oltmannd I think we'd find that train weight is a big deal. If I were Amtrak, I'd have a watt-hour meter on the output of each inverter on the P42s and I'd download or record it along with train position periodically on every trip. I'd use this data to help determine ways to improve energy efficiency. Maybe they do this already, but I doubt it.
I think we'd find that train weight is a big deal.
If I were Amtrak, I'd have a watt-hour meter on the output of each inverter on the P42s and I'd download or record it along with train position periodically on every trip. I'd use this data to help determine ways to improve energy efficiency. Maybe they do this already, but I doubt it.
Several units could be equipped with watt meters AND THEN RECORD THE output to both motors and the HEP inverter(s). More important would be to record the loads with various consists (ie 2 car coonsists on NH - Springfield) up to ten car consists ( Also Hiawathas and STL plus every route could then be analyzed. Power for every route segment could be analyzed as well.
An item not considered is to also measure the idle fuel consumption for HEP and idling locos. A recording thermometer would be needed to factor in weather. All the new Electric motors on order should have this capability along with measuring how much regenerative power returns to grid.
Off topic the cold weather fuel consumption of road traffic and the effect of jammed traqffic is not cited in comparing fuel consumption. Wife drove to/from florida last week and got 18 MPG instead of our usual 26 MPG due to very heavy stop and go traffic. Sticker MPG listed as 29MPG but we have a heavy foot.
oltmannd I would think that you could do a good approximation of a TPC program piece-wise on a spreadsheet. Chop the route into chunks and calculate the energy for acceleration (F=ma), train resistance (Davis Equation), grade (20#/percent) and curve (0.8#/degree), then add them up. It would take some tedious work with a track chart, but once done, you could play with some of the input variables like train weight, aerodynamics, regenerative braking, etc.
I would think that you could do a good approximation of a TPC program piece-wise on a spreadsheet. Chop the route into chunks and calculate the energy for acceleration (F=ma), train resistance (Davis Equation), grade (20#/percent) and curve (0.8#/degree), then add them up. It would take some tedious work with a track chart, but once done, you could play with some of the input variables like train weight, aerodynamics, regenerative braking, etc.
From my perspective, one big unknown is the HEP demand -- I have no idea what energy is required for air conditioning in summer or more significantly, providing electric heat in winter. The other thing is that you at least have to keep heat on at least on a standby level 24/7 in winter in anything that has "indoor plumbing." Amtrak states that they have switched to plug power for layovers rather than keeping HEP going, but that plug power ought to be charged against the energy needs of trains. My car lacks an onboard toilet and I don't keep it heated when it is not operating.
The other big unknown is the pattern of slowing down for speed restrictions and speeding up to track speed to keep schedule.
A third big unknown is I have no idea regarding the aerodynamics of different Amtrak consists, especially the P42-Horizon car-NPCC consists with large step changes in height.
If I could get a handle on these three items, the simulations would be straightforward.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
schlimm http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb29/Edition29_Chapter02.pdf I would draw your attention to Table 2.12 on energy use by modality, in BTU per passenger mile. Amtrak 2398 Auto 3437 Airline 2995 Those figures, from Oak Ridge, would appear to show a significant advantage even for inefficient Amtrak: a 30% saving over autos. Perhaps these numbers don't meet your engineering sniff test either? Your comparison of a Chevy Volt (or any car) to a train seems a bit strained. Most cars are traveling with less than four occupants, often one and the average for these studies is two. On the other hand, if you were to ride an HSR-type train in France or Germany, you would typically find it quite full.
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb29/Edition29_Chapter02.pdf
I would draw your attention to Table 2.12 on energy use by modality, in BTU per passenger mile.
Amtrak 2398
Auto 3437
Airline 2995
Those figures, from Oak Ridge, would appear to show a significant advantage even for inefficient Amtrak: a 30% saving over autos. Perhaps these numbers don't meet your engineering sniff test either?
Your comparison of a Chevy Volt (or any car) to a train seems a bit strained. Most cars are traveling with less than four occupants, often one and the average for these studies is two. On the other hand, if you were to ride an HSR-type train in France or Germany, you would typically find it quite full.
Those numbers are well-known to me -- they are the numbers which cause me concern about claims from MWHSRA, WisPIRG, and others that "trains are multiples more fuel efficient than autos." These are the numbers that don't pass the "sniff test" of the advocacy community -- I have been told on this Web site that I am promulgating government lies to advance these numbers as representative of passenger train fuel efficiencies.
Given the capital and subsidy dollar inputs required to expand train service, there is probably a reason why advocacy groups overstate the fuel efficiency of Amtrak -- a 30% saving is not good enough. Dollar for gallon, hybrid vehicle subsidies are a far more effective use of public money if the objective is reducing energy consumption, either to the goal of reduced oil imports or reduced CO2 emissions.
The four-persons riding a Chevy Volt was offered as a comparison to all-seats occupied on a Velaro train, which in all likelihood is where Siemens got its numbers. That I ride the TGV and find all the seats taken is not an accurate measure of load factor -- the "train was full every time I rode it" has the selection bias that the times the train runs near empty, there are fewer people to report on that experience.
The operators of the TGV do indeed claim 80 percent load factor. Such high load factors are also how US airlines get their fuel economy (and cost economies) -- at the expense of dealing with "rush hour conditions" every time you ride an airline with the stress of slow boarding and disembarkation, dealing with cabin luggage, and the inconvenience of a lot of pre-planning any trip to get low fares.
Figuring out a pretty good estimate of what the passenger miles per gallon or seat miles per gallon shouldn't be all that difficult. At least any RR or consultant worth his salt should be capable. A train performance calculator program will integrate the energy requirements and get the total energy required to move the train with pretty good accuracy. Some even know the power production efficiency of the locomotives and can give fuel consumption directly. Adding in the HEP requirements is a bit trickier - you'd have to make some assumptions about the heating/cooling/lighting demand on the average for the train while moving and while on standby between runs.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
About 2 or 3 years ago, when gas prices were hovering close to five dollars or so, I didn't noticeany changes in traffic or in people's behavior, other than that they complained more. I think they learned over the last few decades that gas prices will vary, and eventually will come back down,so you don't see the panic that you saw in 1973. I guess this is as sam1 said, it's the perceptionof the cost that matters. And as schlimm said, they figure it's temporary. Another reason for the lack of change in behavior is that there is really no other short term optionfor many people since the population has become very spread out. I live in a relatively small town,and for miles out in all directions there are big houses out in the country. With gas so readilyavailable, many people have opted for "a couple of acres out in the country." This makes it nextto impossible to provide public transportation to them. It would take a drastic and long-termchange in fuel (and land) prices to have any effect on attitudes. As far as justifying any transportation mode by fuel economy numbers, I'm always skepticalabout such reports. There are many assumptions made, and I figure that in too many cases thefirst question asked by those contracted to do a study is, "What do you want it to say?" Well I've rambled on enough for now.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
These words appear in a banner at the top of five of the pages of the referenced document:
Great care should be taken when comparing modal energy intensity data among modes. Because of the inherent differences between the transportation modes in the nature of services, routes available, and many additional factors, it is not possible to obtain truly comparable national energy intensities among modes.
Several years ago the owners of the Trinity Railway Express (TRE), which is a commuter rail operation between Dallas and Fort Worth, gave me detailed information on the TRE's operations, including the load factors for each train. Two variables caused me to wonder about the difference between their operation and a theoritical model set-up by a national agency to compare the efficiency of various modes of transport.
The load factors on the TRE ranged from more than 80 per cent during the morning and evening rush hours to less than 10 per cent during the very early morning and very late evening trains. The average load factor was in the neighborhood of 33 per cent. So during the morning the TRE is probably more energy efficient than a large personal vehicle with only one or two passengers. But during the off-peak hours, the efficiency factors change.
Operationally, the TRE trains stand idle at the end of each run for 20 to 30 minutes. The locomotives idle at a seemingly high rate. I don't know how much fuel they are consuming whilst in idle mode, but it leads me to wonder how the analysts, who are attempting to determine the comparative efficiency of alternative modes of transport, factor this fact into their analysis.
Behavior change is a funny thing. Remove the negative reinforcement (higher priced gas) and the old behavior (driving over-sized ego vehicles) returns. Just in the past 35 years this has happened several times.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
The BTU/passenger mile statistics are often difficult to calculate. For example, they claim motorcycles have a load factor of 1.18. That is every 6th motorcycle you see has two people on it. Really? Anyway. The rail load factor is 26 people/vehicle. And airplane load is 97 p/v. To get better energy usage we could double the number of people in each rail vehicle without increasing the energy usage, but to do the same for an (already full) plane would not help. You would have to get a second plane.
And yes, the $4/gal barrier is rapidly approaching. Friends who just bought gas eating trucks are a little discouraged. The government should have never let the price fall back in the $2.50 range.
Behavior frequently is a function of perception.
When the price of a gallon of gasoline in Texas hit $4.00, significant numbers of Texans changed their behavior. The number of people using public transport (all modes) rose dramatically. The SUV and pick-up markets collapsed. The race to smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles was on. And the amount of driving declined dramatically, as reported in the state's major media outlets. Yet, at $4.00 per gallon the real price of gasoline, when adjusted for inflation, was only a tad higher than it had been in 1980. But $4.00 was an important psychological (perceptual) barrier; it triggered a behavioral change in many if not most Texans, especially those who had an option. When the gasoline bubble broke - my term - people went back to their old habits, i.e. buying and driving gas guzzling SUVs and pick-ups, ditching their new fondness for public transport, etc.
Amtrak and the airlines would be impacted by the run up in fuel prices. But they hedge the cost of their fuel, which few if any motorists can do. Accordingly, the impact is not likely to be one for one.
Inflationary expectations are part of the reason the price of gasoline has risen significantly over the past year. But devaluation of the dollar, the continuing current accounts deficit, and the increase in demand, especially from emerging market countries like China, India, etc., are more important factors. According to Hofmeister, demand levels in the United States, for example, have returned to 2007 levels, whilst those in China and India have increased substantially beyond their 2007 levels.
So to my original point! If people perceive that the price a gasoline makes driving too expensive, they will engage in a variety of alternative behaviors, i.e. dump the SUV or pick-up for a more fuel efficient vehicle, drive less; and support more and better public transport options, including passenger rail. Yes, most of them don't understand the economics of public transport or how to calculate the net present value of buying a new, more fuel efficient vehicle, but if they perceive there are better alternatives, that is their reality. And $4.00+ per gallon is likely to be a game changer. Advocates of passenger rail should not overlook the opportunities it would present for broader community support.
I had seen that claim for the Velaro, and I have an e-mail in to Siemens dated August 20, 2010 inquiring about the assumptions without a reply. As the Siemens Web site was largely an advertisement meant to advance the adoption of HSR by promulgating its advantages to the public, I thought it was worth a try e-mailing them.
Wikipedia (yes, Wikipedia) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation states that the new double-deck French TGV (Atlantique model) requires 18 kWHr per kilometer. Translating into Diesel fuel equivalent with generating efficiency of 1/3 in converting fuel BTU's into kilowatt-hours, that works out to about 2.1 gallons/mile, which is in the ballpark for an Amtrak Diesel corridor consist, if the Amtrak BTU figures are to be accepted. The TGV is going at least twice as fast as the Amtrak train, but it is much lighter in weight and highly streamlined, so that number passes the test of engineering intuition.
The report is that the TGV operates with 80 percent load factor, which gives them bragging rights to 668 BTU/passenger-mile fuel equivalent, multiples better than airlines, cars, or Amtrak, and even somewhat better than intercity motorcoach buses. With respect to the 80 percent load factor and how you count load factor in energy efficiency, that high a load factor means that not only is the TGV a popular mode of travel, the TGV has to be playing the same games as the airlines in terms of charging you high fares at times you would like to travel and making you spend all manner of time planning your life around the times when travel is affordable.
The Siemens economy claim didn't pass the engineering smell test, hence my e-mail to the contact address on the Web site touting that train (no, I didn't put it that way -- I expressed my interest in their train as a passenger train advocate and asked for the details behind their energy efficiency number). In light of the TGV number that sounds more reasonable, in light of the reasonable assumption that whatever tech Siemens has, Alstom is in the same ballpark, I made some assumptions about seating capacity and that they assumed 100% efficiency in converting BTU's into kWHr's, and I came up with the Siemens train requiring 14 kWHr/train-km -- perhaps the Siemens train is only single deck and lower drag, perhaps the Siemens train is another "generation" beyond the TGV.
There is also the question, what social advantage is derived, if any, from any energy saving train or a train that gets its power from the electric network instead of from oil. If the advantage is reducing oil imports, perhaps the electric train is a freebie as electric power is generated from non-oil sources. If the advantage is reducing CO2 emissions, and given that half of electricity in the U.S. comes from coal, a heavy source of CO2, the factor of 1/3 generation efficiency is perhaps reasonable in comparing the efficiency of an electric train with a Diesel train.
On the other hand, if one wants to compare electric kilowatts for whatever reason as a 100% conversion from BTU's into kWHr's, the Chevy Volt gets 4 seats times 90 100%-conversion-gasoline-equivalent MPG's in electric mode or 360 MPG's -- about halfway there to the new Siemens train. Again, I have come to the conclusion that Siemens is way overstating the energy advantage for a country (the U.S.) with a heavy reliance on fossil electric generation by giving a number for all seats occupied and assuming 100 percent conversion of fossil fuel into electricity.
I think one of the biggest problems is relying on system averages for Amtrak, which system-wide runs with pretty low load factors (LD routes) and some fairly inefficient equipment (Superliners) operating in non-corridor environments (mountains). More comparable metrics should be used which would allow a more direct, meaningful comparison for relatively high speed corridor services in flat terrain using lighter weight equipment.
According to Siemens, the Velaro (its new generation electric HSR) has a fuel consumption of just 0.33 liters per seat over a distance of 100 kilometers ( .087 Gal. for 62 miles = 713 miles per gallon). I couldn't find any manufacturer's numbers for Talgo or diesel-powered units. How does that compare with your figures?
schlimm Just because members of the discouraged Madison rail advocacy community have been unable to get it does not mean that the hypothesis that rail is inherently more efficient than the auto should be rejected.
Just because members of the discouraged Madison rail advocacy community have been unable to get it does not mean that the hypothesis that rail is inherently more efficient than the auto should be rejected.
There is only one person in the Madison rail advocacy community who has even been pursuing the question of fuel efficiency, and I can assure you that person is far from discouraged.
Far be it for me to reject the hypothesis that trains offer significant fuel economy savings or could offer such savings over automobiles. It is just that the public record indicates that the savings of Amtrak train travel over automobiles is moderate, that it is a reasonable interpretation of available data that high gas prices would not favor a current-operating-practice Amtrak, and that there is an absence of evidence to support specific claims, made by passenger advocates as "offering facts to counter mis-information" that passenger-mile fuel economy of proposed or expanded Amtrak train services would indeed achieve multiples of auto MPG's.
I am going around telling people "We don't have hard numbers on the type of corridor trains that are meant to address concerns of road congestion, regional air pollution, and fuel efficiency, but the system averages for Amtrak are not very encouraging that we can back up our claims for train efficiency" and the response I am getting is "in the absence of any hard numbers, let's not jump to the conclusion that the corridor trains are not fuel saving"?
Isn't this a backwards standard of proof? In light of the known Amtrak system-wide data, I say we should not jump to the conclusion that the trains are fuel saving until we get evidence to back this up. In the business I am in, the burden of proof is on the investigator making a claim, not on the critics asking for that proof.
I agree, of course, that empirical data is of the utmost importance. But reasoned hypotheses derived from theory and then tested empirically is the scientific method. Both are important, unless you think Einstein's mathematical theoretical speculations were nonsense, for example.
To examine the rail fuel efficiency question requires hard data. Just because members of the discouraged Madison rail advocacy community have been unable to get it does not mean that the hypothesis that rail is inherently more efficient than the auto should be rejected. Just not a settled question, as I said. Minimizing load factors really make the speculations less meaningful. In any case, actual data should be accessible with the same or similar equipment used in Washington State as well as in the various European systems.
schlimm Aside from restating the obvious, that empiricism is one of the keys in science and technology, along with the musings of theoreticians, what are you saying? That no one has hard data about relative transportation efficiencies?
Aside from restating the obvious, that empiricism is one of the keys in science and technology, along with the musings of theoreticians, what are you saying? That no one has hard data about relative transportation efficiencies?
That empiricism is on an equal footing to the "musings of theoreticians" is the opposite of what I am saying. There was a theory regarding planetary motions going back to ancient times. The big breakthrough came when Kepler, yes, a theoretical person, was given Tycho Brahe's large and accurate data set.
That no one has hard data on relative transportation efficiencies is opposite to what I am saying. The ORNL data, based on a telephone interview with the people at Amtrak who are in a position to know total Diesel gallons, electric kilowatts, passenger, train car, and train miles, these are public data.
It is a matter of belief, a belief based on the reasoning of the low rolling resistance of the steel wheel on steel rail along with the aero resistance advantage to combining carriages into trains, that not only are trains more fuel efficient than cars and planes, they are more fuel efficient by multiples of passenger miles-per-gallons. Such belief is reinforced by "To Hell in a Day Coach" and more recently "Waiting on a Train." That this is believed to be true is documented by the MWHSRA Web site and by letters-to-the-editor to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of persons representing WisPIRG.
The available empirical data contradicts this reasoned view. Yes, the direct comparison depends on load factors for the train and whether it is one or more than one person per car on an intercity trip. But the data indicate that Amtrak may be somewhat more fuel efficient than driving, it is not dramatically more efficient, and not more efficient in the way that advocates have reasoned in the debate over the Madison train.
Let us say, just hypothetically, that someone had data to say, "The equivalent auto-gasoline fuel economy of the average Amtrak train was 40 MPG in year 2000 and has increased to 50 MPG in year 2010 owing to Amtrak's efficiency plan. The efficiency of the Hiawatha service (these numbers are hypothetical -- on one has any data on this) started out at 50 passenger MPG but has increased to 90 MPG owing to increase ridership. The new lightweight streamlined Talgo train will be mated to a new-design GE locomotive, which will achieve 180 passenger MPG at 110 MPH design speed owing to its advanced design features."
Has anyone in the advocacy community made the argument for the Madison-Milwaukee train based on such a scenario. No. Has anyone in the advocacy community tried to collect the data to make this argument. Yes, I have worked on this for the past 4 years and have unanswered queries from State DOT's in Wisconsin and California.
Every other acquisition decision in transportation factors in fuel economy -- the airlines extract fuel-economy guarantees out of the airplane and engine makers, every auto consumer must be looking at least at the EPA rating these days. Was there even a fuel economy rating for the Talgo? No! This thing was to be purchased on faith. Faith-based advocacy and faith-based transportation planning.
There are two sets of "official" numbers on Amtrak's fuel usage: Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL). These two sets reference the same primary source -- a phone call to someone who works at Amtrak headquarters. The BTS gives a somewhat more optimistic set of numbers because they count electric kilowatts on an equal energy basis with Diesel fuel BTU's. The ORNL numbers assume that fossil fuel is converted to electric kilowatts and delivered by wire with a 33% percent efficiency, thus showing Amtrak to require a higher BTU/passenger mile amount.
The most recent ORNL number for Amtrak (year 2008) is 2398 BTU/passenger-mile. Two persons riding in a 25 MPG car can match that figure. I recently achieved 25-26 MPG on each of two round trips to Milwaukee, in cold weather driving with strong winds, in a 15-year-old Ford Taurus, driving legal speeds. Based on these data, what I say stands -- even at $5 or $10/gallon gasoline, the old-beater Taurus will beat Amtrak cost-wise, even if the somewhat low highway gas mileage for that car is a result of the old engine losing compression.
It could be that a short-distance train such as the Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha or the Madison-Milwaukee Talgo we are not getting beats the Amtrak averages on fuel economy as it lacks non-revenue cars and low-seating sleeping cars. But no one seems to know -- someone on another thread proposed a means of getting fuel economy numbers for particular trips of particular consists, and I put the question of getting such numbers out to members of the forum as where I live does not have train service and I don't have occasion to go where there is train service these days.
But the advocacy community -- Midwest High Speed Rail Association, no less -- puts fuel economy front and center on their Web site complaining about the recent decision to cancel the Milwaukee-Madison train. They claim that the passenger miles per gallon are multiples of driving or flying, which is completely unsupported by publically available data.
As to empiricism, I am not stating the obvious -- at least not obvious to MHSRA, WisPIRG, and others who make claims that trains offer multiples of the fuel economy of driving without backing any of this up. And advocacy people fume about how the opposition to trains is devoid of facts and based on misinformation.
The inherent goodness of trains is a matter of advocacy faith, and to question or challenge any of the assumptions is apostasy. I remember on another occasion raising the issue of the ORNL numbers and the response was "Oh, that is from the Government -- they make stuff up all the time."
Yes, the ORNL numbers cannot be right, train fuel economy has to be a lot better than that, isn't it? OK, where are the better numbers?
Aside from restating the obvious, that empiricism is one of the keys in science and technology, along with the musings of theoreticians, what are you saying? That no one has hard data about relative transportation efficiencies? Perhaps you are looking in the wrong places or using the wrong metrics?
schlimm You state the first point as though it were a settled truth. It may be so, but I don't believe the evidence is as quite so clear as it appears to be to you. And with electrification, the equation would change more. As to ethanol, most scientists now recognize it to be a net energy loser.
You state the first point as though it were a settled truth. It may be so, but I don't believe the evidence is as quite so clear as it appears to be to you. And with electrification, the equation would change more. As to ethanol, most scientists now recognize it to be a net energy loser.
I was walking behind a group of "da guys" at work when I heard the word "Ven" from which I butted into the conversation. "You mean 'Hven', the Danish island where Tycho Brahe brought about the modern scientific world by actually collecting -- data -- on the motion of the planets rather than flapping his arms (made Red Skelton sea-gull sketch gesture with arms) in the manner of the theoreticians of the day (my colleagues are experimental scientists working on controlled nuclear fusion -- describing theoreticians as arm-flappers provoked a chuckle)?" Turns out Ven is the Swedish word for the place and it is now part of Sweden, and one of the research fellows got a tour as part of a scientific conference where they went into the whole Tycho Brahe thing.
What separated the faith-based world from the modern world was not reason vs unreason as the faith-based system was shaped by reason (Aristotle and others). What gave birth to the modern world, which includes everything from the heliocentric system to the railroad locomotive was empiricism, actually going out to measure to confirm or falsify what people reasoned to be true.
A few months and threads ago, someone around here told me that Amtrak locomotives have digital fuel readouts on the outside by the tank filler. Is there, like, anyone around here who rides Amtrak trains that they can confirm or deny this digital readouts, and if there is such a thing, is there anyone out there who has ridden a train a checked the readouts for the fuel used? I have a Scan Gauge and can tell you the fuel economy of my car under different driving cycles and weather conditions -- isn't there a way to get actual trip fuel usage on any of the trains?
Paul Milenkovic Et tu, Sam1? If the price of gas rises for motorists, it rises for the airlines, and it rises for Amtrak. As cars, airplanes, and trains, as presently constituted and operated have roughly the same passenger-mile fuel economy, there really isn't that much of a cost advantage to the trains. Hence, if gas went to $5 or perhaps even $10/gallon, it would not shift the underlying economics of a mode choice, but it would create a political demand for what is perceived to be a more energy efficient alternative (trains, ethanol), whether such alternatives are more energy efficient as presently constituted or not.
Et tu, Sam1?
If the price of gas rises for motorists, it rises for the airlines, and it rises for Amtrak. As cars, airplanes, and trains, as presently constituted and operated have roughly the same passenger-mile fuel economy, there really isn't that much of a cost advantage to the trains.
Hence, if gas went to $5 or perhaps even $10/gallon, it would not shift the underlying economics of a mode choice, but it would create a political demand for what is perceived to be a more energy efficient alternative (trains, ethanol), whether such alternatives are more energy efficient as presently constituted or not.
Also, that gas is projected to reach $5/gallon reflects projections of inflation brought about by increases in the money supply from the Federal Reserve fighting the high unemployment. Inflation doesn't affect all markets all at the same time, but in recent history, oil is the first to feel the effects. As such, you will see higher prices for gas and for a whole lot of other things. Whether the Amtrak unions have the negotiating power to get pay raises to cover the cost of living of the workers may be debated, but other Amtrak costs besides fuel may increase in that time.
What a rise in the price of gas does, however, is cause people to rethink their transportation choices, especially since most of the other costs of driving are hidden by gas has an immediate effect on out-of-pocket driving cost, and Amtrak is heavily subsidized, meaning the Amtrak ticket price may not jump up as rapidly in response to changing economy conditions. You see people "on the margins" in economics lingo -- say a person traveling by themselves, in a not particularly fuel-economical vehicle like a pickup or an SUV, finding that an Amtrak route serves their trip without particularly large amounts of inconvenience, and the decision tips towards an Amtrak trip. Given that cars have about 90 percent of the passenger miles and Amtrak has .1 percent, a tiny shift towards Amtrak results in huge gains in Amtrak ridership.
What would it take to get the public (tax payers) to be more supportive of expanded passenger rail? Here is a hint. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.07. Some experts say the average price will hit $4.00 per gallon by Memorial Day. And John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Company, predicts that gasoline will be $5.00 per gallon by the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012. If they are correct, passenger rail advocates may find heaps of supporters.
Yes, may I also respectfully recommend this book, which I bought and read with delight in March 2010 in a trade paperback edition @ $17.95. It is very easy to read, and organized simply, by geographic area, then by specific routes and trains. So, for example, if you have an interest in the Southwest Chief, you just have to read pages 121-124. But each route/train chapter not only recalls his experience thereon, but also introduces some national or local issue, about which he expands. Each chapter usually gives his personal experiences, good, bad, or otherwise, commencing in 2007.
"Waiting on a Train" is the manifesto for the passenger train advocacy movement today, much as Peter Lyons' "To Hell in a Day Coach" played that role in the events leading up to Amtrak's founding.
The basic premise is that the railroad passenger train is perhaps the most refined mode of transportation known, with a single track carrying the equivalent of 20 highways lanes, using less energy per passenger mile than a motor scooter, door-to-door trip times competitive with airlines, amenities comparable to the finest hotel or cruise ship, and providing all of the above with costs comparable to airlines or highways were all of the hidden charges properly accounted for. Oh, and trains operate in almost any weather, or at least the operate in weather that ground planes and closes roads, and they have a safety record that is orders of magnitude better than planes or cars? Given that the railroad passenger train has all of those intrinsic advantages, that intercity passenger service in the form of Amtrak is in the poor state that it is in is evidence of a combination of indifference, ineptitude, along with outright hostility from the misinformed or perhaps from people who know better (cough, Scott Walker, cough) but are acting out of spite.
I read "To Hell in a Day Coach" from cover to cover some 40 years ago; I have only skimmed "Waiting on a Train" -- someone tell me there is something I could learn from "Waiting on a Train" that I don't already know form "To Hell in a Day Coach?"
What I am trying to say is that if you are recruiting a new member into your local advocacy organization, "Here, read Waiting on a Train" is a means of indoctrinating that person into the culture of the passenger train advocacy community, what we believe, what we stand for, and why we believe it. On the other hand, Amtrak was the endpoint of what the advocacy community wanted (NARP) in the "To Hell in a Day Coach" days, that is, taking passenger service out of the hands of the railroads that were trying to rid themselves of it and providing subsidy to trains to "level the playing field" in relation to other modes receiving subsidy in various forms.
From what I have read from "Waiting on a Train", it is much like "To Hell in a Day Coach" in that reinforces the feeling of being mad at the people who put trains into such a sorry state and perhaps angry enough to want to organize into passenger train advocacy groups to do something about it. On the other hand, we have been at that model of advocacy for well over 40 years and it has only gotten us so far, and maybe we need to engage in some introspection as to what has been achieved and what has not been achieved and why. A devil theory of history of "It was Nixon's fault -- he wanted Amtrak to fail" or "It is Jeb Bush's fault, he fought HSR in Florida" seems to be only part of the story.
We have a national passenger train system in Amtrak along with a means of providing needed subsidy dollars to run the trains, so why is there not more public support for this? If about 1.5 billion/year is underfunding, would 10 billion/year be adequate (Vision Report recommendation)? What would have to happen that the public at large would favor this level of expenditure? What is it about the 1.5 billion/year expenditure that is not providing enough train transportation product or the right kind of train transportation that people would favor higher spending to expand the system?
Looks pretty interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.
Just finished James McCommons' "Waiting on a Train" He toured the U.S. on Amtrak and interviewed many of the freight, commuter and Amtrak management. I highly recommend this book and would liike to discuss some of the issues he presents.
For example, the sorry state of passenger rail in Florida after a failed attempt to start high speed rail was side tracked by Gov Bush. Is there any hope of restoring that initiative?
LInk to McCommons' info: http://jamesmccommons.com/
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