The Need for Secondary Options

[Trogdor]

That's the difference, not between public and private ownership, but between passenger and freight. Had the freight companies also owned the passenger service, they would be more responsive to quickly solving the rail problems both from an economic and public blame points of view. Since freight delays are almost always not as big an issue as passenger delays, there is now no incentive to go up and beyond to accommodate passenger service just like there is not much incentive to repair or maintain tracks for passenger speeds. Public ownership is not the only solution. I see some alternatives:

• Public ownership
• Public or third party corporation that defines standards that must be met by railroads hosting Amtrak trains and penalizes railroads that fail to meet requirements. Amtrak retains its current status.
• Railroad operation of passenger trains on their tracks with strict requirements on service standards with penalties. Amtrak becomes just another operator in the NEC. Rolling stock and passenger engines owned by the government or by Amtrak.

Your assumption is incorrect. Freight railroads have tremendous incentive to maintain their tracks for passenger speeds, as faster passenger speeds also allow faster freight train speeds (freight train speeds are still lower, but for a given class, there's a passenger speed and a freight speed, and generally to increase freight speeds, the allowable passenger speed also has to increase). And when railroads have high-priority freight that can net them, in some cases, a quarter million bucks per trip, that is significant incentive to keep the railroad in good working order, and to clean up any problems as quickly as possible.

Compare the privately owned freight infrastructure to the state of publicly owned infrastructure (let alone all the politics, rather than economics, that goes into most infrastructure decisions that are public), and I'd much rather keep the railroad network in private hands.

Point is, it simply makes no sense at all for a route that hosts one or two passenger trains per day, and several dozen (or more) freight trains per day to not be in the hands of the freight companies. To change that would be to trigger a serious decline in the freight railroad system in the US (which, honestly, would be good for nobody). For routes that have lots of passenger traffic, it does make sense for a passenger operator to own/maintain the tracks, but if you look around, in many instances that's already the case (almost all of the commuter routes in/out of Chicago are owned by a passenger operator; the bulk of the NEC service is owned and/or managed by passenger operators, most of the Surfliner route in California is owned by passenger operators). There's really only a relatively small amount of Amtrak mileage that hosts more than a couple passenger trains per day that isn't owned by a passenger operator, and in most of those cases I can't find any economic justification for changing that (the big questions being who's going to pay, and how willing are they to pay for it?).

 

[Trogdor]

And another point that folks are missing here. It's not just that there were problems on the main line that prevented trains from running (if that was the case, nothing would have run rather than a reduced schedule), but Amtrak was also facing a shortage of serviceable equipment due to the extreme cold temperatures which also hindered the ability for mechanical crews to even service the trains. Amtrak in Chicago doesn't have that much inside space to service, inspect and repair equipment. That means a lot of it has to be done outside. In -30 degree wind chill. I don't see how the federal government owning the NS Chicago Line would solve that problem (nor would rerouting trains from one railroad to another solve that problem).

Lots of people simply couldn't get to work, and those that could really couldn't stay outside that long without risking their health.

When schools throughout entire states are closed for two days in a row, and governors are telling people to stay inside and off the roads, is that really a time to be sending trainloads of people out into the wilderness, during weather conditions that increase the likelihood of enroute mechanical failures?

 

[Ryan]

Trogdor nailed it. Well done.

 

[greatcats]

Yes, Trogdor, very well stated. Am contemplating a Southwest Chief trip to Chicago Feb. 28. Hopefully not too much of an adventure.

 

[Ispolkom]

Your assumption is incorrect. Freight railroads have tremendous incentive to maintain their tracks for passenger speeds, as faster passenger speeds also allow faster freight train speeds (freight train speeds are still lower, but for a given class, there's a passenger speed and a freight speed, and generally to increase freight speeds, the allowable passenger speed also has to increase). And when railroads have high-priority freight that can net them, in some cases, a quarter million bucks per trip, that is significant incentive to keep the railroad in good working order, and to clean up any problems as quickly as possible.

This, of course, depends on the particular route and the particular railroad. BNSF, for instance, has no incentive to maintain parts of the Southwest Chief route to any speed, since it doesn't run any trains on those tracks. Things were similar for the Hillsboro and Devils Lake subdivisions on the the northern Transcon. Remember that until recently, BNSF claimed, at least, that it was willing to forego through traffic on the Devils Lake sub, and Hillsboro might have been the last place an Empire Builder passenger could enjoy jointed rail. You can still enjoy slow orders on that track.

Any publicly held railroad has an incentive to skimp on track maintenance to improve its present financial position, even at the cost of later troubles. Wall Street cares a lot more about last quarter than about five years down the road. Look at CP's operations, if you have any doubt. I'm not expert on all their operations, but I do know that even with the oil boom, the former Soo Line through ND and Minnesota is remarkably lackidasical. It would seem that not all railroads are gunning for high-speed, time-sensitive freight loads that would require great track. If you can make a better return on investment from lower-speed commodities unit trains, why wouldn't you do that? Especially if, with BNSF's well-known problems with congestion, you can still offer competitive times.

Not that public ownership is any improvement. This month's Trains magazine has an article listing how Connecticut has kicked the can down the road on Metro North bridge maintenance/replacement for decades.

 

[Nathanael]

Setting aside my absolute opposition to putting the rail infrastructure in public hands (my rants against this have been noted previously in the forum), I really don't see how making the infrastructure public would fix this problem. The cancellations weren't caused by Amtrak not owning tracks.

Some of them weren't. Admittedly, on Amtrak most of the cancellations were due to equipment problems. Then there were the cancellations due to 100-year-old catenary on the NEC.
But when we get to track-related cancellations they were on freight-owned lines, again. Look at Metra, where the cancellations were almost entirely on the freight-owned lines, and not on the Metra-owned lines.

I'm not entirely sure why, but there seems to be consistently a lower maintenance & upkeep standard on "freight-owned" lines than on "passenger-owned" lines, which probably accounts entirely for the difference. If you could eliminate that, then maybe there wouldn't be a difference... In practice, freight railroads do not act as if they have an incentive to maintain freight lines to passenger standards. I agree that they ought to, for all the reasons Trogdor gives, but in practice *that's not how they act*, so maybe they know something we don't about the economics.

Now, for one-each-way, or even two-each-way, maybe there's just no justification for passenger-operator ownership. But...

Trogdor wrote: "There's really only a relatively small amount of Amtrak mileage that hosts more than a couple passenger trains per day that isn't owned by a passenger operator,..."

Let's just include lines with four passenger trains a way each day and Amtrak. The freight-owned ones include the Metra route from Chicago to Aurora, the CP section from the end of Metra trackage in Chicagoland to Milwaukee, the RF&P from DC to Richmond Virginia, the Capitol Corridor around Sacramento, the entire Cascades route, the NS Chicago line from Union Station to Porter (hosting all the Michigan trains plus the LSL and CL), the Empire Corridor, and the Downeaster.

The list doesn't sound relatively small to me, it sounds relatively large. And then there's other commuter lines without Amtrak which are showing issues with freight-hauler ownership, such as Metra's UP-N, UP-NW, and UP-W lines.

Now, in most of those cases the existing arrangements seem to work out tolerably well most of the time, but particularly around Chicago there's a lot of freight-controlled track which is really passenger-critical, and it *does* perform worse than the passenger-operator-owned trackage.

GO Transit in Toronto figured out that the passenger operator needs to own the track and has been buying the entire Toronto commuter network from CN and CP in pieces; where it can't, it's building its own parallel passenger-exclusive lines! It would be wise for Metra and Amtrak to do the same in the critical and busy segments, where possible. It's likely not worth it in one-a-day or even two-a-day areas, but for even four-a-day it really seems to be worth it to make the freight a tenant rather than a landlord.

 

[Trogdor]

Trogdor wrote: "There's really only a relatively small amount of Amtrak mileage that hosts more than a couple passenger trains per day that isn't owned by a passenger operator,..."

Let's just include lines with four passenger trains a way each day and Amtrak. The freight-owned ones include the Metra route from Chicago to Aurora, the CP section from the end of Metra trackage in Chicagoland to Milwaukee, the RF&P from DC to Richmond Virginia, the Capitol Corridor around Sacramento, the entire Cascades route, the NS Chicago line from Union Station to Porter (hosting all the Michigan trains plus the LSL and CL), the Empire Corridor, and the Downeaster.

The list doesn't sound relatively small to me, it sounds relatively large. And then there's other commuter lines without Amtrak which are showing issues with freight-hauler ownership, such as Metra's UP-N, UP-NW, and UP-W lines.

Now, in most of those cases the existing arrangements seem to work out tolerably well most of the time, but particularly around Chicago there's a lot of freight-controlled track which is really passenger-critical, and it *does* perform worse than the passenger-operator-owned trackage.

There's a reason I specifically wrote "passenger operator." In Chicago, BNSF and UP are passenger operators.

On the Empire Corridor, the bulk of the trains run NYP-ALB, where Amtrak now controls the route, having taken over from CSX.

Chicago to Porter is 42 miles (i.e. relatively small).

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Lots of people simply couldn't get to work, and those that could really couldn't stay outside that long without risking their health.When schools throughout entire states are closed for two days in a row, and governors are telling people to stay inside and off the roads, is that really a time to be sending trainloads of people out into the wilderness, during weather conditions that increase the likelihood of enroute mechanical failures?

Strange how the Rossiya was never cancelled. Moskva to Vladivostok ever other day. Transportation dependable over 9259 km.

Point of fact. Winter happens ever year.

Someday Amtrak not going to be surprised that it get cold and snow covered.

Run the darn trains, stock extra food, be a transportation system.

 

[Ryan]

There's a difference between "cold and snow covered" and "historic low temperatures across very nearly the entire US".

If that sort of thing were routine, you could plan for it. Different equipment, massive indoor facilities so cars could thaw and be worked on in a heated area, that sort of thing.

But that'd be a colossal waste of effort for Amtrak, they've got better things to spend their meager dollars on.

Even just "stock extra food" isn't as easy as it sounds - where are you going to put it?

 

[nferr]

It's easy to say "bypass Chicago'. But how do you bypass the station that has all the passengers waiting to board and all the facilities to service the train etc. It's not realistic.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Different equipment, massive indoor facilities so cars could thaw and be worked on in a heated area, that sort of thing.But that'd be a colossal waste of effort for Amtrak, they've got better things to spend their meager dollars on.

You call it a colossal waste of funds, I call it a investment in the furture.

1st AU Tour of Chicago "our switch pull cars out of trainsets into the shop and after repairs, are normal put right back into the same trainsets."

2nd AU Tour of Chicago "I was push for the inside Maintance building, but it was not in the cards."

Amtrak Chicago know its issues, just need upper management to make it happen.

 

[AlanB]

Even just "stock extra food" isn't as easy as it sounds - where are you going to put it?

Well you're not going to get two extra days worth of food into the Superliners, but this time of the year with the lower passenger counts you could still squeeze 1 or 2 extra meals into the cars. Of course then the issue becomes what happens if you do run on time, you've not got a lot of food you didn't need that is now rapidly approaching its expiration date.

The LSL is a different story, as there really isn't too much extra capacity there.