Quick read and short paper:
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Good paper. Thanks. I wonder how the anti-Amtrak, anti-government folks will comment?
interesting to see vividly the disastrous Hoosier train experiment.
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The problem is that the āwhite paperā will be perceived as exactly what it is: an Amtrak apologetic intended to preserve Amtrakās existing scope, pre-emptively against assumed ānegative actionā. That most of its claims are either objectively correct or reasonably probable may not count for much.
The arguments for maintaining the first-class mail monopoly with the USPS are relevant here, both in terms of private ācream skimmingā and with what may be excessive competition or de facto monopolization of cherry-picked parts of the operation, leaving the āunderservedā clientele either poorly served or without service at all. Had REA been considered in these terms at the time the Post Office was considering all the contract cancellations in the latter 1960s we might not have needed NRPC so earlyā¦
I do think that it can be difficult to dance between LD as a ātransportationā service and LD as something large numbers of people want to ride.
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[quote=ācharlie_hebdo2, post:2, topic:413067, full:trueā]
Good paper. Thanks. I wonder how the anti-Amtrak, anti-government folks will comment?
interesting to see vividly the disastrous Hoosier train experiment.
[/quote]
I got in trouble last time I commented on that operation. But yeah that guy should not have been in the rail passenger business on the national railway network.
I think that was in the previous regime which seemed to be biased towards the late operator.
Our passenger rail issues might be solved (emphasis on might!) by adopting the model now used in some of Europe (Italy, Germany, France) with open access. The legacy operations continue and private operators compete, generally with low-cost, budget fares.
Seems reasonable on why Amtrak wants to become Privatized, especially because of funding being cut from the government in some cases
My principal difficulty with that is that it would come to resemble a charter-schools model, where students who can āpayā get a better or less restricted experience, and the āpublicā alternative gets increasingly commoditized and starved of resources.
There is also a concern with continuity or assurance of service. Iowa Pacific had one of the best possible operating paradigms for a private operatorā¦ and they lost their butts. I would have pointed to Richard Bransonās institutional ability to support Virgin Trainsā¦ but now heās lost his butt, too. Sure, the assets and the contracts will be picked up reasonably quickly ā but thatās the model of independent trucking, and itās extraordinarily fragile in any sort of economic or other downturn.
Quasi-public corporation dodge or not, I donāt see Amtrakās enabling legislation used to justify a Federal āstipendā in the full amount of a particular LD route to an independent operator who then presumably operates āfor orofitā ā no matter how effectively or attractively. Perhaps some lesser amount could be agreed on for the ātransportation serviceā, perhaps with discounted rates for āinternal destination pairsā.
The White Paper was in response to Elon Musk running his mouth again. Amtrakās response was why should we try privitization again and then Amtrak produced the White Paper.
BTW, you might want to check out the giant bronze bust of himself erected in Boca Chica, Texas. Think he left his humility meds or is not taking them.
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Instead of looking at two failures: one minor and one nationwide (but so many of GBās choices have failed for years!) look to the continent. So far at least, that model is working ok. Itās important to have a nationalized infrastructure with open access for freight and passenger services.
The Continental model works because the Government owns the infrastructure (or can compel operation on its terms). That would be as beneficial now as it would have been in 1920, or even with the Plumb Plan in the mid-Twenties, but it would be almost incoherently expensive to accomplish it voluntarily (followed almost certainly by political suicide at the polls) or require the sort of authoritarian ānationalizationā that you and I so dislike.
Amtrak already HAS the ability to operate what it wants over any participating-in-1971 railroad ā people in the STB hearings were pushing that narrative as recently as the Mobile service-extension hearings. The immediate question to me is whether Amtrak could āoutsourceā more than a government-funded corridor ā they have already outsource private operators like Keolis to run those things under contract, so why not extend that to a share of passenger profitability? The problem is that you and I both know the private operator will not run long without falling in the hole somewhere, either with service or amenity levels, or with periodic traffic decrease, or with some lawsuit or other unanticipated thing. Which will leave Amtrak, or some other successor, scrambling for the next mark or oatsyvor greater fool to Make Passenger Trains Great Againā¦
Iām not so sure that the cost to federalize trunk infrastructure would be so insurmountable. The rails would be relieved of their property tax burden (huge so they claim without transparency) and the costs of maintenance.
In return they would have a huge cash infusion to upgrade outdated equipment (electrification of major trunks) and the ability to operate faster services and recapture absndondonef revenue sources, as greyhounds has noted.
Remember that I have been a proponent of true open access since I was a child learning about the āiron oceanā from John Kneiling.
I donāt really think weāll ever get āFederal Controlā again, on the terms Wilson did, even when we go to war with China, nor will there be the opportunities to āpushā rational reform at the end, as there was with the Esch Act in 1920 ā although you may be sure that the āusual suspectsā who cobbled up the House and Senate bills after East Palestine will be working their agendas to the full.
The problem is that there a couple of important concerns ā ECP, punctuated electrification, hours of service reform ā that are very expensive and have to be solved simultaneously just at the time the government would be seizing operating authority. And sensible tax setasides would need to be devoted to funding capital mandates before any fair-market value for compulsory sale would likely work. Perhaps a better idea is to establish āFederal dispatchingā along the lines of air-traffic control, where the private owners can set standards for interchange and the government handle both the operations and the crew calling in āsafeā ways.
The capital for the sections of electrification needs to involve at least one guaranteed source with its capital and operations guaranteed by the government, perhaps along the lines of the RFC āpump primingā that benefited the nation via PRR and NYC. I would note that a similar-scale effort could be underwritten to convert cars to the ādualā system, where the two-pipe components are installed and routinely tested, and simply actuated when desired, but the car acts with normal ADBX in the meantime.
I would not presume a Pacific War in the future that replicates the one we fought with Japan. Those days are over. By extension I donāt think we will need WWII infrastructure to fight a Pacific war in the future. So I do not picture a great reliance on railroads as a backbone of defense. I donāt even see a Pacific War for that matter.
To make electrification affordable, start from scratch and outsource the work to Germans, French, Japanese or Chinese. Sadly our salad says of engineering preeminence sind vorbei.
I wouldnāt, either. The likely cause would be the āspecial military operationā to (re-)annex Taiwan. The last four or so generations of advanced fabline are in Taiwan, and replicating even obsolescent capacity in āthe United Statesā is economically infeasible. Weād also be shown up as a bullying paper tiger if we respond with bluster or the sort of aplomb we showed in the early months of WWII and the bad parts of Korea.
Privatization of Amtrak is a solution? What is the problem?
If I were in charge, I would not ask Amtrakās staff to define the problem(s) and recommend a solution(s). I would engage a top-drawer consulting firm with the required expertise to study the problem and propose a solution(s). I would make sure that they did not have a dog in the hunt.
Changing the form of ownership, i.e., from government to investors, without changing organizational structure, management processes, regulatory drivers, etc. is not likely to result in a better outcome.
The Northeast Corridor, which is owned by Amtrak and several state commuter authorities, is the only corridor that might lend itself to having the infrastructure owned and operated by an independent operator, with access open to all comers that could meet the operating requirements.
The freight railroads are not likely to agree to sell their infrastructure to a third party. And they have a good reason to resist doing so. Once they lose control of their rights-of-way, they are at the mercy of the independent operator, which may not be all that independent. Just like the highways!
I just read the paper, and it really doesnāt sound like Amtrak has any desire to privatize. Not sure where anyone was getting the idea that this was the case.
As far as I understand, Amtrak has no interest in being privatized, but ahā¦ the government we have currently is a strong believer in removing funding from government programs and such, and prone to making some rather poorly thought out choices. I think the whole point of the paper was Amtrak making a case for why being privatized wouldnāt be good for Amtrak.
-El
I wonder why the German model with nationalized infrastructure and privatized open access works, while the British model even after re-nationalization of infrastructure did not work out with their version of open access?