Passenger vs. Freight Priority. Was: DOJ sues Norfolk Southern for making Crescent late

eolesen wrote: ↑Wed Sep 11, 2024 10:01 pm It's a nice contrast to those who find it hard to admit that even with 50 years of life support, Amtrak's mission with regard to its long distance network has failed and continues to fail.

I just think that it’s unfair to set something up to fail and then complain when it does and only blame the organization that was setup to fail. I will at least say folks such as yourself and Mr. Norman have reasonable and well informed and intelligent views against Amtrak and passenger rail outside limited dense corridors in general and aren’t shy about expressing it which I absolutely respect even though I may not agree. I certainly think it’s a reasonable debate to have.

What drives me most crazy is people such as Evan Stair that imply that the only reason Amtrak’s funding gets attacked is because of how Amtrak handles certain trains or does whatever operational thing we are complaining about that week. I don’t think it’s fair to argue against or downplay funding of Amtrak and at the same time complain about how they are obsessed with cost cutting and cut stuff and then say that the only reason they cut stuff is because of some evil ideological hatred and conspiracy against certain trains by scheming executives.

While I don’t want to put words in your mouth I suspect in contrast to that folks such as yourself would be up front and honest and simply say that you don’t think Amtrak should be funded because passenger rail outside the corridor isn’t a good use of taxpayer funding in 2024, feel it’s an impediment to freight, and that it should go away. I can at least respect that.

Mr. Randall W has located language within 49USC stating there will be a national system and it will be linked together to enable travel from any one point to another (never mind how circuitous such could be) thus obviating my contention that national system could be interpreted as Amtrak stands ready to provide right of access, equipment, crews, and all the unique institutional expertise to operate a passenger train, to any duly formed Local agency desiring such and paying for it - even if it is "The Aberdeen-Mobridge Flyer".

A historical note is that when long about "A-Day + 2y" Amtrak and the roads negotiated performance payments, those payments were lucrative enough that "they ran on time". But over the years, Amtrak started to "penny pinch" so that by the later '90's, those payments were mere tokens and the roads had picked up high priority traffic from the likes of JBH, Jeff (Amazon), and UPS. So guess who got "the short end"?

So if Congress insists that Amtrak operate this LD system to provide transportation to the "can't drives won't flys" as well as to the experiential crowd, they best provide for performance payments to the roads equal to that any of the noted outfits provide. If the LD's are some kind of last resort transportation, a system of "accessible" busses could be substituted (even if the standard Greyhound does without, wheelchair accessible busses do exist. I've seen them overseas). So far as the experiential crowd goes, just ring up Mr. Belmond (or your for-fee travel consultant), get yourself on Big Bird's Business Class, and ride the Orient Express or other overseas "Luxotrain" for your "high".

NS is going to be in a pickle due to the turmoil at Peachtree towers. The legal department may have to reset with less fighting available to meet the lawsuit.

west point wrote: ↑Thu Sep 12, 2024 8:54 am NS is going to be in a pickle due to the turmoil at Peachtree towers. The legal department may have to reset with less fighting available to meet the lawsuit.

Yeah, I threw some articles up on a thread in the NS forum about that. Don't know what the new CEO's going to do about this.

west point wrote: ↑Thu Sep 12, 2024 8:54 am NS is going to be in a pickle due to the turmoil at Peachtree towers. The legal department may have to reset with less fighting available to meet the lawsuit.

No they will not. The US Courts back in 2016 have already ruled that Amtrak can not enforce on-time metrics made by itself with an arbiter that is not appointed and not consented by Congress since it is technically a federal agency, all three facts the result of the lawsuit settled in 2016.
All Norfolk Southern lawyers have to do is bring up the earlier lawsuit.
I'll admit Amtrak is asking the federal courts to be the arbiter in this case, bypassing around one on the issues in the earlier lawsuit, but the on-time metrics are still made by themselves and not as required by law via agreements with the freight railroad companies. Unless Norfolk Southern has at one time in the past agreed with Amtrak's on-time metrics, I can't see Amtrak winning in court.

Confusion. The lawsuit is Dept of Justice not Amtrak. IMO Amtrak will only be a witness not a plaintiff.

What is needed as well is that freight needs better reliability than is not now occurring. IMO it is time to spank the RRs and get both passenger and freight to destinations more quickly.

Makes one question what standing the DOJ has suing N-S on Amtrak's behalf if indeed Amtrak is a for-profit corporation....

Interesting that you'd consider whatever's happening with Shaw and Nag as turmoil or a distraction.

I suspect little to nothing's changing at the level of people who'd be doing the actual work on the DOJ case.

electricron wrote: ↑Thu Sep 12, 2024 6:14 pm I'll admit Amtrak is asking the federal courts to be the arbiter in this case, bypassing around one on the issues in the earlier lawsuit, but the on-time metrics are still made by themselves and not as required by law via agreements with the freight railroad companies. Unless Norfolk Southern has at one time in the past agreed with Amtrak's on-time metrics, I can't see Amtrak winning in court.

That's the big thing. It's been roughly eight years, and I know there's been one agreement with NS on performing some expansion of the Pennsylvanian that also would help with on-time service there. Depending on existing contracts, it's possible that other provisions were slipped in at other times.

There's also a scenario where while Amtrak may have been declared an arm of the federal government, it did make the on-time recommendations to the FRA et al. The FRA would have issued those recommendations as prospective regulations after their own review, soliciting input from all other interested parties before making any adjustments and putting the regulations on the Federal Register. The DOJ could work around the issue that hit the 2016 lawsuit by presenting the entire docket for the regulation and saying "Hey, we solicited input from NS. They ether elected to not participate or they gave us input that was weighted into the regulation."

Of course, you also have the law that may have changed since then.

So I suppose that language in Tiele 49 Mr. RandallW located gives the DOJ standing in this matter. Good luck having THAT upheld.

I think Topper's lawyers will take care of that "expediently" and have the whole matter dismissed - not only for NS, but also any other road Justice chooses to put in their "sight".

Hopefully this matter will be settled before Amtrak commits MEGA$ to reequip the LD's; a line of business in which neither "The Donald" nor Kamala appear to have much interest.

If I understand correctly, the only entity in the US Government that can bring suit is the DoJ (they sue on behalf of every other department), so if the DOT (or even the STB) are suing, it will be done by the DoJ. Given the recent Supreme Court rulings strongly curtailing the use of administrative law, it could really be the STB suing because under the laws passed by Congress, the STB is to determine appropriate relief for any railroad related complaint, but if believes it can't, the only avenue would be to sue in front of the courts. Might also be interesting to see if other RR customers are beginning to use courts instead of the STB to handle their complaints.

Outside of section 207 (which the courts invalidated), PRIIA section 213 authorizes the STB to take action independent of Amtrak "if the on-time performance of any intercity passenger train averages less than 80 percent for any 2 consecutive calendar quarters".

lordsigma12345 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 11, 2024 8:46 pm Amtrak has 50 years of lackluster funding, back and forth mission statements, and mediocre commitments from Congress about whether we even want to even continue with intercity passenger rail. After 50 years we still can’t decide.

They've decided. What they've done is federal government-ese for "we don't give a s*** so we're going to let it wither on the vine" for the long distance network. Otherwise there would be some minor semblance of competency and effort, but there's not. They run the LD fleet about ten years past design life, then scrape together money to buy 90pct of a replacement fleet. Rinse and repeat for 50 years. No new LD trains, no real effort to make the LD system meaningful.

They've decided not to care.

lordsigma12345 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 11, 2024 8:46 pm I’m willing to blame Amtrak management for what they can control. But I have noticed a trend of conservative leaning rail enthusiasts who always want to blame everything exclusively on Amtrak institutionally and deflect from lackluster funding and inconsistent back and forth on Amtrak’s mission.

If you ride regularly, you notice there are two types of problems: (a) big money and national attention problems, such as needing new rolling stock or services, which require material changes in funding mechanisms and/or legislation. Then there's (b), which requires "not sucking today". This means incredibly inconsistent levels of service and procedures at stations and aboard trains. Senior management having absolutely no oversight of how the OBS folks do their job. Lengthy PA announcements, rude station agents, unsafe and inneficient boarding procedures, erratic cafe hours... these are (b) problems that require staff attention. They sure spend a lot of time on heritage liveries, cool posters and marketing, social media, but they can't seem to print up some procedures for boarding, seating, and station functions.

Amtrak sucks and a lot of it is callous disregard by management.

I do ride quite often. I will leave it with this comment to avoid derailing this topic too far off the subject of priority. As to whether Amtrak sucks that’s obviously a personal subjective opinion informed by your experiences - so not going to challenge it as your experiences are of course yours. I do however ride quite often including long distance and I would say more often than not my experiences are perfectly fine. I will say I started riding Amtrak and trains in general in the mid 2010s so I have absolutely no perspective on what train travel was in the pre Amtrak days. I also don’t really like flying so admittedly I may be somewhat of a captive audience. I do generally find my trips quite enjoyable. It isn’t perfect and there can be some inconsistency with some employees - but I would say the newest generation of Amtrak employees shows some promise. For me it doesn’t suck. It isn’t perfect, but for the most part I enjoy it. Take it for what it’s worth - just my perspective.


Having said all that I do think there is certainly room for improvement and reform. One issue at Amtrak is it really isn’t directly accountable to anyone and its board and management exist in a black box. The board meetings should all be opened up and there should be far more transparency into what goes on, what metrics are being set for executive compensation, what are the management goals and priorities being given by the board, etc.

To us, a billion dollars a year is real money. To many of the 435 and the 100, a billion dollars is now rounding error.

That’s why much of Congress doesn’t care.

And this is where british-style privatisation would be interesting. Right now, we've seen how both the freights and amtrak have a adverserial relationship, and Amtrak does not have much of an incentive to improve their passenger services either. As JP says, $1b to congress is dogfood.

Now consider this concept: Every 3-5 years, private operators are allowed to bid on a route. There is a selection committee that includes local politicians, host railroads, and a national network manager. The candidate operators must submit their subsidy needed, ridership projections, revenue model, equipment concept, etc... you can lease cars and motors from the network owner and/ or buy new and used ones. The proposal is evaluated and compared for frequency, prices, historical record of timeliness and customer evaluations. If there are 2 or more candidates, they can try to pitch differing services and equipment options and different tenant behavior packages.

While it may not be profitable as we know the Daylight or Century was prewar, the competition still brings out a winning combination of services and operational patterns.

This has been inspired by my recent reading "The rise and fall of British Rail Goods & Freight". It should be required reading for all buffs to contrast how BR ran freight, versus our private Class 1 system. There was so little incentive to innovate or do better that their freights were run with steam and four-wheel wagons (with no brakes!!!) into the 1960's. How the brits won the war trying to transport supplies and men in trains we wouldn't have used after 1900 is shocking. Anyway, back to the comparison: had LNER and LMS been allowed to continue competing, they would've innovated much faster than BR did. Even if a national body took over the crumbling infrastructure or funding.

I think when PRIIA first came about in 2013 they did entertain bidding out the long distance routes. There weren’t any serious proposals and I believe the effort was aborted fairly quickly. I think most everyone that’s an advocate of passenger rail would be open to a different way of doing things if it would work and would be an improvement over the Amtrak model. I’m just a little skeptical that there’s any feasible immediate alternatives at this time without annulling services. But if someone comes up with a way to do it without sacrificing services i think most people wouldn’t oppose it.

I think an important difference with the British model is our private ownership of the infrastructure - which at the end of the day is probably one of the reasons why we’ve maintained a public sector operator (along with VIA rail in a similar manner in Canada.) I don’t personally have a problem with the public buying up the infrastructure, but I suspect the investors of the roads would have something to say about it. I think a move to public ownership of the rails would make moving to the British model a bit more feasible.

I do have to say I have some concerns about how much better things would really be in private hands at this point also. Most of the class 1 roads have had declines in quality of service over the last several years for issues that are of course well discussed and debated on this site.