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Fewer people are riding the Rail Runner for fun
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By the numbers
$125 million: Cost for the first phase of the Rail Runner Express between Belen and Bernalillo.
$393 million: Total cost of the rail line, including plans to extend tracks to Santa Fe by 2008.
$9 million to $9.5 million: Estimated annual operating cost for the Belen-to-Bernalillo line.
$2.5 million to $3 million: Estimated revenues from ticket sales and other sources from the Belen-to-Bernalillo line.
$2: Cost of a one-way ticket, once the railroad begins charging passengers Oct. 14, although other discounts are available. Permanent ticket prices haven't been established but will depend on distance traveled, and take effect Jan. 1.
Who's paying? Most of the construction costs are being covered by the state. Federal Highway Administration money covers operating costs this year and for the next two years.
Source: Mid-Region Council of Governments
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Dale Baltz used to have a low-powered, fuel-efficient car for his commute from his home in Placitas to his job at Intel.
People would make jokes about a hamster wheel running the engine. The reality was that mice were building a nest in the engine. As a result, one day the car burned up, Baltz said Tuesday as he waited for the Rail Runner Express train.
The car fire was an unpleasant experience, but Baltz said it's been a blessing in disguise. Now, he drives his truck to the Bernalillo Rail Runner station, takes a train to the Journal Center station and catches a bus for the short ride to Intel.
He figures the trip takes him 15 minutes longer than driving the whole way, but they're pleasant minutes.
"I buy the paper, I read, I look at the cows," he said. "I talk to other people. Sometimes I wish I lived further away so I could ride the train longer."
It's for people like Baltz that the state is building the $393 million Rail Runner system, planned to link Belen and Santa Fe by 2008.
Ridership on the train, which began between Albuquerque and Bernalillo in July, continued to decline this month, falling to about half the number of riders who rode the rails during the trains' opening weeks.
Officials say they're not worried, because of people like Dale Baltz.
"The drop we're seeing is because the people who wanted to ride the train for fun have done that," said Lawrence Rael, executive director of the Mid-Region Council of Governments, which oversees the system.
"The vast majority of riders we're seeing now are commuters, and that's what the system was intended for," he said.
That's more or less what Rael said in August, when he said ridership was "leveling out" at about 2,500 to 3,000 riders per day, down from 4,000 to 4,500 a day in July.
Ridership now averages about 2,100 to 2,500 riders per day, Rael said.
It remains to be seen what happens to ridership when passengers start paying. Riding the rails has been free since July. Starting Oct. 14, the cost to commute will be $2 one way, although multi-day tickets are available at a discount.
Prices will rise again Jan. 1, though the cost has not been determined.
Rael said the rail system plans to step up its public relations campaign to convince commuters that a train ride combined with a short bus ride is a viable option.
Rael said the council is also trying to convince the "powers that be" at Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia National Laboratories to pay at least part of the cost of a shuttle bus connecting those employment centers with rail line stops.
"We're trying to identify the main areas of commuters and link to them," Rael said. "Our learning curve is to learn where those areas are."
The biggest boost to ridership, Rael said, would come when stations open in Los Lunas and Belen. Those stations are nearly complete but are still waiting on track to be delivered by Progress Rail, the Colorado company that was supposed to deliver the track this summer.
The track will take one to two months to install once it arrives, pushing the opening day for those stations back to December, Rael said.
"They evidently have a lot of orders," Rael said of the company.
In the meantime, the fledgling rail system does appear to have incubated at least the beginnings of a mass transit culture.
Bus drivers and train conductors said they're getting to know their regular riders, who, in turn, are getting to know each other.
About three dozen people filed off the 5:35 p.m. train that clattered and whooped into the Journal Center station Monday. That they were commuters was clear as they strode purposefully toward their cars, work badges dangling from their clothes.
That they are the vanguard of a new wave in transportation is less clear, but New Mexico has at least 393 million reasons to hope so.
