With Amtrak’s new $1.9 million funding passed. What will happen next?
Midlan142,
I understood it was $19M over 6 years.
Didn’t we just hash this out in “What would you do?”
Conversely, who knows what Amtrak will do? They certainly haven’t said much about priorities or anything pragmatic for the level of funding.
Harvey
Dr. Evil:
I will unleash my Evil weapon on the world unless my demands are met and I am paid one point nine miiiiillion dooollars!
#2
(whispers in Dr. Evil’s ear explanation about change in price levels and inflation since the pre-Amtrak era)
Dr. Evil:
Ok, Ok, I have changed my demands. You must now pay me, nineteen biiilllion doolllars!
They will buy one new passenger car.
But, what if they had $19B?
They’ll probably hire more car inspectors and coach cleaners, create several brand new, large, competing and overlapping, internal departments, complete with full VPs to study ways to spend the $$, hire several consultants to do planning and design work, and then suddenly find the money is all spent.
…or maybe I’m just cynical.
You mean 1.9 Billion passed?
I seem to remember reading or hearing that Amtrak’s stipend for the coming year will be more along the lines of $1.5 billion, part of the new funds on top of the usual political squabble that usually resolves around one billion.
I hope that Amtrak acquires or rehabs some of its equipment or (glory hallelujah!) buys some more L-D equipment. If extra NEC scheduling is not possible due to congestion, then I hope Amtrak will start commissioning bi-levs (“tri-levs” to the sticklers). If NJT can take their bi-levs into Penn Station, so can Amtrak.
If all they do is featerbed, whether at the labor, white-collar or magerial levels, Congress should just buy the thing out or privatize it IMHO. Even if it’s just the NEC. At long last Amtrak has half a hope of responding to consumer demand, and if they blow it, I for one have had it.
I sincerely hope they don’t.
If the “extra money” goes towards some vision of congestion-relieving gas-saving frequently-and-reliably-scheduled future-of-transportation-in-America, I am all for it. If the money goes to same-old same-old, lets refurbish some Superliners to keep the Sunset going, in the mode of service that we get to keep sleepers and dining cars in the style of the year 1950, but we are operating once-daily or perhaps thrice-weekly service in the manner of whenever we can get there, well, that pretty much spells the end of Amtrak and US intercity passenger service at the end of the six years.
This money was supposed to get us the 110 MPH tilt-train Empire Corridor, Midwest Regional Rail Initiative style of frequent, networked corridor service. If people in the advocacy community want this money spent on LD equipment instead, and there is only so much of this money to go around and Amtrak along with the people influencing Amtrak will need to make choices. This reinforces my suspicion that the advocacy community is really about the LD trains, and our claims that we will solve the Chicago, Atlanta, etc road congestion problem and the $4 gas problem are mere talking points.
I can see holding on to the Sunset if what we are trying to do is hang on to the trains we have, any train, to prevent the network from collapsing and seeing the end of passenger service in the US. On the other hand, if the advocacy community is apparently successful in getting an infusion of money into Amtrak to expand service, if as an advocacy community we can’t see perhaps even cutbacks on some types of trains for which there is no future in exchange for a more vigorous expansion of other types of trains that are our vision for the future, I don’t see a long-term future for the entire enterprise.
One Amtrak need and priority is for adequate route capacity to provide a reliable intercity rail passenger services with the new equipment that the funding would provide.
The freight railroads, facing unprecedented growth in traffic since the middle of the last century, need help to expand capacity - some of which are Amtrak routes. I’m okay with some national Amtrak money going to capacity improvements on regional routes to be matched by states as a contribution to railroad improvements, maybe 10-10-80. This should not be a major source for funding and back-door grant to the railroads. The exception being routes slated for downgrading or discontinuance of freight service.
I wonder if it would be desirable and legal for the people and government to obtain commensurate shares of stock in the company for the public money used for route capacity expansion.
The following illustrate the breadth of the issue.
Illinois is considering upgrading a few routes for new services. This goes well beyond restoring service by putting a train on adequate existing lines. New crossing protection, signaling, and passing tracks will be needed.
Upgrading and increasing Amtrak service between Chicago and Milwaukee will impact both hosts: Metra and Canadian Pacific. One alternative that has been considered is a freight bypass route.
Missouri has provided funds for two siding projects on the Saint Louis - Kansas City route; but it looks like this will be inadequate to assure reliable service in the face of heavy freight traffic. Meanwhile, Union Pacific seems to be investing in capacity improvements on the Fort Worth - El Paso line that sees far fewer trains.
Can anyone comment on the California trains? They run hourly service some times a day and some routes. Do they keep their schedules? What deal did they make with UP to facilitate the level of traffic?
The thing is that Metra and other commuter agencies operate over host freight railroads and have achieved operating agreements and apportioned line improvements between the commuter agency and the railroad. I am thinking Amtrak can achieve the same thing on certain corridors, expecially if they go more with the California approach and less like the Illinois approach of having a more adversarial relationship with the host railroads.
As others have said before, the basic problem with Amtrak is it has evolved too much into a government bureaucracy and not into a modern rail enterprise. (By the way, my friend who has worked for Amtrak for over 30 years agrees with that description.) Given that its funding is so political, I suppose it was inevitable. But I have no confidence that the current Amtrak can handle any major challenge. I’ll believe that Amtrak is on the rise when I actually see signs of progress in the future.
Personally, I’d like to see a commission set up among the 8 states served by the NEC (forget DC) to take over running it and then have the rest of Amtrak exist on its own. (You can also do the same for the other “solid” corridors such as in CA and Chicago-Milwaukee.) But tying the operation/funding of the NEC to the Sunset Limited or similar makes no sense.
I have to ask if you’ve taken a Chicago - Saint Louis Lincoln Service train?
I took 4-5 round trips from Chicago to Springfield last year; and it was an adventure. I know things happen; but the delays frequently seemed to exceed any reasonable dispatching choices by both CN and UP. Only once was the train on time and actually had to wait a few minutes for the schedule at Joliet and at Springfield going down.
Illinois has rebuilt the Chicago - Saint Louis line for CN and UP and gets treated like a mushroom. The bottom line is that, unless repealed, the railroads that joined Amtrak are obliged to accommodate the service, notwithstanding, derailments, floods, landslides and other calamities. If business shrank and brought about a reduction in capacity, it should not be up to Amtrak or the states to restore or expand capacity because freight traffic picked up.
The confounding delays were, and may still be, a major irritation and discouragement to return customers. Mabe it’s good that service is bad and does not attract more business than Amtrak has equipment to handle.
That, in my opinion, is at the core of what the passenger train advocacy community is about and the choice about what direction we want to take.
One choice is to say we are never going to have a viable passenger operation over the freight railroads; we need dedicated passenger rail lines. That argument is advanced by many here saying “Let’s build HSR and putting money into 79 MPH trains is pouring money down the drain.” Not saying I agree with that argument, but the position that we need separate freight and passenger railroad lines is one position to take. We sort of have that with the NEC. Yes, there are freight trains on the NEC, but they operate at the convenience of the predominant passenger traffic rather than they other way around. No, the NEC is not HSR, but it points to what is possible with a dedicated high-volume passenger line. And yes, the NEC is expensive to own and operate, even at the high volume of traffic, and the question is whether it or the next step of HSR can be cost-effective in other corridors in the US.
Another choice is to go down the “public accomodation” route. I have talked about this before, and I am not dismissive of the concept of public accomodation. When you go into the electric utility business, there are regulations that you need to follow. You don’t have to be in that business, but if you chose to be in that business, you have to maintain the wires to Paul Milenkovic’s ho
An interesting read - related to this discussion:
https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/1446/RL31473_20020626.pdf?sequence=1
It was generally expected that, as time went by, Amtrak would drop more unprofitable routes and add new, higher speed routes, and that the profitability of the higher speed routes would keep the LD trains that were left afloat.
What happened was…nothing. The existing map is nearly identical to May 1, 1971 and there are no new high speed routes.
Lots of blame to go around. Neither Congress, nor Amtrak, nor the advocacy groups led much of an effort to do anything but protect the status quo.
Paul,
You a sadly mis-informed if you think Illinois is trying to brow-beat the railroads into providing service at their expense. The State has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the railroads for infrastructure improvements in addition to contract operating costs and has committed for another 100 million for increased frequencies.
The problem is that a railroad is not meeting the agreed-to schedules at an unsatisfactory rate.
$30-40 million is proposed for infrastructure improvements alone to implement a new route.
Having spent most of my working life in the electric and gas utility business, your comment on the service requirements of the utility business caught my attention. You’re correct! An electric utility is required to serve everyone in its service area who meets the service standards.
Your analysis, however, missed an important point. The utility is not required to provide service to customers who will not pay the full cost for it. If they default on payment for the service, they are disconnected. And they are not reconnected until they pay up, including a disconnect and reconnect fee.
Usually the disconnect rules, at least in Texas, prevent the company from throwing nonperforming customers into unwarranted hardship. For example, it cannot disconnect a customer during an extreme heat or cold wave. But as soon as the weather mitigates, the disconnection process can proceed.
Most states have a program to help low income customers pay for their electric and gas utility service. They have to show that they do not have the funds to pay for their service.
Passenger rail service should be placed on the same footing. Those who use it should pay the price (fare) necessary to cover the cost of the service. &nbs
If I am sadly misinformed, then where I am getting my sad misinformation is from the WisARP newsletter and Illinois passenger train advocates Rick Harnish and Ken Brubeck. In all of the discussions about the problems of the Illinois trains from these sources, there was absolutely no mention of the infrastructure improvements in the context of the late trains. It is one thing if the Illinois trains were simply imposed on the railroads, it is quite another thing if those railroads accepted large-dollar trackage improvements and then are doing what they are doing.
If there is a “back story” to the Illinois train situation, this needs to be made known to people. This issue about how or whether it is possible to operate intercity corridor-service trains on schedule while interoperating with a freight railroad needs to be addressed on a more detailed level than merely to blame the railroads as conducting business as usual, which is the only information I get on this subject out of the advocacy community.
I fully agree that a customer who fails to honor a contractual agreement to pay for the service can and should get cut off. But what the customer has to pay has traditionally been determined by regulation, and any given customer paying that rate may or may not be paying for the full cost of that service by whatever economic or accounting formulas may be applied to the situation.
An example of this are “lifeline” rates where regulation mandates low connection charges for low-usage customers. I am arguing that the terms of the formation of Amtrak has Amtrak paying “lifeline” rates to the host railroads for trackage rights, rates that provide very little in the way of incentive for priority service on a post-Staggers act capacity-constrained rail network.
When I began my career in the electric utility industry in Texas, rates were set by the cities. Subsequently, with the formation of the Public Utility Commission in the late 70s, if I remember correctly, the rate making process defaulted to the PUC.
Until 2002 rates in Texas were set by the PUC upon presentation of a rate case by the utility seeking a rate adjustment. Beginning in 2002, for the most part, only the rates associated with the poles and wires are set by the PUC. The other components of the electric rates, e.g. power generation, customer service, etc. are set by the market place.
Preferential rates were the name of the game when I started to play it. The rates for residential customers were subsidized by commerical and industrial customers. But over the y
Paul,
You usually are on top of rail passenger issues. It was therefore disappointing to read your appraisal of the situation in Illinois. I did not mean to be patronizing and apologize for it.
Rick and Ken are men of good intentions. However, they like others dealing in the political arena will focus on the message of the day. Regrettably, discussing current issues may have presumed a background knowledge that was not there. You make a good point about the need for the “back story” that also makes a more powerful argument.
At one point, MHSRA listed the State’s improvements on their website. Rather than trust my say so, go back to either MHSR or the State of Illinois.
If you are talking about Metrolink…yes, they pretty much do run on time…although they did drop their ontime guarantee as their equipment has aged failures are more commonplace.
Depending on what line they are on, it could be Metrolink tracks, BNSF or UP. They did have a big problem with UP a couple years ago, but now that the tracks and signalling have been upgraded (with tax and railroad dollars) things are much smoother.
Can anyone comment on the California trains? They run hourly service some times a day and some routes. Do they keep their schedules? What deal did they make with UP to facilitate the level of traffic?