Amtrak Tennessee Proposals: Memphis - Nashville - Knoxville - Chattanooga - Atlanta

Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 7:19 am Corridor ID'd: NewsChannel

Chattanooga receives federal grant to study development of intercity Amtrak passenger rail

The City of Chattanooga has received a federal grant to study the development of an intercity Amtrak passenger rail, Mayor Tim Kelly announced Tuesday.

The $500,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Corridor ID Program will fund a comprehensive study to develop the scope, the cost, engineering, and other requirements needed to establish Amtrak passenger rail service on existing alignments between Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta.
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Do you know how much $500,000 goes today? Keeping it simple, that's employing 5 people to do the study at $100,000 or 10 people to do the study at $50,000. Consultants are more likely to fall in at the $100,000 per year salary.
And that's not including the rent for their offices, electricity for lights, heat, water, computers, internet and phone lines, etc. Yelp. that $500,000 is not going to last until the study's completion. They will need more money next year and every year there after until this initial study is complete, and more money for the next steps to get an environmental study done.
Best to think of this small amount of cash as a start of getting the ball rolling. But more money will be needed later.

Ron makes a really good point. Someone has to figure out all the fine details, because CSX is not going to let them just start running trains and stopping and letting people off in random places. Amtrak also doesn't want to violate any laws. So the question then is does Amtrak keep 20 people on payroll just to plan new ideas or do they contract it out? And you can bet Amtrak isn't alone in this - most government operations and many private companies do not have the bandwidth to make a strategic plan. Consider if IBM or Ford wanted to buy a building such as Michigan Central station. It would require six figures of study money, and probably seven figures of architectural review and planning. Ford didn't just buy that building, they had a plan in place beforehand to see if it was viable.

Back to Amtrak. Perahps instead of paying some beltway consultants to do these studies, a group of Class 1-related engineers and statisticians would be best. Especially if they were on a class 1 payroll, and Amtrak covered their costs for a year. That way the plan has firsthand knowledge of what works at the host railroad and has buy-in from the beginning. I don't doubt each Class 1 has some sort of planning staff that looks at new services and such. At what stage are they involved now? Does Amtrak ask them at the early stages or does Amtrak drop off a study by Booz Allen Hamilton and say "run this train"?

Tadman wrote: ↑Sat Dec 30, 2023 9:20 am Does Amtrak ask them at the early stages or does Amtrak drop off a study by Booz Allen Hamilton and say "run this train"?

Very unlikely. There are transportation consulting firms, usually with a revolving door to the various companies. And it's also very doubtful that such a firm is employing five people full-time on a given contract. The point of outsourcing such planning is you yourself (as a gov't or a private company) don't have to keep full-time people that you can't keep busy. The firm will have a variety of people with different areas of expertise, and they'll be working on multiple contracts over the course of a year, zooming in for the specialty, then maybe sitting in on meetings to stay up to date, but not providing much output till their area becomes important again.

I do this in a different industry, and also use to sit on citizen transportation planning committee that had such consultants speak to us occasionally. I've got three billing lines going right now, and some of my colleagues have 5.

On the other hand, Ron may have underestimated consulting salaries, though not by enough to cancel out the outsourcing gains.

The bigger issue I foresee is that suddenly releasing the amount of rail-plan funding they did last month is going to overwhelm the available, experienced, knowledgeable consultants. Hopefully the money doesn't have to be spent in a year, and some of the recipients won't have their act together right away. A funny thing to hope for. It would have been better to release a quarter of these grants a year ago, to help the industry ramp up.

I should concede that the committee I was on was very low-level, aspirational, a group of interested people drawn together by a Chicago area not-for-profit that had transportation as one of their focuses. I'm not claiming it gave me great insight. But we did have transportation consultants come talk.

Someone posted the Indy Corridor application in that threat. It identifies the firm they're partnering with for the planning work - Patrick Engineering.

[Edited to add that after re-reading, I'm not sure Patrick is yet picked for the upcoming Indy contract. They did the previous technical study of the Indy corridor. But the following is still very relevant to the discussion of planning consultants in this thread.]

Here is a portion of the "What We Do - Freight Rail" page on the Patrick Engineering website:
>Patrick has extensive experience in the engineering design and construction of railroad facilities, including freight yards, intermodal terminals, quiet zones, and design-build of rail spurs for rail service provided to industrial developments. Boasting strong client relationships and a reputation of repeat work with these clients, Patrick is proud of our history of providing comprehensive solutions to the nation’s largest freight rail providers.

They also have a page for Transit and Passenger Rail if anyone wants to look.
https://www.patrickengineering.com/what-we-do

Tadman wrote: I'm not sure that's the answer unless the constraint of "intrastate" is put on. Where are the people in Tennessee going? The people I know in Memphis do a lot of business in Little Rock and Saint Louis, send kids to Ole Miss and Arkansas, and spend leisure time in Chicago and NOLA.

The people I know if Chattanooga and Knoxville center around Atlanta and Charlotte as much or more than Nashville. Meanwhile Nashville seems to attract every third bachelorette party for the last ten years from all over the country.

Is an intrastate train a good idea? It really never was back in the day, the TC was always broke. Things have changed, but my purely anecdotal evidence above plus the crazy maps don't lend a good picture.

Many of the issues that plague the TC route then still exist now (and that’s excluding the missing 30 miles or so between Monterey and Crab Orchard): the route is too slow, too steep, and too windy, and in many places the trains would be forced to go at a crawl.

The 1943 timetable of the TC’s passenger services show that train 4 (with the fewest stops) leaves Nashville at 9, and gets at Harriman TN (the operational limit of the TC near Knoxville) at 3, a distance of 166 miles in 6 hours. For anyone who doesn’t have their calculators in hand, that’s fewer than 28 MPH on average for the TC corridor. It was another 2 hours and 25 minutes to Knoxville… just 50 miles away. 216 miles in over 8 hours.

People talk about trains like the Cardinal being slow, I’ve seen snails faster than this service. And for most of the route there really isn’t a good way to cut times.

And the worst part is that there isn’t a good way to cut these down. You could try it in some places (the commuter service realigned some track and helped uptick the speeds in some places, you could in theory do this for a few other parts of the route) but at best you probably have a train that would average maybe 35 MPH across the route. Tops

Unless you’re looking strictly for tourism, a passenger service on the TC is simply a non option.

As for a Nashville to Memphis service, you could get something there even if the original route on the NC&StL is no longer present. The original City of Memphis train was 5.5 hours long, averaging about 43mph. This does make it a slower train but it’s at least within the ballpark of some services Amtrak has today. Looking at the of the existing route, I think you could find ways to cut that down a bit, particularly in the western portion of the route where it’s almost perfectly straight.

A Nashville to Memphis train has at least some viability to it when it comes to the existing route.

Steamguy73 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 01, 2024 9:19 am
Many of the issues that plague the TC route then still exist now ... passenger service on the TC is simply a non option.

Completley agree. It was not a serious proposal on my part but just a note that it was perhaps never a serious railroad at all, and a lot of historians take that picture.

As for a Nashville to Memphis service, you could get something there even if the original route on the NC&StL is no longer present...

A Nashville to Memphis train has at least some viability to it when it comes to the existing route.

That may be, but I'd like to see some data on where the travel patterns are in TN. Nashville-Memphis is the more distance than Memphis-Little Rock, Jackson MS, and a bit less than BHM. I don't know that any of us here have much more than a map to connect dots with.

Also if you groove on the TC, the J Parker Lamb photo archives at the Center for Railroad Photos are incredible and show why the TC is not a serious passenger route.







https://railphoto-art.org/collections/lamb/group-five/

No big thing probably but CSX (NC&SL) Nashville - Chattanooga is interstate into Alabama and Georgia.

RFQ issued: CommercialAppeazl.com

Plans for Tennessee passenger train from Memphis to Nashville to Chattanooga steam ahead
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The RFQ request is seeking firms to help with the initial planning and design for how a railway will best connect Atlanta to Chattanooga to Nashville to Memphis.
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That said, the application outlines the four-city loop as the "Sunbelt-Atlantic Connector." Additionally, the application is part of the FRA's Corridor Identification and Development program. The program is looking to expand passenger lines through selected corridors nationwide.
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Two interesting things stand out on that map. They want to connect Montgomery with Atlanta, not BHM. Why? Montgomery is the state capital and the traffic is to Mobile, BHM, and Huntsville, not Atlanta.

ALso it appears they want more trains in Florida despite having a private operation in competition. Why? Spend tax dollars subsidizing service where it doesn't exist. The whole point of Amtrak was to provide service where it didnt' exist. Not to compete with private money.

Not sure what I did wrong trying to edit this post that ended up duplicating it. I'll eliminate this one and leave the edited post next.

Tadman wrote: ↑Fri May 03, 2024 7:42 am Two interesting things stand out on that map. They want to connect Montgomery with Atlanta, not BHM. Why? Montgomery is the state capital and the traffic is to Mobile, BHM, and Huntsville, not Atlanta.

ALso it appears they want more trains in Florida despite having a private operation in competition. Why? Spend tax dollars subsidizing service where it doesn't exist. The whole point of Amtrak was to provide service where it didnt' exist. Not to compete with private money.

As to Florida, the map is something the Commercial Appeal grabbed, unrelated to the news or to the thread. Amtrak has all sorts of maps and vague plans that aren't acted on, sometimes drawn onto a map with no particular intention of pursuing a route, but merely appeasing or energizing some group or interest, so I'm not sure it makes sense to discuss that here or worry about it. Maybe it could be in its own thread.

The Montgomery to Atlanta vs. to Birmingham question seems more relevant. I'd guess the why is that they see promise in an Atlanta hub, more so than a largely disconnected service. I do get your point about interstate travel to a capital. But I don't know travel patterns there. It's very possible that there is more travel to the Atlanta metropolis from part of its hinterland than there is travel between two small cities in Alabama. I'm not fit to say one or the other idea is best, but you ask the question in a way that implies only your idea is plausible, and that Amtrak's idea is crazy. I'd be interested to hear your evidence.

Anyway, this is an RFQ issued by the city of Chattanooga, who had to put together the partners on it. I think a more interesting question is how formal are the representatives of the states of Georgia and Tennessee mentioned in the article? Is this state DOT planning getting engaged or just somebody from a state commission?

Mr. Ryan immediately is so on mark. If the existing NC&STL-W&A route - even if double tracked - were used Nashville-Atlanta, it still wouldn't be competitive with highway travel times.

Not even sure how much a "price no object" tunnel under Monteagle would help. Help? of course, but If you are going to serve Chattanooga, you still must wind along the Tennessee R to get there.

I can't speak for heading West from Nashville (other than the 60miles along I-24; I don't think I've ever been on the 40); but I understand the topography is "not exactly flatland".

It's clear what needs to be done. Level a large part of the southern Appalachians and use the dirt and rocks to restore the Outer Banks and the Louisiana marshes, and other areas threatened by rising sea levels, and straightening all the damn rivers to make the Southeast fit for railroading. "Let the low places be made flat, and the high places made plain."

Something in the spirit of the guy who said of Chicago "why did they put this glorious city right next to this miserable lake?" Does no one have any vision anymore?

(It's not the exact quote, but it captures the gist of some ridiculous turn of the 20th century alderman. I can't seem to google it now.)

Jeff Smith wrote:RFQ issued: CommercialAppeazl.com

Plans for Tennessee passenger train from Memphis to Nashville to Chattanooga steam ahead
...
The RFQ request is seeking firms to help with the initial planning and design for how a railway will best connect Atlanta to Chattanooga to Nashville to Memphis.
...
That said, the application outlines the four-city loop as the "Sunbelt-Atlantic Connector." Additionally, the application is part of the FRA's Corridor Identification and Development program. The program is looking to expand passenger lines through selected corridors nationwide.
...

Move Atlanta Peachtree station to West Marianetta Road, or build a way for the Cardinal to reach Atlanta Downtown. Anything else isn't economical in the long term.

ryanwc wrote: ↑Fri May 03, 2024 8:57 am I'm not fit to say one or the other idea is best, but you ask the question in a way that implies only your idea is plausible, and that Amtrak's idea is crazy. I'd be interested to hear your evidence.

My evidence is living in or near Alabama since 2018. My friends, peers, and neighbors are in business, law, and government. I observe the lawyers, legislators, and government people travelling to Montgomery on government business and BHM on commercial business. They also travel to Mobile on port business, as it's a big rail-water-steel hub. But the Montgomery-BHM would be a quick and easy win - a 90 minute train where people could work or sleep as they travel to the capital to do interface people, business, and government needs.

There is probably a lot of BHM-ATL travel for commercial (IE non-government) business. That might be a good train, too. Given ATL's very sprawled out nature, you probably wouldnt' even have to run downtown.

If there is to be useful rail travel options in the gulf-deep south, I'd suggest (again based on my life here and interactions with politicians and business people and observing how people work and travel) dumping the Crescent south of ATL in favor of a network of 2x/day trains such as the maybe-itll-happen Mobile train, a BHM-Mobile train, maybe BHM-ATL. BTR-NOL, etc...

Options, frequency, reliabilty, and sub-4 hour trains are what people find useful. Not the 1/day train from the 1920's that seems to take a few weeks per year off when NS decides to do track work. I guarantee you nobody finds that useful. Most people in NOLA and BHM don't even konw we have trains running around here.

Amtrak's idea is crazy.

Yeah I enjoy riding Amtrak but they place is a disaster. For 50 years they've run basically the same map as 1971, which due to over-regulation, is the same map as 1921. All they do is make noise about running more trains and connecting dots with little thought to where and how people travel in 2024. They also do a very poor job of running their current trains. Nobody in middle management ensures competent and uniform levels of service which makes riding less than fun some days. Amtrak is indeed stage three crazy.