"Why train tickets are so expensive."

[George K]

It's not like the writer has an agenda or anything.

https://www.thehour.com/technology/...lost-money-every-year-since-1971-13721690.php

But here's what's really sticking in my craw:

"According to Amtrak's company profile, it operated approximately 300 trains a day in 2017. In comparison, SNCF, the French National Railway Company, operated 14,000 trains daily. That's 47 times more trains, serving a nation that has one-quarter of the population of the United States."
​

Made me wonder: Does SNCF also operate commuter lines, light rail, streetcars, etc? I wonder how many trains run in the US taking all of those into consideration.

 

[jis]

One partly owned subsidiary of SNCF named Keolis operates trams, buses and such, and also partially owns further subsidiaries that operate commuter service in the UK.

Rest of SNCF and its subsidiaries do not have anything to do with trams, but do operate commuter service specially around Paris either by itself (e.g. RER-C and Transilien banlieu service) or in collaboration with RATP in some cases (E.g. RER-B).

To compare SNCF on an apples to apples basis in the US one would need to count all commuter service on the NEC at least and perhaps a few more. In fact it is hard to do a fair apples to apples comparison because the corporate and governance structure of rail transportation is so different in the US from almost anywhere else in the world.

Bottom line is that the paragraph quoted above while sounding impressive is actually a bogus comparison. A better comparison would have been between SNCF Mobilites (possibly minus its Transilien subdivision which is mostly commuter) and Amtrak.

 

[spinnaker]

I hate to say it but train tickets are probably not expensive enough. The taxpayer should not be footing so much of the bill At least in the case of commuter rail the taxpayer probably should assume some responsibility because the train serves the greater good (reduces car traffic, air pollution, makes the area a more attractive place to live etc). And U guess some of that could be said for LD trains.

I know I would be willing to pay more if I had to. Not exactly sure where the break point is or where others would stop paying to seek alternate forms of transportation.

 

[Anderson]

Reading the article, I think there's a core element that was missed. The article really doesn't discuss the lack of economies of scale that are a real problem for Amtrak in several contexts:
-A lot of station expenses are either fixed (the station itself) or at least not entirely flexible.
-Others won't be heavily affected barring a massive schedule expansion (for example, adding hours for more trains).
-And yet others will scale, but at below a 1:1 rate (such as yard ops and the like).

So in some cases, going to a hypothetical hourly schedule around-the-clock would result in a 24x increase in service while likely only tripling or quadrupling staffing and some other costs. In more than a few cases, you wouldn't even have that...between BUF, ROC, SYR, and ALB you would only add about eight or nine station-hours per day (across the four stations) with around-the-clock trains. Granted, this is on a 4x daily corridor (for three of those stations) and at the end of a high-frequency corridor (for Albany) but the point still generally stands.

Moreover, one thing I have observed is that when Amtrak (or a state) go to a railroad to ask for one more train they get taken to the cleaners. If they were going in and asking for a dozen more trains, the deal would likely be more equitable (or would be big enough to simply involve the purchase of the line in lieu of haggling over slots). As I've often phrased it, "To a freight railroad, one train per day is an annoyance. One train per hour is their biggest customer." Everything scales, and at some point you become a big enough operation for the freight operator to take you seriously without having to solely rely on the force of lawsuits.

 

[jis]

If not purchase, at least long term lease of the line, as happened in case of Pughkeepsie to Hoffmans on the Empire Corridor.

Actually there is some evidence that as an owner of ROW even to Amtrak one train a day is annoyance. Look at the sorry state of the Post Road owned by Amtrak to connect from Albany Station to the CSX Boston Line, which carries just the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited each day.

 

[Anderson]

I think Anderson's comments also speak to this. In a sense I don't think the animus towards the LD network has necessarily as much to do with "Nobody wants to ride these trains" as it does "We're maintaining all these facilities and messy access agreements for very thin service that is inefficient in equipment terms" (for example, I can think of multiple trains that sit at one endpoint or the other for 20-30 hours [1]).

I want to say there was a thread I did at one point on here involving single-level LD equipment, and IIRC equipment utilization steadily increased as you expanded the pool (we basically start out around 80% now and you get close to 90% with less downtime on an equipment pool that is 4x the current size on the same footprint) because of a mix of what a single protect car covers and because you can get to a point in both NYC and Chicago where it becomes efficient to just have a spare train sitting there...which in turn gives you room to more tightly schedule equipment turns (since you have room to simply have all of the physical equipment "take one step to the right" in the equipment rotation if an inbound train is late) [2].

[1] The Meteor and Crescent in New York, the Chief and Builder in Chicago, the Capitol Limited in Washington...

[2] For example, if you get to the point that instead of having four daily LD trains out of NYC (Meteor, Star, Crescent, and LSL) you have seven (add the Capitol Limited [converted to single-level], Cardinal, and Palmetto [extended]) or eight (also add a Broadway Limited), you probably "save" one or two trainsets at New York depending on timing and equipment cycling.

 

[Gary Behling]

I hate to say it but train tickets are probably not expensive enough. The taxpayer should not be footing so much of the bill At least in the case of commuter rail the taxpayer probably should assume some responsibility because the train serves the greater good (reduces car traffic, air pollution, makes the area a more attractive place to live etc). And U guess some of that could be said for LD trains.

I know I would be willing to pay more if I had to. Not exactly sure where the break point is or where others would stop paying to seek alternate forms of transportation.

The taxpayer absolutely SHOULD be helping Amtrak----just as it does with Airlines, airports and roads for cars, trucks and busses

 

[sttom]

I hate to say it but train tickets are probably not expensive enough. The taxpayer should not be footing so much of the bill At least in the case of commuter rail the taxpayer probably should assume some responsibility because the train serves the greater good (reduces car traffic, air pollution, makes the area a more attractive place to live etc). And U guess some of that could be said for LD trains.

I know I would be willing to pay more if I had to. Not exactly sure where the break point is or where others would stop paying to seek alternate forms of transportation.

Never mind that airports get twice the capital than Amtrak gets in subsidies each year. Or that highways get at least 40% of their maintenance funds from the Federal government...if rail were to get the same treatment as highways, 75% of their capital needs for new routes would be paid by Congress without question and it would get a 40% operational subsidy.

As for SNCF running more trains, they put money into trains. At least more than we have. We could very easily have a comparable rail system, but we need to have a conversation about the subsidies mentioned above. If you look at historical numbers and numbers world wide, giving Amtrak and to a lesser extent the railways that level of funding would pay itself back in economic activity, where as highways are a perpetual money sink.

 

[Ryan]

I hate to say it but train tickets are probably not expensive enough. The taxpayer should not be footing so much of the bill

How much of the bill do you think is covered y the taxpayer now, and how much do you believe is appropriate?

 

[jis]

In addition what proportion of the road maintenance bill that everyone uses is actually footed by road users, and not the general public irrespective of whether they use the road or not? I think every road should be tolled so that only actual users get to pay for each segment. The technology now exists to put such a thing in place. This is being done in congestion priced CBDs already to some extent. But watch everyone rise in arms if anyone actually tries to do that. Just imagine. All gas taxes go to zero for everyone, and the exodus from the hinterland accelerates due to unaffordable road toll costs, reflecting the realities of what things actually cost.

And then it will become so much easier to privatize roads so that everyone living in Podunk can take over their own roads and put in place luxury boulevards in place of the dirt road, which in reality is the only thing that is affordable. But of course, if enough foreign tourists can be enticed into using the extravagance, it will pay for itself and then some.

 

[spinnaker]

Never mind that airports get twice the capital than Amtrak gets in subsidies each year. Or that highways get at least 40% of their maintenance funds from the Federal government...if rail were to get the same treatment as highways, 75% of their capital needs for new routes would be paid by Congress without question and it would get a 40% operational subsidy.

As for SNCF running more trains, they put money into trains. At least more than we have. We could very easily have a comparable rail system, but we need to have a conversation about the subsidies mentioned above. If you look at historical numbers and numbers world wide, giving Amtrak and to a lesser extent the railways that level of funding would pay itself back in economic activity, where as highways are a perpetual money sink.

Not that I am disagreeing with you but this country decided long ago that the major forms of transportation are going to be highway and air.

I don't know how that happened. I remember reading years ago in my Weekly Reader how trains would be everywhere. To the point where many large companies would have their own spur. Other companies would be served by local trucking but most of the shipping would all be done by rail.

As far as the interstate system, I would have no trouble paying a fee to use it. As long as taxpayer funding was eliminated or at least reduced.

 

[spinnaker]

How much of the bill do you think is covered y the taxpayer now, and how much do you believe is appropriate?

What does it matter how much?> The fact is that is is subsidized by the taxpayer. Why is it fair that someone who never uses Amtrak should need to pay for it? What is fair is what it costs plus a modest profit. Actually for a private company, what is fair is whatever they choose to charge. The cost and their profit is irrelevant. That is assuming they don't have a monopoly or are gouging in an emergency situation.


The argument for federal funded highways, at least most people benefit. While they might not use the highways directly, they still get goods delivered using the highway system. But even then it could be argued that the users of the highways pay for the upkeep and development.

 

[sttom]

The argument for federal funded highways, at least most people benefit. While they might not use the highways directly, they still get goods delivered using the highway system. But even then it could be argued that the users of the highways pay for the upkeep and development.

Highways have never paid for themselves directly, railways existed as a private venture largely without subsidies beyond land grants. Highways have always needed massive amounts of money to exist. This is before we get into how much traffic costs out economy on a yearly basis or how Amtrak could turn a profit, but Amtrak was never meant to survive, it was meant to rot on the vine until it died. BTW We spend $175 billion per year on highways to lose $305 billion to traffic in 2018, for reference, 20 years earlier we lost about $51 billion.

As for the pay off, even the federal government admits that rail saves them money on road maintenance and studies show that access to reliable rail services strengthens economies. Mostly because if you walk places you tend to impulse spend more time and money in your community. Then there is the fact that upgrading railways is far cheaper than building out new highways. When rail is upgraded, you generally don't have to buy a quarter mile wide swath of land like when building a highway that will eventually get crowded and start being a drain on the economy.

My point is, the rail tends to justify its cost in a far faster than roads do (which some never do). Here is a study done by APTA about commuter rail, from my digging, expanded Amtrak corridor service tends to pay of at a similar scale when there are multiple trips per day 7 days per week.
https://www.apta.com/resources/repo...Commuter_Rail_Suburban_Urban_Economy_1997.pdf

 

[Ryan]

What does it matter how much?> The fact is that is is subsidized by the taxpayer. Why is it fair that someone who never uses Amtrak should need to pay for it?

So you don’t know how much is borne by the taxpayer, but whatever it is, that’s too much?

There are plenty of things that I don’t use that my tax dollars go to. That’s how society works.

 

[NSC1109]

So you don’t know how much is borne by the taxpayer, but whatever it is, that’s too much?

There are plenty of things that I don’t use that my tax dollars go to. That’s how society works.

An even better example is to think about it like wages. The government works for us, or it’s supoosed to anyway. We pay taxes to them so they can operate. It’s just like our employers paying us wages for working. The companies have to give us our money, but they can’t say how we use it. The general idea is the same: we HAVE to pay taxes. But we can’t really tell the government how to spend it. Granted it’s more complicated than that (you can voice your objections or support to your representatives and things have to go through the legal system) but at the very-high-level, it’s the same idea.

 

[danmcfarling]

Subsidy. Detractors of Amtrak often refer to the fact that "Amtrak is subsidized." Yes, Amtrak receives some subsidy. But let's look at the whole truth.

Generally speaking, railways are the ONLY mode of transport in the USA expected to rely on private investment to:

1. Acquire additional right-of-way.
2. Develop infrastructure on that right-of-way.
3. Maintain infrastructure.
4. Provide security and safety on and about their infrastructure (railway companies, including Amtrak, have their own police force).
5. Provide traffic control within their infrastructure, as well as between other modes of transport (such as drawbridges and grade crossings).

Furthermore, most railroad right-of-way and infrastructure are taxed by government entities.

This is generally not true of any other mode of transport. Highway, aviation, and waterway infrastructure is provided, maintained, policed and provided traffic control by federal, state and local governments and as such is not taxed. User fees are generally inadequate to sufficiently maintain and create said infrastructure. Railway companies subsidize their competition.

During economic downturns, national, state and local governments often use tax dollars to improve infrastructure in an appropriate effort to create jobs and stimulate the economy. This investment is often focused on improving and expanding capacity of highway, aviation and waterway infrastructure rather than privately-held railroad infrastructure. Conversely, during dips in economic activity, railroad companies – beholden to stock holders – often are forced to downsize infrastructure, and are understandably conservative with regard to investment/expansion during prosperous times.

Limited railroad infrastructure, compared to that of other modes of transport, is the root cause of delays to both freight and passenger trains. Such delays increase costs and reduce patronage and revenue. Creating adequate and appropriate infrastructure for all modes of transport is what our nation needs to thrive, and doing so will highlight the safety, speed, comfort, fuel-efficiency, and appreciation of the environment that passenger trains – and railroads in general – provide.

An efficient, effective transportation system is dependent upon the sensible utilization of all modes of transport: highway, aviation, waterway and rail.