$800K Rail Runner stop for Lobos sits abandoned
ALBUQUERQUE — It’s been a decade since the Rail Runner platform just south of downtown Albuquerque has been used, and there are no plans to reopen it.
Albuquerque television station KRQE reports the $800,000 stop along the commuter rail route was abandoned just months after it was built, and critics are pointing to it as an example of government waste.
The Lobo Special Events Platform was the brainchild of former Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat who pushed hard to develop the commuter rail line that now stretches from Belen and Albuquerque to Santa Fe.
A joint venture between the Rail Runner, the University of New Mexico and the city of Albuquerque, the special events platform was meant to provide service for college sporting events.
The thought was if fans lived in Santa Fe or Belen and wanted to go to a Lobos game, they could avoid the hassle of driving and parking by riding the train, getting off at the Lobo station and then catching a bus.
“The governor [Richardson] was really a very big supporter of Lobo athletics at the time and was very interested in seeing if there was an opportunity to connect the Rail Runner to … the football stadium, The Pit, maybe Isotopes Park,” says Lawrence Rael, who headed up the Rail Runner in 2008.
Rael says no feasibility studies were done relating to ridership before the station was built.
Following a year of construction, the Lobo platform was completed in September 2009 and soon inaugurated for the Tulsa-New Mexico football game. Sixty passengers went to that game on the Rail Runner.
That next month, 91 fans used the platform for the UNLV-New Mexico game. The Rail Runner hosted 49 passengers for the BYU game in November.
In December 2009, the university ordered a special train for the New Mexico Bowl to see Fresno State battle Wyoming, but only 27 fans took the train. Rail Runner officials say that didn’t come close to justifying a special train, as the number would have needed to be closer to 300 or 400 to break even.
The bowl game would spell the end of the Lobo platform. Due to low ridership and a lack of interest, KRQE reported the platform was padlocked, and the $800,000 project was written off as an unfortunate political blunder.
“We take money from taxpayers, and then politicians get a great idea in their head, and they just spend this money on what they think is a great idea,” said state Sen. Mark Moores, R-Albuquerque. “When you’re dealing with other people’s money, it’s easy just to spend it without actually planning.”
Rael says Rail Runner officials were doing what elected officials at the time had requested.
Cinnamon Blair, a spokeswoman for the university, said that looking back on the project, it was clear that not enough due diligence was applied.
“There should have been more studies on ridership and survey work done to see if people indeed would have used the bus service and the Rail Runner,” she said.