Should RRD be privatized?

The question comes amid increasing concern about SEPTA finances in the aftermath of the crisis over funding earlier this year. A potential new threat to RRD operations may come from the dissolution or modification of Amtrak as we know it, if it actually occurs. A government agency in Pennsylvania would be obliged to assume responsibility for a substantially increased amount of rail infrastructure were Amtrak to be dissolved or reduced in scope to a Train Operating Company on the British model.

In this context, privatization is being discussed in certain political circles within Pennsylvania, mainly those with conservative Republican agendas.

METRA, the Chicago area transportation agency responsible for operating commuter rail, provides service both in-house and through the use of contract carriers, the UP and BNSF railroads. This has been the case for many years and METRA service is widely regarded as one of the best commuter rail operations in the U.S.

In 2003, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority awarded a contract to the http://www.mbcr.net/Default.htm Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company (MBCR) to provide commuter rail service in the Boston metropolitan area. MBCR is a partnership of three transportation companies: Connex North America, Bombardier and Alternate Concepts, Inc.

On November 12, 2004, the SCRRA board of directors awarded Connex Railroad LLC a contract to provide train operation to Metrolink. Metrolink, moniker for the Los Angeles area commuter rail services, will be transferred to Connex operation on July 1st, 2005.

Britain experienced massive privatization of passenger rail service in the mid 1990’s. The results there are mixed to this day.

During my visit to Britain in 2000, I found that service had, in general, improved for the weekday commuter. Dedicated services for travel between large city centers and airports were an attractive new innovation with heavy passenger loads. Long distance trains were a mixed bag, depending upon their circumstances – some good, some not so good. The perception of the common British citizen at that time was that, while some good had come from privatization, on balance, privatization was a negative experience.

Trying to make sense of the fractured service structure provided by the multitudes of Train Operating Companies was a definite negative from the tourist perspective. The average tourist from the USA, who would likely see little value in using train service (being used to their SUV), would find the process to frustrating and choose another mode of travel. Given the travel situation in London, this is unfortunate as train service should be made as attractive as possible for tourists to relieve the burden on other modes.

Would privatization really make a difference at RRD? That would depend on whether a private railroad corporation would really be able to run RRD more effectively. Would the SEPTA Board really demand accountability from a private operator? Would the remaining SEPTA Staff allow changes to be made without interference? Would the contract of existing union employees be respected? Would new services be introduced or previously abandoned services be reinstated?

It is not clear to me that a private operator is the magic bullet, panacea, etc. for RRD woes. I would agree that the current status quo at SEPTA RRD must change and change dramatically.

What is truly disturbing is that there are groups with a privatization agenda who are trying to advance the cause at any and all opportunities. They want to privatize, good or bad, because of a fundamental philosphical belief. http://www.rppi.org/bostonprivatizes.html

I'd be willing to bet that once its painfully clear that oil continues to get more and more expensive, that transit operations will eventually go in that direction. Maybe this is years off, but I think once that happens to Amtrak, the same model will eventually be applied to local transit agencies.

For one, SEPTA has no incentive to operate efficiently right now. They have no incentive to expand service. If a private company were operating our system right now, do you think the 15 would be operating as a diesel line or a electric trolley?

For those of you who subscribe to conspiracy theories, I have a hunch Bush is trying to dismantle Amtrak solely to put it into the hands of private enterprise to make money. Once the infrastructure is separated from the operation, to the point where the operation alone can make money, private operators will be lining up to run these systems.

Right now, we have no accountability at all. $98 million of our money was spent rehabbing a trolley line, which in itself took 5 years, and we have yet to realize the benefit. No one lost their job, no one got penalized, its just business as usual. I dont think that would be the case if a private operator was involved. If it was their own money that was spent, we wouldn't have any room to complain. But in the case of Route 15, public funds were wasted, as they are everyday on other things SEPTA chooses to waste money on.

Again, I think this is inevitible. If there really is a serious oil crunch coming, and I think its only a matter of time, things will change. I'd bet the farm that if the wells ran dry, things like Newtown service would be put on the hotlist. Back in the day, private railroads built entire lines from scratch in months, not years. Stay tuned.

jfrey40535 wrote:Back in the day, private railroads built entire lines from scratch in months, not years. Stay tuned.

Oh, but back in the day, there wern't any rules like environmental impacts, processes for emniment domain, or even dealing with NIMBYS [they would say "That's progress" and the opponents would have no choice but to sit there and accept it]. When rail lines [and roads ] were built, they just used to say, "Here it is, deal with it." It can't be done today. It takes years to even get permission to plan for a new line.

Another thing to remember is the aspect of private operation that led to the failure of so many systems and the formation of quasi-governmental transit authorities all over the country. As Bill R. pointed out, rail service in the U.K. is now more fragmented and uncoordinated than it was when BR ran the show. Would we want to go back to the days when the PRR and RDG, for all their greatness, had separate schedules, separate fares, and exercised their competitive mojo by building parallel lines on routes that could barely support one, let alone two sets of service?

As horrendous as systems such as SEPTA and MBTA are, at least they provide relatively seamless coverage from one part of their service areas to another. Any sort of private operation would end up having some form of semi-public oversight board to coordinate operations and that starts looking like what we have now, except with still another layer of bureaucracy.

There has to be some middle way between Wild West style privatization as proposed by the Bushies and the near-Soviet mentality that underpins operations like SEPTA. I'm just not sure I have any idea what it would look like.

<i>This has been the case for many years and METRA service is widely regarded as one of the best commuter rail operations in the U.S. </i>

No, METRA is regarded as a great operation by people who never leave the Chicago area. It's otherwise a joke - slow, obsolete locomotives, equipment that sets a new low for passenger friendliness, poor off peak service, zillions of grade crossings and accidents, no ATC in most places. And it's hardly a money saver either.

Granted, government run rail systems in the US suck, but METRA is hardly a shinning example of privatization done well..

Nasadowsk wrote:METRA is regarded as a great operation by people who never leave the Chicago area. It's otherwise a joke - slow, obsolete locomotives, equipment that sets a new low for passenger friendliness, poor off peak service, zillions of grade crossings and accidents, no ATC in most places. And it's hardly a money saver either.

Most of those criticisms have nothing to do with whether the services are operated by the private sector or the public sector--they are a matter of whether the system has had as much capital investment as your LIRR (i.e. electrification, grade separation, additional C&S equipment).

Now the public-sector-operated segment of Metra (primarily the Metra Electric) happens to be better-capitalized than the private segments, but that's not the product of its being public--it's because IC went bankrupt while the Burlington and the North Western (UP) didn't. All that capital investment came long before Metra ever existed.

If you want to make the claim that crew performance, courtesy, etc. are better on the Electric than on the BN and UP systems, go ahead, but I haven't seen any evidence to that.

Would we want to go back to the days when the PRR and RDG, for all their greatness, had separate schedules, separate fares, and exercised their competitive mojo by building parallel lines on routes that could barely support one, let alone two sets of service?

I really wouldn't worry about schedule and fare conflicts if transit systems were privitized again. Look at the airlines and how they have ticket sharing programs where you can transfer a ticket from one airline to another. Parallel lines isn't exactly the end of the world either. Competition in itself should promote efficiency, and of course survival of the fittest. We'll always be dependent on public capital funding to keep things running unfortunately.

The best we can hope for, and what I'd like to get out of our regional system is improved performance and accountability. We have none of that right now. In fact, it almost seems as if SEPTA runs the trains poorly, and makes the trains inaccessible, in the city at least, if not elsewhere, to promote their bus system.

I'd like to actually ride a system where the operators and management appreciate my patronage and strive to keep me as a customer. Does anyone here actually feel like a customer when riding SEPTA (and look beyond your favorite conductor!). We're probablly years off from real change, and I think Bush is going to use Amtrak as the guinea pig.

I would reject the idea that privatizing the railroad, or for that matter keeping it as a public-sector operation but under a separate authority from the transit system will necessarily make the system more fragmented from the passenger's perspective.

Start with the fact that SEPTA has had more than 20 years to run this railroad, yet they've made only small steps towards seamless intermodal travel. We still have no single-trip intermodal fare (except the 200-series routes), schedule coordination is more chance than anything else,and I see little in the way of economies of scale attained.

Meanwhile, San Francisco manages to coordinate fares among something like two dozen independent operators; VRE and MARC cross-honor each other's tickets, and VRE can make arrangements with the Washington Metro for alternate transportation in case of a disruption.

Making a user-friendly transportation system is more a matter of willingness to do it than it is a matter of who is in charge of what.

Matthew Mitchell wrote:

Making a user-friendly transportation system is more a matter of willingness to do it than it is a matter of who is in charge of what.

This is a VERY true statement!--- And the primary question to ask regarding privitization of the RRD is What has changed since the 1960's ( when those lines WERE privately operated) that would make successful private operation any more likely now than it was when the PRR ( actually PC) and Reading gave up the sevice? And remember- SEPTA began with SEPACT--- which was crerated for the purpose of funding state subsidies to the PRR and RDG for those suburban services---- much to the dismay of the Red Arrow Lines' Merritt H. Taylor, Jr.

In retrospect, it was a big mistake to take SEPACT and form SEPTA. We would have been much better off keeping the PRR and RDG propped up rather than make it 'state run'.

What has changed since the 60's? I wasn't around in those days, but I think its safe to say that to some respect, urban decay has been reversed, at least in certain parts of the city. That in itself should be a great benefit to inner city rail operators. We still don't have an abundence of jobs here, and the biggest challenge now is probablly sprawl. While plenty of people still take the train into the city, there is a large growing number who take them out too.

This is where a private transit operation would be great---> having a railroad compete with a bus company for who gets to take people in and out of the city would be a great benefit to all of us.

Right now, I see busloads of people riding the 22 or 55 to work in Willow Grove from Broad & Olney every day. Most probablly choose the bus because of cost and time. While Fern Rock TC is right around the corner, the scheduling probablly isn't convenient, and comparing a $1.30 a ride vs $3.75 isn't anything to sneeze at either. I think a privately run railroad would go more out of its way to steal people away from the bus lines, or for that matter run their own shuttle service to get people to and from their stations.

The problem with all of this, that is I think sometimes missed in this discussion, is this notion of private, competing companies to provide commuter services. Don't take this critique the wrong way, but the above poster's concept of railroads and bus companies competing against each other for the commuter market misses the fact that very few of these operations stand even the smallest chance of paying for their own operating costs, let alone their capital costs. Are you suggesting that the public sector should subsidize two competing modes and competing carriers to serve the same market? To me this sounds like a waste of taxpayer money.

Now, and this isn't the first time I've said this on rr.net, but, here in MBTA land it is amusing to see our commuter rail contract held up as a model of a "privitization sucess," especially when used by a Mr. Mineta to talk about Amtrak solutions (but I digress...). The MBTA commuter rail system isn't privitized, its a publically managed, publically funded system wherein the final opertion is by a private contractor. This is the same as METRA's contracted lines, MetroLink, MARC, VRE, Tri-Rail, etc. It is not the British model of multiple operators, competition, etc. The only private competition is between the different coprorate giants who bid for the contracts periodically when they come up for renewal.

Someone above hit it on the nail -- its not whether the public agency operates the trains or contracts it out -- its all about the will of the agency to "make it work" and "make the customer happy" from top to bottom. Up here, I don't know that many MBTA commuter rail riders would say that the quality of service changed radically with the transition from AMtrak to MBCR (the MBTA never directly operated commuter rail the way SEPTA or NJT do), and I would think that doing an "MBCR approach" with SEPTA's RRD wouldn't substantially alter the daily experience of the railroad rider in Philly. Its all about organizational change, and it will have to come from the top.

Actually, those conditions don't represent as big a change ( from the '60's) as one might think. There is still the problem of heavy peak period usage, with very heavy personnel and equipment requirements, but very sparce usage during other periods, a condition which keeps most of the fleet, and most of the personnel idle for most of the day. This has always been the bane of commuter operations. ( I remember 14 car trains of MP-54's on the Media- West Chester line during peak periods, and between two and four car trains during most other periods-- at least as far as Media.--- and never more than two cars between Media & West Chester).

It is interesting to note that during that same period ( the 1960's) the Red Arrow Lines managed to find ways to equalize its peak period demand and remained profitable right up until its 1970 take-over by SEPTA.

BTW- SEPACT's major problem was that Delaware County, because of the influence of Merritt H. Taylor, refused to join or contribute any funds--even though two of the subsidized PRR suburban lines ran through the county.

jfrey40535 wrote:What has changed since the 60's?

Well for purposes of this discussion, the most significant change is that governments are willing to provide capital and operating funds to rail and transit operators, be they public- or private-sector. Channeling funds into Philadelphia-area commuter rail operation was a rather novel idea in the 60s.

What this means to the discussion over privatization is that it's not an either-or thing--either let the private sector sink or swim or take the system over as a public operation. It also means that the knee-jerk anti-privatization response: 'if the private sector cures all ills, then why aren't private companies lining up to take over responsibility for [Amtrak|SEPTA|etc.]?' is now a red herring.

Regardless of whether the operation is public or private, if it isn't adequately funded, it's going to fail. That's an unfortunate consequence of the way our transportation system is structured--competing modes are subsidized either openly or in a hidden fashion.

No, METRA is regarded as a great operation by people who never leave the Chicago area. It's otherwise a joke

If one is stuck in traffic on I-90, I-190 or I-55, I doubt that the joke would seem too funny and a ride on a gallery car would seem a whole lot better. The "Jamaica Crawl" is where LIRR and Metra are equalized...

And to bottom-line the thread, the RRD was indeed "privatized" from its beginning in the 19th Century up until about the 1970s. Can anyone really visualize the AEM-7s (of both operators in PA) in "Dark Future" or NS Black?

Irish Chieftain wrote: Can anyone really visualize the AEM-7s (of both operators in PA) in "Dark Future" or NS Black?

Ugh! Could anyone visualize a GG1 in PC black?

http://community.webshots.com/photo/286 ... LxNlcZGpMI

http://community.webshots.com/photo/285 ... xdIosvzjpC