is only for the Rail Runner, for Amtrak, you will still have to go Lamy, NM for the time being.


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## abqdave (Jan 26, 2009)

For those of you who have taken the Southwest Chief through ABQ, you know it always uses track 1 (closest to the station). Train #3 to L.A. is scheduled to arrive at 3:55pm and depart at 4:45pm. Sometimes it is late and is in the yard at the same time as the Rail Runner north- and south-bound trains, which always use tracks 1 and 2. They are both usually in the yard at about 5:15pm. At this part of the yard there are (IIRC) 6 tracks. There is no platform, it is flat.

The Rail Runner always seems to use track #2 for the north-bound train and #1 for the south-bound. Since there is a chance the Southwest Chief train might be sitting there and delay the south-bound Rail Runner, any guesses as to why they wouldn't schedule it the other way around? Or, if the SW Chief is there, why not just switch for that time? Or use tracks 2 and 3?


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## gswager (Jan 27, 2009)

What about the fuel truck?

Rail Runner has platform, but is for ADA section (wheelchair) at ABQ platform, number 1.


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