Least sense to whom? Again, the EB is considered by many to fulfill a vital service in winter. The CZ\s route between Denver and Salt Lake City is certainly a tourist’s high spot, and Denver-Chicago and Kansas Citu-St. Louis-Chicago are populated areas that can use some form of corridor service. The Coast Starlight performs relativelly well compared to most LD trains.
I think the question might better be recast to ask if there were things the train could do to better serve the market the route traverses.
For example, does it make sense for the SW Chief to serve the Grand Canyon stop (WIlliams) in the middle of the night? Would Albuquerque - LA day train make more sense? Is there a an untapped tourist market out of LA into the SW? (You should see all the RVs rented from LA that show up at the Grand Canyon!) Amtrak California markets a day train/bus trip from SF to Yosemite. How about a weekend trip from LA to the Grand Canyon or Albuquerque/Santa Fe?
You can look at Chicago/KC/(Topeka?) in the same light. The problem becomes the gap. Do you do the gap overnight or run a separate day train with though travelers going to hotels?
You can look at all the western trains in this light, I think.
I thought you lived in the northeast, Don. Am I wrong?
Those of us who do live in the northeast between Washington and Boston really have grabbed the free stuff for ourselves. After all, this route is 431 miles long, much less than 750 miles, but there is no serious suggestion that we in the northeast should pay for it. I mean my own Governor, Chris Christie backed out of New Jersey Transit’s plan to build two new tunnels under the Hundson, a plan that was many years in the making. The Feds response was to say they will come in and build it for us. And we are getting our catenary redone along with substantial repairs to the track, all paid for by Uncle Sam. Maybe I should say Uncle Sugar.
John
In addition to eliminating or dividing up some routes into city-pair segments, Amtrak should consider cost-cutting on the service by eliminating non-essential features and raising fares to come closing to covering “above-the-rail costs.”
That does sound pretty respectable, in Canada VIA Rail would be breaking open the bubbly with those types of numbers. Passenger rail in this country is in steep decline and I’m not sure there’s anything that can be done to stop the bleeding, I’m mean, VIA just cut back service to Kitchener, Ontario, what’s next?? less service for Toronto to Montreal??
http://www.therecord.com/news-story/2606278-via-rail-is-cutting-service-to-and-from-kitchener/
Very Bad
In FY10, if Amtrak could have shed the long distance trains, it could have covered its operating costs (above the rail) with an average fare increase per passenger of $7.41. Clearly, the increases would vary by leg and market variables. This number assumes no service level change on any of these routes.
In FY10 the NEC had an operating profit of $51.5 million, offset by an operating loss for the other short corridor trains of $231 million.
From the Republican Platform for the 2012 election:
"Amtrak continues to be, for the taxpayers, an
extremely expensive railroad. The public has to
subsidize every ticket nearly $50. It is long past time
for the federal government to get out of way and
allow private ventures to provide passenger service
to the northeast corridor. The same holds true with
regard to high-speed and intercity rail across
the country."
What strikes me is that while the Republican Platform does acknowledge the loses from long distance train routes there is no proposal to change those routes. However, in the routes which are profitable or are believed will become profitable there is a proposal to turn them over to the private sector.
"allow private ventures to provide passenger service to the northeast corridor. The same holds true with
regard to high-speed and intercity rail across the country."
Not that party platforms have much effect, but I would read that as privatize the whole route structure. Or at least, open up ROW to various operators.
Schlimm,
I was looking for some kind of Republican consensus. This is the closest thing to one that I can find. I offer it for what it’s worth.
However, I don’t think the Republicans are calling for privatization of long distance routes simply because they know the trains lose so much money that no private concern would operate them. But I don’t think the platform reflects strong opposition to long distance routes either.
John
You didn’t attend school where the local Republicans managed to vote down all of the bond referendum ballot questions, and where the school board then furloughed English teachers so you could keep your football team that went every year to the state tournament?
I’m confused, Paul. What do the decisions of a school board have to do with rail passenger service?
John
Since I provided the Republican Party Platform statement on Amtrak I thought I should do the same with the Democratic Party Platform. However, unless I missed something, the Democratic Platform is silent about Amtrak. If someone else can find something about the subject I would appreciate it. Here is a link to the Democratic Party Platform:
http://www.democrats.org/democratic-national-platform#america-works
Why talk about cuts? Why not expand the system? Amtrak had devolved into a political animal. For years they had wrecked equipment sitting in Beach Grove in need of repair that congress would not allocate the funds to repair. Worse still the US Government had collected the money from other parties that had caused the damage and put the money into the treasury. If you want a rational system you need to keep it in good repair. But Congress will not fund basic maintenance items. One of the reasons Amtrak gets so little respect from freight railroads is that they are a marginal operation. Name a heavily used freight corridor and you will see 2 or 3 trains in a unit train. IE Intermodal coal grain tank. Each train will provide a 6 or 7 figure revenue stream for each train. I look at countless stack trains that run by my house every day with a hundred or more boxes in each. I see long manifest freights. And every morning and evening the Texas Eagle. One engine with four cars. As for keeping a sked. It is regular that the train runs an hour or two behind sked. And very unpredictable as to when it runs on time. How about giving Amtrak something it’s never had a snowball’s chance in a Texas summer. Rgds IGN
Please forgive my ranting and raving with foaming mouth. Thx IGN
Well said, narig01. In 1971 Republicans and Democrats came together to come up with Amtrak as a national passenger train network. Without it, there would be nothing more than commuter operations around the country. Pretty much forget about corridors, because the freight railroads would have no reason whatsoever to all of a sudden let someone start running passenger trains over 100-500 mile routes. Unless of course that someone wanted to buy the thing lock, stock and barrel.
The current Amtrak has kept trains running in the US and does actually have a network where you can travel from coast to coast. In a time when we have a generation coming of age that isn’t all car crazed and very interested in other forms of transportation, when flying has lost all the luster it once had and has all the appeal of a ride on the cattle truck, when Interstates are packed with cars and trucks and then some, trains are a real alternative that deserves investment and addition to frequencies and lines.
Talking about what lines to cut is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Cut a line this year, then another next year and pretty soon there won’t be any left to cut. The conversation should be about which new trains to add. Illinois seems to get that. They are pushing hard for getting the line Chicago - Quad Cities up and running. A line that should be extended all the way to Omaha along the old Rock Island main line post haste. There are plenty more corridors that should be happening today or tomorrow or really, really soon. But don’t dump the current LD’s just because corridor seems to be the fashion word of the day.
There’s a cost to building, maintaining and even expanding a national train network. The thing is that the US can’t afford not to spend the money, unless it wants to become a 3rd world country when it comes to transportation.
Are you saying 20-35 year olds are going to start flocking to the western LD trains or ride trains from the east to west coast? The answer in few words is, No, impossible to compete because of the distance. Even if trains could average 120 mph (very fast and very expensive) CHI-LA do you realize how long a ride that would be? [18 h 52 m] How many folks would elect to spend nearly an entire day, or more likely, parts of two for that trip? Only some elderly, some railfans and generally folks with a lot of time on their hands.
The obvious point that you and other folks are missing is that passenger rail in the US, to be viable, needs to compete with air where it is competitive, i.e., the in the relatively short four-five hour corridors which you so nicely dismiss as " the fashion word of the day." Getting rid of the legacy LD trains, which create most of Amtrak’s losses while carrying a small percentage of passengers, is not getting rid of Amtrak one route at a time. It is the only way to save Amtrak!
Illinois is doing the right thing, with the various State-subsidized routes and the CHI-StL pretty high speed corridor. The Quad Cities route might work, especially if Iowa gets on board and pitches in to Iowa City [good luck on that!]. The restored Blackhawk a
Schlimm,
As I understand CJ he calls corridors “the fashion of today” in the sense that this is the direction Amtrak is heading in today and needs to head in to give us the transportation service we need. I hope I represent him fairly; I certainly think that is true.
But he also believes that if we do not maintain the long distance trains, the whole national network, we will wind up losing Amtrak. If that happens we won’t have to worry about corridors because there won’t be an Amtrak to run corridor trains. And I believe that too.
You (and other people here) say “we need to invest wisely.” But there is a paradox here. Certainly there are arguments, in fact strong arguments, that corridor trains would be better investments of scarce dollars than long distance trains. But if Amtrak is going to make these investments Amtrak must continue to exist. And if, as I certainly believe, Amtrak becomes so fragmented that its existence is threatened or worse thee will be no possibility or corridor trains or and other Amtrak trains.
In the Republican Party Platform the one line that is identified as a candidate for cutting is the Northeast Corridor Line precisely because it is profitable and is therefore considered inappropriate for government operation. And the Democratic Party Platform does not even bother to address that issue much less oppose it. I know individual party members may take different positions but over all there is no challenge to the way Amtrak is run by either party except for that one place where Amtrak is most successful.
John
The crux of our difference is you and others think continuing the legacy LD routes nationwide is the only way to preserve Amtrak. You think the government will sell off the NEC. Others and myself believe pruning those routes and making Amtrak a close to break even organization on operations while increasing corridors is the way to grow. For us, Amtrak’s wasteful LD routes make it more vulnerable to congressional meddling.
If you have one train on a route originating in Chicago, the schedule has to be set up to facilitate Chicago connections.
If you have two trains on the route, you can schedule the second train for better times where the traffic warrants. Using the Southwest Chief as an example, if you had a second frequency you could run a Los Angeles-Grand Canyon train that left Los Angeles at 9:15 AM and arrived at Williams Junction at 7:50 PM. The train would lay over 3 hours in Williams Junction, then leave for Chicago, arriving in Chicago at 10:15 AM the 2nd day following.
The current Southwest Chief schedule is good for Los Angeles - Albuquerque service.
You represent that fairly.
Let me bring in what I’ve seen happen in places in Europe:
Whole regional networks were considered unprofitable by the national railway. So they wanted to abandon passenger traffic on those lines. In response and thanks to changes in law, the regions took over the traffic. Not unlike Amtrak, they were faced with scarce resources. So most of the traffic was abandoned, with remaining, upgraded traffic focused on a few corridors. Then a funny thing happened: Upgraded service brought more passengers, which led to service expansion. All of a sudden there was talk of reopening lines that had been abandoned for passenger traffic years before.
They are however also finding that reintroducing passenger traffic 20-30 years later is difficult and associated with large costs. Yet the regions push forward. Why? Because once people see the benefits of trains, they want them. Not just where the trains run now, but where the people who want them live. So why should we be so eager to get rid of trains that work to maybe save pennies now, when in a matter of years we’ll be trying to get trains back on much those same lines? Because that will happen in the US. It is happening in corridors already.
Schlimm doesn’t seem to believe that the millennials will want to take the train to go plac