Posted Apr 6, 2021, 7:51 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Toronto
Posts: 52,200
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Government Accountability Office Issues Status Report on U.S. Commuter Rail
https://www.enotrans.org/article/gao...commuter-rail/
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- Stakeholders told us that commuter rail provides a number of economic and quality-of-life benefits, particularly for communities in less urbanized areas. For example, commuter rail agencies said that several large companies have chosen to locate along commuter rail corridors to draw on the regional labor market, including its less urbanized areas. Stakeholders also said that commuter rail could increase mobility and transportation options, as well as access to employment and essential services for individuals who live in the service area. At the same time, however, officials at commuter rail agencies with whom we spoke pointed to considerable infrastructure and operational costs making commuter rail more expensive to provide compared to some other transit modes. Supporting commuter rail in less urbanized communities may also pose additional funding challenges for these commuter rail agencies and local communities. For example, less populated areas may have difficulty raising the local match required to secure federal funding for a transit project.
Some less predictable findings:
• Right-of-way costs. “officials at some commuter rail agencies we spoke with said right-of-way fees pose financial challenges. With respect to right-of-way fees, commuter rail agencies often operate some or all of their trains as “tenants” on the track of another railroad—such as Amtrak or a freight railroad—known as the “host.” The tenant may pay the host fees to access, dispatch, and maintain the track infrastructure, depending on the arrangement. For example, Metrolink in Southern California pays these types of fees to host freight railroads on 44 percent of its total route miles. Other transit modes do not need to pay to use their right-of-way; for instance, bus systems do not need to pay to drive on public roads. As such, it may be challenging for commuter rail agencies to alter their scheduled service in response to changes in ridership demand, in part due to restrictions in their agreements with other track users.”
• PTC costs. “Officials at three of the 10 commuter rail agencies we spoke with noted that installing and maintaining their PTC systems significantly adds to overall capital and operating costs, potentially affecting the ability to extend the service area. One commuter rail agency official said that, to install PTC by the federal deadline, the agency had delayed other work on the system. The agency estimates that its ongoing annual PTC maintenance costs will be approximately $3-to-$4 million dollars, which could be as high as 14 percent of its annual operating budget.”
• Post-COVID. “In the long term, commuter rail agencies may need to reassess their pre-pandemic service levels. For example, officials at seven of the 10 commuter rail agencies we spoke with said long-term shifts in commuting patterns, such as increased teleworking among former riders, could affect their service long after the immediate effects of the pandemic are over. Accordingly, it is unclear how the economic and quality-of-life benefits commuter rail service provides to riders may change if lower levels of ridership persist.”
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