Passenger rail expansion in Maine

Data don't lie: At its current 3mm passenger-miles/month rate (and assuming that about 50% of those PMs are generated with Maine passengers and 50% of passengers travel as couples), the Downeaster has reduced traffic on the Maine Turnpike by about one percent. Not exactly a congestion reducer (oh, by the way... at that passenger count, the train averages less than 60 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel - buses get 150-250 PMG. In other words, when comparing the Downeaster fuel performance to bus service, think Hummer vs Prius! but I digress...

Back to the "congestion" issue. Even if the train was able to double it's impact in reducing car trips POR-ROCKLAND, it ain't gonna make a dent in any of coastal Route 1's perceived congestion issues. PS - Average daily car count through Thomaston on Rt 1: 9,300. Spreading that daily rate over just a 12 hr period per day would yield an average a car every 9 seconds or so in each direction. Not exactly gridlock. MDOT categorizes seasonal traffic volume fluctuations on RT 1 in Thomaston, Rockland, etc. as moderate.

Cowford wrote:MDOT categorizes seasonal traffic volume fluctuations on RT 1 in Thomaston, Rockland, etc. as moderate.

I'd love to know what the numbers for Route 1 in Wiscasset are. I've sat in bumper-to-bumper, nobody's-going-anywhere traffic in Wiscasset enough times to know that I'd definitely rather take the train if given the option.

407, you've got a point that Wiscasset is a lot higher... nearly double that of RT 1 in Thomaston. Here's the link.

http://www.maine.gov/mdot/traffic-count ... incoln.pdf

Still doubtful that the train would make a dent. It's not like you don't need a car once you're up there.

Cowford wrote:407, you've got a point that Wiscasset is a lot higher... nearly double that of RT 1 in Thomaston. Here's the link.

http://www.maine.gov/mdot/traffic-count ... incoln.pdf

Still doubtful that the train would make a dent. It's not like you don't need a car once you're up there.

Thomaston is east of Rt 90, which most people who understand the region use to bypass Rockland. Looking at the data, the numbers list 18,000 cars going into Wiscassett from the west, and the number drops to 12,000 cars in Waldoboro to the east. Assuming they could get 100-200 people per day, that would only be 50-100 cars off the road. Not very significant. The only way to reduce traffic significantly would to offer service every 15 minutes or so from Rockland, which would not be very cost-effective.

Cowford wrote:Data don't lie: At its current 3mm passenger-miles/month rate (and assuming that about 50% of those PMs are generated with Maine passengers and 50% of passengers travel as couples), the Downeaster has reduced traffic on the Maine Turnpike by about one percent. Not exactly a congestion reducer (oh, by the way... at that passenger count, the train averages less than 60 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel - buses get 150-250 PMG. In other words, when comparing the Downeaster fuel performance to bus service, think Hummer vs Prius! but I digress...

Back to the "congestion" issue. Even if the train was able to double it's impact in reducing car trips POR-ROCKLAND, it ain't gonna make a dent in any of coastal Route 1's perceived congestion issues. PS - Average daily car count through Thomaston on Rt 1: 9,300. Spreading that daily rate over just a 12 hr period per day would yield an average a car every 9 seconds or so in each direction. Not exactly gridlock. MDOT categorizes seasonal traffic volume fluctuations on RT 1 in Thomaston, Rockland, etc. as moderate.

Well that is true, but I mean the turnpike goes from Kittery to Augusta. Trains dont go to Augusta. what would be the point in taking a train to Portland, then to get a car to Augusta? You'd just drive you own car. Do you see what I'm saying? If a train went ALL the way to the destination, then the turnpike would see reductions in traffic. I think that if a Portland - Rockland train was established it would reduce traffic on route 1. But who knows, you can only see what happens if such a service existed.

Data don't lie: At its current 3mm passenger-miles/month rate (and assuming that about 50% of those PMs are generated with Maine passengers and 50% of passengers travel as couples), the Downeaster has reduced traffic on the Maine Turnpike by about one percent. Not exactly a congestion reducer (oh, by the way... at that passenger count, the train averages less than 60 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel - buses get 150-250 PMG. In other words, when comparing the Downeaster fuel performance to bus service, think Hummer vs Prius! Sad but I digress...

As a wise man once said: The data doesn't lie, it exaggerates. That 150-250 PMG figure for buses seems like it could be a product of most buses going express (or close to it) from beginning to end point-- most if not all Concord Trailways buses, for instance, doesn't stop between Portland and Boston. That's a sure way to boost your PMG.

Back to the "congestion" issue. Even if the train was able to double it's impact in reducing car trips POR-ROCKLAND, it ain't gonna make a dent in any of coastal Route 1's perceived congestion issues. PS - Average daily car count through Thomaston on Rt 1: 9,300. Spreading that daily rate over just a 12 hr period per day would yield an average a car every 9 seconds or so in each direction. Not exactly gridlock. MDOT categorizes seasonal traffic volume fluctuations on RT 1 in Thomaston, Rockland, etc. as moderate.

To me it's both a land use and a congestion issue. Cars promote sprawl, and greater Portland has some of the worst sprawl in the nation. One solution (and by no means the only one, and admittedly probably not even the most efficient one) is to get them onto trains and by extension, start planning development around rail or other forms of public transportation.

Again, I can't emphasize enough the disastrous turn Maine has taken in terms of inefficient land use. The environmental degradation is already staggering, not to mention the changes in quality of life. Maine is much more like the rest of the country than it has ever been before, and it's unchecked suburbanization has a lot to do with that. Curbing automobile use is one way to fight that. Certainly there's a worthy debate to be had about the different ways we want to fight sprawl and how much we want to spend doing it. To me the environmental (not economic) efficiencies of steel wheels on steel rails make a lot of sense.

On congestion: As a baseline concept, just so I'm clear about where I'm coming from conceptually, I think that good regional planning should anticipate growth and all the problems that it brings, not respond to it (OK, it should do both, but what I'm saying is that building new rail lines, roads, etc as a sort band-aid response to congestion that's already there is a sure way to chaos)...

Cowford, much like the PMG figure, I think that 1% reduction of congestion on the Turnpike figure is a canard. First, we shouldn't expect a train to reduce highway use, at least in the short term, because highway use virtually never diminishes. To use an imprecise economics metaphor, its demand is inelastic (and yes, for all you nitpicking economists out there, I know that it's price that's supposed to be inelastic, not demand...it's a metaphor ). We can, however, expect a train to slow the rate of traffic growth. Indeed, this is exactly what's happened, albeit modestly, on the Maine turnpike. I'm not an economist or a planner, so I can't say that the correlation equals causation, but it is suggestive.

And that statistical uncertainty is the real difficulty in the cars vs. buses vs. trains argument. Mass transit's success is measured not by reductions in traffic that already exists, but by reductions in traffic that doesn't exist yet. I don't know of any easy ways to measure that.

The data doesn't lie, it exaggerates

I actually tried to be conservative... where is the exaggeration? Let me demonstrate- and I'll skew it even more in favor of rail by assuming that ALL passengers took the train its entire route. Here are the stats:

Downeaster: ave 3mm pass-miles per mo; 5 230-mile RTs per day (34,500 miles per 30-day mo); fuel consumption 1.5gal per mi, or 51,750 gal per mo. 3mm/51,750= 58 pass-miles per gallon of fuel consumed.

Bus: Total rail passengers in September - 36,500 (or 18,250 each way). Typical bus seating cap'y - 46. Typical load factor (% of seats filled): 70%, or 32 passengers per trip. Given that, ~19 RTs per day (or 567 RTs per month) would be required. (130,410 miles per 30-day mo). Fuel consumption 5 miles per gallon, or 26,082 gal per mo (transit buses get 3-4 mpg; commuter and long-distance buses get 5-6 mpg.). 3mm/26,082= 115 pass-miles per gallon of fuel consumed.

So, intentional exaggeration in favor of rail makes buses about twice as energy efficient. Take out the intentional skewing and the figure will rise to my previous estimate or being three to four times as efficient.

And here's the scary part: If you had bought a bunch of Camrys, hired drivers and ferried all those people between Boston and Portand three-at-a-time, the total fuel consumed each month would be less than the train!

The problem is that despite proclamations to the contrary, the trains are averaging well under 50% capacity for much of each journey. Downeaster passenger-mileage would have to triple or even quadruple (without additional train starts) for rail to approach the fuel efficiency of buses... and even the most rabid advocates at TrainRiders Northeast wouldn't predict such fantastic volume increases.

I actually tried to be conservative... where is the exaggeration? Let me demonstrate- and I'll skew it even more in favor of rail by assuming that ALL passengers took the train its entire route. Here are the stats:

Downeaster: ave 3mm pass-miles per mo; 5 230-mile RTs per day (34,500 miles per 30-day mo); fuel consumption 1.5gal per mi, or 51,750 gal per mo. 3mm/51,750= 58 pass-miles per gallon of fuel consumed.

Bus: Total rail passengers in September - 36,500 (or 18,250 each way). Typical bus seating cap'y - 46. Typical load factor (% of seats filled): 70%, or 32 passengers per trip. Given that, ~19 RTs per day (or 567 RTs per month) would be required. (130,410 miles per 30-day mo). Fuel consumption 5 miles per gallon, or 26,082 gal per mo (transit buses get 3-4 mpg; commuter and long-distance buses get 5-6 mpg.). 3mm/26,082= 115 pass-miles per gallon of fuel consumed.

So, intentional exaggeration in favor of rail makes buses about twice as energy efficient. Take out the intentional skewing and the figure will rise to my previous estimate or being three to four times as efficient.

And here's the scary part: If you had bought a bunch of Camrys, hired drivers and ferried all those people between Boston and Portand three-at-a-time, the total fuel consumed each month would be less than the train!

The problem is that despite proclamations to the contrary, the trains are averaging well under 50% capacity for much of each journey. Downeaster passenger-mileage would have to triple or even quadruple (without additional train starts) for rail to approach the fuel efficiency of buses... and even the most rabid advocates at TrainRiders Northeast wouldn't predict such fantastic volume increases.

Sorry, I was imprecise when I used the word exaggerate. I didn't mean to say that your figures comparing PMGs on the train and the bus were flawed. I meant to say that I don't think the comparison is terribly apt, and that the figure exaggerates the bus' efficiency because, as you say, the train is only half full. This isn't a problem of inefficiency, it's a problem of unrealized potential.

As a corollary to what I said in my previous post (that good transportation planning doesn't just respond to demand, it anticipates it), I'll also say-- what is sure to be an unpopular opinion-- that good transportation policy should seek to maximize efficiencies for the common good (interpret "common good" as you will). To me that means adjusting the monetary cost of automobile travel upward so it reflects it's impact. For example, the Maine turnpike is funded with toll revenue, but it also negatively impacts the roads of towns it passes through (because of additional traffic it generates), increasing municipal road maintenance costs. It allows people to live farther away from where they work, necessitating municipal expansion in the form of roads, utilities and public safety, etc. We may argue over who should bear these costs, but there is no question they are present. In my opinion they ought to be born by drivers-- how? I wouldn't say, but higher tolls, gasoline taxes, or congestion taxes are ideas that are out there.

So, Cowford, while I don't doubt the veracity of your number crunching, I do wonder why it's meaningful in this discussion. It seems to say two things we knew already: A full bus is more fuel efficient than an empty train and that more people are taking buses and cars than are taking trains. OK. Does it mean that fuel efficiency should be the primary referendum on the efficacy of mass transit?

It's situations like this one that remind me not to put all my faith in a single metric-- costs and efficiencies are spread over an array of activities and it's hard to capture them in a single stat. But again, as a disclaimer I'll say that I'm coming into this with the opinion that the passenger car today has an overwhelmingly negative impact on our environment and our culture and that steps should be taken to reduce our dependence on it. To paraphrase Robert Kennedy, we should be looking at our transportation system-- and rail in particular because it is so underutilized as a mode of moving people-- not just as it is, but as it could be.

Midnight, I think we can agree on at least two points: (1) modal choices should be based on a multiplicity of factors; (2) one of those factors should be demand potential. My issue is that I haven't seen any evidence that Por-Bos rail service will EVER see the demand needed to compare favorably to bus... on virtually ANY metric. Cost efficiency - Bus wins; Fuel efficiency - Bus wins; schedule and destination flexibility - Bus wins; Traffic reduction: Rail wins... to the tune of 19 bus trips/day.

You stated that "...good transportation policy should seek to maximize efficiencies for the common good..." I agree. So modal choices should be used to optimize their relative merits. Buses shine in low-medium density, short-medium distance markets. They are flexible, cheap, efficient, and require little to no additional infrastructure. Trains are inflexible, expensive, and require massive dedicated plants. They shine in high-density, short-medium distance markets, but falter when density is low (due to scale inefficiencies) and/or distance is great (due to relative efficiency of air travel). Por-Bos, from my perspective at least, falls in the "buses are the best option" category.

And the train always wins for passenger comfort. We're not talking about hauling freight here.

One thing over the years and probably more so in New England than in
other areas and that is that a lot of people who use the train will not use
the bus if the train is not available. They will simply drive.
Item in point, in 1966 when the Boston and Maine caused the end of
passenger service through Vermont, the bus company which was and still
is Vermont Transit thought their business would substantially increase as
a result but it did not. I stumbled across this in one of the Vermont
newspapers during a ski trip during the winter of 1967 but I did not save
the item.
It would not surprise me one bit that the same thing would happen if the
trains between Boston and Portland were to come off. A good number of
train riders would simply resort to driving their cars between Portland and
the Boston area. The commuters in New Hampshire would probably drive
to a "T" station in Massachusetts and use a commuter train in this case.
I think it is very reasonable to think that a lot of the rail passengers would
not take the bus out of Portland.
Noel Weaver

Anecdotal observation: Yesterday I rode the Downeaster RT Boston - Durham to catch UNH - SLU hockey game at the Whit. The noon departure from BON was < 50% full and we only picked up a few passengers at Andersen RTC and Haverhill stops. The 4:06pm sb departure from Durham also had lots of empty seats and the cafe car had very few patrons.

Both trips ran OT. Lots of new signals and turnouts appear to be ready to cut-in (CTC?) north of Andover. Saw 1 wb PAR freight at Rockingham on the way to Durham and two wbs at Rockingham and Haverhill on the way south plus switching at Lawrence yard. What's the get-well story on the Merrimack River bridge? The trains run so slowly over the bridge that one might think the bridge could collapse.

I had to depart the hockey game at 5 minutes into the 3rd period when the score was 3-3. When the DE arrived, I was texted by a fan that UNH was up 5-3. As we passed Rockingham, it was 5-5. But Before we hit Exeter, it was 6-5 SLU, which was the final score. Oh well...

A good number of train riders would simply resort to driving their cars between Portland and the Boston area.

That's probably a valid point, Noel. But there actually could be made an argument that a substantial portion of the Maine rail riders are completely incremental, i.e., they wouldn't have traveled AT ALL - by car or bus, had the train not been there. And how can you argue for public subsidy of that class of people? I mean, that's kinda hard to justify the state of Maine paying for a train that provides Maine residents the ability to more easily EXPORT their discretionary income out of Maine and to the Boston area. Amazing! It's pretty safe to assume that more Mainers go to Boston on the train than Flatlanders taking the train to visit Portland... so a "trade imbalance" certainly exists.

What's also strange is that the bus patronage hasn't seemed to have diminished from pre-Downeaster days. As best I can figure, Concord Trailways still has 60%+ greater market share than ATK between Portland-Bos... due in part to the train's 30% RT fare premium and inconvenient Logan access? (And think of it, if the RT fare was increased just to cover operating costs, it would exceed $100!)

There are ways to incent people onto buses through innovative services, better seating arrangements, etc. Heck, even such cities as Dallas have lured commuters out of their cars and into commuter buses... and Europe has fantastic medium-distance coach service.

I'm a libertarian at heart who is pragmatic enough to acknowledge that public funding is necessary to promote viable long-term transportation solutions... so long as that public funding is directed to the most meritorious options. The Downeaster unfortunately just doesn't cut it... and the prospects for service to place Maine city name here are pure fantasy.

Midnight, I think we can agree on at least two points: (1) modal choices should be based on a multiplicity of factors; (2) one of those factors should be demand potential. My issue is that I haven't seen any evidence that Por-Bos rail service will EVER see the demand needed to compare favorably to bus... on virtually ANY metric. Cost efficiency - Bus wins; Fuel efficiency - Bus wins; schedule and destination flexibility - Bus wins; Traffic reduction: Rail wins... to the tune of 19 bus trips/day.

You stated that "...good transportation policy should seek to maximize efficiencies for the common good..." I agree. So modal choices should be used to optimize their relative merits. Buses shine in low-medium density, short-medium distance markets. They are flexible, cheap, efficient, and require little to no additional infrastructure. Trains are inflexible, expensive, and require massive dedicated plants. They shine in high-density, short-medium distance markets, but falter when density is low (due to scale inefficiencies) and/or distance is great (due to relative efficiency of air travel). Por-Bos, from my perspective at least, falls in the "buses are the best option" category.

You're right-- we do agree on those first two points-- that modal choices should be based on a multiplicity of factors and that one of those factors is demand potential-- but I think it's the third point-- that Boston-Portland service will never see the necessary demand potential to compete with the bus-- that we disagree on. If I had to boil my reasons down to a single sentence, it would be: I think it's OK for government to manipulate demand in the form of making bus transit more expensive and making rail transit cheaper if we know that one full train is more efficient than the commensurate ten full busses (I'm guessing ten, maybe it's 15, maybe eight, I don't know). I think this is probably territory where our political and economic philosophies diverge-- I'm a Keynesian liberal democrat-- and we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I think your observation about trains best serving high density areas is interesting, though. As the American landscape and it's population becomes more spread out what will the role of rail transit be? As an aside, you can read increasing population densities in suburban and exurban areas in two ways-- as suburbs and exurbs becoming more dense or as urban areas becoming less dense and "bleeding" out into formerly sparsely populated land. Conceptually I like the latter better because it's a better representation of population movement and its consequences: out of the urban core, into the first tier suburbs, and then into the exurbs where most people work in a different town than they live in, often commuting back to the urban core where the population "bleed" began. In places that look like this-- places like Houston, Dallas, even Boston, the exurbs of which reach well beyond I-495, by your standards, the bus wins most of the time as well. I think this highlights another essential philosophical difference: this kind of growth-- outward from the urban core, not upward within it-- is, IMHO, ecologically and probably at some point economically suicidal. Trains, along with zoning, taxes, etc, can be used as tools to bring this kind under control. But again, I recognize that this is probably a tremendously unpopular opinion in the United States at this point.

Midnight, I think our political/social/environmental thoughts are similar. I believe in the government's power to, under the right circumstances, compel the public to live in a more environmentally friendly way. In this case it would be promoting rail transit over bus transit. I am not nearly knowledgeable enough to thoroughly discuss this philosophy in terms of medium-distance rail transit in New England, but it is through this lens that I view the Downeaster service. I hope the train continues to improve in performance and ridership to the point where it is actually the more environmentally friendly choice, compared to the bus. Whether this is actually possible I do not know but I can hope, can't I?