Funding Amtrak in 2015

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Funding Amtrak: who shall lead the quest for adequate funds in 2015 and beyond?

I am unsure as to whom is taking the lead to promote the sustainability of passenger trains:

Will Amtrak supporters lead the charge and begin the brainstorming needed to find a party capable of beginning an initiative to (dare I say demand) seek and justify adequate funding? We know such funding is needed to repair equipment, deteriorating infrastructure, adequately run LD Trains and provide a class of service that is at least moderately comparable to European and Asian trains?

Here is a question: Do we really need an abundance of High Speed Rail in America? Couldn't we leave the "high speed sectors" to the air carriers - and be satisfied with a negotiated adequate funding to repair infrastructure and enable the running LD trains for convenience and necessity to citizens across the land? Can we make a deal with Congress to put this all to bed once and for all: to enable our current Amtrak services so we can get on with our business?

There needs to be a comprehensive plan for PR and funding development initiative that is organized and led by Amtrak's railfan support base and is far reaching into America. Such must effectively show Congress and change the thinking of "the 100 congresspersons who voted against Amtrak funds" the following and more:

1. Job one is: Amtrak rail transportation is not just a "liberal entitlement". Amtrak service is apolitical and serves all of America's citizens, equally and with what tools it has on hand.

2. Amtrak provides essential convenience and necessity and a life line to many regions in an eco-friendly and increasingly popular service - record ridership 31 million and growing. Services to those important and growing number of constituents and more cannot be allowed to falter.

3. Amtrak is very close to paying for itself; operating with a minimal of funds as opposed to other federally-funded modes such as air carriers. Not a claim that the airline industry can make.

4. Constituents must demand and explanation and rational answer from "the 100 congresspersons" why Amtrak is allowed to starve and airlines get an over abundance of subsidies.

Here is the main point of contention: the top airlines are purported to receive $71.5 billion in subsidies: http://news.yahoo.com/Etihad-says-top-us-airlines-71-5-bn-170049021.html

Such an amazingly high amount subsidized to for-profit organizations all while nickel and diming

the daylights out of Amtrak is not only absurd and unfair to constituents who need Amtrak, it is totally un-American!
 
Unfortunately the link is not working. Please go to Yahoo! News and in the SEARCH enter:

Etihad says top US airlines get 71.5 bn in subsidies
 
Let's not forget the enormous amounts of fossil fuels consumed and pollution created by thousands of daily flights.

It makes sense to have a nationwide system including HSR in major corridors to replace aircraft in inter-city markets of less than say, 750 miles.

The NEC, in spite of it's problems proves that trains can replace flights in specific corridors. Imagine how good Amtrak would be with even a small portion of the airline subsidy.
 
Funding Amtrak: who shall lead the quest for adequate funds in 2015 and beyond?

Do we really need an abundance of High Speed Rail in America?
Where is this threatened abundance of HSR?

The Northeast Corridor needs to be repaired, its capacity increased, and speeds improved. Amtrak and its state partners have laid out plans for incremental improvements. Now all the NEC needs to move toward HSR is money. Tens of Billions, please, or maybe $100 Billion plus would be better.

California HSR should connect L.A. with San Francisco. It too will need many Billions to complete. But the state's "cap and trade" tax to reduce carbon and other harmful emissions will provide enuff cash to get HSR well underway in the next few years.

Other possible HSR routes, like Tampa-Orlando-Miami, were mentioned for Stimulus funds. A group in Texas is talking about Houston-Dallas, privately funded but needing help from eminent domain. Fearless forecast: These ain't going nowhere.

We are looking at two (2) HSR routes in the next 20 years, and no "abundance".

++++++++++++++++++++++++

In fact, the pitiful totals for rail investment in the Stimulus have largely gone to upgrades in the existing system. (It was a mere $10 Billion, plus another few Billion in the 2010 budget, iirc.) Hyping HSR may have seemed like good P.R. at the time. But Congress actually wrote the law to require most of the funds go to corridor services and to many projects dispersed among many states.

The showpiece corridors, St Louis-Chicago and Dearborn-Chicago, each got about a Billion to upgrade many miles to 110-mph service. We'll see some better timetables by the end of this year, but most of those benefits won't be in place until the Stimulus spending deadline of Sept 2017.

By then most of the new bi-level cars, and new diesels, should have joined the fleet. (They were largely paid for by Stimulus funds). This will allow a cascade of used equipment, principally Horizons cars, roughly 90 of them, probably to be refurbished and moved to other routes.

Speaking of Cascades, another route that got close to a Billion was Seattle-Portland, where upgrades will improve the disgraceful on-time performance, cut 5 or 10 minutes from the schedule, and increase the frequencies from 4 trains each way to 6 a day. Also improving the performance of the Coast Starlight from L.A. as well.

Another half a Billion or so is being spent in North Carolina, to speed up trains Raleigh-Greensboro-Charlotte, and almost as much in NY State, to shave minutes off trains Penn Station-Albany-points north and west.

It's not clear how fast investment in passenger rail infrastructure could ratchet up today. Obama rued that that there were no "shovel-ready" projects. Those that were even close to shovel-ready then are underway now. Other big projects await the environmental studies, final route selection, preliminary engineering, etc.

Now Illinois is working on plans to spend the next Billion or two to double track most of the Lincoln Service route, and upgrade the sections Joliet-Chicago, thru Springfield, and Alton-St Louis to cut another 40 or so minutes out of the run time and allow even more frequencies.

Michigan is taking the lead on planning for a new passenger-only track South of the Lake, from Union Station into Indiana, where the existing 110-mph section into Michigan begins, and the Lake Shore Ltd. and the Capitol Ltd. peel off toward Cleveland and points east. That SOTL project could cost as much as $2 Billion, with enormous benefits (saving 50 minutes, better reliability, adding frequencies) to the Michigan services, and solid benefits to the two LD trains. But the final recommended route has not yet been chosen.

Virginia and North Carolina are getting ready to spend a Billion or more on restoring a route Richmond-Raleigh that could cut many minutes out of the run of the Silver Star and the Carolinian, while adding corridor service here.

So we could easily use $5 Billion right there, as soon as the preliminary work is finished. And then another $5 Billion of projects (not counting the NEC) could be quickly found.

Replacing the aging fleets of 2,000 cars and more, both single-level and bi-level, could go to contract quickly enuff. But no maker is sitting around with open assembly lines ready and waiting. CAF could build more cars, even Viewliner coaches. Nippon-Sharyo could build bi-level long distance cars when it finishes with the 175-car order for bi-level corridor cars. Siemens is to assemble coaches for All Aboard Florida, and perhaps that was the "launch order" for hundreds of single-level coaches for Amtrak whenever it gets the funds.

But can you imagine Congress putting even a piddling $5 or $10 Billion into rail infrastructure and equipment? Not when the super rich want to pay less taxes and the military can spend another $100 Billion a year with no problem.

Maybe when the next recession hits. Since the period between the peaks of recoveries typically run about 6 years, and this Great Recession began in Dec. 2007, we're way overdue. Meanwhile normal is that the President proposes to spend on passenger rail and Congress tries to cut the funds to Amtrak or keep it flat. :(
 
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3. Amtrak is very close to paying for itself; . . .
It is?Can you better define "very close".

I don't anticipate Amtrak ever paying for itself.

Amtrak's 15 long distance routes fell something like $600 million short of break-even in 2012.

While the NEC apparently pays for its operations, the NEC does not generate sufficient profits to fund the NEC infrastructure improvements it sorely needs. Plus, the Acela fleet of train sets is nearing the end it's service life and I don't think Amtrak has any money set aside for all the Acela replacement train sets.

Ditto for the P-42 DCs and the long distance Superliner I/Superliner II cars.
 
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One thing to keep in mind on those losses is that those include overhead allocations that we've beaten to death on here. The "direct losses" for the LD system (that is to say, the losses from operating the trains themselves), per one of Boardman's presentations to Congress, are a lot smaller (that presentation showed the Silver Meteor, Palmetto, Auto Train, and I believe the LSL in the black and relatively small operating losses on all the other eastern LD trains).
 
3. Amtrak is very close to paying for itself; . . .
It is?Can you better define "very close".

...

While the NEC apparently pays for its operations, the NEC does not generate sufficient profits to fund the NEC infrastructure improvements it sorely needs. Plus, the Acela fleet of train sets is nearing the end it's service life and I don't think Amtrak has any money set aside for all the Acela replacement train sets.

...
"Very close" is that Amtrak covers about 90% of its operating costs out of the farebox.

That's better than almost any passenger railroad in the world, and better than the commuter lines. That ratio will further improve as new electric locomotives enter the fleet (with half of them delivered, we can expect to finish by early next year). Costs, especially maintenance and repair, will drop again on the Eastern LD routes when the high-cost Heritage diners (and the rest of the baggage cars) are replaced, probably next year. Then revenues will increase when 25 or so new Viewliner sleepers go into service in a year or two.

The order for new and more Acelas will be paid for with a loan from the FRA, funds already set aside. The greatly added capacity (6-car trains replaced by 8-car trains, and more of them) will produce enuff operating surplus to pay off the loan.

In the Midwest and California, 175 new bi-levels on the corridor trains, like Kansas City-St Louis and Pontiac-Dearborn-Chicago, will supply a 30% boost in capacity. And bring better speeds, greater reliability in wintertime, nicer and more efficient lighting and heating and a/c, etc.

The new cars will replace Horizons, which have problems in the winter but otherwise are not so bad. These 90 or so cars will probably be refurbished, but in any case they will add to Amtrak's fleet, be available for LD trains that often sell out, and add to revenues.

Meanwhile, investments in the tracks St Louis-Chicago and Dearborn-Chicago will chop 40 or 50 minutes out of the schedules on these busy routes, and possibly allow a few additional frequencies. If ridership grows to fill the 30% added capacity, it's quite possible that the Lincoln Service in Illinois will no longer need a state subsidy at all.

A huge problem remains that Amtrak is too small. Railroading, like most transportation, thrives on economies of scale. The massive overhead, from maintenance shops to electric power plants to stations, marketing, and whatever, puts a heavy burden on routes with one train a day each way. If we could get more state-supported corridors carrying many trains a day -- Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Chicago, Omaha-Des Moines-Quad Cities-Chicago, Twin Cities-Chicago, Cincinnati-Indianapolis-Chicago, Raleigh-Richmond-D.C., Portland-Eugene, San Antonio-Austin-Ft Worth-Dallas-Marshall, San Antonio-Houston-New Orleans to name a few -- then passengers and revenues would rise much faster than the massive fixed overhead. So the way to fix Amtrak is to get more Amtrak.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Finally, a lousy $600 million (an out-of-date figure, I believe LD losses are more like $400 million, but whatever), yeah, $600 million ain't nothing. What's the annual subsidy to produce unneeded ethanol? What's the cost of another week in the endless war in Afghanistan? What is the cost of building, maintaining, and watering the hundreds of golf courses for the brass at the hundreds of military posts we have in a hundred countries around the world? LOL.

If you want to cut government waste, examine just about any military procurement of $6 Billion or more, but give the LD trains subsidy the low priority urgency deserved by the piddling number. A lousy $600 million is hardly worth troubling your valuable mind.
 
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Politically, the most important priority right now is to convince Mike Madigan and the Illinois legislature to "just say no" to Rauner's slash-and-burn budget for passenger rail in Illinois, which would wipe out half of the Amtrak lines in Illinois, along with doing damage to Metra and CTA service.

I'm not sure what those of us outside Illinois can do. I would like to make the point that the rail lines in Illinois attract tourists to locations where we simply would not go if we had to drive or fly; they bring tourism income into the state. But I'm not sure who to send this message to in order to be effective.

Illinois is significant. The US currently has the following major geographic clusters of passenger rail:

(1) The NEC and connecting branch lines -- in a solid position politically, lots of states and lots of representatives, and expanding.

(2) California -- also in a solid position though with only the one state, surrounded by desert and unlikely to expand outside it much

(3) The Midwest bloc centered on Illinois -- very solid in Illinois, Michigan, and pretty solid in Minnesota, but threatened in Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, and even Missouri. Losing the solidity of Illinois service would be very bad for "mindshare" in the entire region.

(4) The Pacific Northwest -- very solid, but surrounded by mountains and emptiness, so it's not going to expand much.

(5) Florida -- in a weak position and with only one state, although it could theoretically expand north

(6 & 7) Denver & Salt Lake, focused on local & regional rail, with big gaps to the nearest out-of-state population centers

(8 & beyond) Various isolated urban/regional operations in the Sunbelt (Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, New Orleans), but with absolutely no political movement towards connecting them with decent intercity rail, and a lot of hostility to doing so.

Losing the core of the Midwest bloc would be disastrous politically. In terms of creating an expanding network of "rail served areas" and increasing mindshare for rail, it is the second most important network after the NEC-and-branches. (The third most important network is Florida, and it's not doing nearly as well. The Pacific NW and California networks will remain isolated by geographical barriers. The other areas with urban rail haven't managed to get networked at all really yet, Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited notwithstanding.)
 
I agree with that assessment. Illinois has always seemed to me like the base, the rock, upon which the entire Midwest rail system is based. Corridors radiating from Chicago provide a solid network with reasonably strong ridership. Once that Chicago-based network is strengthened (or as it is strengthened, in some situations), other non-Chicago-based corridors can be brought on line to "connect the dots" and expand the reach. However, all of that falls apart if the Chicago-based core is weakened.
 
Unfortunately one cannot avoid the issue of the difficulty of setting up circumferential service around a traffic focal point like New York or Chicago. Yup we always do pretty well in setting up radial services radiating out of the center, but we do not do so well in setting up circumferential services connecting the radial services together midway from the center or at the periphery. We have not succeeded too much in setting up such service even around New York in spite of huge success with the radial services. Consequently, it is not at all easy to lead a life without car if you live out in the burbs, even with relatively good bus service in NJ for example. Yes, it can be done, but at a huge time cost penalty.
 
True, suburb-to-suburb corridors are exceptionally difficult to construct.

I was thinking more along the lines of the Ohio Hub corridors (3-C, Columbus-Detroit, etc), STL-IND, and the like - intercity rail corridors in the Midwest, just ones that do not end/begin in CHI.
 
Appears that the #188 accident is providing the push for the Senators in the NEC states to work together as a group to push for "full" Amtrak and NEC funding for FY16. I expect that they can get both Senators in Virginia and Vermont (all Dems) to join them. And probably the Democratic Senators in NH and ME. If the Senators can stick together as a group, that is a big enough block of votes to carry a lot of weight.

WJLA/AP report: Northeast corridor senators to push for full Amtrak funding. Excerpt:

WASHINGTON (AP/WJLA) - U.S. Senators representing states along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor will urge the Senate Appropriations Committee to fully fund Amtrak's funding request on Thursday as the Committee prepares to debate the Transportation, Housing and Urban development bill.

enator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY); Senator Jack Reed (D-RI); Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ); Senator Bob Casey (D-PA); Senator Chris Coons (D-DE); Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT); Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT); Senator Edward Markey (D-MA); Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) are some of the senators expected to attend the meeting.

This funding fight is personal for most of these senators since Amtrak's northeast corridor is how they commute to the nation’s capital.
Edit: FY16 correction.
 
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Unfortunately in the Senate one member can prevent voting on a bill, and also the Majority Leader, Senator "Do Nothing but Complain about Obama" McConnell, can refuse to call the bill up!

Another consideration is that the Conference Committees between the House and Senate have to compromise on spending, and the House has many more zealots that refuse to fund needed programs and lots of Amtrak haters!

It is good to see then trying to work together but they need Republican members to join in reaching a sensible solution! Chances of this happening aren't good in the current political climate!

The race is on for 2016 and not much is gonna happen till the next Congress in 2017!! Sigh
 
Unfortunately in the Senate one member can prevent voting on a bill, and also the Majority Leader, Senator "Do Nothing but Complain about Obama" McConnell, can refuse to call the bill up!
The leverage that the Dems have is that the Senate has to pass appropriation bills. Which effectively requires 60 votes to invoke closure. If the NE and Mid-Atlantic Democratic Senators stay united on maintaining funding for Amtrak, McConnell is not going to get 6 Democratic Senators to join with the 54 Republicans. I expect the end result for total FY2016 funding for Amtrak, after a lot of fuss and grandstanding by the Tea party types, will match the FY2015 $1.4 billion level, maybe with a small $50 to $100 million increase in capital grants.

The big fight will be over the next 6 year transportation authorization & funding bill along with a side fight over the Amtrak re-authorization. The House passed an acceptable Amtrak and passenger rail re-authorization bill and I doubt that the Senate will pass a poison pill Amtrak authorization bill.

Congress is currently in the midst of passing yet another short term transportation authorization and funding extension as the current extension expires May 31. The focus is on the Highway trust fund which is almost broke, but the transit fund is not in that much better shape. The simplest and most direct solution would be to raise the gas excise tax by 12 to 15 cents a gallon to adjust for inflation and construction cost increases since 1993, the last time the gas excise tax was increased. While not a long term solution, it would be enough to keep highway and transit funding at or slightly above current levels for the next 5-6 years. But, that is regarded as politically impossible, so Congress is looking at complex and byzantine changes to the tax code to fill in the gap in the highway trust fund. We are living in the crazy times.

The fight is likely to last into the fall at a minimum. Wouldn't be surprised to see another 2 year transportation bill to basically kick the can down the road to 2017. Whether there will be sufficient direct funding for the NEC to make some progress and for study & preliminary engineering funds for NEC Gateway, that is difficult to predict.
 
We are living in the crazy times.
I used to figure that the crazy times started when Reagan declared that ketchup was a vegetable and that trees were the main cause of pollution, and claimed that his (multibillion-dollar-deficit) budgets were "balanced" because "defense spending doesn't count".

But I'm young. Some people would say the crazy times date back to "mutually assured destruction" and "better living through chemistry" and the reckless construction of nuclear operations with no thought towards radiological safety and the rest of the fever dream which was the fifties.

But maybe the crazy times have been going even longer than that. Sane government is a remarkably rare quality.

I do actually think it was worse during most of the 20th century, and I suspect it's due to the endemic presence of childhood lead poisoning from gasoline. Perhaps that gives hope for the future, since we aren't poisoning children that way any more. It'll take a while before the lead-poisoned generations age out of power, though. Based on the history of the lead phaseout, I'll only feel safe when the majority of elected officials are born after 1986 (ten years younger than me). This is an actual reason not to vote for anyone over 30. :)
 
Bad as things are and have been in Modern times,( the Industrial Age) History shows us that the Middle Ages and the Inquisition were among the worst of times on this small rock spinning thru the Cosmos!

We've come a long way, but as the saying goes, " Those that don't learn from History are doomed to repeat it!"
 
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Bad as things are and have been in Modern times,( the Industrial Age) History shows us that the Middle Ages and the Inquisition were among the worst of times on this small rock spinning thru the Cosmos!

We've come a long way, but as the saying goes, " Those that don't learn from History are doomed to repeat it!"
Maybe in Europe. Not necessarily so everywhere else in the world that would like to claim at least some part of the small rock for themselves. :)
 
You are correct sir! I didn't mean to exclude the third world and the non western world countries, they had it bad much longer than the so called Industrialized countries, and some still do! ( especially in Africa and those societies under the domination of religious zealots, warlords and dictatorships like North Korea!)
 
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