The Lynx Blue Line is the jewel of Charlotte's transit system, but the city's first light-rail line won't be spared by upcoming budget cuts.
With trains arriving less frequently, the average wait-time for rush hour commuters will increase to 5 minutes, from 3 minutes and 45 seconds. While that's not a huge amount of time, it can make riding the train marginally less attractive. When designing the Lynx, CATS originally had trains arriving every 15 minutes, but it increased the service frequency to meet federal cost effectiveness standards.
The Lynx was projected to average 9,100 weekday trips in its first year. The train has exceeded that each month, and has averaged more than 15,000 trips since the summer.
Using Department of Transportation guidelines for the value of travel time for business [PDF], the average wage in Charlotte (median household income divided by 2000 hours) and various other assumptions:
- 75 seconds is 2.0833% of an hour
- Cost of time is 100% of wage rate
- Hourly wage rate is $23.08
- 250 weekdays
- 15,000 weekday trips
The cost of all this waiting is bound to be something like:
- $1,803,242 = .020833*23.08*250*15,000
Benefit-cost analysis shows that the trains should arrive more frequently:
- Benefits = $1.8 million
- Costs = $100 thousand
- Net benefits = $1.7 million
Benefits are overstated some since trains are only cut between peak hours and I'm allocating all of the trips to the time cost, but, most trips are during peak hours. Net benefits will still be positive.