Passenger Trains

[Anonymous]

Yeah, Amtrak had plans for the Mexico run, but ditched them. I actually was not aware that that many texans went south for holidays. I supose it makes sense, but forgive this northerner, (even tho he's got Texas blood,) but I always thought there wasn't much difference between Texas and Mexico anyway, except for about a hundred years of progress....

Your comments on routing are probably correct. Heard about the governor's recent push for a super-railway. Any thoughts on that?

Any chance the Texas Leg might morph that into something practical? After all, california has CalTrans running it's internal trains and they do a decent job. Texas is just big enough to make it work..... Think of what Southwest did for the airlines, but on rail instead.

Alexander in Oregon

[Anonymous]

If they want to keep the NEC running they may begin to have to pay.....

The rest of the US States DO have to pay to get rail service. Cascades Corridor funding is 50% Washington State DOT Dollars. Likewise, CalTrans in California.

Matter of fact, the Congresswoman from WA was complaining last month about just that.... why does her state have to fund their rail but the NEC gets 100% Fed?

You'd be better off getting the state to fund it anyway. State leadership will be a better garauntee that the trains actually goes somewhere people want to ride.

[Anonymous]

Ed:

That's great investment advice! Your DC analogy is perhaps the most pithy way of phrasing it I've heard yet!

Reasonable? Heck, i love trains, and I know that to be blind and just "wish it were so" will never accomplish anything. Except perhaps to waste more money.

I don't really know for certain if a passenger train can break even, or not. I think it's awful strange if this country can do so much in the free market but can't run one stinking passenger train wihtout subsidies. But maybe it isn't possible.

But we will never know if all we do is take knee-jerk positions and defend the status quo.

[Anonymous]

Got news for you, the density issue is DOA. Enforced high density to support any transit system is a concept of the 20th Century and is not growing, but is in it's last, decadent, golden age.

We are the home of Density in Oregon... we have the "leading light" on New Urbanism issues.... and even those who helped write these laws are now on the other side, fighting against them. People don't want townhouses built in their backyards.... but that's another issue.

[Anonymous]

At least a train stops at small depots along its routes in the west. How many airliners you know stop at Green River, Utah, for example. Airliners and trains will never replace the automobile, but I have a feeling that we really haven't given the trains the opportunity to beat the airliners... What is needed is a high speed rail network, with a line on the west coast and a good basic network east of the Rockies. Denver-Omaha-Chicago-Cleveland-New York City ; Boston-New York City-Washington DC-Raleigh-Savannah-Miami; Savannah-Atlanta-Birmingham-Dallas; Houston-Dallas-Kansas City-Saint Louis-Chicago; Chicago-Lousiville-Nashville-Atlanta-Tampa; and a west coast line Oakland-Los Angeles....Within a couple of hours, bus or local train, three fourths of Americans would be living near a high speed rail line.....

[Anonymous]

If Southwest Airlines had not of used its political clout in Ausin several years ago, TGV would have built a triangle of new high speed rail in Texas expecting to make a profit privately. i wonder why Amtrak and the Feds don't think so.......Our current governor is kissing TGV again currently......Our interstates have been taken over by uninsured Mexican truckers, our airports our out of terminal space and runways, not to mention air space. While it would be nice to high speed around Texas, most Texans wi***o vacation in Mexico, and there ain't no train going there. Amtrak's biggest mistake in Texas!

[Anonymous]

And the airlone subsidies were wrong too.

We have become too reliant on this concept that we should have fast transportation between every where all the time at a low cost. well guess what? Everything costs something, adn we still pay for the ticket. We just pay for it in our taxes instead.

I do not find it palatable philosophically to be getting my plane ticket cheaper because Bill Gates' tax return is subsidizing it.

The idea of interstate systems and such are antiquated, FDR WPA style projects. This era is over. Boston's big dig promises to be the last public works project of a conventional nature to be built in the USA. (It probably still won't be finished a decade from now.)

Alameda Corridor is an example of a project model that could be successfully expanded.... a project which is based soundly on free market principles, not on socialized federal construction.

Well, regardless....even if you and i don't agree on this, I CAN make you one garauntee... you may not like it, but the solution you would like to see will not happen as long as Amtrak exists. There is no chance that Amtrak can morph into anything resembling a professional system of the caliber you wi***o see.

A new, from the ground up organization, designed to do those things? Yes, that could work. But it probably will not happend, and if by chance it did, it will not be a Federalised organization.

That era is over.

[Anonymous]

A lot of the failure of Texas TGV also had to do with the lack of safety standards from FRA.

These still do not exist BTW.

[Anonymous]

The governor calls it an infrastructure corridor, and yes, while he is aiming for the moon, we might get a satellite out of it after all. Not just a 6 lane turnpike, power lines, and 6 railroad tracks side by side, heck double track is hard to find in Texas, but more importantly new gas pipelines....it seems all of the old gas pipelines are reaching the end of their serviced lives, well, maintaining them has become expensive....

More than likely we might end up with a smaller scale corridor, with trains, probably double rail for passengers only. It seems the freight railroads are against public rail, they like having their little monopolies..... And yes, our governor is talking to TGV and ICE.....

[Anonymous]

This is mostly an infrastucture issue... but you must realize the costs of producing such a system would be extraordinairy.... beyond reason. Just as the Interstate highway would not be built today at it's costs today.

One other thing is that the Interstates have fisrst priority... and are now falling apart, especially the bridges, which were not meant to alst as long as they have. They will suck up infrastructure dollars all by themselves for the next half century.

[Anonymous]

Good luck. You guys down there might at least have the space to do it justice. And if Texas can prove it works, then maybe it'll expand.

Or maybe everyone will just move to Texas!

[Anonymous]

Well, Texas has given up building freeways. Notice on a road map the new turnpikes around Houston, and the northern half of Dallas. There is even talk that when the TDOT rebuilds the interstates they will be changed into turnpikes..... Enough said....

[Modelcar]

I don't have any idea who or what organization may do it in the future...but someone better be thinking on HOW we're going to move people or our transportation system will become jammed so tight nothing will move as it needs to in many parts of this great country.

QM

[Anonymous]

But keep in mind that TGV was going to buy the real estate and build the high speed rail lines in Texas....Now, they do not have to buy the real estate.....

As for the safety standards, who really cares? Bureaucrats? Has any TGV train derailed after twenty years of service. Nope..... I wish Amtrak could say the same......

[Anonymous]

True, the safety standards may be irrelevant, considering the TGV's safety record. but without the government safety stamp of approval they can't operate.

[Anonymous]

Well USDOT is supposed to handle all transportation issues. Norm Mineta heads it up now...

But leadership comes from either Admin (ie Prez.) or Congress. The first has more important things to worry about and the second has less important things to waste time on.

This is part of the reason a private enterprise solution would be desireable... no fetters from the feds, maybe we'd see more progress.

But none of this will happen until Amtrak is out of the way. As long as it's floating about there in limbo, half dead, half alive, no one will lift a finger.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, but this is less and less so. The hubs are going away.

The only major hubs still around are St. Louis, Chicago, and Atlanta. But the rest are, one by one, fading away.

Why? Increased fuel efficiency and range means that flights from, say, New York to asia no longer need to stop at a west coast hub to refuel before humping over the Pacific. Airports on the Pacific Rim that built themselves up based on asian Hub traffic are becoming empty shells.

Newer technology is coming online which will only increase this effect. The Boeing Sonic Cruiser promises to make longer runs from smaller runways at faster speeds with greater efficiency. This is not just a pipe dream... this is the very real answer by Boeing to the Airbus A3XX superbus.

So while airports used to be hubs, those that remain will be a lonely few.... and will be, increasingly, local servers and not transcontinental hubs.

[Modelcar]

Well, the Amtrak haters may soon get their wish according to today's paper. GM Gunn indicates he may have to start storing equipment by the middle of next week if some action regarding requested funding isn't forthcoming. If he must start to shut it down....we want ALL of it shut down....No NEC running. Wonder what kind of chaos and attention that may get...

QM

[Anonymous]

....And will continue for years and years

Unless airliners become obscenely slow, or unless the public becomes fed up with transportation susbsidies in general, the Fed will continue funding airport construction & expansion.

In the case of the first, passenger rail would not be able to handle the volume. In the case of the second, then rail wouldn't get any Fed funds at all either.

[Anonymous]

Hopefully not the wrong kind.

The status qou supporters have to be exposed as nothing but prok barrel bingers. Amtrak supporters would use a shutdown to try and tar and feather reformists and the Admin.

Course hopefully the Admin will hold tough... did you notice? Yesterday Mineta at DOT came out and presented the Admin proposals... for partial privitization!

Hallelujah! Now if only Congress would knuckle under so we get on with the 21st century instead of constantly reliving the 20th!

Alexander

[Modelcar]

Privatization back in 1970-71 wasn't doing very well running our rail passenger service....Don't see anything that would make it more attractive to them now...Such as making money for them. This adminstration hasn't made many waves of support for rail passenger transportation that we've heard of. If they wanted to they could have done so many, many months ago. Now though, if somebody doesn't figure out support no one is going to travel by rail in this great country of ours...

QM

[Anonymous]

Well, name any railroad that was doing well in 71. It was a cark time for business. Remember who was President then? One of the worst domestic admins in 20th century history. Price controlls on bread! C'mon!

So rail really didn't stand a chance in that environment. We're all lucky that we didn't get a nationalized freight system too.

We did Get Conrail... and that is an example of a successful privatization.

Yes the current admin did not jump on the rail issue. can you blame them? Less than 1% of the public uses rail, and even a heavy investment will result in a system that is still a minority player. There have been more important things to deal with than Amtrak lately.

And there is one major difference between "then" and "now" on privatization- no more ICC shoving political routes and price fixing down our throats.

I hope that some workable system emerges from this. Will it? Ha ha ha, that's the $200 bliion question.

But quite frankly I don't think the impact on the nation would be that great if passenger rail did disappear in this country. It's just not that relevant to enough people anymore. The High Line of Montana? Well, how much political clout do a few thousand people in a wilderness really have?

Exactly.

So unless a workable deal emerges soon, I think that we who like passenger rail, whether we think it should be private or public or a mixture of both, better get ready for a shutdown.

That and hope that our State Leg's can ante up to save at least some of the service.

Alexander

[Anonymous]

While I did not intend to get into a discussion about aircraft, currently, while jets might fly as fast as 600 mph, economically they fly at 400mph or less (depending on the jet stream and wind direction). Yes, the new Boeing Sonic Cruiser is expected to change the situation, but the Concord does not fly economically faster than the speed of sound.

The reason why Amtrak does so well on the northeast corridor has much to do with the fact that the airports in that area are already at capacity, with no more room for more aircraft- in other words, they are already out of airspace.....

The advantage trains have over airliners is the fact that most of the passenger cars have at least two doors, if not four, whereas an airliner usually uses one....just behind the cockpit......
In Europe the fast high speed trains average length of time for a stop is 3 minutes, it would take longer for an aircraft to taxi to a terminal after landing.....In aircraft, all the passengers must be seated and seat belted in before the aircraft taxis from the terminal, while trains start to move as soon as the door is closed, long before the passengers have stowed their luggage.....

Getting back to aircraft, notice that the Boeing 777 and 767 are similar aircraft, wide bodies. However, the jet turbines on a 777 are much larger, thereby increasing the height of the landing gears, and causing terminals to build new gates, or improve older gates, to service this aircraft. This is one of the reasons why the Sonic Cruiser will incorporate the jet turbines into the wing instead of under the wing. While Boeing built the 777 with the Pacific in mind, the 767 was built for the Atlantic, to compete with Airbus.... Also, you are correct that hubs won't be as important to the airlines in the future as they have been in the past.The only airline currently turning a profit is Southwest Airlines, the one airline without a major hub or hubs....

But the key for Amtrak is not to concentrate on short lines in heavily condensed corridors, but to create fast long lines connecting the major regions of our country, in my opinion. There is no support nationwide for a government owned northeast corridor. If there is to be a government owned nationwide rail passenger system, it will have to be nationwide to gather any support in the Congress, especially in the Senate. The major population centers in the United States are California, Texas, Florida, the midwest and northeast. More than half of Amerca's population resides in these states. When you include the states in and between these major population centers, you can count on more than 75 percent of our nations population.

While Amtrak has addressed high speed rail, it has not done so seriously. Since no high speed rail network can compete with the airliners for California's service to the east, why try? Build a high speed rail link between its major population centers instead. Considering the difficulty of building high speed rail in mountainous regions, it would probably cost as much to build one line through the Rockies as to build all of the network east of the Rockies....

As I stated before, east of the Rockies high speed rail CAN and WILL compete with the airlines. However, there is no need to copy the current route structure, as we should be building a new high speed rail network averaging at least 150 mph. While businesses today will only support using Amtrak for a few hours, the range and speed of today's passenger rail traffic is very short indeed, that is, averaging less than 50 mph. Triple that average, and the distances traveled would be much larger, large enough for business to support rail traffic instead of only 4 hours today to maybe 12 hours in the future.

Also, the new bullet trains, on new track, will generate curiousity in the public, generating revenues far beyond what Amtrak sees today. Most of the people I talk to today, whether here in America or abroad in Europe, actually hate to mess with the traffic going to the airport, finding a parking space at the airport, going through security, the long lines everywhere, and then being crammed like a sardine into a seat too small for their butts. Everyone I meet on a passenger train likes too, the seats are larger, they can walk around, go to the diner, go to the lounge, etc., etc. The only thing they do not like about our passenger trains today IS THE VERY SLOW SPEED of their journey.

While I am not familiar with the east coast, liviing in Texas, I can tell you that most businesses consider the day a total loss to productivity when their employee has to fly to another city, whether Chicago, New York City, or Washington DC. It takes hours in a major city to get to the airport, hours sitting at the airport, hours actually flown, and hours to gather their baggage and rent a car at their destination....

[Anonymous]

The NIMBY issue is very interesting, NO ONE wants a new airport anywhere near them, much less a new freeway servicing it. You consider Oregon dense, whereas I do not.

I live in the DFW area, notice in Texas parlance that no one here says anymore Dallas and Fort Worth----the AND has disappeared from Texas jargon. There are more than 5 million people living within 50 miles of DFW airport. Its the same for the Houston area. There are no bigger metropolitan areas in this country as close as Dallas and Houston without a direct rail link....And to think Amtrak thinks it is more profitable to run a local to Oklahoma City, a metropolitan area of 5 hundred thousand instead of Houston, a metropolitan area of 5 million .Furthermore, Amtrak thinks it is wise to run a daily through train to San Antonio arriving most of the time after midnight is folly beyond anyone's wildest dreams. While Houston might be the big port and petrochemical complex of Texas, and Dallas Fort Worth is the banking and warehouse center of Texas, the heart of Texas is Austin and San Antonio areas.....To say that Amtrak has blown it in Texas is not overstated.

[Anonymous]

Sadly, I have to admit not much. However, having traveled quite a bit in Europe, using rail solves many problems with customs. Yes, a high speed rail network I suggest, which actually follows the high speed suggestions already declared, WITH THE MISSING PIECES IN PLACE, would be worth it for everyone... and it won't cost $200 billion, $100 billion is more likely.

The underlying truth of the matter is that the airlines have almost already reached their peak, as air space over the major cities is becoming a problem........From the long point of view, high speed rail makes sense, it will be another alternative, since most of us to not wi***o drive long distances on interstates and freeways filled with uninsured Mexican truckers......but that is another subject matter entirely.....

If you are a great rail fan, I highly suggest you fly to Europe, and ride the high speed rail from Paris to Lyons, or better yet, the high speed rail from Rome to Florence...... When you do, you will come to the conclusion most Americans have already come to: Amtrak as it currently exists, rates a 10 out of a hundred while the French and Italians rate a 99......

[Anonymous]

Ain't Columbus within a couple of hours bus trip from Cleveland or Toledo? Not even the Europeans are attempting to build high speed rail everywhere, they are basically attempting over a period of twenty years, mind you as a starter system, to build the great box with extensions.... Paris to the Ruhr, the Ruhr to Verona, Verona to Marsailles, Marsailles to Paris, with extensions to London, Berlin, hamburg, Venice, Rome, and to Seville......

We haven't even started on a starter system, but if we build what I suggest, a local could run from Columbus to either Toledo or Cleveland, or even a local possibly through Cincinnati to Lousiville......

Everyone still thinks trains will run at 30 mph in the future..... Think a little more positive, and think that trains can average 150 mph:THE TECHNOLOGY EXISTS! Yet, everyone screams about a measley $100 billion over 20 years, $5 billion a year while O'Hare airport in Chicago wants this year, notice this year alone, $6 billion to reconfigure its runways, basically plow them under and start anew without having runways crossing one another..... And for what, a 20 percent increase in air traffic capability......with that much expended, you would expect at least a 100 percent increase in air traffic capability!

[Anonymous]

Very sharp commentary all around!

I was about to suggest adding extra doors to the aircraft when I realized that extra gates would have to be built to serve them, etc etc..... how much cheaper a rail platform is!

I agree with you view of the political situation, as well as employer's views of air travel. Telecommuting may mitigate this some but not all.

Which brings up another point... most airlines, (if not all?) do not allow you to utilize laptop computers on board. This has never been the case in rail, and certainly one of the pluses of rail could be the provision of internet access, ala hotels, so that business could be conducted on board.

Also, as in Canada and Europe, overnight trains may be the most practical. It allows longer schedules and greater distances to be covered, and reduces costs in that no hotel room is required unless a stay is more than a single day affair.

[Anonymous]

I did not mean that Oregon was dense, rahter the Portland Metro Area, and in that I also did not mean we are NOW dense but that we have, politically, attempted to force ourselves into higher density for the last twenty years. We are now at the point that housing prices are kept artificially high by a growth boundary, and buildable land inside this boundary is becoming fast scarce.

This is especially true of industrial lands... as a rust belt state these are of high value to us.... course that may not be wise as in tough economic times at these, we are first down and last up, as builders of durable goods.

On Texas, I agree. I do not know why Oklahoma rated and Texas did not. Politics no doubt but IMHO Oklahoma, (where I have numeroud cousins,) does not have that much importance to the nation to have that kind of pull.

[Anonymous]

Well, you and I DO agree that the O'hare project is a little, um, overpriced? Now just divide that $6 billon by the passenger load and find out how much those tickets really ought to cost!

Maybe the solution to that would be to actually charge the Airlines the landing slot fees that would cover the construction and maintenance costs. Then perhaps they'd be less inclined to have the government build their airports.

[Anonymous]

I agree that airlines reached their peak. They are not a dead industry nor will they go away or always remain totally unprofitable. But I would not be surprised if a major "rationalization" of the current system will take place in the next decade.

Meanwhile, investment dollars WILL be looking for other places to call a home... rail could be one of those places. But that CAN NOT occur as long as the market remains volatile, an undettled mess of old gaurd, status qou supporters and overburdening regulation.

However, I digress.

High Speed rail could work, yes. It would cost an amazing fortune, but it could work. Generally, I think that you are optimistic in your monetary predictions, especially if it is a government project. However.....

If it were to be implemented gradually, ala Talgo service up here, success might be more achievable. we''d have to get the Superliner/Bus mentality out of here though. Talgo technology (or Acela's similar tilt system) could easily adapt to current US mainlines, which could then be upgraded on an as needed, greatest ridership basis over a decade long period.

Heck, you think BNSF wouldn't welcome an extra, highest grade main track, Chicago to LA? And if Diesel or some other non-electric system were used, costs for implementation and especially maintenance would drmatically plummet. (Can you say golfball size hail?)

On that note, I would not entirely count the Admin out. We have seen nothing we have not seen before, true. Not yet,

But did you notice what I did, recently? Out at AAR Pueblo, they've got a Diesel-Turbine variation of the Acela power unit... in red and silver... it sports a USDOT logo and NO Amtrak lettering on it.... maybe they're hiding something up their sleeve....