Detroit People Mover Loses Almost $10 On Every Ride

The horizontal elevator to nowhere!

Michigan Capitol Confidential, March 29, 2018

“The Detroit People Mover monorail system downtown lost an average of $9.89 on every trip it provided in 2016. The cost per trip was $10.51 and the average fare was 62 cents, according to a website that tracks transportation data.”

How much of a loss should the taxpayer be expected to pay for a public transportation system? And what is the expected loss that the Q Line is projected to carry over its life span?

. https://www.nationaltransitdatabase....n-corporation/Attachment 36140

So, first, I'm not an accountant, so idk how important or unimportant it is. But on that website the cost per trip is calculated by operating expenses, plus asset depreciation, divided by trips. If you only do total operating [[no asset depreciation) expenses divided by trips, you get $7.72 per trip.

I don't have all the documents on hand right now, but the DTC also handles the transit police for DDOT and the Q-Line. For this year DDOT paid DTC $2.7 million. I don't know how much the Q-Line paid them. Say they get paid a total $3 million, then the cost per trip becomes $6.36 per trip. This number is around what's normally reported as the cost per trip, which is a little different from year to year. A 2015 RTA document says it was $5.66 per trip that year. The People Mover was the 7th most ridden transit route then, and the 6 bus routes above it had a cost per trip around $2.50 and $3.50.

So the average loss per trip is more like $5.80 and not $10 like the headline.

The problem with the People Mover is that even though the technology has lower operating costs than other technologies, it's still a rail system and has high fixed costs, serving a small system. The cost per trip could be improved by either increasing ridership [[normally done by increasing service but the People Mover's is already great), or by expanding the system so the fixed costs are spread over a larger system. It's physically not practical to replace the service with a bus loop. And if you shut it down you have 5-6,000 trips during weekday, 9-10,000 trips during weekend days, and more during events, that people have to find alternatives for.

The Mackinac Center would like it if the People Mover didn't exist anymore, but then again the Mackinac Center would also like it if the entire city of Detroit didn't exist, so... :p

IMO, the People Mover should be dismantled and turned into an elevated green space, similar to the High Line in Manhattan.

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Originally Posted by Mind field

IMO, the People Mover should be dismantled and turned into an elevated green space, similar to the High Line in Manhattan.

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How much more popular would that be? How much in maintenance costs over time to have a long winding catwalk above downtown in order to prove commuter transit is a net loss?

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Originally Posted by Mind field

IMO, the People Mover should be dismantled and turned into an elevated green space, similar to the High Line in Manhattan.

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The tracks for the people move are, at best, five feet wide. :confused:

The People Mover is actually pretty critical for the convention business at Cobo Hall.

Sales reps and business moguls from out of state attending a trade show for whatever aren't going to want to go out to the street in the dark, in the Winter at the end of each trade show day and try to hail a cab to get back to their hotel.

If they can just get on the PM and go a few stops to their hotel,.. then they'll do it.

We'd loose a good chunk of the convention business without it. So you have to factor in Cobo hall, convention business profits, profits to the hotels on the loop, some of Greektown business etc in that to figure out if it's a success or not.

Of course it's unfortunate that those business aren't the ONLY ones paying for the People Mover. Our funding of it acts as a subsidy to those entities.

The People Mover isn't the best design and perhaps should be significantly changed, removed, or replaced with something else.

However it is silly to assume that mass transit should "make money" when we don't look at roads and demand the same. We pay billions of dollars a year to build and maintain the road network for cars in Michigan.

We're about to spend over a billion dollars to rebuild I-75 and add a lane in each direction between M-59 and M-102. How much money are we "losing" on that if you demanded every single trip pay for itself.

Yeah, utto-eh, not exactly 'walkable'. Especially not after a tight-night of adult beverages --:p-- !

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Originally Posted by Shai_Hulud

The tracks for the people move are, at best, five feet wide. :confused:

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This whole thread is inane. Eight mile road "loses" millions of dollars a year if you subtract maintenance costs [[considerable) from tolls [[zero). Your local fire department "loses" hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year. Your public library loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The U.S. military loses billions on top of billions of dollars a year.

Transit is a public service, like schools or libraries or public safety. It hasn't been able to make money since government road-building projects put the private transit operators out of business between the 1920s and the 1970s. It's just fucking stupid to discuss how much it "loses".

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Originally Posted by professorscott

This whole thread is inane. Eight mile road "loses" millions of dollars a year if you subtract maintenance costs [[considerable) from tolls [[zero). Your local fire department "loses" hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year. Your public library loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The U.S. military loses billions on top of billions of dollars a year.

Transit is a public service, like schools or libraries or public safety. It hasn't been able to make money since government road-building projects put the private transit operators out of business between the 1920s and the 1970s. It's just fucking stupid to discuss how much it "loses".

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Exactly my point! :)

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Originally Posted by professorscott

This whole thread is inane. Eight mile road "loses" millions of dollars a year if you subtract maintenance costs [[considerable) from tolls [[zero). Your local fire department "loses" hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year. Your public library loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The U.S. military loses billions on top of billions of dollars a year.

Transit is a public service, like schools or libraries or public safety. It hasn't been able to make money since government road-building projects put the private transit operators out of business between the 1920s and the 1970s. It's just fucking stupid to discuss how much it "loses".

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Thank you! I can't believe it is that difficult for people to understand how much we "waste" on road construction every damn year while spending so little on public transit.

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Originally Posted by professorscott

This whole thread is inane. Eight mile road "loses" millions of dollars a year if you subtract maintenance costs [[considerable) from tolls [[zero). Your local fire department "loses" hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year. Your public library loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The U.S. military loses billions on top of billions of dollars a year.

Transit is a public service, like schools or libraries or public safety. It hasn't been able to make money since government road-building projects put the private transit operators out of business between the 1920s and the 1970s. It's just fucking stupid to discuss how much it "loses".

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I would agree but calling the People Mover transit is a bit of a stretch. Not sure what to call it - I’d say more bullshit then transit.

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Originally Posted by softailrider

I would agree but calling the People Mover transit is a bit of a stretch. Not sure what to call it - I’d say more bullshit then transit.

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It has one of the highest riderships of any transit route in southeast michigan during weekdays and is the number one most ridden route on the weekends. Twice as many people ride the people mover than the qline. Maybe that says more about the rest of our transit than it does about the usefulness of the people mover, but ultimately the service being provided is attractive enough for people to use it.

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Originally Posted by drjeff

Thank you! I can't believe it is that difficult for people to understand how much we "waste" on road construction every damn year while spending so little on public transit.

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So if we eliminated the gas tax [[which only motorists choose to pay while buying gas) and then made all roads tolled instead, then would the roads not be magically wasting money?

Look, if you want to talk about the legislature's ineptitude to properly fund roads, and how that results in having to use a portion of the state's general fund to cover road funding.... that would be a fair argument. It would also be an argument of how bad the legislature is... but a fair argument. But the gas tax, while not perfect, is still a pretty fair method of taxing those who drive by the amount they drive. It also costs a lot less in overhead to collect that tax than tolling does as well.

I know someone who works very part time for the people movie on an as needed basis and will eligible for a pension from the city.

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Originally Posted by CassTechGrad

The horizontal elevator to nowhere!

Michigan Capitol Confidential, March 29, 2018

“The Detroit People Mover monorail system downtown lost an average of $9.89 on every trip it provided in 2016. The cost per trip was $10.51 and the average fare was 62 cents, according to a website that tracks transportation data.”

How much of a loss should the taxpayer be expected to pay for a public transportation system? And what is the expected loss that the Q Line is projected to carry over its life span?

. https://www.nationaltransitdatabase....n-corporation/Attachment 36140

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by professorscott

This whole thread is inane. Eight mile road "loses" millions of dollars a year if you subtract maintenance costs [[considerable) from tolls [[zero). Your local fire department "loses" hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year. Your public library loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The U.S. military loses billions on top of billions of dollars a year.

Transit is a public service, like schools or libraries or public safety. It hasn't been able to make money since government road-building projects put the private transit operators out of business between the 1920s and the 1970s. It's just fucking stupid to discuss how much it "loses".

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I will also concur that the above is an excellent post.

Though I am strongly against funding public transportation solely through a property tax millage in a city that forecloses on residential properties for unpaid taxes by the thousands annually, while at the same time, it is almost impossible to build any new residential housing without a major property tax abatement via the NEZs. Those are separate taxation problems, not an anti-public transport position.

It is idiotic expecting every public service any government provides to self fund its own revenue while providing the service. Corrections in this state operate at a multi Billion dollar loss but nobody thinks we don’t need them besides the criminals.