As for the cost of parking spaces, we paid over $30,000 per space for the bare land. That is what land costs around here. Most people are taxed more for their own land that they use to park their cars on than they are taxed for their cars. I seriously doubt that you can rent private land to park a car for a year for the annual taxes paid to operate that car, and certainly not for $77.57.

“locomotives have few emissions requirements that they must meet”
Flat wrong! EPA has been tightening the regs, the builders have been doing their homework.

First, you’re parking prices are pretty inflated at 30k per spot. Parking is only this costly in parking structures. $5000-10,000 would be a more typical price for a space in a bay area parking lot. Second, 4 parking spot per car is typical, so you have a capital cost of $20,000-$120,000 per car, much less than you suggest. Taking a middle value, of $70,000 this is a daily capital cost of $9.58. Much less than you suggest and far less than the capital subsidy of the Capitol Corridor trains.

More importantly, this cost is primarily borne by the USERS of the system. I rent two parking spaces because I want to use the road system and am willing to pay the cost. Most of the road building and repair in CA is also paid for by user fees (the gas tax vehicle registration fees, etc.*). This is in stark contrast to the Capitol Corridor trains where the costs are paid by someone else.

* The accounting for this is fairly difficult as some money is transfered from the gas tax to general government and some money is transfered from the rest of the government to the roads. When you look at aggregate spending levels at all levels of government on roads and the aggregate gas tax revenues, you get a very similar number.

david vartanoff:

While I don’t have numbers for the Capitol Corridor, I do have some national average data:

Automobiles: 3581 BTU/pass-mi
Light Trucks: 4057 BTU/pass-mi
Intercity rail: 4830 BTU/pass-mi
Commuter rail: 2714 BTU/pass-mi

The capitols are pretty lightly loaded, so I would expect them to be close to the Intercity rail numbers I give you. Since the amount of energy you use is directly related to your CO2 emissions, I guess that the CO2 savings are pretty small or non-existent.

As for smog forming emissions, locomotives have few emissions requirements that they must meet, so you’re probably worse off with the train, however, I don’t have sufficient data to say for certain.

As for the land “wasted” on freeways and parking lots, I’ll account for that as soon as you account for the land that is made dramatically more valuable from being usable due to the road network.

The houses cleared to build just the freeways in Oakland would be bringing in about property taxes than the gas tax generated by every car in the city, whether they use those freeways or not. The cost of capital to that would bring that up to about 5 times that amount.

The fact of the matter is that it is difficult to compare various modes of transportation, largely because the powers that be do not want fair comparisons.

On the other hand, the Capitol trains are expensive. Providing bus service every 10 to 15 minutes on the same route would have cost a lot less and would have been faster even if the buses were slower, because one would not have to wait so long for a bus. You may not have the amenities of the train, but with service that often, you could get off at a station, do whatever, and get on the next bus and still make good time.

Marin and Sonoma would be much better off if they acquired the right-of-way and turned it into a busway with a lot of buses on it instead of a few trains. The capital investment would be much smaller, and the service would be much better, more reliable, and more flexible. The maintenance of the right of way would be cheaper, and other buses could use it between the express buses. It would be a better deal all around.

Total Capital investment:
$755,820,259

Daily Boardings (FY 04/05) 3450
Current (published estimate) 4000

Daily interest in capital investment at 5% yearly compounded rate: $103,466
Capital subsidy per boarding EXCLUDING depreciation of assets (which is significant): $25.87
Operating Subsidy per daily boarding: $16.62
Total Subsidy (excluding depreciation of capital) per boarding: $42.49

Total subsidy per round trip commute(excluding depreciation of capital): $84.98

You’re reading right. That’s nearly $85 for EACH ROUND TRIP a commuter takes on the Capitol corridor! That’s $21,245 per year for a daily commuter if that’s what it costs to get people out of their cars, I don’t think we can afford it.

California spends $77.57 per person per year, far below the national average, on the entire road system with most urban roads yielding more in gasoline taxes than they cost to build and maintain (rural roads and some residential streets don’t generate much in gas tax revenue but are expensive to maintain).