Over 100 people attended two public meetings in Dona Ana County this week to look at the possibility of creating a commuter rail line that will extend from Las Cruces to El Paso.
The first round of public meetings were held in Dona Ana County this week as part of a feasibility study funded by the state to see if there is a need for a commuter rail system, and if there are options to fund it.
David Chandler is the principal business analyst for the Center for Neighborhood technology, part of the team completing the study. He says these meetings are to help them gage the public’s interest, and to see what they would expect from a commuter rail system.
“One is just the scale of the market,” Chandler said. “Is there enough people, are there enough businesses here to warrant the service. The second question is how connected are the people, and the points of origin and destination in this region, and the third question is what’s the culture of the people. Is this a service that people would want and use and value, in a place where you don’t really have rail service today? Is this an innovation that people would want to see.”
This discussion comes just months after the South Central Regional Transit District started operating bus service in Southern Dona Ana County. The highly contested service currently serves just over 160 riders a week, up from 92 riders in February.
Dona Ana County Commissioner and Chairman for the South Central Regional Transit District says a rail service would serve to complement the bus service already provided.
“It is an enhancement to the bus system,” Hancock said. “If you have a backbone to a transportation system, then you can take those buses and be doing more things faster in the communities. That meets a lot of the needs, and answers a lot of the questions of the folks that were asking questions here.”
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David Chandler says they will use the information they gathered to created different service plans, at different costs and bring it back for more public comment.
“Now that will give us a basis for the sort of technical questions about this,” Chandler says. “How much money will have to be invested, what would be the financial plans for raising that. What would be the operational plans that would meet the expectations of people in terms of wanting the railroad, but this is the cornerstone to get this public input from people in the region.”
Chandler says it’s too soon to offer preliminary cost estimates for the commuter rail system, and that information will be available in early summer.
To take a survey on what you would want to see out of a commuter rail system, you can visit the South Central Regional Transit District website at scrtd.org.
