Amtrak has a recurring PR problem. Despite its resurgence in popularity over the past decade — particularly along the Northeast Corridor and California’s Capitol Corridor — it has a persistently hard time being taken seriously. It’s outdated, its inefficient, it eats through cash, most of which comes from the government. And most of all, it’s just plain unimpressive, particularly when reports are flooding in from Asia and Europe with tales of gorgeous new bullet trains and astounding travel times (9 hour trips cut to 2.5!).
Now the little rail system that could is facing an even bigger challenge: High speed rail is coming to the U.S. in full force, and is rubbing salt in the fact that our national rail provider has virtually no clue how to design, build, and operate a modern HSR system. A slew of foreign companies, all smelling blood in the water and cash in the till, are already hovering in wait, poised for the opportunity to nab big HSR contracts. Still, as the Transport Politic reports, the folks at Amtrak are giving HSR the old college try, forming an official High Speed Rail department and rushing to do an “internal reorganization that prioritizes the development and implementation of high-speed rail service in the United States.” They’ve even pledged to do feasibility studies to figure out how/whether service between Washington and Boston can get up to 220 mph.
The big prize in the near horizon, of course, is Florida, where the Tampa-Orlando line is the first major projects slotted to begin construction. And, as Transport Politic points out, the French rail company SNCF and Japan’s JR Central have already been pushing for contracts.
So does Amtrak really have a chance here? Many foreign companies have been building and operating HSR trains for decades, and have demonstrated that they could sweep in and get this done with little fuss or fanfare. Amtrak, meanwhile, carries the albatross of being a government-owned corporation (and we know how efficient those tend to be). Granted, they do have a hefty incentive to get their act together quickly — money. As Yonah Freemark notes:
Amtrak’s enthusiasm in running services at high speeds reflects the fact that fast train operations make a lot of money — as long as capital costs aren’t included in the equation. With most new American rail lines expected to be funded through grants rather than bonds, and with limited involvement thus far with the private sector, it appears that operations will not be expected to cover back-payments on construction loans, leaving profit potential for companies like Amtrak.
Image: Nirmaltv.com
March 25th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
An important fact to consider - as part of the creation of Amtrak, freight railroad MUST accept Amtrak trains over their route. Once you move to a third party operator (SNCF, JR Central, etc) there is no legal requirement for the freight railroad to allow trains on their lines. This is a non-issue for Florida’s completely grade-separated system, but could be a deal-breaker on California or in particular the Chicago Hub for anyone other than Amtrak to operate.
March 25th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Amtrak could be profitable today. They aren’t. Giving them higher speed trains wont change the fact that their cost structure is out of hand. It will just turn them into money pits that dig themselves at faster speeds.
March 25th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
If there is enough at stake I doubt seriously that there won’t be some way to negotiate a settlement with the freight roads. In any case true high speed lines (120 mph +) will need to have their own grade separated rights of way. They might need to get back on to the old lines ( and run slowly) to get in to city centers. For these short urban distances they will just have to pay for the right to use these tracks. As for Amtrak’s statutory right to use tracks everywhere this is not something carved onto stone for all time. Necessary laws can and will be developed as needed. Especially if there is a lot of money in prospect.
March 25th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Amtrak, meanwhile, carries the albatross of being a government-owned corporation (and we know how efficient those tend to be).
What? I presume this is written tongue-in-cheek, coming two sentences after noting that (government-owned corporation) SNCF is vying for a contract
March 25th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
This is why the whole US transport policy is f***ed up. We have a “national” rail system that has been beaten and starved and locked in the basement, and now that the government has billions to throw around they are courting the pretty foreign girls who are of course more attractive, not being all scarred and emaciated and all.
Sorry for the metaphor, but why doesn’t Amtrak buy the new equipment with govt funds? That’s how Acela worked, if I recall. Is the best solution now to have multiple, different companies operating disconnected pieces of rail in various parts of the country? Oh yeah, that sounds great.
Look, Amtrak is admittedly as far from perfect as you can get. But we need one, national rail system. If not Amtrak, make a new one, but don’t make a dozen, separate new ones…
March 25th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
The reason why Amtrak has been so unimpressive in the past is that it’s been starved of any serious capital money. All the overseas rail systems, like SNCF, DB, SBB, etc, have been received massive amounts of capital funds to build out HSR systems.
I don’t think Amtrak should necessarily build out HSR (probably better left to private contractors) but they should operate it. Why? Because the operating profits of the HSR line should cross-subsudize conventional speed rail service in the rest of the country. That’s what all the overseas providers do. Not every line of SNCF is high speed - but the slower (and unprofitable) lines are paid for with the revenues from the HSR lines. In that way, the benefits of HSR can be spread more evenly across the country, even in areas without HSR.
If we invested in Amtrak at anywhere near the level that other countries invested in their rail systems, Amtrak wouldn’t be where it is today.
March 25th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
I dont care who runs it, I just want all train tickets to be purchased on amtrak.com, even if behind the scenes it’s SNCF hiring the conductors.
March 25th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
High speed rail is to what we have now in existing rail what teh Interstate is to a Federal Highway.
Interstates may have shadowed existing routes but almost in no cases outside of perhaps some urban freeways did an Interstate follow an existing piece of pavement.
And unfortunately true HSR would fall in the same situation. I have a hard time picturing how teh right of way would be purchased for a line anymore than a 100% new Interstate would happen.
March 25th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
I think your post discussing Amtrak’s “inefficiency” seriously misses the spot. Amtrak manages a systemwide cost recovery of 80% of above the rail costs — that means they cover the vast majority of their variable cost. You may scoff, but 80% is actually better than any other national rail system, including the high speed systems you tout as being interested in coming to the states.
The real issue here is that Amtrak has been seriously constrained, both by lack of operating capital and by a funding mechanism that requires it to come to congress each year for funding. Because of this, the company pays a premium for new equipment since manufacturers don’t know if/when Amtrak will be ordering more. Railroads can make on time service a joke since there are really no major teeth (until recently) requiring them to give passenger trains priority over their own trains. And while other transportation modes can hide their government contribution to expense in trust funds and government grants, Amtrak’s funding is out there for all the world to see — and conservatives love to add up every government appropriation and restate it as Amtrak’s loss to date.
Just for the record, I’m not an Amtrak employee, just an interested observer who has watched the agency flounder since it’s inception in 1971. As an organization that was designed to fail when created, it has had more lives than a very lucky cat.
Which brings us to the question at hand. Amtrak will have certain legal advantages, specifically including their expertise working with freight railroads, and their national reservation system. The main albatross they will have is that, having spent most of the two decades hunkered down with no assurance of continued existence, will Amtrak management be able to shift gears and think big? The company just released a plan to replace their existing long haul conventional rolling stock within the last month, which includes some cars that are over 60 years old. Those cars didn’t get that old overnight, and it was disappointing to say the least that Amtrak management didn’t have a plan ready when Obama came into office for modernizing equipment that could have been rolled into the ARRA effort. Instead, it took over a year to do so.
Furthermore, Amtrak seems to be struggling with the concept of expansion. One recent study to add two trains (one each way) between Oklahoma City and Kansas City called for over 60 miles of new track to be constructed at taxpayer expense to support the service. For two trains a day?? Two other route additions have had similarly expensive launch costs. Amtrak management needs to commit to expansion and work to find cost effective opportunities if it is to succeed in the new high speed arena.
I do believe there are places where high speed rail will be critical and successful, and other routes where conventional moderate speed trains will work well. We need to make sure both types of trains work with each other, with linking schedules where possible, to get the maximum advantage of both.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Under the act that created Amtrak (and got the railroads out of the money losing passenger business), Amtrak is the only railroad that can run intercity service. The foreign operators are looking at the opportunities to design, construct and equip HSR, but Amtrak will need to sub-contract the operations to them as well if the foreign rail firms (government and otherwise) are going to operate US HSR.
Amtrak has been operating with a big monkey on its back since it was created - Congress. If they could really operate as a corporation, I think you would see a very different operational profile. Its a miracle that they were ever able to construct and operate Acela.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Amtrak has a piss-poor brand. No matter how well it executes projects, no matter how much service improves, it’s engrained that Amtrak means delays and unreliability.
We’ll have to turn over a new leaf and create a new brand if any headway is to be made.
March 26th, 2010 at 1:51 am
The California project uses 0% freight-owned tracks. It uses some freight-owned ROW, but that’s different. Any of the true HSR proposals - as opposed to 110 mph diesel trains - use dedicated tracks.
And yes, Amtrak’s lack of funding is part of the problem. But it’s only a small part. Read its proposal to spend $11 billion on shaving half an hour from the Acela’s Boston-Washington runtime, and ask yourself whether Moyniahn Station and Hell Gate Bridge upgrades are the best uses of public money. Then read how it cost SNCF about the same amount of money per km to build the LGV Est, and ask yourself why Amtrak can’t build real HSR for that budget.
March 26th, 2010 at 8:25 am
I would go with Amtrak. Yes, they need to work harder to get the job done correctly. However, I’m going to defend this company. They have had the “yo yo approach” taken to them by Washington. We need a consistent, supportive rail message and one that does not change every time the political winds turn direction.
I ride Amtrak now and will in the future. The aging population of baby boomers are more then ready for high, higher, or even medium speed passenger rail.
All Aboard!
March 26th, 2010 at 10:55 am
There’s a lot of misinformation scattered throughout this post and thread.
1.) Most of Amtrak’s money does not come from the government. Amtrak had $3.4 billion in expenses last year. About 50% of their revenue comes directly from passenger tickets at $1.7 billion. Another $100 million comes from contracted payments by states to operate short-haul trains, $100 million comes from food and beverage service, $100 million is gained from being contracted to operate commuter lines, and there’s about $300 million in everything from freight access fees on Amtrak-owned track to advertising on Amtrak property to rent at Amtrak owned stations. The $1.1 billion gap between expenses and revenue is covered by the federal government. That cannot be construed as “most”.
2.) Amtrak does not have an exclusive right to operate on freight-owned track. That exclusive monopoly died in 1996, exactly 25 years after creation. Nor must freight railroads accept Amtrak if they want to operate over one of their routes. You are free to start your own passenger railroad, though the freight railroads have signaled that they have no desire to work with anyone but Amtrak. Are these foreign operators going to be union shops? Running a train with non-union personnel over union rails is a non-starter.
3.) When it comes to adding new service, the freight railroads hold all the cards. They own the track, after all, and it’s hard to run a train without it. While the passenger trains do pay their incremental cost to access the track, the railroads often don’t see that extra revenue as worth it. Freight is perfectly happy riding on bumpy track at 59 miles an hour and it doesn’t get upset when it’s diverted into a siding for two hours. So, if BNSF says, “Sure, we’ll be happy to host your train if you pay for 66 miles of double-tracking between Oklahoma City and Kansas City,” can you blame them? They’re negotiating with the value of their assets, and Amtrak doesn’t have much to negotiate with. Amtrak can try and bargain with BNSF as to how many capital projects they’re actually going to fund, but as noted in point 2, BNSF is under no obligation to grant access to their rails.
4.) It’s easy to say “Amtrak could be profitable today,” and then end your post without any suggestions of what needs to be reformed other than a vague reference to cost structure. How would you make Amtrak profitable? Usually this is a reference to employee costs. Keep in mind that union-busting will pretty much guarantee that no passenger train ever operates on freight-owned rails again.
March 26th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
In the 1920s, passenger rail had a staggering 1.27 Billion passengers - annually.
Compare that to about 28 Million annually for Amtrak these days.
(another comparison - airlines had a domestic number of about 700 million passengers last year,
and a lot of them are losing money - go figure).
Sure, Amtrak has its share of problems, partially due to limited funds - but no passenger rail in the world makes any sort of real profit, and they all have some sort of government subsidy.
There’s a book that came out in 2009, called “Waiting on a Train” by James McCommons.
Very informative book about the state of Rail today, how we got here, and where we’re going.
Shoud the private sector undertake high speed rail?
The private sector will not risk billions of dollars - the time horizon is too long; most investors want quicker payback.
It’s a proven fact that frequency of service builds ridership/popularity.
(Just look at the rail between Sacramento/Oakland/San Jose).
Long distance trains? Let me state an example of something:
Why did we build Interstate 80 across Wyoming? It wasn’t because of traffic jams in Wyoming.
It was all about connectivity. Same with trains - you gotta have the connectivity between the local trains and the rest of the country.
March 26th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Both employee costs and procurement costs/problems are out of hand at Amtrak. And unions do not hold as much sway as you think with the Class I railroads. Their representation is mostly regional and rarely has any voice in system wide decisions. Often there will be multiple unions representing workers from the same railroads, as signal operators, locomotive engineers, track maintenance workers, etc are all represented by different unions, which makes it very difficult for unions to gain enough of a common ground to sway decisions. For example, track maintenance and signaling unions don’t feel any competition from non-union conductors and engineers, and often see it as a benefit to job security.
Procurement costs are a big problem as well, as Amtrak has been lobbied extensively to buy American locomotives and rolling stock. They could be running cheaper, as well faster (believe it or not, there are plenty of places that have track speed restrictions much higher than Amtrak chooses to travel). They have only been lucky recently with getting Bombardier for the Acela. Going international would enable them to use more off-the-shelf passenger technology.
March 26th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
@Tim: actually, a lot of railfans would be able to come up with tons of ideas on how to improve Amtrak, none of which involves union busting. Instead, the problem is the outdated, pulled-out-of-thin-air FRA regulations. The FRA requires trains to be so heavy that maintenance and fuel costs are prohibitive, and speeds are low. The Acela, whose tilting mechanism is best suited for a lightweight train, is in especially bad condition: it needs to be taken out for maintenance every 20,000 miles, where the original contract called for 400,000.
More bad regulations, none with any basis in reality:
- Trains are limited to a cant deficiency of 3″, based on passenger comfort experiments done in the 1950s with trains with bad suspension. Trains with good suspensions routinely do 5-6″ without tilting. Lightweight tilting trains are capable of 10-12.5″. The Acela, hobbled by its weight and by an unrelated ADA-compliant bathroom issue, can do 7″.
- Every train must have a conductor. One-person train operation is standard in Germany and Japan, cutting costs. In the US this is illegal, so even short commuter trains have to have two people on them.
- Superelevation is limited to 4″. This makes sense on lines dominated by slow freight trains, but on lines dominated by faster passenger trains, such as the Northeast and Keystone Corridor, 6″ should be doable, and even 8″ is fine on dedicated high-speed lines.
Amtrak itself engages in so much chaff spending and is so irresponsible with schedules that the main question about it should be which Japanese railroad to sell it to.
@Eric: SNCF was profitable until 2009, when its track access fees got hiked. The Japanese train companies are mostly privately owned and mostly profitable, including not just the companies that do HSR but also the companies that run commuter rail and subways. Korail is profitable, as are DB’s intercity services. And the subways in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul all make money.
The reason they built I-80 through Wyoming isn’t connectivity. The US Highway system provided plenty of that. The reason was that the road boosters believed in drawing lines that looked connected on a national map, and were not above pork spending. The same is true today for the various HSR fantasy maps that connect Salt Lake City to Denver and half the time imagine HSR to involve 110 mph diesel locomotives.
And by the way, railroad ridership has declined by much less than you think. The figure you cite for the 1920s includes commuter rail, for which the comparable figure today should be about 400-500 million passengers per year. Even that would overstate the decline, since in some areas, for example Long Island, commuter rail lost ridership to the subway rather than to the car. The LIRR used to get a few percent more ridership than it gets now, but much of its ridership came from areas now served by the 7 and the E, which are cheaper and hardly any slower.
March 27th, 2010 at 1:37 am
I, as a citizen and a taxpayer say:
“Over my dead body will we spend tens of billions on high-speed rail, then turn it over to those rotters at Amtrak.”
March 28th, 2010 at 11:08 am
There are other things to consider. For example, when riding on the train, the train is responsible for you from start to finish. This is a cost airlines, for example, are able to push off on the consumer. When a flight is canceled due to the weather the airline is not responsible for that stranded passenger and the passenger is therefore subsidizing a cost that the Amtrak would cover.
March 28th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I wish you could get this information out to the public in larger media sources, beyond this niche readership, Alon….People need to know the trouble with FRA and what exactly is hobbling the Acela. Most casual followers of the news and potential NEC HSR supporters are just assuming that Obama is going to throw money at the Acela and it will finally become what it needs to be.
I want to be clear, though, to get the Acela up to peak speeds does a new right of way need to be established and built the whole of the way, or can new segments be built at key points to segregate it from freight travel, allow the train to pas, and keep the system moving at a good clip?
A general comment for the editor’s of this website; can something be done to just utterly debunk Randal O’Toole? He’s spreading a lot of destructive stuff against mass transit efforts all around the internet tubes that I see get picked up on lots of blogs and message boards it doesn’t belong….
March 28th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Another question, who owns the tracks on the heavily burdened metro-north commuter rails in Fairfield, New Haven counties in CT?
March 28th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Bill: between New Rochelle and New Haven, Metro-North owns the track. It restricts speeds to 90 mph west of the NY/CT state line and 75 mph further east, and bans tilting, which further restricts the Acela’s speed on curvy track. Occasionally it uses track spacing as an excuse, but the real reason for this policy is that slowing everyone down to the speed of express commuter trains makes it easier to dispatch trains. The tracks still have ample capacity for full-speed trains, but that would require timed overtakes, which would force the operators to stick to schedule.
The Acela doesn’t need new tracks the entire way, no. South of New York, and north of the CT/RI state line, the track is mostly straight; there are some bad curves, but most can be straightened at minimal cost. The entire route has minimal freight traffic, and the only segment that sees significant commuter traffic, New York-Trenton, is fully four-tracked with some six-track segments near Newark.
Even between New York and the CT/RI line, there are some stretches where the existing track would support high speeds, given some minor curve easements. Other sections would require new track, which would also provide opportunities to pass slower commuter trains. The main issue in Connecticut is that west of New Haven, I-95 is not always straighter than the existing track.
If you’re looking for ways to deal with O’Toole, then just exploit the fact that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He and Cox lie so much that it’s usually easy to find solid refutations to what they say. Very little of what they say stands up to fact-checking. Just let their funding sources dry up from debt and attrition and they’ll go the way of the Tobacco Institute.
March 28th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
That’s reassuring about Toole…He greatly irritates me in how often I see him quoted all over the internet, and I noticed another blog with a supposed professional planning consultant referencing him this morning, so that sort of sent me over the edge.
What’s wrong with keeping operators to a strict schedule and update the system with satellites and computers? I knew the excuse about not being able to tilt east of the CT line because of all the commuter rail (which also runs far too slow, in my opinion, and I wish would be sped up even more than HSR. Also, as someone who spent decades dealing with tractor-trailer trucks on I-84, what would be wrong with increasing freight by train too?)
Anyways, if I understand you correctly, a very significant upgrade to the whole of the Northeast corridor can be made between Greenwhich and New Haven, if some passing tracks are built, and some extra right-of-way cleared. Why is money being spent in Texas to fix up little used stations instead of focusing all the dollars like a laser beam on making a few dozen miles of track between NYC-Boston come up to international standards for HSR?
Only reasons I can think of is that its in some of the most expensive land areas of the whole country, and often in marshy wetland coast land.
March 28th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
The problem is cultural - American railroads don’t really think of schedule adherence as important. When they do, they think of on-time performance as running within 5 minutes of schedule. With a 5 minute schedule tolerance, you can’t time transfers or overtakes. Trains run within a minute of a schedule in Japan and Germany, where institutional culture has made reliability a priority, but good luck trying to convince American railroad workers and managers to adapt to this more modern way of operating.
The reason the government isn’t spending money on fixing the NEC is cultural, in a different sense. The NEC is Amtrak territory, so foreign operators and state governments don’t really try to improve it. Connecticut doesn’t give a damn about improving travel speeds from New Haven to New York and Boston; it cares more about commuter operations. New York State politicians focus on trains to Upstate New York, Maryland and New Jersey politicians focus on their own commuter rail, and so on.
This arrangement ensures nobody but Amtrak is in a position to propose HSR on the NEC, and so far Amtrak has avoided planning more than incremental upgrades. Full HSR in the Northeast would be cost-effective, but the Connecticut bypasses would be difficult to implement well, and many would incur NIMBY wrath. (For example, I can’t think of any way HSR could go through Darien without a dramatic slowdown, substantial eminent domain, or an expensive tunnel. And Darien’s only the second hardest city to deal with; bypassing the Bridgeport curves would require underwater tunneling.)
Freight rail’s a separate animal from HSR - the reason it’s weak here is that the southernmost freight rail crossing of the Hudson is near Albany. Freight railroads don’t have the money or the inclination to electrify, and diesel trains can’t go through the tunnels crossing Manhattan due to air quality issues.
March 28th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Again, what you’re saying I think needs to be published more widely in mainstream print (I hope Ms. Melissa Lafsky’s reading this and calling her friends at the NYTimes). I’ve seen how Metro-North loves toting out its stats about 97% on-time record to public meetings with city officials (I’ve seen this in Bridgeport), in the press, etc. and people just clap and say good job and think all is well. But if its true that we can be squeezing far more out of our dilapidated system by being more demanding as a culture of transit riders, and we’re not just purely for cultural reasons, that needs to be front and center in the public consciousness.
I also believe the different states, believe it or not, can be coaxed into seeing their mutual self-interests in improving mass transit between one another.
However.
Some of what you’re saying, though, is giving me pause and cause for despair for any real improvements to speed up times from New Haven to NYC in my lifetime. The NIMBY stuff through ‘captains of the universe’ places like Darien I was conscious of, and thought could be avoided in certain segments as long as the new construction could be in sections on less controversial parcels, and not parallel to the whole of the length. But as for underwater tunneling in Bridgeport, fougheddaboutit!! That’d be harder than a Boston Big Dig Part II, even with a re-elected Chris Dodd double-teaming with Teddy Kennedy’s ghost to write the Federal checks to every ‘union’ and ‘legitimate’ enterprise in the region.
:sigh:
March 29th, 2010 at 2:16 am
A lot of misconceptions posted here … and a few insights. I agree with the ones who say that the lack of money isn’t Amtrak’s problem … it’s management. As an example, the tracks east of New Orleans were damaged by Katrina which caused Amtrak to stop service on the Sunset Limited east of N.O. The tracks were repaired six months later … but we still have a gap in Amtrak service.
We need to ditch the plans of HSR and go for HPR (High Performance Rail up to 110 mph). We could get much more bang for the buck by doing this. With the same amount of money, we could get more of everything … better service, faster service, and expanded operations.
March 29th, 2010 at 4:37 am
The 97% is somewhat of a sham - it gives so much leeway that you can forget about timing anything.
The state interest issue is real, but mostly the states let the Feds run Amtrak, with the exception of a couple of in-state or almost in-state corridors like Cascades or Empire. The NEC would have to be a federal effort. It might as well be - the feds own it, the profits would go back to the feds, and right now the biggest constituency for the idea is members of Congress who need to shuttle back and forth between New York and Washington.
You can *mostly* avoid NIMBYism. In a crunch you could follow I-95 in Darien; the curves would slow the trains down, but not by that much - it’s on the order of 1.5 minutes. I’m guessing that on the whole buying out the properties to straighten the curve would cost maybe $50 million, which should be much less than the value of 1.5 minutes to travelers. The same would be true in Milford, the only other part of Connecticut where eminent domain would be significant. Bridgeport is the real whopper; the curves on both sides of the station are horrendous, and the express tracks have capacity issues. My guess is that the underwater tunnel and I-95 tie-ins would save anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes, for about $0.5-2 billion.
March 29th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Nice background facts Alon; brings a lot to the discussion. In the NEC and in SoCal (the two busiest Amtrak systems), it’d be nice to see all of Amtrak’s assets turned over to JPAs made up of regional transit agencies. I’m surprised at the contracting revenue figures for Amtrak. I’d have figured that Transit America/Herzog and such would have blown Amtrak out of the water by now. In terms of customer service, quality of maintenance, and plenty of other factors (not least cost), they seem to be blowing Amtrak away where they’ve taken over operations contracts.
I’m curious whether the FRA reform issue is being looked at much. The agency’s focus these days seems entirely on the positive train control roll out. It’d be nice to more of their functions turned over to FTA, which doesn’t seem to be in the same rail stone age.
March 30th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
To all the people who advocate selling Amtrak to European or Japanese rail companies, I’d like to ask the following: How does such a sale eliminate the FRA rules and long term spending problems that have been identified in this discussion? I haven’t seen anyone propose anything that *Amtrak management* could do to improve service, and I don’t see how simply changing management would fix the problems that have been identified. Granted, changing attitudes about what constitutes “on-time” performance would help, but that requires cooperation from other, outside players.
So, again: What substantial changes could be made by _the_people_who_are_in_charge_of_Amtrak_ to improve service?
March 31st, 2010 at 3:28 am
My two cents is they should have a less scattershot approach in improving things. Granted, during the decade of contracting budgets a lot of the less used station had to defer maintenance and upkeep, but the money in the stimulus bill seems to have been taken as license to do all those updates in as geographically equitable a fashion as possible, rather than directing funding like a laser beam on improving speed and frequency in the major corridors. The other thing management needs to do is figure out what went wrong when they switched to concrete ties in the northeast. They were meant to last decades and in five years the things were cracking and had to be replaced–who was out there inspecting the concrete? Does management have a good handle on its contractors? That was the sort of thing that shakes my confidence in Amtrak management to do big things, and to do them in a hurry. Bring Samsung in here if they cannot, because I don’t want to wait another 20 years. Amtrak simply cannot afford the long delays in implementing these things, or what was worse in that case, finally installing them, only to have to rip them up and do it over again. The political will to do the projects will evaporate and then it will become completely unfeasible for who knows how many more generations. Personally, I can forgive almost any other deficiency (save reckless regard to safety) if three things are made much more competitive: speed, frequency, and cost. Heck, I’m not even sure how much a concern safety is–those Chinatown buses between NYC and Boston are very popular, but not because they’re the safest drivers on the road.
April 1st, 2010 at 3:41 am
Bob, Amtrak could begin by joining with Caltrain in requesting a waiver. If multiple passenger railroads in the US request a rule modification, and argue successfully that moving to UIC rules will not compromise safety, then the FRA might change its ways.