Video on "Why Trains Suck in America"

[Northwestern]

This presentation is 6 years old, and I'm sure the subjects discussed are well known to forum members. However, I think, the video is interesting and does cover a lot of the problems with Amtrak. I wished they also discussed issues with the onboard Amtrak experience.

https://is.gd/FeiNjS
A couple of points that stood out in my mind. The US, with a population of over 319 million, averages around 300 train journeys per day. France, with a population of around 66 million, averages 14,000 passenger train trips per day. Another one; on-time problems with the Calif. Zephyr are due to Amtrak's fault 1.4% of the time. 98.6% of the on-time problems are due to the fault of BNSF/UP. They make a point about the tremendous cost of high speed rail, but also say that 125 mph trains could be a much cheaper and practical alternative.

 

[The Commissioner]

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if forward thinkers acted on trends in the post-war years and had created Amtrak 20 years earlier in 1950? That was the decade that kicked off the Interstate Highway construction boom which accelerated in the decline in US passenger rail service. Certainly the railroads saw the handwriting on the wall and wanted out of the ICC shackles. In 1950, a lot more right-of-way and infrastructure was still intact and much of the population was used to riding the rails. More of the components for building a better national network existed and dedicated passenger routes could have been implemented. Oh well.

 

[John Bredin]

The problem is that the situation was fairly desperate in 1970 and a government corporation taking over passenger service was seen as a reasonable alternative when few other alternatives were left. For the reasons you stated, the circumstances were not dire in 1950, and the political pressure to create Amtrak wouldn't yet exist. Also, proposing a government takeover would've smacked of communism to many in the early 1950s when anti-communist rhetoric was heating up and starting to be fatal to careers.

Before the jet airliners and interstates of the late 1950s and beyond, some railroads still had a good chunk of the business and tourist travel markets (taking trains out West, and to the national parks particularly) and used the efficiency and comfort of their passenger service to promote their freight service even if the passenger service wasn't profitable on its own. Those railroads wouldn't have wanted to hand over their passenger service to someone else.

I think deregulation, or at least significant regulatory reform, might be a better focus for the rail supporter time-traveling to 1950 and whispering in railroad executive, politician, and other ears. Highways and propeller planes had taken enough of rail's market share that the prospect of robber-baronish price gouging absent full ICC control wouldn't have sat as heavily in the public or political conscious as in earlier decades.

Part of a 1950s regulatory reform could be an effort to preserve right-of-way by national regulation removing or limiting the ability of state and local property tax officials to use railroad property in their jurisdiction as the goose laying golden eggs. The same promotion of the idea that the railroads' regulatory burden should and could be lifted could emphasize that railroads were no longer the omnipotent behemoths they were before the ICC, which tended in tax assessors' minds to mean railroads were bottomless vaults that could easily pay any tax bill.

In reality, the high assessed value of railroad land led to railroads pulling up rail and selling off rights-of-way when traffic slacked, as railroads couldn't afford to just leave rails or right-of-way in place for the prospect of a future traffic recovery. Address that issue early enough and much of the whittling away of rail infrastructure could have been avoided.

 

[BlackDiamond]

The problem is that the situation was fairly desperate in 1970 and a government corporation taking over passenger service was seen as a reasonable alternative when few other alternatives were left

The Penn Central bankruptcy certainly added a sense of urgency for dealing with the passenger train situation, given the extensive service still run by PC that remained and the contribution that those losses made to PCs financial woes. If course the PC bankruptcy was due to a number of factors not just passenger losses (read Daughen and Binzen's "Wreck of the Penn Central" for a great analysis of what happened) but certainly contributed, plus even back then people realized the Northeast Corridor passenger service was an asset that we needed to keep.

 

[railiner]

Part of a 1950s regulatory reform could be an effort to preserve right-of-way by national regulation removing or limiting the ability of state and local property tax officials to use railroad property in their jurisdiction as the goose laying golden eggs. The same promotion of the idea that the railroads' regulatory burden should and could be lifted could emphasize that railroads were no longer the omnipotent behemoths they were before the ICC, which tended in tax assessors' minds to mean railroads were bottomless vaults that could easily pay any tax bill.

In reality, the high assessed value of railroad land led to railroads pulling up rail and selling off rights-of-way when traffic slacked, as railroads couldn't afford to just leave rails or right-of-way in place for the prospect of a future traffic recovery. Address that issue early enough and much of the whittling away of rail infrastructure could have been avoided.

I agree...I don't believe railroad's should have to pay any real estate taxes, for their railroads, unless they made money by letting other companies operate on them. That would be in line with highways, waterways, and airways. They pay enough other taxes, that all businesses pay. If they made non-train revenue on any of their properties, such as air right development, that would be an exception, that they would have to pay taxes on.

 

[dlagrua]

I believe that the creator of this video with this title is being a bit too harsh with his criticism. Government took over a failing passenger rail system around 1971. Not only was the National Highway System in force, air travel was being considered as superior by the majority of travelers. IMO, the mistake made was that Amtrak became a political animal and no efforts were made to improve the speed of the LD service. Back in 1934 the Burlington Zephyr made a dawn to dusk run from Denver to Chicago in about 13 hours. Granted it was non stop but it used equipment that has long been considered outdated and obsolete. Today that same route takes 17 hours. If we deduct the time at the stops we are no better off today than we were back in 1934.

 

[Old MM]

It is depressing that we've gone backwards instead of forwards for the last almost 100 years, with rail travel. We could have had developed rail infrastructure and the car companies would have been just fine.