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Huh,

And I wonder what the ontime performance of the airlines has been over the last few months??

I think A. Kummant is right...the freight tracks are maxed out and something needs to be done.

I would hope that it be something co-operative! I'm just not sure what. Anyone on the board have ideas?
 
At the risk of being labeled a big fat "commie", I think the Federal and State governments need to step in. Acquisition (through purchase or eminent domain) of major cross-country rights-of-way, parallel tracks for dedicated freight and dedicated passenger service on the busiest corridors, etc., should get at least a fraction of the tax dollars being spent on highways, airports, coastal shipping, etc. That would open up myriad travel possibilities (think lighter-weight, grade-separated long-distance high-speed travel, say, leaving Chicago after breakfast and arriving in L.A. in time for dinner...)

...to say nothing of being better for the environment, and for resocializing people from our 20th Century insulation in our little bubbles (i.e. cars) to where we can re-learn how to properly interact with our fellow human beings...
 
Well, whatever we do, we need to figure out a way to fund the track maintenance and upgrades. See Texas Rail Advocate's opinion on setting up a Passenger Rail trust fund. I have suggested doing the same on this board in the past. For example, a passenger disembarking in one state could pay a 10 percent "disembarkation fee" to the State in which they disembark. The State could then set the money collected aside in an account from which money could be used to match dollar for dollar the cost associated with maintaning the track at a Class 5 standard, or purchasing additional track to alleviate the congestion prevalent on so many rail lines today. This money would be limited for use only on lines utilized by a passenger train, so frieght-only lines would not be eligible for these funds. See also Gene S's statements in the February 26, 2007 edition of National Corridor Initiative's on line newsletter for his statements regarding Federal-State matching funds. Whatever we create, we have to provide for the capital funding for passenger rail, as one of the reasons the freight RR's departed the passenger rail market is the high cost of providing passenger rail service.
 
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TransAtlantic said:
At the risk of being labeled a big fat "commie", I think the Federal and State governments need to step in. Acquisition (through purchase or eminent domain) of major cross-country rights-of-way, parallel tracks for dedicated freight and dedicated passenger service on the busiest corridors, etc., should get at least a fraction of the tax dollars being spent on highways, airports, coastal shipping, etc. That would open up myriad travel possibilities (think lighter-weight, grade-separated long-distance high-speed travel, say, leaving Chicago after breakfast and arriving in L.A. in time for dinner...)...to say nothing of being better for the environment, and for resocializing people from our 20th Century insulation in our little bubbles (i.e. cars) to where we can re-learn how to properly interact with our fellow human beings...
Click to expand...

I would settle for New York to Chicago and LA to San Francisco. The California high speed rail will probably happen, when is the real question. NYP to CHI is a longer route, but with a new, high speed electric line used only for passenger trains, and perhaps high speed freight like mail, 5-6 hours is not unreasonable. And it would help people a lot more than a lot of other things our government is doing.
 
WICT106 said:
Well, whatever we do, we need to figure out a way to fund the track maintenance and upgrades. See Texas Rail Advocate's opinion on setting up a Passenger Rail trust fund. I have suggested doing the same on this board in the past. For example, a passenger disembarking in one state could pay a 10 percent "disembarkation fee" to the State in which they disembark. The State could then set the money collected aside in an account from which money could be used to match dollar for dollar the cost associated with maintaning the track at a Class 5 standard, or purchasing additional track to alleviate the congestion prevalent on so many rail lines today. This money would be limited for use only on lines utilized by a passenger train, so frieght-only lines would not be eligible for these funds. See also Gene S's statements in the February 26, 2007 edition of National Corridor Initiative's on line newsletter for his statements regarding Federal-State matching funds. Whatever we create, we have to provide for the capital funding for passenger rail, as one of the reasons the freight RR's departed the passenger rail market is the high cost of providing passenger rail service.
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WICT,

While an intersting idea, my problem with this is ensuring that the money actually goes to where it's supposed to. Here in my home State of NY, we've had a gas tax for years that is intended to go into a superfund to help maintain, repair, and improve the roads here in NY. Sadly for almost every year since that tax was enacted, despite the protestation's of AAA and others, the state legislature has raided that fund to help balance the general budget here in this state to pay for their pork-barrell programs.

Because of that, this state is now facing a crisis where roads are falling into greater disarray than ever, and the monies aren't there to fix things. Finally as of last year they are no longer raiding the fund, but alas the damage is done and no one knows where they are going to find the money to catch up on things now. :angry:

So if such an idea is to happen, then some way must be found to guarentee that the money can never be used for any purpose other than the one originally intended.
 
The problem with a passenger train trust fund is that the base ticket revenue of Amtrak is too low to provide any meaningful revenue.

A comparison could be made to the Airport and Airways Trust Fund (AATF): the fund used for federal airport grants, ATC improvements, and part of the FAA ATC operation. The AATF is funded at a rate of over $10 billion dollars a year. Collected airline fares total over $70 billion a year. So, the taxes and fees used to fund the AATF amounts to about 12% of the cost of the typical airline ticket. (Taxes and fees for other uses add more to that total.)

Amtrak ticket revenue is about $1.5 billion a year. If a 12% tax were added on top of Amtrak fares, this would generate only about $180 million a year. Certainly not a windfall and not enough to find anything significant. Plus, since Amtrak is the one and only intercity passenger railroad, Amtrak could effectively do that right now by simply raising fares 12% and cutting out the DOT middle-man. In fact, that is exactly what they did last year.

Trust funds only work when there is a large pool of base revenue. Amtrak does not have that. The freight RR's do, but they want no part of any trust fund. So, unless a non-rail source of revenue is dedicated to Amtrak, the only viable funding source is the General Fund.
 
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So, enact a national sales tax, or excise tax, on freight tonnage moved by rail. That freight tonnage is the "passenger" on the freight RRs. Require that all the money collected be used to upgrade rail infrastructure, the part of it that's in and on the ground. There's your trust fund. There's so much freight that a tiny tax would generate one whale of a lot of trust fund. Amtrak would be a beneficiary, along with the freight RRs, of the upgraded infrastructure. The freight RRs would benefit by being able to more safely and expeditiously move their lifeblood, their customers' freight, and UP, in particular would be saved from itself by having the infrastructure upgraded so that not only would it (finally) be able to efficiently move it's current freight load, it might even be able to start accepting some of the freight it has had to refuse because it's currently so saturated it can't even move what it's got.
 
PRR60: I would point out that many funds for airports camer from the general fund, prior to the set-up of the AATF in the early 1970s. The roads, prior to 1956 or 58, were purchased primarily through funds from the General fund as well. So, there are two examples of money being spent from the General Funds in order to develop the demand for services and infrastructure - which was then paid from from a dedicated Trust Fund. The thing is, one has to spend money in order to make money.

As for a national sales tax, I can just imagine the representatives of the freight RRs making statements to the effect that they already collect funds for the maintenance of their own track, and it would not make any sense to have those funds go through a branch of the government bureaucracy just to do maintenance that they may or may not desire to do themselves.
 
To tax the railroads to fund passenger trains is skinning the wrong cat, to put it mildly. There actually needs to be huge spending on rail infrastructure for freight. My own opinion is that is should come out of the highway funding, which does have money pouring in automatically primarily from car drivers, regardless of what the trucking companies would like us to believe. There are two reasons for this:

1. If we could get more freight off the road and onto rail it would be of such huge benefit to the automobile driver due to fewer long haul large vehicles on the road.

2. The reduction in road damge due to the removal of large vehicles from the road would save more money than the road money reduction by spending part of it on rail.

The current average freight train speeds are generally under 30 mph. Why? Primarily because they spend so much time stopped or going slow due to meets, slow segments in the lines, etc. If the freight can move fast, the passenger trains can move well, too.

A portion of the money diverted to be spent on rail improvements could and should be designated for passenger route improvements, but not all of it.

When we talk about slow areas, remember, even in the peak years of the high speed streamliners, few averaged as much as 60 mph for any considerable distance. As one example, Take the Illinois Central's City of Miami: Yes, it ran up to 100 mph for considerably distances in Illinois, but when it got into the hills of northern Alabama, the last 80 miles into Birmingham were done at an average speed of about 30 mph on tracks where the speed limits were 35 to 45 mph. And south of Birmingham, forget it. None of the route was fast, and some was unsignaled. Look at the long time favored and shortest route Chicago to Florida, and the only one still intact: Between Nashville and Atlanta, 287 miles by rail but barely 250 in a straight line, The fastest ever schedule for this was 6 hours, but that was one stop only (Chattanooga) and give the train the railroad, and hang onto your seat because of all the curves. Major rebuilds including a lot of realignments are needed here if we want any decent speed for any train, passenger or freight.

George
 
WICT106 said:
As for a national sales tax, I can just imagine the representatives of the freight RRs making statements to the effect that they already collect funds for the maintenance of their own track, and it would not make any sense to have those funds go through a branch of the government bureaucracy just to do maintenance that they may or may not desire to do themselves.
Click to expand...
This might sound a little big brotherish of me, but just because the freight railroad does not want to do the maintenance or capacity expansion does not mean that it does not need to be done. I'm not sure to what extent freight railroads use each others rails, but I do know that at least one other railroad uses freight rails: Amtrak.

Rick
 
To tax the railroads to fund passenger trains is skinning the wrong cat, to put it mildly. There actually needs to be huge spending on rail infrastructure for freight.
Click to expand...
So where do we disagree? That is precisely what I am proposing. NO "fund(ing) of passenger trains" from that tax. What I actually SAID was:
Amtrak would be a beneficiary, along with the freight RRs, of the upgraded infrastructure.
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And that's exactly what I meant. My suggestion would not put money in Amtrak's hands, except to the extent that funds from freight carried on the NEC would also generate funding to upgrade that infrastructure. My suggestion, above, did NOT mention any money going to passenger trains. Let's be REAL clear about that. It would fund upgrading the rail infrastructure of this country, which we both AGREE is an absolute necessity. The freight railroads WOULD be the real beneficiaries of that, because it would force a genuine and across-the-board upgrade of all in-the-ground property. More track, better track, a modern and uniform signals system. It would allow them to at least pretend that they're not running a third-world rail system. Amtrak passengers would benefit from much better OTP, and probably would travel more safely. But the proposed tax would NOT buy rolling stock or subsidize tickets, or meals, or whatever. Now, the argument is also made that:

I can just imagine the representatives of the freight RRs making statements to the effect that they already collect funds for the maintenance of their own track, and it would not make any sense to have those funds go through a branch of the government bureaucracy just to do maintenance that they may or may not desire to do themselves.
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- Well, guess what, they've had lots of time and opportunity to upgrade their infrastructure, and to bring things sufficiently up to snuff so that we have a reasonably safe, up-to-date, fast, and efficient rail infrastructure, and, to date, they have failed miserably, so let's try this and see if we can force the issue and get it done. The current scenario, the current status quo, is harmful to the country as a whole, even ignoring the damage it's inflicting on Amtrak's passengers, because we NEED an efficient, safe, fast rail system with sufficient capacity for now and the future, and we don't have it, and nothing that is currently in-process or even in planning is going to fix it before most everybody working today is retired, if not actually long dead.
 
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Alan, my choice of wording was somewhat poor. I should have said track improvements instead of passenger trains. Where I disagree with you is on taxing freight moved by rail. My thought is that the money to fund infrastructure improvements on the railroads needs to come from the highway taxes already in place, even if it means a slight increase. I don't have the numbers, I am sure somebody does, but I would suspect that a 1% or so spending from the highway money on more tracks, straighter tracks, etc., would make a huge difference in the railroad's ability to move traffic, regardless of type. I do think that some of this should be designated to fund improvements that would be primarily beneficial to passenger trains. Four particular items come to my mind: 1. Rerail and upgrade to 110 mph the former ATSF passenger line across Kansas and Colorado. 2. restore to Phoenix line to at least 79 mph operation. 3. re-double track the CSX A Line. 4. make the track improvements so that Chicago to Florida trains can run.

George
 
George Harris said:
Alan, my choice of wording was somewhat poor. I should have said track improvements instead of passenger trains. Where I disagree with you is on taxing freight moved by rail. My thought is that the money to fund infrastructure improvements on the railroads needs to come from the highway taxes already in place, even if it means a slight increase. I don't have the numbers, I am sure somebody does, but I would suspect that a 1% or so spending from the highway money on more tracks, straighter tracks, etc., would make a huge difference in the railroad's ability to move traffic, regardless of type. I do think that some of this should be designated to fund improvements that would be primarily beneficial to passenger trains. Four particular items come to my mind: 1. Rerail and upgrade to 110 mph the former ATSF passenger line across Kansas and Colorado. 2. restore to Phoenix line to at least 79 mph operation. 3. re-double track the CSX A Line. 4. make the track improvements so that Chicago to Florida trains can run.
George
Click to expand...

Ah, ok. Kind of like the "Ampenny" proposed a decade or two ago by Graham Claytor? With inflation, I suppose we could make it the Am-Nickel, or figure out some way that the Mass Transit Trust fund could be tapped (and funded) in order to do this.
 
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