A big problem with American transportation policy is that many policymakers think they understand transportation when in fact they really don’t have a clue. Today’s case in point is Virginia Sen. John C. Watkins, who was recently named the first chairman of Virginia-North Carolina Interstate High-Speed Rail Compact. The compact is the organization overseeing plans for a 162-mile, $2.3 billion plan to bring higher speed rail service between Raleigh and Richmond. Here’s Watkins take on the proposed improved rail service, and how it’s going to undermine airline hubs like US airway’s at CLT:
It would be so much easier for the consumers who now have to fly through Charlotte or wherever. It makes a lot more sense to be able to get on a train that you can depend on to be on time — and just go.
Facepalm. Hate to break it to the senator, but approximately no one actually flies between Raleigh and Richmond. The federal government does keep track of such things, and publishes a quarterly list of markets in the continental U.S. which average 10 passengers a day. And that’s 10 passengers a day total, the sum of people flying commercially each way between RIC and RDU, connecting, or nonstop. And the RIC-RDU market doesn’t show up for any quarter of 2009.
And this isn’t just a Raleigh-Richmond situation. US Airways flies CLT-RDU nine times a day — with a total of 1,201 seats a day — but only about five or six people actually begin their journey each day in Charlotte and fly up to Raleigh-Durham. CLT-Richmond, a route on which US Airways offers eight flights a day with a total of 734 seats, only averages about 35 or 40 people a day going from Charlotte to Richmond. What are the rest of the passengers doing? Connecting, to go places 500 miles or more from home that multi-billion dollar rail boondoggle like the one that Watkins oversees can’t effectively serve.
