Amtrak funding

[Anonymous]

Alexander,

Yes I think Amtrak would have to abandon all but a small portion of its commuter rail to make a profit alone. In the spring, summer and fall, they may be able to operate trains from one major city to another but this would be treated similar to a charter flight or bus. They may even get into the 'land cruise' buisness as they have been accused. But scheduled interstate passenger service would cease to exist in the short run.

But from this seed, Amtrak could do market research and find the routes which could make money. They would build and operate those routes which had the appropriate level of demand.

In my opinion it is the federal relationship which stands in the way of real reform. - Ed

[Modelcar]

Yes....get to work on what is not doing the job in the passenger system now...Mr. Gunn knows how to do that. Fund the system in an appropriate manner, and that will allow the repair facility in Indianapolis to rebuild the equipment that is needed to run the routes properly. Much equipment is there waiting to be repaired, some pieces for several years. Routes are being "robbed" of it's equipment to keep others running. Of course that's not a way to run an effecient system, never can be. Improve it into a decent transportation system or STOP everything. It's been running in a non acceptable manner for too long now. No wonder it has a bad perception and some speak out against it. It hasn't been able to do any better with the funding it's lived with all these years.

QM

[Anonymous]

Well, theoretically the bonding would be paid off by revenue from the trains, when they reach a frequency and user level that can support it, ie 15 or 30 years. After all, that is the intent with a bond, as they are generally longer term, whereas stocks are shorter term and must perform quickly or be downrated very fast.

[Anonymous]

Ed:

There is another way of going about this entirely. One could somehow say, for such and such routes or cities, we, (the gov... pref. state but prob fed.)

Then perhaps we could provide a financial incentive- (tax breaks? A return of the RR fuel tax to RR infrastructure projects?) for the freight RRs to run these trains.

This would get the entire train ops into the hands of the same company which owns the track and controls it.

What do you think? Needs work of course, but it's just a seed right now....

[Anonymous]

Alexander,

At first glance your idea seems to be a resonable transition from public to private operation. Let Amtrak operate two companies. The NEC company has to earn its keep. The national company gets the federal government to pay for all new routes, in hopes that someday it might repay some massive loans. I don't think you could get Congress behind that.

I also don't think Congress has the desire to reduce taxes (on the real railroads) even if it would provide a service to the travelers.

I think that having the train operator the same company that owns the track is essential to finding the right way. - Ed

[Anonymous]

Oh, Ed. Why? Because it's too reasonable of an idea to survive the Hill? Ah, well,

I have stated before, however, this predicition: a certain 4 letter carrier will within the next 5 years "re acquire" the EB & SW Chief, and maybe even the CZ. Why?

1.) Public Relations. Whether for Operation Lifesaver safety issues, or for keeping the public aware of the important role they play, having thousands of people take "inspection tours" of the ROW regularly is a good thing.

2.) Customer relations. It's a great advertisement of how well the ROW is built, how fast the sshedules are, how routing is handled, etc... to get customers on a regualrly scheduled train operating at crack speeds. Compare it to taking your customer and giving him the experience of what his 40' container would get on a Z train.

3.) Government relations. By running passenger trains you become intergrated into society, and thus more relevant to the government. This equates less red tape, and possibly govenrment construction or at least cooperation on capacity projects.

4.) Operational control. By bringing the trains into the fold, their maintenance, dispatching, etc.. are all contained "in house", meaning they will no longer delay the freights.

5.) Express traffic. Do not be surprised if that carrier then becomes more involved in handling express traffic in conjunction with these trains.

Well. How is that as food for thought?

Alexander

[mnwestern]

Alexander and Ed:
Have you driven on our highways and streets lately? Do you still think it works? Of course JB Hunt and Greyhound like the system, we, the taxpayers and auto drivers, build them a nice infrastructure that their big rigs can then go out an pound to death, knowing that we'll just rebuild them.
As for the ticket buyer paying more — great idea, as long as highway and airport users also pick up the full cost of their infrastructure. Man, would JB, Greyhound and Joe Average Airline Passenger bark at that.
Do you realize that when trucks come of the highway and onto our city streets, they are likely driving on roads they didn't contribute a dime to. Are you two homeowners or businessmen? Have you ever had your street and utilities rebuilt out in front of you? Who paid? You did, and the rest of the city residents. Nowhere in the financial arrangements was there a line item saying "contribution from trucking and busing industry."
Get real!

[mnwestern]

Boys,
I agree, then. User pays all. Get ready to put your gas hog SUVs on the market, because gas should cost $4 to $5 per gallon like it does in the rest of the world where it isn't subsidized like it is here. (Oh, yes, we do subsidize it. Why do you think we spend billions each year maintaining half our military in the Persian Gulf — because we like Arabs? Unlikely!)
Get real!

[mnwestern]

My Gosh, just when I thought there was no sanity to this issue after listening to Ed and Alexander. Why is there such anxiety over subsidizing Amtrak? We subsidize highways, streets, airports, lock and dams on rivers for barges, etc. All other forms of transportation are considered beneficial to the common public, much like our support for clean water supplies, sewer systems, electricity and natural gas for home heating (these too are subsidized in their own way, especially in the case of municipal systems). But, boy, talk about giving money to Amtrak and you would think Lenin was taking over Washington, D.C. I don't see the furor over heavily subsidized commuter and light rail systems. Oh, that's right, Ed and Alexander probably use those so those subsidies are fine, I guess.

[mnwestern]

Amen! Cut the subsidizes for airlines and truckers and listen to the howls!

[Anonymous]

Terry,

I don't look at the US military as a highway subsidy. If you can rethink your argument a little I would like to hear what you have to say.

Funny thing about that is that I am paying those taxes too. So it doesn't wash anyway.

Some of y'all need to discard your envy of the best highway system in the world and give a real look at the problems Amtrak face. Later - Ed

[Anonymous]

Wkhey(?)

I think if we start doing things like they do in Europe we will soon have a lower standard of living like they do in Europe. No thanks.

But, in a way I would like to propose a compromise system for you to consider . . .
Since you say we should subsidize Amtrak like they do in Europe and that most European countries are the size of a state here in the US then lets use the 10th ammendment and reorganize Amtrak so they deal with the states instead of the federal government. In my opinion, making Amtrak accountable to the states will raise their level of service. It will also settle the question of how much money should be pumped into the NEC vs the other portions of Amtrak. - Ed

[Anonymous]

Well if my choices are to pay an unspecified amount of money to Amtrak to permit them to persue railroading in the way they would like OR to let it die then I have to say 'let it die.' If you want to pay an unspecified amount of money to Amtrak, then I invite you to go ahead. I think you should spend your money on whatever you think is best. - Ed

[sooblue]

Hi Ed,
I was thinking that there are really two Amtraks maybe three. The local, within a State. The regional, like NEC. The long distance coast to coast.
I like the idea of user funded but it is too costly a burden to be compeditive. If Amtrak is Government funded everyone takes a Share of it, but than when you buy a ticket you are getting double charged.
I like your comment about Amtrak being accountable to the States too.
This is my Idea.
Amtrak becomes Fully funded by all of us(the government)
There is NO charge for the users unless they want premium service and than that is non-profit.
Amtrak becomes fully accountable to the States the regions and the Federal Government.
The track used in service must be DONATED by the railroads and Amtrak gets PRIORITY (since they dropped the ball years ago when they could have gotten togeather and provided uniform service)
The Government will upgrade the track for it's use same as the Federal highway system is.
Will this be benificial to us?
yes, especially in commuter service.
People will park there cars and trucks and ride like crazy where ever they can because in most peoples minds, IT'S FREE. Also, when these people get to thier destination they will need transportation ( electric car fleets for rent, Bicycles, taxies, busses all for a fee )
Maybe this is unrealistic, I don't think so but..
If everyone paid a little, we could do a lot of things, We do now! a lot of it works good, when we are not greedy and we keep where the money comes from in view. Good stewardship is all it takes, but sometimes the people in government are JUST like Enrons accountants and CEO.

THE HECK WITH AMTRAK LETS MAKE THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABLE ( humor )

[Anonymous]

Terry:

Your answers are:

Q1: yes, have done, drive them all the time.
Q2: Yes, it works better than anything else.
Q3: Fine with me, air / road users should pick up the tabe. Guess what- road allready does, has done for some time. Now, we could argue over whether it has yet paid back it's initial development. And you do have fair points on surface streets.
Q4: Trucks DO contribute- weight/mile tax , anyone? We tried "reforming" this system to a "fairer" system here in Oregon a few years back, and guess what? Voters said no. AAA said no. The average driver said no.

Why? Because then everyone would have to pay a user fee on TOP of what they pay through their gas taxes now. These "reforms" always equate double taxation.

Q5: Yes, am homeowner
Q6: yes, am business owner. Self employed. Why do you think I beleive in fair payment? because these are the rules we HAVE to live by.

So fair is fair. If they get a subsidy because of their contribution to the social fabirc, then I think that I too should receive a subsidy, because my business makes my community nicer. Oh, mister Congressman!

Q7: Yes. Our street was shut down for one year due to widening- for a bike lane no one ever uses.

Q8: I am real. Otherwise why do these bills hurt so much? But then that's no different for Greyhound or Hunt- they just deal in more zeros. So don't balance your kooky ideas on our backs. Us camels can only hold so many straws.

[Anonymous]

Ah, this old argument.

So we will just pull out the troops, go home, and all run our cars on chicken ****. Guess what? We will still require a military, and still have to pay attention to the mideast. So your idea solves nothing. And it certainly doesn't address Amtrak funding.

[Anonymous]

Hey Ed, long time no speak.

What happened? Did Amtrak do something that didn't make the headlines here in Portland? Look at all the traffic pick up on this thread!

You may beat my record yet....

Alexander

[Anonymous]

You bet that's humor, Mike. Government, accountable! Ha.

No, but seriously. Here's the problem with a free, 100% subsidized system, and why, IMO, and IMO only, it would not work.

If the cost is paid by the Gov then the only people who really see the numbers will be the gov. Which means, next stop, leak city. Can't you see it now? Stewards that make 40k a year, conductors that make 70k. Phew! And that's in todays comparable civil service numbers, think what they'll get a decade from now.

In addition to saoring personnel costs, what about performance and ridership? These nubmers too would be "cooked" for political purposes. You entity would be more political than what we have now.

Now, a privatized or a public for cost system isn't perfect, but the overiding advantage is that if the ticket sales aren't high enough, (and thus public support is insufficent,) the train dies. Survival of the fittest and mister Truman combined.

The buck train stops here.

Your qoue is the key: "Good stewardship is all it takes"- but that's a tall order. And the reason private versus public is more likely to provide that is that private firms go bust. Dirty CEOs go to jail and lose their mansions. Looks like soon they may also go to Attica, yay! The way it ought to be for all criminals of that caliber.

But when does a public firm go bust? Who's the last politician or administrator to go to jail?

So Private isn't pefcet- but it isn't a monopoly like government.

[Anonymous]

History! Funny thing happened in January 1942, the transcontinentals backed up with too much traffic, hurting the war effort only one month into the war.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt convened a meeting of the best brains of the railroads, and asked where can the Corps of Engineers build another railroad over the divide? Roosevelt liked to throw money at his problems, like the Inner Coastal Waterway from the tip of Texas to the east end of Maine...

The answer was, there wasn't any place. Over a thousand miles of divide, and no suitable place to build another railroad. An old man in his late years, had suggestions to improve sidings and yards. That man was the same man who was the second engineer of the Panama Canal who suggested a lock and dam canal. That man was the same man who built railroads in America, Mexico, the Philliipines, over the Andes, and the Trans Siberian Railway. There is a pass named after him in Washington state, and there is a statue of him at Marias Pass in Montana. Did I forget to mention that this same man discovered Marias Pass on a very cold many degrees below zero Christmas Eve? Who is this man.....probably the best railroad engineer in American history, by far shoulders above the rest.....A man Teddy Roosevelt called a bear.....

[Anonymous]

Don:

Yes, and that man is one I admire a great deal. Some have questioned if her really discovered Marias, (namely some of his underlings-) but even so, he still deserves the lion's share of the credit for that. BTW he also ran the Rock for a while, and was the President of my own favorite RR, the Spokane, Portland & Seattle. It is one of the finest engineered parts of the BNSF system and is his brainchild, largely.

Yes, that man is John Frank Stevens.

The story of his secret mission up the Deschuttes canyon before WWI is an amazingly entertaining one as well. Just shows you how serious competition was then! Corporate Espionage, Edwardian style.

BTW if you know of any good books on him i'd love it if you post them. No suitable bio has ever been written about this man.

And you might also want to check out his companion, Ralph Budd, who had worked with him in Panama, and who later saved the passenger train from an early death. Some of his ideas, too, would be highly applicable to today's passenger rail scene.

Alexander

[sooblue]

I must disagree with you, not in total though.

Anyone or any entity can "cook the books"
When it's over how many investment firms and accounting firms are going to disclose that they have "cooked the books"?
How many will go on because they have not been cought?
Is it going to stop because some CEOs have gone to jail?
NO! they went to jail in the 30s, the practice didn't stop, here we are again.
I would rather put my trust in our government and our way of life. A man can look at our political system positivly or negativly.
Government "for the people by the people" means that the people have control over what is best "for the people" It's a sad fact indeed when the "people" would rather burry their heads in the sand than to MAKE our government Fully Disclose and be Fully accountable to "the people"
The very same free riders on a new Amtrak would be able to control every aspect of the funding. If it's not right make it right.
Our founding fathers said it best when they formed "a more perfect union".
More perfect isn't Perfect, it can be made even more perfect, IF we want to.
This ability of the majority of the population to change "government" is what sets this country apart from most others and is the exact diffrence
between our brand of socialism and communist socialism.
look at our public school system as an example, It's not perfect by any means but it works. We can make it better though if only the People who are paying for it would join togeather in one voice and force accountability.
Amtrak doesn't have to die and we don't have to see rail travel founder. The fact is that some day crude oil is going to be hard to come by and the price of diesle and gasoline is going to be so high that we may see a resurgence of coal for fuel and steam for power. Rail travel will make the most sense and the government will back it to the hilt because the "people want it" NEED IT.
Why wait for an emergency? lets reorganize Amtrak now and do it right.

[Anonymous]

Mike:

I agree, just because criminals go to jail, it doesn't mean crime stops. Just, we don't have much accountability in government at all, at least there is some, if not enough, in the private sector.

However, your proposal is that we hold government accountable, and achieve transparency through civic involvment. In this, I support your proposal.

However, I guess you might think me cynical for saying this- but all governments are political, not functional, and are corrupted to a greater or lesser degree. Just as the private sector- except the private sector is not as political. So both entities have graft, but generally a private company will only go where it makes sense, whereas the public entity goes everywhere it can. Goverment is an expansionist philiosophy at heart.

So I'm not saying your wrong. I'm just saying I don't feel confident that we'll ever clean up governments enough to get where you want to be. After all, politics are as old as the first time that mankind tried to govern over itself, by putting others on thrones or in senates.

Finally, though, yes. Do let's reorganize Amtrak- or more specirfically passenger rail- before there is an emergency. But again, it won't be. Come this fall we'll all be in for a redux of July 4th, but this time at much dire stakes.

Alexander

[Anonymous]

Ed
Never said we should do things like they do in Europe.Just mentioned the fact that all of the European pass.RR's are subsidized by thier goverments.Most people want to know why we can't have a pass. rail network like they do in Europe.Size of most European countries are the reason.As far as AMTK being accountable to the individual states I ask you when was the last time you heard of 50 differant people agreeing on something? Well 46 differant people as it is now.Sure wouldn't want to be the business that has to deal with 46 differant regulations,requirements,tax system,laws,etc...

[Anonymous]

SooBlue,
Are you kidding? The frieght RR's donate their tracks?What do you do with the frieght trains?Do you want AMTK to pay the taxes on the rights of way like the frieght RR's do? Who does the maintenance on the track like the frieght RR's do?Amtk gets by relatively easy by not having to pay for these things except for a very very small percentive.

[Anonymous]

Donating the tracks IS a no-go... but I think Mike didn't mean that. I *think* he meant trackage, not tracks.

I think.

[Anonymous]

I understand your point about regulation, but I think i have two answers on that.

One, the states cannot regulate certain aspects of railroading, as they are proscribed and appropriated by Congress. Altho, I do recall that there is a Texas RR Board- but I don't know how much power it really has.

I agree tho- I wouldn't want to have a mini STB for Oregon! Ugh, it's bad enough at doing what it does now....

And shouldn't that be 48 states, not 46?

And on that note, I don't think that most companies would have to deal with 48 states. A Californian system, for example, probably wouldn't deal with more than CA and maybe NV, OR, and at a stretch, maybe UT/CO/AZ

A Midwest system would be dealing with WI, MN, ILL, IND, OH, IA, MO.

Likewise, the NE would be ME, MA, NH, VT, CN, RI, MA....

So it appears the average would be 4-6 states. Which is a lot but much more manageable. I just don't think we'de see one carrier nationwide under this funding system- but who needs one? The "glory days"- whether justifiably so or not- were when practically every line ended in Chicago, and some didn't even get that far.

Alexander

[Anonymous]

Alexander, A regional concept makes more sense than letting the states go it alone,but still have to set up the regions which might be a problem.Don't know if states could learn to co-operate amonst themselves.
We all know that Alsaka,and Hawaii don't have AMTK along with S.Dakota and Wyoming.What about Maine is it currently served by AMTK.? Think I might have heard something about the Downeaster train.??
What do you propose for AMTK where it just touches states and really doen't serve them?
The fact of the matter is that most LONG distance AMTK trains are nothing but Princess Cruise Lines on steel rails.Are they needed? Do they help take traffic off the highways? Are they a necessary public convienence? The answer to those questions is sadly no.Why should a representitive from say Wyoming want to help AMTK the way a rep. from N.J. would? Both votes have eguall weight.
The reason we have the problems with AMTK that we do is that these same battles have been going on for decades.Just give it enough money to keep it going.Not enough for the states where it is critical for AMTK to survive,without asking for to much so that the states that don't benifit from AMTK ask why.No long term capital plans to improve it.Year by year survival.Its a wonder its survived this long.At the wim and fancy of the frieght RR's that it runs over.Why should they disrupt frieght for one train? Its a situation that we need to decide if we need in it's current makeup.Do we give it what it needs,or break it up into small parcels that are needed.

[Anonymous]

Elvis (a.k.a. Alexander),

I don't think I'll ever get near 167 messages. You'll always be The King!

Some joker brought this thing back up to the top so I had to volley it back. Traffic is picking up. I do enjoy the debate. Thanks for your comment responding to the guy saying the military is only there to protect Big Oil. Some posts are beneath a response. I can't debate someone who has significantly inferior morals.

Catch you later. - Ed

[mnwestern]

Ah, this new argument.

So we will just pull up our tracks, stay home, and wax the car for our next trip to the convenience store.

And everything you've written addresses Amtrak funding? Not!

[mnwestern]

Ed,
If you don't think we are in the Middle East (Persian Gulf) to protect oil, what are we there for? A lot of the 9/11 issue comes right back to our presence there because of our reliance on foreign oil. If you don't believe that, which cave have you been hiding in, Osama's?