I moved to the Washington DC area in the fall of 1968. They'd just started tearing up roadways in the district to construct the Metro. I remember people complaining bitterly about the inconvenience and how no one would take it and on and on. Some 30 years later I was back in DC (having moved away in 1982) and was at 16th and K on a Friday afternoon. There were fewer cars on the road than there would have been 30 years earlier. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think the subway made a huge difference.
I moved to Santa Fe, NM in 2008, when the Railrunner was being built into this city. More than once I'd be somewhere and I'd overhear someone saying it was a complete boondoggle, no one would take it. I'd invariably tell my "I moved to Washington DC in the fall of 1968" story. Possibly no one was impressed.
Right now the Railrunner isn't operating, because of Covid-19. However, before this, the main reason it was somewhat struggling to maintain passenger loads is that the people scheduling it somehow don't understand that you cannot just run the four or five trains a day that serve commuting workers, but have to have more service to accommodate tourists and allow people to attend evening events in Santa Fe and still take the Railrunner back to Albuquerque, or attend evening events in Albuquerque and take the Railrunner back to Santa Fe. The essential problem is that it's being run and scheduled by people who have lived here their entire lives and don't understand such scheduling. Sigh.
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