Again, a view of the political economy in addition to the economics would be useful. Amtrak is to a degree a victim of its government ownership. Because Congress has a role in determing Amtrak's fate, large numbers of non-NEC members must be persuaded to support any legislation. Too much support for the NEC reads in the flyover country as a subsidy by good Christian Midwesterners of those rich, liberal Eastern cities. Those uneconomic routes in the Midwest and coast to coast are a political ploy to obtain Congressional support. Amtrak management trims it's sails to garner that support. An effective solution would be to spin out the NEC services to a multi-state compact with limited federal support. The politics would be messy, but at least all parties would have incentives to run an effective HSR system.
Case in point: both of Idaho's senators - staunch conservatives - voted for the infrastructure bill, because (among other reasons) it entertains the idea of extending an Amtrak route to Boise for some reason.
The *only* thing that would make sense to me is a niche Boise->McCall route so people can day drink on their way to ski or whatever (I would 1000% do this). There's a cutesy tourist line that runs from Horseshoe Bend to Cascade that would be actually worthwhile if they completed the line the entire way (though I'm not sure if the geography would allow it).
Connecting Boise to Portland or Spokane would only make sense as an extension of a hypothetically highly-functioning and reliably used line connecting the Bay Area with Portland and Seattle akin to MY's point - the abject failures of CA's coastal rail line are well-documented of course
Salt Lake --> Boise --> Spokane could work if those trains zipped along really quickly. That drive is horrid and I'd imagine there's demand. It's shouldn't be a priority though
I think the Boise city council was pushing for the resurrection of this Amtrak Pioneer route as well. But who is the user persona for a train from SLC to Boise? The rich elderly? The poor who can't afford a car?
I would propose something different: Privatize Amtrak. Almost all of Matt's complaints with Amtrak would benefit from the efficiency gains a for-profit enterprise brings. Cost escalation, wasteful consultants, silly labor rules and bloated management would all be reduced. Doing this work is hard and we should incentivize talented people to tackle that work.
To get private-enterprise benefits, the government should provide a Revenue support guarantee. The government could look back at the previous 5 years, determine how much revenue support ($/rider) would have been needed to ensure a modest return (or even to break-even), then guarantee that amount in $/rider for the next 5 year period. Then, management and ownership of Amtrak would be incentivized to increase the number of riders, increase revenue and lower costs so they could keep the profits. After 5 years, re-evaluate the support level to re-set the performance bar and repeat.
The profit motive is a powerful force. Our government should use that force to improve rail service.
Ideal would be the Japanese system, where property developers just happen to run railways, and use the profits of their property portfolio to subsidise the trains and make their land around stations even more valuable. Would smack two of Matt's birds (zoning reform and building stuff + faster and better trains) in one go.
Did you realize this is exactly how Los Angeles was developed? That LA is so spread out not because of the freeways and the automobiles, but because of Henry Huntington's Pacific Electric? Huntington (the nephew of one of the Central Pacific's Big Four) was basically a real estate speculator who would buy cheap land out in the middle of nowhere, subdivide it, then run a Pacific Electric line out to it to increase its value. The Pacific Electric itself was never really a viable concern and eventually had to be municipalized.
I was aware LA had an extensive streetcar network at one point (world's largest IIRC) but didn't realize it was a loss leader for real estate development. That's interesting, thanks.
Yeah, this was a very common pattern for streetcar suburbs throughout between the 1890s and 1920s. Wherever you see regular street grids built in that era, it's a good bet there was a streetcar going down the main street in order to make those newly-built homes attractive.
The history of 19th century railroad development in the US suggests that, left to its own devices, private railroad managers can easily be as wasteful and corrupt as any government bureaucrat.
“ the efficiency gains a for-profit enterprise brings”
I realize this is more an article of faith than a reasoned argument, but this seems a bit…naive…given the US’ modern experience in government outsourcing.
I think the model would be something like the UK where they give out franchises to different private operators, sort of like how some states run their Medicaid programs. UK rail is fine, but it doesn't seem superior to other countries'.
This is totally factually inaccurate! U.K. rail is a disaster. Government subsidies are higher than when it was nationalised and fares are the most expensive in Europe
Right, there’s an argument that could be made that “privatization” could get some on the right to come on board, but I don’t think that’s the main obstacle to GOP buy-in here.
Amtrak outside of the NE really is basically running bad tourism trains. Privatize those so we end up with something like this instead: https://www.twilightexpress-mizukaze.jp/en/
Then run the NEC as an interstate compact with Federal backing to actually make the needed investments, before going to CA, TX, and the south and west shores of Lake Michigan with the experience gained and building regional high-speed or higher-speed rail lines. Those four locations cover 85% of demand and half of the population.
If we actually get good at this, it may one day make sense to build a Chicago-Indianapolis-Columbus-Pittsburgh-Philadelphia route. But we would really need to get GOOD at it first, which we aren't currently.
NC runs a successful inTRAstate railroad with 3 daily (4 pre-COVID) roundtrips between Raleigh and Charlotte plus Amtrak's daily Carolinean service from New York to Raleigh/Charlotte. North Carolina would not continue the PIedmont 3 dailys if it was a big money loser.
And traffic on I-95 is brutal from NC to NYC, and the skies can't accommodate more planes in this region even with the GPS traffic control replacement of radar...
So connecting NC's current intrastate service to the Northeast corridor is viable and faster service will come from VA and NC resurrecting the abandoned S line which will save an hour at least by not going through Rocky Mount, NC. Trains just need to go somewhat faster to allow for daytrips from NC to the nation's capital.
The Midwest isn't growing like the Southeast (it will after climate change makes the Southeast too hot) but right now consider this:;;
Tthe population of Georgia and the states that touch Georgia is over 55 million, and all are continuing to grow at warp speed. FL-21m people, GA and NC 11m each, SC-5m, TN,-7m, AL-4
The fundamental problem with privitization--one with which its proponents have never really engaged--is that the incentive structure goes from "Do Thing A" to "Extract As Much Money As Possible While Doing As Little Work As Possible Without Losing The Contract." Funny thing is, anyone with experience on either side of government contracting in 2021 knows this in their bones.
without competing with other providers which would drive down prices you're right. Another problem is when private companies get paid by the federal govt. which they almost certainly will milk and fleece and be silent as the nation's finances can't afford anything anymore. Our healthcare is like this. Big Pharma charging us the highest prices in the world, and medicare paying $17 billion a year for one anti-tumor growth drug to a single pharmaceutical company. There's no incentive for better efficiency and semi-private companies aren't exposed to free market forces..... Our nation's infrastructure won't ever be rebuilt without temporary labor without full benefits and not able to sue for millions if injured.-- we need to offer short term, very high paying temp jobs with these stipulations for new rail tracks up and down the east coast, new water, sewer, and gas line replacements as the service life of the first generation infrastructure ends all at the same time (next 10-30 years).
TBF, it's important to understand what you mean by "privatizing".
Some would take it to mean going back to the 19th C system of individual railways owning their own tracks and running their own services.
Some might mean what Japan did when it split JR into regional blocks (each of which owns its own tracks) which are shareholder owned.
But the GB privatization was this complicated franchising system, it's complicated but the track stayed with a national-level entity, and passenger services were run by franchises which, depending on the profit expected, either paid a premium or received a subsidy in order to operate these services (plus there was some other stuff).
Agreed. And I don't think this is inconsistent with a vision in which state DOTs have the power and capability to ensure that money spent in the public interest is spent wisely. We've been very penny-wise and pound-foolish both in cutting certain functions and in choosing to waste money on others.
Never mind, I just looked it up. It is a state-owned company, which I believe is what Amtrak is too. Suggests privatization is, at minimum, not necessary for achieving the best outcomes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renfe_Operadora
It is irrelevant; we can't replicate the culture and government structure of Spain, so the ownership status of Spanish rail doesn't much matter. We can clearly learn from their experiences, but we need US solutions to US problems.
Cuban healthcare. Amtrak expansion plans. Look, I know that Slow Boring subscriptions have slipped a bit, but is it necessary to go so totally clickbait? It's like reading Buzzfeed.
Boston to DC in 1 hour 40 minutes is more delusional than the 3 hours 40 minute figure MY published a couple weeks ago. Where does this number come from? It’s faster than Italian or even French trains. Here’s some basic numbers.
Rome to Milan: 571km 3:10 181km/hr
Paris Marseilles 775km 3:12 242km/hr
Madrid Barcelona 628km 2:56 214 km/hr
Washington to Boston is 733 km. At French speeds that would be 3 hours 2 minutes. At Italian speeds it would be 4 hours 7 minutes. Achieving French speeds while passing through greater NYC, not to mention Philly and Baltimore is a pipe dream. From an engineering standpoint, it would be cheapest to bypass the intermediate cities, but that would hurt ridership and wouldn’t work politically. The goal should be NYC to DC in 2:15. That is achievable. It would require upgrading the catenaries on the non-urban stretches, expanding the radius of the 50mph Franklin Junction curve in North Philly and building a new tunnel to eliminate a 30mph curve just South of Penn Station in Baltimore. DC to NYC is easier to upgrade because, other than the cities, the line has gentle curves and the limiting factor is the catenaries. NY to Boston is harder to upgrade because the line has many speed limiting curves and they are spread throughout the route. It might be best to follow I-84 to the Mass Pike and abandon the existing coastal route
Seems like he might have edited the text to say a 3-hour DC to Boston trip, but based on the quoted ~hour flying time, I wonder if he originally actually meant DC to New York, which is what you are also talking about and for which the 1:40 figure is not so different from the 2:15 goal you propose.
it sucks that MY can edit his article without acknowledgement but I can’t fix a typo i see 2 minutes after I comment. there should be a brief period to fix typos
You wouldn’t get to 1:40 (which is an average speed of 135 mph/217kph) without either 1) upgrading the tunnel that goes under the Hudson and into Penn Station or 2) bypassing Baltimore and Philly or building tunnels under them with subterranean stations.
i think this infrastructure bill specifies money for the new tunnel under the Hudson which Trump delayed to spite some NJ politician. it would be finished if the unions could contain the cost overruns that scared Gov. Christie into rejecting the project. it is beyond needed no matter the cost.
I wonder what a reasonable transit time would be required to pull people from air travel to rail. It's not a matter of equalizing transit time because air travel has impediments that rail doesn't face (TSA lines, getting to and from the airport compared to where the rail station is). Would a transit time twice as long for rail (as suggested here) do the trick? I suspect the answer is "yes" for a large number of air travelers -- especially if the railcar amenities were superior to air.
The acceptable ratio depends upon how long the air trip is. If a high speed train took twice the 5.5 hours it takes to fly NY to LA, that would not be competitive. But twice a 1.5 hour trip is, especially if you offer downtown to downtown service.
The European routes I mentioned above are the longest frequently traveled high speed routes in each of the country. Basically, people will rarely take a train if it’s over 3.5 or 4 hours.
You may be overlooking the advantages of overnight service if you can sleep well on the train (good recliner, roomette or private room). It's easier to work on a train so a 12-24 hr train trip might be a reasonable business class alternative.
I did Beijing overnight to Shanghai and it was awesome. We were in a first class car though. Later on that same trip I took daytime Zhengzhou to Beijing riding with the masses and it sucked.
(1) Train stations are in city centers, airports (generally) are further out. Usually it takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to get from the airport to wherever you want to be.
(2) Trains have multiple-door boarding. Nothing physical prevents you from waiting on the platform and just getting in the door with the shortest line. Amtrak voluntarily neutralizes this by requiring airplane-style single-door boarding at the largest NEC stations (NY Penn, DC Union, Philadelphia 30th St, etc.), but this is Amtrak being Amtrak (i.e. pointlessly idiotic) and could be ended tomorrow if they wanted to.
(3) Train stations have less security than airports. While this might partly be arbitrary, airports do need more security than train stations because the damage from a plane crash has much more catastrophic potential than any rail accident.
There's other ancillary reasons (like trains' more relaxed standards for what kind/size of baggage can be carried on rather than having to be checked), but those are the big three.
> a plane crash has much more catastrophic potential than any rail accident.
Just to expand on this - a plane can be crashed *anywhere*, while a train *can't* crash into anything that isn't adjacent to the track (and even getting it *adjacent* to the track involves some really difficult maneuvering).
Most people don’t live in city centers and so it’s not necessarily easier to get to the train station. La Guardia and Reagan National are examples of airports that can be just as convenient as the train station depending on what part of town you are starting from. It’s a bit disingenuous for the plane vs train timeline comparison to always start from downtown next to the train station.
I mean, technically yes, if you're going from Queens to Fairfax County that cancels out. It can vary a lot based on the exact city pair. However, for the vast majority of trips, your *destination* is near the city center, even if you live in the suburbs at your origin point. And even if you are a suburbanite, it's not necessarily the case that the airport is better for you than downtown.
Consider: People travel for 3 basic reasons: business, tourism, and visiting family/friends. Most business travel will be to a city center, since that's where you have the heaviest concentration of, well, business. It's also where all the conventions are. Similarly, if you're a tourist, you're either traveling to visit the city or you're using it as a base for nearby sights. In the former case, whatever it is you're seeing will be downtown. In the latter case, it's at worst a tossup between downtown and the airport as to which is more convenient to find whatever transportation options will get you where you want to be (whether it be buses or trains or car rental + convenient highway exit).
By the same token, when you're visiting family or friends, the fact that the people you're seeing live in "the suburbs" doesn't necessarily make flying any more convenient. It depends on where they live and where the airport is. I'm going to see my family in suburban Detroit this weekend. They live in the northern suburbs off I-75, so going through DTW in the western suburbs off I-94 adds about 20-30 minutes to their trip vs. a hypothetical arrival in Downtown or Midtown Detroit. Now, admittedly, I'm coming in from Philadelphia, so there's no way I'd go any way but by air. But if I had ended up living in Chicago--which would've been more typical for someone who grew up where I did--the downtown arrival would be a serious bonus for HSR, even though my family lives nowhere near downtown.
Also, I have to say, DCA and LGA are both extraordinarily close to the downtowns they serve. Even on the East Coast where airports tend to be closer to downtown, they have some of the shortest distances (about 3-4 miles to downtown DC and Midtown Manhattan, respectively, which is less than any major NEC city other than BOS; PHL, EWR, and BWI are all in the 8-10 range, JFK is about 12-13.) Distances outside the NEC are usually even bigger (for reference, MDW is about 10 miles from the Chicago Loop, and ORD about 15; DTW is about 15 miles from Downtown Detroit; HOU and DFW are about 15-20 miles from the downtowns they serve; ATL is about 8-9 miles from Downtown and even further from the secondary business center in Buckhead; etc., etc., etc. The only top-20-metro airports I could find within 5 miles of the city center outside the NEC were PHX, SJC, and SAN.)
Given the very high cost of high speed rail, the time efficient solution might be for time conscious travelers to take a helicopter from the airport to downtown. If a lawyer bills $500 an hour, the client could be happy to pay $200 for a chopper to cut 30 minutes off the commute. Similar dynamics apply with executives and high net worth people. The proposed upgrades to the NEC could pay for slot of chopper flights.
($15 billion buys 75 million chopper flights, or enough for every acela passenger to have one for 18 years). Total NEC revenue in 2019 was $1.2 billion, so sinking $15 billion into the NEC would cost 10 years of revenues just to upgrade tracks
You don't need a method to be more convenient for everyone in order for the method to get a significant user base. It just needs to have a significant population for which it is most convenient.
Faster than anything in China, too, I'm pretty sure. Top speeds for nearly all trains here are about 180 (I think they're rolling one out that tops 200, but project is in infancy). And top speed, of course, isn't average speed.
the fastest beijing to shanghai train averages 190mph which is amazing. but the other routes, eg shanghai to wuhan are much slower and often average around 100
Interesting couple of articles on this theme. Living in the NEC, I agree that it’s a prime candidate to have a working HSR line as opposed to whatever Acela is.
But the heart of the matter is the issue of state capacity. American public-sector engineering and transportation authorities have atrophied completely under the influence of outsourcing.
So thoroughly that they are no longer able to even *ride herd on* major projects effectively, let alone *conduct* them. This is why every mega-project goes over-budget, from bridges to highways to rail work.
It’s why California’s HSR project was a catastrophe from which a single consultant (WSP) was able to extract $2 billion in rents- erm, “design fees” for a design that ended up over-budget by a factor of 5 (and counting).
It’s why Gateway is mooted to cost several times what comparable complex boring projects cost elsewhere.
It’s why PennDOT’s last attempt to spam out 500-odd similar small bridges through consultants was still a massive clusterfluffle. Not because it was a failure, but because the consultants have spent every moment since whining incessantly in the hopes of having the Legislature prevent them from ever doing something similar and eating into their design fees.
We’re so far from having the state capacity to leverage these sorts of capital investments that I don’t even know where to start, really,
Would a state actually save money in the long run by having a larger permanent engineering staff? If so, maybe this is one of those issues where a blue state should try it out and hopefully create a proof of concept. https://www.slowboring.com/p/make-blue-america-great-again
The US's Afghanistan playbook is also the playbook for, well, most large-scale public sector activity. It's also how a lot of our blue-chip corporations run things (thinking GE, IBM).
- You need to be seen doing something and after you start, you need to find metrics showing improvement.
- You needs to spend money to be seen doing something, so it's time to take out debt.
- Spending money, no matter how unproductively, does employ people and those people will testify to the value of the money spent during the effort.
- After you start employing people, they will naturally produce metrics justifying their expense.
- Those metrics may or may not reflect improvements in reality, but nobody listens to the nay-sayers.
- If you didn't improve reality, nobody will be able to prove otherwise for decades, at which point you make the US public bail you out.
One important caveat: "most large-scale *American* public sector activity".
There are other nations where this is manifestly not true, because they haven't been subject to 60 years of a corrosive ideology saying that all public goods should be underfunded as shit and you should expect nothing to work well.
Because we’re not spending enough money year after year after year on basic capabilities.
There’s a big difference between “we have two dozen folks doing design for ongoing rail and rail bridge replacement projects” each year for a decade or two and “let’s spend $50 billion on a high-speed rail project tomorrow.”
Do you really think the Dutch government doesn’t have a team of a few dozen engineers permanently on payroll who know hydrology and hydraulic control structure design?
Even if the mega-projects are designed by Arup, that staff’s expertise is invaluable in managing the project and keeping Arup honest.
Meanwhile, CalTrans had like four rail engineering staff when they kicked off their HSR project, and WSP took them for a ride.
Yes, I meant US. But the fact that it infects our private sector as well suggests it's not just the usual narrative you share of the post-Nixon neoliberal ideological turn. Or at least that usual narrative fails to capture the full scope of American institutional decline.
We financialized the US economy with unrestrained securitization, which underpins neoliberal policymaking by mechanizing and protecting the process of privatizing assets once owned by the public.
This project only worked thanks to activist monetary policy beginning with the Greenspan Put, building a social safety net for massive borrowers and continuously expanding that social safety net. The institution with the power to keep large borrowers from going bankrupt consistently errs on the side of using that power, which keeps unproductive debt alive. Note that corporate consolidation is funded through borrowing. Bailing out unproductive borrowers only really benefits investors, at least it has so far. Employees need to fit into a balance sheet on life support. In the worst case, we produce "zombie" companies, defined as companies which don't make enough money to ever repay the principal on their debt. (Needless to say, the Fed has hot-off-the-presses research showing zombies definitely aren't a problem, and definitely aren't caused by the Fed. Sure.)
This is concretely what is implied by "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor." My argument is that neoliberalism in practice has meant hollowing out both public sector and private sector incentives. Institutions will always get bailed out, and will live to shaft the public another day.
We should re-legalize the governor giving business to his brother-in-law. At least with honest graft it's clear who is responsible for making decisions, and who screwed up. And if the brother in law builds the bridge, we can all celebrate and re-elect the governor.
Even just a low speed Bakersfield to Palmdale connector - with the existing Palmdale to LA commuter route, high speed Bakersfield to Modesto, and low speed Modesto to Oakland you’re already competitive with driving speed!
Isn't this a federalism issue? Stuff that urban people like is constantly in danger of being defunded due to our Cubist constitution and the culture war preferences of Republicans, so agencies like Amtrak have to show they appeal to people outside the coasts. For transit within one urban area, I think you could have some political success saying "fund this train line so the city slickers stop getting lost in your exurban town and backing up your streets on their commute" but I'm not sure that works at a federal level.
It seems like Amtrak is doing old school politics, drawing lines through as many states or districts as it can to ensure broad support. Politics has become so polarized and national, maybe they can make the switch to focusing on the NEC and get liberal support from areas they are leaving or ignoring just bc liberals like trains. Amtrak funding does seem to be a bit of a ‘secret Congress’ type issue so maybe the old pork barrel style should still rule the day.
But if we are moving into a new era where trains become the kind of nationalized culture war type issue (it already seems this way on Twitter), it seems to me like that could go badly wrong. With conservatives, even members whose districts still do benefit, opposing funding and liberals taking a ‘no enemies on the left’ approach to defending Amtrak from the neoliberal scourge of numbers, analysis, and efficiency.
Anyway keep fighting the good fight Matt! We probably need to get to a politics where environmental groups support things like reducing unnecessary staff on trains because that will eventually allow for more trains. We feel along way away from that to me.
From Baltimore, Southwest flies into Hartford, Providence, Boston, and Manchester with a combined 17 nonstops a day. Those are all less 90 minutes gate to gate. Even accounting for security, it is less than four hours door to door. That is what Amtrak needs to compete with.
Southwest also makes three flights a day into Long Island. However, it has no direct flights from DC or Baltimore to Philadelphia, Newark, or LaGuardia. It knows it can't compete on those routes.
There are a lot of other airlines that do go DC/Baltimore into greater NYC but those are all regional jets feeding a hub. Nobody would do those on a stand-alone basis.
That is also the reason there is a Madison to Chicago route. Nobody takes a plane if those are both of their endpoints. That route is only in service of longer multistop trips.
The DC to Boston route is a great example of a bad example that everybody keeps using and it is very apt. It is really DC to NYC and NYC to Boston with a common terminus. In both directions the trains empty out at NYC which just feeds into Matt's other tirade about how bad the people handling at Penn Station is.
The current president is, like, the country's single biggest Amtrak fan. Why isn't he twisting some arms to get some cool shit done along the lines of what Matthew is proposing?
I’m confused about the Madison to Chicago discussion. Three hours from Madison to Chicago seems like it would win out over a plane for most people, even if most would still drive. Flying from Madison isn’t going to get you to Chicago any faster than that - the point of flying is to connect to anywhere else that United flies.
I think the main advantage of that proposal was having the train connecting Madison to Milwaukee. If the stations are in the right place, that could be very convenient.
Flying Madison to Chicago is a horrible idea simply because O'Hare is a horrible airport with poor on-time performance. (For that matter, flying from anywhere to O'Hare is a horrible idea.)
The real train competition would be the bus. Madison to Chicago Union Station is currently about 4 hours by bus. So, if the train really takes 3:18 from Madison to Chicago, that would be an improvement --- albeit not a game changer.
I've spoken at length to an Amtrak employee (some kind of planner) about the northeast corridor, and he said the limitation on speed is about track location, not money. To get faster trains, you need straighter tracks, to limit turning; and to get straighter tracks, you need to move tracks from where they are, to where they ideally should be; that means lots and lots of eminent domain, lawsuits, and petty local political controversies. Getting Acela on the NEC was a political process much more than an engineering process. Other countries have their own political complexities, but generally speaking they either have stronger central planning (China, Korea), they built their tracks at a point in their development where infrastructure and property were "reset" because of being bombed (Japan, Germany), or other particular combinations of events.
I think what this piece (and a lot of thinking around HSR and transit in general) fails to grapple with is that the GOP’s base would rather die than spend a nickel on projects that they see as primarily benefiting cities, particularly urbanites in the NE corridor.
That's the point though. This money is really hard to come by, basically needs unified Democratic control to get it - therefore it's all the more imperative to spend this cash injection wisely on lasting improvements to the network (facts on the ground), not on new cushions or whatever.
There is one element missing from the discussion. That is the element of trains as cruise ships. Other countries that are endowed with the kind of spectacular scenery that the United States has have luxury trains that operate at slow to moderate speeds over good to poor tracks and attract people who pay bazillions of dollars for the privilege.
I don't see why (prohibitive laws or regulations aside) America shouldn't have trains like this. They could be private. They could make money. They could pay some amount of money (perhaps not huge but nonzero) toward maintaining rail as transportation.
I have ridden these trains; other than that, I have no answers, only questions. Would anyone who knows more about this like to comment on why we don't have luxury trains of this kind, and if we did, whether they could contribute positively to the picture Matt paints?
Cool. Odd, though, that there are no sleepers on the train. Anyway, it looks like a step in the right direction. Who gets money from this? Amtrak? The local RR? Did any rules need to be changed or waived to make this work?
I doubt Amtrak has anything to do with it. Anywhere there is no rule prohibiting companies other than Amtrak from operating passenger rail service in the USA.
They don't enjoy a monopoly. The point of Amtrak's formation was that the major US railroads wanted to offload their loss-making passenger operations (which they had some obligations to run), so a new entity was created.
But, AFAIK, there's nothing stopping Union Pacific or BNSF from running their own passenger services if they wanted to.
One of the reasons they don't have sleepers is because they want you to experience as much of the scenery during daylight (since that's what you're paying for) as possible; operating through the night undermines that.
There is something to that, but the African and Australian trains handle it fairly well in several ways, like stopping for short tours at key spots, timing the night parts when you are going through country that is the same for a long way, and even just by going "absurdly slow." (In parts of Zimbabwe, the track is so bad that village kids can keep up with the train jogging along the track).
Again, a view of the political economy in addition to the economics would be useful. Amtrak is to a degree a victim of its government ownership. Because Congress has a role in determing Amtrak's fate, large numbers of non-NEC members must be persuaded to support any legislation. Too much support for the NEC reads in the flyover country as a subsidy by good Christian Midwesterners of those rich, liberal Eastern cities. Those uneconomic routes in the Midwest and coast to coast are a political ploy to obtain Congressional support. Amtrak management trims it's sails to garner that support. An effective solution would be to spin out the NEC services to a multi-state compact with limited federal support. The politics would be messy, but at least all parties would have incentives to run an effective HSR system.
Case in point: both of Idaho's senators - staunch conservatives - voted for the infrastructure bill, because (among other reasons) it entertains the idea of extending an Amtrak route to Boise for some reason.
https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/news/2021-08-05/infrastructure-congress-amtrak-boise-idaho-pioneer-route
(replying to both comments)
The *only* thing that would make sense to me is a niche Boise->McCall route so people can day drink on their way to ski or whatever (I would 1000% do this). There's a cutesy tourist line that runs from Horseshoe Bend to Cascade that would be actually worthwhile if they completed the line the entire way (though I'm not sure if the geography would allow it).
Connecting Boise to Portland or Spokane would only make sense as an extension of a hypothetically highly-functioning and reliably used line connecting the Bay Area with Portland and Seattle akin to MY's point - the abject failures of CA's coastal rail line are well-documented of course
edit: there *was* a HB->Cascade line; what a terrible business model lol http://www.thundermountainline.com/
Salt Lake --> Boise --> Spokane could work if those trains zipped along really quickly. That drive is horrid and I'd imagine there's demand. It's shouldn't be a priority though
I think the Boise city council was pushing for the resurrection of this Amtrak Pioneer route as well. But who is the user persona for a train from SLC to Boise? The rich elderly? The poor who can't afford a car?
I would propose something different: Privatize Amtrak. Almost all of Matt's complaints with Amtrak would benefit from the efficiency gains a for-profit enterprise brings. Cost escalation, wasteful consultants, silly labor rules and bloated management would all be reduced. Doing this work is hard and we should incentivize talented people to tackle that work.
To get private-enterprise benefits, the government should provide a Revenue support guarantee. The government could look back at the previous 5 years, determine how much revenue support ($/rider) would have been needed to ensure a modest return (or even to break-even), then guarantee that amount in $/rider for the next 5 year period. Then, management and ownership of Amtrak would be incentivized to increase the number of riders, increase revenue and lower costs so they could keep the profits. After 5 years, re-evaluate the support level to re-set the performance bar and repeat.
The profit motive is a powerful force. Our government should use that force to improve rail service.
Ideal would be the Japanese system, where property developers just happen to run railways, and use the profits of their property portfolio to subsidise the trains and make their land around stations even more valuable. Would smack two of Matt's birds (zoning reform and building stuff + faster and better trains) in one go.
Did you realize this is exactly how Los Angeles was developed? That LA is so spread out not because of the freeways and the automobiles, but because of Henry Huntington's Pacific Electric? Huntington (the nephew of one of the Central Pacific's Big Four) was basically a real estate speculator who would buy cheap land out in the middle of nowhere, subdivide it, then run a Pacific Electric line out to it to increase its value. The Pacific Electric itself was never really a viable concern and eventually had to be municipalized.
Check out this nifty map of the Pacific Electric in 1920, well before freeways: http://imgzoom.cdlib.org/Fullscreen.ics?ark=ark:/13030/hb638nb72q/z1&&brand=calisphere
I was aware LA had an extensive streetcar network at one point (world's largest IIRC) but didn't realize it was a loss leader for real estate development. That's interesting, thanks.
It's a little known fact, but Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a documentary.
Yeah, this was a very common pattern for streetcar suburbs throughout between the 1890s and 1920s. Wherever you see regular street grids built in that era, it's a good bet there was a streetcar going down the main street in order to make those newly-built homes attractive.
Oh, and this is also the back story to the Metropolitan line in London.
Hong Kong public transport has operated along similar lines, IIRC.
This is how our entire rail network was developed, lol. And most of our older municipal rail systems, and NYC's subway.
And Hong Kong's MTR, for that matter. I believe it was done in Germany too at one point? Can't find the citation right now.
The history of 19th century railroad development in the US suggests that, left to its own devices, private railroad managers can easily be as wasteful and corrupt as any government bureaucrat.
“ the efficiency gains a for-profit enterprise brings”
I realize this is more an article of faith than a reasoned argument, but this seems a bit…naive…given the US’ modern experience in government outsourcing.
I think the model would be something like the UK where they give out franchises to different private operators, sort of like how some states run their Medicaid programs. UK rail is fine, but it doesn't seem superior to other countries'.
This is totally factually inaccurate! U.K. rail is a disaster. Government subsidies are higher than when it was nationalised and fares are the most expensive in Europe
Right, there’s an argument that could be made that “privatization” could get some on the right to come on board, but I don’t think that’s the main obstacle to GOP buy-in here.
I don't think that John is proposing outsourcing or contact work. Plenty of US companies invest heavily in their own infrastructure.
The problem with privatizing rail lines in the US has traditionally been that rail lines are heavily unprofitable in most of the US.
Amtrak would become the Northeast Corridor and maybe the auto train to Florida.
As it probably should...
Evisceration of public services through privatization. What's not to love?
Ehhh, this is a bad take.
Amtrak outside of the NE really is basically running bad tourism trains. Privatize those so we end up with something like this instead: https://www.twilightexpress-mizukaze.jp/en/
Then run the NEC as an interstate compact with Federal backing to actually make the needed investments, before going to CA, TX, and the south and west shores of Lake Michigan with the experience gained and building regional high-speed or higher-speed rail lines. Those four locations cover 85% of demand and half of the population.
If we actually get good at this, it may one day make sense to build a Chicago-Indianapolis-Columbus-Pittsburgh-Philadelphia route. But we would really need to get GOOD at it first, which we aren't currently.
NC runs a successful inTRAstate railroad with 3 daily (4 pre-COVID) roundtrips between Raleigh and Charlotte plus Amtrak's daily Carolinean service from New York to Raleigh/Charlotte. North Carolina would not continue the PIedmont 3 dailys if it was a big money loser.
And traffic on I-95 is brutal from NC to NYC, and the skies can't accommodate more planes in this region even with the GPS traffic control replacement of radar...
So connecting NC's current intrastate service to the Northeast corridor is viable and faster service will come from VA and NC resurrecting the abandoned S line which will save an hour at least by not going through Rocky Mount, NC. Trains just need to go somewhat faster to allow for daytrips from NC to the nation's capital.
The Midwest isn't growing like the Southeast (it will after climate change makes the Southeast too hot) but right now consider this:;;
Tthe population of Georgia and the states that touch Georgia is over 55 million, and all are continuing to grow at warp speed. FL-21m people, GA and NC 11m each, SC-5m, TN,-7m, AL-4
Privatizing rail has its own hurdles, look at England
The fundamental problem with privitization--one with which its proponents have never really engaged--is that the incentive structure goes from "Do Thing A" to "Extract As Much Money As Possible While Doing As Little Work As Possible Without Losing The Contract." Funny thing is, anyone with experience on either side of government contracting in 2021 knows this in their bones.
This.
without competing with other providers which would drive down prices you're right. Another problem is when private companies get paid by the federal govt. which they almost certainly will milk and fleece and be silent as the nation's finances can't afford anything anymore. Our healthcare is like this. Big Pharma charging us the highest prices in the world, and medicare paying $17 billion a year for one anti-tumor growth drug to a single pharmaceutical company. There's no incentive for better efficiency and semi-private companies aren't exposed to free market forces..... Our nation's infrastructure won't ever be rebuilt without temporary labor without full benefits and not able to sue for millions if injured.-- we need to offer short term, very high paying temp jobs with these stipulations for new rail tracks up and down the east coast, new water, sewer, and gas line replacements as the service life of the first generation infrastructure ends all at the same time (next 10-30 years).
TBF, it's important to understand what you mean by "privatizing".
Some would take it to mean going back to the 19th C system of individual railways owning their own tracks and running their own services.
Some might mean what Japan did when it split JR into regional blocks (each of which owns its own tracks) which are shareholder owned.
But the GB privatization was this complicated franchising system, it's complicated but the track stayed with a national-level entity, and passenger services were run by franchises which, depending on the profit expected, either paid a premium or received a subsidy in order to operate these services (plus there was some other stuff).
Agreed. And I don't think this is inconsistent with a vision in which state DOTs have the power and capability to ensure that money spent in the public interest is spent wisely. We've been very penny-wise and pound-foolish both in cutting certain functions and in choosing to waste money on others.
Is the train in Spain public or private?
The train in Spain runs mainly on the plain, so construction and maintenance costs are lower.
I think you’ve got it.
Pretty much all European countries have the track in public rather than private hands, including in "privatized" systems like GB.
The main agency which actually runs the trains in Spain is RENFE, which is public:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renfe_Operadora
It is in Spain.
It is what in Spain.
Never mind, I just looked it up. It is a state-owned company, which I believe is what Amtrak is too. Suggests privatization is, at minimum, not necessary for achieving the best outcomes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renfe_Operadora
It is irrelevant; we can't replicate the culture and government structure of Spain, so the ownership status of Spanish rail doesn't much matter. We can clearly learn from their experiences, but we need US solutions to US problems.
Hemorrhaging money into the pockets of defense contractors in northern VA with an Afghanistan-like ROI is the American way.
Cuban healthcare. Amtrak expansion plans. Look, I know that Slow Boring subscriptions have slipped a bit, but is it necessary to go so totally clickbait? It's like reading Buzzfeed.
OnlyFans stopped accepting sexual content, so we all signed up here for the infrastructure porn.
On an episode of the Weeds, Matt mentioned wishing he could spend more time on financial regulation, but nobody would read it.
Now that he has a captive audience, I bet he's chomping at the bit to write about the Volcker rule.
Boston to DC in 1 hour 40 minutes is more delusional than the 3 hours 40 minute figure MY published a couple weeks ago. Where does this number come from? It’s faster than Italian or even French trains. Here’s some basic numbers.
Rome to Milan: 571km 3:10 181km/hr
Paris Marseilles 775km 3:12 242km/hr
Madrid Barcelona 628km 2:56 214 km/hr
Washington to Boston is 733 km. At French speeds that would be 3 hours 2 minutes. At Italian speeds it would be 4 hours 7 minutes. Achieving French speeds while passing through greater NYC, not to mention Philly and Baltimore is a pipe dream. From an engineering standpoint, it would be cheapest to bypass the intermediate cities, but that would hurt ridership and wouldn’t work politically. The goal should be NYC to DC in 2:15. That is achievable. It would require upgrading the catenaries on the non-urban stretches, expanding the radius of the 50mph Franklin Junction curve in North Philly and building a new tunnel to eliminate a 30mph curve just South of Penn Station in Baltimore. DC to NYC is easier to upgrade because, other than the cities, the line has gentle curves and the limiting factor is the catenaries. NY to Boston is harder to upgrade because the line has many speed limiting curves and they are spread throughout the route. It might be best to follow I-84 to the Mass Pike and abandon the existing coastal route
Seems like he might have edited the text to say a 3-hour DC to Boston trip, but based on the quoted ~hour flying time, I wonder if he originally actually meant DC to New York, which is what you are also talking about and for which the 1:40 figure is not so different from the 2:15 goal you propose.
it sucks that MY can edit his article without acknowledgement but I can’t fix a typo i see 2 minutes after I comment. there should be a brief period to fix typos
Yes I'm almost certain this is correct. Beating 3 hours for the entire line is possible at Chinese speeds though.
You wouldn’t get to 1:40 (which is an average speed of 135 mph/217kph) without either 1) upgrading the tunnel that goes under the Hudson and into Penn Station or 2) bypassing Baltimore and Philly or building tunnels under them with subterranean stations.
i think this infrastructure bill specifies money for the new tunnel under the Hudson which Trump delayed to spite some NJ politician. it would be finished if the unions could contain the cost overruns that scared Gov. Christie into rejecting the project. it is beyond needed no matter the cost.
Look if we can spend 20 years in Afghanistan with made up numbers as unachievable targets, we can spend a few years doing it at home with Amtrak!
Just call it a Hyperloop and nobody will actually hold you to your promises.
I wonder what a reasonable transit time would be required to pull people from air travel to rail. It's not a matter of equalizing transit time because air travel has impediments that rail doesn't face (TSA lines, getting to and from the airport compared to where the rail station is). Would a transit time twice as long for rail (as suggested here) do the trick? I suspect the answer is "yes" for a large number of air travelers -- especially if the railcar amenities were superior to air.
The acceptable ratio depends upon how long the air trip is. If a high speed train took twice the 5.5 hours it takes to fly NY to LA, that would not be competitive. But twice a 1.5 hour trip is, especially if you offer downtown to downtown service.
The European routes I mentioned above are the longest frequently traveled high speed routes in each of the country. Basically, people will rarely take a train if it’s over 3.5 or 4 hours.
You may be overlooking the advantages of overnight service if you can sleep well on the train (good recliner, roomette or private room). It's easier to work on a train so a 12-24 hr train trip might be a reasonable business class alternative.
Have you ever taken an overnight train? I did once. Never again.
It’s an awful nights sleep unless you get completely drunk (or take other sedatives) which doesn’t leave you in good stead the next morning…
i have. a few times. i’ve never slept that well, but i love trains and enjoy getting up at first light and staring out the window
I did Beijing overnight to Shanghai and it was awesome. We were in a first class car though. Later on that same trip I took daytime Zhengzhou to Beijing riding with the masses and it sucked.
There’s been an 8 hour DC to Boston sleeper for ages. No one takes it. It costs much more than a plan ticket.
If rail became really popular, getting to and through the train station would be just as much hassle as checking in for your flight.
Not really, for 3 main reasons:
(1) Train stations are in city centers, airports (generally) are further out. Usually it takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to get from the airport to wherever you want to be.
(2) Trains have multiple-door boarding. Nothing physical prevents you from waiting on the platform and just getting in the door with the shortest line. Amtrak voluntarily neutralizes this by requiring airplane-style single-door boarding at the largest NEC stations (NY Penn, DC Union, Philadelphia 30th St, etc.), but this is Amtrak being Amtrak (i.e. pointlessly idiotic) and could be ended tomorrow if they wanted to.
(3) Train stations have less security than airports. While this might partly be arbitrary, airports do need more security than train stations because the damage from a plane crash has much more catastrophic potential than any rail accident.
There's other ancillary reasons (like trains' more relaxed standards for what kind/size of baggage can be carried on rather than having to be checked), but those are the big three.
> a plane crash has much more catastrophic potential than any rail accident.
Just to expand on this - a plane can be crashed *anywhere*, while a train *can't* crash into anything that isn't adjacent to the track (and even getting it *adjacent* to the track involves some really difficult maneuvering).
Yeah. And it's not just to do with 9/11-style hijackings.
Even in a simple bombing, a train:
a) Can be built rather heavier than a plane, containing the bomb better
b) Isn't at altitude, so won't undergo explosive decompression
c) Can just stop where it is; doesn't have to land
For instance take a look at the Carlos the Jackal TGV bombing.
Most people don’t live in city centers and so it’s not necessarily easier to get to the train station. La Guardia and Reagan National are examples of airports that can be just as convenient as the train station depending on what part of town you are starting from. It’s a bit disingenuous for the plane vs train timeline comparison to always start from downtown next to the train station.
I mean, technically yes, if you're going from Queens to Fairfax County that cancels out. It can vary a lot based on the exact city pair. However, for the vast majority of trips, your *destination* is near the city center, even if you live in the suburbs at your origin point. And even if you are a suburbanite, it's not necessarily the case that the airport is better for you than downtown.
Consider: People travel for 3 basic reasons: business, tourism, and visiting family/friends. Most business travel will be to a city center, since that's where you have the heaviest concentration of, well, business. It's also where all the conventions are. Similarly, if you're a tourist, you're either traveling to visit the city or you're using it as a base for nearby sights. In the former case, whatever it is you're seeing will be downtown. In the latter case, it's at worst a tossup between downtown and the airport as to which is more convenient to find whatever transportation options will get you where you want to be (whether it be buses or trains or car rental + convenient highway exit).
By the same token, when you're visiting family or friends, the fact that the people you're seeing live in "the suburbs" doesn't necessarily make flying any more convenient. It depends on where they live and where the airport is. I'm going to see my family in suburban Detroit this weekend. They live in the northern suburbs off I-75, so going through DTW in the western suburbs off I-94 adds about 20-30 minutes to their trip vs. a hypothetical arrival in Downtown or Midtown Detroit. Now, admittedly, I'm coming in from Philadelphia, so there's no way I'd go any way but by air. But if I had ended up living in Chicago--which would've been more typical for someone who grew up where I did--the downtown arrival would be a serious bonus for HSR, even though my family lives nowhere near downtown.
Also, I have to say, DCA and LGA are both extraordinarily close to the downtowns they serve. Even on the East Coast where airports tend to be closer to downtown, they have some of the shortest distances (about 3-4 miles to downtown DC and Midtown Manhattan, respectively, which is less than any major NEC city other than BOS; PHL, EWR, and BWI are all in the 8-10 range, JFK is about 12-13.) Distances outside the NEC are usually even bigger (for reference, MDW is about 10 miles from the Chicago Loop, and ORD about 15; DTW is about 15 miles from Downtown Detroit; HOU and DFW are about 15-20 miles from the downtowns they serve; ATL is about 8-9 miles from Downtown and even further from the secondary business center in Buckhead; etc., etc., etc. The only top-20-metro airports I could find within 5 miles of the city center outside the NEC were PHX, SJC, and SAN.)
Given the very high cost of high speed rail, the time efficient solution might be for time conscious travelers to take a helicopter from the airport to downtown. If a lawyer bills $500 an hour, the client could be happy to pay $200 for a chopper to cut 30 minutes off the commute. Similar dynamics apply with executives and high net worth people. The proposed upgrades to the NEC could pay for slot of chopper flights.
($15 billion buys 75 million chopper flights, or enough for every acela passenger to have one for 18 years). Total NEC revenue in 2019 was $1.2 billion, so sinking $15 billion into the NEC would cost 10 years of revenues just to upgrade tracks
You don't need a method to be more convenient for everyone in order for the method to get a significant user base. It just needs to have a significant population for which it is most convenient.
Faster than anything in China, too, I'm pretty sure. Top speeds for nearly all trains here are about 180 (I think they're rolling one out that tops 200, but project is in infancy). And top speed, of course, isn't average speed.
the fastest beijing to shanghai train averages 190mph which is amazing. but the other routes, eg shanghai to wuhan are much slower and often average around 100
Interesting couple of articles on this theme. Living in the NEC, I agree that it’s a prime candidate to have a working HSR line as opposed to whatever Acela is.
But the heart of the matter is the issue of state capacity. American public-sector engineering and transportation authorities have atrophied completely under the influence of outsourcing.
So thoroughly that they are no longer able to even *ride herd on* major projects effectively, let alone *conduct* them. This is why every mega-project goes over-budget, from bridges to highways to rail work.
It’s why California’s HSR project was a catastrophe from which a single consultant (WSP) was able to extract $2 billion in rents- erm, “design fees” for a design that ended up over-budget by a factor of 5 (and counting).
It’s why Gateway is mooted to cost several times what comparable complex boring projects cost elsewhere.
It’s why PennDOT’s last attempt to spam out 500-odd similar small bridges through consultants was still a massive clusterfluffle. Not because it was a failure, but because the consultants have spent every moment since whining incessantly in the hopes of having the Legislature prevent them from ever doing something similar and eating into their design fees.
We’re so far from having the state capacity to leverage these sorts of capital investments that I don’t even know where to start, really,
Would a state actually save money in the long run by having a larger permanent engineering staff? If so, maybe this is one of those issues where a blue state should try it out and hopefully create a proof of concept. https://www.slowboring.com/p/make-blue-america-great-again
The US's Afghanistan playbook is also the playbook for, well, most large-scale public sector activity. It's also how a lot of our blue-chip corporations run things (thinking GE, IBM).
- You need to be seen doing something and after you start, you need to find metrics showing improvement.
- You needs to spend money to be seen doing something, so it's time to take out debt.
- Spending money, no matter how unproductively, does employ people and those people will testify to the value of the money spent during the effort.
- After you start employing people, they will naturally produce metrics justifying their expense.
- Those metrics may or may not reflect improvements in reality, but nobody listens to the nay-sayers.
- If you didn't improve reality, nobody will be able to prove otherwise for decades, at which point you make the US public bail you out.
One important caveat: "most large-scale *American* public sector activity".
There are other nations where this is manifestly not true, because they haven't been subject to 60 years of a corrosive ideology saying that all public goods should be underfunded as shit and you should expect nothing to work well.
So, the reason that major public works projects are typically behind schedule, over budget is because…we are not spending enough money?
Because we’re not spending enough money year after year after year on basic capabilities.
There’s a big difference between “we have two dozen folks doing design for ongoing rail and rail bridge replacement projects” each year for a decade or two and “let’s spend $50 billion on a high-speed rail project tomorrow.”
Do you really think the Dutch government doesn’t have a team of a few dozen engineers permanently on payroll who know hydrology and hydraulic control structure design?
Even if the mega-projects are designed by Arup, that staff’s expertise is invaluable in managing the project and keeping Arup honest.
Meanwhile, CalTrans had like four rail engineering staff when they kicked off their HSR project, and WSP took them for a ride.
Yes, I meant US. But the fact that it infects our private sector as well suggests it's not just the usual narrative you share of the post-Nixon neoliberal ideological turn. Or at least that usual narrative fails to capture the full scope of American institutional decline.
I'm not aware of the extent to which this is true in the private sector, but taking that as true, what's your working theory?
We financialized the US economy with unrestrained securitization, which underpins neoliberal policymaking by mechanizing and protecting the process of privatizing assets once owned by the public.
This project only worked thanks to activist monetary policy beginning with the Greenspan Put, building a social safety net for massive borrowers and continuously expanding that social safety net. The institution with the power to keep large borrowers from going bankrupt consistently errs on the side of using that power, which keeps unproductive debt alive. Note that corporate consolidation is funded through borrowing. Bailing out unproductive borrowers only really benefits investors, at least it has so far. Employees need to fit into a balance sheet on life support. In the worst case, we produce "zombie" companies, defined as companies which don't make enough money to ever repay the principal on their debt. (Needless to say, the Fed has hot-off-the-presses research showing zombies definitely aren't a problem, and definitely aren't caused by the Fed. Sure.)
This is concretely what is implied by "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor." My argument is that neoliberalism in practice has meant hollowing out both public sector and private sector incentives. Institutions will always get bailed out, and will live to shaft the public another day.
We should re-legalize the governor giving business to his brother-in-law. At least with honest graft it's clear who is responsible for making decisions, and who screwed up. And if the brother in law builds the bridge, we can all celebrate and re-elect the governor.
We need La to SF HSR
You will never see it in your lifetime.
Even just a low speed Bakersfield to Palmdale connector - with the existing Palmdale to LA commuter route, high speed Bakersfield to Modesto, and low speed Modesto to Oakland you’re already competitive with driving speed!
Gavin Newsom has failed to cancel that. I already regret voting against recalling him.
Do we though? Nonstop flights cost less than $100 and take an hour and a half.
Isn't this a federalism issue? Stuff that urban people like is constantly in danger of being defunded due to our Cubist constitution and the culture war preferences of Republicans, so agencies like Amtrak have to show they appeal to people outside the coasts. For transit within one urban area, I think you could have some political success saying "fund this train line so the city slickers stop getting lost in your exurban town and backing up your streets on their commute" but I'm not sure that works at a federal level.
"Urban thugs will be able to get to your town now."
It seems like Amtrak is doing old school politics, drawing lines through as many states or districts as it can to ensure broad support. Politics has become so polarized and national, maybe they can make the switch to focusing on the NEC and get liberal support from areas they are leaving or ignoring just bc liberals like trains. Amtrak funding does seem to be a bit of a ‘secret Congress’ type issue so maybe the old pork barrel style should still rule the day.
But if we are moving into a new era where trains become the kind of nationalized culture war type issue (it already seems this way on Twitter), it seems to me like that could go badly wrong. With conservatives, even members whose districts still do benefit, opposing funding and liberals taking a ‘no enemies on the left’ approach to defending Amtrak from the neoliberal scourge of numbers, analysis, and efficiency.
Anyway keep fighting the good fight Matt! We probably need to get to a politics where environmental groups support things like reducing unnecessary staff on trains because that will eventually allow for more trains. We feel along way away from that to me.
From Baltimore, Southwest flies into Hartford, Providence, Boston, and Manchester with a combined 17 nonstops a day. Those are all less 90 minutes gate to gate. Even accounting for security, it is less than four hours door to door. That is what Amtrak needs to compete with.
Southwest also makes three flights a day into Long Island. However, it has no direct flights from DC or Baltimore to Philadelphia, Newark, or LaGuardia. It knows it can't compete on those routes.
There are a lot of other airlines that do go DC/Baltimore into greater NYC but those are all regional jets feeding a hub. Nobody would do those on a stand-alone basis.
That is also the reason there is a Madison to Chicago route. Nobody takes a plane if those are both of their endpoints. That route is only in service of longer multistop trips.
The DC to Boston route is a great example of a bad example that everybody keeps using and it is very apt. It is really DC to NYC and NYC to Boston with a common terminus. In both directions the trains empty out at NYC which just feeds into Matt's other tirade about how bad the people handling at Penn Station is.
"state of Philadelphia"
Is MY an Always Sunny Fan?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdaolcn5k00
Sometimes I wish we were a state. (Jk jk lol.)
The current president is, like, the country's single biggest Amtrak fan. Why isn't he twisting some arms to get some cool shit done along the lines of what Matthew is proposing?
Because he's the country's single biggest Amtrak fan.
He's a defender of Amtrak (the currently existing organisation) who just thinks it's been hard done by.
I’m confused about the Madison to Chicago discussion. Three hours from Madison to Chicago seems like it would win out over a plane for most people, even if most would still drive. Flying from Madison isn’t going to get you to Chicago any faster than that - the point of flying is to connect to anywhere else that United flies.
I think the main advantage of that proposal was having the train connecting Madison to Milwaukee. If the stations are in the right place, that could be very convenient.
Flying Madison to Chicago is a horrible idea simply because O'Hare is a horrible airport with poor on-time performance. (For that matter, flying from anywhere to O'Hare is a horrible idea.)
The real train competition would be the bus. Madison to Chicago Union Station is currently about 4 hours by bus. So, if the train really takes 3:18 from Madison to Chicago, that would be an improvement --- albeit not a game changer.
Forgot the bus citation https://www.coachusa.com/airport-transportation/van-galder/bus-schedule
I've spoken at length to an Amtrak employee (some kind of planner) about the northeast corridor, and he said the limitation on speed is about track location, not money. To get faster trains, you need straighter tracks, to limit turning; and to get straighter tracks, you need to move tracks from where they are, to where they ideally should be; that means lots and lots of eminent domain, lawsuits, and petty local political controversies. Getting Acela on the NEC was a political process much more than an engineering process. Other countries have their own political complexities, but generally speaking they either have stronger central planning (China, Korea), they built their tracks at a point in their development where infrastructure and property were "reset" because of being bombed (Japan, Germany), or other particular combinations of events.
I think what this piece (and a lot of thinking around HSR and transit in general) fails to grapple with is that the GOP’s base would rather die than spend a nickel on projects that they see as primarily benefiting cities, particularly urbanites in the NE corridor.
That's the point though. This money is really hard to come by, basically needs unified Democratic control to get it - therefore it's all the more imperative to spend this cash injection wisely on lasting improvements to the network (facts on the ground), not on new cushions or whatever.
There is one element missing from the discussion. That is the element of trains as cruise ships. Other countries that are endowed with the kind of spectacular scenery that the United States has have luxury trains that operate at slow to moderate speeds over good to poor tracks and attract people who pay bazillions of dollars for the privilege.
Check out the Indian Pacific in Australia: https://journeybeyondrail.com.au/journeys/indian-pacific/
Check out Rovos Rail in South Africa https://rovos.com/
I don't see why (prohibitive laws or regulations aside) America shouldn't have trains like this. They could be private. They could make money. They could pay some amount of money (perhaps not huge but nonzero) toward maintaining rail as transportation.
I have ridden these trains; other than that, I have no answers, only questions. Would anyone who knows more about this like to comment on why we don't have luxury trains of this kind, and if we did, whether they could contribute positively to the picture Matt paints?
The company that runs these in Canada just started one Denver-Moab.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/rocky-mountaineer-train-route-united-states/index.html
Cool. Odd, though, that there are no sleepers on the train. Anyway, it looks like a step in the right direction. Who gets money from this? Amtrak? The local RR? Did any rules need to be changed or waived to make this work?
I doubt Amtrak has anything to do with it. Anywhere there is no rule prohibiting companies other than Amtrak from operating passenger rail service in the USA.
They don't enjoy a monopoly. The point of Amtrak's formation was that the major US railroads wanted to offload their loss-making passenger operations (which they had some obligations to run), so a new entity was created.
But, AFAIK, there's nothing stopping Union Pacific or BNSF from running their own passenger services if they wanted to.
*Anyway
One of the reasons they don't have sleepers is because they want you to experience as much of the scenery during daylight (since that's what you're paying for) as possible; operating through the night undermines that.
There is something to that, but the African and Australian trains handle it fairly well in several ways, like stopping for short tours at key spots, timing the night parts when you are going through country that is the same for a long way, and even just by going "absurdly slow." (In parts of Zimbabwe, the track is so bad that village kids can keep up with the train jogging along the track).
I've never ridden it but I've heard Seattle to Vancouver has very nice views.
Seattle to Chicago has even nicer views. Problem is, it needs a nice train.
Seems debatable once you get past the Montana leg...
It has very nice views, but is absurdly slow. Also great for sunset views: LA to San Diego.