Two pieces of New Hampshire transportation usage data came out over the weekend.
First, Amtrak’s Downeaster, the passenger trains that run between Boston and Brunswick, Maine, (not Bangor, as I initially said) with several stops in the Seacoast area, is doing quite well, perhaps better than any passenger line in the country. The Portland Press-Herald notes that the route set a new passenger record in 2019. Story is here.
(The Downeaster still faces the Boston problem, however – lack of a rail link between North Station, where it arrives, and South Station, where southbound and westbound trains leave. I doubt that this will ever be bridged. )
At the same time comes news that the passenger count at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport has fallen for the 14th year in a row. (U-L story here.)
Flight-shaming climate activists shouldn’t get too excited, however. Manchester airport still had 1.73 million passenger trips; the Downeaster had 574,000.
It’s not that people are flying less, it’s just that airlines are pushing them to use big airports. As I noted back in May (full story here), “In 2004, Boston’s Logan Airport carried about six times as many passengers as Manchester. Last year, it carried 21 times as many passengers as Manchester.”
Return to the Concord Monitor
Let’s put this in perspective. According to FTA, the Downeaster has a service area population of 1,431,087. (https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2017/10115.pdf)
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimates the average American takes about 1,500 trips per year. (https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-household-travel-survey-daily-travel-quick-facts)
So the total number of trips taken by persons in the Downeaster’s service area is about 2.15 billion.
You can add this to your comparison: The ratio of Downeaster trips to MHT trips to all trips is roughly 1 to 3 to 3,745.
In the overall transportation landscape, the Downeaster amounts to decimal dust. It’s less than insignificant…indistinguishable from zero. If it wasn’t for press releases putting lipstick on this pig, nobody would even know it exists.
One more thing: the Downeaster doesn’t go to Bangor (yet). It stops in Brunswick, which attracts less than 100 one way passengers a day getting on and off 10 one way trains a day, for an average of less than 10 passengers per train. But, I digress.
The Downeaster is subsidized to the tune of over $10 million a year by the Federal Government and the State of Maine. It’s been running for nearly 20 years. It shows no signs of breaking even, much less running at a profit. How could it be termed “successful” if taxpayers have had to pump a quarter billion into it to build it and keep it afloat? Also, what’s the big secret with the station pairings? Shouldn’t taxpayers, who are keeping the shebang alive, be able to see how many train riders are traveling from and to the various stations on the route?
How much are highways and roads subsidized? They are not covered by gas tax – the federal Highway Fund gets billion-dollars bailouts every now and then. And how about all that “free” parking requirement that drives up per-square-foot costs of buildings in all our cities and towns. And what about airports – they’re wicked subsidized! … there’s something about trains in the U.S. that a set of people think should be handled differently than other transportation systems, which is odd.
David, let’s put that myth to sleep, too.
The last time the USDOT did a subsidy study, drivers were paying more to the Government than they were getting back. The report (link below) says, “Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs….” That was 16 years ago and things have changed. In 2006, the Congress “bailed out” (as you say) the highway account with a general fund transfer that amounted to pennies per passenger-mile.
On the other hand, the same report says, “Passenger rail received the largest subsidy per thousand passenger-miles, averaging $186.35 per thousand passenger-miles….”. Again, not much has changed, except that the Obama administration dumped billions into passenger rail and NH has put both feet on the slippery slope called “commuter rail”.
Since 1983, the government has been skimming 15.5 percent of the gas and diesel tax and depositing it into the Mass Transit Account. Between 1983 and 2014, $123.3 billion was diverted. The diversion is now up to $5.0-$5.5 billion a year.
Between 1983 and 2014, $56.7 billion was pumped into the Highway Account from the General Fund. So, you can see that, had it not been for diversions from highway gas taxes to mass transit, the highway account would have been some $60 billion better off in 2014.
Highway budgets were doing just fine before 1983, when President Reagan (uncharacteristically) caved in to the transit lobby and started the irreversible drain of highway user funds to support trains and buses.
It may or may not surprise you to learn that there is no transit tax…there is no train tax. Train and bus passengers pay zero taxes into any state or federal tax fund. Those passengers don’t even pay enough in fares to cover the operational expenses, let alone capital expenses.
In NH, $21.9 million in state highway revenue was diverted to pay for transit in 2017. Zero NH transit dollars and zero NH general fund dollars were transferred to pay for highways.
Sorry, David, but there is simply nothing to support your assertion that roads and highways are not covered by the gas tax.
I, for one, would be thrilled if trains were financed in the same way as highways: i. e., user funded.
https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/legacy/publications/federal_subsidies_to_passenger_transportation/pdf/entire.pdf
Table FE-201 – Highway Statistics 2014 – Policy | Federal Highway Administration
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2017/pdf/sdf.pdf
Highways and roads are not “subsidized,” any more than public safety (police, fire/EMT) are. We PAY for them as a basic expense of civic life and commerce necessary to live it.
We need roads to get groceries, go to the doctor, go to school, sell and buy our goods, and every other aspect of our daily lives Without roads and highways, human live in a civilized setting would be impossible.
Without passenger rail, everything is possible still, as demonstrated by the near total disappearance of passenger rail during the mid-20th century.
Other options came into being which the traveling public preferred.
You don’t subsidize my vehicles, and you don’t subsidize my roads and highways. We ALL pay for them because we ALL use them. As pointed out above, a miniscule minority of our population uses passenger rail, and in almost all cases, they have other viable options.
Mr. Stone, you can get individual station ridership from Amtrak’s “State Fact Sheets” here: https://www.amtrak.com/state-fact-sheets
But, you’re right. Pair data seems to be a closely guarded secret.
Remember that each 1-way trip includes one boarding and one alighting. Each passenger is counted twice, once getting on and once getting off.
Mr. Brooks:
Highways and roads are not “subsidized,” any more than public safety (police, fire/EMT) are. We PAY for them as a basic expense of civic life and commerce necessary to live it.
We need roads to get groceries, go to the doctor, go to school, sell and buy our goods, and every other aspect of our daily lives Without roads and highways, human live in a civilized setting would be impossible.
Without passenger rail, everything is possible still, as demonstrated by the near total disappearance of passenger rail during the mid-20th century.
Other options came into being which the traveling public preferred.
You don’t subsidize my vehicles, and you don’t subsidize my roads and highways. We ALL pay for them because we ALL use them. As pointed out above, a miniscule minority of our population uses passenger rail, and in almost all cases, they have other viable options.
Why does this question require “moderation?”
all comments on this blog require moderation – sometimes it takes me a day or two to get to it
When the Downeaster folks speak of 500,000 riders, I divide the ridership by 2 to approximate actual souls riding the rails. The theory is that, for instance, a rider leaving Boston and traveling to Portland will likely return to Boston in the same way they traveled from Boston. Not perfect, but close enough.
Here’s another little pocket calculator exercise you can try. Divide the number of annual train passengers by 365 then compare the number of daily train riders to the number of people on the Maine Turnpike—1,572.
Turns out, 1,572 passengers pass over the Maine/NH state line, on I-95 alone, once every 33 minutes.
On average, each of those train passengers cost taxpayers a net of almost $23 while each driver on the Maine Turnpike pays between $6.45 and $7.00. In NH, each driver pays between $1.40 and $2.00.