http://gazetteonline.com/local-news/2009/10/07/233-million-price-put-on-rail-service-to-iowa-city
“The joint application for federal stimulus funds filed Friday by Illinois and Iowa transportation officials seeks $233 million for the project, more than four times the $54.9 million estimated in a 2007 Amtrak study,”
The price goes up.
Not to worry. The projected benifit numbers will be increased (by magic?) enough to justify the extra $178.1 milion. And the government can just print the money.
A paltry $233 million for two trains each way per day between Chicago and Iowa City? No problem. No problem at all.
Perhaps part of the difference could be that the requirement for PTC for passenger trains occured after the Amtrak study, but that is still a breathtaking difference. Does anyone have a guesstimate for PTC per mile? For that matter, does Iowa Interstate even have signals on the Wyanet to Iowa City portion of its lines?
I believe this is in addition to the $109 million Iowa applied for on 9/11/2009 to help support 5 railroad projects on roads other than the Iowa Interstate.
Unfortunately, the old RI signal system was gutted and vandalized after the 1980 shutdown; another reason why, IMHO, the service should be on the UP’s Overland Route mainline. It’s ready to go - right now - save for new stations being built.
No, it is not ready to go right now. Unless you have that in writing from UP.
RWM
Among other differences, the Amtrak study did not include PTC on either the IAIS or BNSF portions, and it assumed there would be available equipment from Amtrak inventory that could be refurbished.
Wyanet to Iowa City is TWC dark territory.
PTC at latest projection is running between $600,000 to $1,200,000 per mile on a system basis, which does not even remotely predict what it might cost for a specific line with a specific number of wayside locations, a specific number of equipped locomotives, a specific number of trains, a specific speed limit, a specific number of grade-crossings, a specific communications infrastructure which may or may not be usable, and so forth. Some lines will cost much more than that per mile. Some will cost much less. Guesstimates are nothing but guesses, really.
RWM
Well, yes, technically you are very correct RWM. And I know that trying to get the historically notoriously anti-passenger rail UP to agree to handle Amtrak service between Chicago and Cedar Rapids or out to Omaha would be akin to pulling teeth from a lion.
But from a purely physical plant standpoint I think it would have to be considered as ready to go. You’re talking either Class IV or Class V track easily capable of handling the speed necessary for passenger trains.
That’s not accurate, not reasonable, and not helpful. The letters of support that UP issued to high-speed passenger rail projects in multiple states are at odds with a claim that UP is “anti-passenger.” I don’t think that the claim is accurate even historically. Just because UP asked new passenger train services to pay their own way (Amtrak’s do not even come close!) and not make freight shippers subsidize the passenger business, that makes them bad people?
It is not even remotely ready to go. The railroad is designed for a speed regime and operating plan that does not account for a pair of 79-mph passenger trains running on fixed schedules with overtakes of every train they encounter. It would tie the railway in knots with freight trains parked all over the place while the passenger trains maintained schedule. The addition of crossovers, outside sidings, and changes to the signaling system to mitigate the damage that the passenger trains would do could easily run into the half-billion dollar range.
Some passenger-train advocates think it is OK for freight shippers to subsidize passenger trains by taking the hit in excess rail transportation costs, capacity loss, transit time loss, or, are in willful denial that the freight rail system is not awash in excess capacity that it owes to the public as redress for alleged past sins. So far at least, Congress, t
RWM,
I would never suggest that freight shippers should be subsidizing passenger trains and/or Amtrak in a vain attempt to squeeze a passenger train in an already congested corridor. Being in the freight rail industry myself (14 1/2 years with CPRS, 1 1/2 with IAIS before that) I couldn’t and wouldn’t advocate anything like that. Rather, I would like to think it’s possible that both the freight rail industry and the passenger side can work together to find creative solutions. I think that both sides are finally beginning to do that but obviously much more needs to be done…
To be fair here, absolutely I recognize that UP’s Overland Route mainline is one busy, congested son-of-a-gun no matter which particular segment you’re talking about. Shoot, even I know that switching Amtrak’s California Zephyr from BNSF to UP for the Chicago-Omaha segment would snarl up things rather nicely to say the least. But even here I would have to ask why if it’s so out of the question for UP to do something like this in the Chicago - Omaha corridor then why is BNSF able to handle Amtrak’s Southwest Chief on its former ATSF “Transcon” mainline for the CHGO - KCITY segment; a stretch that sees just as much traffic as UP’s Overland Route. Ditto for BNSF’s handling of the California Zephyr between Chicago and Denver as well; on the former CBQ that sees a good amount of traffic as well. Personally, I think the UP has some options they could explore to improve capacity in the Chicago - Omaha segment; the most obvious being seeking a paired track arrangement with the CN between Denison and Council Bluffs where both lines closely parallel each other (I know, I know. I beat that dead horse a number of times on a separate thread a while back but neither UP nor CN would listen). The bottom line here that I’m trying to point out is that I wish creative minds were thinking "How ca
The problem with the Overland Route is that you miss significant population centers. From the standpoint of the State of Illinois, you are gaining the college students at DeKalb, but losing Rock Island, Moline and the smaller surrounding communities. On the Iowa side you gain Clinton but lose Davenport and Bettendorf. If you go far enough into Iowa, you gain another city at Cedar Rapids and a college town at Ames but the cost is a longer route and the loss of Iowa City,
Rams Guy,
Great expert nonbiased sources you quoted second above.
Mac
Could have been worse I suppose. Always could have snared something from that wonderfully unbiased L.A. (a.k.a. Trojan) Times.
Actually, when I read through all of the 24 or so comments to the 2nd linked reference - the ‘blogspot’ one - last night, I came away with a pretty fair respect for the positions of each of the opposing sides on that particular issue.
For example, the local California rail agency appears to be saying that if UP runs its trains properly, maintains its line correctly, and otherwise ‘keeps its nose clean’, then there shouldn’t be any unusual problem or conflict between the passenger and freight operations. However, UP supposedly doesn’t want passenger trains even on separate tracks that are parallel to but still ‘close’ to its main line, because any event from any cause on either line could place derailed cars of the one in the way of the other, with a possible resulting death toll. Stated another way - ‘Murphy’s Law’ is still in effect, and UP doesn’t want to risk getting burned by it in ‘big-time’ dollars through events that UP has little or no control over.
When that debate was apparently occurring early in 2008, the ‘poster child’ for that kind of problem then was the wacko who in 2005 parked his SUV on a grade crossing in front of a METRA train in a failed attempt to commit suicide - but the METRA train derailed and crashed into a nearby standing UP freight, killing 11 people. Of course, since then there was the METRA Chatsworth wreck from Sept. a year ago, which was apparently mainly the fault of the METRA engineer who ran past a red signal into the approaching UP freight (although separate lines or temporily/ time-segregated [night] freight operations would be another way to minimize the potential for conflicts).
So I expect that will only reinforce the desire of freight railroads to
Nothing is quite as aggravating to me as prescriptions for how my industry should behave that are handed out by people who have nothing personal at stake but have all sorts of high-minded social-good theories. I wonder if the same people who are full of ideas about how railroads should do this and do that would be receptive if I told them how they should run their lives.
Mass-casualty transportation accidents are bet-the-company propositions. The payouts for a self-insured company will bankrupt the company; the insurance cost if attempted to be passed onto the shipper will result in so much freight not moving (either by rail or at all) that the company’s finances will also be directed into bankruptcy. Freight railroads are not golden gooses sitting on piles of cash and if we squeeze them much harder they won’t even lay goose eggs.
If the public wants to indemnify freight railroads for accidents regardless of cause or negligence that result in passenger casualties, fine, but it is showing no desire to do so. Instead, the passenger-train advocates think the freight railroad and the freight shippers ought to accept their passenger trains at the cost the passenger advocates deem remunerative, that the freight railroad and the shippers assume the liability to the passenger-train system, and then gift the cost of the liability to the public as a public service. When it is pointed out that this is an end-around on the Fifth Amendment, we get lectures on railway physics and operations by people who have no training or experience in those fields, or lectures on land grants, or lectures on how the railroads hate the public.
Putting passenger trains on a freight railroad or next to a freight railroad and expecting the freight railroad to assume the liability at no cost to the passenger-train system is like me saying to you, "I want to ride my motorcycle across your lawn every day, pay you rent for the use of your lawn at the price I deem is fair, and if you sho
I came away with the opinion that there are a lot of people who have no interest in facts or physics, unless they fit their belief system.
RWM
Yes, they were there too - and seemed to be a majority. But reading their comments critically with the benefit of the counter-arguments raised by the others - particularly ‘‘611’’ - made that clearer.
On perhaps a lighter note, I see two explanations for the social phenomena that are evidently at work here, which are so troubling to RWM:
‘‘Don’t attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance’’; and,
‘‘Upon this point, a page of history is worth a volume of logic’’.
They don’t know or understand (yet), so they’re trying to reason or ram their way through it, but neither approach is going to work for them. Some will be able to learn differently and be accepting of enlightenment, others can’t or won’t. In this societal and governmental structure, it’s hard to tell the difference, so we have to try, and learn to deal with the difficult ones, that’s all.
No. You are not allowed.
Amen! It was very interesting to read about the deal CSXT did with MBTA for the Boston to Worcester piece of the B&A. CSX actually assumed some limited liability as part of deal. I suspect the issue of liability will be negotiable, like everything else. As long as the “net”, including the risk, to the frt RR is appropriately positive to provide a return to the owners, deals can be done, it seems. This contrasts with NS’s public position of a positive return for the owners AND indemnification similar to what Amtrak provides, though. (NS’s third tenet is that sufficient capacity must be be provided for and maintained for current and future traffic levels)
RWM
Your post of 10:31 today hit that nail on the head. Seems to me like CSX got shut down when parallel meto had an Ax and that metro wanted money from CSX when CSX had freight Ax that hung up meto. Is my memory of either of these events correct?
The carriers must be very careful not to sell the birthright for a mess of pottage which I believe they have done several times.
Mac
[(-D] [tup] A lifetime enlistment/ commitment/ sentence, is ‘this fascinating railroad business’ now, eh ?
A couple problems with these approaches: First, an indemnification is only as good as the assets and capability of the entity that is providing said indemnity to pay the claims that arise under it. For a public agency that often runs
I believe the current deal Amtrak has with the frt RRs is: If anything bad happens, you take care of yours and we’ll take care of ours, regardless of who caused what. So, if Amtrak derails on a frt RR. Amtrak takes care of injured passengers and damaged equipment and the frt RR puts the track back, regardless of what caused the derailment.