Should We Stop "The Lie"?

[John Bobinyec]

Oh, I understand what "above the rails" means and that it's similar to "above the road". And I do feel that if the road is provided for the trucking company then the tracks should be too (for the railroad company). However, I don't think that the media and most of the politicians understand it and they gravitate to the "NEC is profitable" part and forget about the "above the rails" part. I see it as a catalyst to break Amtrak up into pieces, and I'd rather not see that happen.

jb

 

[jis]

I am with you on the possible dangers of misinterpretation. We should certainly correct such misinterpretations and actively deal with any consequent silliness that ensues. I think we are on the same page now.

OTOH, I think there is a reasonable discussion to be had on whether the NEC infrastructure, which Amtrak came to own as an accident almost, should be separated out as a infrastructure entity leaving Amtrak the train operating company to concentrate on running the best train service that thy can. I don;t see that possible restructuring as a universally bad thing. Just IMO of course, and I suppose I am entitled to at least one

 

[neroden]

I will say that I don't quite see some services booming the same way Woody does...particularly those going past Harrisburg. Yes, the track improvements may be about the same for 8x new trains as for 1x, but I'm not sure the level of demand is there. I could see a situation where the state arm-twists those slots free...but only bumps service up to 3-4x daily service at most. You're more likely to see an aggressive ramp-up of Main Line service to Harrisburg before you see massive growth west of there.

I've said before that what is needed is new-build from Lewistown (west of Harrisburg) to State College, which is the big population center between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh -- roughly following US 322. It would require a significant base tunnel (maybe as much as 10 miles), but the gains are likely to be worth it. The line would be electrified to State College. NS would likely require capacity expansion Lewistown-Harrisburg before allowing electrification.

This is viable on its own as an extension of the Keystone Service. There is no complete expressway route from that area to Philadelphia, so I expect the State College station would have a very large catchment area. And then there's the college students!

Continue west on rehabilitated track Tyrone, and reroute the Pennsylvanian. You bypass Huntingdon, but you gain State College. You've just removed Amtrak from NS's mainline for a large distance, which they'll appreciate, and you can build faster track to gain time. This also allows for the relocation of the Lewistown and Tyrone stations off of the NS mainline into better locations downtown in the actual cities. Probably with grade separations for stuff like the street trackage in Lewistown.

I'm not sure whose attention I have to get to promote this idea. Most of the Keystone West and Pennsyvlania HSR studies have been abominable and incompetent. This might be a $2-3 billion project, but it would add a valuable station, and connect areas faster than an expressway (which does not exist anyway). The consultants for Pennsylvania have come up with more expensive projects which are a lot less useful.

There needs to be advocacy for a "Harrisburg-State College" HSR project, but I don't even have a spiffy name for it. It is the logical next step after the Keystone improvements.

 

[neroden]

Now this is not to say that there are not other arcane accounting goofery carryovers from the private railroad days that should not be gotten rid of. One that needs to be dumped forthwith is the business of over allocating costs to LD trains that even touch the NEC, say by terminating at Washington DC. This practice carries over from the PRR days based on then cross-charging practices within PRR, and for some reason no one seems to have bothered to change it. It artificially boosts the fully loaded cost of trains that touch the NEC but operate mostly off NEC. Ironically of course they get the money right back in the form of the ops transfers. This may be the thing that people refer to as LD trains subsidizing the NEC, but the amount is nowhere near as significant as the several hundred million dollars that flows the other way now. Also ironically, this affects mostly LD trains that are doing relatively well, and have no effect on the more problematic western LD trains since they don;t touch the NEC.

Well, that's exactly what ticks me off about that piece of accounting goofery. It makes the best LD trains look worse, so when people go around attacking "LD trains", they end up cutting the better ones rather than the worse ones (which is madness), and when plans are made to expand LD routes, they plan to expand the worse ones rather than the better ones (which is also madness).