Could an open access operator work in the US like it does in Europe? Such as Eurostar and Heathrow Express.
Explain what you mean. You mention passenger service. I usually think of freight service where every railroad gets 'access' to every industry, even if is not connected to their railroad.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
In theory, since the entire rail network shares a common gauge and is interconnected, open access could work.
In reality, it would require a major paradigm shift in many areas, including labor, maintenance, infrastructure ownership, and a host of others.
We've had some pretty heated discussions here in the past. Most folks seem to fall into the "never gonna happen" camp.
Probably the biggest single stumbling block would be the infrastructure. Signalling issues and the like notwithstanding, there is the question of whether someone would be willing to pay the existing railroads what said railroads are currently assessed for (for property taxes).
If we can maintain a harmonious atmosphere, maybe we can have a decent discussion on the topic.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Assuming you mean passenger the answer is yes and no.
Open access for passenger service exists now in a way. If you want to run a passenger train, or a whole fleet of them between here and there, and you have many millions of dollars, verifiable cash in the bank, you can walk into any railroad in the country tell them your plans, and legally both parties can enter into a contract the size of a small book for the service.
The no part is practical. You will not enjoy Amtrak's forced access at absurdly low rates. First the RR will need to figure out what capital investment you need to make so that their operation will not be worse off for hosting you. That could be anything from several to several hundred million dollars depending on the route and the train frequency you want. Then the railroad will demand to be paid a compensatory rate, basically in the ballpark of what their average freight train grosses, less whatever assets you plan to supply, say locomotives and cars. For talking purposes that will probably be in the range of $40-60 per train mile.
Lets assume that your end points are 100 miles apart to make the math easy. Assume $50 per train mile and $100,0000,000 dollar investment that you need to make 15% or $15,000,000 per year on. That is $41,100 in capital cost per DAY. Your payment to the railroad is $5,000 per train, or $10,000 per round trip. You also have fuel, equipment maintenance, and car cleaning cost, lets say $1,000 per round trip which is probably low. Again to make the math easy, lets assume four round trips. Costs are $10,000 capital recovery, $10,000 to the railroad and $1,000 operating costs excleuding overhead and marketing. Each round trip costs $21,000 per day, or $10,500 each way. Note that if frequency is reduced the capital charge per train increases.
What will your fare be and what will your average load be? The IRS allows about $.50 per vehicle mile. Passengers need an economic incentive to use your train and will probably incur local costs on each end for bus or taxi that they would not otherwise incur. Maybe you could get $30, but I think $25 is more reasonable. How elastic is your demand curve? You will need to hire a consultant to figure it out and at the end of the day it will not be much more than a sophisticated guess.
AT $25 per head and $10,500 per train, both one way, you need an average of 420 passengers per train on every train every day to break even. To hit that average you will probably need about 50% extra cars due to variation in load, so build that into your capital budget. To handle 420 people in a single level 48 seat car you need 9 cars, maybe 5 bilevels. Food service adds costs faster than revenue, so I assumed none.
Oh, if you want to make an economic profit, which is the whole point of the exercise you need more passengers and longer trains.
If ATK, with virtually no cost access to the railroad network can not make money, who is going to be crazy enough to think they can and walk through that open access door?
Mac
PNWRMNMLets assume that your end points are 100 miles apart to make the math easy. Assume $50 per train mile and $100,0000,000 dollar investment that you need to make 15% or $15,000,000 per year on. That is $41,100 in capital cost per DAY. Your payment to the railroad is $5,000 per train, or $10,000 per round trip. You also have fuel, equipment maintenance, and car cleaning cost, lets say $1,000 per round trip which is probably low. Again to make the math easy, lets assume four round trips. Costs are $10,000 capital recovery, $10,000 to the railroad and $1,000 operating costs excleuding overhead and marketing. Each round trip costs $21,000 per day, or $10,500 each way. Note that if frequency is reduced the capital charge per train increases.
Direct labor in the operating expenses seems low or missing.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
schlimm Direct labor in the operating expenses seems low or missing.
Conductor, engineer & brakeman are in the railroad charges. That is far less complex way to do it than hiring own operating crew.
Either one. I know both exist.
Larry(tree68) said : "...We've had some pretty heated discussions here in the past. Most folks seem to fall into the "never gonna happen" camp..."
Larry; That remark could hang in the rafters of the annals of understatement, like a championship banner !
If futuremodal doesn't come out of his cave, we'll be all right.
In other locations, open access, both freight and passenger, was developed where the entire rail system was government-owned and continues as such. I don't believe that it has been attempted in a situation similar to the United States, where the rail system is privately owned.
Exactly. Open acess is only really needed when there is only one rail network, and the goal is increased competition. For most cases, there are at least two networks serving a given location in the United States and Canada.
"Open Access" theory goes back a long way. In railroading's infancy here in the US it was proposed the actual 'roads would be government built and the several railroad companys would pay to use them. It was dismissed as impractical for various and valid reasons so it never came to pass.
NorthWest Exactly. Open acess is only really needed when there is only one rail network, and the goal is increased competition. For most cases, there are at least two networks serving a given location in the United States and Canada.
The ones pushing for Open Access (in whatever form) are usually ones that must physically have the cars at their facility to load/unload. They can't easily (or cheaply) truck their product to/from another railroad. Most locations anymore only have one railroad physically serving them.
Even so, Open Access isn't going to be the panacea that all those pushing for it think it will be. Sure, the very large customers physically "captive" to one railroad might benefit from it. Railroad A would probably love to "cherry pick" Railroad B's high value customers.
The medium and small customers might be in for a rude awakening. They may find out that Railroad A may not be so willing to provide service to them. (Even if Railroad A runs a train right past them on Railroad B to get to that high value customer). Open Access could even end up harming those less desirable customers. Railroad B losing it's on line business to others, probably receiving a fee for use of it's tracks that doesn't cover the costs, and unable to secure new on-line business or cherry pick other railroads, might find itself cutting back on maintenance or outright abandoning some lines. Or they could find Railroad B raising rates on the business it has that no one else wants to stay in business.
Then the next thing they will want is that when a railroad uses Open Access to serve one customer on another railroad, they'll also have to offer service to all other customers at, or enroute, to that location.
Jeff
When British passenger trains were privatized, one thing that was learned early on is you must control costs. Many British passenger trains operate with two person crews; an engineer and a conductor. One thing that is quite noticable about British Passenger trains is that passengers seems to be able to get on and off trains unaided. Passengers seem to be able to open doors themselves and to close them when they exit the train. In America if some open access company might be able to operate trains with a two person crew. However, I think Americans lack the boarding and exiting skills that the British have. They have been opening and closing train doors for generations. I notice that on Northstar Commuter and others still operate trains with larger crews than are needed.
If so called "Open Access" for freight in North America worked, it would not work well. It would increase the overall cost of rail freight transportation. That would do very few people any good.
Here's a paper on the subject coautored by Robert Gallamore. Gallamore is also a coauthor of the recently released book "American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century." The book deals with railroad economics and the failures of government economic regulation.
Gallamore is a PhD economist and a former Union Pacific AVP. When he wrote the paper he was head of the Northwestern University Transportation Center.
http://idei.fr/doc/conf/rai/papers_2004/gallamore_panzar.pdf
Economic efficiency of rail freight transportation is greatly dependant on volume. The more volume that can be concentrated on a rail line, in a train, or in a block of cars, the lower the average cost per ton moved. Now this does have a limit. If the railroad is over capacity cost will start to increase with more volume. That's why we're seeing so many capacity expansion projects these days.
The foolish concept of "Open Access" would split up the volume concentration and drive average costs higher. It would do nothing to increase the capacity of the rail service. It's a bad idea.
Here's an additional link to the book:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_16?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=american+railroads+decline+and+renaissance+in+the+twentieth+century&sprefix=american+railroa%2Cstripbooks%2C307
jeffhergert(Even if Railroad A runs a train right past them on Railroad B to get to that high value customer).
A key point of "Open Access" is that there would be no "Railroad A" or "Railroad B". There would be carriers who operated on the rail system which would be run by a neutral third party (like the airways).
"Carrier X" would be like a local trucking company. A small shipper could contract with "Carrier X" to ship his 3 cars. "Carrier X" could deliver them all the way to the destination or could contract with "Carrier A" or "Carrier B" for the long haul, and either the distant office of "Carrier X", or perhaps "Carrier Y" for the 'last mile.'
Of course, if "Carrier A" wanted to handle local aggregation and delivery, they could do that, too...
Operation of yards would likely be handled by separate companies, for a fee.
Open access is a completely different paradigm than how railroads operate now. That's why people have trouble figuring it out. They usually try to adapt current operations to open access.
To gain a truer picture of what open access would be, you need to merge the trucking industry with the airline industry. Anybody who could afford a locomotive and qualified crew could handle freight. Qualification would be a mix of CDL and pilot qualification, but because over time the entire system would be made equal (as are the highways), once qualified, a crew could go anywhere.
Control of access to the rails would be much like it is now, but on a larger basis. Crews might even file "flight plans." They'd be expected to be able to meet that plan - no junker locomotives that will break down and tie up the system. Of course, "tow" companies would probably crop up.
There would be tolls, probably per axle mile.
The odds of this happening in this country are right around absolute zero (–273.15 degrees Celsius ). Maybe a little less. Don't count me as a proponent, I just like to point out the errors in how people conceive of it.
Open Access. That is essentially how the road network operates at the moment. I'll ignore the question of whether the users pay for their use - that's a whole different topic.
The key to open access on the road network is that it is government owned. For the same to happen on the railroads, step one is for the government to buy the rights-of-way, tracks, yards, signals, etc. from the railroads. In theory I suppose a private company could do it instead, except they could not print enough money.
In a limited sense there is some open access today, where one railroad has been forced to provide trackage rights to a single competitor as a condition of a merger. But that is quite different from allowing anybody to run their train.
John
I disagree that calls for open access mean those wanting it think the railroad trackage should be nationalized into a separate infrastructure company(ies). Some have proposed this, but I think current calls just want to have a second (or third, etc.) railroad be able to access a customer. Either directly or indirectly (reciprocal switching) over the owning railroad's trackage.
I actually think most would rather not see trackage folded into a separate infrastructure company. The high way system is funded (more or less) by all users. Trucks, buses, and private autos all pay user fees. I've read reports (and reports usually validate the views of those who commission them) that private autos pay more in fees than the damage they do to roads, thereby subsidizing the commercial interests. (I've also stopped thinking that we are subsidizing trucks. While they benefit from subsidized high ways by getting business, we are really subsidizing the large shippers. Subsidized high ways means they pay less in freight rates than they would otherwise have to.)
Unless the government wants to subsidize rail infrastructure (doubtful), railroad users will have to pay their full share of costs. The only ones using rail will be the freight customers. No private autos to spread the costs to. Separation of operating and infrastructure could end up costing more to the end users.
I'm willing to bet that those wanting open access are thinking it means having one company use another's tracks for a nominal and regulated fee that probably won't come near the actual cost of doing so. They want the private, individual railroads to eat that cost, not something that would pass it on to the customers.
Even if separation would happen, I think small and medium customers won't benefit unless they are close to a large one. Just because everyone has access to service you doesn't mean anyone may want to.
I see no particular reason why a version of the 'iron ocean' idea couldn't be worked with private ownership -- admittedly with some Government oversight. Separate the civil side of the railroad from the T&E side, as it were -- historically the two have usually been at war, if not at cross-purposes operationally. The entity that administers the tracks would have the part of 'dispatching' dealing with track occupancy, running safety, etc., and the entity that runs trains would have the part of dispatching involving making up of consists, scheduling crews ... all the things that an 'open access' train provider would do. Capex issues could then be handled in the time-honored capitalist fashion -- which operations provide the 'best' return for the track-owning entity, regardless of who owns the operating entities. (This is where the 'government', in the original Keynesian sense of a source of accountable fairness, would be active -- but not needing to ensure more than equitable access, fair application of 'safety criteria', etc. that might be used as phony barriers to entry or excuses for favorable treatment.)
Far less involved here than if the United States were to 'nationalize' the infrastructure and then get into the various cans of worms involved in trying to run it -- fairly or otherwise! -- to say nothing of the fun that would be involved in Government-sponsored freight operations competing with private ones ... MHC, anyone?
On the other hand, in my opinion the only way electrification on any meaningful scale would be possible is with Government-level access to financing (and somewhat cavalier disregard of opportunity-cost and other considerations that would affect private capital implementation). In my opinion it would be more feasible to arrange for this with track ownership divorced from operating ownership.
I think we are straying far afield from what the original poster was asking, which was (as I recall) shared operation over common trackage in the absence of actual capacity restrictions. While the examples he gave involved national track ownership, I don't see any 'hard' reason why the same sort of operation could not be provided under private infrastructure ownership.
I for one would be interested to see how Gallamore would assess the economics with a "split" of this kind being made. Certainly the infrastructure company would have a high incentive to allocate costs appropriately, without the distortions that occur when a 'joint tenancy' section of track is preferentially reserved for its owning company's pleasure. It also seems to me (perhaps naively) that much of the issues with dispatching resolve better when the capacity of the railroad, rather than the number of revenue ton-miles being billed, becomes the operational criterion. Some of the 'privatized' European freight arrangements might be useful examples ... or cautionary tales ... in evaluating the idea.
This is a very different thing from the early American experiments in 'common-carrier' railroads in America -- particularly with respect to how the 'open access' movements are controlled. Although I do have to wonder -- somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but still -- whether a PTC-equipped update of the old 'center post' days, with the engine crew that 'rises from their seat and lays on the leather' getting preferential treatment between sidings, might be a way to encourage faster operation with all the nominal advantages that come with better utilization of rolling stock and facilities...
One thing that has happened in Europe is that the private operators have spurned carload service, leaving it to the national railroad freight operators, while the private operators take the unit train "cream". In a system without a national railroad, who will pick it up? Yes, there are different conditions in the EU versus the USA, but IIRC carload freight in Australia is largely dead. So, open access may actually hurt even large carload customers.
If so-called open access improved competition, it could be a good step.
There may be a lesson in the privatization of the Australian electric power system that might be a workable model.
In Victoria, which is one of Australia's states - Australia like the United States is a federal system, the state owned electric system was privatized. It was broken-up into three components: generation, transission, and distribution, and each was sold off to the highest bidder.
The power plants (generation) were sold to operators from China, UK, U.S., and Australia. The distribution system (poles, wires, and energy services) was broken-up into five companies and sold to operators from the UK, U.S., Australia, and Canada. The transmission system was sold to one operator.
The designers recognized that breaking-up the transmission system did not make any sense. It would not enhance competition. Instead, the transmission system was sold to a third party, which could not own a power plant or distribution company.
The transmission operator developed a set of standards for open access, which allowed the generators and distribution companies to buy space on the transmission system as long as they met the performance standards. It works pretty well.
The same concept might be applicable to the railroads, except I would not see just one infrastructure company. The U.S. is too large and complex for just one track company. The nation might be better off with three or four track companies.
Any company that met the performance, safety, health, etc. standards could operate a train on the system(s), as long as it demonstrated the financial depth to pay for the access. The rates would be set to recover the fully allocated cost of the system.
The biggest hurdle to open access is the investor owned railroads. They would never agree to it, unless a crisis beset the rail industry, and they had no better alternatives.
ndbprrWell private industry has a meaning at least for now. If you owned something of value say a Lexus or Rolls Royce should I be allowed to use it at my discretion? I am in the "shouldn't" happen camp.
After 31 years in the railroad industry, and 4 generations of my family in the industry, it is time for it to happen. Take away all the government granted right-a-ways from the big 5 U.S. railroads, and each railroad is operating less than 1,600 miles of brought and paid for right-a-way. Railroads biggest problem is the nostalgic attached to it. The government through the Federal Railroad Administration(FRA) already tells the railroads what they can and can't do common carrier laws tell he railroads they have to haul anything. The FRA is not divided by the Mississippi river, yet the U.S. railroads are. It is time for open access to taxpayer-funded rails. If start-up companies can pass all the quality safeguards they should be given the proceed aspect.
Now about that Rolls-Royce. Did you pay for it or did the government? If the government paid for it, I will be showing up for my ride.
Railroads love to lie on the taxes and make sure taxes are paying for them, don't believe the self-funded hype, it's a downright lie. Go to your local government and ask to see the taxes the railroads paid and what they deducted. Open government rules require them to show you, in all 50 states. You will be surprised.
andybuzz2u Go to your local government and ask to see the taxes the railroads paid and what they deducted. Open government rules require them to show you, in all 50 states. You will be surprised.
As would you!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Do-do-do-do, from under the bridge.
dakotafred Do-do-do-do, from under the bridge.
Ghosts....[ futurmodal, and his nemisis...]
They would have gotten this Thread not only padlocked, but erased. Kinda miss them.
Isee problems and they have surfaced in the United Kingdom.
The USA already has most of the benefits of Open Acess in most areas through trackage rights, haulage agreements, short and regional lines, and terminal railroaads. There might possibly be a better way to bring these benefits to the areas that don't have them without destroying the vertical integraty of everying from ballast to computer simulation of traffic under one management for a particular line.
As I recall the problems in the UK occurred when BR was privatized, including the network (track, signals and infrastructure). Those problems were solved when that sector was "re-nationalized" as a quasi-governmental corporation.
Rather than stompng one's foot and saying it won't work here or invoking futuremodal, why couldn't a similar nationalized infrastructure with private (and public passenger) operators work here? That hybrid system in also being used in several European countries. Even here, private freight operators use Amtrak and Metra-owned trackage. Infrastructure is strictly a cost center for the rails. Turning it over to a quasi-government ownership would free up a lot of capital which currently has low rate of return for more profitable ventures.
It could be argued that the railroads have something of a monopoly now.
They aren't likely to want to give that up.
That said, making the rail network open access would require a reconfiguration of the control system, to some something akin to what exists for air traffic control - filing "flight plans," etc.
In theory, I could become a "gypsy," buying a couple of locomotives and taking any work I could find. Which would mean some manner of national licensing system, again akin to air.
Given the amount of tax load carried by the railroads for their infrastructure, you might get some pushback from local municipalities, too, as a significant source of property tax income would likely go off the rolls.
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