Milwaukee to Chicago Rail Ridership Up Again, Another Hole Blown in the Argument Against It
February 10th, 2010
More good news on the transit front; ridership on the Amtrak between Milwaukee and Chicago was up in December.
An Amtrak spokesman says more poeple are deciding to skip the crowded highways and take the train to Chicago. Ridership on the Hiawatha service from Milwaukee was up eight percent in December when compared to the year before. – Pierce County Herald
Ironically, just this morning I heard yet another conservative talk show radio host make the tired blanket statement that commuter rail like the Kensha-Racine-Milwaukee (KRM) line is a waste because “NO ONE WILL RIDE IT@!@!#!“.
Apparently the people who are riding it – in steadily increasing numbers I might add – didn’t get the memo.
Categories: Milwaukee County Politics, Politics, Transit
The people saying no one will ride free or highly-subsidized transportation are talking out of their rears. That is an ideological argument against government solving problems rather than a logical argument against the rail line.
However, when I read this article, it seems to blatantly omit key facts and only state the “8%” figure. No indication of how many people that actually is. No indication of whether that is measured in people or seats filled. No indication of what the cost-per-rider for the taxpayer is with the new figures.
Marketing 101 — don’t state statistics that make your service look weak. Does that mean this news only seems strong when you take the 8% figure out of context?
OK, Matt. Always wiling to oblige with some numbers:
Fiscal 2009 (stops at sept 2009) vs fiscal 2007 Hiawatha Ridership
Number of riders up 24% (from 595K to 738K riders)
Revenue up 30% (from $10M to $13M)
Incomplete data exists for FY10 (I can only find up to November) but so far FY10 is close to FY09:
Number of riders: up 3% (up by roughly 1K riders)
Revenue about level ($1M)
Define the difference between “people” and “seats filled” and maybe that information is also available. I suspect the ridership numbers are tickets sold, myself.
Arlen, thank you for the numbers. However, the key item I still see missing is cost per rider or some measure of total cost. I see you included revenue, but that is just ticket sales, which isn’t too meaningful when something is highly subsidized by some unknown amount.
Number of people is the number of people who ride the train. I am with you in that I suspect ridership is actually number of tickets sold, which is a very different number.
December 2009 performance report says Hiawatha lost 18 cents per passenger mile, or roughly $15 per passenger per trip to Chicago, providing you factor in all expenses of Amtrak not allocated to a particular route and amortize them over total passenger miles in the system. If you only consider the expenses directly connected with the Hiawatha route itself, Hiawatha showed a profit of about 1 cent per passenger-mile.
The officially declared loss, factoring in the non-allocated overhead, for 2009 for Hiawatha was $2.6M. To put that in context, they could run the Hiawatha for about seven centuries on what they’re spending on I-94 between here and the Illinois border in just this current roadbuilding project (it’s less than one-seventh of one percent of the cost of the I-94 project). That’s not including what they’re spending on the Illinois side of the border for the same highway, to cover the same trip length.
I’m just curious, do you ride the bus to work every day mwarden? Dan?
I will assume that you do as you seem to be proponents of mass transit, but I figured I’d ask just to be sure.
I rode the train to Chicago once as a novelty. It was fun. I wasn’t able to make my usual stop at Superdawg though, too far away from the station, but we did get to the Happy Chef Dim Sum House… really good food in Chinatown… though it was a five block walk in the cold from the train stop. I was not overly thrilled at carrying shopping bags home on the train either. All in all, a cute novelty; but for the cost and convenience, I’ll stick to my car (SUV actually).
I do commend you both for always taking the train to Chicago and riding the bus here at home. It makes the road a bit more clear for the rest of us.
I don’t take the bus or train every day, no.
Nor do I drive on the Interstate every day. I also don’t use the sidewalks or Wisconsin Avenue every day.
TFG, I was trying to be nice by saying “some people” are blinded by their 100% anti-government ideology that makes no sense and isn’t rooted in logic. I really didn’t want to call anyone out specifically. But you ruined that now didn’t you?
Ok, so neither of you use mass transit regularly? But why? It’s so efficient and cheap and convenient for everyone… isn’t it? I mean, you can bike to the bus stop, throw your bike on the luxury rack, and head off to work. Why wouldn’t you be all over that?
Just as a data point: I *do* in fact ride the train to Chicago when I go there — about evenly split between the Kenosha commuter line and the Amtrak (mainly depends on where I’m going, because the Kenosha commuter line has more friendly stops). I’d like to see the Kenosha line extended into Milwaukee, so I didn’t have to drive there to take it when I wanted to.
But I rarely ride the city bus. I would, if there *was* a city bus line that took me where I wanted to go. But there are only two bus lines that stop within 2 miles of my house, and neither goes where I usually need them to.
For example, I used to work at Johnson Controls in Glendale. To get there by bus was a ride of well over an hour, and three changes. I could bicycle there in less than half the time, if the suburban soccer moms would stop trying to run me over with their minivans (actually happened). My daughter used to work on Brown Deer Road. There is no way to travel east-west on Brown Deer Road by bus (to do so involves two buses and a mile or two of walking). The shortest time involved taking a flyer downtown from the northwest side, then switching to another flyer to go back northeast.
If the Milwaukee bus system were intelligently designed, rather than politically designed, I’d probably ride it. But it’s designed to transport people from the edge of town to downtown, not from one edge to the other, or along the edges.
Well the nice part about you filling up your gas tank is subsidizing the train. Anything that can not survive on its own merits should not get funding from the gas tax to keep it operating. Break even or make a profit and I am all for choo choo trains. But touting 19th century technology in this day and age just shows that the liberals want us to live like it is the 19th century. By the time you add in a rental car at the other end and parking on your end the time savings being given are not there way more efficent use of resources to just drive. But progressives never seem to have taken Econ 101.
Two questions.
What was the ridership in the other 11 months as compared to a year ago? Up, down, or no difference?
With December ridership up 8%, at what capacity were those trains running? 30%, 40%, 90%, or were riders turned away because the cars were at capacity?
The dirty little secret here is that the Hiawatha service as well as the proposed Milwaukee/Madison run only transfer money to the rich and upper middle classes–professionals who have business in Chicago or rich people on shopping or sightseeing trips. If liberals want to argue that we should be spending more money on busses which serve actual poor people, I’d be more inclined to listen. I don’t imagine too many single moms are getting on the Hiawatha to get to their job at Mc Donalds. Why do we need to cough up money for rich people to hit WaterTower?
If they were really serious about improving the transportation infrastructure, they would put the 800M into imporving the interstate system. More than three hundred thousand use the Marquette and Zoo interchanges each day.
Patrick, you may have been unaware, but we just spent over $800 million here in Milwaukee to rebuild the Marquette interchange, are about to spend $2 Billion on the I-94 corridor between Milwaukee and Illinois, and will be spending $2.5 Billion in a few years to reconstruct the zoo interchange.
We are committing huge amounts of money and resources to the Interstates in Wisconsin, and that’s fine. But transportation infrastructure is more than just building roads.
I am aware of the money being spent on the various interstate projects you mention. I take it from your reply that you don’t debate that the planned train routes are largely for the rich and upper middle class.
How many of your union guys use these interchanges each day? How many of them hop on the train for Chicago? Why not ask them if they would ever use these proposed trains more than once or twice a year at most? Since I imagine most of them wouldn’t, why not drop the whole stupid idea?
Since the cost of a round trip ticket on the Hiawatha line (from MKE to CHI) is $44.00 I’m not imagining too many non-rich riders are on the train…..Also, the problem with this train, although convenient, is the massive subsidies necessary to keep it running (and it STILL costs $44.00). Train transit is static, expensive, and a huge burden on taxpayers.
The funny thing about these statistics is even though ridership is up, it still needs to be subsidized (massively) – Why is that?
Dead on the mark there, Sean. The train costs as much as a tank of gas… so no real savings there. Parking costs in Chicago, but so do cabs and mass transit. The train advocates love to trumpet the train that they don’t ride, but the fact is that, outside of novelty, it will never be successful on it’s own.
Lots of things are subsidized outside of rail including roads, commercial rail, shrimp fisherman, farms, oil companies, on and on and are considered successful.
Roads aren’t “static”?
About the cost, a roundtrip ticket from downtown to downtown is under $50. As TFG, gas is only part of the cost of driving to a place like downtown Chicago. Tolls and parking should also factor in. The last time I drove to Chicago, it cost $85 to park a car for the day. Add up gas, tolls and time, and a $44 round trip cost seems pretty good to me.
Dan, you’re correct. Rail is not the only subsidized market, but your post was about transit. I would argue, if you posted about other subsidized markets, the particular pros and cons of those markets as well. I just find subsidizing rail transit as wasteful. Also, roads are static but driving on them is not. Many times, if traffic is bogged down, you can find alternate routes. If you’re on a train, and it has to stop for whatever reason, you’re stuck – period.
As for actually using the train; I, whenever I head to DOWNTOWN Chicago, take the train. It is convenient in the sense of my patience and general hatred of driving, BUT when I do make those trips, for business or pleasure, I consider the train a luxury. The reason for that is purely the price. When it costs $176.00 to take a family of four down to Chicago for the day, that $85.00/day, you cite, (and you could find cheaper) starts looking pretty good.
KRM is a very different type of rail than Amtrak, just as light rail is very different from KRM/Metra type of rail. To compare the two is faulty logic.
The Amtrak line is a very nice option for lots of people and I support it. With that said, it is not overwhelmed with people to the point where an additional rail line is needed. A more efficient use of rail dollars from taxpayers is to revamp the Amtrak line so its faster.
Any so called “high speed” train system should only be paid for (its day to day operations) by the people who intend to use it. Not one thin dime of tax payer money should go toward operating this train. Taxes in Wisconsin are too high as it is for as few good jobs. This train does not guarantee any quality employers will come to Milwaukee. Milwaukee is simply not a business friendly city YET…period.
As others have said, there are better ways to utilize that tax payer money with focus here at home, and continue to make Milwaukee a more desirable place to live and work. This proposed train will absolutely *not* draw prospective employers or commuters to the Milwaukee area like people think it will because of a couple glaring problems. The biggest problem is that there are not enough good jobs to go around here. The “commuter train to nowhere” concept. Also, there is basically no way to get around Milwaukee once commuters would arrive except for a faulty bus system. Who is going to commute to Milwakee for a similar or probably lower paying job, and then look around for an expensive cab ride or a bus line that’s not going where they need to go? There are no good jobs left in downtown Milwaukee. Are we kidding?
So then, this is basically a train that takes people *away* from Milwaukee, to work or play in Chicago or Madison, and to spend their money elsewhere. This will eventually reverse any revival that the downtown area has seen in recent years. The only reason that Milwaukee ever grew as big as it did, is because we kept the money here.
Don’t worry, the train won’t reverse the minuscule revival in a few parts of Milwaukee, as no one will be riding it.
I would, however, fully back your proposal to remove tax subsidies. If folks like Dan support the train, then they should pay the full fare themselves. I don’t ask them to pay for 40% of the gas I put in my car, do I?
Actually, I like it my way better. I’ll pay for the couple of riders on the train and you buy my gas.
But seriously Dan, why do we need to resort to such a silly argument here? Why is it either “pay for the train we don’t need, or close the Fire Department”… your not doing much to win anyone over to your point of view with that stuff.
There’s no hole blown in any argument here. The train is heavily subsidized due to a lack of interest. No matter how much the train folks (who often don’t use mass transit themselves) stomp their feet, few people really care for that product. That’s just the facts.
So by that logic, only people who plan on using the roads should pay for their upkeep, right?
I’ve used the example many times, but have yet to get anyone to answer it who’s made the same argument you’re making: I don’t drive north of Brown Deer Road on I-43 or South of Mooreland Road on I-43. By your logic, why should I have to pay taxes to those roads which I don’t use?
Further, I don’t use the port of Milwaukee, the Hoan Bridge or the fire department, both of which get tax dollars. Why should I pay for them either? I’d love to hear your answer.
Get real you NEED the fire dept. Many, many other people use the Hoan bridge daily, maybe a delivery truck to your house or a plumber to your house, think about it. But nobody needs the high”way”speed trains, nobody. Or they should pay for it themselves. Next time you send a letter send it by rail only see how long it takes to get there. Even the Post Office uses evil trucks not those useful trains.