Rail Runner: Go big or go lean?

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - New Mexico’s commuter train is in dire need of grand ideas if it is to financially survive, according to one of the train’s supporters.

But Gov. Susana Martinez is wary of expensive, unfunded plans and believes the state needs to take a long, hard look at the 5-year-old Rail Runner Express to find a way lessen the financial bloodletting.

“It’s craziness,” said Keith Gardner, Martinez’s chief of staff. “This is not the way the state should be run.”

Martinez views the train as a financial boondoggle perpetrated by former Gov. Bill Richardson, he said.

“We need to go back and take a look at how this thing is being operated and how we can stop the bleeding,” Gardner said.

The train’s $840 million debt costs taxpayers $112,328 a day, or about $40 million a year. And that’s not counting the $68,493 a day, or about $25 million a year, the state spends to operate the train.

All that is for about 2,500 daily riders who contribute $8,876 a day, or about $5 million a year, to ride the rails between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

While Larry Abraham, who is vice-chairman of the train’s operating board, agreed that the numbers don’t add up to anything resembling a rosy financial picture, he thinks the Rail Runner needs to think big and become more than just a commuter train if it is to survive.

“Maybe you put slot machines on some of the trains, I’m not sure,” said Abraham, who is also mayor of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque. “But we gotta think out of the box because we have a lot invested in this train.”

He wants to gather all of those who have an interest in the train around one table and figure out a solution. Abraham’s other ideas include building high-density communities with retail components around each rail station, a link to the Spaceport now under construction north of Las Cruces and possibly turning the Rail Runner into a tourist-centric train operated by the state’s Economic Development Department.

“I think I can do a great service to the state of New Mexico if I can figure out with a group of people how to make this train viable and how to turn it in to a positive asset for the state,” Abraham said. “The train is ours. The debt is ours. How are we going to make this successful and sustainable? I think we can.”

But Gardner warned that any ideas to save the Rail Runner must come with a funding plan.

“There are those who would propose, ‘Hey send us a few more checks, a few more bailouts and we’re going to spend our way out of this problem, and by spending money we’re going to fix it,’ ” Gardner said. “Don’t come in and say, ‘We have these great ideas but we want you to pay for them.’ That’s not the case.”