A Response to Congresswoman Slaughter

Amtrak's routes (4.00 / 2)

When David Gunn, formerly head of the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA), was in charge of Amtrak, he tried to eliminate long, expensive routes that had no demand to meet the supply -- and was blocked, for a while anyway, by a few key members of Congress (including that "maverick" himself, John McCain).  Gunn was eventually fired from Amtrak in late 2005 for refusing to cooperate in a plan to privatize and split up the system.  (Perhaps the anger over the failure earlier that year to privatize Social Security spilled over.)

Imagine if GM and others (Google "great American streetcar scandal" for a partial list) hadn't succeeded, after 40 years of lobbying, in getting the government to build the Interstate Highway System.  Imagine that the money used for that behemoth project had gone instead into a fully integrated, nationwide, electrified passenger/freight rail system.

• The Arab oil embargo of 1973 would not have happened, because we would not have been so dependent on their oil.

• The barrage of kidnappings in the Middle East throughout the 1980s might not have happened, because we wouldn't have had so many oil executives over there.

• 9/11 wouldn't have happened, because we wouldn't have created the Gulf War, and Osama bin Laden wouldn't have turned his sights on attacking us here.

• Global warming would not be nearly as large an issue.
(On that last point, I should mention that one of the leading architects of the money structure underlying the Interstate Highway System was then-Senator Al Gore, Sr.)

• George W. Bush would not have become President, because his family would not have had nearly as much money as they do.

But all this happened, because GM and their partners won, so we have to do something about it -- especially since my brother and his family live in the Quad Cities and I might want to take the train to visit them some day soon.

So let's build those trains, and the infrastructure to handle them.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 12:39:42 PM CDT

A few thoughts (0.00 / 0)

Your cynicism about high-speed rail is well placed, but only if looking through the prism of Amtrak and its epic failure (not all its fault).

I recently graduated Grad school in which I wrote my thesis about high-speed rail.  One of the items that boiled up to the surface while doing my research is that Amtrak is hapless.  Simply as that.  They are hamstrung by Congress at every corner.  

They get a subsidy that is far too low for their operating needs.  They can barely maintain the track that they own, which is hardly any.  They have hardly any ability to endeavor capital projects, which is why we haven't seen any further improvement to Acela - or Amtrak to live up to their end of the bargain in NYS to improve the corridor between Albany and NYC, despite the fact NYS renovated trains for this purpose (now being sold due to the futility of the situation http://www.timesunion.com/AspS... ).

The tracks they don't own are ruled by freight which has little interest in upgrading their tracks for passenger level service, let alone high-speed rail service.  They don't need upgraded tracks as their speeds are really low.  There is little return on investment for them.  

Plus, they don't want passenger trains in their way as they always have the right of way (which usually is a joke, because much of the track in this country is single tracked and the track sidings don't fit freight trains to pull over, therefore forcing the passenger trains to dwell - killing their schedule adherence).  Anyway, the tracks if they were upgraded would only degrade as freight trains have a much greater impact on track condition than do passenger trains.    

If Amtrak wants to cut service on horribly under performing routes (profit wise, schedule wise etc), there will likely be a set of congressional reps to block their move.  This forces Amtrak to take revenue generating routes like the Northeast Corridor and spend that money in places that shouldn't have rail at all.  This makes it impossible for Amtrak to reinvest revenues into places that could really use the investment.

Amtrak is a political neuter.  It can't bite the hand that feeds it - primarily why David Gunn was fired.  He has so much experiencing managing rail, he should have been the voice of expertise on Amtrak, not Congress.  Though, they fired him and Congress once again hobbled Amtrak.  Part of the problem with Amtrak, is that it has a murky legal mandate.  People don't know what to expect from it (on time trains are nearly impossible with the hand they've been dealt).

Some will tell you Amtrak was created to be a caretaker of our passenger rail system and therefore it has done just that.  In that light, those folks think Amtrak is fine with being a subsidy sink, because running rail to far off hinterlands is what was once profitable in 1890, while not anymore that service is invaluable to those communities.  Some others will complain that this isn't really the case and Amtrak should've grown and changed as times have passed.  They'll say it can't get you where you want it to go, when you want it to go, or if you'll actually get there on time.  These people think the subsidy is a waste of money for what is gained in returned.  

The question boils down to this:  is Amtrak a public good or is it a public waste?  You'll get a load of responses either way.  Without have a firm and clear stance from Congress you'll find it is not how to set the mandate for a transportation company responsible for moving millions of people a year.  It forces Amtrak to constantly assuage its hostile critics and most endearing supporters - but without doing either well or getting the trains to run on time.  Amtrak is forced to mind Congress more than their schedules.  

So in my opinion, and one of the points of my thesis, is that Amtrak needs to be put out of its misery.  We do this by envisioning a new high-speed rail system out of the control of Amtrak and Congress.  This can be achieved with accountability by identifying mega-regional systems radiating from a variety of urban centers.  These regional systems would have the collaboration of multi-state partnerships that would operate the trains.  Those regional partnerships would know their communities and how to best plan for high-speed rail and operate it.

Where the federal government comes into play would be through providing the financial incentive (like the current highway funding 80/20, federal/state match) to plan for these networks, actually build them, and then to ensure meaningful interstate connections.  Amtrak would cease to have a meaningful reason to exist and hopefully have a nice quiet peaceful death.  If not totally die, they could still run those silly congressionally mandated long haul routes to places that no one ever visits, but only who's residents flee from on vacation.  

Lastly, it might not hurt to have someone from France come over hear and gives a clue on how to run a train - we've mostly forgotten.  

 

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by: permanentstudent @ Sun Aug 23, 2009 at 11:23:02 AM CDT

Some comments (4.00 / 2)

The NYS plan was defective from the start, and defective on the NYS side.  NYS bought fuel-hog trains in an attempt to cheap out on the necessary track upgrades, which is why the whole thing was a predictable failure.

You're absolutely right that Amtrak has been subject to Congressional micromanagement, starvation, and whipsawing.

As for "putting Amtrak out of its misery", that's insane.  As it is, Amtrak is actually a very effective deliverer of a lot of train service: the NEC and its many extensions, the Cascades, Amtrak California, the Hiawathas, the Illinois Service, the North Carolina service, the upstate NY service, the Maine service, and also the major, popular, and successful cross-country routes: Chicago-NY, Chicago-DC, Chicago-Minneapolis-Seattle/Portland, Chicago-Denver-San Francisco, Chicago-Albequerque-LA, NY-Orlando-Miami. (Now, a very large number of people would like to see some of the other long distance services, such as the Cardinal -- services which do not easily fill up 12-car trains like the ones I named do -- die.  Amtrak is running some very questionable services like that due to sheer politics.)

Trying to start over fresh would simply make a hash of the existing rather heavily used services.

"Amtrak would cease to have a meaningful reason to exist and hopefully have a nice quiet peaceful death."
This would be reasonable, but it would be a VERY slow process.  Currently nearly everyone doing a regional rail startup uses Amtrak expertise (and yes, there's a lot of it) and equipment to bootstrap their system.  Eventually Amtrak may end up as a contractor for a large number of state-run and state-supported systems, and possibly some other federally-supported systems.  That wouldn't be death; in fact, it has a better reputation as such a contractor than it does in other arenas, and a better reputation than other such contractors do.  So it might thrive.

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by: neroden @ Mon Aug 24, 2009 at 02:27:13 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Got that-- (0.00 / 0)

Lastly, it might not hurt to have someone from France come over hear and gives a clue on how to run a train - we've mostly forgotten.  

The Alstom folks-- who make railcars in the Southern Tier and report to a French HQ-- are pretty good for that.

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by: robinia @ Mon Aug 24, 2009 at 16:25:15 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Ugh. Do your research.... (0.00 / 0)

"When I boarded the train, I was shocked to discover that it was a 1950-60s-era coach.... But if it's true, then why not spend some money upgrading, and/or updating, what already exists?   "

The 1950s era coaches have all been replaced (except for the dining cars and baggage cars, which Amtrak is requesting money to replace this year), with the "Amfleet" and "Viewliner" cars, which are short enough to go into the tunnels.  This was done in the 1980s, and the Viewliners are pretty sweet, actually.  A little more money would have replaced the Amfleets, the diners, and the baggage cars long ago.

"Here's another idea: through the power of eminent domain, seize tacks that are being used as freight lines, but were once passenger."

I assume you mean "tracks", not "tacks".  ;-)  In any case, this is one of the primary methods planned to achieve many of the so-called "high-speed rail" projects.  It is a very good idea.

We don't want to actually eliminate freight service, which is very important environmentally, but there are a lot of underused freight lines, and there are a lot of lines which used to have four tracks and now have one or two, so that two passenger tracks and two freight tracks are straightforward.

"I lived in Iowa City, Iowa, for a time. Near downtown there is an old passenger depot. This depot says "Rock Island" on it. Yes, it's a stop on the legendary line made famous by Leadbelly. The problem? No passenger trains stop there anymore. Instead, the geniuses at Amtrak route the passenger service through Iowa along the southern tier of the state"

You have to run where the tracks run, first of all.  The service in Iowa exists solely for the purpose of running to Denver and San Francisco, and to Albequerque and Los Angeles (in the case of the two existing routes), and the track choice in Iowa is due to that.  Secondly, it's hard to get a freight company to let you start a new route.  Given that, and given that the existing routes exist essentially for West Coast-Chicago service, Amtrak is operating them quite reasonably....

Although the route to Denver arguably ought to go via Iowa City, the route via the south of the state was the one surviving in the mid-1970s, and getting it switched costs mucho $$$.

Which gets us back to your suggestion of seizing the railroads for passenger purposes by eminent domain, which remains an excellent idea.

And giving Amtrak enough money to function like a normal rail operator, rather than continuously on life support, would indeed help a lot.  But the same is true of the NYC Subway, Metro-North, Metra and the CTA in Chicago, and pretty much every passenger rail operator in the country.  There's something wrong with our politicians.

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by: neroden @ Mon Aug 24, 2009 at 02:15:37 AM CDT