The future of Amtrak and the long distance trains

[Ryan]

I'm aware of that.

You didn't answer the question either, but you get a gold star for actually addressing them, rather than make an assumption and then rant like Henry did.

 

[RCBev]

Some have suggested on stopping the Crescent at ATL. That leaves a big HOLE of train non-service in the south. If I wanted to get anywhere on the East coast on Amtrak from where I live, I have would have to drive a minimum of 4 hours. Average is more like 5 to 6 hours. Currently, it is an hour and 15 minutes. So PLEASE continue service the Crescent to NOLA!!

 

[George Harris]

The highways are already a hodgepodge of State and Federal funding. For the most part, only roads that are designated as "US-xx" or "I-xx" are Federally funded with the rest of the vast network funded by the municipality/county and State, with occasional earmark federal allocation when appropriated. Even so, even Interstate highways are not always fully funded by the Feds. Look at I-95. Georgia, for the most part is 3-4 lanes in each direction for all 120 miles or so of it. Same road in South Carolina, though, is almost entirely 2 lanes in each direction. Same traffic flow, bottle necked. Same Federal input, different level of State input.

This is not correct. Look at any county or other map that provides designaltions on the type of road. You will see either "FAP" or "FAS" on virtually all roads outside city streets and the Interstates. These acronyms mean "Federal Aid Primary" or "Federal Aid Secondary" Now, maintenance money IS supposed to be fully state or local funded, but construction is supposed to be federally assisted on all these roads so designated at 50%. Interstates are supposed to be 90% federally funded. City streets are supposed to be local issues, and within subdivisions most were initially constructed by the subdivisor. Don't know if it still true, but for the Interstates in the so called "Public Lands" states such as Nevada and a few other thinly populated western states that 90% was even higher at 95%.

As to your South Carolina - Georgia example: The ratio was the same in both states, so the federal imput on a per mile of road basis would be greated. If this is not so, please source the information.

Incidentially, the FAS system started as a depression era "get the farmer out of the mud" progaram that at its beginning did not even include paving. It was only grading, drainage, and aggregate surface for the existing dirt roads along farm boundries, many built and maintained by the farmers as a necessary means to get their crops to market. In other words, a reasonably good gravel surfaced "all weather" road. Most of the small bridges were still wood.

 

[haolerider]

Well GML and the rest, like I said before, all you really want on here is a bunch of BOBBLEHEADS nodding in agreement with your far out ideas. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Good luck with that. Blahahahahahah. See I do have that sense of humor.

No, we are not "bobbelimg our heads" , we are just shrugging our shoulders and realizing that we will never get actual,figurs and facts from you! Perhaps you should un-retire and take a few refresher courses in accounting.......which is a fact-based occupation.....and not assumption-based! We have asked repeatedly for facts and figures from you, but it is a futile exercise! I quit!

I don't get paid enough to publish all that information. If you really want it, look it up your self.

Well, well! None of us get paid, but we are not spouting statements that have no basis in fact! I truly quit now! You have gone over the edge!

 

[henryj]

Well GML and the rest, like I said before, all you really want on here is a bunch of BOBBLEHEADS nodding in agreement with your far out ideas. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Good luck with that. Blahahahahahah. See I do have that sense of humor.

No, we are not "bobbelimg our heads" , we are just shrugging our shoulders and realizing that we will never get actual,figurs and facts from you! Perhaps you should un-retire and take a few refresher courses in accounting.......which is a fact-based occupation.....and not assumption-based! We have asked repeatedly for facts and figures from you, but it is a futile exercise! I quit!

I don't get paid enough to publish all that information. If you really want it, look it up your self.

Well, well! None of us get paid, but we are not spouting statements that have no basis in fact! I truly quit now! You have gone over the edge!

Well bye bye. All my statements have basis in fact. You just don't want to believe it. This whole exercise was just a waste of time anyway. GML just set us up to argue amongst ourselves. He or it really didn't want any answers except those that dovetailed with his own. I can't believe they actually pay him to come up with this stuff in New Jersey.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I don't recall them ever paying me to come up with anything related to rail ever. *thinks really hard* I know my memory is not what it once was, but as a good Jew I know I'd remember people handing me money for doing something. I'm quite sure they don't.

I run a retail garment business that runs me ragged to within an inch of my life. AND THEN In my free time, because I believe in transit, because one day I will need transit, and because there are far too many people who need transit who are too downtrodden by the wealthy power base to fight for it, I fight and advocate for better public transportation in the state of New Jersey. I resent the suggestion that I do it for money, or even personal recognition, which I honestly and truly carefully avoid.

Not every answer that was given dovetailed with my own, but I like some of the suggestions and discussion that has taken place in this discussion. I have accepted as facts anything that has been solidly backed up by linked documentation. If you'd like to do the same, Henry, with your 'facts', I will be happy to accept them too as facts.

Let us assume, just for the sake of the argument, that over the rail costs for running the long distance network is around $150 million a year. Excellent. Approxmately 5 million people ride the trains a year, making the loss $30 a passenger. Those passenger represent a revenue of $520 million, or $104 a passenger on average.

If we can cut $50 million in expenses off the long distance trains (I don't think its unrealistic, especially as certain maintenance expenses are going away), add another 500,000 passengers (we gained 250,000 FY12-FY13), and increase the average per passenger revenue paid approximately 15%, you have a system that will produce $30,000,000 in over the rail profit. I don't think its that hard for an accountant like you, Henry, to actually figure out a way for relatively small changes to exist that will allow for that over, say, 2-3 years?

 

[jis]

Well bye bye. All my statements have basis in fact. You just don't want to believe it. This whole exercise was just a waste of time anyway. GML just set us up to argue amongst ourselves. He or it really didn't want any answers except those that dovetailed with his own. I can't believe they actually pay him to come up with this stuff in New Jersey.

He is a volunteer like many of us. He does not get paid to do any of this. It is all labor of love AFAIK.

 

[Minnesotan]

-I agree with you about Saint Paul. There should be at least three trains a day to Saint Paul in addition to the Empire Builder and possibly a North Coast Hiawatha.

Fixed it for you.

 

[siberianmo]

A great deal of effort put into your post, Green Maned Lion; covered lots of ground with many responses.

I am one of those vintage rail travelers and do so for pleasure. Given my health and bank account holds out, I plan to continue with my long distance get-aways along with my favorite day round trip between Kirkwood and Kansas City, MO.

I enjoy the sleeping and dining cars; without the latter my long distance adventures would probably come to an end unless something suitable could be arranged for those of us content to dine in our bedrooms. Enough of that.

I see passenger rail travel as an alternative to crowded highways and cramped airplanes. My crystal ball does now show a return to the halcyon days of rail travel before many frequenting those forums arrived on Earth. Ain't gonna happen.

On NARP and other organized efforts to keep the trains rolling, all I can say is keep putting your money where your mouth is otherwise it will be like whistling into the wind insofar as being heard is concerned.

On Amtrak past, present and future, I read the three comprehensive works by Joseph Vranich (perhaps someone well known to the well versed around here) and have found much of what you had to offer within his writings. I am not implying anything by bringing this forward just found similarities of thought. Like Mr. Vranich or not, he provides much food for thought to base one's decisions on regarding Amtrak from trackside to boardroom to trains to personnel.

As for politics, well I will simply say that Congress is inept on both sides of that Proverbial aisle. Remove politics from Amtrak and maybe just maybe we could see some long needed infusion of forward thinking with rapid, reliable, secure operations along with profitable enterprise for those desirous of buying in.

Just my ramblings for this fine day in mid-continent USA.

 

[cirdan]

Europe still has largely government subsidized trains. England is the one that did that privatization nonsense and it was generally considered to be an unmitigated disaster.

Depends who you ask.

Privatization may have swept aside some of the nostalgia, old fashioned comfort and many things that had remained unchanged since Victorian days, not to mention brutally higher fares (although that is relative, if you're flexible about when you travel, many routes are actually cheaper today than pre-privatization).

On the other hand, passenger miles have almost doubled.

So it can't all have been wrong.

 

[Paulus]

Europe still has largely government subsidized trains. England is the one that did that privatization nonsense and it was generally considered to be an unmitigated disaster.

Depends who you ask.

Privatization may have swept aside some of the nostalgia, old fashioned comfort and many things that had remained unchanged since Victorian days, not to mention brutally higher fares (although that is relative, if you're flexible about when you travel, many routes are actually cheaper today than pre-privatization).

On the other hand, passenger miles have almost doubled.

So it can't all have been wrong.

Yes, but if the public investment that's been necessary since privatization had been put into British Rail instead, what would we have seen?

 

[neroden]

This is not correct. Look at any county or other map that provides designaltions on the type of road. You will see either "FAP" or "FAS" on virtually all roads outside city streets and the Interstates.

Not up here in rural New York you won't. There are a vast number of NON-federal-aid roads here. Federal-aid-eligible roads are a pretty random mishmash of roads, certainly.

The federal aid eligibility is apparently defined by the idiotic "highway functional classification standards", which assume a "tree and branch" road system, which of course is completely bogus.

This classification system assumes that there are "local roads", "minor collector roads", "major collector roads", "minor arterial roads", and "principal arterial roads", and tries to shoehorn the existing roads into this system. Into which they do not fit.

Apparently "urban principal arterial" through "urban collector" are federal-aid eligible, while "rural principal arterial" through "rural major collector" are federal-aid eligible

This means that a perfectly random set of roads are eligible for federal funding. It tends to include most of the state numbered highways and some random other roads. But MOST roads are not eligible for federal aid.

It is further worth noting that it is often necessary to *refuse* federal aid for eligible roads. Why? Because the roads may actually be local roads with houses on both sides and "children at play" -- but the federal aid guidelines are likely to want to construct them like speedways, due to this "functional classification" garbage.

The rich suburb I grew up in had to reject both federal and state money for several road rebuildings, due to these "widen the roads make the cars faster" requirements attached to the funding.

 

[cirdan]

Yes, but if the public investment that's been necessary since privatization had been put into British Rail instead, what would we have seen?

Maybe the private sector is better at twisting the arm of government into handing over that money.

British Rail regularly asked for money and regularly walked away, meek as a lamb, accepting no as an answer.

I doubt that without privatization, that any of that would have changed.

If the private sector is what is needed to get that money flowing, then we should judge the tree by its fruit.

I wonder if people like Mica would be bullying Amtrak as much if Amtrak was a well connected private corporation that was able to pull some of its strings back.

 

[neroden]

Wow, cirdan, you're probably right, but that's a spectacularly cynical way to approach government; essentially, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, it means that democracy doesn't work and should be abolished. I don't like that conclusion and I want to find something wrong with it.

 

[Paulus]

Wow, cirdan, you're probably right, but that's a spectacularly cynical way to approach government; essentially, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, it means that democracy doesn't work and should be abolished. I don't like that conclusion and I want to find something wrong with it.

All forms of government have their end states and particularly prone to flaws, why would you think democracy is somehow immune?

 

[VentureForth]

Europe still has largely government subsidized trains. England is the one that did that privatization nonsense and it was generally considered to be an unmitigated disaster.

Depends who you ask.

Privatization may have swept aside some of the nostalgia, old fashioned comfort and many things that had remained unchanged since Victorian days, not to mention brutally higher fares (although that is relative, if you're flexible about when you travel, many routes are actually cheaper today than pre-privatization).

On the other hand, passenger miles have almost doubled.

So it can't all have been wrong.

Yes, but if the public investment that's been necessary since privatization had been put into British Rail instead, what would we have seen?

When JNR in Japan was privatized and JR came into existence, fares went up, but the rolling stock improved dramatically. The speed and quality of the changes that came to rail in Japan for the 20 years after privatization was exponentially better than the 20 years preceding it.

And, yes, many low use routes through beautiful country side were either abandoned or sold to 3rd tier or public/private ventures. This is still happening now. The largest and most profitable spinoff JR Company is JR East which enjoyed a $1.7 Bil profit last year. The other spinoffs are making money, too, but harder to discern without delving into the Japanese reports.

Since JR includes the long distance routes, it's most comparable to Amtrak, though it does make a heckuva lotta money from its metropolitan operations.

One of the ways JR makes money is that they own just about the entire infrastructure that they operate within. This is partially because they acquired it all for next to free. But they have spared no expense in improving all of it - not just the catenary, or the platforms, or the ticketing system, but ALL of it. JR owns much of the power generating plants that supply its 98% electrified system. They sell to the grid what they don't use. The own the land and charge rent for tenants to set up everything from kiosks to department stores on its properties.

I could go on and on and on. Problem is that none of this applies to Amtrak and therefore it puts OUR national long distance rail system to an automatic disadvantage. Amtrak barely owns the track on the NEC. I think even the stations along it are mixmatched in ownership - certainly the ones outside of the NEC are. Without the ability to control its own infrastructure, it's severely limited to how it can grow.

I don't have the answers. I don't even seem to have good suggestions. But we're not going to get to keep long distance rail service for much longer so long as it is a political kickball.

 

[neroden]

Maybe the private sector is better at twisting the arm of government

If this is the only way to get stuff done, what point democracy? We're supposed to be able to mobilize by voting, by public speech, etc. If results are all about bribery and threats, we might as well go back to warlords. I'm sure a good-sized militia would be the best way to shake money out for the railroad projects I'd like to see done, and boy would it make land acquisition simpler.

 

[George Harris]

This is not correct. Look at any county or other map that provides designaltions on the type of road. You will see either "FAP" or "FAS" on virtually all roads outside city streets and the Interstates.

Not up here in rural New York you won't. There are a vast number of NON-federal-aid roads here. Federal-aid-eligible roads are a pretty random mishmash of roads, certainly.

The federal aid eligibility is apparently defined by the idiotic "highway functional classification standards", which assume a "tree and branch" road system, which of course is completely bogus.

This classification system assumes that there are "local roads", "minor collector roads", "major collector roads", "minor arterial roads", and "principal arterial roads", and tries to shoehorn the existing roads into this system. Into which they do not fit.

Apparently "urban principal arterial" through "urban collector" are federal-aid eligible, while "rural principal arterial" through "rural major collector" are federal-aid eligible

This means that a perfectly random set of roads are eligible for federal funding. It tends to include most of the state numbered highways and some random other roads. But MOST roads are not eligible for federal aid.

It is further worth noting that it is often necessary to *refuse* federal aid for eligible roads. Why? Because the roads may actually be local roads with houses on both sides and "children at play" -- but the federal aid guidelines are likely to want to construct them like speedways, due to this "functional classification" garbage.

The rich suburb I grew up in had to reject both federal and state money for several road rebuildings, due to these "widen the roads make the cars faster" requirements attached to the funding.

The roads you refer to as not getting federal and state money - apparnently mostly city streets - are exactly the ones I was saying were not on the FAP and FAS system.

 

[neroden]

The roads you refer to as not getting federal and state money - apparnently mostly city streets - are exactly the ones I was saying were not on the FAP and FAS system.

Yes, city streets, but also *vast* numbers of rural roads.
County and town road funding is *huge*. It's about 25% of the property tax in this area. (And this is in NY, where 50% of the property tax is to pay for things required by the state, which doesn't require that we provide fire protection, roads, or police.)

 

[cirdan]

Wow, cirdan, you're probably right, but that's a spectacularly cynical way to approach government; essentially, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, it means that democracy doesn't work and should be abolished. I don't like that conclusion and I want to find something wrong with it.

Neroden, I don't like it either.

And I don't want to go down the road of following that to its ultimate conclusion.

I was just really protesting against the notion that UK privatization was a total and umitigated disaster.

Sometimes if you want things done, you need allies. And sometimes those allies have agendas of their own, and you have to tolerate that in view of the bigger picture. Pre-privatization, the only allies the railways had were a bunch of user groups that were mostly run by pensioners from their homes and ultimately didn't have much punch or cash and weren't very professional in their messaging or campaign management. Plus there were the unions, but these often damaged the railroads more than they helped. This made the railroads an easy target for people in government looking for soft victims they could dole out punches to, knowing they couldn't hit back.

Compare this to roads where there was / is a massive cartel of construction companies and also of car manufacturers who can hold the government at ransom by threatening to close down plants and move production overseas.

Today, the railroads have powerful allies in the forms of the big bus and train groups. These in turn know their success depends on getting more people on trains. Passenger numbers are up. The network has ceased shrinking and even had some bits here and there added. Freight is also on the up, despite having gone through some difficult phases.

So is it right to twist government like that? I'd say no. But sometimes for lack of alternatives, it may be better to join them than face them.

 

[cirdan]

Maybe the private sector is better at twisting the arm of government

If this is the only way to get stuff done, what point democracy? We're supposed to be able to mobilize by voting, by public speech, etc. If results are all about bribery and threats, we might as well go back to warlords. I'm sure a good-sized militia would be the best way to shake money out for the railroad projects I'd like to see done, and boy would it make land acquisition simpler.

If you think about it, that's how the first transontinental railroads got built, or at least how the opposition from Native American tribes got dealt with.

It's not really democracy in the modern sense.

I'm not proposing that it's right to do it that way. But one shouldn't be too naive in assuming all things are as above board as they may at first seem.

 

[VentureForth]

I was just really protesting against the notion that UK privatization was a total and umitigated disaster.

It was, at first. Sure, it didn't go as smooth as the Japanese privatization, but it's getting there. Hardly an unmitigated disaster. They still have most of their trains - short and long distances - and most would say that the service has improved dramatically, both on a personal level, equipment level, and OTP level.

I wonder if privatization occured before the Beeching Axe if more routes and stations would have been cut, fewer, or if these were logical cuts that were proposed by the good Dr. Beeching working for the Gov'ment.

 

[cirdan]

I wonder if privatization occured before the Beeching Axe if more routes and stations would have been cut, fewer, or if these were logical cuts that were proposed by the good Dr. Beeching working for the Gov'ment.

It is often the case with government reports that the government gets a report that justifies the actions it wanted to take anyway.

I think there is no doubt that the British railway system was overbuilt. There was too much duplication of routes and operating practices were old fashioned and inefficient. This was not a sustainable situation. Furthermore, many lesser and lighter rail lines were torturously slow and unable to compete with modern buses or cars. To suggest that things could have gone on as before would be very misleading.

On the other hand, the Beeching reforms were a knee-jerk reaction, leaving many people without rail services and ultimately forcing people to either buy a car or leave the smaller towns that had been cut off. These towns would have been better served by a more long-sighted transition. For example, many of the lines that Beeching closed had only some years before received new trains (I'm intentionally not using the word modern) so a lot of value was destroyed through an utter lack of long-term vision. At the same time, many of the bus services that were hastily set up to replace the rail lines were of temporary nature with bus companies failing to provide a long-term service that matched those of the rail lines they replaced and that failed to provide an integrated transportation chain as schedules were often not coordinated with the rail lines they linked to. Ridership decreased further and thes bus lines were often quietly abandoned. As many secondary routes had also depended on the branch routes feeding in passengers, ridership on these routes also took a plunge and many of these were in turn abandoned.

Government never took steps to ordain minimum service levels or integration or connectivity. This is quite a contrast to say, Germany or Denmark, where many rural bus services, including those that replaced railroads, were run by either DB themselves or by parner companies (such as the Post Office).

Would private companies with a stake in the long term health of the railroad have stood by and accepted being punched around in this way? In hindsight, it is difficult to say. Beeching probably truly believed that British Rail could be returned to true profitability, surviving without any public subsidy. In hindsight, this was probably a naive assumption.

 

[neroden]

Wow, cirdan, you're probably right, but that's a spectacularly cynical way to approach government; essentially, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, it means that democracy doesn't work and should be abolished. I don't like that conclusion and I want to find something wrong with it.

Neroden, I don't like it either.

And I don't want to go down the road of following that to its ultimate conclusion.

OK then.
Maybe we can do better with some sort of combination of grassroots lobbying and leveraging the power of big money than with big money alone... that would make me feel better about democracy!

As far as I can tell, this type of "semi-democratic" lobbying has worked pretty well in places like Grand Rapids. (Everything has a major corporate sponsor's name on it... but the grassroots can be pretty influential in determining what those corporate sponsors decide to sponsor. It's not just "whatever the boss feels like".)

So is it right to twist government like that? I'd say no. But sometimes for lack of alternatives, it may be better to join them than face them.

 

[neroden]

If you think about it, that's how the first transontinental railroads got built, or at least how the opposition from Native American tribes got dealt with.

The early transcons are a legendary and very interesting sequence of scandals.
Up here in the land of the New York Central, the Lehigh Valley, the Erie, and the Lackawanna, the history is a little different. Where I live, one of the first passenger railroads ever -- the Ithaca & Oswego -- was built by a far-seeing rich founder of a university (Ezra Cornell) in order to get people and goods to his rurally-located college. Sensible man. Anyway, the history is one of prominent businessmen recognizing that they needed transportation and building transportation directly to their businesses. I'm not sure when we started running short of businessmen who knew which side their bread was buttered on when it came to transportation.

Though, speaking of overcoming Native American opposition, here in NY we still do need to compensate the Iroquois/Haudenosaundee for the land the state stole from them way back when -- they've been pressing the case continuously for roughly 200 years. (The state government almost did it a few decades back, but then the federal Supreme Court again decided that it was OK to steal land from Native Americans... which isn't going to stop the Iroquois from continuing to demand their rights, because it never has. Note that those cases aren't about the land ceded after the Iroquois lost the Revolutionary War; the Iroquois agree that they gave up *that* land, some of which I live on. The cases are about the land stolen after that, through fraud and falsified documents and in violation of the Nonintercourse Act and its predecessors. They're open-and-shut cases; the Iroquois hold legal title to the land under all of our legal traditions, whatever the Supreme Court may say.)