Passenger

Why is it that many of the advocacy groups seem to view the 1945-1960 period as some sort of "Golden Era" that needs to be perpetuated?  The market for the long-distance passenger train shrank to close to the vanishing point after the airlines introduced the 707 and DC-8.  The withdrawal of the RPO and other mail contracts finally made the losses intolerable when the passenger trains finally had to stand on ticket revenue alone.  Most people are willing to tolerate four to five hours in a 757 from Chicago to Los Angeles because it's a lot faster than 42 hours on the "Southwest Chief", amenities notwithstanding.

 Well said!  Long distance train travel makes little economic sense:

Southwest Chief      43 hours     $143 (coach); $649 (Superliner roomette)

American Airlines    4 1/4 hours  $144 (coach)

So if someone wants to take a land cruise by rail, fine, but it would not seem to be in the province of a government subsidized transport, anymore than a Caribbean cruise is.  Nor should we continue to subsidize people who can't tolerate flying in an aluminum cylinder, even with all the accompanying aggravations.

It's certainly true that one reason rail travel in Britain and Europe work so well is that so many trips are in that "just right" distance range of 3-500 miles...which is just what you have in the Twin Cities to Chicago trips. It would be nice to have another train between those two metropolitan areas. But I think there would be people west of the Twin Cities who would come here by train if given the opportunity. Heck, every day chartered jets land at Twin Cities Int'l Airport filled with people from Japan who hop on the LRV at the airport and go a quarter mile to the Mall of America just to shop all day, then go back to the airport and fly back home.

Of course the rail travel argument is always kind of a vicious cycle. If trains only come through in the middle of the night, you're not going to have many riders. Since there aren't many riders, it's hard to justify adding a second train that runs at a better time - but that might be what you need to do to create riders.

Plus I don't buy the argument that any government subsidy is somehow bad. If the Post Office was an un-subsidized for profit company, there'd be one post office in Salt Lake City and everyone in Utah outside of the city would have to drive there to pick up their mail.

If we can spend 40 Billion on Highways and 15 Billion a on Airlines Systems each year. We can find Money for Amtrak?

conrailman:

If we can spend 40 Billion on Highways and 15 Billion a on Airlines Systems each year. We can find Money for Amtrak?

False argument.  We should spend a lot more money on Amtrak, but the point I and others make is that we need to spend it wisely on routes that will be heavily used by people for fast, frequent and convenient services.  It makes sense to develop the Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Twin Cities corridor service because a lot of potential passengers live there.  North Dakota and Montana are nice, but the potential passenger base is way too small.

wjstix:

If the Post Office was an un-subsidized for profit company, there'd be one post office in Salt Lake City and everyone in Utah outside of the city would have to drive there to pick up their mail.

But UPS and FedEx both come to my door, and I live twelve miles from downtown Salt Lake City. And there are places scattered around where you can take your parcels to either one without having to go to the main office. Are these two transportation companies subsidized?

Johnny

conrailman:

If we can spend 40 Billion on Highways and 15 Billion a on Airlines Systems each year. We can find Money for Amtrak?

Not everything is rosy in the airline picture either. Look at Boeings they have firm orders for over 900 of the new 787 and the plane is two years late making its first test flight. Have they discovered major problems or something else that is keeping this expensive piece of equipment grounded.

Looking at a new Hiawatha I personally think is a waste of time and money. If the Pioneer was reinstated as a Seattle to Denver train via Portland, Boise, Pocatello,Ogden, and then east across Wyoming it would be a route that would serve larger population than the proposed Hiawatha route. The important thing is that the schedule connect with the California Zephyr in Denver in both directions.

It was mentioned that Denver to El Paso route also be considered but if one looka at the past history of trains along a very similar route they did not do very well.

I rode both the Poneer on many occasions and the North Coast Hiawatha and the main problem with the Pioneer was getting sleeping car space as it was always sold out. I rode the Pioneer when it only operated between Seattle and Ogden where it was combined with the CZ and operated the UP route across Wyoming, This was also true of the Desert Wind. The latter train ran practically empty north of Las Vegas on its way to Ogden the same was true for the southbound Desert Wind. I would bet that Las Vegas would love to have a train that just ran between LA and Sin City now. In fact this Crap shooters special could possibly even make money. I would put two lounge cars with penny slots on each train so they could practice going to Las Vegas and be already when they get there. It would also bring additional revenue to Amtrak. Make sure the passengers that board in LA have a non - refundable return ticket so they can get back home and include the meal on the way home as they are probably broke.

Al - in - Stockton    

When the U.S. postal service was founded, people only had a few ways to communicate with each other.  One was face to face communication; another was to send and receive a letter; a third was news sheets and eventually newspapers. 

The situation is much different today.  People have numerous communication channels, e.g. email, telephones, personal communication devices, TV, etc.  This is one of the reasons the first class mail carried by the postal service is dwindling as a cascading rate.

Federal Express, UPS, etc. deliver to thousands of large, medium, and small communities in the U.S., indeed around the world.  They service Alpine, Texas, for example.  There is no reason why they could not deliver first class mail to Alpine, except for the Congressional restriction that grants an exclusive first class mail franchise to the U.S. postal service. 

If someone chooses to live on a hilltop 50 miles south of Alpine, as indeed some people do, is it unreasonable to ask them to pick up their mail, if they have any, when they are in Alpine or pay a premium to have it delivered?  I have a friend in just that situation; he uses email for most of his communication.

Put some competition into the postal service, as has happened with the overnight package business, and I suspect that we would see a greatly improved service.

Fed EX and UPS are not subsidized, other than to say that some people claim they don't pay their fair share of the cost of the highways and airways that they use.  There is little empirical evidence to support this argument.

The $40 billion spend on highways by the federal government is largely recovered through user fees, although they fell short of the requirements in 2007 and 2008 because the Congress has consistently refused to raise the fuel tax.  The same applies to the roughly $14 billion spent on the nation's airways.  Moreover, in the case of the federal transfers from the general funds to the dedicated funds, most of the nation's highway and airways users pay federal income taxes, which flow into the general fund and than are transferred to the dedicated highway and airway funds.  

Passenger rail requires a large per passenger and per passenger mile subsidy from nonusers.  On average it was 19 times greater than the federal subsidy for highway and airways users in 2008.  On of the reasons it is so large is because there is no competition in the passenger rail business.  Another is an insistence, fostered in part by the advocacy community and their political allies, to run long distance passenger trains, which are the real reason Amtrak loses so much money.

If the postal service and passenger rail were structured as competitive organizations, I suspect we would see significant improvements in both of them.  Unfortunately, most people still see the need for both through the eyes of their eighteenth and nineteenth century architects.  We are slow to recognize the changes around us, which are one of the reasons we hold onto a lot of outdate ideas and practices.

With the money they are scheduled to receive this year, Amtrak is going to take bids for a new version of the Viewliners.  Presumably that includes both dinner and sleeping car versions.

However, nothing has been said about a new Superliner.  To judge from trip reports posted on various web sites, the sleepers on several of the western trains rountinely are sold out or close to sold out, sometimes several months in advance.  I suspect the demand for this service is already out there but usage is constrained by the lack of cars.  This report did contain an estimate for new engines and Superliners, but I doubt it was much more than a WAG.  From the known cost of new freight engines alone, the number appeared extremely high.   

Amtrak apparently sees its future as the operator of the Northeast Corridor plus the contract operator for various state underwritten services.  When they do these studies I wonder if their ridership projections are partially based upon their experience operating demand constrained (equipment limited) western routes.   I realize this train would run across what another forum poster once called "the big empty", but they are projecting roughly 360,000 passengers per year, which works out to 500 per train.  Headcounts are not a good way to measure utilization -- passenger miles or capacity utilization would be better -- but that is the data they gave us.

I don't think this LD route should be anywhere near a top priority, but I have come to have deep distrust of studies done by Amtrak -- they just don't seem to me to even pass a smell test. 

This is an excellent discussion thread that raises alot of great points.  As a resident of what is commonly referred to as "the big empty" or "flyover country", I have a vested interest in having reliable transportation choices.  However, I recognize that the study's cost estimates seem like getting this train up and running would be way beyond reasonable.  I also don't believe that others should necessarily subsidize such a huge portion of my travel.

I believe that the long distance trains have potential and have value, but not in their present forms.  I think that Amtrak, or perhaps another future entity, should focus on the two endpoints of this route:  Seattle and Chicago.  What was the straightest, fastest, and best-engineered routing between these two places at one time?  That's right--the Milwaukee Road.  But this time, let's make a TGV-like service with speeds that would rival the Acela for a less-than-24-hour trip.  Easing curves, building better and longer tunnels and bridges, and going "green" with electric power.  Yes, this would require an enormous investment also, but it would be money better spent on technology and service that people could really use.  Frequencies could be greater than 1 train a day each way, with even more frequency between Chicago and the Twin Cities.  All we need to do is look to the railroads in Europe for what to emulate in terms of design and engineering.  Northwest/Delta Airlines can eat its heart out.  Public investment in something like this is something I could get behind.

Deggesty:

wjstix:

If the Post Office was an un-subsidized for profit company, there'd be one post office in Salt Lake City and everyone in Utah outside of the city would have to drive there to pick up their mail.

But UPS and FedEx both come to my door, and I live twelve miles from downtown Salt Lake City. And there are places scattered around where you can take your parcels to either one without having to go to the main office. Are these two transportation companies subsidized?

Johnny

No, but private companies also get to pick and choose what they carry and have much greater control over what they charge...plus I guess you could say they are subsidized, as the roads and highways their trucks travel on are built and maintained with tax dollars, as are the airports for any shipments that go by plane.

I wonder if Amtrak would ever be able to recreate the days of people travelling to Glacier or Yellowstone National Parks by train?? Since gasoline prices are likely to continue to rise overall, at some point it might become a viable option again.

BTW just to twist the thread a little bit...I'd say what Amtrak outside of the east coast needs right now is actually a good north-south route, something like the old "Twin Star Rocket": Twin Cities - Kansas City - Dallas/Ft.Worth - Houston. A friend of mine lived in Colorado for many years, and noted that many people living in his area were originally from the Upper Midwest. He liked train travel and wanted to try coming home to visit by train, but it was a nightmare. He would have had to taken a train from Denver to Chicago, stay overnight, then basically backtrack hundreds of miles to the west to get to the Twin Cities. If he could have changed trains somewhere in Iowa and gone north from there it would save a full day's time.

oltmannd:

A stamp costs $0.05 in 1965. Inflated to 2009, it should cost $0.34, but it actually costs $0.44. To top it off, this is change occurred in an era where transportation costs generally declined! (in real dollars). Now, that's efficiency!

Sounds like a bargain to me!  I checked what it would cost to send a letter FedEx from the Chicago suburbs (I would have to take it to a drop  off site) to Eugene, Oregon (delivered to the person's home).  The cheapest was $17.20, with a Wednesday drop off, next Monday delivery. If you want next day delivery, the charge is $31.39.  Compare that with postal service.   I think the constant knocking of USPS is really undeserved.  If you want to spend an outrageous amount for every letter you send, go ahead.