Pete Buttigieg has been a disappointment as Secretary of Transportation. If smart, young technocrats we’re good for anything, it would be lowering construction costs. He seems to have done zero on that front. He hasn’t even done a symbolic house cleaning at Amtrak. Google him and you’ll see he recently visited a UPS facility and has been active talking about LGBT rights.
This is very sad because his incentives are almost perfect. He will never win a statewide election in Indiana. His only viable paths are moving to a different state or running for President or Vice President. Cutting through red tape and bashing entitled bureaucrats to build eco-friendly rail and mass transit would be a great strategy for capturing the vital center. And yet this extremely disciplined, smart dude hasn’t made any changes that matter.
As Yglesias has written before, [1] the issue is Amtrak leadership.
> I sometimes like to tell the story of the time an Amtrak executive told me “to be honest, I don’t know that much about trains.”
> And I think this is emblematic of Amtrak. It is run by people who are not curious about trains.
A leadership shakeup is needed to address these issues. The suggestion in that earlier article is to bring in a foreign CEO who has experience in running a functional rail system. E.g., someone from the rail programs of France, Italy, Japan, Korean, etc.
But there just isn’t the political will to fix Amtrak leadership and there are existing constituencies that benefit from the current pork barrel approach.
This post is a lot of red meat for Matt's dedicated readers, but as with other accounts of regulatory failure (the series on advanced nuclear and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also comes to mind), I wish there was more reporting on the sources of the bottlenecks that keep these institutions from changing. And not generalities -- it would be amazing to read interviews with the people who work there and get their impressions on the work that they do and don't!
Having grown up in Toronto and taken both the train and bus to New York as a student, I can assure you that there would be a market for a 3:20 HSR line between the cities. The big issues that need to be fixed, however, are not just the rail itself but immigration – you would need preclearance at Toronto Union Station at the very least, and some sort of system for the Canadian side as well. But to do that you need to eliminate intermediate stops which starts to defeat the purpose...not sure how it could work unless one of the countries radically rethought its immigration procedures.
As for the other cities, it's not just sprawl, but how little infrastructure there is around the stations themselves. Getting into Penn Station is way more convenient than getting into JFK; arriving at most Amtrak station leaves you in a desolate wasteland surrounded by parking and no transit, and you're usually better off coming from the airport, so you lose out on the biggest benefit of rail, central arrival. America also needs to focus on cities, like the Northeast Corridor, where the rail station is actually connected to your ultimate destination.
A much more interesting post would be about the politics that led to this inane map. Who dropped the ball? (My guess would be Secretary Pete and Biden himself.) Why? Do they not care? Or did they attempt to do something better but were held back by stakeholders? How can you create a situation where decisions go in a better direction next time?
I agree completely. But if this is what the most train-friendly president in at least 100 years - you get back to Wilson (who else?) for aesthetic hatred of cars - comes up with, how will we ever get there? This ought to be the political moment when we get good mass transit policy people making good proposals, but it hasn't happened. Is it because we don't have such people in the US?
I'm still amazed that, even in the post-pork era, that representatives from here still want to revive a Portland to SLC Amtrak line. It just isn't going to happen.
I would, however, be very interested in touring a Boston to DC line that truly is high speed, and I never thought of the angle of opening up capacity in airports in that region as a benefit, but now that I have I'm even more in support. Just focus heavily on that one line, I don't care if it's thousands of miles away from where I live.
Maybe this is obvious, but I can see why Matt's proposals will likely never pass Congress. Even if the US overnight somehow magically had southern Europe's building costs, you're still spending a lot of money to benefit a small number of already wealthy coastal states. Like, there's really nothing here that would incentivize a Congressperson from the middle of the country to vote for any these. Maybe there's some kind of grand bargain to be struck, but you can see why spending large chunks of federal money on just a few coastal states isn't popular, right?
While the technical analysis is OK, passenger rail (and airports as well) is intensely political. The Acela Corridor is already a political badge (good or bad depending upon your politics). These ideas are nice, but progress has to be a politically palatable package.
I do see a somewhat different market perspective. Fear of flying is not the only motivation for trains. Productive use of time is another. Pre-COVID I did Boston->DC-> Bostin 5-10 times per year for multi-day meetings.
It makes productive sense once you have electricity, wireless Internet, and laptops. Instead of 4 hours chopped up into useless chunks of driving, parking, TSA, waiting, loading, flying, unloading, etc. you have one 6 hour chunk of sitting and getting work done. Small things like the quiet car made it more productive.
Some of those slower passenger segments may make sense when you incorporate all the ancillary time costs. Chicago to Detroit on a regular schedule might be time effective when compared with O'hare or Midway considering all the flight and traffic issues. I know people who think hard about St Louis to Chicago where driving, train, and flying are all options. Cost, productive time, schedule and other convenience factors drive their decisions. Modest things like parking and car rental at market driven locations can make quite a difference.
Interesting to contrast this wishing-for-utopia with yesterday's “managing people is really hard, actually”. I've popped around Alon's Pedestrian Observations and man, IDK ... high-speed rail might just be really hard. Germany's system seems generally a mess (i.e., construction of the "4-hour" Munich to Berlin line took >25 years, city politics force too many stops, mixed freight lines seem to constrain everything, packed ridership compounds reliability issues). France's doesn't seem much better with maybe even higher reliability issues and complex network transfers. Say what you want about all the causes of California's HSR incompetence -- we have one example here and it's a disaster. As a longtime huge rail fan ... I'm becoming more and more sympathetic to the argument that with EV's coming -- point to point auto is hard to beat and HSR here probably missed the window.
There are three main forms of passenger transport in the United States - planes, cars and trains. Essentially all the roads in the US are government owned and run. Essentially all the passenger airports are government owned and run. Trains are the outlier in that almost all of the track is privately owned. But some folks here seem to be arguing that trains are the one with the unfair advantage and are wrong to be asking for a handout.
I would argue trains at least need to be on the same level playing field with roads and airports/ATC.
Pete Buttigieg has been a disappointment as Secretary of Transportation. If smart, young technocrats we’re good for anything, it would be lowering construction costs. He seems to have done zero on that front. He hasn’t even done a symbolic house cleaning at Amtrak. Google him and you’ll see he recently visited a UPS facility and has been active talking about LGBT rights.
This is very sad because his incentives are almost perfect. He will never win a statewide election in Indiana. His only viable paths are moving to a different state or running for President or Vice President. Cutting through red tape and bashing entitled bureaucrats to build eco-friendly rail and mass transit would be a great strategy for capturing the vital center. And yet this extremely disciplined, smart dude hasn’t made any changes that matter.
As Yglesias has written before, [1] the issue is Amtrak leadership.
> I sometimes like to tell the story of the time an Amtrak executive told me “to be honest, I don’t know that much about trains.”
> And I think this is emblematic of Amtrak. It is run by people who are not curious about trains.
A leadership shakeup is needed to address these issues. The suggestion in that earlier article is to bring in a foreign CEO who has experience in running a functional rail system. E.g., someone from the rail programs of France, Italy, Japan, Korean, etc.
But there just isn’t the political will to fix Amtrak leadership and there are existing constituencies that benefit from the current pork barrel approach.
[1] “Amtrak should bring in foreign experts to make trains great again”, https://www.slowboring.com/p/amtrak-should-bring-in-foreign-experts
*Edited to fix typo
This post is a lot of red meat for Matt's dedicated readers, but as with other accounts of regulatory failure (the series on advanced nuclear and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also comes to mind), I wish there was more reporting on the sources of the bottlenecks that keep these institutions from changing. And not generalities -- it would be amazing to read interviews with the people who work there and get their impressions on the work that they do and don't!
Having grown up in Toronto and taken both the train and bus to New York as a student, I can assure you that there would be a market for a 3:20 HSR line between the cities. The big issues that need to be fixed, however, are not just the rail itself but immigration – you would need preclearance at Toronto Union Station at the very least, and some sort of system for the Canadian side as well. But to do that you need to eliminate intermediate stops which starts to defeat the purpose...not sure how it could work unless one of the countries radically rethought its immigration procedures.
As for the other cities, it's not just sprawl, but how little infrastructure there is around the stations themselves. Getting into Penn Station is way more convenient than getting into JFK; arriving at most Amtrak station leaves you in a desolate wasteland surrounded by parking and no transit, and you're usually better off coming from the airport, so you lose out on the biggest benefit of rail, central arrival. America also needs to focus on cities, like the Northeast Corridor, where the rail station is actually connected to your ultimate destination.
The technical analysis is obviously correct.
But everybody knows this, right?
A much more interesting post would be about the politics that led to this inane map. Who dropped the ball? (My guess would be Secretary Pete and Biden himself.) Why? Do they not care? Or did they attempt to do something better but were held back by stakeholders? How can you create a situation where decisions go in a better direction next time?
Matt’s next book - Damntrak: Hell on Rails, A story of liars, bastards and betrayal. Foreword by Lewis Black.
France is a hexagon, not a pentagon! They even famously refer to their shape as "l'Hexagone."
I agree completely. But if this is what the most train-friendly president in at least 100 years - you get back to Wilson (who else?) for aesthetic hatred of cars - comes up with, how will we ever get there? This ought to be the political moment when we get good mass transit policy people making good proposals, but it hasn't happened. Is it because we don't have such people in the US?
I'm still amazed that, even in the post-pork era, that representatives from here still want to revive a Portland to SLC Amtrak line. It just isn't going to happen.
I would, however, be very interested in touring a Boston to DC line that truly is high speed, and I never thought of the angle of opening up capacity in airports in that region as a benefit, but now that I have I'm even more in support. Just focus heavily on that one line, I don't care if it's thousands of miles away from where I live.
Maybe this is obvious, but I can see why Matt's proposals will likely never pass Congress. Even if the US overnight somehow magically had southern Europe's building costs, you're still spending a lot of money to benefit a small number of already wealthy coastal states. Like, there's really nothing here that would incentivize a Congressperson from the middle of the country to vote for any these. Maybe there's some kind of grand bargain to be struck, but you can see why spending large chunks of federal money on just a few coastal states isn't popular, right?
While the technical analysis is OK, passenger rail (and airports as well) is intensely political. The Acela Corridor is already a political badge (good or bad depending upon your politics). These ideas are nice, but progress has to be a politically palatable package.
I do see a somewhat different market perspective. Fear of flying is not the only motivation for trains. Productive use of time is another. Pre-COVID I did Boston->DC-> Bostin 5-10 times per year for multi-day meetings.
It makes productive sense once you have electricity, wireless Internet, and laptops. Instead of 4 hours chopped up into useless chunks of driving, parking, TSA, waiting, loading, flying, unloading, etc. you have one 6 hour chunk of sitting and getting work done. Small things like the quiet car made it more productive.
Some of those slower passenger segments may make sense when you incorporate all the ancillary time costs. Chicago to Detroit on a regular schedule might be time effective when compared with O'hare or Midway considering all the flight and traffic issues. I know people who think hard about St Louis to Chicago where driving, train, and flying are all options. Cost, productive time, schedule and other convenience factors drive their decisions. Modest things like parking and car rental at market driven locations can make quite a difference.
Great piece. Can you do a follow up on political strategies to make it happen?
Train-gry Matt gives this post a fun vibe.
Circa ~2007-2013 I found the Detroit-Ann Arbor-Chicago Amtrak trips to be pretty reasonable for a student without a great car.
Interesting to contrast this wishing-for-utopia with yesterday's “managing people is really hard, actually”. I've popped around Alon's Pedestrian Observations and man, IDK ... high-speed rail might just be really hard. Germany's system seems generally a mess (i.e., construction of the "4-hour" Munich to Berlin line took >25 years, city politics force too many stops, mixed freight lines seem to constrain everything, packed ridership compounds reliability issues). France's doesn't seem much better with maybe even higher reliability issues and complex network transfers. Say what you want about all the causes of California's HSR incompetence -- we have one example here and it's a disaster. As a longtime huge rail fan ... I'm becoming more and more sympathetic to the argument that with EV's coming -- point to point auto is hard to beat and HSR here probably missed the window.
I’ve noticed an odd fact about this discussion.
There are three main forms of passenger transport in the United States - planes, cars and trains. Essentially all the roads in the US are government owned and run. Essentially all the passenger airports are government owned and run. Trains are the outlier in that almost all of the track is privately owned. But some folks here seem to be arguing that trains are the one with the unfair advantage and are wrong to be asking for a handout.
I would argue trains at least need to be on the same level playing field with roads and airports/ATC.