Save Our Trains Michigan
Conductor
Writer laments Amtrak's on-time problems
(The following column, "Coast Starlight isn’t only Amtrak train with on-time problems," was written by Steve Ford of the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer.)
Perhaps the notion of arriving at the airport hours ahead of departure and then hurtling through the sky among the company of who knows whom has for some reason lost its appeal. Aha – we’ll take the train!
Now, when do we leave and when do we get there ... you mean you can’t really tell? So just what kind of railroad are we running here?
That’s a question doubtless being asked more often these days by exasperated riders on the Amtrak trains servicing the Tar Heel State. Ridership has been building steadily, while on-time performance, at least on one route, has been deteriorating toward levels suggesting that the schedule just can’t be taken seriously.
That train is the Carolinian, which runs between Charlotte and New York by way of Raleigh and Washington. The N&O’s transportation writer, Bruce Siceloff, reported the other day that the Carolinian this summer has managed to arrive as scheduled only 13 percent of the time.
A northbound traveler whom my wife and I put on the train in Cary a couple of months ago, departing close to the scheduled 10:43 a.m., was a couple of hours past the advertised time of 5:08 p.m. getting into D.C. And the edition of the Carolinian heading back here each day from the Northeast – it’s due in Raleigh at 4:42 p.m. – isn’t one to set your watch by.
Experience also points up problems with the other long-distance train through Raleigh and Cary, the New York-to-Florida Silver Star. We recently spent a peaceful extra couple of hours waiting for the Silver Star to pull up by the new platform on the south side of Cary’s downtown depot. Another person there, needing to make it to Camden, S.C., that evening, out of desperation called a cab. (He finally decided to wait for the train after all, and his patience was rewarded.)
The finger of blame for these frustrating delays tends to point not at Amtrak but at the freight companies whose rails Amtrak uses.
Consider those slowdowns between here and Washington. They typically are caused by congestion on the CSX line north of the key junction at Selma and up into Virginia. There simply are too many trains, including freights, competing for too little trackage.
Especially at a time when dicey oil supplies make highway travel more and more expensive, and when the airlines and the government are in a constant battle of wits with suicidal terrorists, it’s hard not to conclude that this country has been inexcusably shortsighted in managing its rail capacity. Even without a national railroad, investment never should have been allowed to lag the way it has.
But now for some good news: By 2012 or thereabouts, it may be possible to hop a train in Raleigh and get to Washington in about four hours. A trip between the capital and Charlotte could be over in not much more than two hours, making same-day travel for business or pleasure (you’re a banker, or a Panthers fan) even more of a live option.
The wheels are grinding slowly but deliberately on the ambitious Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor, planned to extend in its first phase between Washington and Charlotte. A route has been chosen from several alternatives. Environmental and engineering work is in progress.
For North Carolina, the project will have a back-to-the-future aspect. Folks who were around Raleigh 20-plus years ago remember when passenger trains stopped not at the current Amtrak station on Cabarrus Street, but at the station north of downtown now pleasantly occupied by Logan Trading Co., the garden and gift center. From there they followed the old Seaboard tracks up through Henderson and Norlina, then into Virginia and on to Petersburg and Richmond.
Well, those tracks proved a bother for CSX to maintain. So darned if the company didn’t rip them up north of Norlina. That’s when passenger traffic through Raleigh was routed on its dogleg down through Garner and Clayton to the CSX main line at Selma.
The high-speed project would revive use of the old corridor. Tracks would have to be rebuilt, but there’s lots of reconstruction involved in any case when the idea is to have trains safely zipping along at top speeds of 110 miles per hour.
Construction financing, at an estimated $2.6 billion, would be mostly federal, but the government anticipates even greater public benefits. Meanwhile, it’s believed that there’s enough demand for this kind of service in the Southeast that operating costs would be entirely covered from passenger fares.
Rebuilding that abandoned track through southside Virginia would have the extra advantage of freeing up more space on existing lines for both passenger trains and freights, making the whole network more functional.
There’s a lot of money involved, and no shortage of burdens these days on the federal treasury. But if the high-speed project actually pans out, it could change the travel habits of plenty of North Carolinians who’d rather leave the driving to the engineer and flying to the birds.
August 17, 2006
(The following column, "Coast Starlight isn’t only Amtrak train with on-time problems," was written by Steve Ford of the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer.)
Perhaps the notion of arriving at the airport hours ahead of departure and then hurtling through the sky among the company of who knows whom has for some reason lost its appeal. Aha – we’ll take the train!
Now, when do we leave and when do we get there ... you mean you can’t really tell? So just what kind of railroad are we running here?
That’s a question doubtless being asked more often these days by exasperated riders on the Amtrak trains servicing the Tar Heel State. Ridership has been building steadily, while on-time performance, at least on one route, has been deteriorating toward levels suggesting that the schedule just can’t be taken seriously.
That train is the Carolinian, which runs between Charlotte and New York by way of Raleigh and Washington. The N&O’s transportation writer, Bruce Siceloff, reported the other day that the Carolinian this summer has managed to arrive as scheduled only 13 percent of the time.
A northbound traveler whom my wife and I put on the train in Cary a couple of months ago, departing close to the scheduled 10:43 a.m., was a couple of hours past the advertised time of 5:08 p.m. getting into D.C. And the edition of the Carolinian heading back here each day from the Northeast – it’s due in Raleigh at 4:42 p.m. – isn’t one to set your watch by.
Experience also points up problems with the other long-distance train through Raleigh and Cary, the New York-to-Florida Silver Star. We recently spent a peaceful extra couple of hours waiting for the Silver Star to pull up by the new platform on the south side of Cary’s downtown depot. Another person there, needing to make it to Camden, S.C., that evening, out of desperation called a cab. (He finally decided to wait for the train after all, and his patience was rewarded.)
The finger of blame for these frustrating delays tends to point not at Amtrak but at the freight companies whose rails Amtrak uses.
Consider those slowdowns between here and Washington. They typically are caused by congestion on the CSX line north of the key junction at Selma and up into Virginia. There simply are too many trains, including freights, competing for too little trackage.
Especially at a time when dicey oil supplies make highway travel more and more expensive, and when the airlines and the government are in a constant battle of wits with suicidal terrorists, it’s hard not to conclude that this country has been inexcusably shortsighted in managing its rail capacity. Even without a national railroad, investment never should have been allowed to lag the way it has.
But now for some good news: By 2012 or thereabouts, it may be possible to hop a train in Raleigh and get to Washington in about four hours. A trip between the capital and Charlotte could be over in not much more than two hours, making same-day travel for business or pleasure (you’re a banker, or a Panthers fan) even more of a live option.
The wheels are grinding slowly but deliberately on the ambitious Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor, planned to extend in its first phase between Washington and Charlotte. A route has been chosen from several alternatives. Environmental and engineering work is in progress.
For North Carolina, the project will have a back-to-the-future aspect. Folks who were around Raleigh 20-plus years ago remember when passenger trains stopped not at the current Amtrak station on Cabarrus Street, but at the station north of downtown now pleasantly occupied by Logan Trading Co., the garden and gift center. From there they followed the old Seaboard tracks up through Henderson and Norlina, then into Virginia and on to Petersburg and Richmond.
Well, those tracks proved a bother for CSX to maintain. So darned if the company didn’t rip them up north of Norlina. That’s when passenger traffic through Raleigh was routed on its dogleg down through Garner and Clayton to the CSX main line at Selma.
The high-speed project would revive use of the old corridor. Tracks would have to be rebuilt, but there’s lots of reconstruction involved in any case when the idea is to have trains safely zipping along at top speeds of 110 miles per hour.
Construction financing, at an estimated $2.6 billion, would be mostly federal, but the government anticipates even greater public benefits. Meanwhile, it’s believed that there’s enough demand for this kind of service in the Southeast that operating costs would be entirely covered from passenger fares.
Rebuilding that abandoned track through southside Virginia would have the extra advantage of freeing up more space on existing lines for both passenger trains and freights, making the whole network more functional.
There’s a lot of money involved, and no shortage of burdens these days on the federal treasury. But if the high-speed project actually pans out, it could change the travel habits of plenty of North Carolinians who’d rather leave the driving to the engineer and flying to the birds.
August 17, 2006
