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What to do About Amtrak — Beyond the Usual Suggestions
Breaking! There’s a major disaster with possible public policy implications! Scramble the hot takes! (I know I often do.)
Here we go: “Amtrak needs help,” asserts the New York Times editorial page. But maybe the “world will lose nothing if the government winds down Amtrak by selling off its profitable lines in the Northeast to a competently-managed private company and scrapping the rest,” as the Washington Examiner argues. Then again, the Center for American Progress claims “Congress’ refusal to acknowledge Amtrak’s predicament has made American trains so inefficient that it’s actually having a dampening effect on ridership growth.” Yet National Review’s Ian Tuttle counters that “Amtrak’s history of fiscal chaos suggests that the service’s problems are not the product of congressional stinginess, but of a faulty assumption (that America needed a passenger rail service) compounded by decades of mismanagement.”
Just privatize it! (Probably won’t happen.) Just throw more money at it! (Probably shouldn’t happen.) Are there any other options? Transportation blogger Alon Levy offered a different path forward in a fascinating 2012 blog post where he sketched out a hypothetical future in which a profitable Amtrak had surging ridership and high-speed rail. Here are its guts:
Amtrak had initially proposed to spend $117 billion on implementing high-speed rail on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, but backlash due to the plan’s high cost led to a scaling back behind the scenes. After the regulatory reforms of 2013, a new team of planners, many hired away from agencies in Japan, France, and Switzerland, proposed a version leveraging existing track, achieving almost the same speed for only $5 billion in upfront investment. They explained that the full cost of the system would be higher, but service could open before construction concluded, and profits could be plugged into the system.
To get the plans past Congress, President Barack Obama had to agree to limit the funds to a one-time extension of Amtrak’s funding in the transportation bill S 12, which would give it $13 billion for expansion as well as ordinary operating subsidies over six years. To defeat a Senate filibuster, the extension had a clause automatically dismantling Amtrak and selling its assets in case it ran out of money, leading to the first wave of resignations by longtime officials. …
Despite assurances that both the cost and the ridership estimates were conservative, the program was plagued with delays and mounting costs, and to conserve money Amtrak needed to cancel some of its money-losing long-distance routes and engage in a controversial lease-back program selling its rolling stock to banks. The modifications required to let the Shinkansen bullet trains decided for the system run in the Northeast pushed back the completion of the first run from the middle of 2015 to the beginning of 2017 … 2017 was also the last year in which Amtrak lost money. … To simplify its temporary deals with track owners in Connecticut and Massachusetts, it made a complex deal with the Northeastern commuter railroads in which it took over operations, with existing amounts of state money lasting until 2022. The primary purpose was to allow rapidly moving workers between divisions, away from commuter trains, which were being streamlined to reduce staffing, and toward the growing high-speed rail market. A similar deal was made in California, where Amtrak leveraged its operation of commuter trains in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Areas and its fledgling profits to take control of the California High-Speed Rail system, whose initial operating segment opened in 2019.
Although industry insiders believed that the takeover was intended entirely to streamline labor issues, in 2020 Amtrak announced a reorganization, in which commuter trains within each metropolitan area would be run without respect for state boundaries or previous agency boundaries. Starting with the preexisting fare union with the MBTA, from which it bought Boston’s commuter rail operations, it entered into fare union and schedule coordination agreements with the major cities in the Northeast and California, allowing the local commuter rail lines to act as complements to the urban subway networks. …
Together with aggressive construction of extensions and long-desired urban commuter rail projections, usually at much lower cost than advertised in the 2000s and 10s, the changes led to a rapid increase in ridership. Together with the commuter lines, Amtrak’s ridership was 700 million in 2020. By 2030, it had risen to 4 billion. By then, high-speed lines opened along more corridors, connecting from the Northeast to Albany, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta; from California to Phoenix and Las Vegas; and in the Midwest from Chicago to Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Louis. Most, though not all, are operated by Amtrak, with seamless inter-railroad operation through trackage rights, and in many of these cities, beginning with Chicago, the local transit agencies engaged in the same commuter rail modernization afforded to the Northeast and invested in additional rapid transit or light rail lines. The effect on the share of commuters using public transportation to get to work was large. In the Philadelphia region it rose from 12% in 2020 to 36% in 2040, in the Chicago region it rose from 15% to 39%, and in the Los Angeles region it rose from 9% to 40%.
All that by the year 2042! Now, I don’t know to what degree all or any of what Levy outlines is practical or even possible. And, yes, it seems like a highly technocratic approach. But it doesn’t seem unreasonable that a far more logical and rational rail system is a possible. Here is Reihan Salam on the above idea:
Published in Domestic Policy, EconomicsOne of the key moves in Levy’s imaginary Amtrak revival was a takeover of commuter rail services in the Northeast and California, followed by an aggressive rationalization of route structures and labor practices as the commuter rail services started to be run without respect to pre-existing agency boundaries. In the New York metropolitan area, for example, what had been Metro-North trains could be used on NJ Transit routes and vice versa, thus improving efficiency. Levy’s scenario might seem too good to be true, but the political foundations of his turnaround — reform of the labor regulations that have stymied productivity gains in the passenger rail industry, the use of a trigger that would dismantle the system if it failed to meet concrete goals — are worthy of consideration.
I think you might underestimate the difficulty with this. Train gauge is essentially impossible to change, and in a smaller space these pods are harder to manage. Amtrak could do better, but British, privatized, first class seats are nowhere near as nice as long distance first class airline seats.
Also, the money may work out right now. In ten year’s time, when travelling by driverless car will mean that almost everyone already gets the benefits of train travel (other than the novelty) without the train, it seems unlikely that you’ll have the same passenger volume. Now cars are easy to turn into airline-like luxury pod experiences, particularly when you don’t need a steering wheel, pedals, etc.
Still seems like an argument for privatization.
In the high-volume commuter routes, where cars are less feasible because of traffic, they’d make money on volume.
On long-distance vacation routes, they either find some way to compete on luxury or they die.
In both cases, there’s zero need to subsidize passenger rail.
British first-class rail routes are not multi-day transcontinental trips, like the sort of thing we’re talking about here. People who simply need to get from a to b aren’t going to choose the train for that purpose.
Private, long-distance rail services can indeed be profitable, as luxury services. The Rocky Mountaineer is one example. The Orient Express is another. I believe that Canada’s trans-continental route also makes money, because it’s a vacation trip in and of itself.
Ok, maybe first-class air travel was a poor analogy. Perhaps luxury cruise lines would be a better one.
The overwhelming problem affecting Amtrak is Congressional logrolling that requires sensible routes in the NE corridor to support empty trains running from Bug Tussle to South Undershirt out west. If the utopian solutions recommended above aren’t politically feasible why not weld Amtrak funding in the NE to farm subsidies for the rest of the country and finally be able to prune the ridiculous routes.
that map peeves me. They completely ignore the entire (non-pacific) northwest.
So, you’re in favor of more routes from “Bug Tussle to South Undershirt out west?”
I really want to do this trip:
Crescent from Clemson SC to New Orleans (coach). Spend a couple of days in New Orleans, then take the City of New Orleans to Chicago, and pick up the Zephyr to San Fran. From San fran, either do the same trip back, or get to the Southwest Chief for another touristy route back to N.O. and then Clemson (oldest daughter goes to school there, and she can do dropoff/pickup).
But . . . megabucks . . .
no, don’t misread me. I just feel like a victim, that’s all.
Ricochet Meet-Up?
I live in Detroit Metro. I’m a bigger victim! (Yes, I listened to the latest Flyover Country today.)
Mis,
I think the difference, aside from the English love of trains, is that England is a much smaller land mass with a greater population density. Long hauls on the American Continent are just absurd. The cost of track per mile to build and maintain can never be made back.
I would look at very short distance high speed rail as an enticement to Mega Metropolitan Commuters only. If it can’t work there it’s not going to work anywhere.
Regards,
Jim
If you ever need a chuckle, try feeding various western US cities into Antrak’s trip planner.
Salt Lake City to Santa Clarita? 24 hours. And that’s with two bus rides to finish the trip. Which are longer than it takes to fly to Burbank.
Train leaves SLC at midnight or 3 am depending on whether you’re going west or east. SLC to Denver? It’s like fifteen hours. If you can’t spring for the berth, you will pay for it anyway with a blood clot in your leg.
Then it gets really weird. Tuscon to Denver? Three days, with a detour through Springfield IL.
Amtrak: When you really, really want to ride a train.
The weird thing is, we’re told we need HSR because we’re going to run out of oil and jet travel won’t even be a choice. But when you look at the prices, and the very low friction of rails (7.5 # of thrust to move a ton) Amtrak isn’t a whole lot cheaper than flying, but it should be. It’s not the fuel cost that matters. It’s the labor.
Another thing–environmentalists aren’t really going to tolerate this. Because you have to fence off the tracks to keep people from putting rocks on them and so forth. At 180 mph you’re not going to see something like that soon enough. Japan and France don’t have elk and moose that wander onto the tracks, do they? So you now have these long lines of fencing crossing the continent and messing with animal migrations–that won’t do.
Amtrak is alright, if you are going up the east coast.
If they wanted to fix it, they need to make all business class seats have a table. The only time I take amtrak is when I goto NYC. I can travel during the day and get work done on the internet because I am not cooped up in a teenie tiny seat without the room to do work.
Outside of the DC-Boston corridor just mercy kill it. Rail is not coming back, its dead technology. I know lets start up an Amish owned transcontinental buggy service, its just the thing for a millennial hipster with an 19th century fetish. Its every bit as stupid as rail, but at least it wouldn’t have pretensions of seriousness.
From the quoted blogpost:
“… a new team of planners… proposed a version leveraging existing track, achieving almost the same speed for only $5 billion in upfront investment.…”
Maybe for the NE corridor, or other small systems. Not for the vast stretches of existing track in flyover country; not leveraging existing track, nor achieving almost the same speed, and “upfront investment” is vague.
Anyone that has spent time on the ground, working with existing rail lines, knows that the vast hundreds of thousands of miles of right-of-way are in no way suitable for speeds that exceed 88 mph, when in their best repair. The Philadelphia wreck was on track built atop closely-spaced concrete ties, where higher speeds are conceivable, (though not through turns!). The tens of thousands of miles of track that I have personal experience with is built atop wooden ties that are much more widely spaced and the ties themselves vary in condition. The ride is too rough for even 88 mph, which the Federal Railway Administration recognizes in its language when it assigns limits over most of the track in this country of “up to 88 mph”. That’s the language I find in my FRA Handbook. Notice that High Speed Rail boondoggles get renamed Light Rail, as planners face the costs in time, money, and regulatory compliance associated with constructing all-new track? High Speed Rail will always be the seller, but it will only apply to isolated and relatively small areas.
Any plan that includes the phrase “aggressive rationalization” used to describe actions by our Federal Government is the worst sort of romantic fantasy.
Amtrak will continue to be a poorly-run enterprise, like everything else the Feds do.
Trains! All Aboard The Nostalgia Tour!
I took Amtrak from NYC to DC once. Ugh. I had checked in a piece of luggage and upon arrival stood in front of the luggage car for 30 minutes staring at my bag just inside the half opened door. We were told we have to wait for the luggage porter. Finally someone just pushed past the chain divider, opened the door all the way, and everyone grabbed their bags. Some Amtrak employee was yelling at us, but no one paid attention.
Lived in Denver Metro area when they started building a Light Rail system. It started at $10 million a mile to build. They bought and used an old existing rail road right of way starting in Denver, through Lakewood to Golden, $30 million per mile.
But the one route, from the beginning, people really, really want is to Denver International Airport (DIA) which is out on the prairie–it seems like western Nebraska–they have yet to build it. That’s just pure politics.
In my town they used existing track to set up a light rail line that gets to within 5 minutes of the airport.
It doesn’t go ALL the way to the airport, and there are no plans to ever extend it to the airport, because the one taxi company in town donates heavily to every single mayoral and city councillor’s campaign.
Common. Midway Airport, Chicago is like that. Either JFK or Laguardia was like that. I don’t know if they still are.
Mis,
This enterprise from your town is perhaps emblematic of what we should call The Wonder of Government. We must have an annual award and I am nominating your town’s light rail line ‘almost’ to the airport for the very first award.
I’m in awe.
Regards,
Jim
They might have to share the award with most of the other light rail projects in the nation.
Lived in Dallas (actually Irving) in the 90’s. They had been collecting taxes from all the surrounding suburbs for about 10 years on the promise of light rail and hadn’t built a thing. With the suburbs rebelling, they revived 2-3 miles of derelict track, bought a couple of used locos from Canada where they had been pulling logging trains (not exactly light rail) and said ‘See…light rail’.
It went from nowhere to nowhere. Not even suitable for park and ride because there wasn’t much in the way of parking at either end.
That’s where it was when I moved away. Not sure whether they ever did any more after that. But this sort of thing seems to be the ‘light rail’ pattern most places.
It gets worse. The existing tracks continue to within a minute or two of the airport, and all the land between the light rail terminus and the airport is owned by the federal government, so there would be no need to expropriate any land to finish the damned job.
The Orange Line goes all the way to Midway – that is the name of the last stop on the line! The Blue Line goes all the way to O’Hare. Both of these are subway-style light rail, with the third rail. I can personally attest to this, having been to both stops.
The Chicago-Milwaukee Amtrak has a stop at Milwaukee airport.
I’ve ridden Amtrak a couple times from Fargo to Chicago and back. If you’ve got three or more people going it’s definitely cheaper to drive, plus you’re not leaving or arriving in Fargo at 3:00 am. For two people Amtrak may be cost competitive, due to the exorbitant price of parking in Chicago.
Any organization that pays $3 wholesale for the same can of soda you can buy for 40¢ retail should not be involved in massive infrastructure planning.