Trump proposes cutting long distance support

andegold wrote:When calculating the shrinkage of the gas tax due to inflation don't forget to also take into account increased fuel economy of vehicles. The gas tax is a fixed price per gallon, not a percentage like sales or income taxes. As cars become more efficient they use fewer gallons and pay less tax regardless of the price per gallon at the pump. A Tesla, or plug-in hybrid, filling up with electricity is no different than a diesel owner using heating oil instead of diesel for autos. Even within the gasoline only world you need consider that while total vehicle numbers and mileage may have gone up the number of gallons consumed per vehicle mile has probably gone down and therefore the amount of tax paid to maintain that same level of wear and tear on the road has gone down as well.

The Prii of the world notwithstanding, more damage is done to the lack of fuel tax/poorer road condition ratio when a semi gets 2 mpg instead of 1 while hauling heavier trailers.

As for Amtrak LD, I hope the diner-lite concept doesn't go west to stem some losses.

Some one who knows needs to tell us about the midnight connections for coach passenger in Buffalo. At least most sleeper passengers stayed on connecting Pullmans.

wigwagfan wrote:

JoeBas wrote:Here we go with the private sector canard again. When was the last time a passenger railroad made money?

Japan. Germany. The U.K.

Just to name a couple of examples.

In the U.K's case , the government still pays subsidies overall. However , I think at least one operating company pays to operate the service on some lines,( East coast main trunk??), so they cover the above rail costs, and make a profit. But the infrastructure costs are paid by Network Rail , which is the government. The Jury is out as to wether the overall cost to the government is more , or less, than if British Rail had continued as a whole.

Ken W2KB wrote:

wigwagfan wrote:

Arlington wrote:Please be clear: user fees pay only 30% to 60% of the costs of roads. 70% of City Street spending, and 60% of State and County roads comes from Property and Sales Taxes.

So maybe that's just justification that those states - and only those states - that subsidize roads through general taxes, should support passenger rail; while states like Oregon that derive virtually all transportation funding from the state and federal gas taxes shouldn't.

Merely accounting. Sources do not matter. Government receives income from several sources and dispenses it as it sees fit. Currency being fungible, it is only paper that says x is funded by y and z is funded by a.

No, Ken, this is not just accounting. The key question for both Wigwag and me (and politically) is whether the total fees assessed on road users ever approach the total spending on roads. If it is (as Wigwag says it is in Oregon and I would say it is not in most states or national-average) then we can say whether roads users experience prices that reflect true costs (I say they do not because in most places fees fall halfway short of what we spend on roads).

So if Oregon has made driving as expensive as the roads cost, we would expect to see strong non-road (train/bus) use, while places like South Dakota mostly rely on Federal gas taxes paid by *other states* and vastly underprice their roads to their in state drivers.

Arlington: that theory holds true for Wyoming as well as South Dakota, if we strictly go by lack of Amtrak service. (ND and MT don't fit the mold because they both have discrete traffic generators of some size. If they didn't, there wouldn't be an Empire Builder past Moorhead or Spokane.)

David Benton wrote:

wigwagfan wrote:

JoeBas wrote:Here we go with the private sector canard again. When was the last time a passenger railroad made money?

Japan. Germany. The U.K.

Just to name a couple of examples.

In the U.K's case , the government still pays subsidies overall. However , I think at least one operating company pays to operate the service on some lines,( East coast main trunk??), so they cover the above rail costs, and make a profit. But the infrastructure costs are paid by Network Rail , which is the government. The Jury is out as to wether the overall cost to the government is more , or less, than if British Rail had continued as a whole.

Exactly, and the same general scheme is in place in Germany. "Profitable above the rails" is not "Profitable".

And in Japan, JR (much like Brightline in the US) is a vehicle for servicing and driving the real estate, which is where the money is. The rail is almost like a utility, and doesn't make money alone.

wigwagfan wrote:There is absolutely grounds to break up the LD network and I'll use the Coast Starlight as an example - the current Starlight is an Amtrak creation that never existed in the same form prior to 1971. Prior to '71 on the Southern Pacific, you transferred trains somewhere between Sacramento and San Jose (depending on a number of factors); and again in Portland if you wished to continue north to Seattle (and again still to Vancouver, or south to San Diego). Likewise, Chicago is in fact a major transfer point for Amtrak's long distance network.

It is not passenger inconvenience which makes the idea of splitting long-distance trains an untenable plan, but rather that it would add costs while sacrificing revenue. Chicago as a transfer point is a completely different animal than Salt Lake City or Lincoln would be; Specifically, there is not just one train per day, and passengers on shorter trips have regional or commuter services in many instances. Prior to 1971 things certainly may have been done differently, but there generally wasn't such a skeletal network then either.

If you can show (even a "guesstimate") that three separate trains would be less expensive to operate than one run-through train, while preserving most of the passenger count, I'd be very interested to see that.

OrangeGrove wrote:If you can show (even a "guesstimate") that three separate trains would be less expensive to operate than one run-through train, while preserving most of the passenger count, I'd be very interested to see that.

I agree with Orange Grove. Once you've committed to covering a whole lot of route-miles through very little population--basically anything west of the CONO and east of California, the expensive part is just hours and hours of train operations that has very little local demand.

Way back in the Replace the Cresilvers with Day Trains threads, I pushed hard for splitting them in favor of day trains. After a lot of discussion, I was persuaded that I had mis-identified the costs/benefits of night trains

The (Economic) Advantage of Night Trains is:
1) Premium rooms that can pay well at premium fares)
2) Overnight service == "rolling layover" between 12m and 6a, which can actually be cheaper than building a layover somewhere (this is true on the Silver Star)

Meanwhile the cost-problem of long distance service is:
A) Lack of Revenue per Mile: if there are long stretches of empty route-miles...hitting the occasional DEN, PHX, or MSP does not pay back fro all the VERY empty stuff between them and CHI and them and the coasts.
b) Spending too much of the Premium Room Premium on the diner

Breaking sleeper train into day trains solves (B) but does not solve (A) and might impose the layover-construction capital costs (losing advantage #2) to build layovers to turn these day trains (Capital $ Amtrak does not have)

The longest airline flights in the world are now running in the 15h to 19h range...meaning you feed people many times, (and feed people in $8k seats very well), but essentially all of it is prepared off-vehicle. Southern Railway's proposal for at-your-seat premium airline-style meals seems the real solution to improving the economics of overnight trains, not breaking them up.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:
Then some advocacy group kicks a Judge out of bed and that half dazed jurist grants an injunction of the strength that the provision under RPSA 70 remains controlling and that there is no longer a National system - all because someone in their haste and/or ignorance did not introduce an "Amtrak Reform" bill to repeal that "National" provision of RPSA 70.

Does anyone here really think NARP et al have the cash to pursue the litigation? The states affected are NE KS CO AZ NM UT NV OR WY MT and one of the Dakotas. Anyone see them ponying up?

I'm gonna pop some jiffy pop.

OrangeGrove wrote:
The idea of splitting long-distance (LD) routes into a series of shorter (generally "day") trains is inherently flawed, and would greatly suppress both ridership and revenue while not reducing costs by a significant amount (if at all). ...

Suppress? When you're less than 1pct of market share, seeing 1/day or 3/week frequency, how much more can you suppress? Consider LD ridership effectively suppressed. A busy LD train has maybe 250 riders.

On the other hand, 4/day creates options leading to ridership growth. It's good asset utilization for stations. You could, overnight, be completely above-rail profitable if you corridorized by dumping sleepers and diners and used the equipment for Corridor service to places like MSP and Spokane.

And the bit about outlying service? Wigwag is right. That's the easiest piece of the problem. You're not swapping wheel sets, you're fueling and maybe watering. There's no outlying service in Norfolk, NPN, Grand Rapids, Detroit... just siding and maybe a fence.

In terms of breaking up LD routes, I don't think there's any benefit to just breaking up the CZ into three routes for example, you might as well run one train through. I would say routes with very little if any end to end traffic and trains that have a hole with no large markets in the middle could be broken up. Then you can make service better at the ends, save many train miles in the middle of nowhere, save sleepers/diners, and only low populated areas lose service.

Cardinal: Run CHI-IND-CIN and CVS-WAS-NYP (currently run separate trains on the route).
Empire Builder: Run CHI-Milwaukee-MSP and SEA-Spokane.

mtuandrew wrote:Arlington: that theory holds true for Wyoming as well as South Dakota, if we strictly go by lack of Amtrak service. (ND and MT don't fit the mold because they both have discrete traffic generators of some size. If they didn't, there wouldn't be an Empire Builder past Moorhead or Spokane.)

Come on, have you ever driven I-80 through rural Wyoming? It's been my experience that less than half the vehicles, both cars and semi-trucks, have Wyoming tags on them. One could easily make the argument there's more through traffic on I-80 than local traffic, and some drivers will only stop to fill up thier gas tanks and bellys.

Surely some pro-Amtrak senator could be persuaded to filibuster this?

Only civilian flights were grounded after the 9/11 attacks, government/military were not, and would not be grounded in a national emergency. The military has no interest in emergency ground transportation by train. The military emergency plan is to use both freight and cargo aircraft flown by their civilian crews in a national emergency that exceeds the capacity of military aircraft and ground vehicles. As to overseas hops, not all airline aircraft are capable of those distances. Many are, of course, and the need for international flights in an emergency can be easily met without limiting domestic emergency flight needs.

By way of comparison of capacity, civilian flights in the USA in two weeks carry as many passengers as all Amtrak trains do in an entire year. There are about 24,000 commercial flights a day carrying over 2,000,000 passengers compared to Amtrak's 86,000 passengers.

As you mention, using commuter trains for emergencies in limited areas has merit, but unfortunately for those of us who support and utilize Amtrak regularly, regional and national emergencies are not a justification in the view of the experts.

Ken W2KB wrote: By way of comparison of capacity, civilian flights in the USA in two weeks carry as many passengers as all Amtrak trains do in an entire year. There are about 24,000 commercial flights a day carrying over 2,000,000 passengers compared to Amtrak's 86,000 passengers.

And that's in terms of tickets sold. Imagine the comparison in terms of seat-miles, revenue-miles, or plain revenue.