Dakguy201 wrote: oltmannd wrote: A big hurdle is that all the institutional knowledge for running passenger trains is currently at Amtrak. The frt RRs have nearly zero. In fact, they have almost no one in mgt who was even employed in 1971. (Maybe a few more at NS off the Southern). It would be a rough transition, even allowing that Amtrak mgt would be hired by the frt RRs to get things going.If I were a freight railroad considering this I would consider how much of Amtrak's institutional knowledge is in the area of running trains effectively and how much of it is in obtaining a subsidy from Washington. I think I would decide on the balance it could be done more effectively without Amtrak's current management. Certainly, past a short transition period they would find their numbers greatly reduced.
oltmannd wrote: A big hurdle is that all the institutional knowledge for running passenger trains is currently at Amtrak. The frt RRs have nearly zero. In fact, they have almost no one in mgt who was even employed in 1971. (Maybe a few more at NS off the Southern). It would be a rough transition, even allowing that Amtrak mgt would be hired by the frt RRs to get things going.
A big hurdle is that all the institutional knowledge for running passenger trains is currently at Amtrak. The frt RRs have nearly zero. In fact, they have almost no one in mgt who was even employed in 1971. (Maybe a few more at NS off the Southern). It would be a rough transition, even allowing that Amtrak mgt would be hired by the frt RRs to get things going.
If I were a freight railroad considering this I would consider how much of Amtrak's institutional knowledge is in the area of running trains effectively and how much of it is in obtaining a subsidy from Washington. I think I would decide on the balance it could be done more effectively without Amtrak's current management. Certainly, past a short transition period they would find their numbers greatly reduced.
Amtrak does seem to have that skill well honed.
I was thinking more of the technical and logistical stuff. Handling bags, training personnel, collecting revenue, HEP & HVAC on passenger cars, maintaining wheel profiles, commissary and laundry, that sort of thing.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
henry6 wrote:Comparing 1971 to 2008 in relation to passenger trains is dangerous. Many things are so different that the single, simple argument that railroads dumped the passenger train in 1971 is sufficient reason for them not to be interested today does have its faults. Congestion, pollution, fuel costs are quite different which, in some instances, may make the idea of providing rail passenger service a viable choice for a (rail) busniess. In 1971, air and highway was the present and the future, business minded railroaders therefore gave up on the passenger and looked toward intermodal and long haul as their salvations. Today, freight railroads are so immersed in that philosophy that their plants are set up for it and not passenger service; its even difficult to find railroaders who know enough about passenger servcie to want to (or do they know better not to) do it. Insurance companies (and liability lawyers) have convinced freight oriented managers that passengers are a bad, huge sue happy commodity, so stay away from it. So...somebody has to convince the railroads that if a service were planned, designed, operated, and priced right, a human being, could be just as lucrative a commodity as lumps of coal or boxes of widgets.
Your last line is exactly right. Any passenger business would have to be at least as profitable as freight for the RRs to take it on. The RR industry, as a whole, is just barely profitable enough to keep things going. They can't afford to take on anything that would be less profitable.
If the gov't paid all of what Amtrak calls "shared costs" and the RRs got to keep all the ticket revenue and only had to pay the direct costs, there are some services that would meet that criteria. For June 2008, these are the services that make the cut (80% contribution) (excludes NEC). It's not a very big list.
If you expanded it a bit to include trains, where if you could improve performance about 10%, they might be viable, you'd pick up these:
Everything else would be a goner.
An advantage to doing it this way is that you put direct profit motive back into at least part of the operation. The RRs would be looking for ways to boost the value (and hence, revenue) of the service and also be looking at ways to cut costs.
A disadvantage of doing this is trains that currently operate on more than one RR would more difficult to keep going.
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I hope I'm not going to blow up the whole world by resurrecting a 9 month old thread. But I have a question. If the conditions are right, the ridership is up, it's *** near impossible to get a trip to chicago from here within the next week-month, and people are finally realizing the feasability in rail travel, why not figure out a way to return the responsibility of running passenger trains to the class ones? NOW DON'T BLOW UP ON ME NOW. I'm not saying it would be nearly as profitable as freight, and I'm not telling you that the class ones will take kindly to this idea (in fact, they're stubborn as hell), but wasn't one of the biggest reason's that the pre-amtrak railroads ran passenger trains was to show a respectable public image? I understand why the average American hates freight trains (we railfans are not average)...they're ugly, slow, dangerous, and not fun to wait for. But wouldn't it be cool to see five hour Twin Cities to Chicago service racing down the tracks at a blistering 110 mph (current timing is around eight hours)?
I personally believe Ulrich is on to something here. There is nothing quite like private enterprise, especially in a place like America.
One idea: I've heard Amtrak is making up more and more of it's deficit year to year. Correct me if I'm wrong with this. However, I think an incentive program could help where instead of paying the whole of Amtrak's budget, the federal government could pay the railroad's for the lost cash. I know I am not very knowledgable in economics but just trying to give an idea.
While I will not deny that Santa Fe, SCL and perhaps a few others ran a first-rate passenger operation prior to Amtrak, I will also remind the younger post-Amtrak generation that even these railroads were losing buckets of money on passengers prior to Amtrak.
For example: By May 1, 1971, Santa Fe was pretty much down to a skeleton operation, Super Chief/El Cap, Texas Chief, San Francisco Chief, Grand Canyon, Tulsan, three San Diegan round trips and a La Junta-Denver turn. They had an overall passenger operating ratio of 200%. The theory had been that the limiteds would make money and the locals and plug runs lost money, get rid of the locals and everything would be fine. It didn't quite work out that way.
The reason the big Class I's can't take on passenger service is because attempting to do so would result in huge losses. Think about it a second - why is Amtrak running all intercity rail passenger services today? Private railroads used to do it. No one forced the railroads to turn over their passenger business to Amtrak in 1971. If fact, a railroad had to pay to have Amtrak take over their passenger services (either in cash or in assets). The reason to railroads turned over their passenger services to Amtrak is because they were losing great gobs of money on it, and wanted to get out of the business. There's no reason to expect it would be any different today.
I suspect that some of those participating in this thread don't realize how hopelessly unprofitable passenger service was for freight railroads. The Interstate Commerce Commission did a report on passenger service around 1959 (it's available in hard copies of "ICC Reports", which many large law libraries have, but I don't have the citation at hand). As I recall the report (which, coincidentally, I just looked at a few days ago, but don't ask why), the ICC found that the passenger deficit was over $600 million in 1958 (remember, these are 1958 dollars) and represented over 40% of the railroads' operating revenue. It also found that, except during and immediately after Word War II, passenger service had been uniformly unprofitable since the 1920's. The report concluded that the passenger deficits were a serious threat to the rail industry. There were other reports on passenger service also written during this period. I have a copy of one done in the 1960's by Stanford University. Some of the individual road's losses shown be this study are truly staggering. For example, C&NW's passenger losses in 1960 were over 110% of its operating revenue - a sure recipe for bankruptcy.
This is the reason that railroads were so desperate to get out of passenger service in the days before Amtrak. Now, you might ask, if the situation were so bad, why didn't the railroads just withdraw from the business? After all, that's what an airline would do today with chronically unprofitable routes. The reason was that railroads couldn't just withdraw from the passenger business - they had to get regulatory permission to discontinue passenger trains on a train by train basis. Prior to 1958, state regulators did this, and they were notoriously unwilling to grant passenger train discontinuances. After 1958, the ICC could grant passenger discontinuances if a state regulator refused to do so. The ICC granted lots of them, but it was still a lengthy, train by train process. After the end of RPO service in 1967, it should have been obvious that the privately operated ral passenger network was doomed, but it took the Penn Central bankruptcy to bring the matter to a head. As a bankrupt carrier with a hopeless cash position, PC had the ability to shut down passenger trains without the regulatory rigmarole. As I recall, its threat to terminate all intercity passenger service west of Buffalo - which would have ended any semblence of a national rail passenger network - was the immediate impetus for Amtrak.
There is an old saying that he who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.
On that score, I agree. Lots of railfans would pay to ride a hot intermodal train. The question is would it pay the added costs of the passenger accommodations on freight trains. Possibly some railroad, the KCS or the FEC might be likely candidates to give it a try. It would essentially be promotion of the freight business through railfans, like the Krebs giving Hunt a ride in his business car on the tale end of trailer train and securing Hunt as a customer for intermodal.
But this is not the major market that Amtrak addresses, either long distance or corridor.
daveklepper wrote: If you are talking about going to New York for business reasons, lots of people! GCT and Penn are both located right by lots of huge office towers and first-class hotels. Both are a seven minute ride from one of the three Wall Street subway stations or a ten dollar taxicab ride. If you are going to spend time with families in the suburbs, once you are aware that passenger trains are still running and thus willing to buy a ticket to the NY area on a passenger train, Amtrak will tell you which commuter authority has very frequent and reliable service from either GCT or Penn to the station nearest your families' home and probably within a ten minute driving range.Croxton simply doesn't make it, I assure you!
If you are talking about going to New York for business reasons, lots of people! GCT and Penn are both located right by lots of huge office towers and first-class hotels. Both are a seven minute ride from one of the three Wall Street subway stations or a ten dollar taxicab ride. If you are going to spend time with families in the suburbs, once you are aware that passenger trains are still running and thus willing to buy a ticket to the NY area on a passenger train, Amtrak will tell you which commuter authority has very frequent and reliable service from either GCT or Penn to the station nearest your families' home and probably within a ten minute driving range.
Croxton simply doesn't make it, I assure you!
By that standard, neither does Idlewild - er - Kennedy International Airport.
(Which is, incidentally, what I was comparing Croxton to.)
There's also the little detail that business travelers from anywhere except the NE Corridor are MUCH more likely to arrive in NYC by air, even though Kennedy is located in Far Rockaway. My target market for a modern mixed train would be rail nostalgia buffs, not people rushing to business conferences.
Chuck
oltmannd wrote: Phoebe Vet wrote: People ride mixed trains all the time. The auto train has car carriers, and Amtrak has freight cars that sometimes go on their passenger trains, though it is admittedly primarily a passenger train.That said, I agree that people would be reluctant to ride a lone passenger car on a 100 car freight train, and I don't even want to try to picture it pulling into Grand Central or Penn Station.... You would be getting off at Croxton NJ!
Phoebe Vet wrote: People ride mixed trains all the time. The auto train has car carriers, and Amtrak has freight cars that sometimes go on their passenger trains, though it is admittedly primarily a passenger train.That said, I agree that people would be reluctant to ride a lone passenger car on a 100 car freight train, and I don't even want to try to picture it pulling into Grand Central or Penn Station....
People ride mixed trains all the time. The auto train has car carriers, and Amtrak has freight cars that sometimes go on their passenger trains, though it is admittedly primarily a passenger train.
That said, I agree that people would be reluctant to ride a lone passenger car on a 100 car freight train, and I don't even want to try to picture it pulling into Grand Central or Penn Station....
You would be getting off at Croxton NJ!
So, what's the problem with that? As long as there was shuttle service to downtown and a rental car office at Croxton, they'd be no worse off than airline passengers. After all, how many cities have their air termini at the equivalent of Park Avenue and 42nd Street?
oltmannd wrote: 4merroad4man wrote: SFbrkmn wrote:If passenger rail could generate a profit for the freight carriers, they would be doing it. Remember the reason the carriers dumped the business in 1971 was no longer did it provide a money making venture. The return of freight operated passenger servive isn't going to take place. Even if it took place, the services provided would not be like we know w/Amtrak. Most likely these trains would be coach only w/no food or slpr car services and fewer stops in between. In addition I don't even think there would be any long distance provided period. A example is BNSF operating the SW Chief say Chic-KC, Zephyr Chi-Den. Be careful what one wishes for.Read carefully the words of E. Hunter Harrison, ....We need to become creative with financing so that the government is not paying for the service directly, so that there's bottom-line motivation for the railroads. BINGO!
4merroad4man wrote: SFbrkmn wrote:If passenger rail could generate a profit for the freight carriers, they would be doing it. Remember the reason the carriers dumped the business in 1971 was no longer did it provide a money making venture. The return of freight operated passenger servive isn't going to take place. Even if it took place, the services provided would not be like we know w/Amtrak. Most likely these trains would be coach only w/no food or slpr car services and fewer stops in between. In addition I don't even think there would be any long distance provided period. A example is BNSF operating the SW Chief say Chic-KC, Zephyr Chi-Den. Be careful what one wishes for.Read carefully the words of E. Hunter Harrison, ....We need to become creative with financing so that the government is not paying for the service directly, so that there's bottom-line motivation for the railroads.
SFbrkmn wrote:If passenger rail could generate a profit for the freight carriers, they would be doing it. Remember the reason the carriers dumped the business in 1971 was no longer did it provide a money making venture. The return of freight operated passenger servive isn't going to take place. Even if it took place, the services provided would not be like we know w/Amtrak. Most likely these trains would be coach only w/no food or slpr car services and fewer stops in between. In addition I don't even think there would be any long distance provided period. A example is BNSF operating the SW Chief say Chic-KC, Zephyr Chi-Den. Be careful what one wishes for.
Read carefully the words of E. Hunter Harrison, ....We need to become creative with financing so that the government is not paying for the service directly, so that there's bottom-line motivation for the railroads.
BINGO!
Did I catch the drift of this message or did my brain squirm like a toad with what I think is being implied? So, becoming creative with financing could take the form of IRS being directed to forgive lets say 2 billion a year of tax revenue from the entire railroad industry or those who elect to operate passenger rail service on their system. The more they offer the more tax relief they get?
blue streak 1 wrote:Maybe a crazy idea-- Place a passenger car between locomotives on a timed intermodal but no guarantee that it wouldn't run early
With very few exceptions - way to slow. But, how about a hybrid approach? A joint venture?
Read carefully the words of E. Hunter Harrison, then with the Illinois Central, not exactly embracing passenger service, but not slamming the door on it either:
"If railroads were in a position where they could be rewarded on the bottom line for their performance--and all private companies are motivated by the bottom line--clearly we could make it work," says Hunter Harrison. "If we were operating passenger trains, we would want control to a large degree over the utilization of assets--locomotives, cars, people. We would be driven to do all of the same things with passenger trains that we're trying to do with scheduled freight railroading. If there is a compelling public interest that says, 'This country needs a national passenger rail system and needs to maintain the infrastructure to provide people with the ability to move by rail,' then there is a compelling argument for some degree of public funding to help railroads provide the service. We need to become creative with financing so that the government is not paying for the service directly, so that there's bottom-line motivation for the railroads. If there's any argument for providing railroads tax relief, it co uld be for providing an essential public service--like running passenger trains.
Some industry CEO's are not against passenger service at all hazards, they simply want the basic things they have in their freight service.
A brief sketch of some informal conversations around the industry. Some time back, a restructuring of Amtrak was informally proposed based on the Trailer Train model, i.e., each carrier has a share in the company; each carrier seats a member of their own executive staff on the board of the new company, and assets and profits are proportionally divided based on work load. The government was to be involved with funding via tax incentives at the local, State and Federal level. Employees were to be transferred to the new company along with all assets. The idea had some serious backing, since TTX went from a questionable operation to a very successful one. It has since been placed on an unlit back burner, probably to be revived when gas hits 5 or 6 dollars a gallon.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Very definitely a crazy idea. Let's be realisitic, how many people could be persuaded to ride a mixed train?
wjstix wrote: oltmannd wrote: JT22CW wrote: oltmannd wrote:But, Amtrak is already effectively "outsourced". They have no profit motiveYou keep saying that, but so far, there's no law in place that has removed profit motive. If there were truly no profit motive at Amtrak, they could reduce fares as low as they wished in order to attract passengers.Isn't that what they do?Amtrak is structured as a semi-governmental (sometimes called quasi-governmental) agency, much like the US Postal Service which replaced the old Post Office about the same time Amtrak was created. They are in effect companies operated by the government, and are supposed to be making money or at least breaking even, with the goal of eventually being able to be able to exist without subsidies.
oltmannd wrote: JT22CW wrote: oltmannd wrote:But, Amtrak is already effectively "outsourced". They have no profit motiveYou keep saying that, but so far, there's no law in place that has removed profit motive. If there were truly no profit motive at Amtrak, they could reduce fares as low as they wished in order to attract passengers.Isn't that what they do?
JT22CW wrote: oltmannd wrote:But, Amtrak is already effectively "outsourced". They have no profit motiveYou keep saying that, but so far, there's no law in place that has removed profit motive. If there were truly no profit motive at Amtrak, they could reduce fares as low as they wished in order to attract passengers.
oltmannd wrote:But, Amtrak is already effectively "outsourced". They have no profit motive
Isn't that what they do?
Amtrak is structured as a semi-governmental (sometimes called quasi-governmental) agency, much like the US Postal Service which replaced the old Post Office about the same time Amtrak was created. They are in effect companies operated by the government, and are supposed to be making money or at least breaking even, with the goal of eventually being able to be able to exist without subsidies.
The post office gets Congress to set their rates so that they break even. They are a regulated monopoly.
Amtrak is not a monopoly. They set their rates based on the market place. Their rates are almost completely disconnected from their costs. If they can save a nickel, it is a nickel that stays in the treasury. It is of no benefit to the corporation to try to save a nickel. They don't get to keep it or use it to grow the business.
Up until some point in the 1950's, PRR actually broke up many of the west-east (and vice-versa) passenger runs in Harrisburg into 2 sections: the one going to NYC via North Philadelphia Station and the other going to Old Broadstreet Station. The practise continued for a little while after the demise of Old Broadstreet and then pretty well disappeared.
When I would ride the NYC train to and from Lewistown to Philly in the early 1980's, it went via N. Philly, not 30th Street, and there would be a connection commuter train that you transferred to go to 30th Street and Suburban. What I remember the most was the 2 crewmen assigned to that short commuter run, which did not go beyond N. Philly, were always grouchy. Also, you had to go down the stairs, throught the tunnel, and then up the stairs to get to the other platform. You only had about 5 minutes to do it--no stopping in the rest rooms or you'd miss it. The crew on the NYC train would always advise us to basically walk as fast as we could to get to the connection. And there no longer was any redcap service, at least that I ever saw.
I grew up near North Philadelphia Station in the 50's when it was still the hot place in the neighborhood, along with the Reading's North Broad St. Station. Around 1960 all PRR trains stopped there, including those to the West and South, and all train on what is now known as the Corridor. PRSL trains stopped there and it was the main transfer point to the Shore from New York and the West. There were about 15 Red Caps working the station regularly, a full service restaurant overlooking the tracks, a barber shop, huge newstand, Railway Express agency (in a separate building) and other services found in a major train station. Across from the station were car rental agencies, bars and restaurants. The place was jumping.
The neighborhood started deteriorating in the 60's. Remember that North Philadelphia as an area was not only home to 100,000's of people, but huge numbers of jobs as well. Many of them had already started to leave the city.
The first major cut in service at North Philadelphia Station was the announcement by Penn Central that the new Metroliner would not stop there. I remember there was a great deal of buzz about it as every train stopped at North Philadelphia Station. From that point on the decline was rapid. I drove a cab in the late 60's and there was still a full time taxi dispatcher. By the time I came back from the Army in 1975, the place was a ghost of its former self. Clockers still stopped there, PRSL service was gone and most Western service was gone. Amtrak originally stopped the Broadway Limited there, but that ended sometime in the late 70's. By the 80's service and patronage had collapsed. Amtrak closed their ticket office in the early 90's and the station is mostly a ghost town now.
The PRR was acutely aware that they were not stopping their main East-West trains in the center of their headquarters city and took many steps to ease the situation. It just wasn't physically feasible for them to bring trains into Broad St., and later 30th St. They even at one time planned to build their own subway under Broad St.
From my era in the late 50's I remember that the PRR publshed a special timetable showing all service between 30th St. and North Philadelphia Station. I imagine though that most people came to the station from Center City on the Broad St. Subway, which was a major transporation artery at the time. North Philadelphia Subway Station was centered between the Reading and PRR stations and had long underground concourses that went directly into them. They were very busy places. Alternately, all East-West train stopped at Paoli, west of Philadelphia. It was a major boarding point for people from Center City and you could check your luggage through right at 30th St. (earlier Broad St.). I think though that the awkwardness of the situation did kick a lot of business to the B&O and the Reading.
al-in-chgo wrote: And I'm also wondering how Center City Philadelphians "way back when" used to get from their homes and offices to somewhere they could catch, say, the Broadway Limited bound for Chicago? Did they take what is now the Main Line R-line (SEPTA) to some possible transfer spot like Ardmore or Paoli, or, it being safer in the Fifties and Sixties, were such passengers expected to hike it up to North Philadelphia to catch the westbound LD trains there? I'm just guessing, don't really know. Surely there are people reading this who do. - a. s.
And I'm also wondering how Center City Philadelphians "way back when" used to get from their homes and offices to somewhere they could catch, say, the Broadway Limited bound for Chicago? Did they take what is now the Main Line R-line (SEPTA) to some possible transfer spot like Ardmore or Paoli, or, it being safer in the Fifties and Sixties, were such passengers expected to hike it up to North Philadelphia to catch the westbound LD trains there? I'm just guessing, don't really know. Surely there are people reading this who do. - a. s.
Depends on your definition of "way back when." Pennsy's Broad Street Station was built in 1881 and torn down in 1952. It was located one block west of Philly's City Hall, which is in the center of the Broad and Market intersection. Several problems existed with the location and track configuration of the Broad Street Station that were addressed with the Philadelphia Improvements (also the title of a two part magazine published by the Philadelphia Chapter of the Pennsylvanian Railroad Technical and Historical Society, the source of my statements, since I wasn't born yet when most of this happened).
The access tracks for the connection from the north-south mainline to the Broad Street Station were on an elevated structure that had arches for the passage of north-south street traffic that were designed for horse and wagon era, not for the motor trucks coming into use in the city in the first half of the twentieth century, the infamous "Chinese Wall" that cut at least 8 streets with these too-low arches. Also, Broad Street was a stub end station, requiring backing moves to enter or exit, slowing operations. The two other Philly stations were West Philadelphia, at 32nd and Broad, and North Philadelphia at (and still at) 2900 North Broad Street, 29 blocks north of Center City, much more remote than West Philadelphia, or today's 30th Street Station.
The improvements would replace West Philadelphia with a much larger through station (today's 30th Street Station) and replace Broad Street Station with today's Suburban Station, one block north of Broad Street Station. The access tracks, as well as the station itself, would be underground, below Pennsylvania Boulevard (today's JFK Blvd), eliminating the Chinese Wall.
Unfortunately, one feature planned but never built was the loop south of 30th Street Station. This loop would allow trains coming down the NEC from New York to stop at 30th Street, proceed in the same direction (ie. no backing move) through the loop and back to Zoo Interlocking and head west toward Harrisburg, or do a 3/4 loop and proceed directly to Suburban Station. Had this been built (who knows, maybe it still can) it would have eased operations in the Philadelphia area, since the Pennsylvanian does have to make a backing move after stopping at 30th Street to get back to Zoo Interlocking and head west.
The line from 30th Street to Suburban Station is operated by SEPTA, but I'm not sure which line that would be.
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