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The dictionary definition of “white elephant,” besides the obvious, is: A possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of.
No segue…
New Mexico Rail Runner Express is a heavy-rail, commuter service serving Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and two smaller towns south of Albuquerque, one of which might be considered an Albuquerque suburb, if you stretch the definition. It reached its current route mileage in 2008, upon completion of brand new right of way from the BNSF Railway main line at the base of La Bajada Hill into Santa Fe proper. In Santa Fe, the route uses a short stretch of Santa Fe Southern track, which railroad is a remnant of AT&SF’s sole actual connection into Santa Fe from Lamy, NM. Santa Fe has a population currently estimated to be in excess of 80,000, and is the state capital.
That’s on the north end. The two small towns on the south end are Los Lunas and Belen, NM, the latter being a connection of the old Santa Fe through Raton Pass, with the newer Clovis route into New Mexico, now the BNSF Transcon, that avoided the grades of the Raton Pass crossing. The total population of Belen, Los Lunas, and surrounding areas does not exceed 24,000, depending on how you define “surrounding.”
In 2003, Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration was extremely pro-active in pursuing not only road projects but the long elusive rail connection between Albuquerque, the state’s largest city with a then population of about 475,000 (current estimate: 550,000), and the state capital. Gov. Richardson spared no expense in funding Rail Runner despite its need for an approximately $10 million annual operating subsidy. Ridership peaked in 2010 at around 1.2 million, and has been falling since. Long term financing and balloon payments will continue to plague the state in its effort to keep Rail Runner going.
Politically, the Rail Runner and the speed at which it was financed and completed has been seen as a feather in the cap of Richardson, who still failed to achieve his party’s nomination for president. It is also seen as an albatross and a white elephant by those who think that the project should have been done at much less expense or not at all, the alternative being spending much less on improving Interstate 25 between Santa Fe and Belen.
I won’t go into all the rail alternatives here. I was blogging at Passenger Rail during the construction phase, and my comments are available in these archives. However, one of the biggest disappointments is that New Mexico’s almost unlimited solar energy was not tapped for all-electric operation. Electric Multiple Units and trailer cars would have been infinitely less costly to operate and maintain than heavy diesel push pull trainsets, and would have provided the railroad with much more flexibility to run more frequent single car trains in non-rush hours.
Are there other white elephants around? Oddly, they’re hard to find. Other than Amtrak. Even California’s struggling SMART rail, a commuter service from North Santa Rosa to San Rafael, north of the Golden Gate, with no rail connection into San Francisco, serves end points with larger populations. But I’ll have a few comments about more railroad white elephants very soon.
As if to prove that any railroad white elephant can get even bigger and whiter if not properly tended, at least three sources (The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, KRQE News 13, and Trains magazine) have reported this week that Rail Runner is in trouble of its own making: Having budgeted virtually nothing for the estimated $50 million it’s going to take to install, test, and train crews for Positive Train Control. As Congress mandated PTC back in 2008, with an original deadline (now extended to 2018) of 2015, it seems unconscionable that Rail Runner management has made absolutely no progress toward PTC completion.
Rail Runner is still hoping for waivers from the FRA, or at least some kind of lightning strike from on high (or maybe down below) that would let it continue operations without PTC. The feeling of its management seems to be that, because the system is poor, they should get a pass, or don’t need anything more than a beefed-up safety plan. The feeling of the FRA is obvious, in that it declined a waiver in part because there hasn’t been any progress since 2008. What a catch-22!
Want more whitewash? Rail Runner operates 128 trains a week, equivalent to 6,400 trains a year, accounting for holidays and holiday schedules. Since the yearly passenger count has fallen to under 800,000, that amounts to an average of a measly 125 passengers per train. The maximum one-way fare is $10. Most won’t be paying that much, but even $1,250 isn’t worth pulling a diesel out of the roundhouse—or, in Rail Runner’s case, wherever locomotive service is currently taking place.
What will happen? Probably a reduced schedule, maybe 60 trains a week and no Saturday or Sunday service, until the FRA is appeased. Less money, maybe more than 50% less, and those balloon payments will be sitting on the track when one of those trains gets there. Don’t be standing near the track when that wreck occurs! You’ll get white elephant crap all over you.
©2017 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com
(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)
