henry6 wrote:Comparing 1971 to 2008 in relation to passenger trains is dangerous. Many things are so different that the single, simple argument that railroads dumped the passenger train in 1971 is sufficient reason for them not to be interested today does have its faults. Congestion, pollution, fuel costs are quite different which, in some instances, may make the idea of providing rail passenger service a viable choice for a (rail) busniess. In 1971, air and highway was the present and the future, business minded railroaders therefore gave up on the passenger and looked toward intermodal and long haul as their salvations. Today, freight railroads are so immersed in that philosophy that their plants are set up for it and not passenger service; its even difficult to find railroaders who know enough about passenger servcie to want to (or do they know better not to) do it. Insurance companies (and liability lawyers) have convinced freight oriented managers that passengers are a bad, huge sue happy commodity, so stay away from it. So...somebody has to convince the railroads that if a service were planned, designed, operated, and priced right, a human being, could be just as lucrative a commodity as lumps of coal or boxes of widgets.
Your last line is exactly right. Any passenger business would have to be at least as profitable as freight for the RRs to take it on. The RR industry, as a whole, is just barely profitable enough to keep things going. They can't afford to take on anything that would be less profitable.
If the gov't paid all of what Amtrak calls "shared costs" and the RRs got to keep all the ticket revenue and only had to pay the direct costs, there are some services that would meet that criteria. For June 2008, these are the services that make the cut (80% contribution) (excludes NEC). It's not a very big list.
If you expanded it a bit to include trains, where if you could improve performance about 10%, they might be viable, you'd pick up these:
Everything else would be a goner.
An advantage to doing it this way is that you put direct profit motive back into at least part of the operation. The RRs would be looking for ways to boost the value (and hence, revenue) of the service and also be looking at ways to cut costs.
A disadvantage of doing this is trains that currently operate on more than one RR would more difficult to keep going.
A big hurdle is that all the institutional knowledge for running passenger trains is currently at Amtrak. The frt RRs have nearly zero. In fact, they have almost no one in mgt who was even employed in 1971. (Maybe a few more at NS off the Southern). It would be a rough transition, even allowing that Amtrak mgt would be hired by the frt RRs to get things going.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
oltmannd wrote: A big hurdle is that all the institutional knowledge for running passenger trains is currently at Amtrak. The frt RRs have nearly zero. In fact, they have almost no one in mgt who was even employed in 1971. (Maybe a few more at NS off the Southern). It would be a rough transition, even allowing that Amtrak mgt would be hired by the frt RRs to get things going.
If I were a freight railroad considering this I would consider how much of Amtrak's institutional knowledge is in the area of running trains effectively and how much of it is in obtaining a subsidy from Washington. I think I would decide on the balance it could be done more effectively without Amtrak's current management. Certainly, past a short transition period they would find their numbers greatly reduced.
Dakguy201 wrote: oltmannd wrote: A big hurdle is that all the institutional knowledge for running passenger trains is currently at Amtrak. The frt RRs have nearly zero. In fact, they have almost no one in mgt who was even employed in 1971. (Maybe a few more at NS off the Southern). It would be a rough transition, even allowing that Amtrak mgt would be hired by the frt RRs to get things going.If I were a freight railroad considering this I would consider how much of Amtrak's institutional knowledge is in the area of running trains effectively and how much of it is in obtaining a subsidy from Washington. I think I would decide on the balance it could be done more effectively without Amtrak's current management. Certainly, past a short transition period they would find their numbers greatly reduced.
Amtrak does seem to have that skill well honed.
I was thinking more of the technical and logistical stuff. Handling bags, training personnel, collecting revenue, HEP & HVAC on passenger cars, maintaining wheel profiles, commissary and laundry, that sort of thing.
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