Another Amtrak Question

[FThunder11]

If Amtrak is "junked" will the freight railroads take over? I think if they do the freight roads will do a better job.

[garr]

I would say "No Way" for regularly scheduled intercity passenger service. The freight railroads, for the most part, got what they wanted in 1971 when Amtrak was formed.

As far as providing the right of way for contract operators like Rocky Mountain Railtours there may be some interest if there is money to be made and the capacity is available.

Jay

[RudyRockvilleMD]

First of all Amtrak won't go away. This is a good question because NS did express possible interest in passenger service subject to conditions.

[FThunder11]

I want good passenger service in the US

[MP57313]

QUOTE: Originally posted by FThunder11
I want good passenger service in the US

So do I. But I seriously doubt the freight railroads want anything to do with it, or there would already be service out there somewhere. Passengers need a lot more "care and feeding" than freight...stations, comfortable rolling stock, parking areas, ticket agents, etc. Not to mention the contingency plans (Plan B) to bring in charter buses when the trains get delayed or annulled.

On the other hand, some short lines operate passenger service (Santa Fe-Lamy) and it is affordable.

[daveklepper]

OK Guys, here is an alternative.

First of all, how much total Federal taxes do the "Big Six" pay each year?

If UP + BNSF + NS + CSX + CP + CN pay a total of about four billion a year to the USA Government, then there IS hope for freight railroads to provide good passenger service.

If much less than that, there isn't hope.

Here is how. Congress decides how much it is worth to the USA to have a good decent passenger railroad system that the USA can be proud of. If they decide two billion or more, per year, then the scheme would work.

The total pie is then distributed to all the railroads that they themselves provide passenger serviced on the proportional basis of the length in miles of each journey or each individual using the service (N x Miles-sub-n) or possibly the square root of the mileage considering that carrying a passenger 100 miles is not ten times more expensive than carrying him/her ten miles, more like three times as expensived. A number of Larry Kaufman and Larry Parsons types should figure out the formula, since they know more than I do about the proportional costs number of passengers vs number of miles.

In other words, a real tax incentive to provide such good passenger service that people will ride.

The fares the railroad collects are on top of this subsidy.

Short of something like this, well better keep the present arrangement with David Gunn in charge.

[passengerfan]

For years Amtrak has pumped most of the money to operate the system into the northeast corridor and neglected much of the rest. Living on the right coast I see Washington, Oregon and California providing more and more Amtrak service to the people by providing state funding to assist Amtrak growth. I am sure if Amtrak goes down these three states will still have some rail services for passengers to ride and those states that want service will just have to ante up the funding to continue service. But it bothers me when I see the shape the US airline industry is in and the government subsidies and bailouts keep flowing to them. If Amtrak were given 2 billion a year for capital improvements only for the next five years I am sure the American taxpayer would see an end to Amtrak at the door each year for a hand out. But the states must do their part as well and provide funding for the operation of the stations and personal related to those operations. The airports are heavily subsidized and so is the air traffic control system by the federal government so why can't the states that have Amtrak service provide the passenger stations and personel to run them. The three right coast states have shown the most improvement in amtrak services anywhere and the those states will continue to support the passenger carrier as long as they are not left as a west coast operation only, without train service to the rest of the country. As long as states keep putting their transportation dollars into highways people will keep buying more cars and filling the additional highways until we will eventually run out of fuel or come to grinding halt due to gridlock. Name one transportation mode more fuel efficient than the railroads that serves the number of people and area of the country.

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by passengerfan

Name one transportation mode more fuel efficient than the railroads that serves the number of people and area of the country.

Greyhound! (Sorry, you asked!) The bus is about 3x more fuel efficient than Amtrak. Amtrak is about = to driving.

Take a look: http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/energy/eng-11.cfm?&CFID=19197095&CFTOKEN=13252440

[AntonioFP45]

QUOTE: Originally posted by oltmannd

QUOTE: Originally posted by passengerfan

Name one transportation mode more fuel efficient than the railroads that serves the number of people and area of the country.

Greyhound! (Sorry, you asked!) The bus is about 3x more fuel efficient than Amtrak. Amtrak is about = to driving.

Take a look: http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/energy/eng-11.cfm?&CFID=19197095&CFTOKEN=13252440

The bus may be efficicent but sorry, the bus to me is one dreadful form of long distance transportation!! Yuck!! [B)]

Before any of you flame me.......I drove the darn things part-time for 10 years!! Driving them was one thing, but riding as a passenger for a long stretch? Getting off at stops for meals? Caught in traffic jams on the interstate! No thanks!!

Give me the Silver Meteor's coach, diner and lounge cars anytime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [:D][8D]

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by AntonioFP45

QUOTE: Originally posted by oltmannd

QUOTE: Originally posted by passengerfan

Name one transportation mode more fuel efficient than the railroads that serves the number of people and area of the country.

Greyhound! (Sorry, you asked!) The bus is about 3x more fuel efficient than Amtrak. Amtrak is about = to driving.

Take a look: http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/energy/eng-11.cfm?&CFID=19197095&CFTOKEN=13252440

The bus may be efficicent but sorry, the bus to me is one dreadful form of long distance transportation!! Yuck!! [B)]

Before any of you flame me.......I drove the darn things part-time for 10 years!! Driving them was one thing, but riding as a passenger for a long stretch? Getting off at stops for meals? Caught in traffic jams on the interstate! No thanks!!

Give me the Silver Meteor's coach, diner and lounge cars anytime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [:D][8D]

I agree! (But that wasn't the question asked!)

I'd REALLY have to want to go there to take the bus.

I saw some stats a while back that Atlanta was the 10th largest loading point on the Greyhound system. Kinda makes me think there might be a pretty good market for passenger trains here.

[jchnhtfd]

First off, I doubt very much if the freight railroads would be even faintly interested in providing passenger service, unless the net profit were to be at least as high as a good freight operation. Why on earth should they? No one should -- although apparently some folks do -- expect business to be in the philanthropy business.

The suggestion of a tax rebate clearly is to tilt the scales so that the net profit from a passenger operation might be high enough. However... IMHO such a rebate would have to have a dollar value well in excess of the amount AMTRAK requested to operate. Why? Because of a number of factors, but primarily because of duplication. Other factors involve such little details as local taxes, capital cost of all-new facilities and equipment, labour costs, etc. etc.

So what would be the advantage?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jchnhtfd

The suggestion of a tax rebate clearly is to tilt the scales so that the net profit from a passenger operation might be high enough. However... IMHO such a rebate would have to have a dollar value well in excess of the amount AMTRAK requested to operate. Why? Because of a number of factors, but primarily because of duplication. Other factors involve such little details as local taxes, capital cost of all-new facilities and equipment, labour costs, etc. etc.

So what would be the advantage?

The fact that it would actually cost more doesn't matter to dubya. It would accompli***hree things for him. 1. It would "privatize" passenger rail. 2. The cost of passenger rail to the nation would be obscured within the budgets of those large corporations. 3. It would starve the federal government of money. Starving the federal govt. of money is one of his core philosophies. That's the reason for all of those massive tax cuts. Theoretically that should lead to smaller govt. (which is his aim) but anyone with a brain knows that it doesn't happen in reality (so we get massive deficits instead.)

[Anonymous]

The freight railroads by virtue of foregone insitutional experience with passenger services, fractioning of identical efforts among many different organizations too small to bring economy of scale to bear, and because passenger would by necessity play second fiddle to freight in the company's set of priorities, would be highly unlikely to do a better job than Amtrak. It would certainly be a more erratic experience, with one road doing one thing well and other badly, and the next road doing the opposite. Taking a single-mission focused outfit like Amtrak and scattering that mission among five or six organizations with a different primary mission, is a dreadful idea.

Those who say otherwise, as far as I can see, have absolutely no experience in running a railroad, or any complex and technically demanding organization, and if perchance they have worked for a rairoad, I'd want to look to see if they're the ones who screwed it up.

OS

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by O.S.

The freight railroads by virtue of foregone insitutional experience with passenger services, fractioning of identical efforts among many different organizations too small to bring economy of scale to bear, and because passenger would by necessity play second fiddle to freight in the company's set of priorities, would be highly unlikely to do a better job than Amtrak. It would certainly be a more erratic experience, with one road doing one thing well and other badly, and the next road doing the opposite. Taking a single-mission focused outfit like Amtrak and scattering that mission among five or six organizations with a different primary mission, is a dreadful idea.

Those who say otherwise, as far as I can see, have absolutely no experience in running a railroad, or any complex and technically demanding organization, and if perchance they have worked for a rairoad, I'd want to look to see if they're the ones who screwed it up.

OS

I'm not so sure Amtrak has a single mission. In fact they may have several overlapping and/or contradictory missions.

I think it would be disasterous to divorce NEC engineering work from equipment ownership and Amtrak train operations, primarily because the 3 have to function as a system and there's lots of room to suboptimize the system if they are separate.

On the other hand, Amtrak's "home grown" signal system on the NEC is a good example how not to do it. If Amtrak's mission had been to promote seemless, incremental development of HSR starting with the NEC, you'd likely have something totally different on the NEC.

Sometimes I wonder if Amtrak's self-perceived mission isn't "survive in one piece at all costs". I can't come up with anything else that explains their actions over the past 15-20 years.

[Anonymous]

All I realy want is many passenger trains serving many places across America. We need fast passenger service. If Amtrak was like the French TGV we would never have a dispute on funding.

[Anonymous]

No quibble from me on your points, Don. I was looking back to the original question if the freight railroads would be better at providing Amtrak services than Amtrak. Now, if you'd address that ... [:)]

[oltmannd]

If you pay'em enough and hold their feet to the fire, there's no reason they wouldn't deliver UPS-like service. Those are two big caveats, tho'.... Neither is true now, which is part of the reason Amtrak train perf on the frt roads isn't very good.

[kenneo]

The question first asked, was, as stated by OS, would Amtrack services be taken over by the "Big 6". But, the others answers, although at times going astray of the original question, all apply to our subject even if only tangently.

The real issue is a political philosophy elucidated by San Diego Coaster. Smaller government. Since making government smaller from the legislative and budget end has not worked, "W" is going to starve the government for money and that is supposed to force the government to downsize. Well, that doesn't work either because both Oregon and California have tried that - and Oregon is still trying hard at it and the public infrastructure has suffered.

There are two basic ways for "W" to accomplish what he wants. First, is to end all types of subsidy to all modes and make them all pay (as railroads do now and none of the others do) all of the costs of doing business. The other is to reduce revenue to the government which is easiest done by giving massive tax cuts to those decision makers who would benefit by the governments reductions and transfer any costs to those who can least afford to pay.

So, for the sake of argument ----- There are 3 methods for "W" to use to rid the US of that robberbarron Amtrack. One, is, what I call the Minneta Plan. In the military, we called it divide and conqure. Split up the organization into pieces which are dependent on each other so that at least one becomes sufficiently underfunded that the system collapses. Hold out a carrot ($1.2B) in subsidy if the "re-org" is accomplished. The subsidy, of course, would not go to any of the areas that have been underfunded thus making the collapse more likely and sooner.

Another is to cut taxes to a segment of the transportation economy for their assistance in ending Amtrack. The suggestion of reducing the "Big 6" tax bill by some $2B is the easiest subsidy to hide and in exchange, the "Big 6" take over the passenger train. As OS states, to additionaly segment Amtrack in this manner would speed up "the Minneta Plan". The railroads involved, however, quite quickly would seek to end passenger rail by route abandenment as they were doing in the 1950's and 60's prior to Amtrack, but would surely resist the loss of their tax break. Again, "W" wins by privitizing a government service and reducing the governments tax take to "force a smaller government". To keep Amtrack in one piece so that it could operate in the most efficient manner would defeat the purpose of the proposed Amtrack Restructuring.

So, the real answer seems to lie in what "W" wants to dangle in front of the railroads. Would they get a permant tax cut for the temporary problem of taking back the passenger train? Given a big enough tax break, probably they would.

The final answer lies in what goes to the bottom line, how much and for how long.

[Anonymous]

Eric,

You analysis would be okay, if it wasn't for the misperception that the other modes do not pay all their costs of doing business. They do. It may be via some redistribution of user fees and allowing the will of localities to add to the pie, but in the end none are really subsidized, so your point is moot. Besides, railroads have a market power that none of the other modes have, namely access to monopolistic pricing via the spinelessness of the STB and the anachronistic owner-operator ROW.

Your other misperception that tax cuts have lead to less revenue is also completely wrong. Since Bush's tax cuts came into effect, revenues have increased substantially. It is the cost of fighting two wars, plus the hidden costs of increased environmental regulation that have resulted in these deficits. Cutting back "third nipple" operations like Amtrak makes sense in these times.

The Amtrak plan Mineta is pushing involves taking the government out of providing operations and refocussing that aid on only providing 50% of the infrastructure, consistent with other modal models. Hopefully, that rail infrastructure aid will also come from a user fee, since that is the best way to fund infrastructure. Rather than taking a portion of the railroads income tax reciepts, the feds should pass a fuel tax on railroads and use that money for rail infrastructure maintenance and development where public access is allowed.

[RudyRockvilleMD]

The idea of the freight carriers taking back the rail passenger service in place of Amtrak poses a bunch of questions.

If you have diffeent railroads running the passenger service the first question is how to obtain a uniform quality of service? A partial answer is; at the outset the Southern Railway and the Denver & Rio Grande didn't join Amtrak, and their trains were better than Amtrak's.

How many trains would run on each route? Presently many routes are congested so the host freight railroads might only be able to absorb one passenger train for each of their lines, similar to Amtrak.'s long distance trains today.

Considering that the freight railroads participate in "just in time" types of shipments, how much would it be worth to them to accept a passenger train over their line in place of a slot for an intermodal train.?

[jeaton]

Futuremodal

Your constant assertion that the user fees pay for all the government support of non rail modes is really getting old. There have been numerous post showing that you are dead wrong on that subject. Apparently your dreams about a utopian world, where every shipper gets dramatic reductions in rates and improvements in service, block out both the reality of the world today and the possibility that what you propose may not produce the results you expect.

As stated previously, the Federal Highway Administration has reported that tolls, fuel taxes and other taxes defined as user fees only pays for about 60% of the cost of building and maintaining all U.S. roads and highways. The rest of the expenditure comes from various forms of taxes that go to general revenue funds. It is true that the largest proportion of those other funds come from state or local taxes, but if you can show me how the dollar you pay in federal taxes takes more from your wealth than the dollar you pay in local taxes, I will stop saying that taxes are taxes. It should also be noted that the FHWA has stated the the backlog of needed highway construction programs is about $75 Billion. If the user fees were actually covering the full cost of building and maintaining highways, they wouldn't be wearing out faster than they are being replaced.

You assertion that the government only puts money into the infrastructure used by the other modes is just dumb. When was the last time you saw an 18 wheeler with flangers removing snow off the road, or the trucking company sending out its wrecker to move its damaged truck, or trucking company personel providing traffic control? The last time I checked, the people that route airplanes are government employees. And even after months of working near a major waterway lock, I have never seen a deck hand climb up the ladder to turn the valves that flood the lock basin.

As an aside, Railway Age magazine recently noted that the Bush budget really put the ax to the inland waterways expenditures. He proposes a $200 million cut from the FY 05 budget, leaving a miserly $4.5 BILLION for the year. The American Waterways Association is really pissed.

Jay

PS. Between FY 2001 and FY 2005 (estimates) annual federal revenues increased $66 billion. Big deal. Because of inflation the purchasing power of the FY 2005 revenues will actually be $100 billion less than the FY 2001 revenues.

[DSchmitt]

Part of the Federal highway user fee money is used to subsidize other modes including passenger rail. The few states who support rail, like California, add State highway user fees to the rail pot. California's highway system would be in much better shape if highway money were was spent on highways not rail. (and also not spent to reduce the deficit caused by wasteful spending and stupid mandated automatic spending increases in social program spending) Actually at the regional/local level spending some highway user fee money on rail is probably justified to provide a balanced overall transprtation system.

The majority of non user fee taxes used for funding roads are local taxes and assessments used to fund local roads. The local residents and business people who pay them benifit.

Separating the local/regional passenger rail from the overall system into local/regional funded systems is in line with local funding of local roads.

Many areas of thre USA do not have the population density/distribution for public transit to work. The is no less or more true than it was 50 or 100 years ago. If you look at the history of public transportation in America most systems lost money even when the had a monopoly and the auto was not an alternative.

One of the things that killed privately owned public transit, in places that had the proper population density/distribution, was the cost of operating off peak hour services. However, when fares are rasied enough to subisize them, or when these services are cut, the peak hour services suffer drastic loses of ridership destroying their profitability.

Fares on local/regional public transit should be raised to be more in line with costs of providing the services, although (while I hate to admit it) for the public good, they should be kept lower than the cost of driving oneself.

It must also be recognized that because it is a fixed system with fixed access points, passenger rail cannot provide as good and convenient service as the auto can for the majority of the people. It seems that transit advocates assume that the vast majority of drivers in a transportation corridor could use public transit. This is not true. Some possible reasons: The transit scheduling may not fit their needs. Their origin and/or destination may not be anywhere near a transit station or place with adequate connecting service. The may need the car for work. They may be transporting items that make be difficult or impossible to use transit.

[Anonymous]

You know, an arguement could be made that the Federal government is required to build and maintain the Interstates by nothing less than the Constitution itself. But what exactly "To establish ... post Roads" means was never really established insofar as can they only declare where a post road should be or actually build it.

[DSchmitt]

QUOTE: Originally posted by radivil

You know, an arguement could be made that the Federal government is required to build and maintain the Interstates by nothing less than the Constitution itself. But what exactly "To establish ... post Roads" means was never really established insofar as can they only declare where a post road should be or actually build it.

Interesting.

The Federal government did not actually build the Interstate Highway system or the US sign route system that preceeded it. The individual States designed and built them.

The Federal government did furnish he majority of the funding for the Interstates. They set minimum standards, and coordinated the routes. The Federal funding made the States develop highway systems that fit into a national network by requiring them to do so in order to get Federal funding.

The US highway system was developed from local road systems where there was little coordination between roads in neighboring jurisdictions.

In California, for instance, it was not until after 1900 that the State startind developing a road system to connect County seats and a few other important cities. The State took ownership or roads fitting the system and began to maintain and improve them.

The 1916 Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Aid Road Act to "coordinate major interstate roads" The justification for the act was the Constitutional provision for "post roads". The Act provided for the Federal government to pay a maximum 50% of the construction cost for any rural public road "over which the US mails now are or may hereafter be transported". The first Federal Aid Road was a 2.55 mile project between Alameda and Richmond in California. It was completed in January 1918.

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by DSchmitt



Many areas of thre USA do not have the population density/distribution for public transit to work. The is no less or more true than it was 50 or 100 years ago. If you look at the history of public transportation in America most systems lost money even when the had a monopoly and the auto was not an alternative.

One of the things that killed privately owned public transit, in places that had the proper population density/distribution, was the cost of operating off peak hour services. However, when fares are rasied enough to subisize them, or when these services are cut, the peak hour services suffer drastic loses of ridership destroying their profitability.

A good bit of what is now public transit was built by developers in order to support profitable development of land they owned. Quite a bit of Queens Co. in NYC was developed this way. Once the land was developed, the developer sold the transit line for whatever he could get and moved on to the next project, leaving the residents dependent on a money losing transit line.

The interstate highway system has provided this same function, only with tax payers footing the bill for construction.

[jchnhtfd]

radivil and DSchmitt have some interesting thoughts there! On the Interstate highway system -- on which I had the dubious privilege to work some many years ago as a design and route selection engineer -- it is quite true that the various States did the actual design and construction work. The Feds paid for 90% of the cost of construction. The Feds also gave a very large set of volumes of specifications for the design of the roads involved, which allowed the design engineer almost no latitude at all, although there was a good bit of latitude involved in actual route selection. In spite of that, some States managed to build some very well-designed and thought out highways. Others... well... lets just say that there are sections of a major interstate in a southern New England State which are STILL used in civil engineering and traffic engineering courses to this day as outstanding examples of what NOT to do when building a highway. Also, one must keep in mind that the original purpose of the Interstate highway system was only partly to expedite traffic; a very significant part of the motivation was to provide for the rapid and efficient movement of military assets from one place to another (just one example: the 14' 6" minimum overhead clearance was to allow for the transport of vehicle mounted ballistic missiles).

The Federal highway system is slightly different; there was a genuine effort to facilitate interstate transportation there, in accordance with the post roads clause of the Constitution. That the individual States took advantage of the system to gain reimbursements for local roads is a political point -- simple opportunism, and why not? The point that the Federal highway system (US route what have you) is somewhat chaotic is the result of that opportunism.

What is the point of this? Simply this: realistically, allowing the individual States to go their own way on something which affects Interstate commerce works, at best, poorly. This is not an attack on the integrity or intentions of the several States, but a realistic appreciation of the fact that, politically, the several States will act in their own best interests, as they perceive them, and if that expedites Interstate commerce it is purely coincidental.

It is highly unlikey that true interstate commerce can ever be successfully promoted or run by the several States, in my opinion. Those areas where passenger service is run across several States by local authority -- the best example being the New York metropolitan area -- one must realise that the local authority is a rather extraordinary interstate compact which took considerable political will and maneouvring to create, never mind maintain. To expect that such interstate compacts can be formed to support a national -- or even a northeast corridor -- rail system is, in my opinion, hopeless dreaming.

[oltmannd]

Jamie

Very interesting, particularly because of your 1st person witness.

Even in metro NY, you have NJT and Metro North each doing their own thing. And, until recently, the LIRR and NYC/NH were operating independently. I'm still not so sure how well Conn and NY get along on the NH line, either.

You can even point to the "weak link" on the NEC being the Conn DOT owned portion from Shell to NH.

Another example of how states don't work together is the "Downeaster". Maine is pushing it hard, and NH is a reluctant partner, even though a major chunk of the riders are from NH.

Even the example Mineta uses as a sucess story, the Cascades, has had trouble. Oregon nearly opted out last year which would have placed more burden on Wash.

[jchnhtfd]

Don -- on Connecticut vs. the NEC and MetroNorth/New Haven line -- the only reason Connecticut supports it at all is that the folks in Fairfield County have the money... and the pull... and absolutely have to have it to get to New York. The State has been trying to kill the Waterbury branch (used mostly by less affluent individuals trying to get to work in places like Stamford) for years... don't get me going.

But all your examples are good ones, and support the argument I was making!

[daveklepper]

thanks, jeaton. I didn't really mean my tax break for the railroads to be a winner. I merely mentioned it is the one thing, if large enough, that could put them into the passenger business. Practially speaking it would not be such a bad deal, because there are really only six players, maybe only five, and they would naturally get together, as indeed the multiple private railroads always did, to pool services and ticketing.

In the old days you could go to Sante Fe Station in Aneheim and buy a ticket to Rahway, New Jersey. It would have two coupons for the Sante Fe to Chicago and then a coupon for Parmelee Transfer and then two coupons for the Pennsy. You would ride four trains, and one van, bus, or taxi between Chicago Stations.

The advantage today is that you would not have to change stations in Chicago. But you would have to buy three separate tickets, one for the Los Angeles suburban system, one for Amtrak taking you from LA to Trenton, and you would probably miss your first-out connection in Trenton while buying your ticket to Rahway from NJT's window there.

May the six railroads together would again provide one ticket for this trip!

[Jetrock]

Think about it--why were the railroads so eager to give up their passenger service in the first place?