What should Amtrak change?

[jis]

The problem is that NS has not been able to stick to the revised schedule, either, meaning that instead of a two-hour late Crescent leaving Atlanta at 10 p.m. rather the scheduled 8 p.m., a two-hour late Crescent now leaves Atlanta at 1:30 a.m. rather than the scheduled 11:30 p.m. This means that the northbound Crescent is "serving" its biggest non-NEC market at an unmarketable time.

Yeah, the timings suck. But the only way they can get fixed in the short term is if STB gets on Crescent's case. No matter how many dozen posts are made on AU that won't make an iota of difference on how the Crescent operates.

 

[TheCrescent]

Loads on the southbound Crescent have been light when I’ve taken it recently. I would think that the completely useless northbound schedule is at least partly to blame. I certainly won’t take it northbound; even if the departure time were ok, spending all day between Charlotte and NY makes no sense when one can fly that in two hours.

The new schedule is thus likely significantly reducing ridership.

 

[west point]

Move the Crescent departure time at NOL to 0600 Central time. The hour schedule slop between MEI and BHM also needs reduction.

 

[Cal]

For sleeping car passengers, Amtrak should offer a beverage upon departure, like airlines do.

If I am getting settled in on board, having a drink upon departure would be nice, instead of waiting for the cafe car to open or waiting for dinner (when an adult beverage is served).

Yes, however I'd rather it be that the SCA will also bring drinks throughout the trip if wanted. Is this already a thing, or is it one of those inconsistent things with Amtrak?

 

[IndyLions]

Yes, however I'd rather it be that the SCA will also bring drinks throughout the trip if wanted. Is this already a thing, or is it one of those inconsistent things with Amtrak?

I’m sure all of the better SCAs will do it if you ask. I can only imagine that some of the “not-so -good” SCAs would look at you like you had two heads if you made a request like that and you weren’t obviously a mobility impaired person.

 

[TheCrescent]

Agreed. I recall that when I once asked for a Scotch with dinner, the SCA lectured me that it isn’t her job to wait in line in the cafe car for me.

What Amtrak should change: two things that would make it easier to sleep in sleeping cars:

1. Turn down lights in hallways (since curtains don’t block all light, light comes into sleeping car rooms all night; sleep masks help, though).

2.Get better mattresses. The top bed in Viewliners, at least, is kind of hard.

 

[Tlcooper44]

That’s not accurate. Many countries have privatized their railroads. The European Union and many of its member states have allowed and encouraged private operators to run both freight trains and passenger trains.

Second, CSX’s market capitalization is $74 billion; Norfolk Southern’s is $67 billion. BNSF’s is estimated at far more (and forcing Warren Buffet to sell is realistic and easy, you think)? So it would require hundreds of billions of dollars to buy them, and that would mean not one cent of that used for track improvements for Amtrak; it would mean all of those funds were used to buy shares from private owners.

US freight railroads are far ahead of publicly-owned freight railroads in price per ton-mile of freight (i.e., they run more efficiently per dollar spent) and in terms of market share. In short, some US railroads do lead the world: US privately-owned freight railroads.

I am irritated as well over how Amtrak is treated by Class Is, but the simpler and cheaper solution is just to give Amtrak enough funds that it can build its own track and not worry about Class I interference. Nationalizing Class Is would be much more expensive and would result in reduced Class I performance.

So, in short: buying Class Is would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and not a cent would directly improve Amtrak. I’d rather spend hundreds of billions directly for improvements for Amtrak (new track, new cars, etc.).

You seriously underestimate the price tag on "enough funds that it can build its own track and not worry about Class I interference."
Your claim that it would be more expensive to buy the Class I's is unequivocally wrong. This would take thousands of miles worth of track construction, and cost perhaps upwards of 500 billion (depending on what type of tracks we build.)

Look at South coast rail construction in Boston:
Its taking 3.5 billion to construct and upgrade roughly 36 miles of track, though relatively easy ROW without too many bridges, tunnels or other complications.

That said, there is merit to your overall argument that spending billions on Amtrak would be better. I would rather, however, wait to see what Amtrak does with 66 billion before we assert that giving them hundreds of billions is better.

A better use of time and money would be to nationalize the tracks overall.

 

[tgstubbs1]

A better use of time and money would be to nationalize the tracks overall.

How about nationalizing the major ROWs? Then tracks and sidings could be added more easily.

 

[jis]

How about nationalizing the major ROWs? Then tracks and sidings could be added more easily.

I doubt that Amtrak by itself can pull that off, even with all the help from the STB. The Congress and the President might have to play a significant role that they probably are not upto at present, realistically speaking.

But it certainly is a good thought, and as you say, it will simplify several things.

 

[Siegmund]

Also, your position seems to be that the costs of building about 20,000 miles of track would be hundreds of billions of dollars.

Only hundreds of billions is quite a lowball estimate. $5M per mile gets you to $100B. In an uninhabited area where you already have the ROW, you can perhaps lay a second track next to existing track for that price. If you have to acquire new land in an urban area it is a whooole lot more than that.

So the value of Class Is’ track is many times higher than their market capitalization?
That makes no sense; if the value of a company’s hard assets is many times the company’s market value, something’s really wrong.

It makes a great deal of sense (assuming that when you say "value" you mean "cost to replace/replicate", as opposed to "price someone would be willing to pay to buy the existing item.")

It means the Class Is own a legacy asset which is cost-effective to maintain, but would not be cost-effective to build from scratch today.

When is the last time someone laid, say, more than 100 miles of new track?
In North America, the three most recent examples I can think of are the Powder River Basin -- single track laid in new territory in the 1970s, double track added in the 1990s; BC Rail's projects to build to Fort St. James and Fort Nelson in the 60s (completed, and still operating though not minting a ton of money); and BC rail's attempt to build to Dease Lake and on toward Alaska in the early 70s (suspended unfinished 1977.) One of those three was a good business investment. A second was a good political/societal move, and at least covers it operating costs, after being built at government expense. The third was an expensive flop, and would have been much more expensive, though less of a flop, had it been completed.

When is the last time someone laid 1000 miles of track?
In North America, the most recent project of that size I can think of is CN's line to Churchill, 90 years ago. In the US, is there an example more recent than the Milwaukee Road and the Western Pacific, 110 years ago?

It has been done in China recently, and in Japan, France, and Russia somewhat less recently - at large government expense; I have seen no figures whether the lines have made back their construction costs.

Similarly, re Amazon -- the company's market value is tied to how much merchandise they can move in a year, not to the resale value of their warehouses and trucks, which will depreciate.

 

[TheCrescent]

Only hundreds of billions is quite a lowball estimate. $5M per mile gets you to $100B. In an uninhabited area where you already have the ROW, you can perhaps lay a second track next to existing track for that price. If you have to acquire new land in an urban area it is a whooole lot more than that.



It makes a great deal of sense (assuming that when you say "value" you mean "cost to replace/replicate", as opposed to "price someone would be willing to pay to buy the existing item.")

It means the Class Is own a legacy asset which is cost-effective to maintain, but would not be cost-effective to build from scratch today.

When is the last time someone laid, say, more than 100 miles of new track?
In North America, the three most recent examples I can think of are the Powder River Basin -- single track laid in new territory in the 1970s, double track added in the 1990s; BC Rail's projects to build to Fort St. James and Fort Nelson in the 60s (completed, and still operating though not minting a ton of money); and BC rail's attempt to build to Dease Lake and on toward Alaska in the early 70s (suspended unfinished 1977.) One of those three was a good business investment. A second was a good political/societal move, and at least covers it operating costs, after being built at government expense. The third was an expensive flop, and would have been much more expensive, though less of a flop, had it been completed.

When is the last time someone laid 1000 miles of track?
In North America, the most recent project of that size I can think of is CN's line to Churchill, 90 years ago. In the US, is there an example more recent than the Milwaukee Road and the Western Pacific, 110 years ago?

It has been done in China recently, and in Japan, France, and Russia somewhat less recently - at large government expense; I have seen no figures whether the lines have made back their construction costs.

Similarly, re Amazon -- the company's market value is tied to how much merchandise they can move in a year, not to the resale value of their warehouses and trucks, which will depreciate.

Again:

1. Amtrak doesn’t need its entire system rebuilt from scratch. For example, delays on the Crescent are between around Atlanta and Birmingham; that’s the area that needs some additional track. Between Washington and around Atlanta, it’s fine and there are very few delays.

2. If the Class Is’ value (the amount someone would pay to buy the entire business) is significantly less than the value of their track, investors would not tolerate that situation as it would mean that the amount spent for track was generating a negative rate of return.

No sane investor would fund a dollar for track the rate of return from the investment were negative. Class Is have built extensive new track recently, from BNSF building large amounts of new track to NS building the Crescent Corridor. And track has to be renewed and replaced--in effect, largely rebuilt--over time; rails need to be replaced, ties need to replaced, bridges need to be rebuilt, so claims that "it wouldn't be cost-effective to build it now" miss the point--track DOES need to be rebuilt over time.

https://compassinternational.net/railroad-engineering-construction-cost-benchmarks/ shows costs of far less than $5MM per mile, too.

If the value of your employer’s business is significantly lower than its hard assets (e.g., if its business is worth less than its office furniture and equipment), I hope that you are looking for a new job asap since it wouldn’t last long.

Finally, Amtrak's revenue is (from what I could find) less than $4 billion per year. Class Is' revenue is about $80 billion per year. Yes, I'd love Amtrak to have many times its current revenues. But in terms of its impact on the economy (even if it grew significantly), Amtrak is a drop in the bucket compared to Class Is. It really makes no sense to nationalize a large and profitable business with a large share of US freight transportation--Class Is--to significantly help a far smaller one whose economic impact is minor on most of its routes.

Given all of the supply chain issues that the US is currently having, people really want to nationalize Class Is, whose economic impact is far-reaching, and reconfigure their track so that a train or a few trains a day that Amtrak operates would be more punctual--really?

I'm not looking to argue, I'm just looking to be realistic about what rail advocates ought to be pushing for.

 

[west point]

How many track miles were built rebuilding the B&O before CSX took its part of CR?

 

[neroden]

Nationalizing Class Is would be much more expensive and would result in reduced Class I performance.

Maybe in some alternate universe.

Here in the actual US, it's quite evident that CSX and NS are incapable of providing decent service to freight shipper customers. Class I performance, in terms of *actually delivering freight*, would skyrocket if they were nationalized.

BNSF does OK. I'm not doctrinaire. Fine, leave it alone for now.

But CSX and NS badly need their track and dispatching nationalized for freight purposes alone. No freight customer in their service territory would seriously dispute this.

 

[TheCrescent]

It isn’t fair that some fares on Amtrak are so high that some people can’t afford them.

It isn’t fair that freight operations by private Class Is delay Amtrak trains.

How can Amtrak become more fair?

 

[Eric in East County]

After reading the various posts in other threads, I’m left to wonder if Amtrak is in better or worse shape (personnel-wise, equipment-wise, website functions-wise, etc.) than it was a year ago. Other than the Red Cap situation in Chicago, it appeared to us to be functioning more or less normally when we made our trip to Ohio and back last summer. (The trains we traveled on were the Pacific Surfliner (business class) the Southwest Chief (bedroom) and the Capitol Limited (coach) and that might have had something to do with what we observed.) You’d expect that things would be even better a year later but perhaps not. Your opinions please.

 

[Bob Dylan]

After reading the various posts in other threads, I’m left to wonder if Amtrak is in better or worse shape (personnel-wise, equipment-wise, website functions-wise, etc.) than it was a year ago. Other than the Red Cap situation in Chicago, it appeared to us to be functioning more or less normally when we made our trip to Ohio and back last summer. (The trains we traveled on were the Pacific Surfliner (business class) the Southwest Chief (bedroom) and the Capitol Limited (coach) and that might have had something to do with what we observed.) You’d expect that things would be even better a year later but perhaps not. Your opinions please.

IMO there are SOME Improvements, Traditional Dining on SOME LD Trains, New Equipment starting to Slowly Arrive,the change from 3 times a week to 7 , then back to 5, for SOME LD Trains.

But Overall, Amtrak is NOT in better shape with the Shortage of Equipment and Staff( with Snail like Hiring,Terrible IT System,, Flex Food still being slung on LD Trains , and Poor to Terrible OTP and Maintainence on most Routes.

Overall I'd give Amtrak a C- Minus if a Grade was given for its Performance in the past year.
YMMV

 

[jis]

This is an interesting development and new for Amtrak...

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...rming-routes-as-part-of-new-contract-with-cn/

 

[Tlcooper44]

This is an interesting development and new for Amtrak...

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...rming-routes-as-part-of-new-contract-with-cn/

Well, we can’t say that Amtrak doesn’t at least try…
In certain circumstances, they make an honest effort.

 

[MARC Rider]

This is an interesting development and new for Amtrak...

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...rming-routes-as-part-of-new-contract-with-cn/

This quote from the article is interesting:

"Friday’s 497-page filing with the STB — which does not include several appendices of details on the current CN-Amtrak agreement, redacted as confidential "

So the current Amtrak agreements with the host railroads are considered "confidential?" I would wonder whether that's good policy or not, regardless of the current legal environment that may allow or even require such confidentiality. It suggests that Amtrak may have different terms with different host railroads in their operating agreements, such that revealing the terms might have some effect on the competitive position of the host railroads. Or that revealing the terms might have an effect on Amtrak's leverage on other host railroads.

 

[jebr]

This is an interesting development and new for Amtrak...

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...rming-routes-as-part-of-new-contract-with-cn/

If this comes to pass, I really think it'd be a positive strong precedent to have for passenger rail. It's not flashy and there'll be no ribbon-cutting, but giving Amtrak additional leverage and tools to use when host railroads refuse to fulfill their legal obligations to Amtrak and run trains on the agreed-upon schedule will enable Amtrak to become more relevant to more people.

Having trains run on-time needs to be one of the top, if not the top, priority for Amtrak to be relevant as a core transportation option. I hope Amtrak continues to push to get the tools it needs to run trains on-time (and yes, that includes making sure equipment is up to snuff as well.) An hour delay, even on the long-distance trains, should be so rare that any time it happens it's a point of discussion on rail forums to figure out what happened, instead of it being seen as "business as usual."

 

[west point]

Level 1 seems to be an observer in dispatch center. Progressing finally having Amtrak or designated operator to doing the dispatch. Can you imagine CP dispatching CN? This application should be a wakeup call to all the RRs class 1s and short lines as well !
Time for the class 1s to man dispatch properly. Quit having a single dispatcher doing too many districts.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Here is three easy observations that haven't been mentioned that much:
First, focus on amenities that can be done quickly and easily and make the passenger experience better. When I go to my local grocery store, a Wifi network is available. Is there any reason that every train station in the country can't have wifi? Okay, maybe in some cases you have a problem where you have 100 waiting passengers all trying to stream movies at once, but in general, wifi is such a normal service to provide, any small town library can do it, so Amtrak should be able to do it as well. Along with that, just things like drinking fountains in every station, and for that matter, water and cups onboard trains is something that makes the passenger experience better. None of this stuff is a game changer---but it also can be done quickly and cheaply.
Second, transit in the US has a last mile problem. From city to city, along corridor service, Amtrak is much quicker and more convenient than air or car travel---until you get more than 2 miles from a station. If local transit doesn't make getting to the station easy, people will just drive. Improving local transit coordination with suburban routes and thruway coordination with exurban routes increases the amount of people who might consider Amtrak, especially along corridor routes.
Third, transit in the US has a chicken and egg problem. Transit service is too infrequent for most riders, so they don't consider it, so there isn't a customer base to support more routes--- so one way to break that is to have perhaps a gigantic promotional campaign, because once people use transit once or twice, they will start considering it as a normal way to travel. Maybe Amtrak should do a crazy promotion like a local waterbed emporium!

 

[Cal]

water and cups onboard trains is something that makes the passenger experience better.

Pretty sure the California cars have this, and I think superliners too.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Pretty sure the California cars have this, and I think superliners too.

Sorry, should have specified, working water and supplied cups.
For example, on my last trip, our car didn't have water, so I had to walk to the next car forward every time I wanted a little cup of water, and since they had those tiny little cups, I had to go there, press the button down to get a dribble of water, drink several cups in a row, and go back to my seat. It is a minor thing, but it is the type of little thing that is both easy to fix and gives a good impression (especially a good first impression).

 

[MARC Rider]

Here is three easy observations that haven't been mentioned that much:
First, focus on amenities that can be done quickly and easily and make the passenger experience better. When I go to my local grocery store, a Wifi network is available. Is there any reason that every train station in the country can't have wifi? Okay, maybe in some cases you have a problem where you have 100 waiting passengers all trying to stream movies at once, but in general, wifi is such a normal service to provide, any small town library can do it, so Amtrak should be able to do it as well. Along with that, just things like drinking fountains in every station, and for that matter, water and cups onboard trains is something that makes the passenger experience better. None of this stuff is a game changer---but it also can be done quickly and cheaply.
Second, transit in the US has a last mile problem. From city to city, along corridor service, Amtrak is much quicker and more convenient than air or car travel---until you get more than 2 miles from a station. If local transit doesn't make getting to the station easy, people will just drive. Improving local transit coordination with suburban routes and thruway coordination with exurban routes increases the amount of people who might consider Amtrak, especially along corridor routes.
Third, transit in the US has a chicken and egg problem. Transit service is too infrequent for most riders, so they don't consider it, so there isn't a customer base to support more routes--- so one way to break that is to have perhaps a gigantic promotional campaign, because once people use transit once or twice, they will start considering it as a normal way to travel. Maybe Amtrak should do a crazy promotion like a local waterbed emporium!

OK, I can see better wifi, that should be pretty easy to do.

As far as the "last mile" problem, airports have the same problem, and it's even worse than trains, as airports are generally not located very close to anything else, except maybe some hotels that cater to air travelers and business space that is related to the aerospace industry. Nearly every town of reasonable size that I've ridden to in Amtrak has either taxicabs or Uber/Lyft at the very least, which pretty much solves the problem. (And a ride share to the Amtrak station is about $20 as opposed to $50-$60 for a ride to the airport.) I had no trouble finding an Uber at Salisbury NC to take me top Spencer to see the NC Transportation Museum, and I had no problem ding a ride back to Salisbury to catch my train. Yes, there are very small towns that don't have anything (Hello, Huntingdon, PA!), but that applies to all forms of transportations. If you live in rural America and can't drive and don't have someone to give you rides, you're out of luck, but I don't think funding access to a few Amtrak trains in a few such places is a high priority.

I really think the main priority now is getting Amtrak's rolling stock in good mechanical condition, buying enough new equipment to replace what can't be fixed and even expand service, and, finally, leaning on the host railroads to ensure running on schedule. After that, it's upgrade of OBS service and then all the other little creative things that would enhance the experience. But getting trains in good mechanical condition to run reliably on time is, right now, the ultimate experience enhancer.