TRB Commuter Rail Subcommittee

[MARC Rider]

I busted my tail getting down to Washington in the "blizzard" in order to attend the TRB meeting, and one of my favorite things is to attend the committee subcommittee meetings. Here's some stuff from the Commuter Rail Subcommittee.

https://trbap0654.blogspot.com/

Here's a PowerPoint deck from the presentation from last week (Jan. 7). Aside from the usual bureaucratic boilerplate, there's some good data on ridership recovery from the Covid pandemic.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jO3WGlWGs2QE_RCmlF8ruzMUK7ADuYei/edit#slide=id.p1

Overall, ridership has recovered to about 75% of pre-pandemic. Looks like MBTA is actually exceeding 2019 ridership levels, while poor old MARC is lagging behind in the rear. (That's for what they call the "legacy" systems, the "New Start",post 1980s, systems aren't doing as well.) Maybe this will change if the new president orders Federal employees back into the office. The consensus seems to be that "commuter" rail is going to have to transition to "regional" rail with all-day service and attention paid to other travelers besides people who have to go downtown for their jobs (although those sorts of people aren't going away.)

 

[Willbridge]

I busted my tail getting down to Washington in the "blizzard" in order to attend the TRB meeting, and one of my favorite things is to attend the committee subcommittee meetings. Here's some stuff from the Commuter Rail Subcommittee.

https://trbap0654.blogspot.com/

Here's a PowerPoint deck from the presentation from last week (Jan. 7). Aside from the usual bureaucratic boilerplate, there's some good data on ridership recovery from the Covid pandemic.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jO3WGlWGs2QE_RCmlF8ruzMUK7ADuYei/edit#slide=id.p1

Overall, ridership has recovered to about 75% of pre-pandemic. Looks like MBTA is actually exceeding 2019 ridership levels, while poor old MARC is lagging behind in the rear. (That's for what they call the "legacy" systems, the "New Start",post 1980s, systems aren't doing as well.) Maybe this will change if the new president orders Federal employees back into the office. The consensus seems to be that "commuter" rail is going to have to transition to "regional" rail with all-day service and attention paid to other travelers besides people who have to go downtown for their jobs (although those sorts of people aren't going away.)

A puzzle - RTD (DEN) isn't shown in the New Starts graph but is listed in the page 19 "all-electric" category. We know that the RTD A, B, G, and N-Lines are regulated by the FRA and they certainly are new enough. (The N-Line grand opening was a masked affair during the pandemic.)

2023 ridership figures for RTD show system down 38 % from 2019, not surprising given that downtown has taken such a big hit and that feeder bus headways on many lines are running (or canceled) on pandemic schedules. All four commuter rail lines crept upwards in 2023 compared to 2022.