The western LD trains serve these states en route aside from the end point states (IL, WA, OR, CA, LA):
CZ: IA, NE, CO, UT, NV
EB: WI, MN, ND, MT, ID
SWC: MO, KS, CO, NM, AZ
SL: TX, NM, AZ
TXEagle: MO, AR, TX, NM, AZ
The estimated US Census population for the US 2015 = 321.4 million.
The population of these 16 states (IA, NE, CO, UT, NV, WI, MN, ND, MT, ID, MO, KS, NM, AZ, TX, AR) = approximately 78.6 million or 24.4% of the total. They are served by 5 LD routes, with a low ridership and at a considerable loss. Most would/will be served far better by corridor services.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
What are your suggeted corridors? With possible ridership?
Not to forget that the Southwest Chief also serves Iowa.
You can prove darn near anything with numbers or the absense thereof. I know you like corridor trains and don't so much like LD trains. Personally, I'd like to see both.
What I don't want to end up with is chopping what was once a run-through into corridors that may or may not connect, forcing either over-night stays to continue on or even using alternate transportation to bridge gaps.
When I went from Little Rock to Los Angeles earlier this year, I could do so with a one-seat ride! Couldn't do that on a plane and it was a key selling point for me.
So what are the corridors you see? How long is a corridor? And what about any gaps making a trip from Chicago to the West Coast impossible?
Starting from Chicago, there's an effort to get passenger service to Quad Cities (but the current gov in IL makes even that a challenge). To extend the corridor to Iowa City is welcomed by the business community in Eastern Iowa and opposed by the current governor and his band in Des Moines. The corridor really should go to Omaha (or even Lincoln, NE, given all the traffic Omaha - Lincoln). This is just one corridor, but it crosses statelines and everyone seems to only care about their own state. So how do you make corridors happen?
New York - Chicago is in my mind a good corridor that should have multiple trains a day. With higher speed or even true high speed trains, travel time would meet or beat driving. Or is that too long for a corridor in your book?
CJtrainguyNew York - Chicago is in my mind a good corridor that should have multiple trains a day. With higher speed or even true high speed trains, travel time would meet or beat driving. Or is that too long for a corridor in your book?
The length for a competitive corridor varies with speed and total time, end to end. An advantage of corridors over 2000 mile LD trains is the ability to have better service in three ways, at least. One, more frequent service daily. Two, more scheduled convenient times of service. Three, more reliable, on-time service because of shorter distances in which delays are compounded.
Implemenation would likely require taking more of the financial burden off the states, especially on multistate routes, such as CHI-Lincoln or Omaha-DEN.
CHI-NYC could work with much higher speeds. Some trains could run endpoint to endpoint, some on existing or new corridors on the overall route(s). And it could only work with largely dedicated RoWs, either new or rebuilding some of the redundant old freight routes.
We talk as though the solution on given routes is either/or: the long-distance trains OR connecting corridors.
However, I doubt very much if the money saved by eliminating the LD trains would support the corridors and frequencies envisioned by Schlimm. The only answer is enough money for Amtrak-- the "fair share" called for by many -- to support both the corridors and the existing one-seat ride.
Until we succeed in getting this, I'm afraid we're only corridor dreaming.
CJtrainguy New York - Chicago is in my mind a good corridor that should have multiple trains a day. With higher speed or even true high speed trains, travel time would meet or beat driving. Or is that too long for a corridor in your book?
2015 ridership for the 5 Western LD trains
https://www.narprail.org/site/assets/files/1038/trains_2015.pdf
EB: 433,382
CZ: 371,089
SWC: 362,999
TE: 313,505
SL: 99,520
Of the five, only the SL could be considered to have a low ridership. And each of the first four trains serve a purpose in connecting a key western area to Chicago which allows them the ability to connect to trains from Chicago to the East (SWC: LA, CZ: Bay Area, TE: Texas, EB: Pacific Northwest). The only change I might make would be to replace the EB by bringing back the Pioneer as long as they have a train between Chicago and Minneapolis. You can then run the California Zephyr and Pioneer joint and then split at either Denver or Salt Lake City. That would allow passengers from Denver and SLC to visit Seattle/Portland and allow Amtrak to serve Boise again. The only decent sized market on the EB between Minneapolis and Seattle/Portland is Spokane. But the EB had higher ridership than both of the California trains so why mess with it?
You can argue the Sunset might be worth getting rid of but you would lose a direct connection from Texas to California (the two largest states in the US) and have no service at all in Houston. Plus instead of being about 40 miles away from Phoenix, you'd be a lot farther away.
If there's any train worth getting rid of because of lack of population and low ridership, it's the Cardinal. Almost no one travels from endpoint to endpoint because other trains are faster and the two biggest markets outside of Chicago and the NEC are Indy and Cincy, which are served at lousy times (Cincinnati in the middle of the night). The market with the second largest ridership on the Cardinal is a tiny college town. Plus, there's an obvious replacement just waiting that you can use the equipment on. I'd like to see a Chicago-Cincinnati train (extend the Hoosier State?) though and hopefully Virginia can run another Lynchburg train to replace the Cardinal between Charlottesville and New York. But it's a lousy long distance train, especialy as a replacement for the Broadway Limited/Three Rivers. It's a way longer ride from Philly/New Jersey to Chicago and doesn't serve Harrisburg, Lancaster, Altoona, etc. at all.
dakotafredUntil we succeed in getting this, I'm afraid we're only corridor dreaming.
Few. if any folks on here have any influence or power over passenger rail services. It's all dreaming.
But you underestimate the enormous operating costs of those five Western LD routes annually. Through July 2016 YTD (10 months, I believe), they look to have cost $364.4 million dollars for operations. By way of comparison, the operating costs for ALL the Acela service is $255.2 million and ticket revenues are such that they yield a surplus of $258 million.
Philly Amtrak Fan2015 ridership for the 5 Western LD trains
That ridership is a small fraction of NEC ridership and even smaller compared to the state-supported corridors. And since others have pointed out that the bulk of the ridership on the five Western trains is not end to end, replcement with shorter corridors, where appropriate, would serve most of those populations there far better. The purpose of Amtrak is to provide needed transportation for the greatest numbers, not highly subsidized land cruises for the few (1.6 million).
schlimm That ridership is a small fraction of NEC ridership and even smaller compared to the state-supported corridors. And since others have pointed out that the bulk of the ridership on the five Western trains is not end to end, replcement with shorter corridors, where appropriate, would serve most of those populations there far better. The purpose of Amtrak is to provide needed transportation for the greatest numbers, not highly subsidized land cruises for the few (1.6 million).
Somehow it's hardly fair to compare one train/day each way with a corridor that has 3-10 trains each way/day for ridership. Experience from around the world shows that when there are more times to choose from, travel by that mode goes up.
Yes, most travel on the LD trains is not end-to-end. But where do you make the breaks between corridors?
Take the Texas Eagle: Many of the folks getting on in Little Rock go all the way to Chicago. So in a corridor model, should those folks all have to change trains in St Louis? (Chicago - St Louis = corridor, Dallas - St Louis = corridor, San Antonio - Dallas = corridor). That intermediate travel doesn't break down neatly but covers most of the possible station pairs on the longer line.
When I was on the Southwest Chief last, coming from LA, a number of people who'd traveled from LA got off at Lamy. In a corridor model, would there be a connection from LA for them? A corridor from LA might go to Albuquerque. Then what?
Short corridors, inside one state are "easy": you just have to have leadership in that state willing to spring for it. Get a couple states into the mix and all bets are off.
I'd really like to see more than one train a day on the LD routes, and would be fine with them covering part of the distance in corridor fashion. Still want to have the ability to offer one-seat rides for longer than 500 or 700 mile distances.
Realistically, what it costs to run one LD train from Chicago to the West Coast, won't pay for turning that whole run into corridors with higher frequencies. We might find that turning the CZ into a corridor train with say 3 trains/day would then mean the train would only run Chicago - Omaha. Then what about the rest of the line?
Just wondering.
Philly Amtrak Fan 2015 ridership for the 5 Western LD trains SL: 99,520 You can argue the Sunset might be worth getting rid of but you would lose a direct connection from Texas to California (the two largest states in the US) and have no service at all in Houston. Plus instead of being about 40 miles away from Phoenix, you'd be a lot farther away.
It can also be argued that the Sunset Limited would have higher ridership if it didn't just run 3x week.
This year, going from Little Rock to LA, the 3x week fit my schedule going out and would have fit perfectly coming back, except for construction that had the train leaving LA in the afternoon instead of late evening. So I chose to come back on the Southwest Chief and stop and see friends in Chicago on the way home, rather than sit in LA for a couple more days.
Someone else might decide to fly instead of taking the train when the train only runs a few times a week.
CJtrainguySomeone else might decide to fly instead of taking the train when the train only runs a few times a week.
Daily would help, but LD trains have nearly invisible market share between major cities on their routes.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I would hate losing a direct train from Chicago to LA or Chicago to San Fran or Chicago to Texas (the NW would be the one I care about the least as I have no interest in traveling to Seattle). If you force a transfer or two, you also make it harder for passengers from east of Chicago to travel out to California/Texas. The east/west model with Chicago in the middle works well for a good portion of the country but Philadelphia is cut off from Chicago as is Florida, Georgia (Atlanta) and the Carolinas. I'd also like better connectivity in the South. The SL is just 3x/week and try going from Texas/New Orleans to Florida now. I can't think of way to do it without going all the way north to Chicago and then back south again (using the Capitol Limited and the Silver Meteor). I'd like to see a same day connection possible between the Crescent and Sunset Limited as opposed to having to spend the night.
Actually there's a simple solution, but it would never fly in Congress(it would really help out in two areas). The fuel tax needs to be completely overhauled and separated into 3 different values, one fore automotive fuels, a second for commercial diesel fuels(those used by buses/trucks, etc.), and a third for wholesale diesel fuel(that used by RR's')(it currently is divided into only two, automotive and diesel). Then you take the base fuel tax of today, which was last raised in 1993, is not indexed to inflation and has not been raised since(since inflation from 1993 to now is 64.6%, the current fuel taxes would be raised from 18.4 cpg(cents per gallon) to 30.3 for automotive fuel, and from 24.4(cpg) to 40.2(cpg) for diesel and other speciality fuels with future increased tied to the inflation index. The fuel tax on wholesale fuel could be set at 4 cpg(just look at how much fuel the railroads use), also tied to the inflation index, with the money going into a special RR only fund(like the Highway Trust Fund). The change in fuel tax rate should also include language that restricts Congress from diverting these funds to any other purpose except transportation infrastructure. Notice that even with inflation the fuel taxes are still not close to a $1/pg for federal, though adding in the amounts state charge would increase a number of states to over $1/pg of fuel tax combined.
This Railroad Trust Fund could then be used for any public and/or public/private improvement to the overall transportation network, especially Amtrak.
@Philly Amtrak Fan: P.S. - For New Orleans to Florida you don't need to go to Chicago, just take the Crescent to Washington then the Silver Star or Meteor to Florida(depending on destination). Of course an extended and daily Sunset would be a more logical joice.
"But you underestimate the enormous operating costs of those five Western LD routes annually. Through July 2016 YTD (10 months, I believe), they look to have cost $364.4 million dollars for operations. By way of comparison, the operating costs for ALL the Acela service is $255.2 million and it runs a SURPLUS over ticket revenue of $258 million." (I think that you meant to say that ticket revenues exceed operating costs, you actually say the reverse when you say operating costs run a surplus over ticket revenues.)
First, if you believe those numbers, you are in a great deal of trouble. Having done work for Amtrak, I can tell you that they are not the real story. For Acela, note that you use operating costs, which are the smallest cost of what it takes to operate the trains. This is like ignoring the cost of the car and oil changes, and just looking at the cost of fuel. Suddenly the cost of having a car is much cheaper. For Acela to operate, the track, electrical system, signal system, and many other infrastructural costs are much greater than they would be without the trains. Additionally, going from FRA Track Class 6 (110mph) to Class 8 (160 max) adds a great deal of regulatory changes including fencing, additional track inspections, dynamic testing daily, etc., etc., etc. Also note that the western equipment seems to last much longer than corridor trains, most of it having been rebuilt multiple times. However, advocates for higher speed "corridors" never seem to add those costs to the package. If Acela actually ran that much of a surplus, and the other corridor trains came close to break even, then Amtrak would need almost no subsidy each year as there would be enough internally generated cash to pay the cost of the long distance trains. However, Amtrak needs about $1 billion a year to survive. Obvously, there are a great deal more costs than you want to talk about.
Look at the billions of dollars being talked about for Northeast Corridor projects. Almost every one of those is required for the higher speed trains, so those costs should be added to their total costs. You talk about the Long Distance costs - guess what, they include the track and time and other costs charged to them by the track owners (which I feel are undercharging, but that is the agreement they operate under). If you want to compare apples to apples, then go with total cost, not operating costs where the LD trains are fully loaded and Northeast Corridor trains are not.
Also, let's talk about operating corridors. Out west, corridors are paid for by the states involved. Back east on the Northeast Corridor, they are paid by the national network. Why isn't this done: let's stop trains at Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York, New Haven, etc., and call each route a corridor and force riders to swap trains and for each state to pay for the corridor trains that run in their state. Again, that would make things apples to apples to what you propose.
Many people in the east cannot even picture the distances involved in the west. I know of people in the Boston area that think the Hudson River is near the center of the country. They don't understand people driving 100 miles to and from work or 3 hours each way to go shopping. Hopping on Amtrak for a 12 to 24 hour ride from a small station to a larger community is pretty standard out here, and if you ride the western long distance trains, you would see that there are very few natural breaks in the routes. Since I ride them all the time for work and pleasure, I generally see folks day after day. Yes, folks get on and off all the time, but there are no real natural breaks where most get on or off.
Would some corridors help along the longer distance routes? Sure - Chicago-Omaga-Denver, Reno-Emeryville, St. Paul-Chicago, Chicago-Kansas City are a few and they are all being looked at for second trains already. But western trains run pretty full most of the year already, many with similar load patterns to corridor trains.
Trying to compare a Northeast Corridor strategy to most of the country is just not a good plan. Places like tyhe Los Angeles-San Diego are and the trains in Central California make good corridors as they are able to combine travel for commuters and regular travel like the NE Corridor. You see the same in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, but here the states are paying for the trains themselves and are serving local markets. The Builder, Zephyr, Eagle and others are connecting parts of the country, providing long distance service where loing distance service is needed and wanted. It is more apples versus oranges, or pickups versus Uber, or open highways at 80mph versus congestion in Megalopolis.
Bartman, you are really "on the ball." Exactly.
The long distance passenger trains are here to stay as per my post on the FF blog. They have been part of the national fabric for more than 40 years. Comparing them to corridor trains does not appear to be a worthy exercise.
Eight-five per cent of Amtrak’s long distance passengers go coach class. Most of them are only on the train for one night if at all. Most of the sleeping car passengers travel further than coach passengers, but the numbers indicate that most of them are only on the train one night.
An important question is whether the long distance trains can be more efficient and effective? The following steps could make them so and probably reduce their losses.
Eliminate the sleeping cars. Replace them with business class cars equipped with seats similar to those found on cross country flights.
Eliminate the dining cars. Upgrade lounge car meal offerings. Outsource food and beverage services to a food service vendor whose core competency is food service.
Eliminate the staff at intermediate stations that are served by only one name train a day, e.g. Dallas, El Paso, Tucson, etc. Provide kiosks for station issued tickets and baggage claim tickets. Passengers would be incentivized to buy their tickets on-line. Checked bags can be placed in a designated holding area and be picked-up or delivered by an assistant conductor or a baggage car attendant.
Discontinue the Cardinal and Sun Set Limited. Run the Texas Eagle through to LAX daily. Implement a connecting train from New Orleans to San Antonio. Implement a daily train from Indianapolis to Chicago with better end times for Indianapolis.
Discontinue the Spokane to Portland section of the Empire Builder and the Albany to Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited. Substitute Thruway bus service.
The suggested changes would meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of passengers that travel coach and/or are only on the train for one night. And they would have a salutary impact on Amtrak’s financials, which could hold off the kill the long distance trains sharks.
Rio Grande Valley, CFI,CFII
Bartman-tn:
What kind of real work did you do for Amtrak? When did you do it? Are you an accountant? Do you have access to Amtrak's current books?
bartman-tn "But you underestimate the enormous operating costs of those five Western LD routes annually. Through July 2016 YTD (10 months, I believe), they look to have cost $364.4 million dollars for operations. First, if you believe those numbers, you are in a great deal of trouble. Having done work for Amtrak, I can tell you that they are not the real story. For Acela, note that you use operating costs, which are the smallest cost of what it takes to operate the trains.
"But you underestimate the enormous operating costs of those five Western LD routes annually. Through July 2016 YTD (10 months, I believe), they look to have cost $364.4 million dollars for operations.
First, if you believe those numbers, you are in a great deal of trouble. Having done work for Amtrak, I can tell you that they are not the real story. For Acela, note that you use operating costs, which are the smallest cost of what it takes to operate the trains.
I compared operating costs with operating costs. They are the only costs available to the public. You seem unfamiliar with even basic accountancy, as you want us to compare apples with trucks. The facts are clear and obvious: Western LD trains have much higher (labor) costs than corridors, largely because of sleeping cars and diners. And they serve very few people, endpoint to endpoint especially.
I'm OK with the following options on the TE:
1. Reroute via OKC and Kansas City to Chicago.
2. Terminate and Originate in St. Louis vs Chicago.
3. Combine with the City of New Orleans and split off at Memphis, TN for Little Rock, AR, Texarkana, Dallas and the rest.
I see zero value in having the TE run over a HSR corridor between St. Louis and Chicago and mucking up schedules with it's slower run or even stopping at the intermediate cities St. Louis to Chicago since they are on a Corridor already.
JPS1,
Your proposals seem very drastic.
While sleeper car passengers count for only a small % of LD trains, they contribute a ton of money. I would one day like to try a sleeper car if I ever decide to splurge and would not want to see them go. I would be dead set against cutting off Boston and Portland from the LD network. I think there should be more through cars, not less. Your SL proposal doesn't really cut costs, it is essentially making the SL route daily but requires passengers between New Orleans and San Antonio to change trains in San Antonio to the TE (and if the schedule is the same, at the middle of the night). I totally support you canceling the Cardinal but extend the Hoosier State to Cincinnati so they still have some service. I can see removing staff from smaller stations a decent cost cutting move but Dallas? We're way too far away from that. Certainly there can be some changes that can be made to make food service more efficient.
CMStPnP I'm OK with the following options on the TE: 1. Reroute via OKC and Kansas City to Chicago. 2. Terminate and Originate in St. Louis vs Chicago. 3. Combine with the City of New Orleans and split off at Memphis, TN for Little Rock, AR, Texarkana, Dallas and the rest. I see zero value in having the TE run over a HSR corridor between St. Louis and Chicago and mucking up schedules with it's slower run or even stopping at the intermediate cities St. Louis to Chicago since they are on a Corridor already.
The Texas Eagle restructuring you suggested sounds like the old Lone Star. You could skip St. Louis altogether and run between Chicago and Kansas City on the Southwest Chief route. Perhaps you could run the SWC and "Lone Star" together between Chicago and KC and split there. That would be less drastic than cutting it off from Chicago. We don't need to cut any more cities away from Chicago. I can speak from experience in Philly. You can't get to Chicago you're a second class citizen. Ask Houston as well.
I'd be in favor of a return of the Lone Star (Chicago-KC-OKC-Dallas/Ft. Worth-Houston) and then a separate train from San Antonio-Dallas/Ft. Worth-Little Rock-St. Louis but instead of sending it to Chicago send it east to Indianapolis and to the Northeast, either reinstating service to Columbus or go via Cincinnati. This would give you a direct train from the Northeast (New York or Washington or both) to Texas. I'd like to see a faster/more efficient way to go from Cincinnati to the Northeast than the Cardinal route (maybe via Pittsburgh?) Anything that can be run daily rather than wait forever for Buckingham Branch to be upgraded for daily service.
#1: Drops all service to Arkansas and Missouri for Texas Eagle. St Louis is not exactly a flag stop for the Texas Eagle. The routing Dallas - Oklahoma City - Kansas City needs its own train that is in addition to all existing trains.
#2: Forces a change of trains in St Louis. Considering the numbers of through passengers (sorry, only have my own observations that most people do travel through St Louis), that would likely lead to a loss of ridership or at least an inconvenience for not much gained as through passengers still have to have room on some train to/from Chicago.
#3: Benefit would be to gain service Dallas - Little Rock - Memphis, but that comes at the loss of Dallas - Little Rock - St Louis. How much is really saved by doing this reroute and how long will combining/splitting the trains in Memphis take (= added total travel time). Fort Worth - Dallas - Little Rock - Memphis is a higher speed corridor that should happen ASAP. I-40 Little Rock - Memphis is overloaded and I-30 Dallas - Little Rock is quite busy in sections as well. But one LD train won't fix that. Several corridor trains per day will be a great help.
Texas Eagle on the high speed corridor St Louis - Chicago: How much slower is the TE really than the other traffic? There's nothing inherently keeping the Texas Eagle from having a higher than 79mph max speed in Illinios. But even at 70mph max, that makes it faster than any freight out there, so it shouldn't muck up the line, unless you are saying the line is operating at full capacity already.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR Actually there's a simple solution, but it would never fly in Congress(it would really help out in two areas). The fuel tax needs to be completely overhauled and separated into 3 different values, one fore automotive fuels, a second for commercial diesel fuels(those used by buses/trucks, etc.), and a third for wholesale diesel fuel(that used by RR's')(it currently is divided into only two, automotive and diesel). Then you take the base fuel tax of today, which was last raised in 1993, is not indexed to inflation and has not been raised since(since inflation from 1993 to now is 64.6%, the current fuel taxes would be raised from 18.4 cpg(cents per gallon) to 30.3 for automotive fuel, and from 24.4(cpg) to 40.2(cpg) for diesel and other speciality fuels with future increased tied to the inflation index. The fuel tax on wholesale fuel could be set at 4 cpg(just look at how much fuel the railroads use), also tied to the inflation index, with the money going into a special RR only fund(like the Highway Trust Fund). The change in fuel tax rate should also include language that restricts Congress from diverting these funds to any other purpose except transportation infrastructure. Notice that even with inflation the fuel taxes are still not close to a $1/pg for federal, though adding in the amounts state charge would increase a number of states to over $1/pg of fuel tax combined. This Railroad Trust Fund could then be used for any public and/or public/private improvement to the overall transportation network, especially Amtrak.
Actually a tax on freight railroad diesel to support ATK is a terrible idea. The freight carriers are already subsidizing ATK to the tune of a few hundred million dollars per year due to statutoraly mandated marginal cost pricing. There is no need for shippers to further subsidize ATK. All that will do is tend to drive freight to the highway and support anothert set of money sucking bureaucrats to launder the railroad's money. DUMB! DUMB! DUMB!
ATK suffers the ill effects of marginal cost pricing of capacity to communter trains on the NEC, again to the tune of a few hundred million dollars per year.
What congress should, but will not because it is too simple, is allow the freight carriers to charge ATK market rates, and allow ATK to charge commuters market rates. Then ATK could make actual-cost based decisions about all of its services.
Mac McCulloch
As part of being relieved of the obligation to provide passenger train services as chartered common carriers, the private lines agreed to the marginal rates. Perhaps they'd prefer fulfilling their previous obligations? Probably not.
schlimm As part of being relieved of the obligation to provide passenger train services as chartered common carriers, the private lines agreed to the marginal rates. Perhaps they'd prefer fulfilling their previous obligations? Probably not.
Yes they agreed, with a gun held to their head!
Hardly. Read BN CEO Menk's remarks on the scheme designed to fail. It was a deal for the rails.
schlimm Hardly. Read BN CEO Menk's remarks on the scheme designed to fail. It was a deal for the rails.
Where are these remarks? Menk did not design ATK, so he could not have designed it to fail. Congress could could defund ATK any time, regardless of how they designed it but have failed to do so.
I beleive the LD trains are there to buy votes for the NEC.
Mac
On the one hand, JPS1 tells us above that the LD trains are "part of the national fabric" and "here to stay." On the other that we should turn them into combination bus-airliners by eliminating sleeping and dining cars "to placate the kill the long distance train sharks." Eliminate Chicago-Portland and Boston-Albany on the LSL in the bargain.
What for, if the LD trains aren't going away?
I agree with his first position. Thanks to the geographical setup of the U.S. Senate, a national system is the price Washington will continue to pay to maintain the NEC on our nickel. And damn well should.
First, operating costs are not good numbers to use when looking at Amtrak as they can be moved about easily, and many of them don't include the cost of the infrastructure where many of the costs really are. For the Northeast Corridor, basically the entire infrastructure is for passenger service, thus the entire infrastructure cost should be assigned to the trains that operate on them. But how is this done with a mix of services and owners? That is a question that until clearly answered raises a large number of questions and makes any decision based upon only half of the story.
For the long distance trains, they have a set cost of infrastructure based upon the costs charged by the railroads for their routes. These costs are included in the train costs while the Northeast Corridor infrastructure costs are not included in the operating costs except for where they are on routes not owned by Amtrak. Even here it is not clear as to how those costs are being assigned. How are station costs being assigned? Where stations and other items were alterred for Acella speeds, were the charges placed solely on the Acella trains or were they spread as general costs across the corridor? I did a few projects where the work was solely for the higher speed trains, but I don't know if the costs were asisgned that way.
Communicating with several states involved with their corridors, there are numerous examples where they claim that corridor overhead costs are being assigned to areas outside the corridor. This has been a major problem at Amtrak, the assignment of costs seems to be very arbitrary. Arbitrary is fine and generally legal, it just sometimes means that they don't actually reflect what is causing the costs. There are several examples of questions about cost and revenue assignments for the Florida trains when they are on the NE Corridor. Go find the reports if you are interested, they are out there and have been discussed in several places in Trains Magazine and elsewhere.
For those who asked, I have managed railroads at various levels and have worked on both short lines and Class 1s. I have been responsible for or had input into budgets approaching $1 billion and have produced company valuation reports both inside and outside of the railroad industry. There is nothing like trying to explain revenues and costs to attorneys and judges. It is amazing how many times I have found a product or service to be losing money whey a company thought they were profitable because they were not assigning the costs to it. I have also found products and services about to be cut that were actually profitable, but they were having costs assigned to them that they did not have a role with.
This is tough stuff to look at and requires full visibility of the data. The problem is that Amtrak is not good about making this information public, and it gets questioned a great deal even by those inside the organization.
One example that I wasn't involved with, but heard a lot about, was at a major Class 1 railroad. Here, a major shipper contract was lost because the rates quoted were too high. When someone looked at the rates, they found out that charges were added for the switch engine in several yards. The problem was that the train was a unit train that simply passed by the year and didn't normally stop. In this case, the policy was to assign costs equally to all trains through the yards. The problem was that some trains used the yard and others didn't. No one was looking at the activities and charging the costs based upon who was using what. While assigning overhead costs have no real constraints, they can be challenged in the freight business, and in this case, cost a railroad a contract worth more than $200 million.
Back to what I have done - I have provided testimony before the Supreme Court and Congress and have been involved with several major facility retirement projects where folks (government and non-government) hunted me down to get my financials on the properties. I happen to have 4 degrees (got bored a lot) and teach the principles and work with a number of companies looking at cost asisgnments inside the transportation industry. I was involved with the Acela program in the Northeast Corridor and have been involved in looking at costs of various routes (mainly freight) across the country.
Again, if you believe the operating cost information, then the Acela trains and all of their profit (!?) should cover the cost of the long distance trains, thus no subsidy is needed for Amtrak. If you feel that Amtrak needs that $1 billion or so a year, then you are admitting that the operating costs shown are not the real or whole story, and you need to look deeper as to where the costs are happening. That is the point of my comments and why I say that anyone using the public operating costs to make a recommendation is really fooling themselves.
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