As the bill for commuter rail service continues to grow, Rhode Island is asking for sweeteners to settle the payment dispute and improve flagging ridership.

ABOARD THE 814 TRAIN — Twelve passengers departing Wickford Junction station just after 9 a.m. on a recent Friday found room to stretch out in the same car — six in the upper level, six in the lower — as a diesel locomotive tugged them north toward Providence and Boston.

Earlier trains are usually busier, but the number of empty seats, and entire cars, leaving Wickford Junction that day has been fairly typical since the $44-million station and parking garage opened in the parking lot of a North Kingstown shopping center in 2012. Traffic at the T.F. Green Airport Station has been only marginally better since that facility opened in 2010 as part of the $267 million Interlink project.

"This is the second time in a month I've taken the train to Boston, but I usually only do it a few times a year" said Chris Barber, an information technology consultant from Exeter doing work on his laptop as he headed to a business meeting. "Maybe I will use it more this year, but it just isn't frequent enough. And it takes an hour longer than driving."

Low ridership has been more than just a missed opportunity for state leaders keen on expanding Rhode Island's unusually low use of public transportation. Under the state's "South County Operating Agreement" with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which brought commuter trains south of Providence to the new stops at the airport and Wickford, Rhode Island must make up the difference between what it costs to run trains south of Providence and what is collected in fares.

Not only have those shortfalls turned out to be much larger than expected, but the state and MBTA have never agreed on exactly how much is owed and the transit agency — which is raising fares in response to a budget crisis — has collected only a small fraction of a debt that now approaches $10 million.

If you go by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation's accounting, its debt to the MBTA stood at $8.3 million last June, according to documents provided by the agency in response to a public records request by The Journal. The MBTA has declined to release its estimate of the debt.

The basis of the payment dispute, first reported by WPRI last spring, and why the MBTA has allowed such a large debt to go uncollected for more than five years, has not been made public. Neither Rhode Island nor the MBTA allowed officials involved in the matter to be interviewed.

"Both the MBTA and the Rhode Island Department of Transportation have made progress toward establishing a methodology for the cost of the service," said MBTA spokesman Jason Johnson in an email response to questions. "We still need to finalize some items, including the form of payment and the payment mechanism. We have had discussions with RIDOT about how commuter service can best be provided in the future, and we look forward to further discussions."

In addition to declining interviews on the issue, Rhode Island DOT has withheld documents on the South County rail debt including seven "drafts" of a Dec. 7 letter from DOT Director Peter Alviti Jr. to MBTA Secretary Stephanie Pollack and an unspecified number of "notes and impressions from RIDOT employees related to the drafts."

The DOT declined to answer whether the drafts, which stretch back to last June, were sent to the MBTA.

As the bill for commuter rail service continues to grow, Rhode Island is asking for sweeteners to settle the payment dispute and improve flagging ridership.

The most significant for commuters is a request for the MBTA to accept Rhode Island Public Transit Authority monthly passes for train travel within Rhode Island, according to the December letter. Such a move would allow people who now take the bus between Wickford and Providence to make the same commute by train for the same price.

In addition, Alviti suggested the MBTA begin using Rhode Island's methodology for calculating future payments, a formula using figures reported annually to the National Transit Database, and that Rhode Island should receive a 16-percent discount on a portion of the debt for paying it in cash.

Under the 2010 South County rail agreement, Rhode Island agreed to compensate the MBTA by paying for capital projects that benefited the system, specifically, improvements to the Pawtucket layover yard and the South Attleboro station.

Rhode Island proposes counting $4.7 million worth of work on those projects toward the $6.4 million the state owed through June 2014. Of the remaining $1.7 million for those years, Alviti proposed paying $1.4 million in cash if the MBTA agreed to the 16 percent, or $300,000, discount.

One positive for South County rail as it enters its sixth year is an operating deficit at least heading in the right direction. The DOT estimates it will owe $1.57 million for the year that ended last June, down from $1.95 million in 2014 and $2.15 million in 2013.

More people riding the train has helped. The MBTA collected $695,063 in fares south of Providence in the year ending June 2012, $1.3 million the next year and $1.5 million in 2014.

To the aggravation of Rhode Island officials, the MBTA does not provide them detailed and up-to-date passenger numbers for trains using Ocean State stations.

The most recent ridership estimates the MBTA sent Rhode Island came in September 2014 and show an average of 187 inbound passenger trips per day at Wickford Junction and 267 per day at T.F. Green for the year that ended that June. That was up from 147 inbound trips at Wickford Junction and 217 at T.F. Green the previous year.

"It took 26 years to get this!! MBTA has sent an accounting of our service," Stephen Devine, the DOT's chief of intermodal planning wrote in an October 2014 email to members of DOT staff. "Upon a quick scan review, the numbers don't look too good."

Although Rhode Island DOT could not provide more recent detailed counts, spokesman Charles St. Martin said the difference in traffic at the two stations has continued to narrow, with both seeing roughly 200 passengers per day.

Oddly, the only ridership estimates made for commuter rail south of Providence before the service opened were done in 2000, a decade before trains started running to T.F. Green, and were never updated, according to Rhode Island DOT.

Those estimates suggested that by 2020, an average of 237 passengers would be using T.F. Green Station per day and a whopping 1,500 passengers per day would use Wickford Junction. The state built the 1,100-car Wickford Junction parking garage that now sits mostly empty based on those estimates, St. Martin said.

In addition to what it owes the MBTA, Rhode Island also spends more than $5 million per year in operating costs that include renting access to the Northeast Corridor tracks from Amtrak, insurance and maintenance at the two stations.

Despite the low return on investment so far, Rhode Island officials want to expand commuter rail service south of Providence. They face a Catch-22: how do you increase ridership without more frequent trains and how do you justify more trains with low ridership.

At T.F. Green Airport, 17 new passengers got on, including Joe Benton, of Philadelphia, who was planning to catch a southbound Amtrak at Providence, and Adrienne Graudins, of South Kingston, who pleaded for more frequent service.

"My husband takes Amtrak from Kingston [to Boston] and my daughter lives in Boston," Graudins said. "If it ran more often, or at all on the weekends, we would use it more often."

By the numbers

267

Average daily passenger trips to T.F. Green in 2014

187

Average daily passenger trips to Wickford Junction in 2014

$5.2 million

Annual operating cost

$8.3 million

Rhode Island estimate of its debt to MBTA as of June 2015

$44 million

Cost to build Wickford Junction

$8 million

Rhode Island share