Passenger

I took some time to read the Amtrak study on a revived Hiawatha.  The complete document can be found on their web site.

The start up costs are breathtaking -- $1.043 billion to be spent over a 5 years start-up period.  $619 mil of that is for track improvements, $330 mil for additional engines and Superliners, $60 mil for PTC (mostly in ND and Montana), $17 mil for stations, and $15 mil. for personnel related start up.

After that, Amtrak projects a $39 mil annual operating loss.

The proposed route would be the same as the Empire Builder from Chicago to Fargo, running about 3 hours ahead of the Builder westbound.  From Fargo, the Hiawatha hits Bismarck, Billings at 11:13 am the next day, Helena, and Sandpoint at 11:15 pm.  It arrives at Sandpoint a half hour before the Builder on the Builder's current schedule but continues as a seperate train getting into Seattle at 10:42 am the second day.  Just how the Hiawatha goes from running ahead of the Builder at Sandpoint to being behind it (on the current schedule) at Seattle is not explained. 

The consist is envisioned as 2 engines, a baggage car, a transition dorm, 2 sleepers, 3 coaches, a diner and a lounge car.

Beginning with the report earlier this year on the Sunset East, it seems to me Amtrak is gold plating their start up costs.  In this case, it appears in the infrastructure portion, which even included some work on the CP east of Minneapolis ($44 mil) and the BNSF between Minneapolis and Fargo ($24 mil) is especially questionable.  On the other hand, I understand the North Dakota and Montana portions are largely single track and used by a number of coal drags, so the provision of additional sidings and the elimination of ground thrown switches seems reasonable.

Has anyone else given some thought to this report?   . 

 

 

linkee??

I should have put a link in my post.   Here:

 http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/PRIAA/NorthCoastHiawathaServiceStudy.pdf

I rde both the Empire Builder under GN and the North Coast Limited under NP , I akso rode th North Coast Hiawatha when Amtrak operated. You ask how the proposed North Coast Hiawatha loses time across Montana and in the state of Washington. The North Coast route is longer across Montana thethe Builder route nd would have more stops. The NCL was always slower across Washington as there route to Seattle from Spokane is much longer. The old NP route leaves Spokane ad travels to Pasco then turns toward Seattle via akima, Ellensburg and Stampede Pass. In NP days theNCL left Seattle about 2-1/2 hours earlier then the EB and both arrived in Spokane about the same time.

Al - in - Stockton  

My opinion is that lots of Amtrak and public transit projects are gold plated. There is very little push to try to trim costs. Need a station? Lots of concrete, curbs, landscaping, etc. Why not just a timber and gravel lot and platform? Don't have to design storm sewer and retention ponds this way. Don't bother with lighting or power if daylight operation. If you need a shelter, a couple bus-stop shelters will work. You can get operational much faster this way, too, so your investment starts paying back sooner. Get started this way, then build out as traffic demands. Same thing with equipment and staffing. The status-quo of the past 50 years seems to get baked in to every new proposal. There have to be better ways. Why to the on board service guys have to sleep on the train? Why can't the train crew and on board service personal share job functions? They do on the airlines. Why do I need a guy to serve me a soda and a bag of chips? A vending machine does that for me every day. Why do I need a commercial kitchen on the train when there are multiple commercial kitchens every 20 or 30 miles along the route? I'm not saying ALL of these are viable, but, with no skin in the game, Amtrak and the others aren't particularly motivated to even LOOK at anything.

oltmannd:

The status-quo of the past 50 years seems to get baked in to every new proposal. There have to be better ways. Why to the on board service guys have to sleep on the train? Why can't the train crew and on board service personal share job functions? They do on the airlines. Why do I need a guy to serve me a soda and a bag of chips? A vending machine does that for me every day. Why do I need a commercial kitchen on the train when there are multiple commercial kitchens every 20 or 30 miles along the route? I'm not saying ALL of these are viable, but, with no skin in the game, Amtrak and the others aren't particularly motivated to even LOOK at anything.

Amtrak is only half of the story.  The other half is the advocacy community, or at least some voices within the advocacy community.

A lot of the choices you talk about either come up in "Amtrak Reform" proposals or from Amtrak itself when some major belt-tightening comes their way.

Now I don't properly know how much "pull" is held by the advocacy community, but the sort of changes you mention coming from the sources I mention is widely regarded as "don't people know that you will have to go back to the old way of meal service when these reforms don't work out" as best, as a Concrete Lobby and Heritage Foundation conspiracy against Amtrak at worst.

We talk about "corridors" and HSR and "110 MPH rail", but at the end of the day, we get all worked up about proposals to cut the Sunset Limited.  Yeah, yeah, national system, the system is a network and so on.  But it seems that some in the advocacy community regard any change as anti-Amtrak and defending the LD trains seems to get more energy than advocating for fast corridor trains.

The one thing I like about this place is these questions of what direction to take advocacy can be discussed -- these kinds of topics seem to be off limits in the bricks-and-morter groups.

Paul Milenkovic:

oltmannd:

The status-quo of the past 50 years seems to get baked in to every new proposal. There have to be better ways. Why to the on board service guys have to sleep on the train? Why can't the train crew and on board service personal share job functions? They do on the airlines. Why do I need a guy to serve me a soda and a bag of chips? A vending machine does that for me every day. Why do I need a commercial kitchen on the train when there are multiple commercial kitchens every 20 or 30 miles along the route? I'm not saying ALL of these are viable, but, with no skin in the game, Amtrak and the others aren't particularly motivated to even LOOK at anything.

Amtrak is only half of the story.  The other half is the advocacy community, or at least some voices within the advocacy community.

A lot of the choices you talk about either come up in "Amtrak Reform" proposals or from Amtrak itself when some major belt-tightening comes their way.

Now I don't properly know how much "pull" is held by the advocacy community, but the sort of changes you mention coming from the sources I mention is widely regarded as "don't people know that you will have to go back to the old way of meal service when these reforms don't work out" as best, as a Concrete Lobby and Heritage Foundation conspiracy against Amtrak at worst.

We talk about "corridors" and HSR and "110 MPH rail", but at the end of the day, we get all worked up about proposals to cut the Sunset Limited.  Yeah, yeah, national system, the system is a network and so on.  But it seems that some in the advocacy community regard any change as anti-Amtrak and defending the LD trains seems to get more energy than advocating for fast corridor trains.

The one thing I like about this place is these questions of what direction to take advocacy can be discussed -- these kinds of topics seem to be off limits in the bricks-and-morter groups.

It is clear that Amtrak has a culture of inertia. Even Don Phillips has finally seen the light. ...and the advocacy group tends to like it that way. Once in a blue moon, Congress, for whatever reason, gets after Amtrak to make changes, however ill-conceived, but they are the only change agent around. The goals should be the cheapest possible equipment moving at the fastest speed, with minimum end point dwell and the fewest man-hours of staffing and support per passenger mile. Fixed facilities should be the bare minimum needed to keep passengers safe and reasonably comfortable. Every man hour of effort spend trying to do anything else is a waste of time and money.

It certainly would be a nice option for us in the Twin Cities, being able to leave here at noon and get into Chicago around 8:30PM, with similar timings for the return trip. Would also be nice for people west of us to not have to get on a train heading east at 3 a.m. to get to the Twin Cities.

I just hope they call it "North Coast Limited" and not that goofy 1970's "North Coast Hiawatha" name!!!

 Don and Paul:

 

Great points!  Now if advocacy could only get us moving in that direction - a modern system, with fast (100 mph average speed), frequent and convenient services between major population points within 5 hours/ 500 miles of each other. Scrap the sleepers and LD services and concentrate resources.

There is no way you can justify spending that much money to have a daily train of 2 sleepers and 3 coaches!   Especially when it is projected to loss another $40M a year. End of story.

schlimm:

a modern system, with fast (100 mph average speed), frequent and convenient services between major population points within 5 hours/ 500 miles of each other

How fast and where will depend a great deal on the cities at the end points, along the way, the available routes and the cost to upgrade the route. It's a reasonable thing to study a range of alternatives before deciding what to do. Setting speeds and range ahead of time can lead to the tail wagging the dog.

schlimm:

Scrap the sleepers and LD services and concentrate resources.

The problem with scrapping the sleepers is that that don't have much resale value. It's not clear to me what the sleepers contribute or cost on an incremental basis in existing service, so it might be reasonable to run the wheels off them until they need a capital overhaul.

wjstix:

Would also be nice for people west of us to not have to get on a train heading east at 3 a.m. to get to the Twin Cities.

The combined population of ND and Montana is 1.5M. That's about 0.5% of the total US population. A second train for them? OK. They pay. Not me. That'll be $700 for every man, woman and child to get started and $25 a head every year the train runs.

A train from Chicago to Fargo or Grand Forks might make sense; but to expand it beyond is absurd. When I took tha Empire Builder to Seattle in 2005; I was amazed just how little traffic there was on US 2 across North Dakota and Montana. Bismarck has I-94 and Delta Airlines which serve it nicely. The Empire Builder does perform its social obligation to those two states.

oltmannd:

The problem with scrapping the sleepers is that that don't have much resale value. It's not clear to me what the sleepers contribute or cost on an incremental basis in existing service, so it might be reasonable to run the wheels off them until they need a capital overhaul.

 

I should have said convert the sleepers to coaches.  That shouldn't cost all that much and they could be used on the additional train sets needed to cover frequent service on sensible routes

oltmannd:

Setting speeds and range ahead of time can lead to the tail wagging the dog.

Speed and range are goals to work towards, long-range.  But my point is that train service is really superior to other modes only if the total time on a train would be less than a certain number of hours.  My guess is that would be about five hours or so.

As I have repeatedly said in the past. There was no need for Amtrak to buy all of thenew cars they have. The simplest solution would have been to rebuild the coaches, domes and diners they got from the existing RRs. Canada did just that and now they are giving the Budd cars a second rebuilding that will extend there lives another 25 years. Siure would have saved the American taxpayer a ton of money. Now Amtrak looks for additional equipment and they don't have it. Why could they not have mothballed the equipment for future needs like the USN did and does with ships. They could have taken the older cars and wrapped them in plastic like they do boats. Many could be used for the seasonal rushes or for trying new services. And besides maybe if we would have kept the 10-6s we would not have ever built the horrible Viewliner's which the are going to repeat that mistake again. Sure most of the world's RRs lose money but not as much as Amtrak does. And I certainly have not seen to many others that throw it away like the US and then shows such poor ridership figures after all is said and done.

Al - in - Stockton