For someone who writes a lot about transit, boy do you get a lot of things wrong here (either by omission, or...just wrong
First... There are three types of Amtrak funding.
Northeast Corridor
Long Distance
State Funded ( this is one he doesn't seem to be aware of)
Only the first 2 as the names would imply come from the Federal Government, and the states fund the following:
Any line less than 750 miles outside of the NE corridor. So you are not even talking about federal dollars for a vast majority of high speed rail lines that make sense. If you have some way to make states do this other than depending on the private sector, lets hear it. I don't know why MY doesn't know this. Also, the map of Frances HSR is kind of misleading. If you look at a map of ALL pax rail in France it is quite extensive...ie they have a huge built out network that doesn't exist here. I could go on, but there is an excellent video that points many of these things out
People get mad that California HSR is $200 million per mile. If you tried to build a mile of railway through my neighborhood, you'd need to pay at least $150 million just to buy up everyone's over-priced houses! Housing prices are rail construction prices.
I know I'm coming late to the discussion, but the reaction of railfan twitter to this article led me to very aggressively start muting and blocking quite a few members. Why don't they want us to be able to get from DC to Boston in a reasonable amount of time?
Would rail still be competitive if you eliminated the TSA? I mean after 9/11 it became much harder to hijack a plane making it much safer (even if u just want to kill everyone they'll assume they must act or die meaning a gun on a plane will likely cause less casualties than on a train). Drones are now the bigger threat so what if we had no more airport security than plane security?
Any line less than 750 miles outside of the NE corridor is the responsibility of State Governments. That means ATL-CLT would be the state's responsibility...so basically every corridor that makes sense. Of course Congress could make special appropriations or change the funding formula, but this is what we have right now.
How about putting the money into broadband and VR so we could teleport our eyes and ears all over the place but wouldn't have to move our heavy bones, kidneys, lungs, etc.?
Fun random fact - for being the 3rd most populous country in the world and the 4th largest in size our cities are really small.
NYC 8.6 million
LA 4 million
Chicago 2.6 million
# 10 San Jose at 1 million
In China # 10 is Nanjing at 9.3 million. Maybe you’ve heard of Nanjing in terms of WWII. But how about #11 Foshan, ever heard of it? 9 million - bigger than NYC.
This is entirely an artefact if the US counting city populations weirdly. Most countries are counting the population of city metro areas it just the city proper. By that measure NYC has 19 million people, and the other city populations rise rapidly too.
As someone who agrees with everything in this piece - and who can nearly recite the stats that Matt and Alon have shared repeatedly - the question is, "so how do we stop Amtrak from being stupid and start being smart?"
The dynamics of how Amtrak works - and the decisions it makes - would be a fascinating and valuable follow-up article. As it is, this just leaves me depressed that America won't have high speed rail in my lifetime (and I'm not even 40).
...or to actually understand where the funding comes from, which most of the people commenting (and the author) don't seem to know. Outside of the NEC any line under 750 miles is the state's responsibility absent any special appropriation made explicitly for said line.
While that would be fantastic, the idea of any cooperation involving all the east coast states is difficult to fathom. Mini examples of cooperation such as WMATA, PANYNJ have such stark and difficult challenges allocating costs among two or three states.
Maryland, New Jersey, and Connecticut Connecticut (lots of trackage, few cities) would surely be perpetually mad at New York and Pennsylvania (short trackage, the premier cities) under any interstate compact.
The essence of success in a commercial product is to know your competition and out-deliver them. Amtrak's primary competition is the airlines. To fly from Boston to DC here are my considerations: cost, time, convenience. Amtrak needs to match pricing, at least in the ballpark. Amtrak needs to meet the same delivery time, which is not just flying time vs. train time. It's also getting to the airport two hours early and the time it takes to de-plane and get to the taxi / rideshare locations. For short hops like DC to Boston and NYC to Philly, it's hard to think that taking the train isn't a shorter travel time.
Convenience is the final piece. Everyone who likes the traveling to LaGuardia or Newark to fly to DC, raise your hand. Now those of you who like going through the TSA lines at the airport, raise your hands. Those who like trudging to the ride-share lot, raise your hands. OK, that's a grand total of zero hands up. And that doesn't even take into account the convenience of being able to walk to the club car vs. sitting in a torture seat. Or worrying about a canceled flight.
Amtrak needs to have a robust schedule to compete with all the airlines' schedules, but the advantage of taking customers to center city in Philly and DC and -- especially -- NYC is a great value.
Once these travel routes have been established and the equipment and schedules are enough to compete with air travel the customers will start to realize the benefits of train travel. Then Amtrak can take those learnings and figure out where else to leverage the experience: Charlotte to Atlanta and Detroit to Chicago and Seattle to Portland and all kinds of place in Florida to all kinds of places in Florida.
Amtrak's future is not to compete with business travelers going cross-country, but to build on its advantages to build its own business model. And since airlines find long routes more profitable than shorts ones the model for airlines will shift to complement rather than compete.
(And, by the way, the comment "it doesn’t make sense as an alternative to a long drive if you’re going to need a car when you get to your destination anyway," well, flying a long way to a destination also means renting a car once you're there.)
If you want improved local/regional service then the funding source has to be local/regional. You can’t expect taxpayers from all over the country to pay for a Northeast rail system.
A further point in support of your argument is that Toronto's Pearson Airport is widely considered one of the worst in North America, and the worst in Canada by a long shot! Despite this, it, like Toronto is as a city, is the central power, economic, population, and political hub in Canada.
One could easily imagine the Canadian Natural Governing Party (Liberals or their successor) and almost any Ontario provincial government (both looking for green points) picking up a large bill for the Canadian route. Indeed, they are independently looking at building their own a high speed line to Montreal via Ottawa as part of the Quebec City to Windsor corridor. If the Quebec industrial-political-engineering conglomerate gets a substantial train and engineering order, that pulls in the powerful Quebec government and Quebecquois nationalist pay-me-off movement in... [The latter two considerations are critical in a Canadian context. Further, Quebecdoes have a lot of transit-rail manufacturingand mega project scale engineering expertise. The whole project could even be powered by "green" Quebec hydro electricity which is still waiting for US permits to pore even more Quebec hydro power into the US northeast. ]
In addition to the Canadian politics of it, this Canadian high speed rail corridor just makes a lot more economic sense if it is tied into a US high speed network via Detroit at the south end and by at least on link to New York rom somewhere on the Canadian corridor between Toronto and Montreal.
[Now Western and Atlantic Canadians get little directly from this. However, the Canadian Golden Triangle (Toronto-Otawa-Montreal) normally gets what it wants in Canada. Further, it would help appease the more powerful than in the US greenish trend in Canada. To help with wider Canadian support, they could make vague future promises of a modern (not 1950s generation as of now) cross-Canada rail link. Namely, extensions connecting the Central Canada Corridor High Speed Rail Corridor to Boston via the Canadian Maritimes and to Seattle via the Praries and Vancouver in the out years. With the links to a stronger US rail system this cross-Canada system makes better sense. For Americans who likely don't know, a/the grand bargain of Canadian confederation was the promise of the late 1800s version of this cross-Canada route (see: The Last Spike).
For someone who writes a lot about transit, boy do you get a lot of things wrong here (either by omission, or...just wrong
First... There are three types of Amtrak funding.
Northeast Corridor
Long Distance
State Funded ( this is one he doesn't seem to be aware of)
Only the first 2 as the names would imply come from the Federal Government, and the states fund the following:
Any line less than 750 miles outside of the NE corridor. So you are not even talking about federal dollars for a vast majority of high speed rail lines that make sense. If you have some way to make states do this other than depending on the private sector, lets hear it. I don't know why MY doesn't know this. Also, the map of Frances HSR is kind of misleading. If you look at a map of ALL pax rail in France it is quite extensive...ie they have a huge built out network that doesn't exist here. I could go on, but there is an excellent video that points many of these things out
https://youtu.be/F_oyZ8DIDMU
I would suggest many of you watch it
People get mad that California HSR is $200 million per mile. If you tried to build a mile of railway through my neighborhood, you'd need to pay at least $150 million just to buy up everyone's over-priced houses! Housing prices are rail construction prices.
I know I'm coming late to the discussion, but the reaction of railfan twitter to this article led me to very aggressively start muting and blocking quite a few members. Why don't they want us to be able to get from DC to Boston in a reasonable amount of time?
Would rail still be competitive if you eliminated the TSA? I mean after 9/11 it became much harder to hijack a plane making it much safer (even if u just want to kill everyone they'll assume they must act or die meaning a gun on a plane will likely cause less casualties than on a train). Drones are now the bigger threat so what if we had no more airport security than plane security?
Alex Block has a Twitter thread where he says that a) this map isn’t Amtrak’s plan, it’s a compilation of what states have asked for; and b) the law requires them to do this. Is that wrong? https://mobile.twitter.com/alex_block/status/1600881646282182656
Any line less than 750 miles outside of the NE corridor is the responsibility of State Governments. That means ATL-CLT would be the state's responsibility...so basically every corridor that makes sense. Of course Congress could make special appropriations or change the funding formula, but this is what we have right now.
How about putting the money into broadband and VR so we could teleport our eyes and ears all over the place but wouldn't have to move our heavy bones, kidneys, lungs, etc.?
Fun random fact - for being the 3rd most populous country in the world and the 4th largest in size our cities are really small.
NYC 8.6 million
LA 4 million
Chicago 2.6 million
# 10 San Jose at 1 million
In China # 10 is Nanjing at 9.3 million. Maybe you’ve heard of Nanjing in terms of WWII. But how about #11 Foshan, ever heard of it? 9 million - bigger than NYC.
This is entirely an artefact if the US counting city populations weirdly. Most countries are counting the population of city metro areas it just the city proper. By that measure NYC has 19 million people, and the other city populations rise rapidly too.
As someone who agrees with everything in this piece - and who can nearly recite the stats that Matt and Alon have shared repeatedly - the question is, "so how do we stop Amtrak from being stupid and start being smart?"
The dynamics of how Amtrak works - and the decisions it makes - would be a fascinating and valuable follow-up article. As it is, this just leaves me depressed that America won't have high speed rail in my lifetime (and I'm not even 40).
...or to actually understand where the funding comes from, which most of the people commenting (and the author) don't seem to know. Outside of the NEC any line under 750 miles is the state's responsibility absent any special appropriation made explicitly for said line.
Bizarre that a former French student doesn’t know that France is a hexagon--they make such a thing of this!
Yeah, Amtrak is a huge disappointment. I get the feeling that it's a non-starter for the foreseeable future.
Do we need some kind of regional train authority on the east coast? That way the costs and benefits would align better.
While that would be fantastic, the idea of any cooperation involving all the east coast states is difficult to fathom. Mini examples of cooperation such as WMATA, PANYNJ have such stark and difficult challenges allocating costs among two or three states.
Maryland, New Jersey, and Connecticut Connecticut (lots of trackage, few cities) would surely be perpetually mad at New York and Pennsylvania (short trackage, the premier cities) under any interstate compact.
The essence of success in a commercial product is to know your competition and out-deliver them. Amtrak's primary competition is the airlines. To fly from Boston to DC here are my considerations: cost, time, convenience. Amtrak needs to match pricing, at least in the ballpark. Amtrak needs to meet the same delivery time, which is not just flying time vs. train time. It's also getting to the airport two hours early and the time it takes to de-plane and get to the taxi / rideshare locations. For short hops like DC to Boston and NYC to Philly, it's hard to think that taking the train isn't a shorter travel time.
Convenience is the final piece. Everyone who likes the traveling to LaGuardia or Newark to fly to DC, raise your hand. Now those of you who like going through the TSA lines at the airport, raise your hands. Those who like trudging to the ride-share lot, raise your hands. OK, that's a grand total of zero hands up. And that doesn't even take into account the convenience of being able to walk to the club car vs. sitting in a torture seat. Or worrying about a canceled flight.
Amtrak needs to have a robust schedule to compete with all the airlines' schedules, but the advantage of taking customers to center city in Philly and DC and -- especially -- NYC is a great value.
Once these travel routes have been established and the equipment and schedules are enough to compete with air travel the customers will start to realize the benefits of train travel. Then Amtrak can take those learnings and figure out where else to leverage the experience: Charlotte to Atlanta and Detroit to Chicago and Seattle to Portland and all kinds of place in Florida to all kinds of places in Florida.
Amtrak's future is not to compete with business travelers going cross-country, but to build on its advantages to build its own business model. And since airlines find long routes more profitable than shorts ones the model for airlines will shift to complement rather than compete.
(And, by the way, the comment "it doesn’t make sense as an alternative to a long drive if you’re going to need a car when you get to your destination anyway," well, flying a long way to a destination also means renting a car once you're there.)
If you want improved local/regional service then the funding source has to be local/regional. You can’t expect taxpayers from all over the country to pay for a Northeast rail system.
Cars and planes made long-distance passenger trains obsolete which is why they all went bankrupt. What we need are more and better airports.
For the Midwest corridor, what are your views on the Twin Cities - Madison - Milwaukee - Chicago route? I can say people in Madison at least are excited about it (https://madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/madison-wants-passenger-rail-residents-hear-what-could-make-or-break-amtrak-options/article_60378ede-1d9f-52b9-85bc-4a4f35c1f879.html#tracking-source=home-top-story) but from an outsider's perspective does it seem like a worthy use of funding?
So build the light blue one from New York to DC (or Raleigh) and the red from from New York to Chicago and see how it goes.
The white line on that map should connect Pittsburgh to Quebec City so you can just ride in a big circle.
A further point in support of your argument is that Toronto's Pearson Airport is widely considered one of the worst in North America, and the worst in Canada by a long shot! Despite this, it, like Toronto is as a city, is the central power, economic, population, and political hub in Canada.
One could easily imagine the Canadian Natural Governing Party (Liberals or their successor) and almost any Ontario provincial government (both looking for green points) picking up a large bill for the Canadian route. Indeed, they are independently looking at building their own a high speed line to Montreal via Ottawa as part of the Quebec City to Windsor corridor. If the Quebec industrial-political-engineering conglomerate gets a substantial train and engineering order, that pulls in the powerful Quebec government and Quebecquois nationalist pay-me-off movement in... [The latter two considerations are critical in a Canadian context. Further, Quebecdoes have a lot of transit-rail manufacturingand mega project scale engineering expertise. The whole project could even be powered by "green" Quebec hydro electricity which is still waiting for US permits to pore even more Quebec hydro power into the US northeast. ]
In addition to the Canadian politics of it, this Canadian high speed rail corridor just makes a lot more economic sense if it is tied into a US high speed network via Detroit at the south end and by at least on link to New York rom somewhere on the Canadian corridor between Toronto and Montreal.
[Now Western and Atlantic Canadians get little directly from this. However, the Canadian Golden Triangle (Toronto-Otawa-Montreal) normally gets what it wants in Canada. Further, it would help appease the more powerful than in the US greenish trend in Canada. To help with wider Canadian support, they could make vague future promises of a modern (not 1950s generation as of now) cross-Canada rail link. Namely, extensions connecting the Central Canada Corridor High Speed Rail Corridor to Boston via the Canadian Maritimes and to Seattle via the Praries and Vancouver in the out years. With the links to a stronger US rail system this cross-Canada system makes better sense. For Americans who likely don't know, a/the grand bargain of Canadian confederation was the promise of the late 1800s version of this cross-Canada route (see: The Last Spike).
Why is Pearson considered 'one of the worst in North America'? I've used it several times, seems like any other airport to me.
For example: https://travelnoire.com/torontos-pearson-airport-ranks-2nd-worst-in-the-world-for-delays#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16705455745471&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Ftravelnoire.com%2Ftorontos-pearson-airport-ranks-2nd-worst-in-the-world-for-delays