What would happen... if Amtrak failed?

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
If I had the money I would definitely pick up one or two of the routes and probably run it better than Amtrak has. First thing I would do is interline the LSL and SM to save on consists and send the crew from MIA on to Chicago. It would be no different than the Western trains with two nights on the road. And you would end up saving a crew in the process. First thing I would want to do is cut my avoidable costs as low as I can with better scheduling which means that 945 Departure from Chicago will have to go and move earlier. And that 3:15 Departure on the Meteor will move way back probably to seven. Turn the Meteor into the Carolinas to Florida train to be an equivalent to the Palmetto with the NEC being evening departures. Not super hard to improve that one set of services.
 
Call me crazy here (I've been drinking sorry for spelling) but I could actually see service expanding is Amtrak goes away. You go to a Spoke and Hub Model (In the EAST and Midwest) while keeping a few LD trains.

Hubs:
NYC
DC
Atlanta
St Louis
New Orleans
Denver



New Routes (Intercity Express Services stopping at major cities only):

Southeast :
Miami/Orlando/Jacksonville/Atlanta
Atlanta/Birmingham/New Orleans
Atlanta/Chattanooga/Nashville/Louisville
Atlanta/Charlotte/Raleigh/DC
Atlanta/Charlotte/Greensboro/Charlottesville/DC
New Orleans/Memphis/St Louis
Memphis/Nashville

Midwest:
St Louis/Louisville/Cincinnati/Columbus/Pittsburgh/Philadelphia/DC
St Louis/Louisville/Cincinnati/Cleveland/Buffalo
St Louis/Chicago/Detroit/Toronto
Green Bay/Milwaukee/Chicago/St Louis


West:
Denver/Vegas/LA
Denver/Salt Lake City/San Francisco
Cheyenne/Fort Collins/Denver/Albuquerque/El Paso
Denver/Salt Lake/ Boise/Portland/Seattle
Denver/Wichita/Oklahoma City/ Ft. Worth


This would suck for the smaller towns as the train would not stop in those locations.
 
West:
Denver/Vegas/LA
Denver/Salt Lake City/San Francisco
Cheyenne/Fort Collins/Denver/Albuquerque/El Paso
Denver/Salt Lake/ Boise/Portland/Seattle
Denver/Wichita/Oklahoma City/ Ft. Worth
Just gonna cut the rail link between the two biggest cities in California?

And nothing for the Bay Area or the Pacific Northwest where rail travel is supported...
 
Just gonna cut the rail link between the two biggest cities in California?

And nothing for the Bay Area or the Pacific Northwest where rail travel is supported...

Yes. All state sponsored services would remain. I should have put that in my post. I knew I forgot something.
 
Last edited:
Rest assured...THAT is never going to happen...

who knows?

The airlines, the auto manufacturers, the banks and many others have at some point required huge bailouts. And they got them because the fallout of letting them fail would have been larger (or so it was claimed) than the costs of bailing them out.

Suppose in some years or decades one or several big railroads hit the wall badly and ask for massive bailouts. A smart government might at that point say, sure we can let you have money, but we want to attach some conditions ...
 
I would be very surprised if NEC the infrastructure is ever privatized. There is very little in the way of a viable business case to make it work without massive public funding. Some NEC trains may be operated by private Train Operating Companies (TOC) British style. I doubt any of the Commuter services will get privatized and they account for a major proportion of the traffic on the NEC.
 
Some NEC trains may be operated by private Train Operating Companies (TOC) British style. I doubt any of the Commuter services will get privatized and they account for a major proportion of the traffic on the NEC.

Yeah the British style has been such a success ??? Network rail taking over most of the operations.
 
who knows?

The airlines, the auto manufacturers, the banks and many others have at some point required huge bailouts. And they got them because the fallout of letting them fail would have been larger (or so it was claimed) than the costs of bailing them out.

Suppose in some years or decades one or several big railroads hit the wall badly and ask for massive bailouts. A smart government might at that point say, sure we can let you have money, but we want to attach some conditions ...
Remember Conrail? That’s how the government would bail out private railroads. And when they brought them back to profitability, they sold them back to private ownership. As for passenger trains, even under government ownership, CR got rid of what passenger trains they still had left.
So, no….private railroads will not run passenger trains if Amtrak fails.
 
The worldwide trend is decisive: privatization of public services is a failure, everyone knows it, Reagan/Thatcher ideology has been rejected by the masses, and government operations are the future of public services. If Amtrak failed, the question would be *what government services* would replace it.

If Amtrak failed it would indicate federal government failure (perfectly likely given the stupid filibuster and the malapportioned Senate and the corrupted Supreme Court and so on). So we'd end up with a lot more state-run operations, and probably consortia of states. Michigan to Illinois would still operate. Michigan might finally bite the bullet and buy the right-of-way through Indiana -- there is plenty of precedent for one state owning land in another state. Or Indiana might politically shift enough to get over its anti-rail politics; I was surprised, frankly, when the West Lake Corridor was approved.
 
CR got rid of what passenger trains they still had left.
So, no….private railroads will not run passenger trains if Amtrak fails.
Actually CR did not have to get rid of anything since the enabling legislation did it for them. Other than that, what you say is on the mark.
 
Actually CR did not have to get rid of anything since the enabling legislation did it for them. Other than that, what you say is on the mark.
Conrail did run several commuter trains from their beginning in 1976, until as late as 1983 in several area's, which either ended, or were picked up by other operator's....
 
Remember Conrail? That’s how the government would bail out private railroads. And when they brought them back to profitability, they sold them back to private ownership. As for passenger trains, even under government ownership, CR got rid of what passenger trains they still had left.
So, no….private railroads will not run passenger trains if Amtrak fails.

But that was in an age that passenger trains were considered to be on their way out. Somewhere in the same category as telegrams and stagecoaches.

I think there has already been a shift in attitudes since and give it another decade or two and I believe that shift will be far bigger.
 
Last edited:
But that was in an age that passenger trains were considered to be on their way out. Somewhere in the same category as telegrams and stagecoaches.
But they still have stagecoaches, they just call them "intercity buses" (sometimes they even call them "coaches"), and the only difference is that they're powered by diesel engines instead of horses. And that they're air-conditioned.

And they still have telegrams, they just call them "email."

:)
 
But that was in an age that passenger trains were considered to be on their way out. Somewhere in the same category as telegrams and stagecoaches.

I think there has already been a shift in attitudes since and give it another decade or two and I believe that shift will be far bigger.

I wholeheartedly agree. Public attitude (especially on the coasts) has shifted in a major way.

There are many reasons for this. I think they are, but not limited to, people traveling and seeing other countries, the current traffic crisis, environmental issues, general distaste toward air travel, and Amtrak being run at least well enough to survive and expand service in the right places.

As time goes on, I think the general attitude towards rail will continue to shift favorably. There are still a few holdouts (that dumb Cato institute article), but I think they’re running out of fuel for their arguments.

I think it’s extremely unlikely that Amtrak will fail, given the general bipartisan support for at least keeping the company on life-support. Hopefully, the post-pandemic boom, the current administration, and general upswing in rail advocacy will help propel Amtrak to a different level.
 
I wholeheartedly agree. Public attitude (especially on the coasts) has shifted in a major way.

There are many reasons for this. I think they are, but not limited to, people traveling and seeing other countries, the current traffic crisis, environmental issues, general distaste toward air travel, and Amtrak being run at least well enough to survive and expand service in the right places.

As time goes on, I think the general attitude towards rail will continue to shift favorably. There are still a few holdouts (that dumb Cato institute article), but I think they’re running out of fuel for their arguments.

I think it’s extremely unlikely that Amtrak will fail, given the general bipartisan support for at least keeping the company on life-support. Hopefully, the post-pandemic boom, the current administration, and general upswing in rail advocacy will help propel Amtrak to a different level.

i agree . But in my view it’s not just about blaming the Cato institute or anybody like that . They are part of the problem of course, but not the whole of the problem . I think Amtrak can also itself be its own worse enemy . In the handling of catering for example. Or in the toleration of staff who are less than fully customer focused . And in many cases the problem can be traced all the way to the top levels of management who either don’t care or are serving some other purpose . Many people who are making their first train journey are not seeing train travel in the best possible light .

some of the things the Cato Institute say are either true or almost true . And many of them could be avoided without it costing a fortune .
 
I apologize for being unintentionally vague on what privatization would look like for the NEC.
Why should the NEC become privatized?

Your second paragraph contains the answer (edited):
... the NEC is the one place in the country where passenger rail is a significant part of the transportation system. Also, both Washington and Wall Street movers and shakers ride the service and thousands of their employees use it to commute to work or travel for business,

That seems like a captive audience situation where the alternatives are, at best, not great. Someone, somewhere would take a look at the math and determine if some sort of NEC operation could pencil out some profit extraction.

Now, do I believe Amtrak would just sell the whole NEC (rolling stock, land, bridges, tunnels, etc) to one person or group? That's very unlikely. That would either take some crazy dealing by the Feds, someone who has Berkshire Hathaway, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk money, or both. (If Elon Musk bought the entire NEC as-is... well, all bets are off about what the NEC would look like.) More likely, the privatization model would look like what the UK attempted before their latest report abandoning the scheme.

The land, non-rail infrastructure (bridges, tunnels), and stations would return to the individual states "in the public interest" to keep commuter rail running. I don't think that would change much, except perhaps how infrastructure projects get funded later on. Some rejiggering of Federal money to/from the states would likely happen in exchange for the land transfer, so the states aren't completely holding the long-term financial bag for Amtrak's collapse.

The operations/rail infrastructure side (e.g. track maintenance, signals, overhead wire work, dispatch) would probably go to an organization similar to Network Rail in the UK. I could see the Feds running this part for a while and just charging the states the cost of doing business, handing it off to a "joint powers board" corporation owned by the states to run it, or handing it over to Conrail Shared Assets. Handing this off to a single Class I would be ... scary, which is why Conrail Shared Assets exists today.

The rolling stock and actual above-rail operations would likely be the fully privatized bit, and the thing people associate as privatization. Whether or not it's open access (like Regiojet/Flixtrain) or if it's one operator like Arriva/DB being contracted to run the NEC on behalf of the states is another matter, determined by legislation.
 
Rest assured...THAT is never going to happen...

I would guess that is the case, but I mentioned it only in case there was some clever legislation when creating Amtrak or there was another contractual agreement in place when Amtrak took over for a Class I.
 
The 8M # gorilla is the $80B needed to get the NEC in a state of good repair. I cannot believe NY state (MNRR), CT State and MA state (RI state line to BOS ) are going to let their portions of the NEC they own get away; are you going to believe that ? So you have 4 owners not just the one Amtrak. Almost forgot you also have LIRR owns Harold CP. That makes 5 owners.

EDIT CSX might also get its pound of flesh as it leases Albany line to Amtrak.
EDIT #2 - Do not forget all the stations that are owned by various agencies . Probably some other facilities as well which would all end up states trying to get property taxes like our class 1s now suffer from.
 
Last edited:
The 8M # gorilla is the $80B needed to get the NEC in a state of good repair. I cannot believe NY state (MNRR), CT State and MA state (RI state line to BOS ) are going to let their portions of the NEC they own get away; are you going to believe that ? So you have 4 owners not just the one Amtrak. Almost forgot you also have LIRR owns Harold CP. That makes 5 owners.

EDIT CSX might also get its pound of flesh as it leases Albany line to Amtrak.
EDIT #2 - Do not forget all the stations that are owned by various agencies . Probably some other facilities as well which would all end up states trying to get property taxes like our class 1s now suffer from.
Where did you hear that LIRR owns Harold?
 
Hasn't there been several posts that LIRR dispatches Harold ? It controls LIRR on toward Jamaica. Isn't the ESA part of the Amtrak separation from Harold so that Amtrak can dispatch from NYP to continue onto Gate CP without dealing with Harold ?
 
Hasn't there been several posts that LIRR dispatches Harold ? It controls LIRR on toward Jamaica. Isn't the ESA part of the Amtrak separation from Harold so that Amtrak can dispatch from NYP to continue onto Gate CP without dealing with Harold ?
No. Those posts would be wrong. Harold is controlled out of PSCC, as is the new Plaza interlocking on the ESA.

How Amtrak trains are routed has not much to do with what control center controls Harold. All of Harold is Amtrak property and under Amtrak ACSES, not the LIRR one. Actually even the new crossovers at Woodside are also controlled out of PSCC even though the track there is owned by LIRR.

It is also true that PSCC is jointly operated by Amtrak and LIRR with an NJT liaison observer present.
 
The worldwide trend is decisive: privatization of public services is a failure, everyone knows it, Reagan/Thatcher ideology has been rejected by the masses, and government operations are the future of public services. If Amtrak failed, the question would be *what government services* would replace it.

Agreed. Fashions come and fashions go, the name "Amtrak," or perhaps even some of the concept, may change or even disappear, but the core NRPC function (and network map) will always mostly be there.

I could see a UK-style franchising of routes to private operators, with heavy federal subsidies of course, with the same result eventually (failure).
 
Back
Top