I'm still hung up on the $36 per rider subsidy. A hard thing to sell.
But Nathanael's alternative schedule points to the solution. Minnesota should go for adding two more trains from the jump. Just two trains a day each way isn't a good business plan.
...
Of course, a third frequency will pain the [freight host] and require more costly upgrades. But as they study notes, a package of upgrades can benefit the freights and the new passenger trains. Let's try to work it out.
++++++++++++++++++
All the freight lines will model any proposed new passenger service. Always it seems, adding even a minimum of another two slots (one each way) for passenger service complicates the operations of the freight trains. Negotiations then begin on measures to allow both sides to meet their needs. Generally, in the case of state-sponsored corridor trains, the state pays for upgrades to add capacity. Sometimes the federal government is able to help with the required investments. The Stimulus program, in particular, put a lot of money into the St Louis-Chicago line and the Cascades route.
Many times the freight hosts are ready to do a deal because they can benefit from investments to upgrade for passenger service. Usually grade crossings are improved for safety reasons, making them safer for freights as well as for Amtrak or corridor service. Longer or more frequent sidings are frequently included in the projects, to benefit both types of users. Signaling may be improved, bridges and culverts rebuilt, and so forth.
If the St Paul-Milwaukee-Chicago route gets investments to carry new corridor trains, there would be spillover effects to Amtrak's Empire Builder as well. The same new grade crossings, the same improved sidings, etc that could make the segment safer, faster, and more reliable would benefit the LD train. Probably larger benefits would come from the combined marketing and advertising of two trains place to place instead of just one, tho the benefit would be difficult to measure fully.
One cost that would decline, and is easy to measure, would be the shared station costs. The impact on the Builder at Chicago Union Station and at Milwaukee would be very small, because there are so many trains. But at St Paul, LaCrosse, and the handful of smaller station en route, the costs of operations would go up little or none, while the corridor trains would take on perhaps half of those costs. Now, station costs are not that great, after fuel, crew, equipment. IIRC the PRIIA studies suggest station operations in the area of 2% of a LD train's total costs, and usually top out a $2 million even for a big station. But if sharing those costs could take even $2 million off the Builder's costs, it would benefit. And of course, if the corridor began to run many frequencies every day, the share falling on the Builder would be even less.
The long term solution to the problems of the LD trains is to share more of their trackage, with shared benefits and shared costs where applicable, with new state-supported corridors that overlap the LD routes. The new St Paul trains could be a good example of that mutual benefit.
, it does matter, because BNSF is generally more friendly to Amtrak and CP is positively hostile. CP is less likely to react favorably than BNSF, though anything can always be bought for the right price.
