The Wednesday morning rail roundup:
— In a significant blow to the fledgling commuter rail service, California voters in Sonoma and Marin counties have turned down a measure extending the quarter-cent sales tax that funds Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit. Approval of the measure would have guaranteed funding through 2059, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reports; without it, the tax will expire in 2029 and cuts of as much as $9 million per year could begin later this year, with reductions in service and manpower. The measure required a two-thirds majority to pass, but was receiving less than 50% approval in initial returns.
— Canadian National faces a backlog of 10,000 carloads of grain as a result of service disruptions from a series of rail line blockades, CEO JJ Ruest told Reuters. “Of all the supply chains, the one that will take the longest [to recover] is the grain export,” Ruest said. CN said in a Monday statement that it anticipated full recovery would take weeks after more than 1,400 trains were delayed by the protests.
— New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy joined other officials on Tuesday to announce the first extension of NJ Transit’s Hudson-Bergen light rail line since 2008, a half-mile extension of the West Side Avenue Branch to reach a new 8,000-unit residential development on the Hackensack River in Jersey City. The “440 Connection” will cost approximately $220 million, NJ.com reports.
— Minnesota state Rep. Dan Wolgamott (D-St. Cloud) has introduced a bill to provide $6 million in funding for efforts to extend the Northstar commuter rail service to St. Cloud from its current endpoint of Big Lake, Minn. The funding would cover six steps over the next 2 ½ years that are necessary to extend the service, the St. Cloud Times reports, including a ridership and revenue study, identification of equipment needs, and the beginning of formal negotiations with BNSF Railway over use of its tracks. The House Capital Investment Committee will hold a hearing on the bill on Thursday.
Oh, well. All might not be lost. The current funding doesn’t expire completely until 2029 so perhaps they can try again some other year.
A rail service that only covers about 10% of operating costs from fares is hard to justify. 2car dmus can’t carry enough people. Not enough concentration of population or strong o/d pairs. A lot of mistakes made with siting stations. Needs to be integrated with Thruway bus.
I would have done it at lower cost but public agencies like grants and hate opex. Hence a gold plated system that ran out of money to serve the northern half and build the bikeways. I don’t see a happy ending.
Do people even ride SMART in large numbers?
I agree. 220 million for a 1/2mile extension for NJ Transit ? Modot recently completed an approximately 1/3mile bridge over the Missouri river for around 65 million.
On the Sonoma-Marin rail vote. The Yes votes were 149 short of passage out of over 101,000 votes cast.
I would update the scope and get it on the next ballot. I have a feeling that many of the No votes were bought by the local home construction crowd.
Surveys showed at minimum of a 60% approval rating going into the ballot box, so a 1000 vote swing against it so late in the gig is suspicious.
It’s a 7 mile extension from the current end of line at Sonoma County Airport to Healdsburg, not 0.5 miles.
$220,000,000 for a half mile light rail extension is crazy. Just like the Democrats that run that state. Most people can walk a half mile without a problem and for those who can’t there are always shuttle buses. No wonder NJ is broke and people are leaving it as fast as they can. And what isn’t said here is that NJ people are not going to be the only ones who get stuck with the bill on this one.
In Sonoma & Marin they got majority yes votes. People do want transit. What they were required under Prop 13 restrictions, was a 60% majority in both counties.
The No vote was bankrolled by one person, not any group or groups.
The anti transit claimed that the district is not telling the public what the SMART is spending money on. The anti transit also outspent the backers of SMART by a $1.5 million dollars.
Peter Benham,
It would’ve been an extension of an existing tax, a tax that already exists they the people already voted for once before, so it has nothing to do with being sick of getting taxed. The NO campaign was also funded by ONE individual, a home builder that builds single family homes and wants to extend urban sprawl even more, because apparently he isn’t smart enough to figure out how to make money on transit density housing(aka apartments, townhouses and condominiums) located along the S.M.A.R.T. corridor.
Regarding extending the Northstar commuter to St Cloud this is long overdue tens of millions of federal, state & local tax dollars have been/are still being spent trying to make the airport there more attractive to air carriers only to have them leave once the money runs out due to poor passenger counts. The city is only 65 mi from the Twin Cities this rail connection would be a more cost effective alternative to get people to the MSP airport. The Northstar has never been allowed to reach it full potential its equipment under utilized due to those trying to set it up for failure since its inception.
It’sa long history. Coupla decades back voters chose an extra lane thru’ Santa Rosa over not-yet-named “Smart.” Winemaker Tony Coturri (all organic before his time) could not believe the short-sightedness.
I think that this initiative failed due to voters being sick and tired of taxed and taxed over and over! They want some say in how the agency is run and some openness in it’s day to day matters.
California hypocrites; given the choice between ecology-friendly rail transit and carbon emissions, they voted to stay in their cars. Imagine that.
According to the Marin Independent-Journal, the measure got more than 50% (combining Marin and Sonoma county votes). However, it needed a two-thirds majority to pass.