FRA's proposal for Long Distance Trains

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It's irrelevant.

Even if the proposal passes, does anyone really think that a private company would be able to run services and make a profit, with only 90% of the subsidy we receive? If there was money in passenger rail, the freight companies wouldn't have abandoned it in the first place, and/or there would be more private passenger rail companies around. One could argue that a private company could have private operating costs, which is certainly possible to a degree. Again, using food service as an example... You may be able to put someone onboard willing to make 1/3-1/2 of what an LSA makes, but the real expenses come in to play when you have to pay in to railroad retirement, still. That's one of the reasons the Subway experiment failed on the Empire Service cafes. Subway argued their personnel weren't railroad employees, but either FRA or RRB argued that they were working onboard a train so they are to be considered a railroad employee, so Subway would have to pay in to the pension, and they refused.
 
It is relevant.

Amtrak pads the numbers on there trains. Could you run a passenger train on 90% of the cost that Amtrak states the train cost. Yes you could. Only if Amtrak to show its true numbers then it becomes a maybe.

There several PTOC (Passenger Train Operating Company) that can and may bid on some of Amtrak trains.

You can't rule this out as irrelevant.
 
Just-Thinking-51 said:
https://locomore.com/en/services.html

A low cost start up in Germany. Trains start in December this year. Four people with some crowd source funding. No 90% of Amtrak cost there.
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There is a big difference operating a train for seven hours one way on track that is built for passenger use, with speeds capable of 125mph, versus fighting with freight lines on a trip that can take up to almost three days. With this startup you can attempt to run service with the one consist they're renting. What happens if a car or the loco is bad ordered? Train is cancelled or passengers are displaced because of a missing coach (assuming the train is sold out). Anyway, in the States all of the routes are a heck of a lot longer, and I wouldn't really think it's that easy to just go and rent a consist, because who has spare equipment laying around to rent out? And the only long distance train I can think of that can conceivably be run with one consist (if the schedule stays as is) is the Cardinal anyway, so you'd be talking about massive amounts of money necessary for start ups costs in the US.

And yes I am aware that the books are cooked. I work as an LSA, so I know what's done on our end of things to help food service look better than it is. We try to make things look better than they really are, so if you think that it's really possible to make things float with a lower subsidy than is currently received, while maintaining current or better service levels, I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
 
But still, to say it is irrelevant outright merely reduces your credibility at least in my eyes. We actually do not know for sure whether it will eventually turn out to be relevant or not. That will depend on how things play out.

This particular scheme is probably not going to work, but I see it merely as a step in a direction. General experience elsewhere shows that initially there is an increase in subsidy when one attempts to privatize, but if done correctly the subsidy goes down on heavily used routes. It is also true that on sparsely used routes either you have to stop running trains or have to agree to fund them specially. This is done in places like Canada and India on clearly identified routes.
 
"Employees of a new operator would be subject to laws and regulations governing current similar Amtrak employees, and winning bidders must provide hiring preference to displaced, qualified Amtrak workers."

Little vague here but if they have to pay and run everything the same Amtrak work rules and even hire their employees's, where is the cost savings going to come from?
 
Three routes to cherry pick. Sliver Metor, Sliver Star, and the (Sliver) Palmetto. Oops now you have a winner. Single overnight trains, use the same (general) stations.

You have one location to for service. Hialeah FL.

One location for a crew base.

Use Amtrak loss numbers, 90% of the cost left to operator a small tight running passenger railroad.
 
Just-Thinking-51 said:
Three routes to cherry pick. Sliver Metor, Sliver Star, and the (Sliver) Palmetto. Oops now you have a winner. Single overnight trains, use the same (general) stations.

You have one location to for service. Hialeah FL.

One location for a crew base.

Use Amtrak loss numbers, 90% of the cost left to operator a small tight running passenger railroad.
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The Palmetto is serviced in Hialeah? So it has to actually travel from Savannah all the way to Florida and back? I thought it was serviced in Savannah.
 
Palmetto is serviced in Sunnyside, but he Amfleet IIs probably get maintenance work done in Hialeah.

The again the Silvers get serviced both in Sunnyside and Hialeah. There is a difference between servicing that happens at the end of each run before the beginning of the next run, and the periodic maintenance of the rolling stock.
 
Just-Thinking-51 said:
Three routes to cherry pick. Sliver Metor, Sliver Star, and the (Sliver) Palmetto. Oops now you have a winner. Single overnight trains, use the same (general) stations.

You have one location to for service. Hialeah FL.

One location for a crew base.

Use Amtrak loss numbers, 90% of the cost left to operator a small tight running passenger railroad.
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I didn't think it was specified that you could pick whatever routes you wanted. If that's true, then those would certainly be the three routes to take, because of sharing a lot of stations, like you mentioned. However, one crew base is not accurate. For OBS you could use NYP, but as far as T&E goes, they're only good for 12 hour shifts, so you would need multiple crew bases still, a commissary on each end, pay for use of the catenary on the NYP-WAS portion (diesels aren't allowed in the tunnels for Penn Station), so now you'd have to buy/lease dual-mode engines that can use electricity and diesel power. And from what I've heard, Amtrak charges quite a lot for the electricity supplied to trains, so you'd have to factor in that increase over what Amtrak already spends to fuel/power the trains.
 
jis said:
But still, to say it is irrelevant outright merely reduces your credibility at least in my eyes. We actually do not know for sure whether it will eventually turn out to be relevant or not. That will depend on how things play out.

This particular scheme is probably not going to work, but I see it merely as a step in a direction. General experience elsewhere shows that initially there is an increase in subsidy when one attempts to privatize, but if done correctly the subsidy goes down on heavily used routes. It is also true that on sparsely used routes either you have to stop running trains or have to agree to fund them specially. This is done in places like Canada and India on clearly identified routes.
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Saying it's outright irrelevant severely reduces credibility as much as saying 100% that it is possible for this idea to work.

What I mean is that as far as the ideas listed in the proposal, I find it very very hard to believe it would be possible to make it work. Now if it was something like..letting a private company come in and bid on the NEC, unfortunately for me, I could see it being ran more efficient. Getting back to the topic, I find it hard to believe that a private company could come in with their own stock and employees, and maintain service levels. If we want to see the Empire Builder turn in to the Canadian and go from daily departures to two per week (albeit with vastly increase consist size), then I believe this would be the way to go. A private company will be in it for the money, so why pay for T&E crews to run a train daily in each direction when it's sparsely used, when you can cram everyone in on two or three departures per week, and cut back on T&E crews? Then it would be harder to fit trips in your own schedule, and whatnot.
 
I think the main issue of allocated cost at Amtrak is that it is a mysterious large blob. One way to slice and dice it is to require billing for individual services and justify those bills. even in the PRIIA 209 exercise, each time Amtrak has been challenged by a state on the charges, Amtrak has basically folded and brought the charges down. Which suggests that Amtrak itself is behaving at least as badly as those big bad corporations, if not worse, hiding behind made up inability to transparently account for things.

Even if a train is operated commercially by a separate outfit using Amtrak equipment an T&E crew but OBS, marketing and customer facing functions are all provided by said other outfit, with clearly demarcated and defined contracts for specific service, that could force better accountability and in the process expose better the actual costs and possibly reduce overall cost of operation, mainly because it becomes harder to load up other random stuff and justify it.

Privatizing can be done in many different ways, and the model that will be suitable is not at all clear at present. US does not have a healthy open equipment leasing market for passenger equipment, like the one the Brits consciously set up in the form of ROSCOes. Siemens has made noises about setting such up. Absent that it is not at all clear where exactly the operator gets the equipment from, short of leasing such from Amtrak, for which there is no set mechanism or pricing rules and regulations in place.

Consequently, it is difficult to see how the current experiment will work effectively. Congress has not made a serious attempt at this. They have as usual tried to throw something feel good across the wall with relatively little thought, which they have been good at of late, when they are doing anything at all, that is. I think it will take a much broader scoped set of actions for privatization to have a real possibility to take root.

So Triley, I guess you and I kinda sorta agree on quite a bit afterall....
 
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If the only way a company can make money is to pay its employees less to do the same job, it doesn't deserve to exist. If you can do something better or more efficiently, or attract mor customers fine, removing more people from the tax paying middle class, to make a few more people rich, does nothing to help the country.
 
PVD said:
If the only way a company can make money is to pay its employees less to do the same job, it doesn't deserve to exist. If you can do something better or more efficiently, or attract mor customers fine, removing more people from the tax paying middle class, to make a few more people rich, does nothing to help the country.
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True this!
 
Boy, wouldn't it be sweet if Iowa Pacific could somehow tap into this funding to bring the Eastern Flyer into existence. I guess that they'd have to extend the stop beyond Tulsa to meet the minimum mileage requirement for a "long distance train", wouldn't it? I wonder if they could bring back the Panama Limited, or do they have to take over a current AMTK LD route? If we could create a new one, Houston to Fort Worth, through OKC to Kansas would be nice........
 
I believe the proposal is for current LD routes. Trying to start a new one, or resurrect a "suspended" one, is a whole different ballgame.
 
Bob Dylan said:
PVD said:
If the only way a company can make money is to pay its employees less to do the same job, it doesn't deserve to exist. If you can do something better or more efficiently, or attract mor customers fine, removing more people from the tax paying middle class, to make a few more people rich, does nothing to help the country.
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True this!
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It's certainly not irrelevant, but Triley is on the right track. I would never deny that there is waste and inefficiency in Amtrak, just as there is waste and inefficiency in every organization I've been associated with throughout my life, be it the schools, various employers, the Church, the Boy Scouts, ad nauseum. There will also be waste and inefficiency in the organization that tries to replace Amtrak with only 90% of Amtrak's costs. It's almost inconceivable that such a venture could be profitable. Cutting pay would only reduce the new operator's ability to hire and retain competent, reliable staff.

A friend of mine recently posted a comment on Facebook, calling it "Back Door Union Busting".

Tom
 
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As it was stated before if their was money in passenger service then the railroads would have never abandoned it in the first places. The largest single expense of operating a train, besides buying equipment, is labor and its union. If labor cost could be reduced, Amtrak would become much more efficient. These are not only operating and on board crews, but shop, station and m of w crews.

Amtrak's like most railroads are heavily unionized. Its the same reason why all american passenger ships could not compete with non union foreign carriers and many air lines went bankrupt or were able to dump labor agreements while under bankruptcy.
 
Most of the rest of the industrialized world has a much higher percentage of unionization than the US. Having cheaper workers does npot make you more efficient, it just gives you another way to mask your inefficiencies. The majority of people working on cruise ships work for low wages come from countries with much lower standards and cost of living than the US. Southwest Airlines is one of the most efficient airlines, but also one of the most unionized. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. It takes a lot more talent to run a company when you can't just keep asking people to work for less. Maybe we should outsource everything, shipping all the jobs overseas, or bring in unlimited numbers of foreign workers to drive down wages and conditions further. Eliminate the middle class, have 300 million poor people working to make a million people better off. See how long the county lasts. This country became great because regular people have always been able to share in the increasing wealth of the economy. If you take that away, and accelerate the race to the bottom, this is going to be a pretty crappy place.
 
erierail said:
As it was stated before if their was money in passenger service then the railroads would have never abandoned it in the first places.
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Can of worms.

Why would the railroads go out of there way to make the passenger service look like there loosing money? Passenger studies done on Tuesdays, add lunch periods for switching crews to the billing of passenger trains. Stop trains in the middle of nowhere, no food service, no heat, no AC.

It like they were trying to get rid of all the passenger trains.

Why did some railroads keep running passenger trains after the start of Amtrak, why did some regret join Amtrak?

Can of worms.

Oh did you not notice we have a US flag very large cruise ship. Several smaller ones too.

Labour cost are not the only cost of running a passenger train. You have the dreaded allocated cost too.

At the very least expect Amtrak to revised the cost of there Long Distance Fleet. You might see that most of the single night trains are close to covering there cost by ticket price alone. The loss report on the western fleet will suddenly drop to something much more understandable.

This is a good thing. Should Amtrak dig in they going to see three trains getting a new operator. 90% of the full allocated cost is going to ensure a PTOC makes money.
 
Actually, the only large cruise ship with an American flag plies the Hawaii inter-island routes for Norwegian. Since it does not call at a foreign port, the Jones Act applies. River, lake and intercoastal yes. We routinely let cruise lines fly flags of convenience, regardless of ownership.
 
Lets back up and start from the beginning. Congress is willing allow privatization and provide a government subsidy equal to 90% of what the route was receiving. The winning bidder gets to use Amtrak passenger cars and the Amtrak system resources. The winning bidder of the route then gets to sell tickets and keep the revenue. If the winning bidder is a freight railroad they own the track and there is no track usage fee. Sounds like a great deal to me. The only caveat is that the bidder would have to pay the on-board employees union scale wages, pension benefits and health insurance. This is contrary to what private industry does. Private industry focuses mainly on using the cheapest labor available (without any benefits) to drive their profits higher and satisfy the benevolent Wall Street investors.
 
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