How are shortlines and regionals able to run some lines profitably when their class 1 predecessors couldn't? The Class 1 roads have the advantages of ecomomies of scale, they are able to keep their locomotive fleets up to date with the latest technology etc. So how is it that a shortline/regional can thrive with old locomotives, lower volumes, and no economies of scale?
Looking at my own industry (non-RR) the BIG Companies I have worked for expected large margins and volumes or it was not worth doing. The smaller companies picked up those areas since their margins did not need to be a big to operate. Also, not everything needs the Best of the Best so the hand-me-down stuff can work just fine in smaller operations. I would assume the same holds true for nearly all industries.
Darren (BLHS & CRRM Lifetime Member)
Delaware and Hudson Virtual Museum (DHVM), Railroad Adventures (RRAdventures)
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Because they go after business the Class 1s (at least some of them) turn their nose up at.
A couple months ago I was at a RITS regional meet where Dan Sabin of the IANR was the featured presentation. He talked about the Manly Railroad musuem he's sponsering, but also about the IANR.
Another thread mentions the new IANR expansion on a former UP branchline. He talked about that and said he thought the acquisition would take a couple of years to pay for itself, but it only took a few months. They (IANR) did more business on the line in the first few months than the UP did in the last few years. (He gave specific numbers, but I don't remember them.) My wife whispered to me that she didn't believe that, but I whispered back that I did, knowing how the UP looks at short haul/smaller volume traffic.
It used to be said of the railroad, "If it doesn't fit in a box car, we don't care about it." Now it's more of, "If it isn't a unit train sized move, we don't care about it." It's like they (class 1s) want the cream off the top, but don't want to milk the cow.
And it's not about being able to make money from a one car per week customer at the end of a 20 mile branch line. Unless more business can be found, that line will be abandoned by either a short line or class 1. The difference is the short line is more likely to try to find business that will keep the line active, the class 1 probably would not.
Jeff
See generally Roy Blanchard's website and references, publications, etc. at:
http://www.rblanchard.com/resources/index.html
How long will the Class Is keep accepting single carload traffic from shortlines. Certainly the customer will be better off if the final delivery is by another shortline. The big problem with the Class Is is operational discipline. If you want to see true precision railroading look at the Swiss Federal Railways domestic carload network, next day delivery of your load from anywhere in Switzerland to anywhere else in Switzerland overnight. And if you are along one of the mainlines it will be by noon the following day. So say you are the Brewery at Rheinfelden, east of Basel, and you need a carload of Beer shipped to Geneva. Your carload will be picked up by 5 pm, humped at Basel, put on a mainline train to Lausanne, humped again, and delivered to your warehouse near Geneva by noon the next day. On a US railroad you might be lucky if they completed the hump switching at Basel by noon the next day. A big part of the problem is the very big size of carload trains in the US. It cuts down on the linehaul cost of carload movement, but tends to create real problems in execution of switching. BTW SBB delivers 98% of the carload traffic on time which is defined as within 30 minutes of schedule. US railroads can't achieve that percentage within 24 hours of schedule.
Of course the corollary for the Swiss is that your carload better be ready on time, or it won't move at all.
We should mention the significant operating cost savings resulting from owners and managers doing multiple tasks. When you have an ownwership equity you do whatever is necessary; and when you hire people you look for that same commitment. There was a Trains story recently about how a very successful short line RR worked which gave details of the commitment all who worked there had.
The flip side to the economies of scale are the diseconomies of scale. You can google the phrase, but it essentially refers to the increasing difficulty of managing an increasing number of people. The large RRs seem to feel it's better to spin off marginal lines (and their personnel, costs, liabilities, etc.) and replace all that with an employee to coordinate all the traffic that hopefully the shortline will supply to the big road. And if the spin-off fails, the original RR often has the option to re-acquire, or let it expire.
Big business railroads want to handle long haul traffic with as little handling (terminal, switching) as possible. Thus a branch line or segments of lines are good candidates for spinning off to short line operators. Short line guys are often local people...at least at start up...and will seek new business, make deals, have smaller crews at lower wages, every employee multitasks, only one but no more than say 5 locomotives are needed, don't have to own equipment or can have and lease out, often track becomes owned by shipper's cooperative or government agency which will farm out the operation, There are so many ways it is cheaper for smaller owners, as many different ways as there are shortlines I suppose.
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diningcar We should mention the significant operating cost savings resulting from owners and managers doing multiple tasks. When you have an ownwership equity you do whatever is necessary; and when you hire people you look for that same commitment. There was a Trains story recently about how a very successful short line RR worked which gave details of the commitment all who worked there had.
beaulieu How long will the Class Is keep accepting single carload traffic from shortlines. Certainly the customer will be better off if the final delivery is by another shortline. The big problem with the Class Is is operational discipline. If you want to see true precision railroading look at the Swiss Federal Railways domestic carload network, next day delivery of your load from anywhere in Switzerland to anywhere else in Switzerland overnight. And if you are along one of the mainlines it will be by noon the following day. So say you are the Brewery at Rheinfelden, east of Basel, and you need a carload of Beer shipped to Geneva. Your carload will be picked up by 5 pm, humped at Basel, put on a mainline train to Lausanne, humped again, and delivered to your warehouse near Geneva by noon the next day. On a US railroad you might be lucky if they completed the hump switching at Basel by noon the next day. A big part of the problem is the very big size of carload trains in the US. It cuts down on the linehaul cost of carload movement, but tends to create real problems in execution of switching. BTW SBB delivers 98% of the carload traffic on time which is defined as within 30 minutes of schedule. US railroads can't achieve that percentage within 24 hours of schedule. Of course the corollary for the Swiss is that your carload better be ready on time, or it won't move at all.
Undoubtedly one of the factors that help the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) achieve the laudatory results that you reference is the fact that approximately 29 per cent of its revenues comes from the public sector. Read taxpayer subsidies! And a total of 21 per cent of these revenues are plowed into infrastructure that is used by passenger and freight trains.
This is a fact and not a political statement. I am a strong supported of free markets with minimum regulation. Having said that, I believe a case could be made to have a public sector corporation take over the rail infrastructure in the United States and allow anyone who meets its standards to operate over it. This could put rail infrastructure on a par with highways, waterways, and airports, which are really owned by the public, and for the most part paid for by the users. Of course, it would never happen, at least in my lifetime, but it is an intriguing idea.
Sam1 This is a fact and not a political statement. I am a strong supported of free markets with minimum regulation. Having said that, I believe a case could be made to have a public sector corporation take over the rail infrastructure in the United States and allow anyone who meets its standards to operate over it. This could put rail infrastructure on a par with highways, waterways, and airports, which are really owned by the public, and for the most part paid for by the users. Of course, it would never happen, at least in my lifetime, but it is an intriguing idea.
The concept of open access has been sliced and diced in these forums in the past. Your proposal suggests that the railroad system be nationalized and separated into a publicly owned infrastructure company with various operating companies still in private hands.
Shortlines move the carloads the class 1's dont want, like single carload customers. The big guys want unit trains. Class 1 money is way more than what most shortlines pay, have not heard of a shortline yet that pays six figures. Lots of shorlines pay salary with no OT. Many shortline managers are also engineers, conductors, track formen, ect. Shortline employees can wear many hats, which in turn saves money.
Track. Yea there are several smaller roads that will get by with the minimum. It often takes an FRA track man to come inspect the line and write up defects before the company will make repairs. Track work costs lots of money which is why you see such slow speeds on the small roads. Most have class 1, and excepted track.
CSSHEGEWISCH Sam1: This is a fact and not a political statement. I am a strong supported of free markets with minimum regulation. Having said that, I believe a case could be made to have a public sector corporation take over the rail infrastructure in the United States and allow anyone who meets its standards to operate over it. This could put rail infrastructure on a par with highways, waterways, and airports, which are really owned by the public, and for the most part paid for by the users. Of course, it would never happen, at least in my lifetime, but it is an intriguing idea. The concept of open access has been sliced and diced in these forums in the past. Your proposal suggests that the railroad system be nationalized and separated into a publicly owned infrastructure company with various operating companies still in private hands.
Sam1: This is a fact and not a political statement. I am a strong supported of free markets with minimum regulation. Having said that, I believe a case could be made to have a public sector corporation take over the rail infrastructure in the United States and allow anyone who meets its standards to operate over it. This could put rail infrastructure on a par with highways, waterways, and airports, which are really owned by the public, and for the most part paid for by the users. Of course, it would never happen, at least in my lifetime, but it is an intriguing idea.
Nationalization is not the correct term. I would keep the infrastructure in private hands, as per below.
It could be set up similar to the electric utilities in Texas and parts of Australia. Here and there the poles and wires (similar to railroad rights-of-way) are owned by investor owned, independent operators, but their rates and rules governing their use are set by a utility commission. In Texas it is the Public Utility Commission.
Private generators and retailers buy access to the poles and wires to transmit and distribute electric energy. They pay a fee to use the system. Well, actually, their customers pay the fee. The energy is produced by a variety of generators, and it is sold through a greater number of retailers. The generators and retailers have to meet the system operator's standards to gain access to the transmission and distribution systems.
In Texas there are numerous sources of power. Some are owned by investor owned utilities; others are owned by merchant plant operators, and others are co-generation facilities. There are even a greater number of retailers. In Dallas, for example, a customer can choose from more than 30 vendors that sell electric energy.
A similar system might be feasible for the nation's railroads, with various parts of the infrastructure operated by different owners, all under a national regulator. Opening the system to other operators might improve competition and therefore outcomes. I believe competition, properly regulated, produces the best economic outcomes in the long run.
I realize the subject has been discussed previously. Furthermore, I just threw it out for grins. I don't believe that it will come about in this country. The railroads, for many good reasons, are against it. Frankly, I don't know enough about the issues to argue for or against it, but I believe that it is something worth considering.
Domestic carload freight is not Open Access in Switzerland. It is SBB Cargo or nothing. The difference is in the attitude of the management and employees. Unless the locomotive is one of the old Ae6/6 locomotives the Driver (they have no Conductor's on through freights) will dock his company issued laptop is a special bay alongside which is a clock. Next he will bring up his train's schedule on the laptop which will be listed at every timing point from start to final destination. On freights the timings are to exact minute, on passenger trains to the exact second. Next he will make sure that his watch, the computer's clock, and the locomotive's clock are all synchronized. At the scheduled departure time he will begin to roll, there is no calling to see if the dispatchers are ready for him, both he and they are expected to be ready, there is no pencil-whipping. If he is late passing one of his timing points by one minute the color of his train symbol changes to a warning color on the Dispatcher's Display, at three minutes late the color gets more ominous and the Dispatcher will get an audible warning and the Driver will be contacted via radio. On trackage equipped with newer signalling systems the Driver gets the same warnings as the Dispatcher. SBB has no trouble attracting top notch college graduates for management positions, and a very through apprenticeship program for the skill positions. Training for a Engineer is typically a six semester program with serious hands-on training on everything he might possibly need to know. The pride in their professionalism shows.
Now contrast that with the US, the reason that US railroads are de-emphasizing carload traffic is because they cannot provide service in a timely manner. They feel that every time a freight has to be switched it is an opportunity for service to fail, and with carload traffic and many OD pairs resulting in a complex network, carloads will have to be switched at least twice and many will need more resulting in many chances of service failure. And in a self-fulling prophecy it usually does. And the only answer they have is to lengthen the schedule which results in poor equipment utilization, and high costs offsetting the higher revenue.
Swiss carload railfreight is more like UPS than US freight railroads. Except for Basel and Chiasso which are the intake points for International traffic, Swiss freight classification yards have more in common with UPS sorting centers than their US counterparts. Both are hectic at the morning and evening sorts, and quiet, empty places in between times
Paul_D_North_Jr See generally Roy Blanchard's website and references, publications, etc. at: http://www.rblanchard.com/resources/index.html
Completely agree. Roy is the man on this...
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I suspect that many shortlines can make a profit because a significant portion of the roadway cost are reduced through grants, loans, or ownership by government authorities. I also suspect that a lot of the same short lines and governmental authorities are about to get a rude awakening about the capital investment needed to keep a railroad in working condition - a lot of them have been coasting for many years on the condition of the lines inherited from the Class Ones.
it seems like a lot of shortlines and regionals are mainly one commodity lines. In our part of the world, it's either grain or pink rocks. It seems pretty common, that the folks selling those commodities tend invest in a financial stake in the forming of new roads. The other oddity, to me at least, is that a class 1 would never operate a line hauling frain cars at 10 m.p.h., but a shortline would, if it made economic sense to them.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Not really,
Most short lines are very conscience of track maintenance, but they do re-use and re-lay a lot of second hand rail
http://www.aslrra.org/our_members/railroad_members/index.cfm
Check out your state and see how many short lines are out there, and while quite a few serve only a handful of companies, most serve a lot more than you think.
My own railroad only has 52 miles of "main line" but over 450 miles of secondary track, yard track and industrial track, we serve almost 400 customers.
We operate under RTC, in dark territory, with the GCOR and rule 6.28, max speed 20 mph, 10 mph yard speed.
We move over 500,000. cars a year, have 3 major yards, 3 small marshaling yards, own 25 locomotives, employee 324 T&E employees and god knows how many clerks, MOW and such.
Besides the "loose car" railroading, we handle three to four inbound 120 car plus grain trains daily, and at least that many coke and coal trains of the same size.
We can turn and burn an pair of inbound and empty unit trains out of Cargil elevator in 4 to 5 hours and have the empty ready to hand off to the Class 1 who brought it to us.
Odds are, if you have a windmill farm near you, we hauled the part for it out of the Houston public docks, built the train and handed it off to our class 1 partners.
Our rip tracks alone bills over one million dollars a quarter, so....
One of the major reasons short line exist isn't because they are not profitable, low maintenance on the fly cheap operations, held together with baling wire and bubble gum , but because a class 1 would have to build, maintain, staff a terminal close to or in place of the short line, and a lot of short lines and regional roads don't generate the profit a class 1 would have to have to do that....short lines and regionals, switching and terminal roads(class 2 and class 3) don't have quite as many rules, don't have to pay a lot of the arbitraries and such class 1 would have to, thing like away from home terminal pay, travel, daily per diem, short crew or un protected man pay, air pay, lots of little things that can drive the cost up past what a class 1 would view a profitable.
For a class 1, it makes no sense to send a three or four man crew 20 miles to grab 10 or 20 cars and drag them back to a yard, but for a short line it makes perfect sense, they can make money at it. because the cost to the class 2 or 3 is less.
And class 2 and 3 roads earn their class 1 partners money; I can promise you that, we make a goodly bit for UP, BNSF and KCS.
Depending on the agreement between the class 1 and short line/ regional, the class 2 or 3 may get a budget from their partner for operations, and once that budget it paid back, any thing they earn over that is theirs to keep, so it can be a very lucrative business.
According to the ASLRRA, there are currently 37 railroads in Texas that are members of their organization.
There are more railroads, just not members of the ASLRRA.
Plus, depending on who their partners are, a class 2 or 3 can offer a shipper a variety of class 1 connections/interchange, and often, the price to ship on the class 1 can be negotiated through the class 2 or 3 and becomes part of the short line /regional bill.
Trust me, the business is out there, and the industry has reacted in a manner that, for the most part, benefits all parties.
23 17 46 11
The regionals seem to be succeeding in areas where the class 1s couldn't...the G&W Atlantic & St Lawrence line and the MMA line through Quebec are two good examples. I knew both lines when they belonged to CN and CP respectively, and back in the late 70s and early 80s trains were mostly one locomotive and three to ten cars. Nowadays, under regional management trains are much longer....even my mother complains that they take forever to clear a crossing because trains are so long. Good for them and the communities they serve. From all appearances they've done a great job in bringing life back to those lines.
http://www.ptra.com/index.php/customers/tariff.html
If you were wondering what a Class 3 can charge for service, look at our 2011 tariffs...by the way, the web site is still under construction, and like most construction projects on a railroad, may take a while...
Sam1 beaulieu: How long will the Class Is keep accepting single carload traffic from shortlines. Certainly the customer will be better off if the final delivery is by another shortline. The big problem with the Class Is is operational discipline. If you want to see true precision railroading look at the Swiss Federal Railways domestic carload network, next day delivery of your load from anywhere in Switzerland to anywhere else in Switzerland overnight. And if you are along one of the mainlines it will be by noon the following day. So say you are the Brewery at Rheinfelden, east of Basel, and you need a carload of Beer shipped to Geneva. Your carload will be picked up by 5 pm, humped at Basel, put on a mainline train to Lausanne, humped again, and delivered to your warehouse near Geneva by noon the next day. On a US railroad you might be lucky if they completed the hump switching at Basel by noon the next day. A big part of the problem is the very big size of carload trains in the US. It cuts down on the linehaul cost of carload movement, but tends to create real problems in execution of switching. BTW SBB delivers 98% of the carload traffic on time which is defined as within 30 minutes of schedule. US railroads can't achieve that percentage within 24 hours of schedule. Of course the corollary for the Swiss is that your carload better be ready on time, or it won't move at all. Undoubtedly one of the factors that help the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) achieve the laudatory results that you reference is the fact that approximately 29 per cent of its revenues comes from the public sector. Read taxpayer subsidies! And a total of 21 per cent of these revenues are plowed into infrastructure that is used by passenger and freight trains. This is a fact and not a political statement. I am a strong supported of free markets with minimum regulation. Having said that, I believe a case could be made to have a public sector corporation take over the rail infrastructure in the United States and allow anyone who meets its standards to operate over it. This could put rail infrastructure on a par with highways, waterways, and airports, which are really owned by the public, and for the most part paid for by the users. Of course, it would never happen, at least in my lifetime, but it is an intriguing idea.
beaulieu: How long will the Class Is keep accepting single carload traffic from shortlines. Certainly the customer will be better off if the final delivery is by another shortline. The big problem with the Class Is is operational discipline. If you want to see true precision railroading look at the Swiss Federal Railways domestic carload network, next day delivery of your load from anywhere in Switzerland to anywhere else in Switzerland overnight. And if you are along one of the mainlines it will be by noon the following day. So say you are the Brewery at Rheinfelden, east of Basel, and you need a carload of Beer shipped to Geneva. Your carload will be picked up by 5 pm, humped at Basel, put on a mainline train to Lausanne, humped again, and delivered to your warehouse near Geneva by noon the next day. On a US railroad you might be lucky if they completed the hump switching at Basel by noon the next day. A big part of the problem is the very big size of carload trains in the US. It cuts down on the linehaul cost of carload movement, but tends to create real problems in execution of switching. BTW SBB delivers 98% of the carload traffic on time which is defined as within 30 minutes of schedule. US railroads can't achieve that percentage within 24 hours of schedule. Of course the corollary for the Swiss is that your carload better be ready on time, or it won't move at all.
The Swiss generally think rail is worth the subsidies - even to the point were there are subsidies to install sidings that produce very marginal traffic - when a regional transload center might actually produce profitable traffic. (This from a SBB manager last fall...)
Look at the geography of Switzerland! It is mountainous and compact country....rail lines were built before motor vehicles became so prevelant...so they had and have little space to build super six lane highways like we know them. Their best transportation asset is the railroads: improve upon them makes sense because there is no room to build highways and its so mounainous it is cheaper to use the railroads.
We keep comparing foreign rail and transportation systems to what evolved here and it is actually like comparing apples to oranges to grapes. Systems evolved in other countries because of the geography and economies and social structures; many of those countries are only as big as most of our states. We keep comparing the differences but not understanding the whys of the differences. Nor do we understand why US railroading would not fit the foreign roles and vice versa.
henry6 Look at the geography of Switzerland! It is mountainous and compact country....rail lines were built before motor vehicles became so prevelant...so they had and have little space to build super six lane highways like we know them. Their best transportation asset is the railroads: improve upon them makes sense because there is no room to build highways and its so mounainous it is cheaper to use the railroads. We keep comparing foreign rail and transportation systems to what evolved here and it is actually like comparing apples to oranges to grapes. Systems evolved in other countries because of the geography and economies and social structures; many of those countries are only as big as most of our states. We keep comparing the differences but not understanding the whys of the differences. Nor do we understand why US railroading would not fit the foreign roles and vice versa.
Very well said.
John Timm
Shortlines and Class 1's are two totally different animals. A class 1 may in fact be making money by running a branch line, but not as much as other, high priority lines. So, in turn, it is cheaper for them to abandon that line, or sell it off to a shortline.
In a shortline's case, they may only have one locomotive to maintain, and don't have to maintian the railroad itself to as high of standards as would a Class1. So the short line can do a better job at servng the industry(ies) that is serves, and can make enough money to survive.
-Justin
The road to to success is always under construction. _____________________________________________________________________________ When the going gets tough, the tough use duct tape.
What is the average length of haul, revenue tons per carload, cars and tons per train, and rate per ton-mile, on the SBB as compared to the US ?
CatFoodFlambe I suspect that many shortlines can make a profit because a significant portion of the roadway cost are reduced through grants, loans, or ownership by government authorities. I also suspect that a lot of the same short lines and governmental authorities are about to get a rude awakening about the capital investment needed to keep a railroad in working condition - a lot of them have been coasting for many years on the condition of the lines inherited from the Class Ones.
But it's not accurate to stereotype or paint all short lines with the same brush, just as it isn't with people. Some are indeed able to reinvest into their track and equipment as capital assets on a 'going concern' basis just as fast or faster than they are deteriorating or being used up, so that over the long-term they should be able to remain viable. How they're able to do that is very individualized and site-specific - more traffic, better/ higher rates or 'divisions' of rates with the Class I, a surcharge from an understanding shipper, etc.
Essentialy, many short lines are to the Class I's what convenience stores are to full-service grocery stores or Wal-Marts - you can get in and out of the former faster than you can walk from your car to the front door of the latter, albeit at a somewhat higher unit price, etc.
- Paul North.
This issue of TRAINS dealing with shortline/regionals is one of the best of the year. I always look forward to this special issue.
The article on Sandersville Railroad was outstanding, but very brief. For years I have noticed their cars plus the white tankers carrying Kaolin and wondered about the railroad. That is quite an operation....big time railroading. Take a look at their physical plant - welded rail and big ballast. Also impressive is their 4 scheduled deliveries to NS daily. This is a special railroad, not a typical shortline.
What is impressive is their expansion away from the one commodity. The infrastructure is in place for other services.
Ed
henry6 .......................We keep comparing foreign rail and transportation systems to what evolved here and it is actually like comparing apples to oranges to grapes. Systems evolved in other countries because of the geography and economies and social structures; many of those countries are only as big as most of our states. We keep comparing the differences but not understanding the whys of the differences. Nor do we understand why US railroading would not fit the foreign roles and vice versa.
.......................We keep comparing foreign rail and transportation systems to what evolved here and it is actually like comparing apples to oranges to grapes. Systems evolved in other countries because of the geography and economies and social structures; many of those countries are only as big as most of our states. We keep comparing the differences but not understanding the whys of the differences. Nor do we understand why US railroading would not fit the foreign roles and vice versa.
While in some respects you are correct, I'm not sure that geography is the whole story. Just as important is the willingness to "invest" a billion dollars in that 6 lane freeway, complete with major expropriation of property, rather than spend 50 million "subsidizing" rail operation. The dollars come from the same source, but somehow calling it an investment instead of a subsidy causes the vaults to open wide.
An urban environment may not usually have mountains like Switzerland to create location challenges, but punching that freeway through a city creates massive disruption of lives and new barriers between the neighborhoods. We have accepted that as the "price of progress" without bothering to find out the true cost.
John
Murphy Siding henry6: .......................We keep comparing foreign rail and transportation systems to what evolved here and it is actually like comparing apples to oranges to grapes. Systems evolved in other countries because of the geography and economies and social structures; many of those countries are only as big as most of our states. We keep comparing the differences but not understanding the whys of the differences. Nor do we understand why US railroading would not fit the foreign roles and vice versa. This is 180 degrees different than the arguements you have made on any thread involving passenger railroads.
henry6: .......................We keep comparing foreign rail and transportation systems to what evolved here and it is actually like comparing apples to oranges to grapes. Systems evolved in other countries because of the geography and economies and social structures; many of those countries are only as big as most of our states. We keep comparing the differences but not understanding the whys of the differences. Nor do we understand why US railroading would not fit the foreign roles and vice versa.
But not the way you insinuate. I compare showing the ways they are different and not that they are different. Your interpretation is that I say, for instance, that passenger service is better in Europe. But what I say is that passenger service in Europe is different because of the lighter loading guage standards, less space, government support, etc.; reasons they are different. The discussion on Switzerland is an example....the terrain, the ecnomomy, the country size, etc. are all so much different than the US that to compare all of mountainous and tiny Switzerland is not equal to the various geophysical characteristics and huge size. So, my above conclusive statement is that we keep comparing the services and quality without understanding the economics, the geography, nor the government inclusion in rail services. To compare one Amtrak train or route to any in Europe, for instance, is unbalanced.
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