First Ride on the Tide

[Anderson]

I finally got to ride The Tide over in Norfolk this evening. That line has the misfortune to go nowhere useful to me as a rule...with one exception, namely Harbor Park (where I usually get dragged to once or twice a year for a game of Golf With Defense, as my mother would often call it). There's really nowhere else on the line of interest to me with the possible exception of the MacArthur Mall, and even that holds little interest for me. Thoughts are as follows:

-The cost of a round trip/day pass is $3. Compare with $5 parking for the baseball games and you can tell who wins if I'm on my own...which was why I picked the train, honestly (well, that...being able to pay with a credit card, and getting to ride this route for the first time) It was doubly apparent that this was working well for them...the last trains into the stadium were pretty packed (3/4 of seats taken and a decent number of standees). Outbound (I got bored halfway through the game...it was eminently forgettable, and there was a goofy show or contest between every half-inning that seemed to be there more to waste time than anything), the train was a lot emptier.

-The cars are nice as well...basically garden-variety light rail stuff, but it made for a nice ride.

-While the trainsets are basically two-car articulated sets, the stations seem set up so that they could handle a three or four car train with just a little bit of added concrete (as opposed to requiring an engineering nightmare to pull off), so it seems that there's some allowance for capacity growth if need be.

-On the technical side, it seems that part of the reason the cost was as much as it was came down to having to stick in some messy bridges...and my gut says that in the long run, we're likely to have to add bridges in other places if the system expands. You can only have so many "every ten minutes" disruptions in street traffic flow before a problem develops. When it's side/cross streets, this isn't an issue, but I can see a problem developing on (for example) Ballentine Road. In downtown, I see this as less of an issue, but the further out you get, the harder of a sell those disruptions are going to get to be with some streets.

-One of the big winners with the system is the 15-minute frequencies for most of the day. HRT's buses often only run every 30 minutes to one hour (at least on the Peninsula), and the greater frequency /does/ make a difference. At 15 minutes, as long as the train gets me where I'm going and I can hope to find a parking space, I'll take it. At 30 minutes or so, a lot of convenience factors start weighing in (weather, parking at my destination, etc.), and at an hour...forget it, I'll just drive. The main suggestion I would make for HRT would be to extend a few more trains out "all the way" on game nights.

-The system is in sore, sore need of expansion. At the very least, an extension to Virginia Beach Town Center seems in order, and a line extension up to ODU/Norfolk Naval base wouldn't be out of place, either. Adding separate lines elsewhere is a bit more of a toss-up, but the biggest drawback in the system is the lack of places that you can take it. I'll repeat the Naval Base option simply because of the traffic...situation surrounding I-564.

--Yes, I want more of this. LOTS more.

-Finally, driving through downtown Norfolk was a bit...chronologically disorienting. I was on my way to Doumar's after the game, and there's some street running. You have /no/ idea how strange it felt to see catenary above and tracks in the street in Downtown Norfolk, especially when there haven't been streetcars on that side of the water in over 60 years. Add in the fact that I was going to a vintage drive-in burger place and...well, the moment felt very displaced.

--Building on this, Norfolk should give serious consideration to removing vehicular traffic (at least during certain hours) from one or two of the two-lane streets in downtown that don't have many/any storefronts on them and instead give them over to rail-only running. They don't seem to do much but muck up flow on the other streets (lots of stoplights and stop signs)...and if Norfolk would focus on some straighter runs, they could probably speed up the trains a little bit in downtown (rather than having to take every single corner they come to, which it certainly feels like they currently do). My instinct here would be to straighten some of this out if a second line goes in, though...just use some of the segments for the different lines.

 

[Anderson]

Chewing over what I've seen/heard lately on the line:

-I hope that Virginia Beach gets on board with at least extending things to the oceanfront. Especially with a city-owned RoW that runs by the big development at Virginia Beach Town Center (and an "excepted" railroad crossing to boot), it seems a shame not to take advantage of things.

-Likewise, on the Norfolk side of things, I'm not sure about what to do with getting the line up to ODU/Norfolk Naval Base. The biggest problem is that you're either going to have to rip up a lot of concrete on the way or you're going to have to do something to allow the rail line to keep a decent speed going (I'm thinking 35-40 MPH top speeds here, with an effort to maintain 25 MPH where possible). Downtown is already mired in curves and slow running...hopefully, Norfolk will be able to sort out a more straightened alignment (be it just running up Granby St., Montecello Ave., or Hampton Blvd.).

-However, there's a problem: It seems entirely possible that if the line were extended, then peak traffic on the trains might outstrip the current fleet's capacity. As it is, the 5000+ fares/day that are being marked up on weekdays

--And let's not even talk parking. The VRE is running into this sort of problem as well: People don't want to do a bus-train-bus transfer (and the buses in Hampton Roads aren't terribly convenient, either), so you're probably going to need lots of parking to make things work. Hopefully, some stations in Virginia Beach will reduce the load on the existing lots.

Next, a bit of back-of-the-envelope math:

-$6.2 million/year in operating costs seems to be the projection

-Assuming a $3 ticket, and assuming 260 weekdays per year (I'm simply ignoring weekends to ease the math for a moment), you need ridership to be at about 7950/weekday to pay operating costs. Per WAVY TV (the local NBC affiliate), the average numbers were a bit over 5000/weekday (5056 in September), equating to 63.6% operating cost recovery.

-Assuming that $3 ticket but factoring in weekends (with more days but less riders per day; I'm entering 360 days instead of 365 to write off a few holidays), you need 5740 riders/day to cover operating costs. The 4870/day that the line has been managing cover 84.8% of operating costs...which suggests that if you can get a decent network expansion in place, you might at least be able to pay for operations out-of-pocket.

Finally, I'm suddenly wondering if running an extension of the line into Portsmouth/Chesapeake (with plans to terminate in Suffolk in the long run) wouldn't be a more sensible option than the tunnel mess they're dealing with right now.

 

[AlanB]

Next, a bit of back-of-the-envelope math:

-$6.2 million/year in operating costs seems to be the projection

-Assuming a $3 ticket, and assuming 260 weekdays per year (I'm simply ignoring weekends to ease the math for a moment), you need ridership to be at about 7950/weekday to pay operating costs. Per WAVY TV (the local NBC affiliate), the average numbers were a bit over 5000/weekday (5056 in September), equating to 63.6% operating cost recovery.

-Assuming that $3 ticket but factoring in weekends (with more days but less riders per day; I'm entering 360 days instead of 365 to write off a few holidays), you need 5740 riders/day to cover operating costs. The 4870/day that the line has been managing cover 84.8% of operating costs...which suggests that if you can get a decent network expansion in place, you might at least be able to pay for operations out-of-pocket.

Your back of the envelope numbers are way off, sorry!

On average in the US in 2010, LRT only covered 28.14% of its operating costs; the best systems manage in the mid to high 30's. The best performing rail, outside of Amtrak, is heavy rail (subways & El's), which come in at 62.26%; the best are maybe in the 70's.

And the preliminary and unaudited numbers for The Tide, and I stress preliminary, are far worse than the national averages. In Nov 2011, The Tide saw a farebox recovery of 15.4%; Dec 2011 saw 16.3%. For reasons that are unclear, things took a huge nose dive in January with a farebox recovery of 7.7%. I haven't looked to see if HRT has posted more recent numbers. However, in defense of The Tide, it is not uncommon for low farebox recovery rates during the first year, even the first two years, of a new LRT system in a city that has never had LRT. It also doesn't help that the line is so short.

 

[Anderson]

Next, a bit of back-of-the-envelope math:

-$6.2 million/year in operating costs seems to be the projection

-Assuming a $3 ticket, and assuming 260 weekdays per year (I'm simply ignoring weekends to ease the math for a moment), you need ridership to be at about 7950/weekday to pay operating costs. Per WAVY TV (the local NBC affiliate), the average numbers were a bit over 5000/weekday (5056 in September), equating to 63.6% operating cost recovery.

-Assuming that $3 ticket but factoring in weekends (with more days but less riders per day; I'm entering 360 days instead of 365 to write off a few holidays), you need 5740 riders/day to cover operating costs. The 4870/day that the line has been managing cover 84.8% of operating costs...which suggests that if you can get a decent network expansion in place, you might at least be able to pay for operations out-of-pocket.

Your back of the envelope numbers are way off, sorry!

On average in the US in 2010, LRT only covered 28.14% of its operating costs; the best systems manage in the mid to high 30's. The best performing rail, outside of Amtrak, is heavy rail (subways & El's), which come in at 62.26%; the best are maybe in the 70's.

And the preliminary and unaudited numbers for The Tide, and I stress preliminary, are far worse than the national averages. In Nov 2011, The Tide saw a farebox recovery of 15.4%; Dec 2011 saw 16.3%. For reasons that are unclear, things took a huge nose dive in January with a farebox recovery of 7.7%. I haven't looked to see if HRT has posted more recent numbers. However, in defense of The Tide, it is not uncommon for low farebox recovery rates during the first year, even the first two years, of a new LRT system in a city that has never had LRT. It also doesn't help that the line is so short.

Alan,

That's fine. I was trying to work up the revenue numbers off of the listed operating costs that I saw and go from there. However, it strikes me that there may be two sets of numbers (i.e. the $6.2m/year operating cost clearly doesn't include debt service, and may be short in some other ways as well). I also see where I made an error (I'm thinking rides vs. riders, and I don't know how they handle round trip calculations).

As to January's numbers, I pulled the figures for December and January (I used the Operating Financial Summary Reports for both)...something caused the Light Rail cost to go from $582,219 to $1,212,988. So the CR numbers are down because something went "wrong" on the expense side, not the revenue side.

Also, something seems a bit off on the revenue side...for January, Light Rail shows revenue of $93,042 on 113,840 rides ($.817/ride), which feels a bit on the low side (and is substantially below December's $.996/ride). I'm guessing that the riders vs. rides issue comes up again, though I don't know how they'd calculate rides given the number of daypass/multi-ride things in the mix. Probably also at issue: I have no idea how "system tickets" get allocated, since there aren't any ticket readers at the stations to say if someone boarded a bus and then took it to a train. Interline revenue allocation is a total mystery here.

Looking to a larger system (say, extending to Virginia Beach and/or ODU), a part of me would strongly hope for some sort of zone system to come into play like what you see in effect in places like DC...even if the difference was $.50 or $1 for a day pass that was "all access" (and you just "clipped" the price of a shorter fewer-zone ticket to the current price). I'm saying this because $3-4 is fine for a round trip into downtown Norfolk, but it just feels a bit too low for a round trip from the Oceanfront to downtown Norfolk (or ODU to the beach).

Finally, ridership is intriguing: In spite of the line only going over one (rather short) route, The Tide is generating close to 1/5 of Norfolk's transit traffic (and about 8% of the system total). Almost all of the rest is bus traffic, but considering the nominal size of the bus network, I think this is rather telling. Moreover, if those revised multi-year projections pan out (and I suspect they will), even without expansion you're going to have more traffic on The Tide than you get on the buses in many parts of the system.

This also raises a very deep question: How much ridership would you get if you started pulling buses and replacing them with various rail-type lines (either light rail or commuter rail of some sort), even over similar routings?