Boardman interview

dakotafred

There's an interesting 3-part L.A. Times interview with Amtrak president Joseph Boardman on today's BLET Web site (http://www.ble.org/).

The best part of it to me is Boardman's unequivocal support for Amtrak's long-distance trains. "They run full," he says of the likes of the Southwest Chief and the Builder, are needed by rural America and are safe "on my watch."

Amtrak's long distance trains had an average load factor of approximately 56% through the first nine months of FY10.  This compares to 54% for the comparable FY09 period.  This does not meet my definition of "full".

For the first nine month of FY10 the long distance trains generated approximately 22 % of Amtrak's revenues, but they accounted for 73% of the carrier's operating costs before interest and depreciation.  They carried approximately 15% of Amtrak's riders.  They lost approximately 25 cents per passenger mile compared to a loss of 14 cents per passenger mile for the short distance and corridor trains vs. nearly 1 cent per passenger mile profit for the NEC trains.  In FY09 the long distance trains carried approximately 4/10s of one per cent of the intercity passengers traveling on a commercial carrier (airlines, buses, etc.).

Most rural areas of the United States are not dependent on long distance trains for commercial carrier services.  One look at Amtrak's long distance train map makes this fact crystal clear.  Moreover, for those areas that have reasonable access to the long distance trains, once a day train services, with many communities served in the middle of the night, is not a serious transport option.

If Amtrak were operated like a business, the first thing that the managers would do, after reviewing the dismal numbers associated with the long distance trains, is drop them and use the resources to beef up the high density corridors where passengers trains make sense.  

Sam1

If Amtrak were operated like a business, the first thing that the managers would do, after reviewing the dismal numbers associated with the long distance trains, is drop them and use the resources to beef up the high density corridors where passengers trains make sense.  

My answer is "political animal". What's yours?

 The original three-part article in the LA Times:

http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/interview-amtrak-pre-7108/

http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/interview-amtrak-pre-7151/

oltmannd

Sam1

If Amtrak were operated like a business, the first thing that the managers would do, after reviewing the dismal numbers associated with the long distance trains, is drop them and use the resources to beef up the high density corridors where passengers trains make sense.  

But this doesn't happen which leads to the conclusion that it's not run like a business. It's run like a ________.

My answer is "political animal". What's yours?

Agreed!

schlimm

 The original three-part article in the LA Times:

http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/interview-amtrak-pre-7108/

http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/interview-amtrak-pre-7151/

http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/interview-amtrak-pre-7153/

The articles are interesting, but like so many of them they tell only part of the story.  Several examples struck me.

Boardman noted that the long distance trains are running full and on time.  Ridership is up.  And he acknowledged that the long distance trains eat up about 80 per cent of the federal subsidy.  This is true for the operating subsidy, but it is not historically true for the capital subsidy.  Most of the capital subsidy has gone to the NEC.  Moreover, he failed to note that the long distance trains, whilst eating up most of Amtrak's federal subsidy, serve a miniscule portion of travelers choosing an intercity commercial option. 

The claim that Amtrak carries more than 50% of the air/rail passengers between New York and Washington is true.  However, one needs to drill into the numbers to get a clearer picture of them.  I have ridden the Acela or a regional train between New York and Philadelphia or Baltimore or Washington three times during the past 15 months.  Based on my unscientific observation, many if not most of the passengers do not ride from New York to Washington.  Rather, they get on and off the train at one of the intermediate stations.  For example, when I took the Acela from Philadelphia to New York, it arrived at 30th Street Station approximately 40 per cent full.  But between Philadelphia and New York it appeared to have a load factor approaching 60 to 70 per cent.  Accordingly, whilst it is true that Amtrak carries more than 50 per cent of the passengers between New York and Washington, it is probably not true that it carries 50 per cent of the passengers going from New York to Washington or vice versa.

The Prius driver quoted a cost of $20 in gasoline to drive from LA to San Diego and back.  He probably overstated the cost of the gasoline.  It is approximately 242 miles from LA to San Diego and back.  A Prius gets approximately 45 miles per gallon, which means that it would use approximately 5.4 gallons of gasoline for the trip.  MapQuest estimates the fuel cost at $17.48.  But the fully allocated cost would be higher.  Using my Corolla as an example, but adjusting the purchase price to what I would have had to pay for a Prius when I bought it, which is the beauty of having everything in a spread sheet, the fully allocated cost of driving it from LA to San Diego would be $71.10.  The comparable weekend rail fare on Amtrak for one person would be $72 before any discounts.  The fare for two people would be $144.  As I have noticed in other analysis, if only one person is traveling by Amtrak, the cost is about the same or less than driving, assuming that the person does not need to rent a car at his or her destination.  But beyond one person, the cost of driving is almost always cheaper than taking the train or a plane or even the bus, although in some instances the bus will trump the car even with more than one passenger.   

I continue in my agreement  with sam1 about LD trains: from most dollars and sense perspectives, their continuation makes little sense.  The only justification I can see is a political one we've seen since the beginnings of Amtrak: providing a minimal service to various areas of the country so that corridor construction and operation can get votes in Congress.

Continuation of long distance trains would make more sense if the equipment were available to cover routes more than once a day (or three times weekly as in the cases of the Cardinal and Sunset Limited).  The fixed costs of operation could spread among more trains and the taking the train would be a more viable option to more people if there was a train every 12, 8, or 6 hours versus once daily service.

 I just saw that Amtrak's Board of Directors has renewed Boardman's contract until or through 2013.  I think he has done a decent job so far and look forward to his continued tenure.

When we spend on Airlines 15 Billion and Highways 41 Billion a year, and give poor Amtrak only 1.3 to 1.5 Billion a year, there is something wrong with picture? We need fair and balance system?  When OverSea Countrys can spend 10 to 30 Billion a year on they train system.

Some contributors to these posts do not believe the government should be involved in railroading.  Yet Adam Smith, often credited as the founder of free market capitalism (he never used that term), felt it was the role of the government to provide goods "of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual" such as roads, bridges, canals, and harbors.  Since Smith was writing before railroads, it seems a reasonable extension to include railroads in that mix.  Although he was a free trader, he did believe retaliatory tariffs should be used to bring down tariffs and barriers in other countries.

conrailman

When we spend on Airlines 15 Billion and Highways 41 Billion a year, and give poor Amtrak only 1.3 to 1.5 Billion a year, there is something wrong with picture? We need fair and balance system?  When OverSea Countrys can spend 10 to 30 Billion a year on they train system.

I'd rather see Amtrak do a much better job with what they have and then build on that as a way forward. I'm not sure how 50+ new baggage cars help the situation much, though.

Just throwing more money at Amtrak doesn't appear to be in the works at all. Very little of the stimulus and $8B for new starts and upgrades was funneled through Amtrak.

I found a table on the breakdown of U.S. passenger miles by year and by mode at

http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_37.html

An interesting table on the breakdown of highway vs local streets is at

http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_automobile_profile.html

I would reason that apart from any "shortfall funded by General Revenue", the entire 15 billion of the Federal air travel budget is funded by "user fees" -- the tax on aviation gas and Jet A, and the ticket tax.  That funds the air traffic control system whereas airports are another story, which have a strong degree of local funding, although it has been argued that there is a high degree of recovery on that through various fees and charges.  I suppose there is an indirect subsidy to air travel through the R&D on military aircraft, engines, and instruments and other electronic systems, and we can argue that one until the cows come home.

A case can be made, however, that there is a large amount of cross-subsidy into Federal highways and of course Interstates owing to the gas tax being charged the minute you turn the key to start up in your driveway.  There is also cross-subsidy of gas tax money into local transit of various forms.

The second table suggests that only about half of driving miles takes place on highways of various kinds, maybe only 20 percent of all driving miles on Interstates.  But then again, Interstates have a heavy freight component, as anyone driving amongst the trucks, or the poor truck drivers doing a job and having to navigate amongst erratic car drivers, can attest.  So maybe Don's suggestion of a 50 million/year subsidy to Amtrak should be boosted to a full 250 million/year. 

Or maybe, for the full billion+ subsidy to Amtrak, Amtrak should be carrying 4-5 times more passenger miles than it does.

However, if the numbers and assumptions of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative to be believed, I had run the numbers and made the case on other threads that if all of money spent on Amtrak over the years had been directed in multiple instances of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, with the same level of Amtrak funding, Amtrak would indeed be carrying 4-5 times the passenger miles with hourly train service on all of the regional corridors, doing this with a comparable efficiency in the use of the Federal dollar as the Federal highway program.

Thus, that Amtrak is limping along with the "mere" billion+ yearly subsidy and .1 percent of total U.S. passenger miles can be placed at the feet of members of the advocacy community who consistently rise to the defense of business-as-usual in Amtrak operations and "stand astride history and say No!" to any change in direction on LD trains and modes of operation and service.

So here we are, where an 8 billion dollar "downpayment" has been made on a future network of, if not HSR, at least "fast trains" in the manner of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative and in the manner of what they run in England, and the first thing Amtrak does when the restart a buying program is to purchase baggage cars.  The defense of business-of-usual continues with all of the detailed reasons and excuses of why brand-new baggage cars are a top Amtrak priority.

The reason Don Oltmann and others of us have "issues" is not so much that a few tens of millions of dollars that Amtrak does not quite yet all have in hand is being spent on baggage cars is perhaps not so much the money as the signal it sends, that Amtrak plans to do the same-old same-old they have done since inception.  I also believe in some debate and "give-and-take" in discussions within the advocacy community, both in the online and bricks-and-morter circles.  But I don't see much of a debate as "The experts have decided that new baggage cars are needed, and baggage cars are expensive as they have all of these features and are low-volume production, and gee Don (or Paul -- Sam1 hasn't waded into this discussion yet), you seem awfully worked up about an order for a few baggage cars.?

So yes, I too have issues with the baggage cars, not even that Amtrak is doing this, but the manner in which members of the advocacy community rise to the defense of this action, which suggests to me that Amtrak will continue with table-crumbs levels of subsidy to supply a small sliver to the transportation demand doing pretty much the same things they did in the past.

I agree.  Other than the NEC, (and even that isn't all that glowing) there aren't many bright spots in Amtrak's 40 year history.  And even now, following the same old out-of-date pathways will not advance passenger rail as a viable option.  One major problem is mission/location discrepancies.  Amtrak is supposed to be a national network, yet only some parts of the US are suited to modern passenger rail.  The result is a continuation of funneling resources into LD rail and artifacts of the golden era like baggage cars.

Did the $72 fare for the round trip cited above by about four posts include the cost of the subsidies?  That much is a cost to each fare sold and should be added, even if only a buck or two.

The cost of the trip via car was about $71 for "all allocated costs".  Does that price include the recapitalization of the Corolla which at some point will have to be replaced?   I ask these questions just hoping for more clarity for the sake of my appreciation of the various points expressed.

-Crandell

If we Stop all the Waste money like Aid to these Over Seas Countrys 100 Billion plus a year, and this War 800 Billion Dollars a year and other programs, waste alot of money. We would have a World Class Amtrak system if stop waste all of this money?

Amtrak does need baggage cars so I am not sure I follow that argument.    The ones it has are just too old to be safe.      As for Long Distance vs Short Distance.      Age old argument BUT your not going to get a quasi-governmental agency to run like a private business.       Same deal with the Post Office.

CMStPnP

The ones it has are just too old to be safe. 

oltmannd

CMStPnP

The ones it has are just too old to be safe. 

How so? The safest RR in the US runs a locomotives and business car fleet that are older than Amtrak's baggage cars.

Perhaps, but are any of the business cars in service at least 90% of the time?  Or do they spend most of their time in storage?

CSSHEGEWISCH

oltmannd

CMStPnP

The ones it has are just too old to be safe. 

How so? The safest RR in the US runs a locomotives and business car fleet that are older than Amtrak's baggage cars.

Perhaps, but are any of the business cars in service at least 90% of the time?  Or do they spend most of their time in storage?

 

The freight car age limit is primarily a commercial limit imposed by the industry on itself. It is not a government safety regulation. There is nothing intrinsic in age of Amtrak's baggage cars that I know of that would make them less safe than new. Nor of the similar-aged 10-6 sleepers zipping back and forth across Canada each day.

How does Amtrak compute its "load factor"?

Suppose I run a coach train on the route of the California Zephyr and Denver is the half way point.  My train runs from Chicago to Denver with every seat filled, but at Denver everybody gets off and it completes the run empty. 

Was the load factor 50% or 100%?  If it is 50%, then what is a reasonable expectation for load factors?    

OK, it was asking a lot to have folks understand metal fatique, cost of maintenence / rebuild, spare parts availability, etc I guess.     So yeah if your willing to spend millions on a old baggage car you can keep rebuilding it over and over again.      Personally, if I am riding on the train or airplane.    I would like to see it out of service past what the industry considers is it's normal useful life.

CMStPnP

OK, it was asking a lot to have folks understand metal fatique

Most of this car order is about getting the car building business in the US going again.

CMStPnP

Personally, if I am riding on the train or airplane.    I would like to see it out of service past what the industry considers is it's normal useful life.

oltmannd

The normal useful life for rail equipment is driven by technology. Locomotives, by replacement ratio, fuel consumption (and now, emissions). Never, has a freight RR purchase new locomotives simply because the existing fleet was "old". Freight cars, by commercial requirements (like roofs that don't leak), and higher axle loadings. What defines the useful commercial life of a baggage car? Or, for that matter, a coach. What technology is driving the need for new?

 There are several problems with the idea of refurbishing old equipment and not using newer equipment.

1. If an Amtrak train derailment happens that can be attributed to an old defective car a jury would probably award additional damages because the car was not kept in a state of good repair even if it was.

2. The September trains mag had a short article on page 14 about Truck performance detectors. This article noted how hard it is to detect problems in lateral-to-verticle ratios; truck guage forces; standardized truck guage spread forces; warp index --  meaning the truck is not rectangular.

All these items are getting more difficult to repair on Heritage cars as lack of reliable parts and non standard cars (anyone know how many different lineages?)  becomes more of a problem thereby increasing operating costs instead of adding to new capital costs that will decrease future operating costs.

3.  Amtrak requested for FY 2011 $592M for operations. The House Subcommittee on Transportation only approved $563M (same as 2010) so there may be no way to add additional trains or even cars to existing trains and once again have cars paked at Bear and Beech Grove awaiting funds for repairs.

4. The same subcmte also cut Amtrak's General capital and Fleet plan from $1,471M to $767M (almost 50%) which presently requires Amtrak to not order as many cars ( for cars and locos $446M Amtrak request for 130 cars per year)) as Amtrak needs. ADA compliance costs of $231M are not funded either.

In conclusiion the over riding need to reduce operating costs is very evident. By buying new equipment with an extended warranty there will be a reduction in future operating costs  ( items other than brake, wheel wear, & the damages that will happen) .

blue streak 1

3.  Amtrak requested for FY 2011 $592M for operations. The House Subcommittee on Transportation only approved $563M (same as 2010) so there may be no way to add additional trains or even cars to existing trains and once again have cars paked at Bear and Beech Grove awaiting funds for repairs.

4. The same subcmte also cut Amtrak's General capital and Fleet plan from $1,471M to $767M (almost 50%) which presently requires Amtrak to not order as many cars ( for cars and locos $446M Amtrak request for 130 cars per year)) as Amtrak needs. ADA compliance costs of $231M are not funded either.

All the more reason to spend the money you do get for cars wisely ... for revenue cars. And I dispute that there is anything in the above that precludes Amtrak from adding cars to existing trains. More space, for customers Amtrak has often had to turn away, has been the crying need for years.

Nobody is talking additional trains on long-distance routes except as the states are willing to ante up for them, including equipment.

dakotafred

All the more reason to spend the money you do get for cars wisely ... for revenue cars. And I dispute that there is anything in the above that precludes Amtrak from adding cars to existing trains. More space, for customers Amtrak has often had to turn away, has been the crying need for years

Agreed but Amtrak has been starved for operating funds for years by both Dems and Republicans. That caused Amtrak not to be able to repair and/or overhaul many cars that are now being refurbished by ARRA funds. (probably one reason for the demise of Heritage sleepers) If operating funds are again shortchanged in FY 2011 and 2012 there will be more revenue cars once again sidelined and how can you then add cars?? That is especially true of the Heritage cars and what happens if several Heritage Dinners go down for some reason and are not replaced??  IMHO a quick loss of revenue passengers?? Another way to kill Amtrak.

But again we do not know the delivery schedule of this order so some one get us a copy of the contract !!.

EDIT: Since I wrote the above it has come to my attention that NARP's latest newsletter states "service cuts are possible if Amtrak must park cars for safety reasons because it can't perform certain capital funded overhauls"

Note: The fleet strategy ;plan that was released last fall stated the order of car replacements and that is what Amtrak is following. That was the time to argue the car building !! I believed Amtrack was going to follow that plan.

blue streak 1

1. If an Amtrak train derailment happens that can be attributed to an old defective car a jury would probably award additional damages because the car was not kept in a state of good repair even if it was.

blue streak 1

2. The September trains mag had a short article on page 14 about Truck performance detectors. This article noted how hard it is to detect problems in lateral-to-verticle ratios; truck guage forces; standardized truck guage spread forces; warp index --  meaning the truck is not rectangular.

blue streak 1

All these items are getting more difficult to repair on Heritage cars as lack of reliable parts and non standard cars (anyone know how many different lineages?)  becomes more of a problem thereby increasing operating costs instead of adding to new capital costs that will decrease future operating costs.

blue streak 1

3.  Amtrak requested for FY 2011 $592M for operations. The House Subcommittee on Transportation only approved $563M (same as 2010) so there may be no way to add additional trains or even cars to existing trains and once again have cars paked at Bear and Beech Grove awaiting funds for repairs.

blue streak 1

4. The same subcmte also cut Amtrak's General capital and Fleet plan from $1,471M to $767M (almost 50%) which presently requires Amtrak to not order as many cars ( for cars and locos $446M Amtrak request for 130 cars per year)) as Amtrak needs. ADA compliance costs of $231M are not funded either.

blue streak 1

In conclusiion the over riding need to reduce operating costs is very evident. By buying new equipment with an extended warranty there will be a reduction in future operating costs  ( items other than brake, wheel wear, & the damages that will happen) .

Don it continously amazes me why you did not apply for Boardmans job.

 You are a wealth of information and Im sure Amtrak would be much better if you ran it.

Dutchrailnut

Don it continously amazes me why you did not apply for Boardmans job.

 You are a wealth of information and Im sure Amtrak would be much better if you ran it.

Amtrak board announced that they re appointed Boardman into 2013. See Amtrak web site!

I Know , I know , but with Don's wealth of information they could have gotten one person to do CEO, Chief Mechaical officer, Head of engineering and Financial officer.

 look at how much they could have saved.