(1) Every time I see a "FONSI" I keep expecting Henry Winkler to stomp his foot and turn on a jukebox.
(2) 3,470,800 is the projected 2019 ridership in the base case. That is
not far off of what I recall us eyeballing the projections they had to be making as some time ago. Of interest is that the Orlando-South Florida market (1,526,300) only comes in at about 44% of the total. The intra-South Florida market's ridership (1,944,500) puts about 170 passengers on your "average" train, assuming 16x daily trains in each direction. I don't know if this is quite enough to justify the service within South Florida entirely on its own, but I suspect there's a case for eating some losses here in the first few years to cultivate the market. Adding the additional 130 passengers/train going between Orlando and South Florida puts you at close to 300/train...which should be more than enough for the train to pay for itself and then some (this level of ridership is, for example, consistent with the Lynchburger).
(3) More fun with data in the "Ridership and Revenue Study Summary" (which makes no mention of revenue in the summary):
https://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/Details/L15932
-The "Business Plan Case", covering some marketing efforts and, more importantly, taking into account connectivity effects in South Florida. This adds about a half-million long-distance riders as well as a small bump for ridership within South Florida. Total ridership here comes to 4,013,000 (2,010,900 short-distance and 2,002,100 long-distance).
-The "Management Case", which takes into account a bunch of stuff that AAF's management is looking at doing; to quote the study (emphasis mine):
The Business Plan Case does not include the impact of certain strategies that are commonly employed by management of similar consumer-oriented rail operating companies and that could potentially further increase ridership and/or revenue such as (i) revenue yield management strategies; (ii) frequent rider loyalty programs; (iii) block ticket agreements with resorts and educational institutions; and (iv) plans for further local transit connections not known at the time of preparation of the Business Plan Case forecast....
Management Case estimates are presented herein to illustrate AAF management’s expectation for the operation of passenger service.
These numbers came to 2,671,556 short-distance; 2,434,300 long-distance; 5,105,856 total. That would put average per-train ridership at 208 LD, 229 SD, and therefore about 437 total. Obviously there's some turnover implied, but assuming 400-ish seats per train (an average ridership that high borders on impossible).
--Also of interest is that post-ramp-up, ridership is expected to keep growing in line with the market. This makes sense (and the rates make sense as well), though the 2030 ridership projection under the Business Case scenario comes in at 5.45m/yr (which translates back down into 467/train). Kicking this growth over to the Management Case spits out
just under seven million riders per year (6.95m, to be exact), or almost 600 riders per train (at which point I think we can safely say "this is impossible under proposed service levels).
The way I read this, AAF is expecting to need to grab additional equipment down the line in some form (either running longer trains or more trains). Per the EIS, a 20% increase in frequency (i.e. 3 extra trains per day for the first iteration, for 19; 4 for the second, for 23; 4 for the third iteration, for 27; 5 for the fourth iteration, for 32) would likely trigger a 5.4% bump in ridership. Iterating this out, 23 trains/day yields 7.72m/yr (or 460/train) while 32/day yields 8.58m (or 367/train).
I draw out 23/day (as a proxy for 24/day) and 32/day because those zoom in on AAF's demands for Tri-Rail service planning. Following the logic of the Management Case (and to a lesser extent the Business Case), by 2030 AAF very much does not expect to be able to accommodate demand on 16x daily trains. 24x daily hits an assumption that some of the additional trains would be planned either to run up to Jacksonville and/or serve additional destinations along the coast or would accommodate demand from a Tampa extension. 32x daily just assumes that all of the added trains get thrown in to deal with traffic on the existing corridor.
Anyhow, I'm done for now...but the studies shed a
lot of light on some of the behind-the-scenes aspects we'd been seeing. Then again, a lot of this isn't telling us anything new...it's just spelling out what a lot of us already twigged.
