See Fred W. Frailey’s story on the Friday newswire. Surprised that nobody has responded with a new post, I will start one myself.
Here, I believe, the railroads are being shown the potential cost of climbing into bed with Washington, whether for high-speed rail or capacity improvements. Given the expansive notion of government prerogatives exhibited by the Obama administration, it would not surprise me in the least if the carriers did not ultimately have to go to court for affirmation of their right to reject the kind of onerous terms proposed by the FRA.
The litmus test here is NS. If their admittedly pro-passenger train CEO starts voicing doubts, then the game has progressed beyond posturing and wrestling for position.
As someone who spent a career in the electric utility business, I have had a lot of experience with regulators. The trick in regulation is to get the balance correct. It must be smart regulation. If it isn’t, it can produce a variety of unintended consequences.
A key weakness in the regulator process lies in the fact that most of the regulators, although not all of them, don’t have the capabilities of the industry personnel that they are regulating. This was certainly true in our business. We paid two to three times what the regulatory agencies paid. As a result, we simply got better people, i.e. better education, better experience, etc.
I don’t know much about the FRA, other than a few articles that I have read, nor do I know anything about the proposed high speed rail regulations, but if I were the CEO of a private carrier, I would be leery about any proposed regulation. I would want to be sure that the regulation, as well as the regulator, understood my business and was imbued with real world flexibility.
Phoebe Vet asks me above: “Do you think you can make your point without the political slur?”
For Vet’s instruction, the point IS the “slur” – or what Vet perceives as one. I would say, rather, that it is the OPINION of the loyal opposition that the Obama administration has been characterized by overreaching, as reflected in the proposed FRA rules. I could certainly give numerous other, non-railroad, examples – but these would be off the subject and could be legitimately criticized as “political.”
Let Vet lay out and defend his own opinions, if he can, and not take cheap shots at opinions on railroad subjects with which he may disagree.
Still, since I am here trying to understand what the thread originator intends by his opening remarks, the phrase, “…in bed with…” suggests more than a business or a regulatory arrangement or relationship, and sounds somewhat unflattering of those in business or in government. I don’t think our hosts want to stifle creative expression, but this is a trite phrase that is often used in political discussions…and we know how our hosts feel about those. Just a thought…
In other words, you personally don’t agree with the implications posited by the thread originator, and so if it were in your power, you would stifle them; however, because you do not control the the website, you merely seek to alert the hosts to do stifle him for you. Subtle. You’d make a great bureaucrat. (a complement, by the way).
I have not read the Frailey article, but from the characterization of it in the first post, I did make exactly the same point several months ago in more than one thread. I would have to go back and dig up the archives for the specifics. I think it was in a thread about electrification and also in one or more on HSR.
My basic source for developing my opinion on the matter was a mission statement by the FRA that was released maybe a year or so ago. In that paper, the FRA seems to be saying that the best routes for HSR are exactly where many existing rail corridors are located. Therefore, the FRA expects freight railroads to host new HSR on their freight corridors because there is no better place for them. Presumably, the proposed HSR would not use the track of the freight railroads, but it would use the same corridor. Of course, even if new, dedicated track were built for HSR, the construction and operation would pose enormous complications and cost on the hosting freight railroads.
The tone of the paper was that this cooperation was simply expected from the owners of the freight corridors because all the good corridors have been spoken for and they should be regarded sort of as a public good because the FRA predicates HSR as serving a national goal that goes far beyond just serving the need
Apparently dakotafred is more interested in scoring some supposed political point than in a reasoned discussion on the specific rail-related issues. Phoebe Vet and Bucyrus, among others, show us how to discuss this without getting political. It is a tricky matter to have cooperation between private/public sectors.
As I mentioned in a post above, last fall, I posted my comments in which I questioned whether railroads would be leery of the controls that might be placed upon them by government if they accepted “free money” from the government to upgrade their infrastructure in order to accommodate national public HSR. The same question arises in connection to the proposed use of rail corridors to accommodate a new power grid that is being planned.
When I consider the prospect of a publicly owned track infrastructure, a publicly owned power distribution system on the track corridors, a publicly owned HSR system on the track corridors, and a privately owned freight business operating on the track corridors; I wonder if the private freight business might be the minority player in this public/private business model.
Adding to this scenario, is the fact that the FRA and the Obama administration have announced plans for dramatic changes in the freight rail industry that include taking 80% of long haul truck freight off of the highways and placing it on rail; and electrifying freight rail with publicly produced renewable energy delivered over a publicly owned distribution system.
Here is the link that I posted with my comment last fall:
Interesting article. There is no such thing as free federal money. It always comes with strings, often politically motivated strings like “must buy it in my district”. Politicians are not very good at business decisions. They tend to think of every decision in terms of either votes or campaign donations, not business sense.
NCRR is owned by NCDOT. NCRR has owned the ROW from Charlotte, through Raleigh, to the Atlantic Ocean for more than 100 years. They have operating agreements with CSXT and NS to operate and maintain it.
There would be advantages to publicly owned ROW, but that would also require a public Rail Traffic Control system, and it would be very hard to make it revenue neutral, so it will probably never happen.
When a subject or an offshoot of one comes up I feel the need to contemplate the ramifications. This look at the down sides of RRs working with HSR certainly falls into that corner.
After reading the FRA guidelines I find that there is ambiguity in the base line for on time targets. That certainly would get any RR to sit up and take notice. It did me as well. These guidelines indicate that they may be subject to change. April’s Amtrack performance results show that the other 4 class 1s have gotten their on times up to the BNSF performance figures that have been leadiing the others for the last couple years. However I believe that the class 1s were well aware that the higher on time figures were coming.
The indicator? All the PRIIA proposals on the Amtrak web site have a big chunk of the infrastructure improvements all directed toward better times. These were added at the insistence of the freight RRs Ex. CSX NOL - JAX; UP SLC - PDX; BN KCY - OKC; NS HAR - PIT: KCS? not involved so far. It has been hard for this poster to understand how infratructure that will be only be used for freight train benefits 21 hrs of a day does not get any consideration in the PRIIA reports. Suppose the UP/TP Fort Worth - El Paso route is upgraded for use of a passenger route (may an extension of Meridian - FTW) wouldn’t UP benefit by not having to fleet trains on this siding challenged route?
Another item is at those locations where the passenger track will deviate from the freight route by going for straight up and down instead of the round about freight route to eliminate cant deficiency of the passenger trains. I can see that if these straight line HSR routes can support high HP, fast, light weight, intermodal freights the freight RRs could use them to compete more with highway freights such as UPS, FED EX, or others.
With the question of re-regulation hanging over the railroads is it any wonder that they have concerns about their relationships with the federal government?
If Union Pacific and CSX hadn’t mishandled Amtrak trains for the past decade, then perhaps these rules and regulations wouldn’t have to be so strict. CSX’s many delays of passenger trains usually seem due to incompetence and a lack of adequate infrastructure. Union Pacific’s, on the other, have always seemed vindictive.
That probably has something to do with it, but that hasn’t been the case lately. CSX and UP have done an about face in the past couple years.
The FRA is blowing this one, plain and simple. I’m hoping Matt Rose can 'splain it to them and get a reasonable deal done. Otherwise, what seems to be a good approach to incremental passenger improvements is going to go down the drain.
The carriers have been abused for over 100 years by the United States Government. I hope they stand fast and do not accept government money with these strings attached.