Albuquerque Rapid Transit, Masterpiece or Mishap?
ART is Better than it Gets Credit For
A Bit of a Lemon?
If you talk to residents of any city, they’ll all complain about the weather, the drivers, and the local government. If that city has a new transit project, well they’ll complain about that too. It’s almost a national pastime to complain about expensive and disruptive transit projects. Albuquerque is no exception. If you ask Burquenos about Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART), responses are likely to range from, “it's too bad the project was handled so poorly” to, “that debacle was a waste of money and they ought to tear it up!” But if we want to actually learn anything about how to improve transit projects in cities like Albuquerque, we have to look more closely. Part of that certainly entails looking at what went wrong so that other cities don’t repeat those same mistakes. But it also involves understanding what aspects of ART were successful and should be replicated.
What is ART you ask? Well you can read Part 1 here to catch yourself up! Also Part 3, and Part 4.
Shortly after being sworn in as Mayor of Albuquerque, Tim Keller called ART “a bit of a lemon” in a speech in January of 2018. In 2016 a group of business owners and other opposed property owners led by the restaurant association filed an appeal with the U.S. 10th circuit court to halt the ART project before it even began construction. ART, as a new project, was fairly unpopular with Burquenos overall. Detractors had a veritable laundry list of reasons to oppose ART. All of this in the face of insistence by the city that ART would be a massive boon to the area once it was complete.
Each side made claims that were completely counter to the claims of the other. ART would both increase and alleviate congestion along Central Ave. ART would both bankrupt local businesses by making car travel and parking along Central Ave. more difficult and spark new commercial development through increased density and foot traffic. ART would both be a danger to pedestrians and drivers as well as improve safety. From 2016, when the project began, to 2019 when it was finally completed ART was extremely contentious.
But now, with the project completed and ART operating for four years (albeit most of that during a global pandemic that has devastated public transit all over the world) all of this partisanship has a surprising benefit: all that scrutiny helps improve clarity after the fact. One would expect, given the heated opposition, that both failures to meet expectations and successful benefits will be flaunted with “I told you so”s by their respective partisans. So how did ART pan out? What could have been done better and what was already done well?
Harm to Business
The loudest and most influential objection was the pain inflicted on small businesses along the Central Avenue corridor during construction of the ART. Businesses along Central reported losses in sales ranging between 25-40%. With sidewalks and street lanes torn up and the loss of parking it is no wonder, as customers had trouble even accessing some businesses. In conjunction with very long delays (which I will detail shortly), the pain inflicted on local businesses was undoubtedly severe.
This is not to say, however, that small businesses languished unaided. Albuquerque established the Central Loan Fund in early 2017. Businesses would be eligible for up to $15k in loans, and loans would be forgiven if the business made their interest payments and was still in business on Central Ave one year after ART was completed. In order to get around the NM Constitution Anti-Donation Clause, the loans were also entirely funded by private contributors and non-profits. No tax dollars were harmed in the making of these loans. The fund would also help businesses get financial advice for weathering construction.
But while the Anti-Donation Clause forced a creative and cost effective solution, it also made establishment of the fund legally complicated, delaying roll out by a year. Many business owners, therefore, deemed it too little too late. Future projects, both in Albuquerque and other cities, will have to figure out how to mitigate harm to affected business owners, or at least how to get some of them on board.
Economic Boon
While restaurant owners, especially in the Nob Hill and University areas, were hurt by the construction, the completed ART had several positive economic impacts. While not all businesses recovered, many businesses were back to normal or better, at least before the COVID pandemic. And, as predicted, ART did attract development to the area. Commercial developments, mixed use developments, and hundreds of new residential units, including 92 low income units with preference and accommodations for citizens with hearing and visual impairments.
In fact, mass transit development, including BRT, tends to attract developers and increase property values overall. In this case ART mostly adds to an already somewhat extensive list of cases demonstrating this trend. Importantly here, we now know that this is the case even in a sprawly, otherwise transit poor city like Albuquerque.
Delays and Budgets
Especially because of the loss in sales as a result of construction, the extensive delays in ART were also intensely contentious. ART was supposed to begin operation in 2017, but was delayed until 2019. That delay of nearly two years just about doubled the timeline to get ART operational. These delays were due almost entirely to two issues. First, the electric buses which were supposed to run along the route were defective, and the city had to replace them with standard diesel ones. There were also problems with the construction of the stations which forced the construction contractor to rebuild several of them. I’ll get into the specifics of these issues in a moment, but needless to say doubling the time it takes to complete a project is far from ideal. This is especially true when that delay means additional losses to local businesses.
Given the extreme delay, you could be forgiven for assuming that cost overruns were also rampant. But they weren’t. The estimated cost in 2015 was $119M, while the final cost was $133M. That's only an 11.7% increase. To put that into perspective, the average cost overrun for rail projects in the United States is around 40%. When compared to other BRT projects in the U.S. ART is boringly standard, with most landing between 5-15% cost overruns. When we look at the cost performance overall, ART looks a little expensive. At $15.2M per mile, it is above the average cost per mile for BRT in the U.S. of $11.5M. Although we should keep in mind that this average includes what are typically called “BRT-lite” systems. The old rapid ride was a BRT-lite system, and, as I will discuss shortly, does not offer comparable ridership to a true BRT like ART. We should also keep in mind that $15.2M in the context of mass transit projects more broadly. While it is slightly higher than the average for BRT, it is still exceedingly cheap for mass transit in general. Upgrading existing rail lines for commuter rail averages $49.5M per mile. That number is much higher when building rail from scratch.
So what seems to have happened, at least in part, is that Albuquerque traded schedule delays for cost savings. Neither the electric bus failures nor the station construction problems cost the city any additional money. Cities will have to consider, based on individual circumstances, whether that trade-off is desirable. But we might also examine the specific causes of the delays and ask if cities must make such trade-offs to begin with?
Stations and Electric Buses
Construction of the stations was awarded to HDR as lead contractor and planner, Bradbury Stamm Construction as the construction contractor, and Dekker/Perich/Sabatini for additional design work. But there were problems. One station was built too close to the intersection so that buses blocked it when stopped at the platform. Other platforms were uneven and built at inconsistent heights both of which hindered wheelchair access and fast embarkment and disembarkment. Light poles installed as part of the project were also improperly secured, sometimes not secured at all, and at least 46 fell over or were removed due to safety issues. Fortunately, all three contractors agreed to resolve these issues at no extra charge, at least in part due to a maximum price in their contract.
ART was originally supposed to use electric buses contracted from BYD’s California location at a cost of $20M. However, during testing and inspections the city found several problems. The buses were supposed to have a range of 275 miles, but were only able to achieve 177 miles. The buses also had a plethora of safety concerns. Doors would open and close suddenly, brakes were faulty, and the batteries were prone to overheating and potential fires. After a series of mutual accusations, Albuquerque eventually canceled the contract for no cost, since the buses were unable to pass a federal inspection. Instead, they ordered traditional diesel buses from manufacturer New Flyer for $7.5M. The electric buses were a requirement for the federal funding Albuquerque received for the project, but the city was able to negotiate with the federal government to use the diesel buses in order to get the route online. The city did purchase five standard size electric buses from Protera, also paid for through a federal grant.
While it is good that neither of these major issues cost the city money, they did result in substantial delays. How could these delays have been avoided?
Increased Safety and Ridership
Finally, we come to the question: what is ART like for people who aren’t drivers?
First, Central Avenue is much safer. ART has decreased traffic volume along its route by 28.6%. With a decrease in drivers we might expect to see an increase in pedestrian safety, and we do. Pedestrian collisions along the ART corridor have decreased by 8.2%, even accounting for the decrease in traffic volumes (that is, this is both a decrease in total incidents, and an increase in safety for individual pedestrians). But even more incredible, *fatal* pedestrian collisions along the corridor have decreased by 57.1%! All of this while city-wide pedestrian safety has gotten worse. ART has thus been a boon for pedestrian safety.
Collisions per mile per month along the ART corridor of Central Ave
Fatal and Serious Injury Collisions per mile per month per vehicle
And riders have clearly benefited from ART. Ridership on ART more than doubled the ridership from the old rapid ride system in its inaugural month of operation. Thanks to COVID, that growth wasn’t sustained. But by January 2020 ridership increased by about 30% over the rapid ride a year earlier, from 106,848 to 139,461. And, although the COVID pandemic reversed growth in ART ridership just as it did for all forms of transportation around the world, the system has continued that steady ridership growth now that the quarantines and other restrictions are over. ART ridership increased by 50.3% between January 2021 and January 2022, slowly approaching pre-pandemic levels.
Conclusion
So it appears that ART is certainly not the failure which it is often depicted as. It is much more of a mixed bag. ART was delayed by two years, doubling the original timeline and drastically increasing the harm to local businesses. Other cities will need to look at how Albuquerque handled these issues to figure out how to avoid them. But the project did not go substantially over budget, and increased development along with boosts in sales for some businesses prior to COVID helped offset the economic impact of ART’s construction. And of course ART transported more people, even during COVID, than the previous rapid ride. Not to mention the dramatic increase in safety along Central Avenue. What did the city do to achieve these impressive results, and can other cities replicate them with the same techniques? ART offers mistakes that we can learn to avoid, as well as successes which we can reproduce. In the next installment, I will discuss just exactly what those lessons are.
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