LA.Swift is a bus service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Funded by a FEMA grant it was intended as a service to aid workers living in B.R. and working in the city. It was originally intended to be discontinued after November 30, 2006, then extended to June 30, 2007 at which time it was picked up by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and may go on forever.

La. Swift provided 200,000 free rides between October 31, 2005 and October 31, 2006. That would be an average of 550-750 rides per day over the year. Recently the service has been providing about 1000 rides (500 round trips) per day.

FEMA tells us they'll need $8 million to keep it going another 18 months. If that means 300,000 more rides will cost $8 million then the cost would average $27 per ride, $55 per round trip. That seems pretty expensive for a 70 mile bus ride. ( Just think, if the workers coming into to town are making the $5.15 per hour minimum wage for 8 hours they are earning $41 dollars per day. )

Alternatives include Amtrak rail service. That has a $60 million startup cost and will cost an additional $8-10 million per year in operations. If a ticket costs $10 each way, it would take one million rides per year to offset the operating costs and 2 million rides per year  to recover the capital costs in 6 years. That's just under 7 times the current volume of La. Swift  riders or about 7,000 rides per day (3,500 each way). If a rail car can hold 50 riders it would take 70 rail cars per day in each direction to carry those riders.

I don't think that's the way the planners are looking at the traffic. They probably expect something like double the La. Swift traffic and intend to subsidize operations and eat the capital cost. If that's the plan, we are looking at a cost of $40 per ride vs revenue of $10. It looks like the taxpayer can expect to subsidize this operation to the tune of $12 million per year or roughly $30 per ride.

Now it is approaching July 1, 2007 and the free FEMA supported La. Swift service is again coming to an end (did that 18 months go by pretty quickly or is FEMA still paying, did $8 million just disappear?) . The Louisiana Department of Transportation is scheduled to pick it up and offer rides in chartered Hotard Coaches between Baton Rouge and New Orleans for $5 each way. They estimate this will pay 20% of the cost but still compares favorably to the $16 per ride average for commercial service.


Why is the State competing with cheaper commercial services? Looking at the numbers quoted above, wouldn't it cost $9 per ride less to just use the commercial services and charge the state $16 per ride? Wouldn't this have been true from the beginning?

Hey helicopters are looking pretty cost effective, compared to this kind of government operated and subsidized nonsense! Why is it that every time I look into these kind of  programs, I feel someone has misplaced a decimal point.