This Week at Amtrak; April 27, 2009

This Week at Amtrak; April 27, 2009


A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America’s foremost passenger rail policy institute

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail info@unitedrail.org • http://www.unitedrail.org



Volume 6, Number 12

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy institute that focuses on solutions and plans for passenger rail systems in North America. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, URPA has professional associates in Minnesota, California, Arizona, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Texas, and New York. For more detailed information, along with a variety of position papers and other documents, visit the URPA web site at http://www.unitedrail.org.


URPA is not a membership organization, and does not accept funding from any outside sources.



1) We’re hearing many things about the Sunset Limited route; not many of them are what we want to hear.

Working from west to east, and working from confirmation from good, multiple sources, it appears Amtrak’s plans to make the Sunset Limited a daily train mostly consist of extending the Texas Eagle from its artificial endpoint of San Antonio, Texas all the way west to Los Angeles.

This is the good part, having the Texas Eagle now providing a second daily service between Los Angeles and Chicago over a variety of other intermediate stops and opportunities for hubbing and allowing the natural affects of the matrix theory to come into play. The bad part appears to be this will replace the Sunset Limited, America’s oldest named passenger train, with a train once mistaken by Al Gore’s office for a noble species of bird.

If the Texas Eagles does extend all the way to Los Angeles on a daily basis, that will be a boon to the fortunes and finances of that train, and – if Amtrak uses enough foresight – a boon to the fortunes and finances of the beleaguered Sunset Limited.

In every way the Sunset has been mismanaged by Amtrak through the years, and even with some of its best frontline managers running the train and making the most of a bad situation, the Sunset has always suffered from being an exceptionally long route with a multitude of stations and infrastructure, but only tri-weekly operation. Where all other Amtrak trains have 730 departures a year (once a day in each direction), the Sunset only has 312 departures a year, yet carries all of the station and corporate overhead of a daily train. Basically, by design, the Sunset has never been given a chance to show its financial chops.

If you take today’s Sunset Limited numbers and extrapolate them over a year for a daily train, they are dramatically different, and move the Sunset into a much different financial category of long distance train.

Using Fiscal Year 2008 annual performance numbers, the Sunset (Based on its truncated route of Los Angeles to New Orleans; not its full pre-Hurricane Katrina route of Los Angeles to Orlando, Florida.):

Total Revenue, tri-weekly – $8,046,900
Total Revenue, projected if daily – $18,827,682

This moves the Sunset from next to last place (The Cardinal, Amtrak’s only other long distance tri-weekly train.) in revenue for all long distance trains to in front of the Palmetto, City of New Orleans, and Capitol Limited.

Revenue Passenger Miles, tri-weekly – 66,149,000
Revenue Passenger Miles, projected if daily – 154,771,698

This moves the Sunset from next to last place (The Cardinal, again.) in revenue passenger miles for all long distance trains to in front of the Palmetto, City of New Orleans, Capitol Limited, Crescent, Lake Shore Limited, and Texas Eagle.

Ridership, tri-weekly – 71,700
Ridership, projected if daily – 167,759

This moves the Sunset from dead last (including the Cardinal) in Ridership for all long distance trains up one place to in front of the Cardinal.

Seat Miles, tri-weekly – 116,569,226
Seat Miles, projected if daily – 272,742,099

This moves the Sunset from next to last place (Back to the Cardinal, again.) in Seat Miles for all long distance train to in front of the City of New Orleans, Palmetto, Texas Eagle, Capitol Limited, and Lake Shore Limited.

This brief display of numbers shows two points: First, if allowed, the Sunset Limited can be a reasonable performer, and not the financial punching bag of every blow-hard politician who doesn’t understand passenger rail economics. And, second, ridership numbers alone, the way Amtrak loves to present them as an absolute of performance measurement, mean nothing. While the Sunset’s spot for ridership moves up only one position, it moves up dramatically in all other categories which really matter.

But, you wisely say, “what about expenses; won’t they go up, too?” Yes, they will, but will only go up incrementally for some, but not all categories.

As an example, station costs will go up, but, since some stations, depending on the train’s schedule, are open most of the week, or all of the week anyway (Such as New Orleans, San Antonio, and Los Angeles.), the only difference will be what it takes to open the remaining stations every day instead of most days.

Train miles, of course, will increase. But, so will the corresponding number of opportunities for revenue to be produced, too, and on Amtrak long distance trains, revenue exceeds actual operating costs. Onboard services employees and train and engine crews costs will increase, but only incrementally. Train and engine crews will take the smallest hit, because they work only an average of eight hour shifts now, and with tri-weekly service, these crews are often paid to sit around waiting for the next train instead of staying in continuous service such as on daily trains.

Where incorrectly Amtrak piles on the excess costs to the long distance system (Often, so the Northeast Corridor trains look better financially.) usually occurs in areas of corporate overhead, the reservations system, and related areas. If the Sunset is a daily train, there will be near-zero additional costs associated with all of these functions (Okay, there probably will be a slight increase in the cost of copy machine paper and toner.). A daily Sunset will require no additional costs for reservations, the number of corporate managers in Chicago and Washington, or the number of people in Human Resources.

Put all of this together and tie a nice bow on the package and – suddenly – if the Texas Eagle goes daily and starts fully sharing expenses with the Sunset between San Antonio and Los Angeles, and the Sunset goes daily and provides actual travel choices instead of the one-service-in-each-direction-take-it-or-leave-it for all of the 13 stations between San Antonio and Los Angeles, there is a financial and transportation output boon for both trains.

But, from what is coming out of Amtrak right now, this scenario is unlikely, and a butchered Sunset Limited route seems to be in the making.

If a daily Texas Eagle assumes the Sunset Route on the west end, then most likely a daily, daylight train will run between San Antonio and New Orleans, consisting of coaches and reduced food service from a full dining car to a lounge car selling potentially stale sandwiches. The home terminal for this train would be New Orleans, which has an excellent crew base, and used to have a good maintenance base before most activities were moved elsewhere.

While two connecting trains meeting in San Antonio would preserve the length of the original, pre-1993 Sunset route, it doesn’t do much for passengers; but, it does keep intact Amtrak’s penchant for operating trains for the convenience of its operating and maintenance departments.

From 1993 to the dark days when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 (We’re fast approaching the 4th anniversary of that tragedy, and Amtrak for that long has been telling everyone the dog ate its homework and refusing to reinstate the train and make any move to reconsider running it, even though it officially never cancelled the train or abandoned the route. CSX released the track to Amtrak for use again three years ago, on April 1, 2006.), the Sunset was the only fully transcontinental train in North America, virtually running from the Left Coast in Los Angeles to the Right Coast in Jacksonville, Florida, and down to first Miami and then more sensibly truncated to Orlando.

Passengers luxuriated in single-car, single-train service to any station, without bother of changing trains. And, the service was popular, despite the many digestive ills of Union Pacific Railroad as it gobbled up the Southern Pacific Railroad, owner of the Sunset Route between Los Angeles and New Orleans. Despite the Sunset being tri-weekly, and constantly running late, passengers still rode the train. It wasn’t until the final year and a half before Hurricane Katrina when CSX was performing many maintenance and infrastructure upgrade chores on the Sunset route east of New Orleans, that ridership fell for the simple reasons Amtrak management at the time was CONSTANTLY cancelling the train for the entire run east of New Orleans, and the unofficial slogan of Amtrak was “no alternative transportation provided.” This was occurring every season of the year; it was nearly impossible to book a trip on the Sunset much in advance of departure because of all of the cancellations.

The arrival of Hurricane Katrina provided the biggest reason of all for cancellation of the Sunset, and Amtrak, in one of its darkest and foulest corporate moments, took advantage of the cancellation to drive a stake through the heart of the Sunset and keep it off the rails east of New Orleans, even though CSX gallantly made a Herculean effort to restore that track and get the route open again in record time.

After all, Amtrak managers and planners could point to the declining ridership east of New Orleans and with something of a con man’s straight face, declare to Amtrak’s Board of Directors the route was more of a loser than most. The dishonest part of that on the part of Amtrak’s management cadre and what it was presenting to the Amtrak Board of Directors was the numbers were falling by Amtrak’s own design, as it constantly, in the months preceding the windy arrival of Hurricane Katrina, kept cancelling trains because of CSX planned maintenance and did nothing to assist passengers other than directing them to the bus station and telling passengers they were on their own.

In effect, Amtrak’s dishonest managers at the time grabbed onto knowingly false and manipulated information, and killed a train that was a vital link in its system, all the while claiming there was no financial benefit in restarting the train, using every excuse in the book, from storm-damaged stations to bad track, to the dog ate their homework.

Now, after Florida Congresswoman Corrine Brown has given Amtrak $1 million in free federal money to “study” the reinstatement of the route, Amtrak has come up with a scenario which breaks a once promising transcontinental route into three different trains, all at the inconvenience of Amtrak’s passengers.

2) All of this brings us to Amtrak’s April 23rd initial presentation to the Southern High-Speed Rail Commission meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. This coalition of the three states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama has a long history of promoting efficient and effective rail services along the Gulf Coast.

The bottom line on Amtrak’s presentation for restoration of service to the Sunset Limited route east of New Orleans was one of three proposals would likely be chosen.

The first proposal is a complete restoration of Sunset Limited service as it was previously, with an endpoint of Orlando, as before Hurricane Katrina. It should be noted – again – that 46% of the Sunset’s total route revenues originated on the route east of New Orleans, a concept which seems to constantly escape the numbers crunchers at Amtrak.

The second proposal is one long advocated by United Rail Passenger Alliance of the route of the daily City of New Orleans being extended eastward to Orlando over the previous Sunset route.

The third proposal, which is probably the most likely, is a new daily train on an overnight schedule, based either in New Orleans or Sanford (Orlando) running the Sunset’s east-end route, with connections to the new train to the west of New Orleans, replacing the Sunset to San Antonio.

In its presentation, Amtrak did its usual huffing and puffing about a shortage of equipment (Self-inflicted, by choice, if they were honest with themselves.), and, oddly, about a lack of funding to run this train. Since funding wasn’t a problem prior to Hurricane Katrina, one can’t help but wonder why funding is a problem now, since this is a national system train, and not a state-sponsored corridor train.

Let’s veer to the left here for a moment. If Amtrak is allowed to get away with taking a long distance route and chop it into pieces, and then tell certain states that restoration of service will only come with the proffering of state or regional monies, then no route – NOT A SINGLE ONE – in the Amtrak system is safe from this type of blackmail shenanigans. Amtrak could just as easily take the California Zephyr, and declare the route between Chicago and Denver to be a new corridor, and the company not be willing to operate the Zephyr unless Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois pony up big bucks. Since Illinois already pays twice for Amtrak service (Once through the federal dollars which flow to Amtrak, and the second time for trains within Illinois Amtrak says it won’t run without state funds.), what’s to keep ambitious managers at Amtrak seeking more from these current donors?

But, back to the Sunset route east of New Orleans. Any of the three solutions outlined above are acceptable, as long as the actual restoration of the Sunset be done on a daily basis, and not return as tri-weekly service.

In its presentation, Amtrak said a dependable train between New Orleans and Orlando would generate somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 passengers a year, an increase over the final year numbers from Amtrak of 16,000 to 17,000 passengers a year based on the many months of train annulments and outright cancellations Amtrak did to the Sunset due to an isolated period of CSX track work and upgrades before Katrina.

Taking Amtrak at its word, at 17,000 passengers a year, and 312 departures a year (If none of the annulments had taken place.), that means an average of only 54 riders per departure were on the train.

That number can’t be correct. Year round, Orlando always had heavy boardings, as did Jacksonville. Tallahassee and Pensacola usually had pretty good business, too, and more than a smattering of passengers called Mobile their station stop. What happened here? Most likely, whoever crunched the numbers at Amtrak didn’t pull the counts correctly. It’s impossible to think that train ran empty through all of the major metropolitan areas it served, especially Orlando, one of the world’s busiest vacation destinations. However, Amtrak may have been using one of its old hocus-pocus tricks when pulling this number, by just using local boardings for points between New Orleans and Orlando.

Years ago in the 1980s when URPA fought and won the war to extend the Palmetto from Savannah, Georgia to Jacksonville, Florida, when Amtrak managers presented data to the Board of Directors, they presented data which showed local business only between Savannah and Jacksonville, a short distance of only 148 miles. The Amtrak planning department never took into account how many passengers in Jacksonville (Which turned out to be a substantial amount.) would board a northbound Palmetto and travel beyond Savannah to all of the other cities along the route, including those cities in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The only figures the Amtrak planning department pulled were for Savannah-Jacksonville business.

It’s likely this same scenario has happened with the Sunset numbers east of New Orleans, where we know 46% of the pre-Katrina Sunset’s revenues originated east of New Orleans. Passengers boarding in Orlando, Palatka, Jacksonville, Lake City, Tallahassee and elsewhere to the west are just as likely to travel to Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Tucson, Maricopa, Yuma and Los Angeles as they are to Pascagoula, Biloxi, Bay St. Louis, and New Orleans.

Again, we drift into the discussion of intellectual honesty when discussing Amtrak, even when discussing internal numbers crunching and internal communications, and who has what agenda.

The new 50,000 to 100,000 projected figures are probably a bit low, as any figures in a service estimate should be. Based on 100,000 passengers per year, and 730 departures, that puts an average of only 137 passengers per train, on a route which is just over 600 miles in length, which includes Orlando, Jacksonville, Florida’s capital of Tallahassee, Pensacola, Mobile, and all of the other Gulf Coast cities between Mobile and New Orleans. It isn’t unreasonable to say Amtrak’s passenger count estimate is low by as much as 50%, but, again, for estimating purposes, it’s good to have a low count of revenues.

Much of the Sunset’s transcontinental on-time performance factors in the past were due to the Union Pacific Railroad’s problems integrating the Southern Pacific into its larger UP system. It was not unusual for the Sunset to register the lowest on-time performance measurements in the Amtrak system. Today, that has much improved, with the Sunset’s on-time factor somewhat equivalent with most other long distance trains.

Running a single train across an entire continent does present its own special set of problems and challenges. Enormous and expensive pad time in the Sunset’s schedule partially solves that problem, including, when it ran all the way to Orlando, at least three to four hours layover time in New Orleans, which often wasn’t enough.

In an ideal world, the City of New Orleans would be extended to Orlando as the overnight train, offering connections from an eastbound train from San Antonio, but a separate, daylight train would also run between New Orleans and Jacksonville. The increased travel choices through two frequencies generally push ridership numbers through the roof, even with just a second frequency.

So, it’s possible the Sunset will be butchered into three separate trains. It would be nice to know Sunset cars would be carried on the Texas Eagle (including sleepers) and transferred in San Antonio to the New Orleans bound train. At least that would provide through-passengers with the convenience and courtesy of same-car service, and would also preserve the Sunset Limited name. A single change in New Orleans is not the end of the world, as long as legal connections can be made and enforced. Even in the early days of the Sunset’s coast to coast service, splitting the train in New Orleans, offering a “fresh and clean” on-time train between New Orleans and Orlando was discussed and considered an option. It’s tough to explain to someone in Atmore, Alabama their train was delayed by multiple hours because of a grade crossing accident in Yuma, Arizona, about 2,000 miles away.

3) Let’s take a moment and study what could happen east of New Orleans if the present City of New Orleans was extended to Orlando (Or, even better, to Tampa, which sits in the middle of a four million resident metropolitan area on Florida’s West Coast, just 99 route miles beyond the Orlando Amtrak station, and has a complete, but unloved and unused maintenance base.).

Today’s City of New Orleans operates between New Orleans and Chicago via Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; Carbondale, Illinois and various other cities and towns.

Southbound, the City leaves Chicago at 8:00 P.M., arrives in Memphis at 6:27 A.M., and pulls into New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal on Loyola Avenue at 3:32 P.M.

Northbound, the City leaves New Orleans at 1:45 P.M., arrives in Memphis at 10:00 P.M., and arrives at Chicago Union Station at 9:00 A.M., at the end of rush hour.

The City trainset lays over in New Orleans for over 21 hours each day and night before it heads north, again. There is an 11 hour turn time in Chicago.

Okay, let’s be creative and get away from Amtrak’s habit of only running routes in a straight line, and loathing to split trains into sections (Even as it successfully does each day in Spokane, Washington for the two sections of the Empire Builder.).

Remember, the matrix theory, where more trains to more places with more city pairs dramatically improves travel choices and ridership and revenue passenger miles.

During the 1979 murder of much of Amtrak’s long distance system by Democrat Jimmy Carter’s administration, Amtrak lost its only Chicago to Florida service, the Floridian. Now, there is an opportunity to not only restore a much-agitated-for Chicago to Florida same train service, but improve on the concept, too.

Understand the Auto Train maintenance facility in the Orlando suburb of Sanford is one of Amtrak’s best maintenance facilities. The work done there is consistently superb. When the Sunset had its maintenance performed there instead of Los Angeles, equipment reliability jumped substantially, as well as passenger satisfaction because the train was cleaner and everything worked.

So, move the maintenance of the City of New Orleans to Sanford/Orlando. Since you won’t need to rely on maintenance in Chicago, do something dramatic on that end of the route, and extend the City’s route to either Minneapolis/St. Paul to the west, or Detroit to the east. Either of these logical extensions make sense because a second, full service train is being added to the busy Minneapolis/St. Paul to Chicago market, or Detroit for the first time in years will have a full service train (And, there is already a maintenance base in Detroit, too.) with direct connections to the lower Midwest and Florida. It’s an eight hour run from Chicago to Minneapolis, and about an eight hour run between Chicago and the Detroit maintenance base, too. In other words, the existing Chicago-New Orleans schedule of the City could easily be maintained with either of these extensions.

But, you wail, Amtrak would need more sets of equipment to make either of these changes. Yes, it would. And, there is adequate equipment available, sitting around in the wreck line weeds which could be restored and put back into high revenue service instead of deteriorating on some unloved siding. At some point someone has to make a visionary choice and say either the highly valuable equipment sitting on the wreck line is worth something, or Amtrak is not interested in running long distance trains, and the equipment should be sold to some Third World country which has better service than the United States has today.

Okay, so we’ve extended the north end of the City to other logical endpoints. What else can we accomplish getting this train to Florida?

Easy. We can restore the River Cities between Kansas City, St. Louis, Centralia, Memphis, and New Orleans. When Amtrak went through its second massacre of routes under Democrat President Bill Clinton, this piggyback train which operated as part of the City of New Orleans from New Orleans to Centralia, Illinois and then split into a separate section, provided the two major metropolitan areas of Kansas City and St. Louis with a direct connection to New Orleans.

If this service is restored, then a passenger in Kansas City or St. Louis will be able to board a train and stay in the same seat or accommodation all the way to Orlando, Florida via Memphis and New Orleans. Again, the power of the matrix theory with enhanced city pairs and many more travel opportunities comes into play, creating a powerhouse of a train.

Think of this, all on the same train:

From the Minneapolis/St. Paul side of the equation (substitute Detroit if you like),
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
Red Wing, Minnesota
Winona, Minnesota
La Crosse, Wisconsin
Tomah, Wisconsin
Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin
Portage, Wisconsin
Columbus, Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Glenview, Illinois
Chicago, Illinois
Homewood, Illinois
Kankakee, Illinois
Gilman, Illinois
Rantoul, Illinois
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois
Mattoon, Illinois
Effingham, Illinois
Centralia, Illinois
Kansas City, Missouri
Independence, Missouri
Lee’s Summit, Missouri
Warrensburg, Missouri
Sedalia, Missouri
Jefferson City, Missouri
Hermann, Missouri
Washington, Missouri
Kirkwood, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
Belleville, Illinois
Du Quoin, Illinois
Carbondale, Illinois
Fulton, Kentucky
Newbern-Dyersburg, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
Greenwood, Mississippi
Yazoo City, Mississippi
Jackson, Mississippi
Hazelhurst, Mississippi
Brookhaven, Mississippi
McComb, Mississippi
Hammond, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Gulfport, Mississippi
Biloxi, Mississippi
Pascagoula, Mississippi
Mobile, Alabama
Atmore, Alabama
Pensacola, Florida
Crestview, Florida
Chipley, Florida
Tallahassee, Florida
Madison, Florida
Lake City, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Palatka, Florida
DeLand, Florida
Winter Park, Florida
Orlando, Florida

What a powerhouse. Here’s a single train departing Florida, with a section to Kansas City and a section to Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul (Or, Detroit.), providing 60 terminals and intermediate stations, with a total city pair possibility of 1,770 city pair combinations JUST FOR ONE SINGLE TRAIN ROUTE. When you add the additional hubbing/matrix opportunities for this proposed route in Orlando, Jacksonville, New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, and Minneapolis/St. Paul, that number explodes into more thousands of combinations because over a dozen other major Amtrak routes suddenly become connected to this one impressive train. If you calculated every city pair in Amtrak’s entire system (Even those which are impractical, such as Dallas-New Orleans.), you have 129,795 city pairs. That is the power of the matrix theory, and that is what can help make Amtrak much more of a player in Advanced Passenger Rail, as a springboard to a high speed passenger rail system all over the country.

Here’s hoping Amtrak looks at ALL of the options, and first makes decisions that are best for its passengers and customers (The people who pay the bills and make the company possible.) before it makes decisions based on the comfort and convenience of the operating and maintenance departments.

And, keep in mind when Amtrak WANTS to do something, it can always miraculously find the equipment to do so. Those stimulus dollars which have floated into Amtrak are not the last dollars it’s going to receive from the federal treasury. If Amtrak is serious about restoration of service, it will somehow find the money to put a couple of trainsets back together, and get operating funding again for a train which has never been officially discontinued.

This is one of those moments when the Amtrak Board of Directors needs to step up and closely examine all possibilities, not just blindly accept what is presented to them by staff which may have an agenda that is separate from that of the board.

4) On the subject of Advanced Passenger Rail, William Lindley of Scottsdale, Arizona has some thoughts on the subject.

[Begin quote]

By William Lindley

Amtrak is the glue that is to bind the growing local rail networks, and it can have a definite role in what Andrew Selden has named Advanced Passenger Rail. Here's how ...

A prerequisite to APR is a national commitment to opening at least one new passenger railcar factory in the United States. Today, all railcars including commuter, light rail and subway cars, are imported from already overburdened foreign plants. Part of rebuilding America will be reigniting our dormant skills in manufacturing, and if passenger trains are part of our future we will be needing many more of them. There must be significant sources of new equipment, and even if an American plant says "Bombardier," "Siemens," or "Kawasaki" it's a step in the right
direction.

As the single physical roadblock to new trains – namely, manufacturing – is removed, Amtrak can go to the states and make offers. In its history, Amtrak has rarely sought expansion; it has nearly always been the states asking for new trains, or Amtrak making demands and threatening to cut service. Instead, let Amtrak now devise a plan to fulfill its charter of tying together America's existing and emerging regional systems, connecting Los Angeles Metrolink to proposed commuter lines in Phoenix and Houston; connecting Dallas's Trinity commuter trains to Chicago's; and likewise across the country.

Specifically, Amtrak's charter is:

"Amtrak shall operate a national rail passenger transportation system which ties together existing and emergent regional rail passenger service and other intermodal passenger service."

– Title 49, Chapter 247 Section 24701 (http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/49C247.txt )

There has been no better time, with new light rail systems in places like Phoenix and Houston bursting with new riders, many of whom never set foot on a bus but have now discovered that, to quote Amtrak's old slogan, “There's something about a train that's magic.”

Cities are looking to expand their rail systems but budgets are short. Commuter rail and regional rail deliver more "bang for the buck" than light rail projects do; in Phoenix, a few hundred millions are slated for several five-mile extensions, but similar money could run trains sixty miles northwest to Wickenburg, thirty miles west to Buckeye, maybe even a hundred miles southeast to Tucson. In Arizona, both BNSF and Union Pacific railroads are at the table with the state, counties and cities on passenger rail projects. Arizona DOT and the associations of governments are careful to point out that the railroads are private businesses, and that any agreement must make business sense to them. But experience from Los Angeles to Denver and beyond proves fair agreements can be reached ... agreements that expand freight capacity and bolster safety while providing space for passenger trains. The recent Arizona pattern is being repeated in nearly every major American city.

With new equipment, and with new determination to forge relationships with the railroads, and with regional rail projects looking like better bargains than subways and new highways, there is little in the way of nationwide passenger rail expansion.

Amtrak's challenge is to develop an Advanced Passenger Rail-style proposal to connect these existing and new commuter and transit lines together – first regionally and then nationally. This lays the base for high speed rail in five to ten years, but more importantly it's how in two or three years we can get our people, and our economy, moving sooner rather than later.

[End quote]


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J. Bruce Richardson
President
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203
Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739
brucerichardson@unitedrail.org
http://www.unitedrail.org

This Week at Amtrak; April 21, 2009

This Week at Amtrak; April 21, 2009


A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America’s foremost passenger rail policy institute

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail info@unitedrail.org • http://www.unitedrail.org



Volume 6, Number 11

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy institute that focuses on solutions and plans for passenger rail systems in North America. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, URPA has professional associates in Minnesota, California, Arizona, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Texas, and New York. For more detailed information, along with a variety of position papers and other documents, visit the URPA web site at http://www.unitedrail.org.


URPA is not a membership organization, and does not accept funding from any outside sources.



1) America finally has a surface transportation plan – sort of. The Obama Administration has, to great fanfare, placed a renewed emphasis on high speed rail as our next capital system of transportation. No one seems to have an exact definition of high speed rail for this plan, but it’s useful to say all of the proposed routes reach a traveling speed of at least 110 miles per hour over some portion of the route.

The foamers are foaming at the mouth over this, and they are so collectively excited, they can’t stand to wait for all of this to happen. Towns and cities large and small are trying to get into the high speed rail business, with great speculation as to what high speed rail can do for the future of their denizens. One can imagine that if newspapers of the day were archived when the first transcontinental lines were built just after the Late War of Northern Aggression in the 19th Century, the same type of speculation was made then as today about what the railroad would do for local commerce and local development. Hopefully, the railroad rascals and robber barons of that day haven’t become the railroad CEOs of today.

We’ve read what visionaries like Gil Carmichael and Andrew Selden have to say about the future of passenger rail in this country. And, we’re seeing what other voices have to say, too. The informed voices are making interesting projections and floating viable ideas; the uninformed, as usual, are using up valuable oxygen and wasting our time with hyperbole.

2) It is time to step back half a step and look at the big picture. We’ve seen the designation of 10 allegedly viable high speed corridors in the United States, some just a couple of hundred miles long, others multiple hundreds of miles long.

As we proceed to designate spending this year for the first corridors, what are we doing to design a full system? When the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System was designed and building began, it was pretty much a complete map; certainly much more than today’s few high speed rail corridors.

We know connectivity is critical for the success of any rail corridor, and, at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be much connectivity in the initial design. “Disjointed” perhaps is the best description of the first parts of the system.

And, we know these new high speed lines are going to be considered almost exclusively for passenger trains, so they will cause a financial double whammy. First, the higher the track speed, the more expensive it is to maintain that track. Speed can kill, and it really can kill when you combine high speed trains on low speed track. Second, today’s tracks outside of Amtrak’s expensive to maintain Northeast Corridor share the right of way with pesky, money-making, keep-America-moving freight trains. In most instances, the argument is made the tracks are maintained for the heavy pounding of freight trains, and only maintained at incrementally higher costs for passenger train speeds. Thus, outside of the NEC, no passenger train is burdened with the full cost of track maintenance, since tracks are shared with freight trains.

The new, nearly-exclusive high speed train tracks will have ALL of the maintenance costs charged to the high speed trains, which will make the high speed trains less financially viable.

3) Amtrak for years has falsely claimed Acela service on the NEC makes a profit. Amtrak accomplishes this through financial hocus-pocus (which sounds so much better than to simply say they are lying) and the payment of routine maintenance costs from capital budgets instead of operating budgets, or, simply just ignoring maintenance and chalking it all up to deferred maintenance, and claiming Acela service is profitable. The reality is, of course, Acela is never charged with all of the costs of operating the service because of the financial hocus-pocus.

So, who is going to operate these nifty new high speed trains? The French, since they are not busy surrendering at the moment to anyone, have generously offered to come run the trains, but it’s unlikely Amtrak is going to take kindly to that suggestion.

If Amtrak is the operator of the high speed trains, will it continue its current shabby and probably illicit accounting practices and use the same methods to keep track of high speed profits and losses it does on the NEC? Or, will somebody – anybody – seize the initiative and declare high speed rail to be free of funny accounting and demand everything be done right from the first moment?

4) And, let’s talk more in-depth about the issues of connectivity and feeder systems to the proposed new high speed rail trains.

Everyone wants to point to Europe as the example to follow. (Which, by the way, should you, too, choose to point to Europe, please take note of the Dutch, German, and other passenger rail systems in Europe which do make money, commonly called “profit.” Amtrak and its sycophant organizations such as the National Association of Railroad Passengers seem to love to tell the lie that no passenger systems in the world make money, which we know not to be true. Even the Japanese passenger rail systems turn a profit.)

One of the reasons European trains make money is connectivity; you CAN get there from here. Unlike Amtrak’s skeletal system, with current glaring holes like the missing Sunset Limited east of New Orleans to Florida, and the fact in Florida you can’t get to Atlanta, the commercial capital of the Southeast by passenger train, in Europe everywhere is connected to everywhere else by either conventional passenger rail, fast passenger rail, or high speed passenger rail. Frequencies are frequent (hence, the term), levels of service are designed to match market demand, and competition abounds, providing incentive to do well and provide good passenger service.

In Europe, you can go almost anywhere on a train. In America, there are many more small, medium, and large cities and towns that Amtrak doesn’t serve than it serves. Amtrak brags it serves just over 500 destinations in 46 states, with 21,000 route miles of service. Hmmm ... let’s see, 46 states, round up to 510 destinations, that averages 11.08 station stops per state. But, wait! In Florida alone, Amtrak serves 23 stations (including Amtrak Thruway bus service), so that means some states have less than the average of 11.08 stations. The Commonwealth of Virginia has 40 cities and towns, but Amtrak only serves 14 of those, including Amtrak Thruway bus service.

Should we return do the days of the 1956 Official Railway Guide where every small town and hamlet had passenger train service? Certainly, not. But, for Amtrak to be successful, and the next generation of high speed trains to be successful, then more than a mere 500 cities and towns must have passenger train service.

5) Where does/where should Amtrak figure into the development of high speed rail? The automatic answer is it should figure prominently. The realistic answer is, Amtrak, after being the monopoly passenger rail carrier in the United States since 1971, for nearly 40 years, still has not proven it is worthy of the tax dollars which are poured into it year after year.

This brings us to “the vision thing” as the first President George H.W. Bush used to say at the end of the 1980s.

As it stands today, Amtrak and its management lack vision. Amtrak may corporately lust after the pot of money which is being thrown at the development of high speed rail, but it really has not proven itself worthy of the privilege of directing the spending of that money.

Here is what Andrew Selden has to say as a vision for the immediate and long-term future of Amtrak.

[Begin quote]

A. Amtrak must become relevant.

Its contribution to national mobility today does not justify its cost. The national network is too small – it goes to too few places and interconnects too few city pairs (e.g., it doesn't go to Las Vegas, Nevada or Columbus, Ohio, and one cannot get from Dallas to Denver or Dallas to Orlando). Even in what its own supporters characterize as its strongest market, the Northeast Corridor, its market share of intercity trips is less than 1%, at a public cost of about three-quarters of a billion dollars a year. Even in the NEC, a complete shut-down would be all but imperceptible as all of its customers (except in the New York-Philadelphia sub-market) could be easily absorbed into existing road and airway capacity.

B. Amtrak must grow.

No business, or social service, succeeds by stagnating. Amtrak's share of the national intercity travel business has shrunk steadily for three decades. Its carrying capacity has shrunk steadily for two decades. The newest Superliner rail car is more than 10 years old and the average age of the intercity fleet is far older than the cars Amtrak inherited from the private railroads in 1971. At the same time, Boeing builds a new 737 airliner every day, and Airbus builds a new A320 every day. Southwest Airlines adds a dozen or more new aircraft to its fleet every year. Amtrak could not absorb real growth if it were to occur, except in regional corridor markets where even a doubling of transactions would not raise it to a 2% market share.

C. Amtrak must change its vision.

Amtrak views itself as a social service, like a transit agency or a sewer authority, and thus as a ward of government. It measures its performance by the metrics of a public agency, in simple transaction volume. The only function at which it truly excels is extracting money from public sector sponsors. This vision condemns Amtrak to always being irrelevant to the needs of the traveling public. Amtrak must adopt a vision of sustained growth, relevance and minimized dependence upon public agency financing in favor of dependency upon customer selection, of mode and route. Amtrak must position its services and its operational network such that it can become the mode of consumer preference for most intercity travel.

D. Amtrak needs a new business model.

Amtrak has pursued the same business model for its entire history, one based upon the supply-driven model of point-to-point short corridors between urban city-pairs, based on the High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1966. That model has produced the current state of Amtrak: irrelevancy to the traveling public and financial catastrophe. The model causes the results, the results do not occur despite the model. The new business model must be based on consumer demand, in applications that can be financially remunerative. The new model must focus on the metrics of output, not merely transaction volume, and growth, market share, and maximal return (in output and revenue) on invested capital. The model must create volume and efficiencies of scale on a national basis, by developing a true national network of regional and interregional routes that allow use of rail for most intercity travel demand, and inherently grow with demand and population growth. Capacity must be re-allocated to match consumer demand, and must grow to anticipate and accommodate growth in demand.

[End quote]

6) It’s going to take a while before the first shovel of dirt is turned to build any new high speed rail systems, even those systems with studies completed and the permitting process underway. What do we do in the interim?

We must unleash the pent-up power of Amtrak and let it take its natural course to prosperity through expansion and growth. Stop all of this silliness of whether or not Gulf Coast cities and towns east of New Orleans deserve or can support the reinstatement of the Sunset Limited from New Orleans to Florida. Yes, those cities can. Nashville, too, can support passenger rail, as could Louisville, Kentucky if it was properly configured and based on passenger needs, not commodity needs. Amtrak’s present skeletal system has done yeoman’s work as a placeholder, but those days need to be over. Amtrak and its host railroads must devise a plan – right now – that will provide for growth and connectivity and a financial infrastructure through connectivity and a proper domestic transportation matrix to support coming high speed rail and make it viable from the first day.

To allow Amtrak to remain as it is, without first improving it, and jump directly to high speed rail is like putting a race car on a bicycle path.

High speed rail may be visionary, it may be exciting and glamorous, and it may be the wave of the future. But, if the proper connectivity infrastructure is not in place when high speed rail becomes a reality, then it will fail, and be even a worse stepchild of government than Amtrak is today.

Andrew Selden has dubbed a new concept in America – advanced passenger rail. APR will ensure the success of high speed rail, and can be accomplished in less than three years.

This first step towards high speed rail can be done cheaply (as opposed to what is being spent on high speed rail) and efficiently. Things like ordering new passenger cars for existing trains, making station and parking improvements to make Amtrak more user friendly, and making relatively inexpensive upgrades to today’s railroad infrastructure to allow initial 90 miles per hour running where feasible, along with eliminating railroad choke points like junctions and bridges, and adding double track where viable.

An important aspect is these are all things which can be done with existing technology and plans, without requiring any costly and time consuming environmental politics, and mostly without land acquisitions (with a few exceptions at a few stations). These are things which can be begun TODAY with almost immediate MEASURABLE results and gauged RETURN ON INVESTMENT. These are the steps which pave the way for successful high speed rail. These are the steps that cost relatively little to do, thus building a new popularity for passenger rail which will result in less spending by the federal treasury later to build a popularity for high speed passenger rail.

7) Now is not the time for the faint of heart. Now is the time for the bold and resourceful to stand up and demand things be done right, in the proper order, and by those who have a vision to understand the process. Now is not the time to waste valuable federal dollars in the beginning on a project that may flounder. Embrace advanced passenger rail as the first logical step towards high speed rail. Finish the job with Amtrak and create a viable, functioning organization which can meet the demands of the future without relying on political patronage and money from others that only comes after months of haggling and begging.

This time, do it right.



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J. Bruce Richardson
President
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203
Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739
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This Week at Amtrak; April 13, 2009

This Week at Amtrak; April 13, 2009


A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America’s foremost passenger rail policy institute

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail info@unitedrail.org • http://www.unitedrail.org



Volume 6, Number 10

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy institute that focuses on solutions and plans for passenger rail systems in North America. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, URPA has professional associates in Minnesota, California, Arizona, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Texas, and New York. For more detailed information, along with a variety of position papers and other documents, visit the URPA web site at http://www.unitedrail.org.


URPA is not a membership organization, and does not accept funding from any outside sources.



1) A strong case can be made that often there is not a lot of intellectual honesty when it comes to discussing passenger rail in the United States.

Different groups have staked out different positions, and they are sticking to those positions, no matter what happens to prove those positions are incorrect. Often, the positions make no sense either ideologically or realistically, but are good for membership drives, which accomplishes very little other than to fatten organization coffers.

Such examples are “there are no passenger rail systems in the world which make money,” and “all Amtrak needs is more money and everything will be fine.” Both statements, of course, are completely wrong.

The real head-scratcher is how the concept/ideology/operation of passenger rail passed from being the province of the very conservative world of the railroad industry to the socialist and liberal world of no one other than a government has the ability to operate passenger rail. Therefore, this unsavory theory goes, passenger rail should be treated exactly as roads and highways are treated, and funded accordingly, without an honest attempt for passenger rail to be as self-sustaining as possible, with government contributions only after other resources are exhausted, not the other way around.

2) Respected passenger railroad historian David Carleton has provided this very brief outline of recent passenger rail history [Note: a TWA guest columnist is working on a longer and more intricately detailed history of Amtrak, which we hope to bring to you sometime soon.]

[Begin quote]

By David Carleton

In 1956 the Republican Eisenhower administration approved the Interstate Highway program. It was going to have serious implications for the passenger train, but Congress and the administration did nothing to alleviate it.

In 1967 the Democratic Johnson administration directed the Postal Service to remove all remaining Railway Post Office cars from passenger trains. Since this was the one remaining piece of passenger train business which was consistently profitable, the implications for passenger train service were dire. Still, the administration and the Congress did nothing to relieve it.

Then, in 1970 the Congress passed – and Republican President Nixon signed – the bill creating the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (NRPC), commonly known as Amtrak. In light of the previous inaction this would appear to be a dramatic turnabout. What events facilitated it? Here are three:

A) At the end of 1969 the venerable Pullman Company ceased operations and in 1970 was liquidated. Evidence of the impending demise of the Pullman Company became apparent in official Washington when it was necessary to assemble a funeral train to transport the remains of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The large fleets of stand-by Pullman cars which had once been called upon to assemble campaign trains for candidates such as Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower were no longer available and the railroads had to scramble to assemble a suitable train.

B) In 1970 the Western Pacific Railroad succeeded in winning a train-off case to stop running its segment of the California Zephyr, effectively killing the train. This was America’s train, the train of the movies, the quintessential post-war streamliner. Its discontinuance had symbolic meaning larger than the train itself.

C) The bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad threatened the stability of the entire railroad industry. The Penn Central was the largest passenger carrier, and that became an issue – not because of all the passenger train mileage that was being imperiled, but rather because of the size of the passenger train losses which showed up in the railroad’s reports to the Interstate Commerce Commission. If these reports were accurate, then these losses accounted for about ten percent of the railroad’s loss, but they were the most obvious item. Then, too, the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project (NECIP) was just then beginning to bear some results with new Metroliner trains moving swiftly over recently resurfaced Penn Central tracks.

It is important to understand what happened to crystallize the thinking of both Congress and the Nixon administration when the decision was made to form the NRPC, because their reaction to those events continue to shape the national passenger train enterprise till this day.

First of all – The NRPC was to stand in the place of the Pullman Company and manage a fleet of cars that could be deployed as needed.

Second – The ICC and the railroads would be relieved of the complications of train-off litigation. That’s not to say that no more trains would be cut, in fact on Day One of Amtrak, half of all remaining private passenger rail service (Except for the services which opted not to join Amtrak, including the Southern Railroad and the Denver and Rio Grande Western.) was eliminated by the creation of Amtrak under rules governing what were – and were not – viable routes. But, the railroads and the ICC were no longer part of the process, from then on if the public was dissatisfied with changes to their service they would have to take their complaints elsewhere.

And, third – The NRPC (Amtrak) was to save the NECIP and the Metroliners from the bankruptcy of Penn Central. It is interesting to note Amtrak service has typically been meager throughout most of its system, even on the former Penn Central, with the exception of the Northeast Corridor.

In carrying out the above, the NRPC was formed and contracts were made with the various railroads. The contracts called for these railroads to operate certain designated trains “for” the NRPC, and also allowed the railroads to eliminate most of the rest. All the personnel, stations, etc. were to be provided by the railroads per the contract. The better railroads even continued to print timetables for “their” trains and distribute these to “their” stations. After a year even this began to fade away. What happened?

The NRPC acquired an upper management which proceeded to form it into a strong bureaucracy. They replaced the designation NRPC, which stood for something, with Amtrak, a word they made up. And, then they went to work building and reinforcing the Amtrak we know today – perfectly equipped to stand against the travails of 1969/70!

[End quote]

3) Next, we visit a most interesting and thought-provoking white paper by J. William Vigrass. Through the years This Week at Amtrak has been published, we have been honored to publish the writing and speeches of former FRA Administrator Gil Carmichael, who, along with Andrew Selden, are the two greatest passenger rail visionaries in the United States today. Long-time railroad and transportation specialist William Vigrass has shared his thoughts of a vision similar to that of Mr. Carmichael and his Interstate II concept for the future of American railroading.

Mr. Vigrass completed 56 years on the transportation industry, including service with Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy; Hill International, Inc.; Port Authority Transit Corporation, Lindenwold, New Jersey; Battelle Memorial Institute, the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and the Erie Railroad Company. Mr. Vigrass is the past chairman of the Committee on Rail Transit A1E04 of the Transportation Research Board.

Mr. Vigrass has an extensive background in both passenger and freight railroad operations and planning. The following paper was first presented in 2007 at the height of freight congestion in our country. While today many of the problems cited have abated simply because of a slackened economy, as the national and world economy start to improve, these problems will once again be all too prevalent.

[Begin quote]

A proposed National System of Interstate and Defense RAILROADS, as an infrastructure project for the next fifty years

By J. William Vigrass, Member, Blue Ribbon Panel of Experts
Project Manager (retired) Hill International, Inc., Marlton, NJ 08053.

To the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, USDOT Bldg., L’Enfant Plaza, 400 7th St. N.W. Conference Room 4200, Washington, DC, 20590, Tuesday, 10:00am February 6th, 2007.

Background: The scope of the Commission’s mandate is to provide policy direction for infrastructure for the next fifty years. This paper will expand upon the thoughts set forth in my December 7th, 2006 paper and will be confined to the railroad mode because all other modes have numerous advocates for government investment in highways, waterways and airways, all of which are owned by the public sector. All are used by private sector operators which have not invested any of their own capital in the infrastructure provided by government. They pay fuel and other taxes as operating expenses, and said taxes cover but a portion of the government’s investment and maintenance costs. Only the railroad infrastructure is privately owned, maintained and financed. Even though railroad property is devoted entirely to the public interest, the owning companies nonetheless pay real estate taxes on their properties. In urban areas these taxes can be substantial. Railroad freight rates must cover all operating, maintenance and ownership costs, something that competing modes have never had to do.

When railroad companies invest in improvements to their physical plant with internally generated funds, they must be assured of an internal rate of return equal to or better than the cost of borrowing money in the private market. In contrast, when the Corps of Engineers makes improvements to the inland waterways system, the barge operators do not put up any investment dollars. When the FHWA and state DOT’s improve highways, the trucking industry does not have to directly contribute to the investment. This unbalanced situation has led to under-investment in railroad plant with consequent congestion is many locations. Railroads presently have great difficulty adding new train services and have made it clear they are unable or unwilling to add timetable slots for additional passenger train services unless the public sector makes capacity available.

At the same time, an expanding economy has put pressure on freight railroads to add more service and some new services such as long distance run-through trains. The nation’s highways are congested in many places, and the expanding economy has added to the pressure for widening existing Interstates and building new Interstates where they do not now exist. Tests done under the auspices of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) have proven highway damage is geometrically related to heavy loads. There is good reason to divert heavy loads off highways onto railroads since the latter are engineered to handle heavy loads. With several good reasons to add more railroad service, why has not more been done? The answer is, very simply, the railroads cannot afford to make the necessary investments. Their margin of profit is held down by truck competition for the most part. Common carrier truck rates are held down by the ubiquitous owner-driver who often works for bare wages, fuel, a contribution to maintenance and little or nothing for depreciation.

The trucking industry is using an Interstate and Defense Highway System designed and built since 1956, and incorporating improvements in design from time to time. It is largely an up-to-date highway system. The enormous capital invested in the Interstate and federal aid highway systems has been generated by motor fuel and other motor vehicle related taxes borne by the entire motoring public. Past studies have found trucking does not cover about 30% of costs related to truck operation. This allows the trucking industry to offer rates less than their true economic costs. Every time taxes on trucks or trucking have been increased, the industry has lobbied intensely and successfully for increased length and weight limits which in turn allowed freight rates to remain lower than they otherwise would have been. This has attracted more freight to highways, which in turn caused more wear and tear and congestion.

It is recommended the Congress not approve any more increases in the size or gross weight of motor trucks in interstate commerce.

Trucking uses up to date highways.

Railroads use Nineteenth Century Alignments. In contrast, nearly all the US railroad network was designed and built in the 19th Century. Grading was done by manpower, horses and scrapers. Heavy excavation was done by manual drilling (sledgehammers on the drill someone was holding) and black powder. Such engineering achievements as the Horseshoe Curve, Tehachapi Loop, the Central Pacific (UP) over Donner Pass were all great achievements of that era, but they are circuitous compared to competing Interstate highways. No matter how fast railroad freight trains may run, they must go further than a truck in most cases. Curvature imposes permanent speed restrictions. Histories of those early projects often include drawings of proposed realignments that could not be carried out by the privately owned railroads. Major tunnels had been proposed, but not built. Many sharp curves remain although realignments had been planned.

Meanwhile in Europe, at this time, many kilometers of new high speed railways have been – and are being – built. Several Base Tunnels are being built for railway use under the Alps and other mountainous barriers. These are:

– Lötschberg base tunnel – portals at Frutigen (Canton of Bern) and Raron (Canton of Valais) in Switzerland. 34.6 km (21.6 miles) in length. Scheduled to open this year (portions will be single track).

– Gotthard base tunnel – portals at Erstfeld (Canton of Uri) and Biasca (Canton of Ticino) 57 km (35.6 miles) in length. Scheduled to open 2015-2017. They are running into geological problems. (This project has been covered on cable television’s The Discovery Channel.)

– Combination bridge/tunnels connecting Sweden to Denmark provide an all rail connection between Scandinavia and Europe.

– In project planning (length not yet established) – Mt. Cenis (France-Italy and Brenner (Innsbruck), Austria and maybe Bolzano/Bozen, Italy

– Proposed tunnel connecting Spain and Morocco under the Straits of Gibraltar has been planned and is going into the engineering phase. This will connect the railway system of North Africa with that of Europe.

– The Channel Tunnel (50 km, 31 miles long) is well known in the US. Less known in the US is the Japanese Seikan tunnel between the main island of Honshu and the north island of Hokkaido. It is longer and deeper than the Channel Tunnel, and passes through far more difficult geology. It has the following statistics:

Seikan Tunnel
Location: Honshu and Hokkaido, Japan
Completion Date: 1988
Cost: $7 billion
Length: 174,240 feet (33 miles)
Setting: Underwater
Materials: Steel, concrete
Engineer(s): Japan Railway Construction Corporation

The US has no railroad tunnels that compare.

In all such cases, the railroads are owned by the public sector and such projects have national and/or European Union support. (Switzerland is not in the EU.) While European railroads offer much more frequent passenger train service than is found in the US, they carry a tiny percentage of freight ton-miles and are far less efficient than American freight railroads. Yet, with the superiority of American freight railroading, the companies cannot justify or afford the huge investment that would be needed to provide a 21st Century alignment. They need help!

The present US railroad system is the most efficient hauler of overland freight in the world in terms of ton-mile costs. It is also the result of drastic downsizing that followed deregulation. The present system is carrying double or triple the number of ton miles that had been carried on a much larger network prior to deregulation. About one third the track miles are carrying two to three times the traffic. While efficient, this leaves little room for growth. It is also difficult for freight railroads to maintain their track when there is only one track on a given alignment. Trains must be delayed or rerouted over circuitous routes to allow track to be taken out of service for maintenance or replacement. This is not desirable, but it is necessary.

One may conclude that the present railroad system consists largely of 19th Century engineering, has greatly reduced track miles and route miles than existed in the 1950’s, yet is carrying twice the traffic. Expanding capacity to be able to handle increased freight traffic as well as increased passenger train traffic appear to be highly desirable national objectives. Excess capacity is desirable to handle an expanding economy as well as peak loads. Private companies cannot invest in excess capacity (unless they have large profit margins, which the railroads do not.) Redundancy is highly desirable to handle dislocations caused by natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or terrorist attacks that have not yet been experienced.

It is a point of historic fact the Prussian State Railways in what is now Germany were built in the 19th Century such that the network consisted of a series of triangles. Two routes were provided between strategic points so that the military would always have an alternative route in case of invasion. The US railroad system was not designed with such strategic objectives in mind. The mainland US was never threatened, but now this is a distinct possibility. The loss of a key bridge or tunnel here or there could cause great havoc to the US economy, as there are now fewer alternative routes than there were in the 1950’s. Some of the alternatives might be restored, or new ones created.

One may conclude the basic US railroad network is a product of 19th Century engineering with no thought to redundancy which may be needed to cope with natural or terrorist activity, or even routine maintenance or reconstruction. It is also circuitous compared to the Interstate Highway System, and thereby not as competitive as it might be. This all indicates it probably is an impediment to economic growth of the US rather than a lubricant for economic growth.

What, then, should be done?

It is proposed to create a National System of Interstate and Defense Railroads which would be multi-tracked, grade separated and suitable for competitive speeds. This would mean 75 mph for freight trains and 110 or 125 mph for passenger trains. A combination of tax credits and direct grants would be needed, since some strategic investments desired for passenger train use might not be needed or wanted by freight railroads. Those improvements would be provided by grants, and such grants would consist of federal and non-federal shares. Multi-track means at least double tracked, and where combined passenger/freight traffic requires, three or even four tracks.

Heavy Haul Routes Needed. This is not to ignore the need for separate heavy haul routes that would be (and are) designed for 25 – 40 mph. It is recognized such routes being capable of handling 15,000 to 25,000 ton coal or other heavy trains are needed. Energy needed increases with the square of the speed, such that it requires four times the energy to move a train at 80 mph as at 40 mph. The railroad companies have been relatively successful in generating internal capital for such investments in heavy haul routes. It is desired to keep such traffic off high speed freight/passenger routes to avoid delays to fast trains. It may be desirable to have separate heavy haul tracks alongside fast freight/passenger tracks where both share the same corridor as exist on portions of the Union Pacific Railroad and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. For purposes of this paper, it will be assumed the railroad companies can continue to fund improvements for heavy haul traffic from their own resources. Exceptional needs might be handled on a case by case application for government aid.

A Program to Create a National System of Interstate and Defense RAILROADS.

A number of steps would be needed to approach, identify and quantify needs. This is not something which can be done by a few papers such as this, in which small numbers of man hours have been committed. A major research and planning effort will be needed. This might be done under the auspices of the Transportation Research Board with funding from USDOT.

Assumptions: Some key assumptions must be made upon which planning would be based. Among them would be the following:

– Population of the US would continue to increase as forecast by the Bureau of the Census. Legal immigration would continue at the same rate.

– The US economy would continue to expand at the same overall rate. Shifts within the economy would be recognized to the extent data become available.

– Petroleum would continue to become scarcer with consequent increases in price. Unusual or anticipated changes in the supply/price would be included to the extent data permit.

– Efforts to control degradation of the environment will increase.

– Population distribution will continue to flow to metropolitan areas.

– Others, as may be developed during initial research.

A Proposed Research Program to Develop a National System of Interstate and Defense Railroads.

Some factors which have come to mind and/or have been suggested by some of my many email friends and correspondents follow. They are in a more or less sequential (chronological) order.

– Identify corridors, and quantify traffic to the extent data permits as to what growth would be expected over the 50 year period under study for the Commission.

– Identify where rights of way for double or multiple track remain. Determine when – and if – restoration would be desirable.

– Identify abandoned rights of way that exist (more or less intact). Determine which ones could be rebuilt for modern use. Rank them in order of probable need. Establish a list of rights of way to be purchased and preserved for future rail use. This use might be freight railroad, intercity and/or commuter passenger railroad or rail transit in urban-suburban areas. Funding for purchase and preservation of such rights of way should be the first item to be implemented under the proposed program. Existing rights of way must be preserved especially in urban areas before they are disposed of to developers or other non-rail use.

– Identify where railroads are essential for defense. It is established that railroads are the most efficient way to move an armored division. There are other areas where railroads have been used effectively.

– Identify new areas where railroads might be useful or critical in combating domestic terrorism.

– Identify areas/places where railroads should be protected from terrorism access. Devise means for such protection.

– Identify corridors suitable for electrification in chronological sequence. Given that petroleum will become more expensive and scarcer, it follows that electrification of major corridors will be in the national interest and will contribute to the railroad system’s efficiency. This may well be a major contribution to reducing our nation’s dependency on petroleum and allow petroleum’s use where there is no alternative, such as for aviation. A major shift of freight and passengers from highway to railroad should be an objective to reduce domestic use of petroleum based fuels. No technological development would be needed. Electric locomotives would be similar to diesel-electric locomotives “under the floor” with similar traction motors. “Above the floor” devices such as transformers, rectifiers and inverters are all within the state of the art. Transmission and distribution systems have been developed in Europe and Japan and could be adapted to American conditions.

– Identify where increased electrical generating capacity would be needed. Whether electrification would be nuclear or coal powered would be decided by research in that area and local policy. It may vary from one place to another in the US. Where convenient to waterpower or coal, those sources would be used. Nuclear power might be used widely provided that certain objections to it can be overcome.

– Determine where by-pass freight routes are desired around urban areas. These are desired for carriage of hazardous materials and as ways around urban railroad congestion. In recent months, carriage of hazardous material through Washington, DC has stirred up opposition by local residents and their political representatives. There are few options other than very circuitous routes that would bring the shipments through other communities which would object.

Input from local planning agencies will be desired, but oversight by a steering committee appears to be desirable and necessary because many planners have not had academic training or experience in evaluating what railroad rights of way might be used for. They might want a hiking trail on what might be a strategic interstate freight corridor.

– A nationwide survey is needed to determine where such by-passes are desired. The survey would include identification of existing abandoned or underused alignments that could be incorporated.

– Costs and benefits from such by-passes should be identified and quantified. They could be strategic redundant routes.

– Create a “Greater Amtrak” route structure and overlay it on a proposed fast freight network. Determine where multiple track would be needed, multiple meaning three or more tracks. It used to exist, and roadbeds remain in most places, primarily New York – Cleveland on the ex-New York Central and New York – Philadelphia – Pittsburgh on the ex-Pennsylvania Railroad. Short segments did exist in other places such as on the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie between Pittsburgh and Youngstown where the heavy industry that was served has disappeared. Some multi-track routes may not be needed to be replaced, but new multi-track may be needed where none existed, such as has occurred for the Powder River Coal Field in Wyoming. Other new needs will occur for multiple track.

The sum of all the above efforts will be a very large research effort. It might be separated by task into contracts, or it might be awarded to an agency that could manage and coordinate the entire effort, subcontracting out tasks. The latter appears desirable because of the huge depth and breadth of scope and need to coordinate tasks.

– Financing of such a National System of Railroads will be a major and continuous undertaking. In the recent past, TRB and USDOT/FHWA have sponsored meetings/seminars/symposia on the subject of innovative financing of transportation projects. There is no need for duplication. Rather, research toward financing the National System of Interstate and Defense Railroads should build upon work already done. This new research effort will be separate from but in parallel with research to define and quantify the proposed system.

Win/Win: A key point to be kept in mind is that financing must be acceptable to all parties to any agreement to improve the national railroad system. With win/win in mind, it is suggested that improvements funded by the public sector be owned by a public entity and leased to the railroads so that the improvements should not be subject real estate taxes.

Some assumptions here may be in order, but they should be confirmed before work begins.

– Whatever is proposed must be acceptable to the freight railroads which own nearly all the national railroad system. It must be a win/win combination that benefits the owning railroads, as well as public sector needs.

– Tax credits as proposed by the Association of American Railroads may well be a primary source of capital funds from the private sector. It is suggested a basic percentage be established for all railroad infrastructure, primarily heavy haul routes, and a somewhat higher percentage be allowed for multi-tracked lines handling passenger trains operated by public entities or on behalf of public entities.

– For very large projects (which would be common) having very long pay off periods, precedent of the Alameda Corridor might be followed. A public entity would be owner, and would issue long term bonds to fund the project. Using railroad(s) would pay a fee (a toll) per car, per ton, per ton-mile or whatever logically fits the project for the use of it. If such fees would not cover interest and amortization, public financing of the balance might be used, covered by a port authority or whatever the owning agency might be assuming it has cash flow from other sources.

– Multi-purpose corridors might be established, especially in urban areas, in which a corridor might include separate freight and passenger railroad tracks along with fiber optic cable, electric power lines (especially if the railroad is or is to be electrified), water or other pipe lines, and perhaps truck-only roads. Fees from all users would be applied to bond issues. If forecast revenues were found insufficient, direct grants from relevant public agencies might be sought. The nature of each project would guide choices of funding. It is likely funding will be project specific, although similar projects might well employ similar funding methods. Innovative, new, financing methods should be an objective of research.

– Legislation at the federal and state levels will be needed to implement the proposed National System of Interstate and Defense Railroads. It would be the objective of a final research task to draft such proposed legislation for review by representative staff of relevant legislative bodies.

The above program is ambitious and will require much investment over a period of years. It need not be done all at once. Much of it is already in place, and needs only improvement. Restoration of double track where rights of way exist could be an early development. Some bottlenecks are already apparent, and are the topic of another panel discussion. Elimination of such bottlenecks would be a natural inclusion in the proposed National System. Identification of defense needs is the subject of still another panel that will be fit into the National System.

Task 0: A preliminary first task will be to estimate the funds and time needed to undertake the research outlined above. A source of such funds must then be identified and found. Some money or services in kind might come from the railroad industry itself, as a key beneficiary and would also give them seats on any steering committee. Much must come from the public sector, most likely USDOT through its FRA, FHWA or other appropriate agency. An independent research organization would manage the effort, and this would logically be the Transportation Research Board which already has much experience in some of the proposed tasks. Tasks would be advertised and awarded to research foundations or consultants in the usual manner. This effort might take up to three years and might cost on the order of $3 to $5 million. Output would be a conceptual engineering type of result defining a National System of Interstate and Defense Railroads and putting tasks in prioritized order for implementation.

A sense of urgency is needed to create a National System that will reduce the nation’s dependence upon imported petroleum for its basic interstate transportation needs. The world’s petroleum supply is being used up at an ever increasing rate, and many of its sources are in insecure areas. President Bush’s state of the union message January 23, 2007 included an objective of greatly reducing the US’s consumption of petroleum for surface transportation purposes. The proposed electrified railroad system would contribute to this objective in a big way. Freight railroads are one of the larger users of diesel fuel, much of which must be consumed on main lines which are most conducive to electrification. It has been estimated that railroads consume about six percent of the nation’s consumption of petroleum. Railroads are the only interstate mode that is suitable for electrification using existing technology. We should save petroleum for uses in which there is no readily apparent alternative such as aviation.

If we don’t get started promptly, we will regret it in the not too distant future. The future is approaching rapidly. It is recommended the research proposed above be authorized and funded at the earliest opportunity. It took fifty years to build the Interstate and Defense Highway System as defined in 1956 legislation and amended from time to time. The railroad system envisaged would take approximately the same length of time.

An improved railroad system will benefit the economy.

An electrified railroad system would reduce petroleum use and will also contribute to faster and more efficient operation.

An unimproved railroad system will be a hindrance to economic growth.

If the United States is to continue its role as the world’s leading economy, it must have a 21st Century System of Interstate and Defense Railroads.

The time to begin is now!

[End quote]

4) One highway interchange to be rebuilt in New Jersey using stimulus funds appropriated earlier this year connects an Interstate Highway with a US Highway and a New Jersey state road. The cost of rebuilding this single interchange is $900 million. Amtrak’s average annual free federal monies appropriation is $1.3 billion, just $400 million more than the single interchange in New Jersey.

This does not speak of the unattractive bugaboo of modal envy, but makes business sense for the spending of government resources for the highest and best use of funds and return on investment. While the highway interchange will serve perhaps less than two million citizens in New Jersey, that same $900 million, applied to Amtrak’s national system, would easily serve over 20 million Americans and international tourists, based on Amtrak’s unacceptably skeletal system.

Which is the best return on investment?

Where is the vision in federal, state, and local governments to start seriously including passenger rail in government planning?

Where is the vision in Amtrak to start realigning corporate resources to reach out to the various government agencies to create awareness and programs which benefit everyone involved in domestic network transportation planning?



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This Week at Amtrak; April 6, 2009

This Week at Amtrak; April 6, 2009

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America’s foremost passenger rail policy institute
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Volume 6, Number 9


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1) Interesting words from Matt Rose, Chairman, President, and CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. His thoughts and comments mesh well with former FRA Administrator Gil Carmichael’s Interstate II vision.
[Begin quote]
Written Testimony of Matthew K. Rose
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
BNSF Railway Company
Before the House Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development
For a Hearing on "The Future of High Speed Rail, Intercity Passenger Rail, and Amtrak"
Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Good afternoon Chairman Olver, Ranking Member Latham and members of the Subcommittee. I am Matt Rose, the CEO of the BNSF Railway, and I appreciate the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee today on the issue of high speed rail. As a freight railroad CEO, a member of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, and an early supporter of the One Rail coalition, I’ve had a lot of opportunity to think about what our country’s vision for passenger rail ought to be.
I, too, have traveled to Europe and Asia and appreciate the perspective of those in the United States who ask why Americans can’t have what they have – 200 mph corridor service connecting dense population centers which, themselves, have efficient regional transit distribution. However, as I discovered in my work on the Commission, while many passenger rail advocates and policy makers at all levels of government are intercity passenger rail advocates, they are somewhat skeptical of this vision. Their appetite is for a more incremental approach of improving existing intercity passenger rail service. Perhaps conditioned by years of scant Amtrak budgets and Congress’s disinterest in a formal federal intercity passenger rail program, many also are concerned that some large metropolitan areas might not be included in a "bullet train" network, either due to unavailability of right of way or other market-based demand reasons. In the Commission deliberations, we had a very robust discussion about these issues.
The Commission clearly called for the kind of investment needed to support passenger trains operating at the highest speeds in sealed, passenger-only, separated right of way. It called upon Congress to see the future, as Europe and Asia have, and begin the process of developing a corridor system of truly high speed rail. Make no mistake about it – this is a trillion-dollar funding proposition. Such a system may be beyond our current means; but one certainly can envision the development of five to ten truly high speed passenger regional rail corridors that make economic and operational sense. California – where you would expect some of these corridors should be – has taken the difficult yet necessary steps toward a vision of 200-plus mph passenger trains, despite a challenging budgetary environment.
Importantly, the Commission report also specifically recognizes the contribution that less-than-highest speed passenger trains in corridors of fewer than 500 miles can make to the Nation’s transportation system. Existing Amtrak service outside the Northeast Corridor generally achieves 79 mph on freight rail tracks. Public investments made to enhance reliability of this service can yield tremendous on-time performance reliability benefits, which is often all that is needed to successfully satisfy demand for passenger service in certain markets. There are many examples of this, but most recently, BNSF completed several double track construction projects on behalf of the State of California, which are intended to further improve already good on-time performance levels for 79 mph service.
Speaking as a freight railroad CEO, it is possible to increase speeds from 79 mph to 90 mph on tracks that both freight and passenger trains use. Upgrades would include the implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC), which I’ll touch on again shortly. Track would need to be upgraded from Class IV to Class V track, which would lead to a step level increase in track maintenance and track component replacement. For example, a larger number of ties per mile would have to be replaced each year. Rail joints would have to be eliminated. Extensive and regular undercutting would have to be undertaken to eliminate sub-grade defects. Rail would have to be re-surfaced much more often. All of this, in turn, would lead to more frequent outages for needed work, which will make joint freight/passenger operations more challenging and expensive.
At sustained speeds in excess of 90 mph, passenger train operations will need to be segregated from freight operations on separate track. The level of maintenance work required, the very different impacts passenger and freight rolling stock have on the surface of the rail and managing the flow of train traffic with such differences in speeds would make the joint use of track uneconomic and impracticable. Furthermore, it is my belief that at these speeds all interface between passenger trains and road crossings will need to be eliminated by grade separations or crossing closures. While it may be possible in some instances to co-locate higher speed passenger tracks with freight tracks in a freight railroad’s existing right of way, that won’t always be the case, and other right of way should be obtained. Where it is possible for the public to purchase freight railroad right of way, we must ensure sufficient capacity remains to operate safely and protect the ability to serve freight rail shippers, present and future, on a corridor.
In sum, the Commission’s model for intercity passenger rail in this country is to develop the highest speed rail where feasible and economically viable, coupled with more reliability for 79-90 mph passenger service in other key corridors where it will continue to make sense from a density, utilization and cost perspective. We believe that this vision could finally generate the public support and political will necessary for a successful passenger rail system in this country.
During the Commission’s deliberations, Wisconsin DOT Secretary and Chairman of States for Passenger Rail Frank Busalacchi and the late, great Paul Weyrich and I spent a lot of time debating the provisions of the report that dealt with the passenger and freight rail interface. It was a worthy exercise because from it came a clear understanding of the importance of how freight and passenger rail are interdependent in today’s policy, political and economic environment. This is the origin of the OneRail coalition, which consists of passenger, freight and environmental interests and advocates for the benefits of both freight and passenger operations.
There were some basic principles around this interface upon which the Commission agreed. These are basic rules of fairness, which make public-private cooperation possible and fruitful. In my own experience, they have helped BNSF and many communities on the BNSF network – including Seattle, Chicago, Albuquerque, St. Paul/Minneapolis, and Los Angeles – realize a partnership that achieves outstanding commuter rail service without degrading present or future freight service. These communities recognize their stake in both passenger and freight rail service.
The first key principle is that access by passenger providers to freight rail networks, where reasonable, must be negotiated at an arm’s length with freight railroads. This includes joint use tracks and rights of way, as well as opportunities for shared corridors with separate track structure for freight and passenger service. The second is that the impact on present and future corridor capacity must be mitigated to ensure that rail freight capacity is not reduced, but enhanced. This recognizes that speed differences between passenger and freight trains and certain well-defined passenger service requirements must be taken into account. There must be a fair assignment of costs based on the ongoing cost of passenger services, including the cost of upgrading and maintaining track, signals and structures to support joint freight and passenger operations and the cost of maintaining and improving the safety and reliability of highway/railroad intersections in joint use corridors. Finally, all host railroads must be adequately and comprehensively protected through indemnification and insurance for all risks associated with passenger rail service on their lines and in their rights of way.
I’d now like to turn your attention to an issue that has become very important in the discussion about the passenger-freight interface: positive train control (PTC). Congress has placed a non-risk based, multi-billion-dollar mandate to install PTC on what effectively could be 90% of the freight rail network. This is driven by the requirement to implement this technology where passenger rail or shipments of certain hazardous materials utilize the network.
BNSF began developing this train control technology in 1984, which led us to the development of what we now call Electronic Train Management System (ETMS). However, it was never intended to be implemented on the scale envisioned by the mandate included in the rail safety bill enacted last year by Congress. The unprecedented cost – which we estimate could be in excess of $1 billion when fully implemented on BNSF in 2015 – is driven by factors mostly outside of our control, such as the presence of passenger trains and our statutory common carriage obligation to haul toxic chemicals. The cost will have to be fairly allocated between BNSF, its shippers and the public.
This mandate represents a tremendous financial burden not just on the freight railroads, but also on Amtrak and the commuter lines. If you have not yet heard about this issue from these constituencies, you soon will. They are partners in the cost of implementing this technology across jointly used lines. While the rail safety bill did authorize a relatively small technology grant program ($50 million per year for Fiscal Years 2009-13), no funding has yet been appropriated. I urge you to fully fund this program.
However, you should also ensure that other funding sources are available to the public passenger and private freight railroads to help defray the tremendous financial impact the mandate will have. For example, the intercity passenger and high speed rail programs at the Federal Railroad Administration received significant funding in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The intercity passenger program has previously been tapped for safety technology investments like centralized traffic control and cab signal systems and makes sense as a funding source going forward, given the PTC mandate’s intense focus on passenger train operations.
In addition, the Department of Homeland Security’s rail security grant program was created by Congress with specific statutory language making train control, tracking and communications systems eligible for funding. The Transportation Security Administration’s long time focus on reducing security risks surrounding shipments of Toxic Inhalation Hazards fits squarely with the mandate’s inclusion of rail lines carrying these highly hazardous materials.
Finally, the freight railroads continue to support a rail infrastructure tax credit bill, sponsored by Congressman Kendrick Meek (D-FL) and Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) in the House. This bill provides a 25% tax credit and expensing for rail infrastructure expansion activities, of which PTC implementation is eligible. I believe this is a significant way that Congress can soften the impact this mandate will have on the railroads, in what is one of the most economically challenging times we’ve seen in decades.
In closing, my recommendations to you are two-fold:
1) Observe the principles for passenger/freight joint use of rail right of way that the Commission recognized, and be realistic about the kind of passenger service that can be achieved, given the limitations of joint use. Generally, those limitations are based on nothing less than the laws of physics and the consequences that flow from them.
2) Develop a realistic vision for passenger service that works for all stakeholders – including freight railroads and the nation’s shippers – and fully fund it.
It took $4 a gallon gas to show us that passenger train options are important to providing a fuel efficient alternative to the highway for millions of Americans. In addition, though, a comprehensive passenger rail program may shift a portion of the congested short-medium haul air traffic to rail, expand employment in the passenger rail industry and engender vibrant economic development around these networks. The choice to fund passenger rail over the next 20 years can have as significant an impact on this country as funding Air Traffic Control and runways have had in the last 20 years.
I appreciate the opportunity to present these views and I would be happy to answer any questions you have about passenger rail or freight rail policy.
[End quote]
2) An inconvenient fact: When writing about high speed rail coming to the United States, many writers refer to high speed rail in Europe where "everyone rides the train, and high speed rail is very successful." Well, compared to Amtrak’s share of the domestic transportation market in the United States, which stands at less than one percent, yes, high speed rail in Europe does have a much larger market share. However, look at the real numbers. High speed rail in Europe does not have an overwhelming market share.
According to the Rio Grande Foundation, high speed rail works well for tourists traveling in Europe without the expense of renting an automobile, but it hasn’t done much to change European travel habits.
In 1980, intercity rail accounted for 8.2 percent of passenger travel in the 15 countries which made up the European Union as of 2000. But, by 2000, intercity rail declined to 6.3% of market share. Automobile driving gained almost exactly the same market share that rail lost in this time period, growing from 76.4% to 78.3%. Low cost European airlines have made the greatest challenge to high speed rail, thanks to Europe’s "open skies" policies, domestic air travel increased from 2.5% of travel in 1980 to 5.8% in 2000. Both intercity busses and urban transit both lost shares.
3) Thoughts from Ken Orski, Innovation NewsBriefs, Volume 20, Number 5.
[Begin quote]
April 1, 2009
The Promise of High-Speed Rail
Is it wise to spend $13 billion of the taxpayers' dollars in the next five years ($8 billion in the recovery package and $5 billion in the next five annual appropriations) as a down payment on a high-speed rail network? Or are there better ways to spend this money on transportation? That was the subject of a recent weekly debate on the National Journal's Transportation Blog. The Blog's contributors include some 80 invited "Beltway Insiders," including members of Congress, governors, state and local transportation officials, senior executives of trade associations, environmentalists and respected transportation professionals. The debate revealed a spectrum of opinion among the contributors, with proponents of high-speed rail outnumbering the doubters by a wide margin.
SUPPORT FROM THE POLITICAL LEADERS
To launch the conversation, National Journal’s Lisa Caruso, who hosts the blog, asked Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood what he thinks of President Obama’s decision to make high-speed passenger rail service a centerpiece of his transportation agenda.
"Do I believe in President Obama’s high-speed rail initiative? The short answer is ‘Yes, I do. Profoundly,’ the Secretary answered. It is a "transformational initiative," the Secretary went on, and the $13 billion in federal money is "a down payment that will jump-start what will be a world-class passenger rail system." The Federal Railroad Administration is finalizing a plan and related guidance for intercity passenger rail grants from the initial $8 billion in the economic recovery package, the Secretary announced.
Belief in the promise and potential of high-speed rail was also expressed by two congressional lawmakers who will be at the center of the legislative debate about the future of the nation's transportation program. "President Obama is on the right track, if I may use the term," wrote Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. High-speed rail can provide "an efficient, convenient, comfortable alternative to driving or flying short or medium distances," he observed. Referring to the European and Japanese experience with high-speed rail (HSR), Oberstar noted "that success did not occur overnight." It took many years for the high-speed networks to mature and European countries continue to invest substantial amounts each year. There is no reason why we cannot do the same here in the United States, Oberstar contended. Rep. John Mica (R-FL), Ranking Member of the House T&I Committee echoed Mr. Oberstar’s sentiments, noting that he has been a long-time supporter of high-speed rail. A solicitation in the Amtrak reauthorization law, he wrote, produced over 110 expressions of interest, "an encouraging sign that there is tremendous interest in bringing high-speed rail to the United States." It won’t be right for every region of the country, and it will require a significant investment, Mica wrote, but it has to be part of our national transportation strategy. Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, was of the same opinion. Many communities have lost commercial air service over the last two decades, he observed, and high-speed rail can be an effective and affordable alternative for shorter commute routes. It already is in the Washington DC-to-New York corridor, he noted, and we need to create additional high-speed passenger rail corridors to support other major urban centers.
STATES’ SHOULD BE AN IMPORTANT PARTNER
Several contributors drew attention to the need to involve the states and to use the leverage of federal money to obtain funding commitments from state, local and private sources. Steve Heminger, Executive Director of (Bay Area) Metropolitan Transportation Commission cited the California HSR Authority’s plan as the kind of business model that needs to be replicated around the country if we are to be successful in building high-speed rail networks. The $35 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco project, he wrote, hopes to secure at least $15 billion in federal funds, $3 billion from local agencies and about $7 billion from the private sector in addition to a $10 billion state bond measure. In other words, the federal investment would leverage another 130 percent of funding from other, non-federal sources. "When it comes to high-speed rail, the federal response should focus on helping those states and regions that are willing to help themselves," Heminger concluded. Frank Busalacchi, Secretary of Wisconsin DOT was of the same opinion. California, the Cascades corridor, the Midwest corridor and North Carolina are some of the states already offering corridor services at their own expense, he noted. "Allocating the $8 billion to the state corridors will help expand passenger rail services where services are most needed," he wrote. "High-speed projects that require new rights-of-way would require a longer time frame."
Mortimer Downey, Senior Advisor at Parsons Brinckerhoff and head of the Obama transition team at U.S. DOT observed that what the Administration proposal has done is to bring the rail options to the intercity transportation table. But, he said, "the real proof of the merits of rail investment will come when hard decisions have to be made concerning specific corridor investment. It is those corridor decisions that will prove or disprove the merit of the high-speed rail case. And it will be up to the proponents of specific projects to show how effective high-speed rail is in bringing about desired results in terms of energy conservation, decrease in greenhouse-gas emissions, congestion reduction and other potential benefits.
NOTES OF CAUTION
Several contributors cautioned about raising unreasonably high expectations as to what the $13 billion in federal money can accomplish. There needs to be a reality check on what is practical, since there is no way an entirely new rail line can be built in the near future given the complex and lengthy environmental review and approval process, Rich Sarles, Executive Director, NJ Transit wrote. A similar opinion was expressed by Bob Poole, Director of Transportation Studies at the Reason Foundation. "The $8 billion in the stimulus bill has created expectations for Japanese-style bullet trains on 11 long-planned corridors, but those hopes are likely to go unrealized," he wrote. "True high speed rail (HSR) that goes 150-200 mph requires entirely separate rights of way with no grade crossings, shallow grades, very broad curves, and no 60 mph freight traffic. That’s what Japan, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy are doing, and the taxpayer cost is many billions per line...What the new federal funding will mostly be used for is upgrades to the existing shared passenger/freight tracks, aiming to get Amtrak trains up to speeds of 90 to 100 mph rather than today’s 60 or 70 mph."
Ken Orski, Editor/Publisher of Innovation NewsBriefs, also thought that much of the $13 billion in federal money is likely to end up supporting incremental improvements in existing rail infrastructure rather than building true high-speed lines in new alignments. But incremental improvements, he suggested, could involve not just upgrading existing signalization and roadbed but also adding extra track capacity in existing rail corridors, a move that would reduce interference between passenger and freight trains and benefit both freight and passenger rail service. In the same vein, Ed Hamberger, President of the Association of American Railroads, noted that passenger and freight improvements are not mutually exclusive goals. "America has the best freight railroad system in the world," he wrote, and " there is no reason why we can’t have the best passenger system as well."
Jack Schenendorf, former vice chairman of the congressionally-chartered National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission, urged to consider the high-speed rail initiative in the wider context of a national surface transportation strategy. "I applaud the fact that the President is making a down payment on high-speed rail but I am dismayed by the fact that he continues a pattern of underinvestment in the rest of our national surface transportation network," he wrote. We need to do much more than just increase investment in high-speed passenger rail, he continued. We also need to increase investment substantially in other modes of transportation. We need to adequately maintain our existing roads and bridges, upgrade our freight rail network, expand our transit systems and significantly increase highway capacity. "I respectfully urge the President to revise his budget to do for all the modes of transportation that he did for high-speed rail" Schenendorf concluded. Bill Graves, President of American Trucking Association also cautioned that we must not lose sight of the nation’s need to expand and repair the national highway system. Expanding passenger rail will not end traffic congestion, he wrote.
Greg Cohen, President of the American Highway Users Alliance, injected a note of skepticism. It is important that the Administration, rail advocates and critics answer some critical questions about the ultimate high-speed rail plan before investing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, he wrote. "Where is the money coming from to fund the ultimate HSR plan?" he asked. Are there no good alternatives to HSR? He suggested that "intercity motor coach" transportation may offer a meaningful alternative and ought to be considered more closely.
Is the $13 billion high-speed rail program a game changing event that, in the words of Peter Gertler, Director of High-Speed Rail at HNTB Corporation, "will lay the foundation for the most significant national investment in public infrastructure since President Eisenhower’s vision to build a national interstate highway system"? Or will the money be frittered away on studies and modest improvements in existing rail service — improvements that may achieve marginal reductions in travel time but do not move us any closer to achieving a true national high-speed rail vision? Will the Administration resist the political temptation to spread the $13 billion among the six high-speed rail initiatives that are in various stages of planning in California, Texas, the Midwest, Florida, Nevada and North Carolina? Or should the Administration take the long view and focus its efforts and resources on one or two corridors that most clearly justify high-speed service (the Northeast Corridor comes to mind), knowing that such a strategy, like the interstate highway system, may take decades to realize over a number of presidential administrations. We should soon find out which road the Administration has chosen to follow.
For a full text of the discussion go to http://transportation.nationaljournal.com
[End quote]
For a full view of all of Mr. Orski’s work, visit www.innobriefs.com
4) Amtrak, finally, after three and a half decades seems to be getting serious about the Sunset Limited. Word is coming the Sunset will become a daily train between Los Angeles and New Orleans. Still no word, however, about much needed service east of New Orleans. Amtrak still has not made a decision about this service; a congressionally mandated study is underway concerning restoring the Sunset Limited or a replacement service for it. We expect to hear about a completed study sometime soon. In the mean time, Amtrak is still sticking to its story that no one is interested in riding this train east of New Orleans even though a full 46% of the Sunset’s revenue used to originate east of New Orleans. Or, to put it another way, Amtrak still claims the dog ate its homework, as usual.
5) There is some good news. Amtrak has restored sleeping car service on the Lake Shore Limited between Boston and Albany, New York. This puts a missing sleeping car service back which has been gone for several years. Miraculously, Amtrak says it can make money from this on-again sleeping car. Wow; Amtrak has figured that out. Does that mean Amtrak also acknowledges what the rest of us have known for decades, that most sleeping car service on Amtrak everywhere else in the country makes money, too?
6) Just a quick note about Amtrak’s $1.3 billion in stimulus money. Amtrak has a plethora of documents on www.amtrak.com detailing how this money is being spent all over the country (That translates to how the money left over from not being spent on the Northeast Corridor is being divided up by the rest of the country.). Lots of good projects included in here, mostly for ADA compliance, and lots of new signage around the country which will help solidify Amtrak’s image. A lot of projects which have desperately needed to be done, such as the restoration and painting of the canopies over the train platforms at Tampa Union Station are included here. Most of this stuff would have never come out of Amtrak’s normal operating or free federal monies capital budgets, so it’s good to have the stimulus money to get these things done.
However, probably the most important expenditure of the money is for the restoration and rehabilitation of out-of-service passenger cars.
On Amtrak’s web site, we are told there are 1,519 passenger cars owned by Amtrak, plus 469 locomotives, 80 Auto Train vehicle carriers and 101 baggage cars. Amtrak operated state-owned equipment includes 136 railroad passenger cars and 20 locomotives.
So, if Amtrak says it owns 1,519 passenger cars, less the 1,346 cars it says it has on its active daily roster, then there are 173 pieces of equipment sitting around in the weeds somewhere on a wreck line. In the stimulus package, Amtrak says it will return 21 long distance cars from wreck status to operating status, and a mixture of 60 Amfleet low-level cars (a very few long distance cars, but the vast majority are NEC cars) back to service. This totals 81 cars, which still leaves 92 cars sitting in the weeds. Yes, some of those cars are most likely beyond repair, but not all 92 of them.
When will we see these other cars returned to service? How much of a priority will this be for Amtrak?
Of the current 1,346 active cars on the daily roster, there is a daily requirement of 1,072 cars for use (Yes, trainlines and consists have been cut that much.). In late February, there were 1,120 cars ready for service, which is a good improvement for Amtrak. That leaves 274 cars (a high percentage) either as spares, or in the shops being worked on.
So, let us say Amtrak is improving its shop performance, and will have a lower amount of cars in the back shop at any one time, and more cars available for service, plus the new Viewliner series sleepers, diners, and baggage cars it is ordering.
What could be done with all of this equipment, right now?
Well, the Sunset could easily go daily between Los Angeles and New Orleans, as could the Cardinal between New York and Chicago.
Either the Pioneer, Desert Wind, or North Coast Limited between Chicago and the West Coast could be restored (Only one, not all three.).
Some type of short daily train between New Orleans and Florida could be added to replace the east end of the Sunset Limited, and this train could include a full consist of cars, including sleepers. Other consists could be beefed back up.
All it takes is for Amtrak management to have the will to do this.
Remember, with the current inventory of cars (prior to lots of wrecks, thus the requirement for some of this equipment to be rebuilt), all of the existing Amtrak network was operated, plus the Desert Wind, Pioneer, and Sunset Limited east of New Orleans, and most trains had longer consists.
It’s not about the money. It’s about Amtrak management wanting to be clever enough and work hard enough to make this happen, and the Amtrak Board of Directors to be asking questions as to why this isn’t happening.


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J. Bruce Richardson
President
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203
Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739
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