From my perspective, Amtrak's main flaw is their failure to say ENOUGH. They should tell NJT to keep their money for the additional slots and say we can not handle any more trains into or out of Penn Station or across the high line. Easing the load will reduce the congestion and loads on the catenary.
But, we all know that is not going to happen.
Yup. i was just giving the other perspective. And we can agree to disagree on certain details and still be friends I hope. At the end of the day it is all politics, and everyone looking to preserve their own interests the best they can.
I think the Wicker Booker proposal that is in the proposed “Railroad Reform, Enhancement, and Efficiency Act,” strikes a reasonable realistic compromise position. It retains sufficient control with Amtrak to reasonably run the operations and gives some added supervisory powers to the Commission, though not as much as the House PRRIA 2015 gave.
Amtrak afterall is not a normal corporation, nor is it a normal department of the federal government. it is an odd creature of politics which got an infrastructure foisted on it as a matter of immediate convenience, far expanding its charter from the original one that it got in 1971. And everyone is still figuring out how to make the whole thing work while not funding it adequately. It really is not a matter of just NJT vs. Amtrak. The issue is much broader, and that is why we get a new "Reform Act" every year in the guise of a new authorization.
While it may feel like it never is Amtrak's fault from the inside, and indeed it is seldom the fault of the line workers, the view as I have pointed out, justly or otherwise, is quite different from outside of Amtrak, and both sides will have to learn to live with that tension and learn to move forward with compromises to live together, and all this in a continuing tight funding situation, until the happy day when Amtrak is able to generate enough resources internally to meet all operating needs. For peculiar accounting reasons capital dollars are easier to come by than operating grants.
We gave a huge amount of feedback to Senator Booker on what he should or should not put into his bill, and we generally discouraged any action that would make it harder for Amtrak to run the NEC or do anything towards separating the infrastructure from Amtrak on the NEC at this time. That issue needs to be addressed at some point but now is not the right time for it. In addition a lot of feedback was given on the total accounting mess that Amtrak has created somehow in connection with the PRIIA Section 209 pricing and at least providing the mechanism to revisit and fix it, which appears in the proposed bill. The other major concern is with providing a mechanism for increasing service and introducing new trains outside of the NEC, something that has also been addressed. The big elephant in the room is allocated costs with some secret formula that Amtrak is either unwilling or unable to clearly explain to anyone. For some unknown reason Amtrak has far far higher proportion of its costs allocated than any other comparable transportation company. Without fixing that problem there is a general accountability of what exactly is happening on the cost side of things.
Anyway, while not perfect, I think the dialogue is working and progress is being made in small steps.
As part of the PRIIA 2009 Section 212 in the near future the charges paid by the Commuter agencies on the NEC will go up significantly, over the major objection of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which actually owns the ROW in Massachusetts. NJ in particular has not objected to the proposal, though it will be interesting to see where they find the additional money from absent a significant rise in their fuel tax, which might finally come to pass, notwithstanding the present Governors Presidential aspirations. This will bring some additional resources to bear on the infrastructure maintenance and SOGR side of things
As for NJT adding trains, at each stage they were agreed to by Amtrak, so it is not as if NJT added the trains without Amtrak's consent. So to claim later that it was not Amtrak's problem is a bit disingenuous. If it was really that bad they should have refused. Of course the fact that Amtrak is beholden to the NJT legislators in Congress for their funding makes this an interesting negotiating situation, so I do sympathize with Amtrak's management to some extent. But it stands to reason that if they accept a certain number of trains as part of a contract for a certain amount of contract payment, then it becomes their problem to run those trains the best they can. These contracts are negotiated (used to be) every two years, so things can be changed based on experience. Of course no matter what one does someone has to take the heat. Of course we could agree that it is possibly an Amtrak management problem and not a dispatcher problem.
About Raritan trains, I thought the reason that there are no through Raritan trains during rush hours was precisely because there is no available slots. Has that changed recently? OTOH why would it be a problem to run a through Raritan train in the middle of the afternoon? The NJCL through trains are one for one replacement of Long Branch trains so that should be a wash.
