V.PayneEisenhower even had a general working with a large staff on alternatives to running the interstates through the cities, but he got beat down in the administration.
V.PayneThen the urban highway revolts of the late 1960's and 1970's followed, and engineers such as myself lost a lot of credibility.
Interesting! Can you elaborate? It's those urban interstates that have gotten us in the most hot water - air quality, sprawl, unfriendly transit environment...
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
It was late in the process but Robert Moses did want to build a freeway directly into midtown or lower Manhattan and the public revolted. Consequently, that route never got built. Closer to home, the so-called Crosstown Expressway proposed for Chicago was never built. It would have roughly paralleled the BRC and one proposal would have put it on stilts over the BRC. Eventually, the federal funds earmarked for its construction were released for transit development in the Chicago area.
oltmanndPlaying a different game?
Don,
Amtrak is playing a different game. Amtrak is balancing transportation goals with political goals. The law says Amtrak "shall not be an establishment of government" but Amtrak believes the reality it different. To exist it has to serve as much of the country as it possibly can even though that is not the way to maximize the transportation it provides. And it must balance covering a wide area with providing trains people ride.
If Amtrak focuses too narrowly on providing transportation on the most potentially profitable routes its support in the Congress will erode. If Amtrak goes everywhere it will wind up running a lot of empty trains. So it must adopt a middle path as its best available strategy and that is what it does.
John
V.PayneEisenhower even had a general working with a large staff on alternatives to running the interstates through the cities, but he got beat down in the administration. Then the urban highway revolts of the late 1960's and 1970's followed, and engineers such as myself lost a lot of credibility.
What a fascinating insight. Of course engineers didn't decided to rip the guts out of our cities. This was a time when many cities were ungovernable and we were having riots. Some say it was a second Civil War. It was the political leaders who decided to destroy the cities in order to save them. They told the engineers what to do and the engineers simply worked at their assigned tasks. And, as you point out, were blamed for the results. But the engineers could have and ultimately did re route many interstates to go around our cities.
CSSHEGEWISCHIt was late in the process but Robert Moses did want to build a freeway directly into midtown or lower Manhattan and the public revolted.
It was Moses vs. Moses fighting under the pseudonym of Jane Jacobs.
In 1940, the City Council of Chicago approved the west route of the Superhighway System of Chicago, based on Daniel Burnham's idea of 1909, which opened for operation in 1955. This highway system, formerly named Congress Expressway, was the first in the United States to incorporate a rapid transit line and an expressway within the same corridor. The the Kennedy opened in 1960 and the Dan Ryan opened in 1962. All three had the effect of dividing/destroying urban neighborhoods (and the CA&E in the case of the Eisenhower/Congress) well before the urban riots of the mid-60's.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
General Bragdon was the name of the individual.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/bragdon.cfm
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/dde1959.cfm
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/26/how-the-interstate-highway-was-born-fortune-1958-archive/
Then there was Burton's 1944 report to congress, which based highway cost allocation on the ton-mile basis. Probably should have listened to him, but instead went with incremental method since the ATA liked it in the 1961 HCA report, dooming the railroads, and doing a lot of damage to the economy.
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001108622
Most of what we did/are doing with urban/suburban transportation is desperately trying to spread everybody out until the money and space runs out then suddenly what has been built suits nobody and everybody is stuck in a trap.
We will probably come out of it in the next two decades, but to a large degree we are just getting back to where we were. Double track mainlines down to single, then finally re-double tracked. Cities left for dead then re-invigorated after people tire of driving in all their free time.
This engineer's blog deals with the question of the financial sustainability of what we are doing in urban situations. It is worth a read if you are curious.
www.strongtowns.org
Historically, there wasn't agreement on what to do.
The better way would have been to charge road users the full cost for their use, as many of the above historical figures suggested, instead of trying to leverage off the existing urban roads and then wondering why the money is being sucked out of the city.
John WRAmtrak is playing a different game. Amtrak is balancing transportation goals with political goals.
I wouldn't argue. But, can you explain how this applies to whether the Crescent is overnight vs day train from ATL to NYP? Who in Congress even knows when it runs? Wouldn't it help Amtrak to have a better balance sheet when they go begging for money?
We're not talking about taking a train off, just improving an existing route.
I can't tell you why Amtrak keeps the Crescent as an overnight train rather than 2 daily trains. I have no information about their though process or why they make the decisions they make.
All I can to is to surmise they see themselves as preserving these long distance routes as they existed with private railroads and that they are not inclined to re visit the decision.
If the Crescent were to be re structured as two daily trains and that were to lead to lower losses it is not at all clear that Congress would approve of their decision. Just the change could generate a backlash. By sticking to traditional long distance trains they have in fact preserved their subsidies up to now. By making a change that they could then be called on to justify they might be putting what they have gained at risk. But that is just my speculation.
John WRIf the Crescent were to be re structured as two daily trains and that were to lead to lower losses it is not at all clear that Congress would approve of their decision.
Congressmen from GA objecting? That's funny....
V.Payne http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/bragdon.cfm http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/dde1959.cfm
Really interesting stuff! Look's like Ike's highways got hijacked by the cities looking for that 90% money to flow. Too, bad.
Ike's guys did tend to support "ring roads" as part of the network. I wonder if that would have spurred the same sprawl and inner city decay we got with the through roads included in the network.
oltmanndongressmen from GA objecting? That's funny....
I'm talking about Congress in general, not the Georgia delegation or any other specific state.
John WR oltmanndongressmen from GA objecting? That's funny.... I'm talking about Congress in general, not the Georgia delegation or any other specific state.
Congress from which state might object to Amtrak changing the Crescent's schedule?
What I do know is that at present there is no public outcry against the Crescent in particular or long distance trains in general. And while in the Congress there is opposition to Amtrak that opposition has not focused on the Crescent. However, when people start fiddling with things that are long established even if they do propose better ways the change in itself can and often does cause backlash.
Do you remember Medicare Part C?
oltmannd John WR oltmanndThere are a couple of inconvenient facts. People stopped riding LD trains long before there were jets and good highways, and fancy cars with GPS and DVD players in them. Don, Good highways came in the 1930's when Franklin Roosevelt started building them to counter the depression. They weren't really all about transportation; they were all about giving jobs to some of the legions of unemployed men. So did people stop riding long distance trains in the 1920's? John The "Good Roads" movement actually started in the bicycle era. Many roads were built in the prior to FDR. And, yes, people did stop riding LD trains in the 1920s as soon as decent roads gave them a place drive. A good example? When the Delaware River Bridge, US 30 and NJ 47 were completed, the ridership on the ACRR and WJ&S took a big hit. This was when cars were crude, slow, noisy and had no heaters or radios. It was a major reason in the creation of the PRSL less than 10 years later. The last year US RRs netted a profit on passenger traffic was 1929. But, the biggest hit of all was the suburban migration after WWII. "See the USA in your Chevrolet" beat Streamliners. Nobody was complaining - except the railroads - and that was about being forced to run unprofitable passenger trains. They dropped a bundle on those Streamliners only to see ridership dry up in less than a decade. There wasn't anybody saying: "Interstate highways? What a lousy idea!" We weren't "robbed". We got what we wanted!
John WR oltmanndThere are a couple of inconvenient facts. People stopped riding LD trains long before there were jets and good highways, and fancy cars with GPS and DVD players in them. Don, Good highways came in the 1930's when Franklin Roosevelt started building them to counter the depression. They weren't really all about transportation; they were all about giving jobs to some of the legions of unemployed men. So did people stop riding long distance trains in the 1920's? John
oltmanndThere are a couple of inconvenient facts. People stopped riding LD trains long before there were jets and good highways, and fancy cars with GPS and DVD players in them.
Good highways came in the 1930's when Franklin Roosevelt started building them to counter the depression. They weren't really all about transportation; they were all about giving jobs to some of the legions of unemployed men. So did people stop riding long distance trains in the 1920's?
The "Good Roads" movement actually started in the bicycle era. Many roads were built in the prior to FDR. And, yes, people did stop riding LD trains in the 1920s as soon as decent roads gave them a place drive. A good example? When the Delaware River Bridge, US 30 and NJ 47 were completed, the ridership on the ACRR and WJ&S took a big hit. This was when cars were crude, slow, noisy and had no heaters or radios. It was a major reason in the creation of the PRSL less than 10 years later.
The last year US RRs netted a profit on passenger traffic was 1929.
But, the biggest hit of all was the suburban migration after WWII. "See the USA in your Chevrolet" beat Streamliners. Nobody was complaining - except the railroads - and that was about being forced to run unprofitable passenger trains. They dropped a bundle on those Streamliners only to see ridership dry up in less than a decade.
There wasn't anybody saying: "Interstate highways? What a lousy idea!" We weren't "robbed". We got what we wanted!
What suburban migration there were already streetcar suburbs. I also don't get how suburbanization would effect intercity passenger train. I have never understood people's obsession with automobile but that is just me. So passenger rail was only profitable until 1929? Then why have it for so long after that. As for getting what they wanted nobody has a right to free stuff.
Railroad to Freedom
There was pre-interstate suburbs and post-interstate suburbs. The later are quite costly financially and were based on capacity that has now dried up with no reasonable way to expand in many cases. To the degree they set the marketplace expectation that is now changing it is interesting to look at them...
Back to Long Distance operations, which I admit I got away from...
Transmark Analysis, from “A Reexamanination of the Amtrak Route Structure”, USDOT 1978
Using the first year-round column, the carmile maintenance and operation costs would be $2.31/car-mile for (21 revenue berth) sleeping cars and $2.08/car-mile for (52 revenue seat) coach cars of that era converted to ($2012). These values are within a few cents of the range determined by a spreadsheet model I keep once capital purchase costs are taken out as was assumed by the Transmark study. I believe Transmark was a British Rail consulting subsidiary. Now this was probably for steam heated equipment, most assuredly “heritage” cars in some state of rehabilitation.
Now, everybody says that the sleeping cars are more expensive as they demand more interior/systems maintenance. Perhaps that is true, but I would suggest that it just isn’t that much of a per carmile basis. Say Bob and Norm spend 4 hours on a single car doing other maintenance and cleaning solely required of a sleeper at each terminal. Say that costs $340 in labor and $40 for parts, as there are at least two sleepers on most consists, and they split the shift, half for each car. But over the 1377 miles of the Crescent that works out to $380/1377 miles = $0.276 per carmile, or $0.023 per average room mile occupancy. ($0.23 vs $0.28/carmile), pretty close to the 1978 differential right, always nice when you get back to where you started by a different method.
Certainly the revenue from a sleeper more than clears this maintenance cost and the cost of the capital for the car while also making a contribution to the train amenities, though not fully paying for them. The difference isn’t in the operation of the car itself but in the assignment of cost of other train amenities to the sleeper or higher revenue passengers and the marketplace expectation of price.
For the ATL to NYC run, the cost reduction solution to simply run a “day” train, aka cut the dining car, means that there would be no substantial food option for the 18 hour schedule, (3) meal periods when the train is most full. IF you want to do this, keeping the overnight schedule makes more sense as you could have dinner in ATL on Peachtree St. before boarding 8 PM, or at WAS, and people don’t eat much overnight. A continental breakfast would work.
That being said, it would also make sense to have a Lynchburg-Newark-Lynchburg and a Gainsville-mainline trade off around Tuscaloosa-Gainsville food service crew and not have employees riding through the night doing nothing. South of there the café might work for the smaller crowd or you could add a New Orleans based crew on a short turn to Tuscaloosa and back same day.
You would still be stuck with trying to figure out a suitable schedule for a daytime trip, say somehow you get the time down to 16.5 hours, 6:00 AM ATL to 10:30 PM NYC? I hope everybody can conceptually see how that is much worse than the current schedule as the hotel in NYC or ATL is worth more than the ticket and you have no daytime left to spend at your destination on either end. You could shorten the trip to say Charlotte, but there already is a day train running on part of that trip, and you lose the connection to Atlanta, so what is the point?
What is also forgotten is the research in Europe by Troche and in the US by Martland and Lu has shown a strong market for late PM departures and early AM arrivals with a string of closely spaced pickup and dropoff points in the metro areas on either side of an overnight through run. This is how the CityNightLine operations are structured. With that being said Metro Atlanta needs at least two more stations on the ring roads to reduce urban access time and cost which Martland and Lu spends a lot of time fleshing out ( I highly recommend reading this paper).
www.mit.edu/~uic/TRB-handouts.ring.8.1.pdf
But you will NEVER see/notice/defend these incremental route improvements if you bake in $20+ million in system Fixed cost into the Crescent route and then divide by passenger miles…
Just curious what would be the point of having Amtrak if you were to eliminate Long distance routes. IF it is just corridors why no local operators? What is the advantage of a unified system with only corridors.
V.PayneThere was pre-interstate suburbs and post-interstate suburbs. The later are quite costly financially and were based on capacity that has now dried up with no reasonable way to expand in many cases.
I agree that our newer suburbs, especially the ones with 1 to 5 acre lots, are costly. However, it does seem to me that we do have place to expand them. For example, consider Metro North's Port Jervis Line. There is a lot of vacant land along that line that would be subdivided and it could include new stations with generous parking. Or the West Trenton line that New Jersey no longer operates but does carry freight. There is a lot of undeveloped land there and NJT could reinstate it commuter service.
And these are in the New York area which is, on the whole, very congested.
I don't know the specifics of the land you are talking about, it might be on flood lands, or you might be able to develop the immediate area but have no way to effectively tie it to major employment centers as that capacity is used up and the market won't currently bear the user revenue to finance a link due to our sense of the marketplace.
The answer goes beyond the topic of this post....
Start here: http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
The land does not flood. In the case of the Port Jervis line there is already a rail line to Manhattan. But the market does not exist for homes on that land right now.
V.Payne There was pre-interstate suburbs and post-interstate suburbs. The later are quite costly financially and were based on capacity that has now dried up with no reasonable way to expand in many cases. To the degree they set the marketplace expectation that is now changing it is interesting to look at them... Back to Long Distance operations, which I admit I got away from... Transmark Analysis, from “A Reexamanination of the Amtrak Route Structure”, USDOT 1978 Using the first year-round column, the carmile maintenance and operation costs would be $2.31/car-mile for (21 revenue berth) sleeping cars and $2.08/car-mile for (52 revenue seat) coach cars of that era converted to ($2012). These values are within a few cents of the range determined by a spreadsheet model I keep once capital purchase costs are taken out as was assumed by the Transmark study. I believe Transmark was a British Rail consulting subsidiary. Now this was probably for steam heated equipment, most assuredly “heritage” cars in some state of rehabilitation. Now, everybody says that the sleeping cars are more expensive as they demand more interior/systems maintenance. Perhaps that is true, but I would suggest that it just isn’t that much of a per carmile basis. Say Bob and Norm spend 4 hours on a single car doing other maintenance and cleaning solely required of a sleeper at each terminal. Say that costs $340 in labor and $40 for parts, as there are at least two sleepers on most consists, and they split the shift, half for each car. But over the 1377 miles of the Crescent that works out to $380/1377 miles = $0.276 per carmile, or $0.023 per average room mile occupancy. ($0.23 vs $0.28/carmile), pretty close to the 1978 differential right, always nice when you get back to where you started by a different method. Certainly the revenue from a sleeper more than clears this maintenance cost and the cost of the capital for the car while also making a contribution to the train amenities, though not fully paying for them. The difference isn’t in the operation of the car itself but in the assignment of cost of other train amenities to the sleeper or higher revenue passengers and the marketplace expectation of price. For the ATL to NYC run, the cost reduction solution to simply run a “day” train, aka cut the dining car, means that there would be no substantial food option for the 18 hour schedule, (3) meal periods when the train is most full. IF you want to do this, keeping the overnight schedule makes more sense as you could have dinner in ATL on Peachtree St. before boarding 8 PM, or at WAS, and people don’t eat much overnight. A continental breakfast would work. That being said, it would also make sense to have a Lynchburg-Newark-Lynchburg and a Gainsville-mainline trade off around Tuscaloosa-Gainsville food service crew and not have employees riding through the night doing nothing. South of there the café might work for the smaller crowd or you could add a New Orleans based crew on a short turn to Tuscaloosa and back same day. You would still be stuck with trying to figure out a suitable schedule for a daytime trip, say somehow you get the time down to 16.5 hours, 6:00 AM ATL to 10:30 PM NYC? I hope everybody can conceptually see how that is much worse than the current schedule as the hotel in NYC or ATL is worth more than the ticket and you have no daytime left to spend at your destination on either end. You could shorten the trip to say Charlotte, but there already is a day train running on part of that trip, and you lose the connection to Atlanta, so what is the point? What is also forgotten is the research in Europe by Troche and in the US by Martland and Lu has shown a strong market for late PM departures and early AM arrivals with a string of closely spaced pickup and dropoff points in the metro areas on either side of an overnight through run. This is how the CityNightLine operations are structured. With that being said Metro Atlanta needs at least two more stations on the ring roads to reduce urban access time and cost which Martland and Lu spends a lot of time fleshing out ( I highly recommend reading this paper). www.mit.edu/~uic/TRB-handouts.ring.8.1.pdf But you will NEVER see/notice/defend these incremental route improvements if you bake in $20+ million in system Fixed cost into the Crescent route and then divide by passenger miles…
Just a couple of comments.
City Nightline trains are a nice adjunct to the network of day trains. They are not the backbone of the network. A network of overnight LD trains in the eastern US should function the same way.
The major problem with the Crescent's schedule is that it completely ignores the population growth in the Piedmont, particularly in SC that's occurred in the past 40 years.
You are dead-on about the need for suburban stops in metro areas such as Atlanta. You only have to look at the census data to see it. I took a quick look at the 2010 census data in my blog of May 9, 2012. Amtrak needs to be pro-active about these things. They could probably get decent local funding to get the stops build out.
There are many, many ways to restructure and improve the economic performance of the overnight LD trains. Amtrak does not appear to interested in any of them and/or does not even consider that they may exist.
V.Paynewww.mit.edu/~uic/TRB-handouts.ring.8.1.pdf
Interesting. Lots of food for thought. Going to take some time to digest fully.
What I REALLY like about it is the notion of figuring out where and how trains fit best instead of:
"isn't it obvious that ALL trains are inherently good"
and
"1001 reasons Amtrak status-quo is justified".
Which is where we usually wind up....
CNL as Don said, is a nice adjunct service. One correction in V. Payne's comment ["a string of closely spaced pickup and dropoff points in the metro areas on either side of an overnight through run. This is how the CityNightLine operations are structured"] It's a good idea, but a glance at the linked CNL brochure (in English) shows that is not the case with the exception of Berlin and Hamburg on some routes.
http://www.bahn.de/citynightline/view/mdb/citynightline/cnl/media/mdb_103216_brosch_1213_en_final_neu.pdf
If this were a rational situation, there would be huge immediate investment in short distance trains which might serve communities within a 250 radius, more frequent availability (like several FULL trains per day), and for long distance travel, equipment suitable for the task including sleeping accomodations. If we were talking trucking commodities, there would be no delay in investment. But since we are talking people and severe competition against airlines and inefficient, slow and expensive automobiles, the congress people can't seem to get their heads around the concept. GW Bush of course, tried mightily to kill Amtrak entirely and starved the system so it will take years to recover.
schlimm CNL as Don said, is a nice adjunct service. One correction in V. Payne's comment ["a string of closely spaced pickup and dropoff points in the metro areas on either side of an overnight through run. This is how the CityNightLine operations are structured"] It's a good idea, but a glance at the linked CNL brochure (in English) shows that is not the case with the exception of Berlin and Hamburg on some routes.
Correct, it is meant to be paired with ICE on one leg out/back.I believe the schedule has changed over the years, you are correct as well. On one timetable I seem to remember a few years ago, one of the major German Metro areas being served twice, like 7:30 am and then 8:30 am, with a few other stops in the nearby towns in a loop to bring you back. Last time I was aboard was 2005.
But look at the frequency of stops in the late evening PM early AM of the trips, some are 20 to 30 minutes apart, but in the overnight hours they are 2-3 hours apart, and only at the main stations.
Roughly speaking for a two engine consist, operated in the current manner, inclusive of Equipment and Terminal Capital, Overhauls and Maintenance, and Labor I get these costs:
$24/trainmile in fixed cost for track access, stations, and operating crew, irregardless
$2.68/carmile for coaches and $2.86/carmile for sleepers, multiply by 125% (5/4) if you assume a food service car for 4 revenue cars
$3.50 per trainmile for the dining car labor
For the way the Crescent is operated today, I still get around $50/trainmile in direct long term costs, which fits with the PRIIA route improvement reports for direct cost with equipment capital added in. Recently the Crescent, even for its puny capacity, has been pulling in revenue of $31/trainmile or so.
The existing $19/trainmile difference even though it represents some inefficient operating practices, when divided by the equivalent number of passenger automobiles worth of people on the train, is close to the interstate highway subsidy.
If you do the modifications that the PRIIA reports suggested you get historical Federal interstate highway subsidy (state cost are mostly a wash but I am going back and looking at them). Add even more revenue cars and you get half the interstate highway subsidy(Non-linear), eventually getting to a much lower subsidy, a level roughly equal to the government borne automobile accident costs as the Variable portion of the subsidy.
I can walk up to the Peachtree St station right now and get a ticket for tomorrow night's Crescent to NYP for $138 (tonight's fare is $217). A flight on Thursday AM is $189. How exactly will lower fares attract more riders? Could there really be potential passengers out there whose go/don't go price point is say $100 vs $138?
Only a decade ago, the Crescent had a fifth coach. That has disappeared. Pricing has always been below airfare. There's just not much demand, I think
You could get a one way ticket on the Crescent tonight to Charlotte(what could become a good short corridor) for $56.00. Tomorrow night $70.00. Problem isn't so much length of journey - 5:17 - but the time you arrive in Charlotte: 1:21 am. On the other hand, the air connections are not so good. Non-stop is 1:10, but the fare is $464.00 and many flights are one stop and five hours. So if Amtrak could think beyond what it inherited 35 years ago, it could tap and get a good market share for that segment of 250 miles, especially if the time could be reduced to 3.5 hours.
Now, if you merely flip the schedule and dovetail it into the mid-day Piedmont slot (NC can do cross platform to Raleigh at Greensboro)
You drop the cost of the sleeper and coach attendants.
You drop the dining car cost.
You drop the second locomotive.
You don't have those long 5+ minute station stops
You don't need all that extra dwell at Charlotte and Lynchburg.
You gain riders at Clemson University, Spartansburg, Greensburg and suburban Charlotte (make a Kannapolis stop)
You a useful "second" train to/from Lynchburg/Charlottesville and the northeast.
Schedule would be something like 6:30 AM departure from Atlanta, 11:00 PM arrival in NYP.
You'd have something that would beat the performance of the Palmetto and Carolinian.
schlimm You could get a one way ticket on the Crescent tonight to Charlotte(what could become a good short corridor) for $56.00. Tomorrow night $70.00. Problem isn't so much length of journey - 5:17 - but the time you arrive in Charlotte: 1:21 am. On the other hand, the air connections are not so good. Non-stop is 1:10, but the fare is $464.00 and many flights are one stop and five hours. So if Amtrak could think beyond what it inherited 35 years ago, it could tap and get a good market share for that segment of 250 miles, especially if the time could be reduced to 3.5 hours.
I can drive to Charlotte in 3-1/2 hours. It's not a bad drive except on Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons in the summer - lake traffic....
Most Atlantans live on the north side and the airport is on the south side. I don't know anyone who would consider flying to Charlotte.
Now, if you could do a couple/three trains a day and you had a stop in Duluth/Buford..... you might have something. You could even live with somewhat slower trip times.
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