Case #7: Consider Reduction of Ramsey Star Express Fare to $2.75 Per Ride
Assistant City Administrator Nelson stated that the City's current fare for direct service to downtown Minneapolis is $4.50 per ride. She noted that the current ridership numbers were included in the Council packet. [...] She noted that staff had made assumptions that, with the reduced fare [to $2.75], the ridership would increase. She stated that staff supports reducing the fare.
Mayor Gamec stated that he also supports reducing the fare.
Councilmember Strommen stated that she also supports reducing the fare [... and] stated that all public transportation is subsidized.
Mayor Gamec stated that he feels a huge number of residents commute and this is a service [... to a handful of folks].
Councilmember Dehen stated that he is not sure he wants to pay for someone else to be able to get downtown and feels this whole issue needs Council debate.
Councilmember Look stated that he also doesn't support this because the operating costs are $37,000 monthly and the fare boxes only bring in $7,000. He stated that this service only has about 60 regular riders and he does not feel the drop in fare will increase ridership. He stated that basically with this service, 60 residents are subsidized $500 each month from the other residents of the City. He stated that he feels this is just trying to artificially prove the need for a rail stop in the City and he would like to be able to legitimately prove the need for a rail stop.
Councilmember Olson stated that transportation is very high on the list of priorities for constituents and reiterated Councilmember Strommen's comment that public transportation is subsidized [...]
Councilmember Elvig stated that he feels the fare reduction would definitely increase ridership. He stated that 80% of the funding for this comes from the FTA and he supports bringing money back into the City that residents have already paid. [A non sequitur if there ever was one - people pay taxes at any governmental extraction level hoping it will not be wasted at the level collected or distributed for waste among other governmental levels, the point being don't waste regardless of whether it's from pocket A or pocket B.]
Colin McGlone 9495 - 164 Lane, stated that all citizens use the roadways, so subsidizing that makes sense to him. He stated that subsidizing bus service for 60 people does not make sense [...]
Councilmember Olson stated that the fare reduction adds up to about $17.50 a week and for that amount of savings, she would get in her car and drive to Anoka and get on the bus there. [...]
Etc., etc.
That historical data shows it was wasteful. But staff "made assumptions." Heide Nelson said that. Wow! Assumptions!
I assume a tornado will hit the Norman castle [aka Municipal Center] because God hates ostentatious and outrageous waste and punishes it; so, we all can make assumptions. I'll sell you mine for a dollar three-eighty.
THE POINT: What's the nitty-gritty? The truth?
Now with pump price shock at or passing four bucks a gallon, and time has passed since March 1, so it is appropriate to review the productivity of the change - is it better or worse, is more being lost monthly down the bottomless rathole known as City of Ramsey spending foolishness than before the change, or has there been a shift?
I do not know. I will send an email with this question - a link to the post - to City Administrator Ulrich, CFO Lund, Brian Olson who answered my last Star Express inquiry, and council reps at large, Strommen and Look.
Hopefully one of them, ideally one of the three staff people w/o need to have a council person find the data, will respond in a day or two with the answer.
Better or worse, by how much, i.e., in Councilmember Look's terms, $37,000 per month to operate, (so is it still there, more, or less, given fuel cost escalation), and producing then a grand monthly $7000 income (is it the same thing, better or worse, and by how much)?
Those numbers Look advanced are appalling - fares returning only 19%, not even a fifth of what the thing costs; not twenty cents on the dollar.
It is stupid - or was.
The QUESTION, is it any better now, with the fare reduced?
The theory was, cut the fair, more will ride, etc.
Dehen said if it is to get riders, make it free.
That is a good baseline.
Who would use the thing if it did not cost a thing? Go figure. All cost, no return, what would the true worth, in ridership then be?
Try it, denizens of the Norman castle. If you cannot get ridership for free, bag the entire thing. It's clearly too wasteful if that's the story.
I will publish whatever numbers are given in response.
While Ramsey officials may not like having to give up the numbers they have always been good enough to not stonewall, so I expect a simple answer to a simple question, in comparison to Look's $7000 back for every $37.000 spent back in Feb. 2008, where are we now? $7000 returned on $37,000 [81% down the tubes] WAS fact then; and there is fact now, and we citizens are not mushrooms; we deserve to know.
_______UPDATE________
This is another "father-knows-best" cramdown, unless the numbers prove themselves.
Then if the present numbers back from City of Ramsey is that ridership is up, my questions are, does the Elk River bus charge $2.75, or $4.50? Is ridership down there by an equal number as Ramsey gained, or is usage of the thing, in total, actually growing? Is the only thing shown that people will change from the Elk River bus to the Ramsey bus, for a price differential per ride between $2.75 and $4.50, and if so, what does it prove?
That is a key trifecta of questions.
If it is $4.50 there, in Elk River, then it is simply that it's no trouble driving between Elk River and Ramsey so that people do it for the differential.
Councilmember Olson even clearly said, the minutes reflect it for the discussion, that for $17.50 per month, SHE'D make that drive or the comparable one between Anoka and Ramsey, vs. between Elk River, and Ramsey, which is equivalent.
After all, Ramsey is the place where the RV dealership and the traffic lights are on Highway 10, between Anoka and Elk River - that's always been the truthful definition. (And to most living in Ramsey that reality is not a major life crisis or problem - not to those lacking a big council center seat ego. They live with it, joke over it, it's a point of minor amusement, but it's not a problem.)
Bottom line, if a councilmember would as soon drive from Ramsey to one of the near stops for a price of $17.50 per month, she's priced it so that it is crystal clear that Ramsey does not need to cause millions to be spent, and Dave Elvig, it is irrelevant whether it is FTA tax money or local tax money - IT IS TAX MONEY - so don't waste it.
So - a hypothetical - if Olson is right, Ramsey's "need" for a NorthStar stop is "justified" only by a $17.50 per month payment to each of her hypothetical commuters.
Why spend a truckload of public cash in a train stop cramdown if the TRUTH is that for the few who ride it, having that extra stop is at best worth - has a benefit in balance against the cost - of $17.50 per rider per month. That's minuscule.
So, is a Ramsey stop just one more extravagant and unneeded part of the entire Dan "The Trainman" Erhart's dream scenario?
Yes, it can later at an appropriate time be added to a fledged out transit system for the twenty-first century if/when justified; but no, it makes no real sense making it a present part of the next transit-plan piece when all the entire NorthStar thing does is drop you downtown where you can quickly get to Mall of America or the airport, or walk, or stand in crappy weather waiting for a slow and infrequently run bus, to somewhere.
Few have the need to only get downtown every day, and back in evening rush hour. If you have to stay overtime, even at a downtown desk job, you miss the few trains during peak hours, and have to take a cab, or a slow, infrequently run evening bus.
Very few work downtown desk jobs where a car is not needed during the day. Customer sales and site-based service providers get no help. That includes building and repair contractors, or the person who fixes or upgrades the phones or workstation network - in Champlin, in Fridley, in Nowthen, where needed; much less the worker whose job is a normal workday length desk job, but in Plymouth.
Considerations in the last paragraphs go to the economics of the entire NorthStar train dream; whereas leaving Ramsey fine as is and without a train stop goes to not making it more costly by millions - eight figures at least in additional cost - simply for Ramsey to have a stop added in addition to nearby stops in Anoka and Elk River.
Starting and stopping a train every ten or twelve miles makes little sense. But that's the distance reality, Ramsey to Elk River or Ramsey to Anoka. And driving Ramsey to Elk River, is a drive against rush-hour flow and you get a better seat that way by frontrunning the Anoka stop. And you'd have to drive anyway, to get from home to a Ramsey stop, you already are in the car, and another ten minutes against the grain of the heavy traffic not in it, is no real burden. Simply make certain there is enough parking in Elk River for the demand, and the job's finished, reasonably, not at extreme extra cost.
The marginal benefit of a few less minutes drive for people living in Ramsey does not justify the capital cost investment, especially now if there's no grid of other rapid transit spokes from downtown to other locales.
Those are the logical next pieces to go with Hiawatha. Invest the spending there, not dropped into another sizable increment to the already gigantic cost of NorthStar.
BOTTOM LINE: $17.50 per head per month IN BENEFIT is hardly justification for more colossal sized waste in Ramsey. Having a NorthStar stop in Ramsey fails, in the cost-benefit analysis, despite the hand-wringing of "oh, please, just one more stop."
It doesn't compute.
Save the FTA, the federal government, the world from that waste, please, if Councilmember Olson's price differential of $17.50 is a legitimate pricing of the benefit, per rider, that would arise from the humongo cost.