Ryan
Court Jester
Very nice mention on the timetables.org project in there.
URPA Newsletter
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This Week at Amtrak; March 31, 2010
A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America’s foremost passenger rail policy institute
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected] • http://www.unitedrail.org
Volume 7, Number 11
Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy institute which focuses on solutions and plans for passenger rail systems in North America. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, URPA has professional associates in Minnesota, California, Arizona, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Texas, New York, and other cities. For more detailed information, along with a variety of position papers and other documents, visit the URPA web site at http://www.unitedrail.org.
URPA is not a membership organization, and does not accept funding from any outside sources.
As Amtrak continues to say the right things, and to do a few as well, the logic of incrementalism is making inroads... but the "old-think" that stunted our passenger rail network for half a century hasn't gone away yet.
Amtrak's Fleet Plan (pdf), released at the end of February, is one of the most positive of their publications issued. Parts of it read almost as a reply to the calls to action reprinted in this column a few short months ago:
The modeling that has been undertaken to underpin this plan is based on anticipated growth in all major lines of Amtrak business, the Northeast Corridor (NEC), long distance services and state corridors (both existing and new). This approach is consistent with the goals that have been set within Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA), which reauthorizes Amtrak and establishes new programs for the development of the intercity passenger railroad system within the United States, and the experience of recent years with the increase in demand for the current services.
It cannot be emphasized enough that new equipment is a vital pre-requisite to the process of delivering enhanced passenger rail as envisioned by PRIIA. Moreover, a sustainable passenger service requires regular investment in equipment. Rebuilding existing equipment is always a temporary solution and does not save money in the long term. If passenger rail service is to be sustained and grown, equipment investment has to be accepted as part of the process...
Based upon demand analysis and the defined [lifespan] policies, Amtrak needs to buy the following equipment over the next 14 years:
780 single level cars
420 bi-level cars
70 electric locomotives
264 diesel locomotives
25 high speed trainsets...
That certainly counts as "saying the right thing." According to Business Week on March 23rd, Amtrak is proceeding apace with the plan:
Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, asked Congress for $446 million to begin replacing locomotives and passenger cars...
Joseph Boardman, chief executive officer of Washington- based Amtrak, told a House Appropriations Committee panel today the railroad needs to raise its budget from the requested $2.1 billion for the next fiscal year...
“Between 2002 and 2008, Amtrak increased its ridership by 32 percent without buying a single piece of new rolling stock,” Boardman testified at the transportation subcommittee hearing. “That’s a remarkable accomplishment, but one that cannot be sustained indefinitely.”
In this space previously, we have opined that Amtrak has rarely gone to Congress with a request for specific growth targets. For the first time in recent memory, they have.
(Speaking of adding service, North Carolina announced yesterday a third daily train between Raleigh and Charlotte, creating basically a train leaving each endpoint of the corridor roughly every five hours between 7am and 5pm. Service begins June 5th.)
As Amtrak makes the first moves toward expanding capacity, the high speed rail advocates have begun speaking a little about the importance of the "conventional" train as part of a matrix. Chicago's WBBM reported this week:
Advocates for high-speed rail passenger service, meeting in Chicago, said Saturday that this is the year to seek what they want from Washington and laid out an ambitious agenda that calls for higher-speed passenger trains nationwide...
While Harnish's immediate goal is a true high-speed, 220 mile-an-hour, rail link between Chicago and St. Louis by 2020, he wants to see a series of other steps funded that will make Chicago the nation's high-speed rail hub.
"Four bullet train routes, upgrading the rest of the system to at least 100 miles an hour, filling in some very key gaps and at least doubling frequency on all routes. That's what I'd like to see," Harnish said.
Harnish's last point is the strongest. Certainly it would be nice to have something like the ICE, TGV, or Thalys whizzing across the Midwest, in California or Florida, or one day between Georgia and Maine (though the concept of an Augusta-Augusta train is too much alliteration for this author to contemplate); but it is the raising of average speeds, the expansion of the route matrix, and the increase from daily to multiple frequencies that will create the need for the few high-speed trains. As we have discussed here before, running trains between two cities (oh, say, Tampa and Orlando) without connecting to downtowns, local transit, the network regional or "conventional" train service, and all the airports on the route is a recipe for failure. Projects like Wisconsin's, connecting Madison with the Chicago hub, are the sensible ones and should be the "immediate goals" because they start serving people in a relatively few months, not ten years from now.
As to the critics, Joseph Vranich, in his 1997 book "Derailed: What went wrong and what to do about America's passenger trains", writes:
Amtrak's goal of operating at 100 mph outside the Northeast Corridor was a throwback to past railroading practices. Steam engines pulling passenger trains on the Milwaukee Road and Chicago & North Western Railroads more than fifty years ago [in the 1940s] were hitting that speed, and trains elsewhere were close to it. If 100-mph trains were unable to keep their customers when airports and highways were underdeveloped, then they sure won't build traffic in today's competitive environment.
Let us momentarily set aside modern railroad safety requirements that have limited top speeds.
Now, a dozen years after Vranich's remarks, you can no longer re-enact Dinah Shore seeing the U.S.A. in your 1957 Bel-Air Chevrolet because your pothole-plagued Interstate is plugged from 5am to 9pm; and if you care to endure the traffic to the airport, the demand to see your papers please and the strip-search followed by sitting in a seat that feels nine inches wide for two hours with no peanuts let alone bathroom breaks while waiting for a takeoff slot, then you can fly. Seriously -- No market for convenient train service between our towns and cities?
Ronald Sheck, in his 1982 report "Amtrak 90: A Route to Success" writes,
Amtrak trains outside of the Northeast Corridor are slow not only in comparison with passenger trains operated on main-line railroads in other parts of the world, but they are frequently slower than trains two decades ago on the same routes. While more than $2 billion has been spent in upgrading the 456-mile spine of the Boston-New York-Washington Northeast Corridor for 125-mile-per-hour operation, there is no need to make an investment of that magnitude in order to bring overall passenger train speeds up to competitive levels. Figure 12 shows target end-to-end travel speeds, and some sample journey times for 1990 illustrate goals for the planning period. Speeds in these suggested ranges are considerably above automobile trip times and for journeys of up to 300 miles may equal or better aircraft times if airport-to-downtown travel is included.
Note that, almost three decades later and even after the Acela project and its further billions, there are still few miles in the Northeast Corridor that see speeds higher than 125 mph.
From his Figure 12 let us excerpt these sample goals and examples:
Long Distance 50-55 mph Chicago-Los Angeles 40 hours
Medium Distance 60-65 mph Los Angeles-Tucson 8 1/2 hours
Short Distance 70-75 mph Tampa-Miami 3 3/4 hours
In 1937, Santa Fe advertised its Super Chief as making the run from Chicago to Los Angeles in "39 3/4 hours." In 1956, with equipment not unlike today's trains, performance was nearly the same, leaving Chicago at 7pm and arriving L.A. the following morning at 8:30. Today's Southwest Chief departs Chicago at 3:15pm and arrives the following morning at 8:15 -- three and a half hours slower than in 1956. Yes, there route differences (especially in greater Los Angeles) and station stops have changed somewhat, but we are talking endpoints here. Sheck's 40-hour goal should be easy, if not inexpensive, equaling the 1937 schedule one with modern technology. Building Harnish's Midwest network of 100-mph corridors would be a start.
Similarly, the Sunset Limited, America's oldest name train, likewise in July 1956 left Los Angeles at 07:30pm, arriving New Orleans on the third day at 4pm. Today, Amtrak's version leaves Los Angeles at 2:30pm -- five hours earlier than 1956 -- and arrives on the same third day at 2:55pm -- about one hour earlier. Today's train is four hours slower than in 1956.
Here are comments submitted by Anthony Haswell -- widely known as the "Father of Amtrak" -- circa 1998 to the Surface Transportation Board ("under 49 USC §24308(a), Finance Docket 33469.") The subject at that time was the addition of Express to Amtrak's trains, but the facts remain:
Amtrak passenger trains over many of its route-miles outside the Northeast Corridor are anything but "modern". Amtrak trains between many city-pairs are slower than the trains operated between the same points 45 to 60 years ago.
Railroads' Time/MPH Amtrak Time/MPH
City-pair December 1941 October 1997
New York-Chicago 16:00 / 60 18:26 / 52
New York-Pittsburgh 8:25 / 52 9:20 / 48
New York-Miami 24:00 / 58 26:25 / 53
New York-New Orleans 28:30 / 49 30:10 / 46
Washington-Chicago 15:45 / 49 18:00 / 43
Washington-Pittsburgh 6:40 / 44 7:28 / 40
Chicago-Detroit 4:45 / 60 6:00 / 47
Chicago-Cleveland 6:00 / 57 6:46 / 51
Chicago-Cincinnati 5:15 / 58 8:45 / 37
Chicago-Carbondale 4:26 / 70* 5:30 / 56
Chicago-New Orleans 15:30 / 59* 19:25 / 48
Chicago-St. Louis 4:55 / 58 5:30 / 51
Chicago-Kansas City 7:00 / 64 7:55 / 53
Chicago-Omaha 8:00 / 62 9:00 / 56
Chicago-Milwaukee 1:15 / 68 1:32 / 57
Chicago-Minneapolis 6:45 / 62 7:59 / 52
St. Louis-Fort Worth 14:55 / 50** 16:17 / 46
St. Louis-Kansas City 5:00 / 56 5:30 / 51
New Orleans-Memphis 6:30 / 61* 8:35 / 47
New Orleans-Houston 7:30 / 48** 9:13 / 39
Fort Worth-San Antonio 6:23 / 50** % 7:22 / 39
Oakland-Los Angeles 9:47 / 47 10:45 / 43
Oakland-Bakersfield 5:40 / 56 6:05 / 52
Oakland-Portland 15:00 / 47** 18:50 / 39
* June 1948 ** June 1953 % Dallas-San Antonio
Source: Amtrak October 26, 1997 timetable
Official Guide of the Railways, 12/41, 6/48, 6/53
In some instances, there are small differences in mileage between Amtrak routes and the earlier routes. These differences were taken into account in computing the average speeds.
Some of the Amtrak trains make more stops than the fast trains of earlier years. I submit that this is not of major significance. For people traveling between endpoints or larger intermediate cities, the fact is that their train is slower today than what would have been available to them two generations ago, while air and highway transportation has improved exponentially. Furthermore, it is not unreasonable to expect that a half-century later, intercity passenger trains should be able to make more stops while at least equaling the earlier end-to-end schedule time. In at least two instances -- Chicago-New Orleans and St. Louis-Kansas City -- the impressive historical performance included more stops than Amtrak makes today.
Many of Amtrak's trains have a poor on-time performance even on their slow schedules...
The timekeeping of trains like the Sunset Limited has happily improved from the dark first days of the Union Pacific - Southern Pacific merger. Amtrak can continue to improve performance by making sure their trains are always ready to leave on time; but it will be the incremental upgrades of a siding here, a straightened curve there, and a new automatic-switched station throat track to eliminate a five-minute delay, that will move the average speed upward, and whittle away the minutes between endpoints.
Stepping back to a broader picture -- Passenger rail facing stiff competition from publicly subsidized highways and airlines; the need to repair and modernize the passenger fleet; a push to do more with existing trains and stations; and a productive relation with labor. When are these headlines from? 2010? No -- let us look back to 1947 and Robert R. Young, the "Populist of Wall Street" who, at that moment, controlled the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and was poised to take chairmanship of the New York Central:
"Competition on land, sea, and in the air, the steady decentralization of industry, and the carriers' inability [primarily through regulation] to increase the price of their product as much as other prices have increased, are again working to reduce their [the railroads'] share of the national income... They have got to make money the hard way. They have got to try to expand their passenger business, the only part of their business inherently expansible..."
"...Young himself is absolutely sure the unions will come his way [on reforms] 'Labor is with me,' he explains airily. 'I told them it was a choice between an efficient low-cost operation and a high-cost dying operation. They said they understood it the same way, but could never get the management to go along.'" Fortune describes how Young's team implemented suggestion boxes, long resisted by management, and how "employees identify themselves with Young... morale of the rank and file seems remarkably high."
Another of Young's controlled railroads, the Pete Marquette, inaugurated its "Detroit-Grand Rapids streamliner... in August 1946; the train reversed the national trend of declining passenger revenues, hauling 76 per cent more people between Grand Rapids and Detroit than its predecessor did in the same period of 1945..."
"[Young] wants to replace practically all the Centrals fleet of 2,100 cars, of which only some 700... are of the so-called lightweight type. This would cost no less than $100 million... The Centrals present management is, to put it mildly, distinctly cool to the whole notion. 'If Governor Dewey puts through his $200-million superhighway from New York City to Buffalo,' President Metzler says flatly, 'we're bound to lose still more people to the highways.'"
As to Young's "almost endless inventory of ideas, some pneumatic and some substantive, about passenger service... most of [them] are a bit dusty; anyone who reads Railway Age, the industry's excellent trade paper, will recognize them readily... Yet the fact remains that whereas others only talk about their wonderful ideas and then put them on ice, Young is doing something about them, and right on the C.&O."
-- Fortune magazine, May 1947, page 96, "Mr. Young and his C.&O."
Hold the line, please! What was that quote again?
"They have got to make money the hard way. They have got to try to expand their passenger business, the only part of their business inherently expansible..."
There you have it -- Fortune at the late date of 1947 suggesting that passenger trains, run properly, could make money for the railroads. With, indeed, the caveat about publicly funded superhighways.
The operative parallel between 1947 and now is that Amtrak is asking itself the question, How can we raise revenues faster than expenses? This we could call at least "cutting their deficit" while the more optimistic among us might postulate such an idea, sufficiently nurtured, eventually resulting in phrases like "small operating profit."
If we can stop trying to build superfast toy trains that don't connect to anything, and keep doing what Amtrak and states like North Carolina and Wisconsin have started these past few months, then we might finally be getting something done.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are reading someone else’s copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can receive your own free copy each edition by sending your e-mail address to
[email protected]
You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from [email protected]; we are unable to go through any approvals processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.
All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe should be addressed to
[email protected]
Copies of This Week at Amtrak are archived on URPA’s web site, www.unitedrail.org
URPA leadership members are available for speaking engagements.
William Lindley
c/o wlindley.com, l.l.c.
PO Box 3621
Scottsdale, AZ 85271
480-947-6100
A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America’s foremost passenger rail policy institute
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected] • http://www.unitedrail.org
Volume 7, Number 11
Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy institute which focuses on solutions and plans for passenger rail systems in North America. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, URPA has professional associates in Minnesota, California, Arizona, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Texas, New York, and other cities. For more detailed information, along with a variety of position papers and other documents, visit the URPA web site at http://www.unitedrail.org.
URPA is not a membership organization, and does not accept funding from any outside sources.
As Amtrak continues to say the right things, and to do a few as well, the logic of incrementalism is making inroads... but the "old-think" that stunted our passenger rail network for half a century hasn't gone away yet.
Amtrak's Fleet Plan (pdf), released at the end of February, is one of the most positive of their publications issued. Parts of it read almost as a reply to the calls to action reprinted in this column a few short months ago:
The modeling that has been undertaken to underpin this plan is based on anticipated growth in all major lines of Amtrak business, the Northeast Corridor (NEC), long distance services and state corridors (both existing and new). This approach is consistent with the goals that have been set within Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA), which reauthorizes Amtrak and establishes new programs for the development of the intercity passenger railroad system within the United States, and the experience of recent years with the increase in demand for the current services.
It cannot be emphasized enough that new equipment is a vital pre-requisite to the process of delivering enhanced passenger rail as envisioned by PRIIA. Moreover, a sustainable passenger service requires regular investment in equipment. Rebuilding existing equipment is always a temporary solution and does not save money in the long term. If passenger rail service is to be sustained and grown, equipment investment has to be accepted as part of the process...
Based upon demand analysis and the defined [lifespan] policies, Amtrak needs to buy the following equipment over the next 14 years:
780 single level cars
420 bi-level cars
70 electric locomotives
264 diesel locomotives
25 high speed trainsets...
That certainly counts as "saying the right thing." According to Business Week on March 23rd, Amtrak is proceeding apace with the plan:
Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, asked Congress for $446 million to begin replacing locomotives and passenger cars...
Joseph Boardman, chief executive officer of Washington- based Amtrak, told a House Appropriations Committee panel today the railroad needs to raise its budget from the requested $2.1 billion for the next fiscal year...
“Between 2002 and 2008, Amtrak increased its ridership by 32 percent without buying a single piece of new rolling stock,” Boardman testified at the transportation subcommittee hearing. “That’s a remarkable accomplishment, but one that cannot be sustained indefinitely.”
In this space previously, we have opined that Amtrak has rarely gone to Congress with a request for specific growth targets. For the first time in recent memory, they have.
(Speaking of adding service, North Carolina announced yesterday a third daily train between Raleigh and Charlotte, creating basically a train leaving each endpoint of the corridor roughly every five hours between 7am and 5pm. Service begins June 5th.)
As Amtrak makes the first moves toward expanding capacity, the high speed rail advocates have begun speaking a little about the importance of the "conventional" train as part of a matrix. Chicago's WBBM reported this week:
Advocates for high-speed rail passenger service, meeting in Chicago, said Saturday that this is the year to seek what they want from Washington and laid out an ambitious agenda that calls for higher-speed passenger trains nationwide...
While Harnish's immediate goal is a true high-speed, 220 mile-an-hour, rail link between Chicago and St. Louis by 2020, he wants to see a series of other steps funded that will make Chicago the nation's high-speed rail hub.
"Four bullet train routes, upgrading the rest of the system to at least 100 miles an hour, filling in some very key gaps and at least doubling frequency on all routes. That's what I'd like to see," Harnish said.
Harnish's last point is the strongest. Certainly it would be nice to have something like the ICE, TGV, or Thalys whizzing across the Midwest, in California or Florida, or one day between Georgia and Maine (though the concept of an Augusta-Augusta train is too much alliteration for this author to contemplate); but it is the raising of average speeds, the expansion of the route matrix, and the increase from daily to multiple frequencies that will create the need for the few high-speed trains. As we have discussed here before, running trains between two cities (oh, say, Tampa and Orlando) without connecting to downtowns, local transit, the network regional or "conventional" train service, and all the airports on the route is a recipe for failure. Projects like Wisconsin's, connecting Madison with the Chicago hub, are the sensible ones and should be the "immediate goals" because they start serving people in a relatively few months, not ten years from now.
As to the critics, Joseph Vranich, in his 1997 book "Derailed: What went wrong and what to do about America's passenger trains", writes:
Amtrak's goal of operating at 100 mph outside the Northeast Corridor was a throwback to past railroading practices. Steam engines pulling passenger trains on the Milwaukee Road and Chicago & North Western Railroads more than fifty years ago [in the 1940s] were hitting that speed, and trains elsewhere were close to it. If 100-mph trains were unable to keep their customers when airports and highways were underdeveloped, then they sure won't build traffic in today's competitive environment.
Let us momentarily set aside modern railroad safety requirements that have limited top speeds.
Now, a dozen years after Vranich's remarks, you can no longer re-enact Dinah Shore seeing the U.S.A. in your 1957 Bel-Air Chevrolet because your pothole-plagued Interstate is plugged from 5am to 9pm; and if you care to endure the traffic to the airport, the demand to see your papers please and the strip-search followed by sitting in a seat that feels nine inches wide for two hours with no peanuts let alone bathroom breaks while waiting for a takeoff slot, then you can fly. Seriously -- No market for convenient train service between our towns and cities?
Ronald Sheck, in his 1982 report "Amtrak 90: A Route to Success" writes,
Amtrak trains outside of the Northeast Corridor are slow not only in comparison with passenger trains operated on main-line railroads in other parts of the world, but they are frequently slower than trains two decades ago on the same routes. While more than $2 billion has been spent in upgrading the 456-mile spine of the Boston-New York-Washington Northeast Corridor for 125-mile-per-hour operation, there is no need to make an investment of that magnitude in order to bring overall passenger train speeds up to competitive levels. Figure 12 shows target end-to-end travel speeds, and some sample journey times for 1990 illustrate goals for the planning period. Speeds in these suggested ranges are considerably above automobile trip times and for journeys of up to 300 miles may equal or better aircraft times if airport-to-downtown travel is included.
Note that, almost three decades later and even after the Acela project and its further billions, there are still few miles in the Northeast Corridor that see speeds higher than 125 mph.
From his Figure 12 let us excerpt these sample goals and examples:
Long Distance 50-55 mph Chicago-Los Angeles 40 hours
Medium Distance 60-65 mph Los Angeles-Tucson 8 1/2 hours
Short Distance 70-75 mph Tampa-Miami 3 3/4 hours
In 1937, Santa Fe advertised its Super Chief as making the run from Chicago to Los Angeles in "39 3/4 hours." In 1956, with equipment not unlike today's trains, performance was nearly the same, leaving Chicago at 7pm and arriving L.A. the following morning at 8:30. Today's Southwest Chief departs Chicago at 3:15pm and arrives the following morning at 8:15 -- three and a half hours slower than in 1956. Yes, there route differences (especially in greater Los Angeles) and station stops have changed somewhat, but we are talking endpoints here. Sheck's 40-hour goal should be easy, if not inexpensive, equaling the 1937 schedule one with modern technology. Building Harnish's Midwest network of 100-mph corridors would be a start.
Similarly, the Sunset Limited, America's oldest name train, likewise in July 1956 left Los Angeles at 07:30pm, arriving New Orleans on the third day at 4pm. Today, Amtrak's version leaves Los Angeles at 2:30pm -- five hours earlier than 1956 -- and arrives on the same third day at 2:55pm -- about one hour earlier. Today's train is four hours slower than in 1956.
Here are comments submitted by Anthony Haswell -- widely known as the "Father of Amtrak" -- circa 1998 to the Surface Transportation Board ("under 49 USC §24308(a), Finance Docket 33469.") The subject at that time was the addition of Express to Amtrak's trains, but the facts remain:
Amtrak passenger trains over many of its route-miles outside the Northeast Corridor are anything but "modern". Amtrak trains between many city-pairs are slower than the trains operated between the same points 45 to 60 years ago.
Railroads' Time/MPH Amtrak Time/MPH
City-pair December 1941 October 1997
New York-Chicago 16:00 / 60 18:26 / 52
New York-Pittsburgh 8:25 / 52 9:20 / 48
New York-Miami 24:00 / 58 26:25 / 53
New York-New Orleans 28:30 / 49 30:10 / 46
Washington-Chicago 15:45 / 49 18:00 / 43
Washington-Pittsburgh 6:40 / 44 7:28 / 40
Chicago-Detroit 4:45 / 60 6:00 / 47
Chicago-Cleveland 6:00 / 57 6:46 / 51
Chicago-Cincinnati 5:15 / 58 8:45 / 37
Chicago-Carbondale 4:26 / 70* 5:30 / 56
Chicago-New Orleans 15:30 / 59* 19:25 / 48
Chicago-St. Louis 4:55 / 58 5:30 / 51
Chicago-Kansas City 7:00 / 64 7:55 / 53
Chicago-Omaha 8:00 / 62 9:00 / 56
Chicago-Milwaukee 1:15 / 68 1:32 / 57
Chicago-Minneapolis 6:45 / 62 7:59 / 52
St. Louis-Fort Worth 14:55 / 50** 16:17 / 46
St. Louis-Kansas City 5:00 / 56 5:30 / 51
New Orleans-Memphis 6:30 / 61* 8:35 / 47
New Orleans-Houston 7:30 / 48** 9:13 / 39
Fort Worth-San Antonio 6:23 / 50** % 7:22 / 39
Oakland-Los Angeles 9:47 / 47 10:45 / 43
Oakland-Bakersfield 5:40 / 56 6:05 / 52
Oakland-Portland 15:00 / 47** 18:50 / 39
* June 1948 ** June 1953 % Dallas-San Antonio
Source: Amtrak October 26, 1997 timetable
Official Guide of the Railways, 12/41, 6/48, 6/53
In some instances, there are small differences in mileage between Amtrak routes and the earlier routes. These differences were taken into account in computing the average speeds.
Some of the Amtrak trains make more stops than the fast trains of earlier years. I submit that this is not of major significance. For people traveling between endpoints or larger intermediate cities, the fact is that their train is slower today than what would have been available to them two generations ago, while air and highway transportation has improved exponentially. Furthermore, it is not unreasonable to expect that a half-century later, intercity passenger trains should be able to make more stops while at least equaling the earlier end-to-end schedule time. In at least two instances -- Chicago-New Orleans and St. Louis-Kansas City -- the impressive historical performance included more stops than Amtrak makes today.
Many of Amtrak's trains have a poor on-time performance even on their slow schedules...
The timekeeping of trains like the Sunset Limited has happily improved from the dark first days of the Union Pacific - Southern Pacific merger. Amtrak can continue to improve performance by making sure their trains are always ready to leave on time; but it will be the incremental upgrades of a siding here, a straightened curve there, and a new automatic-switched station throat track to eliminate a five-minute delay, that will move the average speed upward, and whittle away the minutes between endpoints.
Stepping back to a broader picture -- Passenger rail facing stiff competition from publicly subsidized highways and airlines; the need to repair and modernize the passenger fleet; a push to do more with existing trains and stations; and a productive relation with labor. When are these headlines from? 2010? No -- let us look back to 1947 and Robert R. Young, the "Populist of Wall Street" who, at that moment, controlled the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and was poised to take chairmanship of the New York Central:
"Competition on land, sea, and in the air, the steady decentralization of industry, and the carriers' inability [primarily through regulation] to increase the price of their product as much as other prices have increased, are again working to reduce their [the railroads'] share of the national income... They have got to make money the hard way. They have got to try to expand their passenger business, the only part of their business inherently expansible..."
"...Young himself is absolutely sure the unions will come his way [on reforms] 'Labor is with me,' he explains airily. 'I told them it was a choice between an efficient low-cost operation and a high-cost dying operation. They said they understood it the same way, but could never get the management to go along.'" Fortune describes how Young's team implemented suggestion boxes, long resisted by management, and how "employees identify themselves with Young... morale of the rank and file seems remarkably high."
Another of Young's controlled railroads, the Pete Marquette, inaugurated its "Detroit-Grand Rapids streamliner... in August 1946; the train reversed the national trend of declining passenger revenues, hauling 76 per cent more people between Grand Rapids and Detroit than its predecessor did in the same period of 1945..."
"[Young] wants to replace practically all the Centrals fleet of 2,100 cars, of which only some 700... are of the so-called lightweight type. This would cost no less than $100 million... The Centrals present management is, to put it mildly, distinctly cool to the whole notion. 'If Governor Dewey puts through his $200-million superhighway from New York City to Buffalo,' President Metzler says flatly, 'we're bound to lose still more people to the highways.'"
As to Young's "almost endless inventory of ideas, some pneumatic and some substantive, about passenger service... most of [them] are a bit dusty; anyone who reads Railway Age, the industry's excellent trade paper, will recognize them readily... Yet the fact remains that whereas others only talk about their wonderful ideas and then put them on ice, Young is doing something about them, and right on the C.&O."
-- Fortune magazine, May 1947, page 96, "Mr. Young and his C.&O."
Hold the line, please! What was that quote again?
"They have got to make money the hard way. They have got to try to expand their passenger business, the only part of their business inherently expansible..."
There you have it -- Fortune at the late date of 1947 suggesting that passenger trains, run properly, could make money for the railroads. With, indeed, the caveat about publicly funded superhighways.
The operative parallel between 1947 and now is that Amtrak is asking itself the question, How can we raise revenues faster than expenses? This we could call at least "cutting their deficit" while the more optimistic among us might postulate such an idea, sufficiently nurtured, eventually resulting in phrases like "small operating profit."
If we can stop trying to build superfast toy trains that don't connect to anything, and keep doing what Amtrak and states like North Carolina and Wisconsin have started these past few months, then we might finally be getting something done.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are reading someone else’s copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can receive your own free copy each edition by sending your e-mail address to
[email protected]
You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from [email protected]; we are unable to go through any approvals processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.
All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe should be addressed to
[email protected]
Copies of This Week at Amtrak are archived on URPA’s web site, www.unitedrail.org
URPA leadership members are available for speaking engagements.
William Lindley
c/o wlindley.com, l.l.c.
PO Box 3621
Scottsdale, AZ 85271
480-947-6100
Last edited by a moderator:
jis
Permanent Way Inspector
Staff member
Administator
Moderator
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
I think that the latest URPA Newsletter above is an exceedingly well written and balanced issue. Kudos to Mr.Lindley foran excellent job!
delvyrails
Train Attendant
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2008
- Messages
- 84
As a display of the general deterioration in train travel times, Haswell's 1998/pre-World War II comparisons are telling. If done today, some even longer Amtrak travel times would be cited.
However, a more appropriate, realistic, and useful comparison would be between current Amtrak schedules and total time by driving, which is Amtrak principal competing transport mode. To be realistic, Amtrak times would include transfer time between trains where appropriate; and driving times would include all necessary stops, including overnight stops in longer travel markets.
The list should NOT cite traditional Amtrak routes or route segments; but it should include all of the major travel markets, whether Amtrak serves them with a through train or less directly. There would be separate lists of short haul markets (no overnight stay needed for driving) and long haul markets (say, ten hours added for each night in the road alternative).
Long distance markets would start with New York-Miami and New York-Los Angeles. Short distance markets would begin with the likes of Los Angeles-Las Vegas and New York-Philadelphia. The top 20 or 30 each of short and long distance markets would show Amtrak's competitive stance with the automobile. Among the traveling public, Amtrak is generally measured against the automobile alternative, not against long-past train travel times.
This is the kind of "homework" that constructive critics of Amtrak should be doing now.
However, a more appropriate, realistic, and useful comparison would be between current Amtrak schedules and total time by driving, which is Amtrak principal competing transport mode. To be realistic, Amtrak times would include transfer time between trains where appropriate; and driving times would include all necessary stops, including overnight stops in longer travel markets.
The list should NOT cite traditional Amtrak routes or route segments; but it should include all of the major travel markets, whether Amtrak serves them with a through train or less directly. There would be separate lists of short haul markets (no overnight stay needed for driving) and long haul markets (say, ten hours added for each night in the road alternative).
Long distance markets would start with New York-Miami and New York-Los Angeles. Short distance markets would begin with the likes of Los Angeles-Las Vegas and New York-Philadelphia. The top 20 or 30 each of short and long distance markets would show Amtrak's competitive stance with the automobile. Among the traveling public, Amtrak is generally measured against the automobile alternative, not against long-past train travel times.
This is the kind of "homework" that constructive critics of Amtrak should be doing now.
Last edited by a moderator:
Volume 7, Number 12
A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America’s foremost passenger rail policy institute
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected] • http://www.unitedrail.org
This week we look first at Amtrak’s slow pace, then at continued nationwide wrong-think surrounding Amtrak’s new venture into high speed rail; and we wrap up with a guest commentary by our Andrew C. Selden.
“In the unlikely event of a cabin depressurization, oxygen masks will appear overhead. Reach up and pull the mask closest to you, fully extending the plastic tubing, fasten the straps, and begin breathing normally… If you are seated next to a small child or someone needing assistance, secure your own mask first, then assist the child.”
— Airplane safety announcement
Consider a dramatization of the above starring Amtrak’s Joseph Boardman as the passenger, and network expansion as the child. Faced with the upcoming depressurization of its system through aging equipment, Amtrak is now in the process of securing its own mask with an equipment order. This is no little feat, but Congress still holds the strings. The mask isn’t even on yet, and as the air drains away, what are the prospects for the little form in the next seat?
Readers of This Week have had plenty to say about Amtrak’s progress, or lack thereof. Charles McMillan wrote:
I just finished reading your March 31st issue and I have just visited the two universities in Montana, Meeting with Faculty/Students/Staff and interested local citizens who want to see the restoration of the North Coast Hiawatha reinstated. In fact the consensus is to pretty much take the bull by the horns and get America back to the forefront of technology and world leadership in all areas of Science and Business. They are very adamant about this!
Their desire for Amtrak to get off of this NEC mentality and get a nation wide rail passenger system in place is unparalleled. They are disgusted with Joe Boardman and the attitude of the present board of directors in this regard, because they see no real growth on the part of Amtrak in the form of expanding routes around the country. They keep asking “how much growth in ridership can Amtrak realize just by operating their present routes without adding more trains,coaches or service”? “Can’t they (Amtrak) see that expansion is the key to real growth.” These are some of the thoughts of the general public and our Univesity system students.
We are continuing to garner support for this N.C.H. train all across the northwest including Minnesota.
Jerry Sullivan echoes a sentiment of frustration at,
Amtrak’s absolute refusal to restore the Sunset, or even a connecting train, to Florida. The only train I rode regularly was the Sunset prior to August 2005, and I have not been on a train since, except for excursions. Amtrak has become irrelevant; although I despise flying, Southwest Airlines is now my forced choice until Amtrak gets off their backside on the Sunset issue.
Until last year’s flawed Gulf Coast report is revisited and corrected, and until enough new — not just replacement — equipment is available, probably nothing will happen. Amtrak may be the only company whose product is desperately wanted by everyone but refuses to offer more of it.
As to markets and expansion, Christopher Parker noted, in reference to the speed comparison table:
[At that time,] top speeds were held by limiteds that were mostly overnight sleepers, a market [ceded] to the airlines… You should be comparing today’s trains to the stopping [all-stop local] trains of old. The other factor is we live in a more open and safety conscious world – routine disregard of speed limits is impossible now, as are top speeds over 79mph without automatic train-stop.
I wonder if railroads had the regulative freedom to run very fast if the fate of the passenger train would have turned out differently. Speed makes a huge difference in staying competitive. With some exceptions (IC), today’s top speeds aren’t much different.
True, after a number of accidents fifty years ago, legislation was passed that did limit train speeds. Modern safety devices warrant revisiting those speeds, as does the pending implementation of Positive Train Control, along with satellite, GPS, wireless technology, and computer control. There must be an equilibrium point of higher speeds versus construction and maintenance costs. How to implement a mixing of relatively high speed passenger trains in an era of double-stack containers and long unit coal trains is no easy task, but a worthwhile one. Mr. Parker suggests, that with good track and “cheap technology to detect open switches, dark territory should be good for 70-79 mph.”
And while railroads no longer have the monopoly on business travel, but European experience suggests there is plenty of market here for a slogan like “we are your rolling hotel.” A businessman at a conference in Phoenix could have a late dinner, board the midnight sleeper, and be in downtown Los Angeles by morning in plenty of time for a 9am meeting. Mr. Parker responds, “Let’s start by getting sleepers back on the [Washington-Boston] Night Owl or whatever they call it now.” Could not be repeated across the country?
Amtrak’s newest focus is on high speed rail. As yet they have little involvement in most of the pending projects, so let us see the fine mess they are getting into.
Over the last few weeks we have compared Wisconsin’s pragmatic expansion approach to Florida’s Bullet Train That Doesn’t Connect (Daniel Carleton, 23 March 2010). We will look at Colorado’s venture into high speed rail in a moment, but first consider the California high speed project, which started some years ago along the lines of the Florida fiasco. Each refinement, we are pleased to report, generally tended toward a more logical approach. Maglev was eliminated in favor of compatible steel-wheel technology, permitting shared rights-of-way and stations. Nevertheless, room for improvement still exists in the “Plays well with others” department:
In a letter dated 23 March 2010, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) ask the California High Speed Rail Authority (CAHSRA) to please revisit and consider “a rational shared use option in the Anaheim to Los Angeles segment of the CAHSRA project… In November of 2009, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued its first High Speed Passenger Rail Safety Strategy which provides a strategy for the development of shared use corridors. We believe this safety strategy has direct applicability to” the L.A.-Anaheim corridor and they point out that “reports prepared by the CAHSRA staff and consultants did not contemplate any discussion of the rationalization of passenger services in the Anaheim to Los Angeles segment… [part of] the second busiest passenger rail corridor in the nation… we would like to make these services more coordinated and integrated.”
One could well read this as a formal, polite way of saying, “You’re doing it wrong,” and one does wish that high speed trains, where they are built in this country, integrate with local trains and transit as well as they do in Germany, for example. In Germany they have even figured out how to run a streetcar into a regular train station, where you might see one on the platform alongside an ICE high-speed train. If the Germans can master the engineering and those safety features to give easy cross-platform transfers, why can’t we?
Meanwhile at the northern end of that California corridor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on April 3rd that Caltrain, facing “plummeting sales tax revenues and shrinking ridership” could be forced “to eliminate its midday, night and weekend service, and return to its roots as a commuter-only railroad.” Yet an article there the previous day noted of the new High Speed project, “New numbers put the price of the Anaheim-to-San Francisco segment alone at $42.6 billion.”
Why are we spending millions on high-speed rail studies to the detriment of existing services? Why are we further planning new trains that will hurt, instead of complement, the few successful ones we have spent decades building? Cannot even railroad people work together or has too many years of fighting the highway lobby fractured the passenger train industry?
Colorado is poised to make the same mistake. Railway Track and Structures on March 30th reported,
A study of possible high-speed, intercity rail for Colorado has found that lines between Fort Collins and Pueblo and between Denver International Airport and Eagle County have the best “operating and cost-benefit results” of the options evaluated… The full system carries a $21.1-billion price tag, but Harry Dale, chairman of the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority, which produced the study, said the rail system would probably be built in phases…
The feasibility study… took 18 months to complete and cost $1.4 million… “It might be 10 to 20 years before we actually build anything,” [Dale] said…
The study identifies a $3.32-billion rail segment from DIA to downtown Denver and then south to Colorado Springs as a likely first phase [,which Dale said] would not compete directly with [the] Regional Transportation District’s planned East Corridor commuter train that will link the airport and Denver’s Union Station.
“This [HSR] is not meant to be fare-subsidized,” Dale said of the proposed high-speed rail system. “Average speeds must be superior to travel by car, or nobody will ride. There have got to be time savings to make it worthwhile.”
Does it not matter that almost every new well-planned light-rail and regional-rail system in the West has met, exceeded, or far exceeded ridership expectations? Why spend money planning a second “high speed” system paralleling a regional train we haven’t even built yet? Why do we keep having to fight the superfast fallacy? Frequency, dependability, and the matrix of connections are what attract people to trains — not high speeds. Dr. Adrian Herzog’s Matrix Theory, despite being proven repeatedly, continues to be ignored.
— William Lindley, Scottsdale, Ariz.
p.s., Mr. Selden’s guest commentary follows.
Why Joseph Boardman Can’t Succeed
By Andrew Selden
Joe Boardman is a fine fellow, and an experienced rail administrator, but his tenure is doomed to be another failure as CEO of Amtrak, for the simple reason that his strategy for the company is to pour ever more capital and effort into the exact same business strategies and plans that have failed the company consistently for four decades. This is evidenced by Amtrak’s latest strategic “plan” released late this winter.
“Amtrak Planning” has come to be as much of an oxymoron as “Amtrak Accounting.” Key elements of the latest plan:
Upgrade interiors and add WiFi on Acela trains, with leather seats, new tray tables and improved at-seat power outlets.
NEC infrastructure enhancements such as a new Niantic River drawbridge in Connecticut, new power supply equipment for New York – Washington, new switches at Chicago Union Station, new car shops at Los Angeles, station renovation at Wilmington, Delaware, fire safety improvements in the Hudson River tunnels, car renovation at Beech Grove, NEC track and wire maintenance, etc.
Study its “poorest performing long-distance routes” to identify possible changes. These routes include the Sunset Limited, Eagle, Cardinal, Capitol Limited and California Zephyr. (No mention of chronically underperforming short routes.)
Expand state-funded short corridors.
Install PTC on Amtrak-owned track.
Increase security.
Replace large parts of the company’s locomotive and car fleet.
Now, this all sounds wonderful, and many observers leapt on the last item as proof that “Amtrak was home free and the Age of Aquarius was upon us.” No one paused to ask, “With the U.S. trillions of dollars in debt and piling on new debt just as fast as we can sell bonds to the Chinese, how is Amtrak going to pay for all this?”
Even worse, no one seemed to notice that Amtrak’s plans were nothing more than a reshuffle of the same tired 40-year-old business plan that has put Amtrak into a financial black hole. (Amtrak’s net loss worsened again last year, proving once again that the billions “invested” so far into the NEC, Acela, and all the other infrastructure projects has produced a negative rate of return on investment.) No one asked: “Based on 40 years of consistent failure and steadily worsening financial results, why should we continue pouring billions of new dollars of federal support down the same old black hole?”
This ultimately is why Mr. Boardman cannot succeed: recycling failed business strategies is not “planning.” Doubling the bet on a losing position is a poor strategy.
When Amtrak released its wish list of new engines and rolling stock in March, it took independent analysis by URPA professionals to point out that the “new fleet” strategy reflected a net shrinkage of lift capacity in the national system.
But, there may be a growing awareness inside Amtrak that they are missing out in their long distance markets. At an Amtrak conference in Chicago in March, some interesting ideas were surfaced. A URPA attendee reported:
“Amtrak made official their intent to restructure the Sunset and Texas Eagle routes by operating a daily Los Angeles-San Antonio-Chicago train with a connecting San Antonio-New Orleans train. Amtrak has divided their 15 long-distance trains into three groups of five. The five worst performers – including the Sunset and Eagle – will be addressed this year, the middle five in 2011, and the five best – such as the Empire Builder and Southwest Chief – will be tweaked beginning in 2010. The undesirability of tri-weekly service on any route was noted.
“Amtrak seems to be grasping – and willing to emphasize publicly – the importance of their long distance trains. One of the slides in a presentation : ‘Long Distance Trains are Fundamental to Amtrak’s Mission and Future.’ The slide’s charts showed that long distance trains provided 15 percent of Amtrak’s riders, but 24 percent of revenue, and 39 percent of Amtrak’s train miles but 46 percent of passenger miles.”
As promising as this is, it still fails to reflect any understanding of how explosive growth could be if Amtrak were to address two simple questions:
What would long distance ridership, passenger miles and revenue be if Amtrak actually added capacity to existing trains, especially in peak periods? Long distance capacity and available seat miles have been flat, if not down, for two decades. Since these trains run nearly full much of the year, no growth is even possible without added capacity.
What would long distance ridership, passenger miles and revenue be if Amtrak better interconnected its routes, so that its trains could serve hundreds of new origin-destination city pairs? Examples: extend a Missouri state corridor train to Omaha, to connect St. Louis, Kansas City and intermediate points to the Central Transcontinental Corridor – Denver, Salt Lake City, Reno, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area; or, drop a coach and sleeper from the Chief, at Barstow, to run over Tehachapi Pass to Bakersfield, connecting to a San Joaquin, linking the entire Southwest Transcontinental Corridor to the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay area.
Even if one assumes that these new services perform no better than the known performance of the existing trains, these small increases in operations, by opening up many hundreds of new long distance city pairs, will triple output, and revenue. Now there is a capacity issue, and a growth strategy, all in one.
If you are reading someone else’s copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can receive your own free copy each edition by sending your e-mail address to
[email protected]
You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from [email protected]; we are unable to go through any approvals processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.
All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe should be addressed to
[email protected]
Copies of This Week at Amtrak are archived on URPA’s web site, www.unitedrail.org
URPA leadership members are available for speaking engagements.
William Lindley
c/o wlindley.com, l.l.c.
PO Box 3621
Scottsdale, AZ 85271
480-947-6100
A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America’s foremost passenger rail policy institute
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected] • http://www.unitedrail.org
This week we look first at Amtrak’s slow pace, then at continued nationwide wrong-think surrounding Amtrak’s new venture into high speed rail; and we wrap up with a guest commentary by our Andrew C. Selden.
“In the unlikely event of a cabin depressurization, oxygen masks will appear overhead. Reach up and pull the mask closest to you, fully extending the plastic tubing, fasten the straps, and begin breathing normally… If you are seated next to a small child or someone needing assistance, secure your own mask first, then assist the child.”
— Airplane safety announcement
Consider a dramatization of the above starring Amtrak’s Joseph Boardman as the passenger, and network expansion as the child. Faced with the upcoming depressurization of its system through aging equipment, Amtrak is now in the process of securing its own mask with an equipment order. This is no little feat, but Congress still holds the strings. The mask isn’t even on yet, and as the air drains away, what are the prospects for the little form in the next seat?
Readers of This Week have had plenty to say about Amtrak’s progress, or lack thereof. Charles McMillan wrote:
I just finished reading your March 31st issue and I have just visited the two universities in Montana, Meeting with Faculty/Students/Staff and interested local citizens who want to see the restoration of the North Coast Hiawatha reinstated. In fact the consensus is to pretty much take the bull by the horns and get America back to the forefront of technology and world leadership in all areas of Science and Business. They are very adamant about this!
Their desire for Amtrak to get off of this NEC mentality and get a nation wide rail passenger system in place is unparalleled. They are disgusted with Joe Boardman and the attitude of the present board of directors in this regard, because they see no real growth on the part of Amtrak in the form of expanding routes around the country. They keep asking “how much growth in ridership can Amtrak realize just by operating their present routes without adding more trains,coaches or service”? “Can’t they (Amtrak) see that expansion is the key to real growth.” These are some of the thoughts of the general public and our Univesity system students.
We are continuing to garner support for this N.C.H. train all across the northwest including Minnesota.
Jerry Sullivan echoes a sentiment of frustration at,
Amtrak’s absolute refusal to restore the Sunset, or even a connecting train, to Florida. The only train I rode regularly was the Sunset prior to August 2005, and I have not been on a train since, except for excursions. Amtrak has become irrelevant; although I despise flying, Southwest Airlines is now my forced choice until Amtrak gets off their backside on the Sunset issue.
Until last year’s flawed Gulf Coast report is revisited and corrected, and until enough new — not just replacement — equipment is available, probably nothing will happen. Amtrak may be the only company whose product is desperately wanted by everyone but refuses to offer more of it.
As to markets and expansion, Christopher Parker noted, in reference to the speed comparison table:
[At that time,] top speeds were held by limiteds that were mostly overnight sleepers, a market [ceded] to the airlines… You should be comparing today’s trains to the stopping [all-stop local] trains of old. The other factor is we live in a more open and safety conscious world – routine disregard of speed limits is impossible now, as are top speeds over 79mph without automatic train-stop.
I wonder if railroads had the regulative freedom to run very fast if the fate of the passenger train would have turned out differently. Speed makes a huge difference in staying competitive. With some exceptions (IC), today’s top speeds aren’t much different.
True, after a number of accidents fifty years ago, legislation was passed that did limit train speeds. Modern safety devices warrant revisiting those speeds, as does the pending implementation of Positive Train Control, along with satellite, GPS, wireless technology, and computer control. There must be an equilibrium point of higher speeds versus construction and maintenance costs. How to implement a mixing of relatively high speed passenger trains in an era of double-stack containers and long unit coal trains is no easy task, but a worthwhile one. Mr. Parker suggests, that with good track and “cheap technology to detect open switches, dark territory should be good for 70-79 mph.”
And while railroads no longer have the monopoly on business travel, but European experience suggests there is plenty of market here for a slogan like “we are your rolling hotel.” A businessman at a conference in Phoenix could have a late dinner, board the midnight sleeper, and be in downtown Los Angeles by morning in plenty of time for a 9am meeting. Mr. Parker responds, “Let’s start by getting sleepers back on the [Washington-Boston] Night Owl or whatever they call it now.” Could not be repeated across the country?
Amtrak’s newest focus is on high speed rail. As yet they have little involvement in most of the pending projects, so let us see the fine mess they are getting into.
Over the last few weeks we have compared Wisconsin’s pragmatic expansion approach to Florida’s Bullet Train That Doesn’t Connect (Daniel Carleton, 23 March 2010). We will look at Colorado’s venture into high speed rail in a moment, but first consider the California high speed project, which started some years ago along the lines of the Florida fiasco. Each refinement, we are pleased to report, generally tended toward a more logical approach. Maglev was eliminated in favor of compatible steel-wheel technology, permitting shared rights-of-way and stations. Nevertheless, room for improvement still exists in the “Plays well with others” department:
In a letter dated 23 March 2010, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) ask the California High Speed Rail Authority (CAHSRA) to please revisit and consider “a rational shared use option in the Anaheim to Los Angeles segment of the CAHSRA project… In November of 2009, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued its first High Speed Passenger Rail Safety Strategy which provides a strategy for the development of shared use corridors. We believe this safety strategy has direct applicability to” the L.A.-Anaheim corridor and they point out that “reports prepared by the CAHSRA staff and consultants did not contemplate any discussion of the rationalization of passenger services in the Anaheim to Los Angeles segment… [part of] the second busiest passenger rail corridor in the nation… we would like to make these services more coordinated and integrated.”
One could well read this as a formal, polite way of saying, “You’re doing it wrong,” and one does wish that high speed trains, where they are built in this country, integrate with local trains and transit as well as they do in Germany, for example. In Germany they have even figured out how to run a streetcar into a regular train station, where you might see one on the platform alongside an ICE high-speed train. If the Germans can master the engineering and those safety features to give easy cross-platform transfers, why can’t we?
Meanwhile at the northern end of that California corridor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on April 3rd that Caltrain, facing “plummeting sales tax revenues and shrinking ridership” could be forced “to eliminate its midday, night and weekend service, and return to its roots as a commuter-only railroad.” Yet an article there the previous day noted of the new High Speed project, “New numbers put the price of the Anaheim-to-San Francisco segment alone at $42.6 billion.”
Why are we spending millions on high-speed rail studies to the detriment of existing services? Why are we further planning new trains that will hurt, instead of complement, the few successful ones we have spent decades building? Cannot even railroad people work together or has too many years of fighting the highway lobby fractured the passenger train industry?
Colorado is poised to make the same mistake. Railway Track and Structures on March 30th reported,
A study of possible high-speed, intercity rail for Colorado has found that lines between Fort Collins and Pueblo and between Denver International Airport and Eagle County have the best “operating and cost-benefit results” of the options evaluated… The full system carries a $21.1-billion price tag, but Harry Dale, chairman of the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority, which produced the study, said the rail system would probably be built in phases…
The feasibility study… took 18 months to complete and cost $1.4 million… “It might be 10 to 20 years before we actually build anything,” [Dale] said…
The study identifies a $3.32-billion rail segment from DIA to downtown Denver and then south to Colorado Springs as a likely first phase [,which Dale said] would not compete directly with [the] Regional Transportation District’s planned East Corridor commuter train that will link the airport and Denver’s Union Station.
“This [HSR] is not meant to be fare-subsidized,” Dale said of the proposed high-speed rail system. “Average speeds must be superior to travel by car, or nobody will ride. There have got to be time savings to make it worthwhile.”
Does it not matter that almost every new well-planned light-rail and regional-rail system in the West has met, exceeded, or far exceeded ridership expectations? Why spend money planning a second “high speed” system paralleling a regional train we haven’t even built yet? Why do we keep having to fight the superfast fallacy? Frequency, dependability, and the matrix of connections are what attract people to trains — not high speeds. Dr. Adrian Herzog’s Matrix Theory, despite being proven repeatedly, continues to be ignored.
— William Lindley, Scottsdale, Ariz.
p.s., Mr. Selden’s guest commentary follows.
Why Joseph Boardman Can’t Succeed
By Andrew Selden
Joe Boardman is a fine fellow, and an experienced rail administrator, but his tenure is doomed to be another failure as CEO of Amtrak, for the simple reason that his strategy for the company is to pour ever more capital and effort into the exact same business strategies and plans that have failed the company consistently for four decades. This is evidenced by Amtrak’s latest strategic “plan” released late this winter.
“Amtrak Planning” has come to be as much of an oxymoron as “Amtrak Accounting.” Key elements of the latest plan:
Upgrade interiors and add WiFi on Acela trains, with leather seats, new tray tables and improved at-seat power outlets.
NEC infrastructure enhancements such as a new Niantic River drawbridge in Connecticut, new power supply equipment for New York – Washington, new switches at Chicago Union Station, new car shops at Los Angeles, station renovation at Wilmington, Delaware, fire safety improvements in the Hudson River tunnels, car renovation at Beech Grove, NEC track and wire maintenance, etc.
Study its “poorest performing long-distance routes” to identify possible changes. These routes include the Sunset Limited, Eagle, Cardinal, Capitol Limited and California Zephyr. (No mention of chronically underperforming short routes.)
Expand state-funded short corridors.
Install PTC on Amtrak-owned track.
Increase security.
Replace large parts of the company’s locomotive and car fleet.
Now, this all sounds wonderful, and many observers leapt on the last item as proof that “Amtrak was home free and the Age of Aquarius was upon us.” No one paused to ask, “With the U.S. trillions of dollars in debt and piling on new debt just as fast as we can sell bonds to the Chinese, how is Amtrak going to pay for all this?”
Even worse, no one seemed to notice that Amtrak’s plans were nothing more than a reshuffle of the same tired 40-year-old business plan that has put Amtrak into a financial black hole. (Amtrak’s net loss worsened again last year, proving once again that the billions “invested” so far into the NEC, Acela, and all the other infrastructure projects has produced a negative rate of return on investment.) No one asked: “Based on 40 years of consistent failure and steadily worsening financial results, why should we continue pouring billions of new dollars of federal support down the same old black hole?”
This ultimately is why Mr. Boardman cannot succeed: recycling failed business strategies is not “planning.” Doubling the bet on a losing position is a poor strategy.
When Amtrak released its wish list of new engines and rolling stock in March, it took independent analysis by URPA professionals to point out that the “new fleet” strategy reflected a net shrinkage of lift capacity in the national system.
But, there may be a growing awareness inside Amtrak that they are missing out in their long distance markets. At an Amtrak conference in Chicago in March, some interesting ideas were surfaced. A URPA attendee reported:
“Amtrak made official their intent to restructure the Sunset and Texas Eagle routes by operating a daily Los Angeles-San Antonio-Chicago train with a connecting San Antonio-New Orleans train. Amtrak has divided their 15 long-distance trains into three groups of five. The five worst performers – including the Sunset and Eagle – will be addressed this year, the middle five in 2011, and the five best – such as the Empire Builder and Southwest Chief – will be tweaked beginning in 2010. The undesirability of tri-weekly service on any route was noted.
“Amtrak seems to be grasping – and willing to emphasize publicly – the importance of their long distance trains. One of the slides in a presentation : ‘Long Distance Trains are Fundamental to Amtrak’s Mission and Future.’ The slide’s charts showed that long distance trains provided 15 percent of Amtrak’s riders, but 24 percent of revenue, and 39 percent of Amtrak’s train miles but 46 percent of passenger miles.”
As promising as this is, it still fails to reflect any understanding of how explosive growth could be if Amtrak were to address two simple questions:
What would long distance ridership, passenger miles and revenue be if Amtrak actually added capacity to existing trains, especially in peak periods? Long distance capacity and available seat miles have been flat, if not down, for two decades. Since these trains run nearly full much of the year, no growth is even possible without added capacity.
What would long distance ridership, passenger miles and revenue be if Amtrak better interconnected its routes, so that its trains could serve hundreds of new origin-destination city pairs? Examples: extend a Missouri state corridor train to Omaha, to connect St. Louis, Kansas City and intermediate points to the Central Transcontinental Corridor – Denver, Salt Lake City, Reno, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area; or, drop a coach and sleeper from the Chief, at Barstow, to run over Tehachapi Pass to Bakersfield, connecting to a San Joaquin, linking the entire Southwest Transcontinental Corridor to the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay area.
Even if one assumes that these new services perform no better than the known performance of the existing trains, these small increases in operations, by opening up many hundreds of new long distance city pairs, will triple output, and revenue. Now there is a capacity issue, and a growth strategy, all in one.
If you are reading someone else’s copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can receive your own free copy each edition by sending your e-mail address to
[email protected]
You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from [email protected]; we are unable to go through any approvals processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.
All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe should be addressed to
[email protected]
Copies of This Week at Amtrak are archived on URPA’s web site, www.unitedrail.org
URPA leadership members are available for speaking engagements.
William Lindley
c/o wlindley.com, l.l.c.
PO Box 3621
Scottsdale, AZ 85271
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Volume 7, Number 13
April 22nd, 2010
April 22nd, 2010
A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America's foremost passenger rail policy institute
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected] • http://www.unitedrail.org
America's foremost passenger rail policy institute
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 • Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected] • http://www.unitedrail.org
Our desks being at last clear of the beloved IRS instruction booklets, and with last year's tax forms safely snuggled in their bankers' boxes, we turn now to how a few of our hard-earned dollars are — refreshingly — wisely to be spent in Ohio.
We hear this week from our Bruce Richardson who wrote the following just before (according to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette), "Democrats on the state Controlling Board voted 4-3 along party lines to approve spending $25 million in federal stimulus money to complete final engineering and design work on" Ohio's Three Cs corridor this Monday. This is a wise investment, giving planners the opportunity to prove the plan's worthiness: "Future support from GOP lawmakers on the panel will be crucial. State law requires a supermajority vote for capital improvements on passenger rail development…" reports the Journal Gazette, so lawmakers will have the opportunity to weigh the merits of the complete design before committing to construction.
This is a welcome development; Mr. Richardson explains why:
Oh, Ohio.
By Bruce Richardson
It's a mad, mad, mad world in Ohio right now for rail fans, who for decades have been agitating for the creation of the Three Cs corridor. The rail fans are "this close" to having the Three Cs corridor recreated, tying Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati together in one passenger train run after the feds opened the treasury and doled out $400 million in free federal stimulus monies to create the route.
Currently, Cleveland has dreary nocturnal service in each direction courtesy of the Lake Shore Limited and the Capitol Limited. Cleveland has a metropolitan area population of 2.25 million, yet Amtrak passengers entraining and detraining only total 39,371 for fiscal year 2009. Cincinnati fares even worse, with only three days a week nocturnal service provided by the Cardinal. Cincinnati's metropolitan area is almost as large as Cleveland, with an area population of 2.15 million souls. Hardly anybody notices the Cardinal in Cincinnati, with only 14,777 FY 2009 passengers entraining and detraining.
Columbus isn't even on Amtrak's map. The metropolitan area population is 1.77 million, not a small city.
The plan is to right this wrong by creating a four round-trips day train between the three cities and Dayton, with some extra stops along the way. Here's the problem: Ohio's governor wants to do this, Ohio's Department of Transportation wants to do this, and the feds want to do this. But, the majority party in the Ohio state senate doesn't want to do this, and some members of a state commission which ultimately have to sign off on this don't want to do it, either.
The naysayers say thanks very much for the $400 million, but what about the small state matching money and funds for operating the trains? They are afraid Ohio will be in the same position as charity recipients are on that silly ABC Television reality show, Extreme Makeover Home Edition: Some goofy looking guy with bad hair who for whatever reason nobody can figure out has become a celebrity hands you a nice gift, but you can't afford to keep it up or pay the taxes on it year after year. So, rail fans in Ohio are gritting their teeth, and can taste the new Three Cs corridor it's so close. All of this comes down to convincing just less than a handful of people of the wonders of intrastate passenger train travel, and the Three Cs will be a reality.
The question must be asked: Has anyone educated these recalcitrant public servants about other state success stories? Have they quizzed their next door neighbors in Illinois about how successful those state trains are? Did they take a look at the country's most important state, Virginia, and see how in just the first quarter of operations of the new Lynchburg train, the state paid no operating subsidy in the second month to Amtrak because ridership and revenue passenger miles were so successful? Did anyone consult with North Carolina, home to the country's most enlightened state department of transportation on rail matters about how to run state-subsidized passenger trains successfully so the subsidies remain low or nonexistent? What about California, and its giant, successful state rail program?
All of this boils down to education and the proper presentation of facts. Most likely, Ohio politicians are relying on past Amtrak studies, such as last year's Three Cs report, which predicted low ridership and high expenses, as Amtrak always does to prevent later finger pointing claiming the company was too optimistic. Instead of doing their own homework, they incorrectly relied on the work of someone else. Had they done their own homework they probably would have come up with a completely different set of numbers and been able to make far different decisions.
Another point of contention is the alleged speed of the proposed trains. The alleged forces of evil claim the overall speed is too slow for the money being spent. visions of high speed trains dance in their heads. Nobody told these folks about incrementalism, using relatively inexpensive conventional rail such as found in the Three Cs proposal as a building block and later feeder system for high speed rail.
The war in Ohio will continue until someone figures out a way to educate these politicians about the realities of passenger rail and the promise passenger rail holds for a balanced transportation system in the future. Until that day comes, Ohio will be a state of highways, not a state of transportation choices.
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This Week at Amtrak; 2010-04-27
Posted By brichardson On April 27, 2010 @ 9:41 am
Volume 7, Number 13
Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy institute which focuses on solutions and plans for passenger rail systems in North America. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, URPA has professional associates in Minnesota, California, Arizona, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Texas, New York, and other cities. For more detailed information, along with a variety of position papers and other documents, visit the URPA web site at http://www.unitedrail.org [1].
URPA is not a membership organization, and does not accept funding from any outside sources.
1) Thank you, Bill Lindley for allowing me to "borrow" This Week at Amtrak for this special edition. This is Bruce Richardson, and I have a special announcement to make.
2) I've been waiting for over a year to write this column, and I'm immensely excited about what I have to tell you. Today, April 27, 2010, a new, privately funded and privately operated intercity passenger train is being announced, slated to begin operations during the Christmas season of 2011.
The name of the train is "Z-Train," and it will operate six days a week on a regular schedule between Los Angeles Union Station and Las Vegas, Nevada, with an intermediate stop in Ontario, California.
Initially, the train will be 14 cars long, made up of a combination of bi-levels and dome cars.
3) Some of you reading this may think this is old news; that you heard about the Las Vegas train 10 days ago.
That was the X Train of Las Vegas Railway Express; this is the Z-Train.
It's a bit of a sordid story about how two trains came about.
Z-Train has been in continuous, active development since 2007. When I was first contacted about Z-Train in March 2009, before I could have more than a cursory telephone conversation with Romm Doulton, the Las Vegas entrepreneur of D2 Holdings who created Z-Train, I had to sign a lengthy and complicated non-compete, non-disclosure legal document. Everyone even marginally involved with the project has signed the identical document for the protection of the project.
Earlier, in 2008, before I became involved with the project, a local gentleman in Las Vegas was briefly part of the development team. He invited a second gentleman to learn about the development group; both of these people signed the same non-compete, non-disclosure document. Neither gentleman was related to the project very long; in fact, the second gentleman only had a cursory involvement as part of Z-Train's development team.
So, they went away.
But, it appears they took with them all of the team's proprietary plans and documents which had been created up to that point in 2008.
Since then, plans for Z-Train have matured and changed dramatically, as is often in the case of projects like this, as new people with new or better ideas join development teams.
In July 2009, in my United Rail Passenger Alliance e-mail box, I received an invitation from the X Train people to review their project and give them any advice I may want to offer.
I immediately contacted Z-Train, since by then I had developed a full relationship with them, and alerted the development team about a rival project.
Instantly, the Z-Train team knew what was going on; it seemed their own, privately held materials were being used by someone else and represented as their own property, instead of the sole property of the Z-Train developers.
A cease and desist demand was made by Z-Train to X Train.
Nothing happened, and in the past 30 days various press releases have been popping up about X Train, all amazingly similar to Z-Train ideas, plans, and materials from 2008. Well, with two big exceptions. The Z-Train developers know it is impossible to have onboard, legal gambling, yet X Train says it will have gaming onboard. And, X Train says it will offer a $99 roundtrip fare, which is pretty close to impossible to do if you're going to be financially viable.
4) There had been no plans to fully announce Z-Train until every detail was fully developed and every business relationship established.
But, then came X Train; a decision had to be made to protect the interests of Z-Train, so a public announcement – even though a bit early probably by about a month – would be made.
That's what we're doing today; Z-Train is seeing the first light of day in TWA.
All that out of the way; you would probably like some details about Z-Train. Here is some information for you from the Z-Train fact sheet which is part of the detail being sent to the news media today.
Train Operations
• Z-Train is expected to begin operations for the Christmas season in 2011.
• Plans are for the train to be pulled by Amtrak locomotives, and Amtrak will also provide train and engine crews, as well as all equipment maintenance at its Los Angeles maintenance base.
• Onboard services crews will be direct Z-Train employees.
• The route encompasses trackage rights to be provided by Metrolink in Southern California, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, and primarily Union Pacific Railroad.
• Los Angeles Union Station, owned by Catellus Development Corporation will be the Southern California terminal, and a new Z-Train station will be built in Las Vegas adjacent to the famous Las Vegas Strip, the heart of the hotels, resorts, and casinos in Las Vegas.
• Trip time is planned for five hours in each direction, with a single intermediate station stop in Ontario, California. The train will be turned and cleaned in Las Vegas for a same-day return to Los Angeles, where maintenance will be performed overnight.
• Z-Train will be America's only regularly scheduled, non-government subsidized intercity passenger service between two major metropolitan areas, where anyone can purchase a ticket for transportation; operating full roundtrips six days a week.
• The train will operate Wednesdays through Mondays, with Tuesdays planned as a full maintenance day.
• Z-Train has been developed to meet the rigid requirements of host railroads and federal transportation statutes, including any necessary construction of additional railroad passing sidings or other necessary upgrades to host passenger trains. Every facet of Z-Train has been created to work in harmony with pending agreements with host railroads and operating crew and motive power providers.
Equipment and Onboard Experience
• Z-Train is beyond just traveling from one city to another; it's a transportation, dining, pampering and entertainment experience designed to rekindle the great American slogan, "getting there is half the fun!".
• Z-Train is the only passenger rail project which will run directly from downtown Los Angeles/Los Angeles Union Station to the heart of the Las Vegas Strip and Z-Train's proposed, newly-built passenger train station, and is the only passenger rail project which will directly connect to all other passenger rail routes in Southern California.
• All Z-Train passenger railcars will be rebuilt and redesigned equipment from America's most prominent passenger railcar builders, designed originally for some of America's most luxurious passenger trains. The upgrades and modifications made by Z-Train will meet every need and desire of modern travelers from new technologies to comfortable, plush seating.
• Z-Train offers four levels of accommodations and services, all aimed at up-market travelers, especially international travelers from the lucrative Asian market.
• Food and beverage and onboard pampering and entertainment will be areas of major emphasis, with dining and lounge cars to meet every expectation and requirement for all age groups.
• Almost half of the passenger space is devoted to coach passengers, although coach passengers will have amenities and services available to them not normally found elsewhere.
• Additional classes of service are club, business, and first class premium cars, all of which have their own discrete, expanded levels of service.
• The most distinctive level of service will occur in private dome cars, each not holding more than 25 passengers per car. This unparalleled level of luxury will rival any private jet experience, appealing to the most discriminating passengers.
• Four separate dining cars run the choices from high end gourmet to an all-organic, healthy living dining car choice to a dedicated sports car, complete with micro brewery and comfort food buffet.
• Onboard services are unique, with a company of repertory players providing live entertainment, a murder on a train mystery, fortune tellers, fashions shows provided by one of the most distinctive fashion retailers, art gallery offerings, spa services, and book signings by best selling authors.
Development Team
• Created by professional railroaders in the best traditions of the passenger railroad industry, combining successful historical values with today's passenger and operating environment.
• Z-Train has been developed by a professional team working since 2007 to provide an exciting passenger rail experience between Los Angeles/Southern California and Las Vegas. Weeks, months, and years have been spent in deep research of every aspect of the market, jobs growth, and economic development for Z-Train to be an economic engine for tourism and in support of Las Vegas. Government officials on every level have been consulted, in addition to professional railroaders, hospitality and gaming industry luminaries, and marketing experts. Every facet of Z-Train has been developed with one overall goal in mind: to provide America's unrivaled premier intercity passenger train experience.
Z-Train Limited, LLC and D2 Holdings
• D2 Holdings is headquartered in Henderson, Nevada and controlled by Romm and Elaine Doulton and James K. Clark. D2 is a well-established company with a wide variety of interests. For further information, consult www.d2holdings.net [2]. D2 provided the company umbrella for the Z-Train development team to come together and create the project before it was formally incorporated.
• Z-Train Limited, LLC is a Nevada corporation, headquartered in Henderson, Nevada (A Las Vegas suburb).
• Romm Doulton, creator of Z-Train, currently serves as the company's Chairman, President, and CEO while a search process is being completed to find other individuals to hold those offices. Mr. Doulton will continue to serve as a Chief Executive Officer of the company, but the other positions will be filled by individuals with a strong financial and railroad industry background.
• Z-Train has been developed using sound, conservative financial principles.
• Over $500,000 worth of time, materials, and funds spent have been put into the creation and development of Z-Train.
• Everyone associated with the development of Z-Train has been a senior executive in their respective fields.
• Z-Train as a company has been designed as an organization which will have a number of strategic alliances with corporate partners for cross marketing and branding purposes.
Marketing and Development
• Z-Train will be marketed on three levels: regional, national, and international.
• Regional marketing will reach Southern California, providing a travel choice beyond private automobiles, busses, and air travel to bring new visitors to Las Vegas.
• National marketing will promote both Z-Train and partner casinos and resorts and the city of Las Vegas.
• International marketing, aimed heavily at the lucrative Asian market, will provide a familiar travel choice to the 4.4 million Asian visitors who arrive in Los Angeles, of which 32% currently travel onward to Las Vegas via bus and airplane. Asians are currently the single most profitable demographic for visitors to Las Vegas, followed by Southern Californians.
5) That's pretty much everything in a summary; if you want more information, you can visit Z-Train's web site as it is being developed at www.z-trainltd.com [3] or to find out more about the creators of Z-Train, visit www.d2holdings.net [2] for a fascinating background on Romm and Elaine Doulton, Z-Train's parents.
6) And, yes, this native of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and 42 year resident of Florida, who has never lived more than 100 miles (and, currently less than 20 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean is about to relocate to Las Vegas and Southern California to be a part of Z-Train as the Chief Special Projects Officer, where dreaming of the future is encouraged, and all sorts of interesting projects about present and future passenger trains await. A permanent move west will not be happening for a while, but there will be lots of airplane time between Jacksonville, Florida and Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
There will be some wonderful people from Amtrak and elsewhere working and helping create Z-Train, and it's exciting to be a part of the re-invention of the modern intercity passenger train.
7) Make you plans now to ride Z-Train in 2012; you will be glad you did.
haolerider
Conductor
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2004
- Messages
- 1,436
I am not sure that is a fair comparison, since Amtrak simply cannot afford to - or be allowed to operate a train of this service level, based on constant criticism that they should not be operating luxury service at taxpayers expense. Acela is a bit different, since it is a business oriented product that has appeal in the NEC, but "land cruises" have been a point of contention in Congress for years. I will also believe this product when I see it. The backers have a strong track record, but there model is based on heavy usage by the Asian market and that has not always proven to be a constant demographic.^^ I am loving all this competetion from private companies to so something Amtrak says it can't do. Kinda is puttin' the heat on Amtrak...
Ryan
Court Jester
Sad to see Bruce taking over two in a row - hopefully Mr. Lindley's more reasoned writings will return next week.
This works out to just more than 94 people entraining/detraining every time the Cardinal pulls in. I don't know if I'd call that "hardly anyone".
That's a lot of talk for a train that hasn't carried a single passenger yet.^^ I am loving all this competetion from private companies to so something Amtrak says it can't do. Kinda is puttin' the heat on Amtrak...
jis
Permanent Way Inspector
Staff member
Administator
Moderator
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
Interesting and somewhat misguided comment IMHO about "heat on Amtrak" considering that it is Amtrak engines and operating crews that will be running this train under contract. Only OBS staff, facilities and consist will be provided by the operator. I think this should be viewed as a very nice public-private partnership serving a leisure market, instead of as a big competition thing.That's a lot of talk for a train that hasn't carried a single passenger yet.^^ I am loving all this competetion from private companies to so something Amtrak says it can't do. Kinda is puttin' the heat on Amtrak...
My point is here we are in 2010 and Amtrak is not running a train to Vegas. For whatever reasons they are saying, they are not doing it.
But there are two private companies, who want to start up service. Regardless of whether they hire Amtrak to run the train, or have their own engines and operating crews, it's still ANOTHER COMPANY (and for profit) that is running the show. And Amtrak is sittin' there lookin' like a fool with their pants on the ground, bent over.
But there are two private companies, who want to start up service. Regardless of whether they hire Amtrak to run the train, or have their own engines and operating crews, it's still ANOTHER COMPANY (and for profit) that is running the show. And Amtrak is sittin' there lookin' like a fool with their pants on the ground, bent over.
jis
Permanent Way Inspector
Staff member
Administator
Moderator
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
Ideally that is the way it should be, and unless someone has a strange idea of what Amtrak's mission in life should be, specially given that the expansive view of such is as close as one gets to an unfunded mandate, I don't see why Amtrak should be looking like a fool as a result of this. They have made it quite clear what they can and will run and what they won't. We know and have discussed ad infinitum why Amtrak cannot operate every route that it would be nice to have a train or two running on. That fact is not going to change. So the more we see this sort of partnership efforts the better it is for all concerned. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Amtrak should be the only company running LD or even Corridor trains. It would certainly be good if we can maintain a single uniform reservation system for the sake of the riding public, but running individual trains should be opened up to whoever is able and willing.
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Right one Jis! Dont want to knock Private Enterprise but this has been tried several times by private companies in various forms, I'll just point out that all of them DID NOT MAKE A PROFIT and WENT BROKE!! :blink: For what it will cost to operate this "land cruise", and with cheaper (and faster!)alternatives available, there is no way most folks will pony up the big bucks it will cost to ride this luxury gambling junket, perhaps a one time thing!(dome and lounge cars! ) But most folks who can afford it will continue to fly in their private jets, ride on the casinos dime ("Free" is the most expensive thing in the world in Vegas!)or have their driver drive them! IF it gets started Ill give them a year till it's History and the equipment will be auctioned off like so many previous "Dream Trains"!) IF it happens, glad Amtrak will get to operate it!For sure no-one will ride it for the scenery!
) But most folks who can afford it will continue to fly in their private jets, ride on the casinos dime ("Free" is the most expensive thing in the world in Vegas!)or have their driver drive them! IF it gets started Ill give them a year till it's History and the equipment will be auctioned off like so many previous "Dream Trains"!) IF it happens, glad Amtrak will get to operate it!For sure no-one will ride it for the scenery!
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haolerider
Conductor
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2004
- Messages
- 1,436
In reality, this venture is nothing different from the relationship between American Orient Express and Amtrak. They provided the equipment and on-board staff and Amtrak provided the operating crew - engineers, conductor. While this partnership existed, the Road Foreman of Engines in each district generally shadowed the train to insure there was someone able to deal with operational issues along the route. We know what happened to AOE, so there may be no difference in the final outcome of this venture, but it will be interesting to view as they progress.Right one Jis! Dont want to knock Private Enterprise but this has been tried several times by private companies in various forms, I'll just point out that all of them DID NOT MAKE A PROFIT and WENT BROKE!! :blink: For what it will cost to operate this "land cruise", and with cheaper (and faster!)alternatives available, there is no way most folks will pony up the big bucks it will cost to ride this luxury gambling junket, perhaps a one time thing!(dome and lounge cars!
I have a couple of thoughts here.
First is that one of the major things wrong with our "national rail system" is that it doesn't go nearly enough places. The idea that it should be scoffed at that two very major cities shouldn't expect to be a part of a national system is wrong to me. Its like giving in to the naysayers. Can you even conceive of closing the airport at Los Vegas because every city shouldn't expect one. Please a little reality here. Trains always ran to Los Vegas and they certainly should now.
Second it should be noted that even if it fails, which is quite possible, the fact that they understand that many passengers want more than the most minimal comforts and that trying to entice riders by offering a experience of getting there is as old as the railroads of old that rolled out many a famous train. Broadway Limited, Super Chief, Panama Limited, Twentieth Century Limited, Cites Streamliners, Empire Builder, these names meant something in their heyday, I see nothing wrong with stealing something they knew that todays operators are loath to admit. Plus I must point out that even though it has been degraded somewhat since its roll out the Amtrak Empire Builder is one of the most sought passenger routes, if it ran like the Cardinal I doubt it would be seeing that kind of support. People are not fools, they spend where they can enjoy both the scenery as well as the amenities.
First is that one of the major things wrong with our "national rail system" is that it doesn't go nearly enough places. The idea that it should be scoffed at that two very major cities shouldn't expect to be a part of a national system is wrong to me. Its like giving in to the naysayers. Can you even conceive of closing the airport at Los Vegas because every city shouldn't expect one. Please a little reality here. Trains always ran to Los Vegas and they certainly should now.
Second it should be noted that even if it fails, which is quite possible, the fact that they understand that many passengers want more than the most minimal comforts and that trying to entice riders by offering a experience of getting there is as old as the railroads of old that rolled out many a famous train. Broadway Limited, Super Chief, Panama Limited, Twentieth Century Limited, Cites Streamliners, Empire Builder, these names meant something in their heyday, I see nothing wrong with stealing something they knew that todays operators are loath to admit. Plus I must point out that even though it has been degraded somewhat since its roll out the Amtrak Empire Builder is one of the most sought passenger routes, if it ran like the Cardinal I doubt it would be seeing that kind of support. People are not fools, they spend where they can enjoy both the scenery as well as the amenities.
jis
Permanent Way Inspector
Staff member
Administator
Moderator
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
I agree. In spite of all the dire predictions of how Amtrak's NEC service will be abandoned by all due to the availability of cheaper Boltbus and China Bus service, the Regionals and Acelas are running more full than ever. Of course the big differentiators are journey time and comfort in this case, and it is some of the buses that are trying to use luxury as an enticer.
Ryan
Court Jester
Having recently gotten off the Cardinal and gone directly onto the Empire Builder, I think that the differences between them are massively overstated.
I think the Cardinal may have been updated some. The reviews I often read were of a train with "No Lounge as such", a very limited diner, one sleeper and an unmatched consist. At one point the Empire Builder offered food prepared on board, small things like candy and wines in your room, wine tasting on board, and a newly remodeled consist. The fact that your not seeing much difference is more the leveling out again of all services that has been taking place.
Ryan
Court Jester
Not really, those reviews are all still pretty much true - having experienced them, it just doesn't much matter in my book. It doesn't particularly matter to me if a train has one sleeper or 10, I'm not interested in sitting in a lounge if I have a bedroom (Amy and I have spent maybe 30 minutes in the lounge here on the Chief and maybe that much on the Coast Starlight and Empire builder as well). The limited menu isn't a big deal when you get one breakfast lunch and dinner (from WAS to CHI) and the food was delicious.
Yes, we got champaign on the EB and CS, and we're still hauling around one of the bottles that we were given on the Builder (I plan on cracking that guy open as we settle into our room on the Capital Limited). I guess that the little "perks" aren't as important to me as some, but I was wholly satisfied by my experience on the Cardinal - a Viewliner bedroom is the same regardless of what train you're on, and the food was delicious, the staff was friendly and the scenery was beautiful. It's a real winner of a train in my book.
Yes, we got champaign on the EB and CS, and we're still hauling around one of the bottles that we were given on the Builder (I plan on cracking that guy open as we settle into our room on the Capital Limited). I guess that the little "perks" aren't as important to me as some, but I was wholly satisfied by my experience on the Cardinal - a Viewliner bedroom is the same regardless of what train you're on, and the food was delicious, the staff was friendly and the scenery was beautiful. It's a real winner of a train in my book.
Thanks Ryan, Im on the Card next Thursday CHI-PHL for NTD, my first trip on this route! Really look forward to it, Im with you I dont complain about things like delays, more time on the train! And food just seems to taste better on a LD train! I do complain about rude and lazy OBS and conductors
and totally agree that a Viewliner sleeper is a grand way to travel, I prefer them for sleeping
:lol: as compared to a Superliner with its uptop coffin!(Ive never been in a Viewliner Bedroom since the roomettes do the job, a Superliner bedroom is THE way to go on the Superliners however!)Little perks like bottles of shampoo and cheap wine are nice but a smiley, helpful OBS crew goes a long way for sure! Hope your next post is from the Metro Lounge in CHI waiting on the CL!
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Well I am glad to hear your detailed review. Personally I hope it holds, at least the scenery will remain the same. That is train that hopefully will be coming very close to me here in Illinois should it get routed over to St. Louis which would be real boon to the central midwest. I look forward to riding it from Effingham to Washington or New York with out spending many extra hours sitting in chicago and on the rails getting there. Makes a lot of sense to me.
BlakeTyner
Train Attendant
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
- Messages
- 93
Interesting news item from the Trains News Wire today about the Vegas trains:
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific has thrown cold water on two separate plans to run party trains between Los Angeles and Las Vegas over its rails, the Associated Press has reported. Developers of the competing "X Train" and "Z Train" proposals both plan to use the freight railroad's tracks, but in a letter, UP said it's nowhere near reaching an agreement with either.
The two companies are already in a legal battle over whether one stole the idea from the other. UP's letter further cast into doubt whether either proposal could hold water. Concerned about growing publicity over the trains, the railroad denied being in serious negotiations with either company. It also said it doesn't endorse gambling on its property, though the trains' developers say on-train gambling isn't a necessity.
Meanwhile, two plans for high speed trains linking the two cities have also been drawn up, one using magnetic levitation technology. Both would use isolated rights-of-way and wouldn't need UP's blessing, but both are years from being ready for development.
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific has thrown cold water on two separate plans to run party trains between Los Angeles and Las Vegas over its rails, the Associated Press has reported. Developers of the competing "X Train" and "Z Train" proposals both plan to use the freight railroad's tracks, but in a letter, UP said it's nowhere near reaching an agreement with either.
The two companies are already in a legal battle over whether one stole the idea from the other. UP's letter further cast into doubt whether either proposal could hold water. Concerned about growing publicity over the trains, the railroad denied being in serious negotiations with either company. It also said it doesn't endorse gambling on its property, though the trains' developers say on-train gambling isn't a necessity.
Meanwhile, two plans for high speed trains linking the two cities have also been drawn up, one using magnetic levitation technology. Both would use isolated rights-of-way and wouldn't need UP's blessing, but both are years from being ready for development.
leemell
Conductor
Desertxpress is planning to start construction at the end of this year or EIR approval, if that comes earlier.
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