My guess is they’ll bark and push Amtrak over some of their issues with Amtrak’s state supported cost accounting but quite possibly their bark will be worse than their bite. Another operator has to want to operate the service which is no guarantee and any non Amtrak operator has to make a profit operating the service which is also never a guarantee. One often misunderstood thing is Amtrak does not have to make a profit or break even operating state supported service. While states pay the primary costs and subsidies as the customer under PRIIA 209, Amtrak often still loses money on a fully allocated cost basis operating PRIIA 209 service even after the state supported payments are factored in (which Amtrak books as passenger revenue) and can earmark operating subsidies from the national network account to cover this - which private operators like Herzog and Keolis can’t do. While obviously there’s always been a lot of questions on how Amtrak assigns costs to various routes, it remains true that Amtrak is the only potential operator backed by federal subsidies - so there’s again no guarantee a private operator can do it cheaper. When operating over freight tracks there’s also advantages related to Amtrak’s statutory access rights. It’s not impossible for other operators to be brought in but it’s far from a sure thing that it would happen - after all there’s a reason Amtrak exists in the first place. If private operators were lining up to operate services all over the country Amtrak would have been privatized or phased out long ago.
I think the more likely outcome is that California and the involved agencies take their objections to the federal level and try to push to get more transparency and rules about how Amtrak assigns costs.
So, there are four services that are tangled up in this discussion: The
Pacific Surfliner, the
Capitol Corridor, the
San Joaquins, and the
Coast Starlight. Let's go down the list:
-The
Pacific Surfliner are probably not going to be changed until a putative Phase 2. Aside from LA-Anaheim, there's no duplication of service in Phase 1, but this would turn the Surfliners into a feeder line in that timeframe.
-The
Capitol Corridor also has no duplication with Phase 1. So, see the above.
-The
San Joaquins are duplicated. My understanding is that a few will remain (as local service to the HSR's express service), and I think there will be a few transfer points.
-The
Coast Starlight is duplicated on paper...but not really. LA-Bay Area
is a significant market, but there's a
lot of intermediate traffic along the coast as well. My guess is that while you'd have some displacement on through passengers heading to/from points north (e.g. LA-Seattle) who could simply take CAHSR to San Jose (or Sacramento, if Phase 2 is ever done), you'll also get some shift in the
Starlight getting some traffic as well for folks who don't want to lose that whole second day. LA-Sacramento-[Starlight] could allow you to leave LA at like 7-8 PM or get into LA before lunch. However, California
has been looking to run a "Coast Daylight" on a similar timetable to help with the local traffic for some time, so this just seems likely to shuffle traffic around and limit such a need (well, at least presuming that Amtrak ever stops being short on equipment).
By the way, Brightline
has listed the Surfliners as a line they'd like to run, and all three state corridors are under separate authorities. My guess is that Amtrak eventually loses the Surfliners, and there's a good chance that the Capitol Corridor eventually goes under some commuter authority.
