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November 01, 2007
Amtrakin'
Given how underfunded Amtrak is, it's not exactly weird that their service is so poor, but it is a shame. So it's good news that Congress is considering a significant boost in funding for the beleaguered rail system. It's true that America doesn't have the density to support a train infrastructure like that of Europe's, but parts of America certainly do, and in those areas, Amtrak just isn't funded well enough to be a competitive option. This, of course, creates a rough cycle in which a poor reputation drives away customers, which in turn increases fares and lowers service quality, which in turn harms the reputation, which in turn drives away customers, which...
In answer to this, some conservatives suggest Amtrak should be able to stand on its own two feet. But is that fair? Last year, Congress appropriated $40 billion in highway funding -- that goes to maintenance and new road construction. And a similar sum is appropriated every year. Amtrak received around a billion. In 2002, the nearest year for which I can find cross-statistics, Congress appropriated $14 billion for the FAA and air travel, $32 billion for highways, and $521 million for Amtrak. Between 1971 and 2001, Air and Highways received 62 times the funding Amtrak did. That the train system isn't as plush should not, under those circumstances, come as a surprise.
Also, see Ryan Avent for more on this topic.
November 1, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Why isn't Amtrak more like a toll road than a public road? Would it make sense to subsidize highways if they were operated as private toll roads?
Posted by: henry evans | Nov 1, 2007 9:35:48 AM
an infusion of funding into our rail system
would be wonderful!
most beautiful journey in america...
is the amtrak "southwest chief"
or the "empire builder",
across the northern and southwest routes
of america.
the trains are living legends,
tracking through time.
rolling through midnight whistlestops
and sharing breakfast and sunrises
with a wonderful cast of characters,
through historical,indescribable backcountry,
mountains, canyons and heartland.
california, arizona, new mexico, colorado,
kansas, missouri, indiana and illinois...
or, the northern route
through washington, oregon, idaho, montana,
north dakota, minnesota, wisconsin and illinois.
amtrak is a treasure.
Posted by: jacqueline | Nov 1, 2007 9:42:34 AM
Congress appropriated $40 billion in highway funding, and collected $40 billion in road fuel taxes. (EIA quickfacts.)
If AmTrak focused it's money on the areas where it is a reasonable option (DC-Boston and San Francisco--San Diego), it might make sense to subsidize those routes if needed. It makes no sense to subsidize the cross-country routes.
Posted by: SamChevre | Nov 1, 2007 9:53:28 AM
Well, the roads in the US were mostly built with public funds and need to be maintained as such. Railroads were built more by private concerns as I recall.
While train travel is a "treasure" as said above it isn't very efficient for most travelers so it is underutilized. I don't know if pouring money into it will increase ridership beyond its current threshold; unless you can make people see that getting there is part of the journey too.
Posted by: Texicans | Nov 1, 2007 10:02:01 AM
An excellent suggestion someone once proposed in a WashPost op-ed was to finance rail systems as we do highways and airports. That is, the government should own the rails, ie the infrastructure, and private companies provide the transport. That, to me, makes a lot of sense. Outside of the northeast corridor, Amtrak has no control over its schedules because the private operators of the rails can push it aside for their own priorities. that's why it's chronically late in other parts of the country.
Besides California and the northeast, there are plenty of other places that would benefit from better rail service: Birmingham to Atlanta, Minneapolis to Chicago to Indianapolis. Rural areas, like Mississippi, absolutely rely on Amtrak.
And given what happened on 9-11, you'd think our government officials would be eager to improve rail service.
Posted by: lou | Nov 1, 2007 10:10:42 AM
It would help Amtrack a lot if the railsystem would become independent from the company owning the rolling stock and providing the actual service. Decades of neglect have turned the rails into a state beyond repair,and its totally illusionary to run something like a modern rail service on them. In Europe, railway compaqnies had to rebuilt most of the tracks connecting cities from scratch, too. This is a multi-billion-dollar endeavor, but it will be an attractive alternative for flying,if finished. It's quite an ironic fact that Amtrack's engines are dewsigned for speeds of 150 mph and more, but that it's impossible to actually drive that fast most of the time. The explanation is,of course,that politicians wanted Amtrack trains to look like TGVs or ICEs, but shied away from the costs that it would have taken to really bring the system up to that standard. Let's hope this scrooge attitude will change soon.
Posted by: Gray | Nov 1, 2007 10:12:24 AM
Ok, look, this is the problem with Amtrak-- the same Republican party that is demanding that Amtrak "stand on its own" is full of people demanding pork for Amtrak to support little-used routes in the gulf coast and midwest area.
The problem is that the private concerns who own the rails have no interest and nothing to do with passenger service-- their main concern is freight. Thus, the rails are completely substandard when it comes to supporting passengers. The Boston-DC I-95 corridor is so snarled with traffic as to be almost unusable (particularly between NYC and DC). And when was the last time a major airport built a new runway?
There are a large number of opportunities to promote rail because it's at the point where it's pretty darn necessary.
it isn't very efficient for most travelers...
It doesn't have to be. It has to be efficient for the people who need to travel along our most congrested corridors. Personally, I've never taken a 3-day long rail trip through the midwest, and I couldn't care less about doing so. What I do know is that the technology exists to get me from DC to Boston by train in 4 hours, which would relieve congestion on our roads and airports, and that's a necessity.
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 1, 2007 10:19:10 AM
It makes no sense to subsidize the cross-country routes.
It does, but for different reasons. Consider the Australian cross-country network: it covers an even greater amount of fuck all than the east-west Amtrak routes. But it's an experience. And it's packaged as such, as one of the world's Great Railway Journeys.
A friend of mine took the train from New York to San Diego a few years ago, through Chicago, then down towards LA on the southwest route that jacqueline mentions, travelling through Dodge City among other places. He was blown away by it: time slows down, the sense of space reveals itself.
An investment that enabled Amtrak to market the cross-country routes in the right sort of way, not just to tourists but to domestic users, makes a lot of sense. Give the trains sleeper cabins and proper dining cars, arrange stops that provide guided tours in historic locations or on-off fares where you can take a few days out and pick up where you left off, provide a rolling audio track so that you can plug in headphones and be told what you're seeing out of the window.
(jacqueline: did you ever see Ludovic Kennedy's BBC programme on the northern cross-country route, made in 1980? I think you'd enjoy it.)
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | Nov 1, 2007 10:24:35 AM
> Railroads were built more by private
> concerns as I recall.
You might try looking up "land grants", "eminent domain", and "Indian wars". The US railroads were built using possibly the largest public subsidies in the history of the world.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Nov 1, 2007 10:26:49 AM
On another note, I suspect that the nature of the transcontinental rail system did a lot of long-term damage to rail's prospects. Because the system had to traverse long distances at a relatively slow pace, a sort of culture grew up around this (see the song "City of New Orleans"), and that became associated with the "romance" of rail travel.
Well, most people engage in travel because they need to get from point A to point B, and when advocates for rail were needed to push for faster, more efficient connections between cities within 200-400 miles, the only members of the "train lobby" around were people pining for the days of slow-moving scenic traips over purple mountains and amber waves of grain. And while southern senators were more than happy to earmark money to keep these sorts of trains running through their districts, the political will never materialized to start investing in rail when it came to building serious transportation infrastructure.
It would be as though the auto lobby was full of people who wanted the government to support more projects like the pre-Eisenhower Route 66 when it came to spending highway dollars.
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 1, 2007 10:30:42 AM
> Well, most people engage in travel because they
> need to get from point A to point B, and when
> advocates for rail were needed to push for faster,
> more efficient connections between cities within
> 200-400 miles, the only members of the "train lobby"
> around were people pining for the days of slow-moving
> scenic traips over purple mountains and amber waves of
> grain.
Have you ever read any of the history of the Pennsylvania Railroad or the New York Central? Timetable speeds of 80 mph between NYC and Chicago were not uncommon, with on-track speeds reaching 120 mph over some sections [Amtrak today is limited to 79 mph due to FRA track standards and freight railroad maintenance practices, although I have paced Amtrak trains in my car at 85 ;-) ]. The 1920s railroads were very good at what they did - they just couldn't make any money at it for a variety of historical, operational, and human factors reasons.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Nov 1, 2007 10:37:11 AM
pseudonymous
no, i havent seen it, but i will surely look for it.
thank you. i enjoyed reading your comment.
when you mentioned dodge city...some years ago,my daughter and i were on the train and arrived late at night into dodge city on the fourth of july!
it was very exciting and actually opened a door of study for me into those early settlements, cowboy culture and the remarkable history of mining further into the west.
...anyone with the gift of some time, could sure benefit from one of those cross-country journeys.
Posted by: jacqueline | Nov 1, 2007 10:38:03 AM
Amtrak is horrible. I ride the train from Philadelphia to NY and they charge $60 for it now. If I'm willing to spend 45 mins longer (and that's counting the wait to change trains), I can take the same trip for $17 using SEPTA to Trenton, and then NJT to NY. That's over a factor of 3 difference in price!!! I'm glad you feel you can wax sentimental over Amtrak's long-distance train routes, since when you want to visit your folks you obviously don't have to ride the perennially-delayed NE corridor trains that subsidize the rest of that fantasy. And don't even get me started on the boondoggle that is "Acela Express."
Money isn't Amtrak's fundamental problem. The problems are wastefulness and inefficiency, and that America was built in such a sprawling way. The first problem could be fixed with some competition, perhaps, but why did the second happen? Well, one of the reasons is that price controls and regulation by the government strangled the rail business after WWI while subsidizing the construction of highways. It's impossible to read the Wikipedia page on Amtrak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Government_regulation_and_labor_issues
and come away without it shaking one's faith in the ability of government to successfully intervene in the private sector.
Posted by: HFS | Nov 1, 2007 10:41:36 AM
Yes, Cranky, I was aware that our train system today is, ironically, slower than what we had in yesteryear, but this sort of rapid, intercity travel isn't rarely on the mind of "rail fans" who seem to take much more interest in the prospect of a leisurely trip down the Missippi between Chicago and New Orleans. And then there are the sort saying, "well, I can't see why ANYONE would need a train to get from Kansas City to North Platte! Hardly anyone would use it, and you can just drive or fly!" Both these attitudes do nothing but damage prospects for rail. Me? I just want to get to Boston in a reasonable amount of time without having to waste time going to the airport.
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 1, 2007 10:43:24 AM
We should build out the infrastructure for rails for both freight and passenger services. These need to designed to allow each type of service to operate well. Then we can let various operators compete to run on the rails. This is somewhat like trucking which uses the highways.
We know that freight hauling by rail is competitive and if subsidized as the roads are would be huge. We can see this becuase trucking is forced to build trains on the roads with triple trailer trucks. This system is silly.
I would agree that a clear transportation road map and investment to build strong long haul freight rail and local region rail passenger service infrastructure is long over due.
Posted by: George | Nov 1, 2007 10:44:26 AM
I wish that they could find someway to reduce the passenger rail fares and increase the speed. I much prefer taking the train home to taken the bus, but the bus is generally half or two thirds of the price of taking the train and only a little slower. Unfortunately this would probably entail fighting the Amtrak employee's union and probably imperil the costly improvements to the tracks, trains, and service that would most benefit it.
Posted by: Paludicola | Nov 1, 2007 10:48:06 AM
> Both these attitudes do nothing but damage
> prospects for rail. Me? I just want to get
> to Boston in a reasonable amount of time
> without having to waste time going to the airport.
You can't really compare passenger train service east of the Mississippi (or even east of the Appalachians + {Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis}) with the area between the Mississippi and the Rockies - trains will never beat airplanes and seldom be competitive with cars in the Plains and Intermountain West.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Nov 1, 2007 10:48:25 AM
since warren buffet bought norfolk southern and union pacific, and not too long ago, purchased a huge interest in burlington northern~santa fe, perhaps this might improve some of the shared trackage issues and other problems that amtrak and the freight companies have/share.
Posted by: jacqueline | Nov 1, 2007 10:52:04 AM
Cranky, my point is that pro-rail interest-groups tend to be overrun my people who feel some kind of nostalgia for the west-of-the-Missippi "rail culture," leading anti-rail people to point out, logically, that this is a boondoggle. While "Texican" has likely never had a need to travel between major cities, millions upon millions of us do so all the time, and you can't talk about this reality without someone from the peanut gallery starting to hum a few bars of "City of New Orleans," which only makes the endeavor more difficult.
I have no interest in rail nostalgia. I have an interest in (a) wanting to get from one place to another quickly (b) getting the highways less congested and,as an aside, (c) not having the US transportation infrastructure between major hubs appear so ghetto.
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 1, 2007 10:56:10 AM
> I have no interest in rail nostalgia. I have an
> interest in (a) wanting to get from one place to
> another quickly (b) getting the highways less congested
> and,as an aside, (c) not having the US transportation
> infrastructure between major hubs appear so ghetto.
Plenty of history (and nostalgia) in "Trains Magazine", but if you read the editorials, political columnists, and business articles from the last 5 years' issues you will find any amount of hard-headed thinking and reporting of other hard-headed thinkers on exactly these topics you desire. Problem is that an efficient passenger rail network doesn't serve the interests of the Cheney constituency, the Norquist constituency, the trucking companies, the freight railroads, or the suburban real-estate developers. With those forces arrayed against there is never going to be a rational passenger rail policy in this country.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Nov 1, 2007 11:04:08 AM
Posted by: henry evans | Nov 1, 2007 9:35:48 AM
Why isn't Amtrak more like a toll road than a public road? Would it make sense to subsidize highways if they were operated as private toll roads?
What ever gave you the impression that Amtrak is anything like a public road in the first place?
In the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak is "like a public road", in the sense of all those public roads that we ask Greyhound to build and maintain in order to run Greyhound buses on. Outside the northeast corridor, Amtrak is "like a public road" in the sense of all those public roads where Greyhound has to pay a charge per mile per ton to use, and is denied access to if running behind schedule when there are freight trucks running the opposite direction.
Or, in other words, nowhere in the country is Amtrak like a publicly accesible transport service provider operating on a public road.
And, indeed, if we subsidized interstate passenger railway infrastructure like we subsidize interstate road and air transport infrastructure, then it would be entirely reasonable for states to get together to establish consortiums to operate passenger rail service for the economic benefits that they would provide.
Posted by: BruceMcF | Nov 1, 2007 11:14:37 AM
> And, indeed, if we subsidized interstate passenger
> railway infrastructure like we subsidize interstate
> road and air transport infrastructure, then it would be
> entirely reasonable for states to get together to
> establish consortiums to operate passenger rail service
> for the economic benefits that they would provide.
Well, the State of Illinois (with some help from Missouri IIRC) is doing exactly that. That's not a good basis for a national policy though.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Nov 1, 2007 11:17:59 AM
Posted by: Texicans | Nov 1, 2007 10:02:01 AM
Well, the roads in the US were mostly built with public funds and need to be maintained as such. Railroads were built more by private concerns as I recall.
So that is saying that the public policy should forever be biased in favor of road and air because public policy was established in the 1930's and 1940's with a bias toward road and air?
Indeed, in the heyday of railroad construction, the main trunk lines were heavily subsidized, in order to encourage the settlement and economic development of the then-frontier. It was the more lucrative urban and interurban trolleys that were established with little public subsidy.
While train travel is a "treasure" as said above it isn't very efficient for most travelers so it is underutilized. I don't know if pouring money into it will increase ridership beyond its current threshold; unless you can make people see that getting there is part of the journey too.
On the other hand, it isn't very efficient for many travelers for whom it would be efficient if funded on a level playing field with other federal investment in interstate transport.
That is, the "isn't very efficient" argument is taking the present, badly run system, starved of infrastructure investment that is provided in large amounts to competing transport systems, and treating it as if it showed what is possible in this country with our current population distribution.
There is a problem, of course, is that rail is more fuel efficient when operated effectively, while on the other hand a substantial proportion of the costs of the motor-road transport system are carried by general state and local taxes, and so a fuel tax for railroads will not yield enough to maintain the system.
However, a system that biases the United States in favor of systems with lower fuel-efficiency seems to be ignoring the national need to reduce our dependence on imported fuel.
Posted by: BruceMcF | Nov 1, 2007 11:25:10 AM
Why subsidise Amtrak travel when the high-quality/low-cost bus market is just starting to thrive?
Posted by: Chris | Nov 1, 2007 11:28:42 AM
I'm a bit biased here because two of my grandparents and a bunch of cousins, uncles and aunts worked in the railroad business, so I don't appreciate the kicking-around Amtrak puts up with -- a bipartisan kicking-around, BTW.
That said, I agree with Ezra that there are parts of America where rail travel can and should be a competitive option for the airlines, because Lord knows they deserve some damn competition given that the planes are always full, the airports are always full, and all the majors still lose money despite the direct subsidies through the FAA, and the indirect subsidy of foreign policies aimed at keeping the cost of fuel low.
Simply put, I don't know of a single rail travel system on the planet that operates successfully -- whether measured financially or by customer satisfaction -- without government subsidy. The make-Amtrak-self-sustaining argument is simply disingenuous, and in my opinion, meant to kill it permanently.
At certain travel distances (say 400 one-way miles or less), with existing rail technologies, a case can be made that passenger rail travel can compete if subsidized just to the same proportion that the airlines are.
As an example, I offer my own experience from a 2-or-3-times annual trip to see relatives that my family of four would make from Ann Arbor to Chicago.
Scenario One: We drive. The minivan gets about 24 mpg on the highway fully loaded. 506 mi, door to door round trip, that's $58 in gas at $2.75 a gallon, plus a fast-food meal at around $25 for the four of us, once each way. That doesn't count depreciation and wear-and-tear on the vehicle. The IRS allows 48.5 cents per mile for business, 20 cents per mile for medical or moving. Total drive time, including meal stop, 4.5 hours each way. Total expenses: $108 immediately, but depending on what you consider a true accounting for the car, either $295 or $151. Plus, I have to do the work of driving, though everyone else is pretty comfortable for the ride.
Scenario Two: We fly. Timewise, it's a 40-minute drive to Detroit Metro. You have to arrive at least 1 hour early for security, baggage check and seat assignment, maybe 2, plus an extra 20 minutes to park the van in long-term and ride the shuttle up to the terminal. Flight time is 1 hour, 20 minutes each way. Our relatives meet us at Midway, and its another 40 minutes up to the north side if the traffic is light (a big assumption, if you know Chicago at all). Total cost for the cheapest 3 adult (the 15-year-old pays full price) and 1 child fare, $541, plus $24 for four days long-term parking, for $568. Time spent: call it 4 hours each way, assuming no delays, and being generous with the wait times. The meal is a bag of nuts and a drink, legroom is poor, and you usually can't get out of your seat -- and why would you? But, someone else does the "driving."
Scenario Three: We take the Wolverine on Amtrak. It's a 10-minute drive to the train station in Ann Arbor. We park for free in the Amtrak lot, and we can see our vehicle from the platform. No security (you get to keep your shoes and belt on the whole time), and you can prepurchase your ticket online and print it out. Baggage check is optional. The ride is scheduled at 4.5 hours each way. Our relatives meet us at Union Station, which is downtown, a 15-minute drive to the north side. The 15-year-old rates the child fare, so total fare for 2 adults and 2 kids is $258. You can buy a meal on the train, $5 for a burger and a Coke, but there are lots of options and the quality, in my experience, was at least as good as fast food, and usually better. So add, maybe $30 each way for the four of us (Total: $318). Total time spent is about 5 hours each way. The seats are big, legroom huge, you can slide the backs to face each other. You can get up and go to the Cafe car, where there are tables to eat, socialize, play cards, plug in your laptop, or just watch the scenery roll by.
I offer this comparison with the assumption of a best-case scenario, meaning no delays. My caveat here is that, while driving yourself, you can always get caught in a traffic jam, and flying, you can always get volume delays, bad weather, security snafus or get stuck in traffic driving to or from the airport. On the train, it's been my experience that delays are MUCH more likely, and are generally VERY long.
IMHO, this unreliability is why train travel remains uncompetitive, since, as my examples above show, cost-wise and time-wise, depending on where you travel, train travel is indeed competitive with driving and flying, even in the current environment of grudging government subsidies and inferior technology.
Consider:
I believe if three things were done, passenger rail would be a 100% viable travel alternative in many markets:
1) Serious investment in high-speed rail technology, which we have not done (Acella, while a step in the right direction, does NOT cut it as a world-class high-speed rail option), would only improve the time-factor for passenger rail travel.
2) As Ezra points out, increased federal and/or state/local subsidies for passenger rail, money that could be invested in serious marketing campaigns (like, say, the ones the airlines have), service improvements, and more frequent and convenient runs.
3) Reduced conflict with freight lines. This is a biggie -- not well publicized nor understood, even by me. As I understand it, freight trains have right of way ahead of passenger trains, and where they share track, you could sit in the station or on a siding waiting for freight traffic to clear. I've been told this is the greatest source of delays and unreliability. This would require either a legislative or corporate policy solution, or building dedicated passenger trackage. Again, money could go a long way to solving this problem, but some hard decision-making would be needed too, with no guarantees of success.
Posted by: Rick | Nov 1, 2007 11:32:35 AM
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