Comments on: Why Buy More Trains if You Can’t Afford to Run Them?

By: Henry James

Henry James — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:22:50 +0000

Using federal money for operating costs is an incredibly bad idea. The entire transit system is capital starved — blowing the money on operating will only result in one time rescues at the cost of long term benefit. We need to be honest and look hard at transit operating costs, which, unfortunately, people on the left are terrified to do. They would find that transit workers may make about the same hourly wage as their peers in the private sector, but have far richer benefits, much more restrictive and costly work rules, and generous retirement benefits. How can any transit advocates endorse wage packages of $50 to $100 per hour for unionized transit operators when the people they carry make minimum wage? It is no wonder that we can’t get voter support for more transit taxes with these compensation packages.

By: bikerider

bikerider — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:16:58 +0000

Go ahead and flame, but Tri-Rail has always had its share of problems. $47 million annual budget for a mere 14k trips (i.e. 7k round trips) is very poor cost/benefit, even for a sprawly location like Florida. The antiquated Amtrak-style train shown in the photo is a big part of the problem — extremely expensive to operate in terms of fuel and crew requirements, and not at all appropriate for this type of service. If they do purchase new trains, hopefully they can at least do a full fleet replacement with modern trainsets that have much lower operating costs.

By: mikesonn

mikesonn — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:43:55 +0000

BART has me wondering the same thing…