I’m going to share my experience with commuter (not high‐speed) rail: the New Mexico Rail Runner. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trainroadrunner.jpg

The Rail Runner was built in 2006 primarily due to Governor Bill Richardson’s efforts. It essentially covers two cities, Albuquerque (~500,000 people) and Santa Fe (the capital, ~70,000 people), which are already connected by Interstate 25.

I love trains; I recently took Amtrak to LA and back. And I love the Rail Runner. It’s my favorite way to get to Santa Fe by far. Once I arrive, being without a car is not too bad: Santa Fe is a fairly walkable city, Albuquerque has a decent bus system, and a bicycle (which I can take on the train) makes things a lot easier.

The big problem with the Rail Runner is its cost.

Richardson originally was very vague about the cost, and initial estimates were (it turns out, a wildly optimistic) sub–$100 million in initial capital. The state took out a loan to pay for construction. The total cost is now estimated to be about $800 million. Currently the state Department of Transportation pays about $25 million a year on the loan; as currently structured, that will slowly increase to $35 million per year until 2025 and 2026, where the payments jump to $110 million (per year!).

New Mexico is currently in a budget crisis (not just due to the Rail Runner). (http://fortune.com/2016/12/04/new-medico-budget-crisis/) There have been special legislative sessions called this year to sort things out, and there’s conflict between all three branches of our state government. I have no idea where the DOT will find $80 million in their budget the next ten years, at least not without serious cuts to our already underfunded highways.

Then there are the operating costs. This is “not so bad.” Revenues only cover about 10% of operating expenses. But at least the rest is covered (at the moment) by county taxes, federal grants, and payments for use of the track by Amtrak and BNSF.

I’ll be cynical: my personal belief is that Richardson intentionally hid the costs and pushed the Rail Runner as a short‐term publicity stunt for his 2008 Presidential run, without a care as to what it would do to the state ten years later. It is very like him. (Don’t even get me started on the spaceport.) https://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/602848nm10-16-07.htm

The legislature sponsored a study to determine the feasibility of selling the Rail Runner (https://lintvkrqe.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/final-hm-127-s...). It concluded that nobody would be willing to buy it due to low revenues, high operating costs, and the plethora of exclusivity agreements that would need to be renegotiated (with BNSF, Amtrak, the pueblos, the federal Department of Transportation…). And selling it wouldn’t help since it wouldn’t absolve us of the requirement to pay off the debt. At this point I don’t foresee a solution other than refinancing the loan (again) to avoid those $100 million cliff payments, at the cost of further interest payments.

Like I said, I love the Rail Runner, and I really want to see it (or passenger rail of some sort) succeed in New Mexico. I do think the way the Rail Runner was handled — intentionally hiding the costs and having no concrete plan to cover operating costs — is completely unconscionable.

Not that it has to operate at a profit; after all, highways lose money too. But the Rail Runner loses so much money, and we’re already a poor state. It is valuable to connect New Mexico’s capital with its largest city. I just feel like there has to have been a better way to do it. I hope the proposed train from Las Cruces, NM to El Paso, TX (http://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/2017/06/28/study-...) will learn from the mistakes made with the Rail Runner.

Whew. After all that, I’m curious: what successful rail projects have you seen, and what makes them successful?