Abolishing Amtrak: Why I Voted No

Publius is saying what I meant. The Feds could establish an infrastructure, an arena in which railroad companies (private) could compete and actually get good.

Rodney, I would be so pissed if I could not get a beer on an Amtrak -- seriously, I know how you feel.

I would go to Holland, where the trains run to the second on time, get you from city to city in nothing flat, and, some Dutch gal comes down the aisle with a cart bearing candy, coffee, papers to read and Heinekens to drink.

And go check out the TGV.

It goes so fast, you can't look out the window sometimes without getting a little queasy.

Smooth, quiet, it would beat a 737 in a race between two cities as far apart as Indianapolis and St. Louis, and anything nearer. No kidding.

Don't bum out because you are seeing Amtrak and imagining that as the future of the American Rail System.

If I believed it were, I would not be arguing my points.

If the author is pushing socialism, then so did President Madison when he initiated federal involvement in building roads. So did President Lincoln when he signed the law creating "land grant" railroads to sew the country together. So did President Coolidge when he got the federal government to improve waterways. So did President Eisenhower when he proposed building the Interstates.

Let's face it. The author is right. The feds have been funding internal improvements for nearly 200 years. Canals had their day. Rail had its day. Roads have had their day. So has air. Now it's time to fund the rails again.

What's old becomes new again.

...I would be so pissed if I could not get a beer on Amtrak...

I second that emotion.

Amtrak is the contractor that was hired by the state of Washington's Department of Transportation to run the Cascades Service trains on the Vancouver (BC)--Seattle--Portland--Eugene run. These trains use Talgo equipment that tilts on curves and permits higher speeds than are possible using the standard Amtrak equipment.

In the Bistro Car -- yes, I know it's a sissy name for a bar car, but that's the Pacific Northwest for you -- Amtrak sells our Pacific Northwest microbrews, the micros that made Seattle famous for something other than Microsoft and rain.

If you ever get out this way, take the Cascades, grab a micro, sit down in the business car and watch the scenery as you skip the white-knuckled horror of Interstate 5.

It takes you forever to get anywhere.

If a train could get you from Chicago to Detroit in 2 hours, would you take it?.

---max

If a train could get you from Chicago to Detroit in 2 hours, would you take it?.

I would in a second. I took the current train between Chicago and Detroit two weeks ago and it took six hours. I could almost ride my bike there faster.

"If a train could get you from Chicago to Detroit in 2 hours, would you take it?."

In the unlikely event I was ever traveling from Chicago to Detroit, getting there in two hours would be good. However, that would be assuming that for the entire 283 miles, without any slowdown or stopping--which means you would monopolize the rail (doubtful)--you would have to maintain 140 MPH.

I vaguely remember reading something, somewhere about high speed trains, but can't remember enough to speak decisively about it, but I don't think that's going to be happening in our lifetimes, even if the government was willing to toss a trillion bucks at it.

Besides, you can already go from Chicago to Detroit in about 2 hours...on an airplane (although that may be a mistake on my part. Perusing Expedia flight posts, it takes 2:05 for a non-stop flight, but I don't think a jet'll stay aloft at 140 MPH)...for only $89 (plus gate tax, plus landing tax, plus takeoff tax, sales tax, fuel tax, and who knows what else).

There are trains in Japan that run at 150+, non-stop. Europe has them as well.

---max

Whether some on this forum like, or not, passenger trains are going to come back strong. Petroleum will one day run out if some world crisis doesn't make it difficult to obtain before that event. Most people don't realize it, but today's locomotives are actually diesel electric sets. They can use an overhead power line, or alternatives for electrical energy could be employed. In other words a petroleum crisis would slow down the railroad, but not stop it.

Convenience and price will be the key to quick adoption of rail. A cartwheel system will have to be reimplemented where passengers are brought in to mainline stations and transported rapidly to other mainline stations non-stop to transfer onto another train that reaches into the hinterlands if that is where their destination lies. These trains would need to operate on a 1 hour schedule between major metropolitan areas so travelers could go and come at their leisure.

Something else that is going on quietly on railroad right of way (read private property) is the burial of fiber optic cable for communications sales. This is being done partly to help defray these property tax expenses some have talked about. Using the property to its highest and best use. But don’t forget. The tax man used to tax each and every telegraph pole. I’ve heard my dad talk about when Southern Railway did away with telegraph in his area, the railroad immediately chainsawed every pole and gave it away so they would not have to pay tax on it another year.

Tell that to the companies who want their coal hauled, their grain hauled, or their new cars hauled. Put those comodities on trucks, and the interstates will gridlock.

FREIGHT railroads are an essential backbone of this country. There is simply no comparison between the cost of hauling 50 hopper cars full of coal by rail and the cost of hauling it by road. Depending upon the route, the cost difference could be well over an order of magnitude.

Railroads' cost advantage, however, is only significant when loads are consolidated into long trains. If a particular facility uses 10 cars of coal per day, it would be more cost-efficient to deliver a 50 cars load of coal every five days than two 5-cars of coal each day. People, however, aren't generally willing to travel on that sort of schedule. A train which runs once a week in this country will not get seven times as many people per run as one that runs daily; it might even get fewer.

Rail is an excellent means of transporting large quantities of non-time-critical freight. When no other modes of human transportation are unavailable, using the freight rail infrastructure for human transport will provide at least a transportation option. On some highly-traveled routes it may be competitive with other modes of transport, but the economics of scale usually do not kick in sufficiently for it to really be economical.

Sounds like a good run.

My best Amtrak story was when, in 1992 or so, I made a cross-country trip on the old George Washington (C&O), which Amtrak called the Cardinal.

It ran from Chicago to New York, and we rode it from Indianapolis to Manassas, Virginia, to visit relatives.

The route is beautiful, and slow, and goes past the town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, about nightfall.

The scenery is spectacular, and I spent much time with my wife and young son in the cafe car, looking out the window.

At the time I still smoked, and Amtrak had just instituted its no smoking policy. So that meant you had to go between the cars, or stand out on the end of the last car, to have a smoke. It was cold and off-and-on raining, but no big deal.

Especially after several beers in the cafe car.

So I remember standing on the end balcony of the last car, in the dark of night, watching a railroad guy on the ground, a half-mile away, astride the tracks, swinging his oil lamp back and forth in a slow arc, after the train had started moving again and was picking up steam, leaving him in the distance.

And this very pleasant mist was being drawn up, from the Venturi effect of the train going so fast over the tracks.

The scene was the very essence of the romantic lure of rail travel, or so I thought.

After a few minutes I realized that is was not raining.

Rather, the old cars treated the efflux of the sleeper cars' toilets and sinks with the "fast track" treatment, if you know what I mean.

This was the source of the 'mist'.

This freaked me out, but I couldn't tell my wife, or she would not have let me back into the sleeper car. And maybe never allowed me indoors at home again, I don't know.

I would have been permanently assigned outdoor status, like a mastiff.

Anyway, this is another reason not to smoke.

I do hope that trains in the future have some kind of lavatory tanks so that pedestrians standing by a TGV-type train are not given the Jackson Pollock treatment as it passes them at 250 mph!

Regards, caddie

There is no free market in transport when the government builds highways.

Rail is an excellent means of transporting large quantities of non-time-critical freight.

But UPS and FedEx are demanding trains that are time-critical, but not necessarily in need of overnight movement. UPS and the CSX have worked on a deal, and FedEx wants an arrangement similar to the "hot freight" of fifty years ago. They want to own the train and pay the BNSF or the CSX to provide a locomotive, cab crew and dispatching services.

The UP has an arrangement with the CSX to move fresh fruit and vegetables from California to Brooklyn on a very tight schedule with only a crew change, rather than a locomotive change, at Chicago.

The railroads are getting back into the business of moving time-sensitive materials on fixed schedules. Now if you put a coach or a few sleepers on the end of that train, you have a "hot freight" carrying people. This may be how things end up.

Today's trains store waste water and no longer dump them on the tracks. Amtrak's 1980-era equipment is so-equipped, and the EPA required Amtrak to update their older equipment.

I generally despise government subsidies, but when you compare Amtrak to the nation's interstate highways you find that the railroad generates a far better return on each dollar spent than the highways do (about $0.70 for the rails, compared to $0.30 for the highways, if I remember correctly). It's time we started looking at things on a level playing field when we decide how operating expenses for these things are to be paid.

That's correct. Amtrak has been making about 70-80% of its costs since 1990, while highways consistnently make 10-30% of their costs from the gas tax revenue derived from vehicle miles traveled upon them. Highways are paid for by your property taxes, which pay for municipal and county roads, which produce most of the vehicle mile consumption of gasoline to produce gas tax revenue to pay for expressways.

Gas taxes are about $0.40 per gallon, and fleet economy is around 20 mpg. A 6 lane highway stuffed to the gills with 180,000 cars per mile per day (like say, Boston's Central Artery) is producing just $3600 in daily revenue per mile, or $1,314,000 per year per mile. Yet the costs of building such a freeway along are upwards of $25 million to well over $100 million per mile depending on location (the Central Artery is coming in at over $1 billion per mile - similar costs are about to be experienced for the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge and approaches over the Potomac on the Beltway), and annual maintenance and police costs are 2 to 5% of construction cost, to say nothing of interest on bonds, forgone property tax revenue, etc. Obviously, massive tolls or enormous increases in gas taxes would be needed to balance the books.

If you examine the cost of projects to build new highways or reconstruct existing ones, you can come up with figures like: (a) a car trip from NYC to Florida is subsidzed about $200 each way by property taxes, (b) the average 15 miles each way daily expressway commute represents a subsidy of well over $1000 per commuter, (c) the average cost of a rebuilt complex highway interchange could be paid for by levying a $0.25 toll on every vehicle traversing it every day.

Looked at in that light, the starvation level Amtrak system is a bargain. To say nothing of its potential were it actually capitalized to expand and increase its variable profits from actually operating trains against its high fixed costs. Similarly, the 5:15 commuter train with 500 people on board paying $5 each is netting over $2000 vs. the very minimal actual costs of operation for 1 hour in crew salary, depreciation, fuel, etc.

Yet somehow, the impression is out there that trains can't make money, while highways pay their own way.

See my number 74 about highways "paying their own way". They don't.

When you have a chance, check the budget line for your town, township, and county for streets and roads, then check the gas tax they are collecting. You'll find it is tens of millions annually, and the gas tax collection is nil.

If we relied on gas taxes only to pay for roads at the current level of taxation, we'd never be able to leave our driveway, since there'd be no local road system.

You'd be surprised how much of your state general revenue taxes and your local property taxes are going to subsidize automobile travel.

Interesting info about the time-sensitive freight movement.

A while back I learned that in many areas of freight movement the speed of a delivery is less important than the reliability. In other words, many customers would rather receive a delivery in twelve days on the dot than seven days with the possibility that it might be six or eight.

In some cases, it appears that comparing the "cost recovery" for rail and highway systems is like comparing apples and oranges. The reason is that many of the hidden "benefits" of a road system cannot easily be calculated. For example, a local road system serves a variety of users that do not benefit very much from a railroad (school bus and emergency vehicle access, for example).

Using property taxes to fund local roads does not seem like a big deal to me, for a substantial portion of a property's value is directly tied to its access to public infrastructure. A suburban residential lot that sells for $100,000 would be worth only a fraction of that value if it only abutted on a river or railroad right-of-way. In fact, there's no way in hell this land would ever support a residential land use under the latter circumstances.

Having said all that, it would seem that there are only two ways to get railroads and highways on a "level playing field" -- either have the government take over all the railroads in the U.S., or privatize every road in the country. I'm not sure I want to see either one of these things happen, so this kind of debate will go on for a long time.

BTW, New Jersey Transit held their public hearings for their proposed fare hikes the other day. While I can understand their need for a fare hike and view NJT as a top-notch agency, the last few months have exposed some major flaws in public transit as it operates today:

1. The methods of funding public transit in the U.S. are absolutely idiotic. Federal Transit Administration funds can be used for capital projects, but not for operating expenses. This is like providing incentives for people to purchase an $800,000 home even though they can't afford to buy any furniture. The natural result is that transit agencies (NJT is particularly bad this way) build major projects that they can't possibly operate, due to limitations in operating funds or capacity constraints. September 11th has given NJT an excuse for all those trains jamming into Penn Station (NY) packed to the roof with passengers, but the truth is that those trains were packed to the roof before September 11th. The fact that NJT was able to open their Midtown Direct service and build the Secaucus Transfer despite the common understanding that the Northeast Corridor Line cannot accommodate the projected passenger load is an absolute disgrace.

2. The major flaw with any rail system is that a train only operates with one degree of freedom (i.e., forward and backward). If there is a problem somewhere on the system, then there is no way to divert trains somewhere else and still get people to their destinations. If a major highway is shut down for hours at a time, at least people have an opportunity to find their way to an alternate route. Can you possibly put a value on that kind of flexibility when you compare railroads to highways?

Using property taxes to fund local roads does not seem like a big deal to me, for a substantial portion of a property's value is directly tied to its access to public infrastructure. A suburban residential lot that sells for $100,000 would be worth only a fraction of that value if it only abutted on a river or railroad right-of-way. In fact, there's no way in hell this land would ever support a residential land use under the latter circumstances.

A well stated reply and I like this part the most.

But I would also mention that governments have always subsidized the construction of roads and bridges to facilitate both trade and military mobility. The resulting expanded trade has generally paid the freight every time although additional revenue was usually supplemented, in both ancient and modern times, with toll booths.

But I would also mention that governments have always subsidized the construction of roads and bridges to facilitate both trade and military mobility.

You're absolutely correct about that. However, governments have also subsidized the construction of railroads for the same reason. The difference is that in the U.S. the government support for railroads is limited to capital improvements and does not extend to operating costs.

BUMP for relevance with today's Amtrak news about Warrington's resignation and the Congressional hearings on Amtrak's future. The above is a well written article, irrespective of the opinion of some naysayers responding on the thread.

Coston is being considered as a replacement for Warrington:

Already there is widespread talk about a successor. Most prominently, though not exclusively, mentioned is James Coston, a former Amtrak employee and a member of the soon-to-be defunct Amtrak Reform Council. Many on Capitol Hill involved in rail transportation are excited about the prospect of Coston, now a Chicago railroad lawyer, taking over the reins of America’s passenger railroad. While not denying that he would be interested in the job, Coston stopped short of saying he was seeking it.
“I am very interested in a solution,” Coston told TRAINS news wire, “and want to assist in the best way I can.”
(from Trains NewsWire,03/07/02 [site registration required])