Following up on a short twitter conversation (not really; just more of the same from the usual suspects) last night. From folks who have been attending the JMVC school of leading questions, disappointingly. Here you go.
The city’s urban rail plan will never be built out without some participation from Capital Metro, and by participation, I mean money. We need some of their local dollars to get this done, in other words. McCracken knew this back in 2008. Don’t know why the city’s pretending it’s not true now, but you can see they don’t really believe it, given the undertones in Ben Wear’s latest Statesman article where the plan has basically retreated into a Red Line circulator (awesome – circulate the same 1500 boardings/day we have now – hooray – the same people who, remember, have turned up their noses at transfers so much that Capital Metro is cancelling almost all of their rail shuttles).
How much “urban rail” can you buy for $200 million ?
Not very much, according to City of Austin figures, and certainly not enough to make a success of what might be the area’s sophomore foray into rail transit. With that and other considerations in mind, Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell and city transportation officials now say substantial federal transit funding almost surely will be needed for urban rail’s first segment.
That would be a change from what city officials had said over the past couple of years: Austin would probably build a first piece of rail with roughly $200 million from voter-approved bonds and whatever else it could raise through other local means, and then use primarily federal funds years later for outlying sections of the proposed 16.5-mile , double-tracked system. But local money alone would pay for little more than a downtown circuit comparable to the Dillo bus lines that stopped running two years ago for lack of riders.
[...]
“Of course, it would be helpful if it went some place initially, but we may not have the money to do that,” Leffingwell said. “That someplace may be where the Red Line is going right now.”
So it’s clear the city doesn’t REALLY believe they have enough money to get this done. And if they think the Feds are going to kick in the rest, we are presented with the next problem: Capital Metro is also going to seek Federal funding to buy more cars and/or double-track more sections of the Red Line.
The chance the Feds would fund two major rail projects in an area with our characteristics (population, transit patronage, ridership potential)?
Zero.
So in direct response to this question from @jacedeloney:
@mdahmus @MPTMike @downtownatx Do you have information that shows that Urban Rail funding depends on current MetroRail dollars?
Yes. The fact is that the city doesn’t have enough money; Capital Metro is the only other possible local source; and they’re already spending more on the Red Line than originally planned (first, on higher operating subsidies, then on even higher operating costs to run all-day service; note that even this weekend’s spectacular performance was still a net money-loser for the agency!). So some of their ‘current’ spending is absolutely essential. I don’t know how far back we can pare the Red Line from what it is right now, but it clearly would have to be pared back some if CM was to contribute ANYTHING to urban rail.
So there you have it, tweeters. No, it’s not ‘data’. It’s just the opinion of the only guy who was willing to go out on a limb way back in 2004 and has been right all along up to this point. Take it or leave it, but no more homework assignments, please.
