Fred Frailey Column- "It's Time"

[David Benton]

"Socialist" countries generally have universal pensions, provided by the government.But its a bit hard to follow an argument that something is good or successful because Insurance companies and pension funds invest in them. these arguments can go around in circles and are not overly relevant to Amtrak long distance trains.
I would like to know what would make LD trains acceptable to the anti LD posters.
- Covering their direct costs, i.e the cost of running hem less the cost of stopping them ?
-Doubling their payment to host railroads , Trile , whatever ?
- Making a small profit?

I don't buy that Amtrak LD is a complete basketcase. I think it would be possible to cover their direct costs , or come close. We can ignore capital costs because they are ignored for the NEC , corridor and virtually every other mode. I do think they could be made more efficient at the least. The ideas and concepts have been trashed out on here , in the Priia reports and Congress, Amtrak has done virtually nothing to make fundamental changes. It seems to be hellbent on showing any change makes alot of negatives , with little savings. Al a food on the LSL. I think there is at least a subconscious feeling that costs can be loaded on the LS's , because they are politically untouchable.
Fred's column comes up with several ideas , that could at least be tried on one route to gauge the response. Does anyone expect Amtrak to try any of them ???
That dead inertia seems to be built in to any old institution , public or private. It takes generations to change it, unless something drastic happens.

[Gilbert B Norman]

Mr. Benton. "cutting to the chase", pay the roads the opportunity cost of the train they cannot run and that provides the investors with a return, which at the reported existing rates, the Amtrak train does not.

[mtuandrew]

Mr. Benton. "cutting to the chase", pay the roads the opportunity cost of the train they cannot run and that provides the investors with a return, which at the reported existing rates, the Amtrak train does not.

Honestly, this seems fair and a good-faith effort on the part of the government, even if it means not making up as much of the Amtrak operating subsidy. The two issues are:
—if the railroad believes the opportunity cost of Amtrak is $Infinity meaning that they passenger service as an absolute no, in which case Amtrak needs guaranteed access to at least start the process of how to run on a difficult line, and
—if the railroad believes the opportunity cost is $(intermodal rate)x10 or something else unreasonable, in which case a neutral arbiter to determine a true and fair cost.

The answer may well be a return to T&E crew being supplied by the host lines so as to treat the off-corridor trains as haulage-rights consists rather than as a foreign move under trackage rights. There may also be some value in privatizing the on-board service. I see minimal benefit in both regards, but I don’t have access to any of the books.

Regardless, the LD trains have value both as they stand and with potential value given capacity, timeliness, and speed improvements.

[Gilbert B Norman]

I wonder how a "grand bargain", such as was made during 1969 between the ICC and the SP, would sail today?

The "bargain"; get one or two off, in exchange for restored amenities, and on-time performance on the others.

During 1969, the SP, likely the most anti-passenger road out there, and the ICC struck a deal that allowed the frequency to be reduced from Daily to Tri-Weekly, in exchange for restoring the amenities to the then-Coach and Automat "Sunset". Thus, Sleepers - including a through NY-LA line, full service Dining (Automat stayed for the "folks back there", and on-time performance.

Based on a December 1970 ride NO to El Paso, SP lived up to their side. #1 left NO about an hour late owing to a late L&N 99, Pan-American. The passengers, one of such being me, were transferred on the platforms of the then-closed Carrollton Ave. station, and figures me, "Murphy's Law" will take hold.

Was I ever mistaken; while enjoying a great "Dinner in the Diner", it first looked like the best would be to "hold its own". But once clear of the swampland, it was off to the races with freights held for meets and runarounds. Next morning after San Antonio, largely on time, and way early into El Paso.

Now I realize the benefit, i.e. getting a route killed, would inure only to the road affected, but would inure to all Amtrak passengers with full service Dining, wine tastings, and, where whacked, Lounge service.

Something to think about?

[mtuandrew]

Mr. Norman: that also assumes that the government loosens or eliminates the break-even food service requirement as written into Federal code. Also, if UP loses one (presumably the Sunset Limited), what prevents other roads from insisting they also be released from the burden of one each? That’s a quick way to lose the Crescent, the Southwest Chief, the Cardinal, and the Adirondack (covering both CP and CN’s shares) in part or full, for no particular gain to Amtrak.

Ironically, while your grand bargain does reduce Amtrak’s operating deficit, it’s also counterproductive to eliminating LD service totally in that it presumably makes the other routes presumably more popular by providing more amenities. That also increases public pressure to reinstate the curtailed routes.

[ExCon90]

Generally, reducing a train from daily to triweekly doesn't cut costs as much as it cuts revenue, worsening the cost-benefit ratio instead of improving it. Also, there is so little LD service left today there's almost nothing left to trade off. If you're running the Argonaut and the Imperial as well as the Sunset and the Golden State, you can offer to trade off the first two by improving the remaining two-=but on today's Amtrak the Argonaut and the Imperial are already gone.

[Tadman]

I think those "Grand Bargains" were made in a time with a much different context. The SP case was not the only one. CNW made such a case with Chicago, where they would buy new gallery cars in exchange for being able to drop inner city scoot stops. NYC cut a deal with NY state so they could implement Empire service with regular schedules and food in exchange for dropping their LD "Great Steel Fleet" to Chicago and STL.

The grand bargains were made in the context of the time, which reflected the ideas that a complete dropping of passenger service might not ever occur, deregulation might not ever occur, passenger subsidy might not ever occur, and many roads were heavily in the red. PC was already bankrupt and LV, Rock, MILW, EL, CNJ, Annie, D&H, were all at or near bankruptcy. The grand bargain made a huge difference on bottom lines and cut losses significantly, but those operations still were not cheap.

Today, the context is that trackage has been heavily rationalized and all roads are deregulated. The money is good but capacity is tight, too tight, because in the interim between 1967 and 2019, we had 1985, where it wasn't apparent things were ever going to come back. Trackage was right-sized for 1985, and then the empty land from old yards and terminals was sold. I know a couple of lawyers that make some serious coin facilitating the sale of old former yard and station areas. That was how many bondholders of the pre-Conrail roads were paid off. Roberty Yanosey of Morning Sun books started the book with the proceeds he made from the sale of CNJ stock long after the road was given to Conrail, for similar reasons.

TLDR, it's not surprising to see how the economic pressures of the time in 1967, 1985, and 2019 have hobbled the passenger train. We'll probably never have 1967's long distance passenger train network because of where we forced the railroads into in 1967. Times were really bad, and it was largely a result of regulatory hazards.

If I had one suggestion, it's that a railroad property trust is created. When trackage or land is rationalized, it goes into the trust rather than being abandoned, eliminating the requirement to revert to prior land owners. When it's needed again, it goes up for sale to highest bidder. This would alleviate the problems we've seen lately about re-laying second mains and abandoned secondary routes.

But it might be a bit too late.

[mtuandrew]

If I had one suggestion, it's that a railroad property trust is created. When trackage or land is rationalized, it goes into the trust rather than being abandoned, eliminating the requirement to revert to prior land owners. When it's needed again, it goes up for sale to highest bidder. This would alleviate the problems we've seen lately about re-laying second mains and abandoned secondary routes.

But it might be a bit too late.

That’s more or less the idea behind railbanking. The company banking the line gives it over to government control (usually a local railroad authority) and if traffic patterns change, can then file to reactivate the line. Should another company wish to activate the railbanked line and file an appeal to do so, the company that did the banking (or its corporate successor) has the right to reactivate it first but does not have the right to keep the line fallow if it has been duly banked.

When reactivated, I do not know if the property is conveyed back to the railroad or if it is kept in government hands. In practice, I also don’t know whether railbanking will ever actually serve the purpose of restoring rail connectivity, because it has become a code word for rail-trailing. It is an optional process too — that ought to change, I believe, and the public and industry ought to be able to appeal a decision to abandon and sell rail property that is in the public interest to keep banked instead (particularly main and branch track, not industrial for the most part.)

[Tadman]

In practice, I also don’t know whether railbanking will ever actually serve the purpose of restoring rail connectivity, because it has become a code word for rail-trailing. It is an optional process too — that ought to change, I believe, and the public and industry ought to be able to appeal a decision to abandon and sell rail property that is in the public interest to keep banked instead (particularly main and branch track, not industrial for the most part.)

This is my frustration with railbanking. Because it goes to a local authority, they do what NIMBYs and voters want, which is not running ugly smelly bad trains. I'm not aware of any stretch of railbanked property that has been reactivated for that reason. Also witness the HHPA/NKP debacle in Fishers, Indiana, recently. What a MESS. You had a bunch of museum guys with their head in the sky refusing to get along with other museum guys or local authorities, Iowa Pacific was involved for a hot minute, old rolling stock and bad track where developers wanted to build... it was an easy target for the local pols.

Given that railroads are mostly interestate commerce, and thus a federal matter, I wish railbank or a similar trust were federal. It would allow for less trail-robbing and abandonment-by-railbanking.

Can you imagine if the Monon Indy line and C&WI lines were still broadly available? A viable Chicago-to-Indy route would be available now, giving the Card and Hoosier State a far better chance. As it is, there is no way Carmel residents would give up their bike train in favor of trains. That has less chance than landing a man on Pluto.

[Nasadowsk]

This is my frustration with railbanking. Because it goes to a local authority, they do what NIMBYs and voters want, which is not running ugly smelly bad trains

Sounds like a problem the railroad created, not the NIMBYs. If the RR can't be a good neighbor, then too bad. There's zero reason a train, especially a passenger one, needs to go around blasting everyone out of their skin at every crossing, running around with inane bells binging all the time (I've still yet to figure out what the hell a ring bell is supposed to do for anything...), running locomotives that make the average airliner quiet by comparison, blocking crossings, and begin general pests to everyone. And hiding behind "Interstate commerce you can't do anything about it HAHAHAHA!" instead of, you know, not being a crappy neighbor...

But if that's what the industry wants, it shouldn't be irritated that nobody wants trains near them. We all have that one crappy neighbor on our block. And if we had the power to keep them from moving in, we'd exercise it. If passenger RRs stopped being that one neighbor, folks wouldn't be opposed to them moving in.

[JoeBas]

Mr. Benton. "cutting to the chase", pay the roads the opportunity cost of the train they cannot run and that provides the investors with a return, which at the reported existing rates, the Amtrak train does not.

This "Opportunity Cost" argument is, for the most part, specious at best and hogwash at worst, in the vast majority of cases.

Unless and until capacity constraints are such that the running of the Amtrak Train causes a Class-I to not run a train they would otherwise have run, and/or not carry cargo that they otherwise would have carried, had it not been for the presence of said Amtrak train, the opportunity cost is exactly zero. Yes, capacity is more constrained - it's nowhere near 100% at the present time under normal (I.E. Non-Irrops) operations.

I'd be happy to see cited, documented examples of Class-I's turning shippers away due to "Passenger Train Interference", and will wait politely (and forever, I'm sure) for such a citation.

[mtuandrew]

JoeBas: can I friendly that motion to even include loss of business due to not being able to run trains as fast as desired, or with the most advantageous routing, due to Amtrak interference? I think it’ll still be a vanishingly low percentage, excluding of course Amtrak-owned track.

[ExCon90]

I'd be happy to see cited, documented examples of Class-I's turning shippers away due to "Passenger Train Interference", and will wait politely (and forever, I'm sure) for such a citation.

It is often the case that the shipper turns away from the Class I because of unreliable performance owing to the Amtrak train not showing up at the same time two days running. Amtrak and the railroads sit down regularly and work out a schedule by which the hotter freight trains are fleeted closely behind Amtrak, which should keep Amtrak and the Class I out of each other's hair; this is negated if Amtrak, for reasons of its own, isn't able to get there in time to fill its slot--or, once in its slot, has an engine failure that ties up everything behind it. Some well-known, demanding shippers who pay for performance will find an alternative if this sort of thing keeps happening. Documented examples would involve proprietary information which is not made public.

[JoeBas]

It is often the case that the shipper turns away from the Class I because of unreliable performance owing to the Amtrak train not showing up at the same time two days running. Amtrak and the railroads sit down regularly and work out a schedule by which the hotter freight trains are fleeted closely behind Amtrak, which should keep Amtrak and the Class I out of each other's hair; this is negated if Amtrak, for reasons of its own, isn't able to get there in time to fill its slot--or, once in its slot, has an engine failure that ties up everything behind it. Some well-known, demanding shippers who pay for performance will find an alternative if this sort of thing keeps happening. Documented examples would involve proprietary information which is not made public.

So then, that would be no, no citation. I would love to hear even general, attributable examples of this "often times shippers turning away from rail" because of Amtrak inconsistency. If it happens so often, that should be a low enough bar to meet.

And IME, when Amtrak shows up late, Amtrak gets shoved in the hole. Late trains get later.

Less "vague threats of inefficiency", more documentation please.

[Tadman]

I'd be happy to see cited, documented examples of Class-I's turning shippers away due to "Passenger Train Interference", and will wait politely (and forever, I'm sure) for such a citation.

That's not always how the industry works. They don't necessarily take one train off to fit another. They change scheduling and dispatching, shorten or lengthen trains, combine or split up trains, re-route trains over other routes, build or lengthen sidings. It's absolutely not a binary issue.

And if you do want a case of this happening, South Shore Freight declined to let Amtrak in on trackage rights over NICTD around 2008 because of lack of capacity. UP declined to let Amtrak Sunset go daily because of capacity. BNSF declined to move the Chief to southern transcon because of capacity issues. Amtrak just bought a third main for NS in Indiana due to congestion. When rights are declined, it’s because it would slow traffic velocity enough to the point that revenue wouldn’t leave enough margin to run the train profitably. Thus they either decline the passenger train or a freight train.