This is the vision of a government commission for passenger rail up to the year 2050. Unlike previous Amtrak “reform” proposals, this one was produced by professional transportation planners, not political appointees or activist groups. Their vision map and cost estimates can be found in the 4 page executive summary. A more detailed 80 page report and a 2 page press release are also available. It appears to be the first step in what I have long advocated: a coordinated planning process.
Note to Samantha: this may be more to your liking than what NARP has offered.
WHY does it have to take 50 years? There are babies that haven’t even been born yet that will live and die and never see this come to pass. 50 years? Our country is ripe for this now, and, believe it or not funding is AS available right now (or not) as will be over this extraordinary length of time.
This ought to be on a 15 year development “maximum,” except for the high-speed element. Communities need to be reconnected today. This isn’t only about transportation between mega-centers, communities that have lost their connection and sit 80 miles from airports should be respected and get the track upgrades an station renovations that will help the decay and hemorraging in their locale. Again, America isn’t only about the major metro mega-centers.
Get a larger system operating now; work on the bullet concept should follow only as long range future development.
It’s 43 years, not 50, but I agree the timeline is awfully long. Heck, the interstate highway system was mostly complete in 15-20 years. This could easily be done in the same time frame, if the political will was there. Unfortunately, the will isn’t there yet. Thus I think this proposal reflects the current political realities. A lot of skeptics will be asking why annual rail spending should suddenly jump from $1.3 billion $5-8 billion. That alone is going to be a hard sell to the current “can’t do” congress.
Still, if its a serious proposal and gets off to a solid start, it could build momentum and get going faster.
Interesting report. Looks like they took all of the individual proposals and reports that have been done and consolidated and prioritized to form an integrated plan. Even if it is a patchwork quilt of a plan rather than a zero-based plan, it’s a good starting point.
Lots of good info about environmental impact, population growth and highway congestion all in one place. Interesting that high altitude CO2 is 3X worse GHG than at ground level.
I scanned through the report for what they had to say about energy saving with trains, and they were back to the NARP Web site figures of 10-20 percent saving over autos and planes.
To quote comedian Mike Meyers, that is insufficiently Evil. It is semi-evil, quasi-evil, the margarine of evil, the one-calorie Diet Coke of Evil, and I might add, the ethanol-from-corn of Evil. How can Amtrak expect to reach world domination with that weak a record for being Evil?
Without doing anything exotic, a train should be more than twice as good as a bus, which in turn is twice as good as a car or plane, either on a fill-every-seat comparison or a realistic load factor in service comparison. A train should use 20 percent of the energy of everything else, not 20 percent less energy than everything else.
My guess is that Amtrak corridor trains are about comparable to intercity buses in per-seat fuel consumption, and the the buses do a little better in passenger-miles per gallon on account of how they are dispatched. The corridor train consists are overweight and badly streamlines and could do much better. The long distance trains, with their much lower average seating per car, taking into account low-density of “chair car” coaches, baggage, lounge, diner, crew dorm, low density of sleepers, are probably SUV-like in their energy consumption and pull the averages down.
Part of what happened was the rest of the world got better while Amtrak stayed put. In the mid-1970s, the typical family station wagon might sneak up over 15 mpg, at 55 mph, on a good day. Now, a family sedan will do about twice the mileage at 70 mph. Heck, even a Suburban will sneak up toward 20 mpg on the highway. Even airline service is more fuel efficient than the mid-70s. Amtrak’s P42s are more efficient than the F40s, but they yield higher HP/ton for the
20% energy savings is nothing to sneeze at. But is it accurate? As it turns out, different government agencies have different figures.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) has a table showing Amtrak’s energy consumption per passenger mile that is 46% lower than airlines in 2001, the latest year available from them.
NARP qoutes the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and when I do the math Amtrak only comes up 17% better than airlines (not 20% as NARP figures). Oak Ridge figures go up to 2005.
For 2001, Oak Ridge shows Amtrak with an energy consumption of 3,257 BTUs per passenger mile, while BTS shows Amtrak with 2,100 BTUs per passenger mile that same year.
Yes, 20 percent saving in energy may be sneezed upon. When you are carrying .2 percent of intercity passenger trips, and doing that requires about 1.5 billion in subsidy, ramping Amtrak up 500-fold to save 20 percent on transportation energy use would require 750 billion dollars per year.
People are arguing about the increase in automobile CAFE standards from 28/22.5 (car/light truck) to 35 MPG across the board. Given the pervasiveness of auto transport, that is a big, big effect.
To get people “on board” trains, the energy savings need to be 20 percent of, not a 20 percent reduction or even a 40 percent reduction. Those rates of savings can be achieved with existing train technology and would far exceed, at least on a seat-mile basis, anything remotely achievable with better cars.
I don’t think there is much chance of it happening. The milage of “seperate 79 - 110 mph” track has to be in the thousands. I don’t see anything in the cost summary that would support the acquistion of that much of a right of way. I even have my doubts that the money proposed would get existing private right of ways up to those standards.
The Vision for the Future, U.S. Intercity Passenger Rail Network through 2050 is a useful document. It contains a lot of food for thought and additional work.
The Passenger Rail Working Group’s (PRWG) work product presents an intriguing vision for passenger rail in 2050. It is better than the NARP offering.
A fund similar to the Interstate Highway Trust Fund, issuing government bonds, raising the gasoline tax, etc. are mentioned as potential sources for funding the vision. Unfortunately, the details are sketchy.
The probability of getting the federal or the state governments to implement a hefty increase in the gasoline tax, especially to build rail corridors, appears to be low. Texas, for example, has not raised its gasoline tax since 1992. Resistance to raising it has been fierce. This is why proponents of public transit in Texas have looked to the sales tax to fund their projects.
The PRWG does not mention the heavy debt burden being borne by U.S. taxpayers, nor does it mention the unfunded mandatory spending liabilities that are likely to acerbate it. These are indicators of the country’s ability to pay for the vision.
The PRWG estimates the cost of the vision at $357.2 billion, but it provides no way to independently verify the details. Whether they are available for public scrutiny is problematic. It claims that the cost estimates are conservative, that the actual costs will probably be less. Many rail projects in the U.S., e. g. the Dallas light rail system, the Austin rail line, etc. have exceeded their original cost estimates by tens of millions of dollars. These projects had a design to complete time of less than ten years.
The PRWG admits that it has no operating revenue and cost projections for the vision. A planning model that fails to estimate these variables would be a non-starter in the business world, or at l
And could start to be realised if the ‘Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act’ which the Senate has already approved, is passed in 2008.
This will (1) Reauthorize and provide funding for Amtrak for 5 years (2)Establish an 80% federal match funding mechanism for capital projects (3) Requires the development of a long-range Federal rail policy.
Many of the technologies that are potentially applicable to other modes of transport could be used by rail. It already uses enhanced computer technology to improve scheduling, control power, and manage signal systems, not to mention a variety of administrative processes. Also, there is the possibility of a break through with maglev technology that would make it economically feasible.
The point is that the changes in the technology of competing transport modes are likely to reduce if not wipe out the rail advantage envisioned by the PRWG.
By 2050, for example, there is a good chance that most of the vehicles on the road will be powered by zero emission engines or motors, thereby taking away the argument that trains are more environmentally benign.
Car makers and highway engineers are studying the use of electronically guided highways, i.e. cars would be guided by electronic sensors embedded in the highway and the vehicle. In fact, GM announced just last week that it is within a couple of years of having a vehicle that can be controlled by GPS, thereby greatly reducing the probability of a crash. If this comes about - I am convinced it will, the highways could handle many more cars than they do today, thereby removing the need for a lot of the concrete that would otherwise be required to keep up with population growth.
If people can travel in their vehicle and drive hands-off along the nation’s busiest corridors, they will opt to do so in a heartbeat. Many people in the rail advocacy movement miss a key point. Most people, given a viable option, would rather drive. They prefer sitting in their own vehicle, where they can listen to the radio and be bothered only by their spouse, as opposed to piling on to a train or bus, where they might wind-up sitting next to a person with a runny noise who has not bathed in a week.
Computer technology makes it possible for millions of people t
The PRWG report projects diverting 3.9 billion vehicle miles or 8.2 billion auto/light truck/van passenger miles in intercity travel to trains in the 2007-2015 time frame. Assuming a 20 MPG average for cars and light trucks (it is a bit higher in intercity-highway driving), those cars and trucks would use .195 billion gallons of fuel or about .6 billion dollars of fuel at current prices. The PRWG report claims a net fuel savings of .4 billion dollars for switching to trains.
We can pick at nits about whether the claimed 20 percent fuel saving of Amtrak over cars and planes is pocket change or if it is subsidy-worthy or whether one set of government figures gives Amtrak better fuel economy than a different set. But buried on p 37 of the report under section 3.2.1 Benefit estimates is an assumption that trains are a 67 percent fuel saving over cars, more than three times better than the number given earlier.
Buried in the report is an assumption that trains at 45 percent load factor can achieve about 1000 BTUs per passenger mile, about comparable to intercity buses. Nowhere have I seen any data that any passenger train built to U.S. standards operates anywhere near that level.
This is a sloppy report that will only provide ammunition to Amtrak critics.
Since it appears to be a compilation of all the studies done over the past decade or so, I think it does a fair job of trying to put all the costs and benefit from each on the same footing in the same document. I doubt there was much money available - it was a “working group” that did the compilation, so there couldn’t be too much new effort expended.
Using an “expert estimate” for fuel consumption really isn’t a fatal flaw. I suspect it’s a better estimate of what “might be” than using “what is”. I doubt Amtrak’s critics would
OK, the next number is 37.9 billion in rolling stock to raise passenger miles from 8.2 to 26.9 billion. I pick the 2016-2030 time frame and the 37.9 billion expenditure because in the longer time horizon, replacement of rolling stock kicks in but here it is a ramping up of the capacity of the network.
The Hiawatha service is run with two train sets doing 7 round trips per day on an 86 mile run, producing 602 train miles per day. Assuming an 80-seat corridor coach, 45 percent load factor (a reasonable assumption given the fuel consumption estimate implicit in those numbers), the added 18.7 billion passenger miles per year will need another 2400 train cars.
That comes out to about 16 million dollars per train car. In 2007 dollars. If you assume the current Amtrak average of 17 passenger miles per train car (allows for LD consists with the usual suspects of non-revenue cars), 450 miles per car per day, that comes out to 5.6 million dollars per train car (including some pro-rata share for motive power).
And the people on the PRWG have day jobs as high-ranking Amtrak or state DOT people and have an interest in making a workable case for the level of expenditure talked about. It feels good to have someone making a case for spending real money (about 8 billion/year over the next 40 years) to finally do something about passenger trains, but it really seems that the PRWG was just waving its arms.
As to cursory nature of this report, the PRWG report wouldn’t have made it out of a church pariish council, or at least during the times I was on one. The difference between church council and the passenger train advocacy community is that if I spoke up that the cost estimate for tuck-pointing the steeple was way out of line, people would hem and haw and say, OK, let’s get one more bid, but at a train advocacy meeting, people will take me aside and ask whether I am having a “crisis of faith.”
Zero emission vehicles do not automatically translate into zero emissions overall. An electric car may have zero emissions, but the power plant that produces the electricity to charge the car may not be so clean. Hydrogen fuel, if it ever becomes viable, produces water vapor as the combustion byproduct. It’s clean, for sure, but if hydrogen cars ever become the standard, I predict that people will start complaining that our cities will be too humid.
Furthermore, emissions are only a part of the environmental equation. You still have to produce the energy somehow, and “renewable” forms of energy are relatively expensive to produce. The cost of energy will no doubt rise as more renewables come available, so efficiency will still be a significant concern.
And then there’s the impact on the land itself. RR tracks lay much more gently on the land than pavement does. They have less problem with directing dripping lubricants into storm drains (which don’t go through treatment plants) and from there into waterways. Aesthetically, tracks almost disappear into the landscape when viewed from a distance. Pavement scars the landscape and fragments wildlife habitat. Many states are turning to rail because of the high environmental cost of building more highways.
Acquiring new right of way is also a problem for highway builders. Land values are so high in California now that the cost of new right of way is often prohibitive. Adding passenger capacity to existing RR rights of way is much more economical.
Developments in the electric power industry, as well as others, could make a near zero emission vehicle a reality long before 2050. These developments would also reduce the pollution associated with electric railway locomotives, since they too draw power from the nation’s electric grid.
Around the middle of the 1880s the Head of the U.S. Patient Office recommended that it be closed. He said that all of the things that were worth inventing had been invented. He was wrong. I don’t know exactly which chickens will have hatched by 2050. But I am sure that there will be a great number of them, many of which we cannot even envision at this point.
As I write this post my former colleagues are laying the groundwork for new nuclear generating units. They will be better, safer, and cheaper than existing units. And like the current ones they will be relatively pollution free. Today the U.S. gets approximately 20 per cent of its electric power from nuclear energy. By 2050 there is a good chance that it will produce a significantly higher percentage of the country’s electric power. And the industry will resolve the waste issue, which is more about politics than technical issues.
I never heard an electric utility executive - I spent half a lifetime in the business - claim that the industry could give away the electricity generated by nuclear fuel. We knew from the beginning that our company would have to build a containment plant, install pricey generators and control rooms, lay in switch yards, and enhance the transmission facilities to get the power from the source to the user. There was no way that it was going to be free. What the industry did not fully grasp was the huge cost of building and licensing nuclear power plants in the United States. Our plant, which produces 2300 megawatts of power, has run without a serious blip since the first unit went on-line in 1989.