Rail line offers less, costs more I KXAN.com

Rail line offers less, costs more I KXAN.com.

 

Red Line also will offer fewer runs, fewer stops

Updated: Tuesday, 15 Sep 2009, 6:09 AM CDT
Published : Tuesday, 15 Sep 2009, 5:13 AM CDT

• Nanci Wilson

AUSTIN (KXAN) – It was supposed to begin runs in early 2008, but numerous delays have pushed the start date of the Capital Metro Red Line to well past this September.

According to Capital Metro’s proposed budget for next year, the Red Line, after numerous starts and stops, might leave the station in October. But when it’s up and running, Cap Metro said there will be fewer trains making fewer stops carrying what will be fewer passengers than what the transit agency has projected all along. The new Cap Metro budget, in fact, expects 23 percent fewer riders than the agency projected in last year’s budget.

KXAN News found those aren’t the only areas where Cap Metro’s projections are wrong. The numbers show the cost of running the rail system is at least $4 million more a year than the original estimate presented to voters five years ago. That sounds like a lot of money to long-time rail opponent Jim Skaggs.

“Their estimate was $2 million, and now they say $6.5 million. That doesn’t include all the costs. (It) doesn’t include a number of things they are going to be paying for,” Skaggs said. “You’re talking $5 or $6 million over their estimate, and you say that’s annually, spread that over 20 years, and you’re talking about pretty big dollars.”

On Election Night 2004, Austin voters approved Cap Metro’s plans to operate a 32-mile commuter rail line from Leander to downtown Austin. After a prior failed referendum on rail, local leaders were jubilant.

“It’s about vision, about our future, about dealing with population growth,” said mayor Will Wynn at the time. “Most say we’ve got to change the paradigm.”

But not everyone was celebrating, including Skaggs, who preferred road construction over a big-ticket transit system.

“As we go forward and Capital Metro falters in achieving what they promised, the public will know it’s not being accomplished,” Skaggs predicted at the time.

Fast-forward five years. At the time the 2004 election was held, Capital Metro sent a brochure to voters, detailing a modest bare bones project estimted to cot no more than $60 million. According to the literature, half of that original funding would come from local funds and half from federal matching dollars.

The election brochure also estimated an annual $5 million to operate the commuter rail line. That included leasing trains.

The $30 million in matching funds never materialized. In fact, Cap Metro admits the agency never applied for the funds. So what about that proposed $60 million start-up cost?

In a May 2007 letter to the community from Capital Metro President Fred Gilliam, Gilliam wrote, “In 2004, we projected the capital costs of our track improvements, maintenance facility, and stations to be $60 million. At the present time, we believe our final costs will be approximately $5 million lower. This lower cost includes the addition of the Union Pacific flyover bridge — a $6.9 million project — that was not included in the 2004 cost estimate…”

By 2009, however, Cap Metro has claimed a budget that has ballooned to $105 million. The agency, however, claims the $105 million tally includes other costs. The $60 million was the orginal capital costs. Add to that the cost of the rail cars, plus the flyover and maintenance facility, and the total now is up to $105 million.

But the records obtained under the public information act show even more costs. The $105 million doesn’t include more than $1 million paid to design a rail station it didn’t build. Nor does it include costs shifted to other Capital Metro programs. Neither the capital cost, nor the annual operating budget, account for the additional $7.9 million it eventually will cost to finance the rail cars.

That’s just the capital budget. What about that $5 million dollar annual operating cost originally promised? That total no longer includes the annual $4.4 million in lease-purchase payments. Now that it no longer includes the yearly $4.4 million in lease/purchase payments, the budget should drop dramatically.

But records show MetroRail’s operating cost for this year, however, is expected to be more than $6.5 million, and the proposed budget for next year is an estimated $6.6 million.

“Well, as you develop these projects, you make estimates of what things are going to cost five years in the future, and to be on a budget of more than $4 million on out of how many millions of dollars on an annual budget, I think you’re getting into levels of detail that probably aren’t accurate to be focused on,” said Doug Allen of Capital Metro.

But, still, $4 million can buy a lot of stuff. And when you multiply that by 20 years, this additional cost bump is more than the original estimated cost to start up the 32-mile commuter rail line.

“The bigger picture here that you need to hopefully look at is that what was represented to the public was a low-cost rail system using the infrastructure we had, and that the operating costs was going to be in this neighborhood,” Allen said. “What’s being delivered is

a higher quality system for essentially the cost that we said it would cost.”

 

 

« Previous Page|1|2Next Page »