National Review Online
December 08, 2004, 8:08 a.m.
It’s the Infrastructure, Stupid
Amtrak, derailed.
By Iain Murray
The news that the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General is deeply concerned about the dangerous state of Amtrak’s railroad infrastructure should come as a surprise to no one. Amtrak has been chronically mismanaged and has never shown any signs of being fiscally responsible. Yet somehow the blame for Amtrak’s recklessness is laid at the door of Congress, for failing to give Amtrak every penny it wants. The problem is not one of underfunding, it is that railroads cannot be run effectively when government is their prime source of revenue. Congress, far from turning up the funding tap, should be preparing to turn it off.
Amtrak’s infrastructure is crumbling. As the inspector general, Kenneth Mead, says, there are “interlockings, bridges and tunnels that are well beyond their economic life.” Amtrak has been deferring capital expenditure on these assets for years. Mead goes on, “Continued deferral brings Amtrak closer to a major point of failure on the system, but no-one knows where or when such a failure will occur.”
This state of affairs is familiar to me, as I was part of the team that privatized the British rail-infrastructure body, then called Railtrack, in 1996. We were aware that there had been a huge backlog in capital expenditure on the railway throughout the 40+ years of public ownership of the British railroad system. That, indeed, was one of the reasons Railtrack had to be privatized, in order to bring in new flows of investment capital that would not be dependent on the political vagaries of the British appropriations process, where rail was pitted against schools and hospitals in the battle for taxpayers’ money.
The trouble was that no one realized just how degraded the infrastructure was. It transpired that many of the rails along which the (mostly passenger) trains were running were in serious
I do agree that major changes need to take place. Privitization of at least parts of Amtrak shouldn’t be out of the question, I’m sure there are certain routes that the private sector would love to own, then Amtrak can be a more focused government funded railway that will run fewer routes, with less equipment, and cost less money.
Thanks for bringing an interesting perspective regarding Amtrak to this forum. I don’t necessarily agree with all the points of the article, but it does serve to inspire discussion.
Gabe, yes this article is specific to the NEC although that specificity goes unmentioned in the article. But it does raise the spector of what might happen if the NEC is either pawned off on the upper right Blue States or privatized without the needed infrastructure improvements being taken care of before such a transfer, vis-a-vis the greater than advertised deteriorated state of the British rail system when RailTrak took over. Notice too that the author does not blame the failures of RailTrak as an inevitiable omen of open access, but of a specific problem regarding the reported state of the infrastructure.
Just what is Mr Murray proposing? I don’t see any real answers in there. Is he criticizing Amtrak for repairing cars to generate more revenue? Unless he can provide more specific examples dollars wasted and where they could have been better spent, I am inclined to view his article as nothing more than hollow whining. IIRC, the estimated cost to repair some of the tunnels he referred to was over a Billion dollars. The money Amtrak spent repairing those cars wouldn’t pay the contractor to move his equipment into place to do the work, let alone make any meaningful progress. In fact, trying attack that large a project with that little funding would most likely have an adverse affect on the overall situation. They made a decision to spend what little money they had, on something positive (a repair) that just happened to bring in a little more money the next day.
I just spent some time at the Ivy City terminal and was impressed by the condition of the infrastructure. The Amtrak employees that I spoke with had very little complaint about the way things were being run on the RR. The trains I rode performed well and I saw no real areas for concern. Using the Madrid bombings as an example is irresponsible . No matter what kind of infrastructure you have it is not immune from a terrorist attack. I see two real choices: get rid of Amtrak , or accept that it is not going to make money. If passenger trains made money the class 1s would still have them.
Randy
BTW… I’m getting really sick of all these armchair expert railroaders putting their worthless 2 cents in just to sensationalize a foolish issue.
I work with someone on occasion who has seen the British rail system up close. (Ed has met him)…The difference between the two countries maintentenance systems is night and day. Amtrak’s M/W on their corridors and their efficiency leaves British Rail (public or private) in the dust. The struggle that the brits have is often a culture clash and government control has stifled modernisation, change and innovation.
Hint: They still dump ballast from burlap sacks and have not embraced rail grinder technology. They have a ways to go to match the NEC.
Agree with Randy 100% - Wonder if Ian Murray would agree to stop funding the airline, trucking and barge systems as well (or give them the same amount as they give Amtrak)
Mike (2-8-2) made a very interesting point and it underscores the ignorance of Mr. Murray. Amtrak’s original request for FY 2005 was a total of $1.798 billion. That was to include $349 million for capital investment in fleet, plus some portion of the $570 million operating budget that would go to fleet maintenance. So, if all fleet investment was canceled, and the only other expenditure on the fleet was for cleaning and mandatory inspections, i.e. bad orders go to the dead line, there might be something on the order of $500 million more that could go to infrastructure. That assumes that by a miracle, no cars or locomotives would break down and there would never be a loss of revenue due to equipment shortages.
Even with that idiotic assumption, there would still not be enough money to fix the Hudson tunnel and the three sorry bridges on the NY to Boston line.
Anybody actually interested in the facts could look at the extensive financial reporting done on Amtrak’s web site. For example:
FY05 Grant and Legislative Request, Table 3, Page 6, February 10, 2004
Grant Request ($ millions)
Capital
Infrastructure 352
Fleet 349
Other 90 (Environment, Info Tech,realestate, safety, etc.)
Subtotal Capital 791
Operating 570
Debt Service 262
Other
Dot Loan Repayment 100
To working Capital 75
Total Federal Grant Request 1,798
Amtrak made some cuts and amended the request to $1.5 billion.
Last week Congress passed the law that includes the FY '05 grant to Amtrak at $1.2 billion.
Oh yes, anybody that thinks elimination of the 16 long distance train routes is going to generate additional cash for Amtrak can’t
It certainly is Congress’ fault that Amtrak has failed to get itself out of the financial mess it is in. How is the NRPC supposed to be of sound financial condition when it has always suffered from inadequate capitalization? Where does the author think the money is going to come from, anyways? When there is no dedicated long-term funding source (like what the highways and airlines have in the form of a Trust Fund) why would the author be surprised when the poorly funded service provider fails to cover its costs?
Oh, I think it is. What is undercapitalization from the start, but underfinding of a sort.
All due to inadequate capitalization from the start of the enterprise. Amtrak has to defer repair because it doesn’t have an adequate amount of capital.
[quote]
QUOTE: This state of affairs is familiar to me, as I was part of the team that privatized the British rail-infrastructure body, then called Railtrack, in 1996. We were aware that there had been a huge backlo
I wi***he airlines had to suffer like Amtrak. Too bad planes don’t derail and block the ROW and they don’t have to hit cars, and they don’t have to stop and pick up cars, and they don’t go into emergency or have dragging equipment, they don’t know how good they have it, and they still complain, you always leave them asking for more!
…Who in privatization is going to come running with a billion dollars to rebuiltd the inffrastructure of the NEC…Of course, no one. I believe we know where this kind of blather comes from.
hey I agree. I think sometimes the airline industry dosen’t know how good they have it. They stole passanger transportation from out railroads!! Darn them. Oh well that’s innovation for ya. But, airlines didn’t take freight transportation from railroads!! Dats good. However, the airline industry does have it’s own list of problems like railroads.
Upon reading this article I wasn’t really aware fully of Amtrak’s infastructure. I do know they are doing track repairs and upgrades in my area. They are also investing in station upgrades. The infastructure of Amtrak is pretty good in my area Philly. However, Amtrak’s trains have been ariving very late in Philly for well over a Month now. I wonder wuts up wit dat??
The whole thing about Amtrak not doing well is just a bunch of whining. What did they expect? If you set up something to fail then by golly it will fail as it is doing right now-mission accomplished.
The only reason why VIA Rail works is because the government actually gives a damn about passenger service and doesn’t like spending money on things they want to fail because that would be illogical and the voters wouldn’t tolerate such foolishness.
I don’t really understand what those idiots in Congress expect as they were the ones who invited revenue loss and infrastructure degrading so they have nobody to blame but themselves and their predecesors.
Well, I first hinted that the argument contained in ***'s post was dubious; now I am just going to come right out and say it.
Futuremodal, thank you for spelling out my inference.
(1) I dislike the article because it bases its entire argument about Amtrak on the NEC, which is like saying the Interstate Highway System doesn’t work and is falling apart because every time I drive through Indiana I hit pot holes. And, as has been suggested, I doubt the NEC is in quite as bad of shape as the author suggests.
(2) I completely agree with Randy’s point about the Madrid bombings. Not only is it illogical I find it morally wrong and distasteful. I can’t stand it when people stand on the backs of the dead to practice their zealotry when the incident in question has little if any fair relation to their zealotry.
I have previously made known my position that I feel as though there are problems with Amtrak and the current state of Amtrak is better explained by political momentum than rational decision-making. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean we should get rid of Amtrak, and it certainly doesn’t mean we should substitute irrational political momentum for an equally irrational paradigm that bases its argument on such unsound premises.
The airlines could not have ever started if they had been forced to pay for all the things the government gave them such as airports, air traffic control systems, tax-free air routes, etc. The railroads were from the very first day seen by governments as tax sources. As such, they should have to build their own infrastructure and pay taxes on it. Which they did, including taxes which, later, went to airport construction. Railroad passenger train critics forget that the government supports air and automobile transportation in far greater proportions than they do by subsidizing AMTRAK. But AMTRAK officials from the very start did themselves an injustice by telling Congress that passenger rail could be self supporting. If it could have been, the class 1s would have kept it up.
Our original poster, a retired BNSF exec, must know that. True, it doesn’t seem to make sense to keep paying for a service which no one seems to use. But then 9/11 comes.
By the wya, BNSF Southeastern Regional VP Ray Stephens took me though your HQ in Ft. Worth. Now that is the way to run a railroad with the only things going back to the 19th century actually being the wheels and the track gauge. Reading the article in Trains re: BNSF, I see that the modern advancements are system wide. Great, great railroad.
Jock Ellis