Reader Aaron asks:
How about, given that flying is much more direct, is rail still more efficient? Cost effective?Once, I looked into taking the train from Detroit to NYC. The price was higher than the plane ticked, it required several changes, and would have required an extra day off of work.
Well, our rail doesn't have to be the way it is. At current fuel prices, my father--who is my go to guy on transportation issues--estimates that any journey of under 500 miles is probably more cost effective by rail. A high speed train like the TGV to Chicago could make the trip from New York in under six hours, at which point it probably becomes efficient.
I am about to blame--you will perhaps be unsurprised--the government. Why isn't there a high speed train from New York to Chicago? Well, first of all, this would greatly anger legislators from New York and Michigan, who like the fact that the Chicago train must pass through Buffalo and Detroit, even if this assures that almost no one with a job will actually use it.
There's also the problem of the Federal construction process. The high speed train between DC and Charlotte was first conceived in the early 1990s. The EIS for this project will be completed probably sometime in 2010. Then we have to get final legislative authority. Then we have to put out the project for bids. By the time the thing is actually built, we'll probably all have evolved an extra leg and be able to run faster than the high speed train.
There are budding private rail initiatives--rumor has it that one of the freight companies that Amtrak runs on is considering taking back the passenger service on that route, because Amtrak is such a scheduling disaster that it's costing them huge amounts of money. But Amtrak can't be even partially privatised, because then who would run trains from New York through Buffalo and Detroit to Chicago in a speedy eighteen hours? Or half-empty tourist trains through Montana?
Half-empty trains are not environmentally efficient; they are pork. American rail needs a combination of higher carbon taxes to price in the mobile transport externalities, and a government that isn't determined to mess things up. I'm skeptical that we'll get either any time soon.
Germany is awesome. And guess what -- government!
The train from New York to Chicago does go through Buffalo. It does not go through Detroit.
Pace JMMS in the first post. Japan's high-speed rail system, still one one of the envies of the world, I think, was built by the government, too, and the line from Tokyo to Osaka, built on entirely separate railbed and at points straight through the mountains, was completed in time for the Olympics. That's the 1964 Olympics. It is much the preferred means of transport between Japan's major transport centers still today. Passengers board downtown and arrive downtown (or close to it) and never suffer the indignity of an airport security check. Megan's right that the government is to blame for the failure of rail in the U.S. but she's missed the real reason, which lies back in the 1950s in the creation of the "National Defense Highway System," as our interstate highways were originally known. Had Eisenhower opted for a "National Defense Rail System" instead, U.S. rail transport would be the envy of the world, rather than Germany's, or France's (also government built), or Japan's. It's worth noting that the U.S. interstate system is itself a testimony to what government does have the potential to do. It is a truly remarkable system that I have enjoyed very much in my life. But I can't help but wonder how much cheaper it'd have been to lay and maintain rail lines compared with the cost of the endless acres of concrete we have now, not to mention what it would have meant for U.S. energy independence over time.
Well, our rail doesn't have to be the way it is. At current fuel prices, my father--who is my go to guy on transportation issues--estimates that any journey of under 500 miles is probably more cost effective by rail.
This seems highly implausible. Is there any rail system in the world that competes effectively over such distances against air and road alternatives without a much higher level of subsidy?
Is there any rail system in the world that competes effectively over such distances against air and road alternatives without a much higher level of subsidy?
AIUI, even with shorter distances and higher population densities, Europe's train systems are not doing quite as well as had been the case due to competition from discount airlines.
Well, our rail doesn't have to be the way it is. At current fuel prices, my father--who is my go to guy on transportation issues--estimates that any journey of under 500 miles is probably more cost effective by rail.
What, including the capital costs, e.g. purchasing all that unbelievably expensive right of way to build nice, straight rail lines from A to B, not following some existing 19th century track? That's sounds very unlikely.
Furthermore, I doubt anyone takes public transportation of any type for a trip between 10 and 200 miles. So you've got a small donut hole between 200 and 500 miles where rail might make sense. Then you have to consider the fact that the destinations to which people travel in the United States are not few and compact, as in Europe or Japan, but sprawled out all over the place. (Just look at the dense spiderweb that is any regional airline's route map.)
If you wanted to change the habits of people wholesale from air to rail, you can't just cover one or a few 500 mile routes, you've got to network the entire country with rail lines, so most points A and B with 500 miles between them have a nice direct route. You're talking about infrastructure development that dwarfs the Interstate system -- which was designed for much lower speeds, and along every foot of which you don't need to distribute high-voltage power.
This sounds silly. Put your money into a new generation of more fuel-efficient small airplanes. Or automating highway driving, so it's possible to drive 500 miles at a steady 100 MPH, at traffic densities no human mind could handle, while drivers read or nap. Think outside the boxcar.
Feh. I realized my Western bias is showing in my statement that no one would take public transport for a trip under 200 miles. Obviously in the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington that figure needs to be divided by four, perhaps.
Which is why commuter rail does OK in the Northeast, generally speaking, and it might make sense for Yankees to tax themselves enough to build a better rail system, or at least take obstacles out of the way of private enterprise doing so.
Just so long as you don't trump up farcical arguments about the general good for the sole ulterior purpose of screwing tax money out of us to build your infrastructure.
Today's article concerning Japan would be right here. All those commuter lines in Japan? Privately owned. Many of them terminate in the basements of department stores (which happen to be the same company, or affiliated with the company)
In Hong Kong I can ride, a safe, pleasant, air-conditioned bus (well-lit, and with TV) for around forty cents, US. They are always on time. They are ruthlessly efficient, because if they are not, their competitors will scoop up the passengers.
Once I get off, I can take minibusses and maxicabs that will take me around the neighborhood quickly, cleanly, and efficiently.
Now compare this with Amtrak.
For that matter, compare the Chinatown bus system with Amtrak.
Today's statistic: No government-owned transit system in America has ever been able to break even. Nearly every private one has.
"Half-empty trains are not environmentally efficient; they are pork." Traditional inter-city trains of the AMTRAK variety are approximately 5x as efficient in terms of consumption of energy per passenger mile as air travel and high speed trains of the TGV variety come in close to 10x. Air travel might well be cheaper and more efficient from an economic perspective but it is quite likely that a 75% empty train would be more environmentally efficient.
Joe Mansfield,
Traditional inter-city trains of the AMTRAK variety are approximately 5x as efficient in terms of consumption of energy per passenger mile as air travel and high speed trains of the TGV variety come in close to 10x.
Source?
What is needed is a radical rethink of "car" and "mass transit" where one mode is a packing people into self propelled and driven containers, and the other is to pack people with hand carried stuff into a steel tube en mass.
Over and over again, it can be shown that people value their private space, which is what a "car" provide, no matter how inefficient, and only take "mass transit" like commercial aircraft, trains, subways, and buses.
One concept to get around that for urban areas is to provide each group with a private "pod" that travels on a rail system.
Another concept might be a "car" that is light, small, and convenient enough to be hauled on a rail like mass carrier, where at destination, it is dropped off, and driven under its own power to a destination that may be far from the railhead.
Such a system would, by necessity, required to be built from scratch rather than use existing rail infrastructure.
Want a silly idea? Have electrified "carts" on the side of major highways that cars can get onto, get taken to destination with electricity, powered carts, and then drive off for the last part of the trip.
Far more imaginative proposals are needed than what has been seen thus far to deal with the coming energy crunch...
Along D's lines -- I realized a month ago what would make trains unbeatable for me would be wireless Internet connectivity and (to a lesser but still high extent) the ability to take your car along with you.
If I've got wireless Internet, an AC outlet, and a comfortable table, I can work during that train trip. That's a huge benefit over driving or flying. In some sense, it makes the travel time, even for long trips, just a normal part of my work week -- which is very much like making the travel time disappear. That would be huge. (I know in theory I can use a laptop on an airplane, but in practice, there isn't enough room for me to comfortably use a laptop machine, and there's no AC outlet so my work time would be battery-limited anyway.)
At the same time, being able to bring your own car gives mobility and makes up for the fact the train never goes exactly where you want it to go. It's much more comfortable (and generally cheaper) than renting a car.
Anecdote alert: Had to go from NYC to Boston this week. Looked into train, plane and driving. Plane for two was too expensive. Meanwhile, Amtrak is in the midst of track repair work and the trip would be 7.5 hours from Penn St to South Station. Plus 45 minutes on NJ Transit to Penn St (or 30 minute drive and then parking garage). With that long a trip there was no train early enough to make an 11 AM meeting. Would have also had to stay a night in a hotel. Round trip would be ~18 hours.
So we drove the trip. 3:45 each way, door to door. The money saved more than paid for the parking at the hotel in Boston and was able to do the whole thing in one day. Round trip ~8 hours.
Amtrak is not reliable enough and there are many issues at the end points and most of us already own cars anyway.
Well, first of all, this would greatly anger legislators from New York and Michigan, who like the fact that the Chicago train must pass through Buffalo and Detroit, even if this assures that almost no one with a job will actually use it.
Actually, Detroit-Chicago is one of the routes that makes the most sense (much more so than New York-Chicago). Even at current rail speeds, it's a good alternative to both flying and driving. I know a lot of people prefer to take it from here (Ann Arbor) to Chicago. Takes a little less than 4 hours and runs from downtown to downtown. By the time you drive to Deroit Metro, park, allow enough time for security, then get from O'Hare downtown on the other end, you've spent about as much time (and much more aggravation). Driving is a little faster (if there's no traffic jam), but then you have to pay to park downtown.
The obvious extension of the Chicago-Detroit route would be neither Buffalo nor NYC, but Toronto. A high-speed Detroit-Chicago-Toronto line would be very useful. BTW -- are you under the impression that Detroit and Buffalo are comparable? The Detroit metro area is ~5M people--about the same size as DC, Atlanta, Boston, Miami, etc. The only metro areas in the U.S. that are significantly larger are NY, LA, and Chicago. Buffalo, on the other hand, is about 1M and just makes the top 50.
What Class 1 is "considering taking back passenger service?" BNSF? UP? NS? If you say CSX, I'll faint. Where'd you read this?
I love to see this issue get a little bounce every once in a while, and this article in particular illuminates a good amount of why I should be skeptical that something as seemingly so "common sensible" has a snowballs chance in hell of getting through the multi-layered congressional gauntlet.
It's got to be more than just "environmental" or even "romantic" reasons to invest in HSR anyway; find the market for it, or help create that market, and the rails will find roots across the midwest and places further.
At least with respect to routes like Detroit-Chicago, the best is the enemy of the good. A separate, dedicated high-speed system would involve huge capital costs. I have been told that for a fraction of such an expense the trackage could be upgraded to allow a downtown to downtown trip in three and a half hours or a little less. Especially when you figure in time to and from the airports and parking, this would make the train quite competitive with flying.
Yet--I may be missing something--most of the talk seems to be about a high-speed line which would admittedly by nifty to have. I'd love to ride it. But I wonder if on certain routes we might not be better advised to look for improvements rather than a major change.
What about population density and land distances? Lay a bit of rail ANYWHERE in Europe or Japan and you can serve millions of people. Washington to Charlotte? That's 400 miles. That's like Paris to Munich, except Washington has a lot fewer people than Paris and Charlotte has a lot fewer people than Munich. New York to Chicago? 800 miles. There's not room enough to lay an 800 mile track in Japan or Europe.
I read an interview with an Amtrak exec in the early 80's, I think it was the CEO of the time, Graham Claytor, but can't be sure. In any case, at the time, Amtrak was doing reasonably okay, and there was demand for more new routes that could have been profitable. But Amtrak, being a good government agency, didn't see them as profitable. Why?
The explanation had to do with that old bugaboo, marginal accounting. Any private business would look at an opportunity, calculate that if it would cost X dollars to run a train, and generated X+Y dollars in revenue, that would be profitable. Not Amtrak. They insisted on including a percentage of the corporate overhead in assumptions for any new business. If Amtrak were to run 50% more trains, they would want to cover a 50% increase in administrative overhead.... before even considering whether to run the route.
Of course, this accounting artifice eventually leads to no investment at all, and the lack of service is the true shame of having rail run by a government agency, not the money wasted.
In any case, our rail system is obsolete at this point, and there's no way to run true high-speed trains on the existing infrastucture. Even the Acela trains only beat the 1930's steam schedule by about 10%-15%. Any new solution has to built from the ground up. There's plenty of private capital out there, the political challenge is figuring out how to unleash.
I read an interview with an Amtrak exec in the early 80's, I think it was the CEO of the time, Graham Claytor, but can't be sure. In any case, at the time, Amtrak was doing reasonably okay, and there was demand for more new routes that could have been profitable. But Amtrak, being a good government agency, didn't see them as profitable. Why?
The explanation had to do with that old bugaboo, marginal accounting. Any private business would look at an opportunity, calculate that if it would cost X dollars to run a train, and generated X+Y dollars in revenue, that would be profitable. Not Amtrak. They insisted on including a percentage of the corporate overhead in assumptions for any new business. If Amtrak were to run 50% more trains, they would want to cover a 50% increase in administrative overhead.... before even considering whether to run the route.
Of course, this accounting artifice eventually leads to no investment at all, and the lack of service is the true shame of having rail run by a government agency, not the money wasted.
In any case, our rail system is obsolete at this point, and there's no way to run true high-speed trains on the existing infrastructure. Even the Acela trains only beat the 1930's steam schedule by about 10%-15%. Any new solution has to built from the ground up. There's plenty of private capital out there, the political challenge is figuring out how to unleash it.
Assuming we all really just need to go from city center to city center, why is everyone discounting the time needed to clear security?
Sure, right now there are no TSA screening lines to board a train. Three reasons for this:
1. Security screening was initially in response to hijackings, which, bad Steven Segal movies aside, isn't very useful on rail.
2. Not many people take trains, making them a less attractive target.
3. Perhaps most importantly, no such train attack has yet occurred in the United States.
Should enough people start taking trains, Islamic suicide bombers will start targeting those trains. When that happens, you'll see an introduction of security lines, complete with shoe removal. At which point, you can kiss goodbye the boarding ease American train passengers now enjoy; add two hours back to your travel time.
A while back I crunched some numbers, with unfavorable results outside of the Northeast. Takeaways: median intercity distance amongst the 10 largest metro areas in the US is nearly 1,400 miles; train travel would have to be free of charge to make up for the value of the extra travel time.
I personally enjoy trains and have ridden them all over the country, but putting them in direct competition with airlines is bringing a knife to a gunfight. Concur with Sol, above, re: ability to work during travel; with Carl Pham on automating highway driving; and with out-of-the-box ideas generally. More, please.
Along D's lines -- I realized a month ago what would make trains unbeatable for me would be wireless Internet connectivity and (to a lesser but still high extent) the ability to take your car along with you.
The bus my kid rides back from college has Wifi -- no reason Amtrak trains can't have it too. And, unlike airplanes, it can be done easily and relatively cheaply with Verizon EVDO and an EVDO wifi router. Or bring your own wireless broadband -- it'll work fine on a train.
Don't forget that air travel is already heavily subsidised in the form of our Air Traffic Control System and air terminals. We've already bet our money in this horse with the understanding that it is a better fit for America. In spite of the current fuel costs, market distortions, a deficient/distracted FAA, and TSA; it probably still is. What's lacking is the will to resolve nagging issues. Changing "horses" now, in mid race, will be wasteful beyond anything yet imagined....while providing an endless stream of pork for those with an appetite.
Heck, half of what's wrong with air travel has bureaucratic roots. How will we escape that by switching to rail...especially when the bureaucrats now think it's their right to micromanage every venture in this country? 'Meet the new bureaucracy, same as the old bureaucracy....yada, yada.'
Rail is fine...for freight and as a backup people mover. It should be designed and promoted as such.
Germany is awesome. And guess what -- government!
Yeah, Germany has a government. Your point?
Seriously, Germany is little. The whole of Germany is smaller than Montana; it's comparable to New England. Small area and high population density is an immense advantage to a rail system. The US has a really large area and over great chunks of that area it has a low population density. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a disadvantage.
Megan, you're making an awfully big jump from "wouldn't it be nice if" to "we ought to have it." Sure, it'd be nice to have a TGV train from Chicago to New York. You'd be able to cut some length off if the route was more direct, but I'll bet it would be a lot less than you think: there are some constraints, like grade (a train can't pull up more than about a 1 percent grade).
Even more important, though, how do you expect to obtain the right of way? You're talking about buying (or obtaining via eminent domain) around 1200 square miles of new rights of way through densely populated states like Pennsylvania and northern, industrial Indiana, with environmental impact statements, NIMBY's and BANANAS, and thousands of stories about people being evicted by the nasty railroad. And that's only that much area if you can make a straight-line road, and you can't.
The TGV, which uses existing rights of way in general, costs between $10 million and $15 million per kilometer. All the other assumptions given --- straight line, not counting acquiring right of way, and all --- you're talking $30 billion for one line. with even a 5 percent ROI, you have to get $1.5 billion in profits. Say it's a 10 percent profit, that's $15 billion dollars.
United's total revenues run about $95 billion annually.
So on one train, running one route, you have to come up with around 15 percent of United's total worldwide revenues?
It just don't add up.
And that's with no thought about the cost of the right of way.
Sorry, Megan, there are some things that even Government AND private enterprise can't do.
As mentioned above, using Europe and Japan as analogs for rail travel here in the US is not realistic due to population density differences.
However, Australia, is on the other extreme. About the same size as the lower-48, but with far less population.
Take a look at the Rail Australia Homepage and browse around a bit. Going from D.C. to San Francisco is about the same distance as from Perth to Sydney -- a three night journey!
Traditional inter-city trains of the AMTRAK variety are approximately 5x as efficient in terms of consumption of energy per passenger mile as air travel and high speed trains of the TGV variety come in close to 10x. Air travel might well be cheaper and more efficient from an economic perspective but it is quite likely that a 75% empty train would be more environmentally efficient.
Source? The Department of Transportation has statistics on the energy intensity of various modes of travel.
Amtrak averages around 2100 BTUs per passenger mile. Domestic air travel averages around 3200 BTUs per passenger mile. "Five times" was true around 1970, but air travel is a lot more efficient than then as it's become less luxurious. The higher load factor in the last few years alone has really brought down energy use by planes, much as passengers grumble.
Of course, those are average figures. Amtrak is certainly more efficient on short trips, and less efficient on long trips that require sleeper cars. Half-empty trains can still be efficient on short trips, but many of Amtrak's long distance trains are worse than half-empty. The long distance trains are so bad that even with increased ridership over the past year, fuel costs alone have been more than the increase revenue from fares, not even counting increased crew wages. That doesn't speak to fuel efficiency. It's not true of the short distance and corridor operations, either, where increased revenue has made those routes more profitable. Latest monthly report here. (Pages 65-67 are highly useful for viewing route performance, also pages 30-35.)
Regarding Japan, even there the vast majority of people don't take the train from Tokyo to Sapporo, because the trip takes over 10 hours even with Shinkansen service to Hachinohe. They fly. Any time a trip requires sleeper cars with a train but is only a 3-5 hour plane ride, planes are going to easily be superior, and may not even be worse in terms of energy considering load factor and the extra cars for sleepers.
Amtrak should be concentrating on upgrading corridors. The DC-Charlotte SEHSR route was even forecast to be profitable back in the early to mid 90s (with cheap gas) when first studied. It really should be a no-brainer, but the EIS study (started in '99 and, as Megan says, should be finished in 2010) has been interminable because the project involves putting down new track in an abandoned right-of-way, requiring extra Tier II EIS work. Instead, however, Congress continues to reject the idea of canceling massively unprofitable service (such as the Sunset Limited from New Orleans to LA, as an amendment to drop it failed recently handily, but an amendment to restore it from Orlando to SF passed) and refusing to adequately fund instead corridor projects, including really obvious ones like the SEHSR and "Why is there no train between New Orleans and Baton Rouge?"
I can only imagine how much environmental work a real high speed train like the TGV would take, since all new right-of-way would need to be acquired and brand new track built. There is absolutely no way that it would break ground in less than 10 years, given current regulations and NEPA requirements.
As others have pointed out the main problem with rail transportation in the US is that the US is so big. The portions of rail in the US that do well and have high ridership are those that run between population centers that are relatively close together: Boston-NYC, NYC-DC. From NYC to DC you go through Philly (Big City) and Baltimore (Big enough City).
I took the train once from Boston to Williamsburg, VA. The ride from Boston to DC wasn't bad, however once south of DC, the train was SLOW all the way to Richmond and SLOWER from Richmond to Williamsburg. Never again. I'll fly to Norfolk and walk.
--Mike
The bus my kid rides back from college has Wifi -- no reason Amtrak trains can't have it too. And, unlike airplanes, it can be done easily and relatively cheaply with Verizon EVDO and an EVDO wifi router. Or bring your own wireless broadband -- it'll work fine on a train.
Although it doesn't always work well on a Shinkansen in Japan. The trains go so fast that the phone has to switch cells a lot, and calls and connections sometimes get lost in all the handoffs. Also of course on trains that pass through rural areas, there would be a fair chance of dropping into a dead zone at any point-- it's happened to me even in Japan.
I have been told that for a fraction of such an expense the trackage could be upgraded to allow a downtown to downtown trip in three and a half hours or a little less. Especially when you figure in time to and from the airports and parking, this would make the train quite competitive with flying.
Except that you can drive that route in four and half hours or less. Which means that once you factor in the time sinks at both ends for train travel, driving is probably as fast and as easy.
Ditto Mixner on the source for Joe Mansfield's efficiency numbers. There is no way that high speed is more energy efficient than a standard inter-city express, let alone 2x more efficient. You also have to consider the logistical tails. While a train is more efficient as a vehicle, aircraft don't have to spend obscene amounts of money on roadbed maintenance.
If passenger trains made as much economic sense in the US as their fans assert, why aren't said fans getting together to build them? If their assertions are correct, massive good things would occur (including the bankrupting of bad folks/groups), yet ....
EIS? Environmental impact statements? Do I have that right?
So let me get this straight. Environmentalists want us to give up cars in favor of mass-transit options like trains, but then they demand that any new tracks laid down require an environmental impact statement that will take 11 years to complete? What kind of sense is there in that?
Efficient trains? With everything stacked against efficiency?
How about train service that runs on decent roadbeds (with redundancy), on time, safe and economical?
And while we're speaking of efficiency, lets have a 'ferry' system where people's automobiles can be hauled on the passenger trains, to be driven off at the destination? That would be efficient - especially for people who don't want to rent cars or rely on unknown public transportation systems in strange cities -- or people who don't want to stay in the (decaying) city centers.
The government not only cannot build such a system anymore, but is actively involved in preventing efficiencies from taking place: Heaven forbid that a safe, and ecologically sensitive rail system be built from (say) Los Angeles to Las Vegas....an example of how incompetent governments are are the light rail systems (4 separate systems, with incompatible equipment) in Los Angeles, that (by governmental dictat) didn't actually go to the major commercial airports (LAX, BUR, LGB, SNA). I guess the taxi lobby had a hell of a benefits program.
And while we're speaking of efficiency, lets have a 'ferry' system where people's automobiles can be hauled on the passenger trains, to be driven off at the destination?
Amtrak operates one such route, called the "Auto Train." It runs from Lorton, VA (somewhat south of DC along I-95) to Sanford, FL (right near Orlando). Carries a fair amount of tourist traffic. It's by far the closest to profitable of all the long-distance Amtrak trains.
Environmentalists want us to give up cars in favor of mass-transit options like trains, but then they demand that any new tracks laid down require an environmental impact statement that will take 11 years to complete? What kind of sense is there in that?
First consider that not all "environmentalists" are the same. One environmentalist might really care about trains, but another is concerned about the impact of laying new rail on the local fauna and flora. What if it impacts an endangered species, etc.? I'm pretty sure that lots of environmentalists would like to make exceptions for rail, but the system has its own logic and inertia now. Ten years is pretty typical for any large project that involves entirely new infrastructure instead of upgrades.
The NEPA was passed right as the Interstate Highway System was nearly completed, largely in response to complaints about the arrogance of the Feds coming in and imposing their transportation plan on everyone. It makes it much harder to change plans mid-stream. There are lots of road studies already performed and in the pipeline, so highways are in a sense less impacted than anything that's not part of the current plan.
Building a more direct route from New York to Chicago than the ones the competing Pennyslvania and New York Central Railroads opened more than a century ago would be brutally difficult and prohibitively expensive. The old NYC line to Albany and across to Buffalo is relatively flat, while the old Pennsylvania four track-Main Line is about as direct as the mountains allow. Better track work, beginning by installing higher-speed track where the ripped up fourth track usded to be, and completion of the electrification that the Pennsy stopped at Harrisburg would be a more reasonable--but still expensive--approach. However, I expect many tunnels would have to be widened to accommodate the longer and higher rail cars now in use, as well as to install the electrical systems.
Building a more direct route from New York to Chicago than the ones the competing Pennyslvania and New York Central Railroads opened more than a century ago would be brutally difficult and prohibitively expensive. The old NYC line to Albany and across to Buffalo is relatively flat, while the old Pennsylvania four track-Main Line is about as direct as the mountains allow. Better track work, beginning by installing higher-speed track where the ripped up fourth track usded to be, and completion of the electrification that the Pennsy stopped at Harrisburg would be a more reasonable--but still expensive--approach. However, I expect many tunnels would have to be widened to accommodate the longer and higher rail cars now in use, as well as to install the electrical systems.
As others above have stated, being able to bring your car along on a train would be great for times that you are not ending up in Manhattan or downtown Chicago but even that has a long way to go before it becomes cost-effective.
I crunched some numbers on Amtrak's Auto Train route from DC to Orlando (~810 miles) assuming a Jeep Grand Cherokee or similar SUV:
Auto Train, 2 adults, 2 kids, 1 SUV: $490 total fare, 17.5 hrs
Auto Train, 2 adults, 0 kids, 1 SUV: $390 total fare, 17.5 hrs
Auto Train, 1 adult, 0 kids, 1 SUV: $290 total fare, 17.5 hrs
Drive yourself: $~180 gas, ~15 hrs
AirTran, each seat: $144, 2 hrs
First of all, in order for any of the private railroads to get back into the common carrier passenger business, the law that created Amtrak would have to be changed. FWIW, the only Class I railroads I could envision wanting to be back in the passenger business would be UP or BNSF. I think it's much more likely it would be BNSF, since (a) they actually allow Amtrak's trains to run more or less on schedule, and (b) the predecessor railroads that make up BNSF (Burlington, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and Santa Fe) all had very pro-passenger management, right up to Amtrak's takeover.
With gasoline headed for $5/gallon and airline travel becoming terrifically unpleasant, this gives Amtrak an opening. But they'll probably screw it up, although Alex Kummant does seem to want to do a good job. I don't think we need to have 200 MPH trains to get people interested in using them - all that would be needed are speeds a little higher than was considered normal 50 years ago, i.e. 80-120 MPH, which could be accomplished, I think, in many or most areas on existing rights of way.
I own a business, so my time is at a premium. Let's say I have business in Chicago; if there were a train that left LA mid-morning and got me to Chicago late the following afternoon (an average speed of "only" 75 MPH) and had cruise ship-type amenities, I'd seriously consider that option, although in all honesty I'd probably take the train one way and fly the other.
Every form of transportation receives subsidies of one sort or another, whether direct or indirect, so I suppose passenger rail deserves a place at the table too. Amtrak, at least in its present form, isn't ideal, but at $1.5 billion a year, its federal subsidy is tiny in the context of a $3 trillion budget. Privatization would be OK with me, if it were not just a backdoor way to euthanize the patient.
The problem is trains in the US don't go where people want to go. Back in 1999, I needed to get from San Diego to San Francisco (No competing federal legislators), I had time and thought taking the train would be interesting. First surprise, it would take overnight vice 2 hours flying; second surprise, it cost as much or more as flying; deal killer, the train would not go to San Francisco but rather Oakland where a bus would complete the trip into the city rather than debarking in the city or at the SF airport area.
Why would anyone take a transport method, that took more time, cost as much and didn't go to your destination?
You want a high-speed train? Try this first, build a direct truck/train only route that runs from the container port out past the suburbs to a distribution hub out of say Newark or LA. Leave a little extra room for a passenger train track. If you can do this then you not only improve cargo movement but once your out in the country, you've got 90% of the problems behind you for running high-speed trains between cities.
Environmentalists want us to give up cars in favor of mass-transit options like trains, but then they demand that any new tracks laid down require an environmental impact statement that will take 11 years to complete? What kind of sense is there in that?
Environmentalism is a religion, not a scientific practice.
You have to go through the ritual, no matter what.
Of course rail is more efficient. Europe and Japan show how it can be built and run. In a real city (e.g London), you take a subway or train to a train station that zips you off to another country (e.g. Paris, France). When you arrive, the high speed train pulls into a major subway station, where you can quickly go to any part of the city or board a train to a neighboring city. The train is half the speed of plane, but throw in the security line at the airport, and it's a wash. By the time the airline passenger has picked up their luggage - assuming it arrived at all - the train passenger has already arrived at the destination.
The problem is American government and the perceptions of public transportation by the public. (The airlines and the federal government turning airline travel into torture also helps.)
However, when gasoline hits $7 or $8 a gallon - in the next year or so - things will change. They will have to. Either cities will change to house people moving back into them, or an effective alternative will be found. I don't think that people will move back into the cities. Big city government is too corrupt and too slow to change to allow the needed housing expansion, and there won't be a market for all of the houses selling in the suburbs.
Two things will happen, creating "hybrid commuting":
1. More people will work at home full time or more often.
2. People will drive their cars to a local train station and take high-speed rail or special buses on special routes into the city. That way they can still come and go whenever they want.
The one problem that prevented this before is that rail lines and road expansion for special bus lanes were prevented by local restrictions by property owners. The other problem is that people didn't like any form of public transportation and didn't want to give up their cars. The one change in the political and legal landscape that makes the change possible is the Kelo decision: a massive government takeover of private property is now possible for "the public good".
Your point of politcal pressures adding to the inefficience of high speed rail (Buffalo and Detroit routing) are well taken.
This happened in the early days of the Metroliner. The original concept was to run non-stop from DC's Union Station to Penn Station in NYC and do it in 2 and half hours to compete with the one hour service of Eastern's Shuttle. But they needed crew changes in Phila and Newark. The real kicker was Maryland felt left out when no stop was planned for Baltimore. Maryland threatened to enact "full crew" laws on the Metroliner if they failed to stop in the state. So another stop was added.
I now live in Florida where we passed a constitutional amendment mandating a high speed rail system from Tampa to Miami (since rescinded). When the capital costs were calculated it was obvious it was grossly unfeasable. For starters, the assumed use of Interstate medians was unworkable. High speed rail needs 3 to 4 mile radius turns if you want to be able to walk to the rest room at 150 mph and not be dumped in someones lap. There can be no grade crossings. All European and Japanese high speed lines have elimiated grade crossings. The Acela does still have several and they are serious safety issues.
The political infighting on stops was a comedy and would have gotten worse if the system had a chance of getting built. Orlando had two stops planned, one at the airport and one at Disney. You can imagine the angst of the non-Disney resorts. So a third was added for them. On high speed rail about 5 minutes is lost for each stop counting acceleration /deceleration time and the stop itself. So in 35 miles there were 15 minutes added to the trip.
There was no time savings of center city to center city (with the exception of Orlando) as the rail terminals were to be at airports to save infrastructure and right of way costs. Air travel is already available between Tampa/Orlando and Miami/Ft. Lauderdale with about 1 hour trip times and good highways.
It was a solution to a problem that didn't exist.
Also, add my thanks to Tom Thatcher for the efficiency stats. I have been looking for these for years.
I would also lay part of the blame for our lack of a coherent rail strategy on the UAW and the Teamsters. While it’s often off the record, their lobbying clout in opposing rail development is immense.
Around my part of PA, new rail projects are usually fought by a coalition of Teamsters and environmental groups. Politics make strange bedfellows, etc.
Also, with respect to Germany and Japan, we need to consider that both countries had their steam-era rail systems completely annihilated during WWII. They were forced to rebuild, practically from scratch, in the 1950’s. Had the US suffered the same fate, no doubt our rail systems would be much more efficient today.
Amtrak, at least in its present form, isn't ideal, but at $1.5 billion a year, its federal subsidy is tiny in the context of a $3 trillion budget. Privatization would be OK with me, if it were not just a backdoor way to euthanize the patient.
Its federal subsidy is tiny, perhaps, but it's also pretty large in terms of the passenger miles that Amtrak carries as opposed to the highways and air traffic. There's a lot of ways to crunch those numbers. Privatization would be a back door way to get Amtrak to actually concentrate on the profitable and potentially profitable corridor routes instead of the ridiculous transcontinental sleeper routes.
The length of time that the EIS takes for a train can be compared to how environmental laws have been used to block every proposed offshore wind farm in the US, unlike Europe. The environmental regulation in the US, like a lot of regulation, favors the tried and true over anything new.
I live in Denver and have never ridden a train anywhere in my life. Amtrak is a joke out here, and the Regional Transportation District in Denver is only now building out a light rail system that in 15 years will be able to take me downtown, where I rarely need to go. I'd settle for decent bus service that could take me from the suburb where I live to the suburb where my job is. Trains assume a high population density and 'core' destination that just don't exist out West.
Should enough people start taking trains, Islamic suicide bombers will start targeting those trains. When that happens, you'll see an introduction of security lines, complete with shoe removal. At which point, you can kiss goodbye the boarding ease American train passengers now enjoy; add two hours back to your travel time
After the bombings in Madrid the Spanish authorities didn't introduce any security theatre. Not because they are less inclined to do so than their US counterparts, but because it is impossible. you can't have airline style security lines in rail travel. In Europe over half of all railway stations aren't even staffed.
Should enough people start taking trains, Islamic suicide bombers will start targeting those trains. When that happens, you'll see an introduction of security lines, complete with shoe removal. At which point, you can kiss goodbye the boarding ease American train passengers now enjoy; add two hours back to your travel time
After the bombings in Madrid the Spanish authorities didn't introduce any security theatre. Not because they are less inclined to do so than their US counterparts, but because it is impossible. you can't have airline style security lines in rail travel. In Europe over half of all railway stations aren't even staffed.
With gas at 5 dollars a gallon this is not the optimal time to be pushing a huge rail system in the US. The only reason rail can keep working in Europe is that it's smaller and the government heavily subsidizes it. Their trains don't make money, taxes pay to keep them running despite this loss.
I like the idea of bullet trains zipping around America, I love trains. They just aren't feasible.
"Its federal subsidy is tiny, perhaps, but it's also pretty large in terms of the passenger miles that Amtrak carries as opposed to the highways and air traffic."
Fair enough. But I still think the point is valid that absent subsidies of some kind, carrying passengers is not a money making business for the airlines, the bus companies, or anyone else. Let's not forget also that the airlines not only have their airport infrastructure paid for through tax dollars, the get direct bailouts from time to time, and they have contracts to carry first class mail (which the railroads used to), which is yet another subsidy of sorts.
Interestingly enough, one issue that no one seems to have remarked on yet is that the airlines, especially the legacy carriers, are running smack into one of the very things that doomed private passenger trains: unions and pension costs.
Rail in Europe vs the US...the European rail systems are generally optimized for passenger traffic, while US is freight-oriented. My understanding is that a significantly higher % of freight goes by rail in the US than it does in Europe...waterways make up some of the difference, but by no means all.
If you had to choose between a good pax rail system and a good freight rail system, then for a country the size of the US you would probably be much better off with the latter.
Do the above-mentioned objections to inter-city rail in the United States (that the great distances involved make it too expensive, etc) not also apply to highways? I'm not suggesting that we raze inner-city neighborhoods to make way for rail, as we did when creating the Interstate Highway system, but projects of similar scale and scope, and with similar levels of subsidy, have been undertaken before.
The problem with passenger rail in the US is tha it "rents" the rails from the freight lines, hence freight has priority over AMTRAK everywhere. If AMTRAK had its own rails they'd be on time and take the most efficient route instead of stop and sit while the freight trains pass them.
Of course it would cost a s*8tload of money to build a passenger rail system in this country and Congress isn't going to pay for that - they've gone broke funding pensions already.
Transit fan, we all ready have rail here in Seattle that is heavily used. The Puget Sound Corridor has multiple daily commuter routs that are always packed. The Seattle to Portland run? Packed. Seattle to Vancouver? Packed. Hell. The high speed Hydrofoil ferry between Seattle and Victoria is packed.
So now what? A high speed train replacing the current freight lines to San Fran? Thats 800 miles. 850 miles to Salt Lake. 1000 miles to LA. 1100 miles to Las Vegas. 1300 miles to Denver. 2000 miles to Chicago.
The best argument for more rail in Seattle to points elsewhere is so we can ship you all more containers full of stuff from China.
My wife and I took Amtrak from Chicago to NYC last Fall.
I thought it would be fun. We didn't pop for the sleeper because (a) it's expensive and (b) the trip was only scheduled for 18 hours and I figured I could nap in the coach seat just fine. My wife did the same trip with a sleeper a few years before and liked it.
Wow, what a mistake. First, the trip took about 4 hours longer than was scheduled. Second, the seats could not have been less comfortable if they were unpadded plastic. Finally, the snack car hours suck. There is no reason for not having the snack car open for the whole trip. The train leaves Chicago at 10pm and the snack car closes at Midnight and doesn't re-open until morning. We left the station almost 45 minutes late, so the car closed about an hour after the trip started and didn't re-open for 8 hours.
The positives: (1) via coach the trip is very cheap, much less than the cost to drive or fly even when gas costs were much lower(2)there is a certain coolness factor to the train (3) each 2 seat section comes with plugs so I could plug in my computer to watch movies or play games.
I had pre-arranged to fly back because I didn't want to add 2 extra days to my vacation. Overall I think that the train could be a viable option, but the comfort and service need to go up, even if that means upping the price a bit. I would have happliy paid an extra $50 for a 24-hour dining car.
TransitFan,
Do the above-mentioned objections to inter-city rail in the United States (that the great distances involved make it too expensive, etc) not also apply to highways?
No.
Krist - that was not exactly my experience in Spain in November 2006. There were some security hassles on the intercity lines, though not nearly so much as at the airports there.
A San Francisco to LA line sounds pretty good in theory - two large, wealthy metropolitan areas, with more air traffic on the route than on any other route in the world; it's all in one state, so the interstate politics don't apply much, and the state thinks it has the money to do the whole thing if they can't get money out of the feds.
But then look at the details. Where does the train stop in the Bay Area? San Francisco is bad, because it bypasses San Jose and Silicon Valley, and either uses the existing track along the peninsula (sharing with a local commuter train), or you buy miles of some of the most expensive real estate in the country to put new tracks in. (Even if you buy land *immediately* adjacent to 101, it's still scarily expensive.) You could stop in San Jose, but then you're over an hour away from San Francisco and Oakland, and a half hour away from Palo Alto, and there's no connection to BART (the other commuter rail system here). You could terminate in Oakland, but then you've bypassed all of Silicon Valley, and you're at least a half-hour away from San Francisco. And you're in Oakland. The route could be built with a stop in San Jose, then ending in either San Francisco or Oakland (but not going to both. Look at a map to see why). But then there would be the time for the stop in San Jose, and the question of high-speed service from San Jose to San Francisco (or Oakland).
I'm sure there are equivalent difficulties at the LA end, but I don't know the area well enough to describe them in any detail. Just remember that there are 3 airports in the Bay Area and 5 airports in LA, and that there are frequent flights for all 15 combinations.
To make long distance trains economical you need very peculiar geography, i.e. dense linear bipolar population distribution like the Tokyo to Osaka route. This rail corridor moves 10,000 to 15,000 people per hour in each direction. Compare this with the busiest U.S. long distance mass transit corridor... Boston to D.C. which moves roughly 500 to 600 people per hour by air. There is no way this amount of traffic can justify the cost of building and maintaining the rail infrastructure. The issue is the infrastructure cost not the cost of operating the trains. The only reason that TGV appears economical is because the French have created two separate companies... a train operating company and a track operating company. The track operating company loses bundles of money (before the massive government subsidies) so that the train operating company can be "profitable" as required for political expediency.
The fact that the U.S. does not have a highly developed train system may become a huge advantage in the next few decades, because it opens the door for the market to come up with innovative solutions - solutions that huge government programs crowd out. For example, France's Minitel network was the envy of the world - for a little while. Then the internet came along, and the existence of Minitel slowed down France's internet adoption rate and put them behind.
Anyway... Think through the implications of plug-in hybrid cars, and the increasingly advanced computer control cars have. This could lead to the development of 'car trains' - ad-hoc groupings of cars that travel together to save fuel. One car is the master, the ones behind it are slaves. They snug up to each other - either by physically connecting with bumper hitches or virtually through computer control that keeps them all inches away from each other. This has huge energy savings, because the cars are essentially 'drafting' - being sheltered in the wake of the car ahead - which eliminates a good percentage of wind resistance.
If the cars are physically connected, they could even share battery power and all operate as one unit - delivering power to the various wheels as needed throughout the 'train'. This would be a pretty good range multiplier, and make the engines more efficient because you could completely shut off some and always operate at maximum efficiency.
Then when you get where you are going, you just break off the train and drive solo.
While you're in the train, you don't need to steer the car or brake or anything -the lead driver 'drives' (he might be a commercal 'car train' operator, or just a friend you trust). You can sit and read the paper.
Anyway, this is only one possible solution out of many that will soon be available to us. There are cars being made today which are essentially completely drive-by-wire, with electronic gas pedals, steering, braking, etc. And with computers in the mix between the driver and the car at all points. A car like this is about 90% of the way to being capable of driving in a 'train'.
Perhaps these 'car trains' will be more formal - every train will have a 'locomotive' at the front which is really something the size of a one-ton truck with a huge battery. You hook up your electric car to the train, and they all get their power from the 'locomotive', which also determines which vehicles should drive their wheels and which ones should coast. At the destination, each car is billed for its share of the total energy used, plus a fixed cost for the locomotive and driver, and they can leave the train at their destination - with their own batteries still fully charged.
Perhaps we'll see a 'locomotive' industry similar to the taxicab industry, with independent locomotive operators being hired on the spot to drive car trains. Maybe you'll just drive into a departing area, wait for a train to build up with the right number of cars in it for max efficiency, and hook up with them.
And this being market driven, it may be only one of many different ways people have of getting their vehicles from point A to B. This 'car train' idea is just one off the top of my head. The market will come up with others - ones we can't even imagine today. We don't need a one-size fits all solution, which is what governments are good at.
We're leaving the old industrial age behind - it's time to start thinking out of the box. Governments are terrible at this.
Anthony -
There are lots of difficulties with a SFO-LAX line. The existing rights of way (Coast line or Valley line) both have steep grades and mountain passes to contend with at various points, which get in the way of true high speed operation. Engineering a relatively straight track alignment with moderate grades would involve so much tunneling that I imagine the cost would be prohibitive.
The most direct route, the I-5 corridor up and down the Valley also carries a hazard that no one till now has mentioned: earthquakes. I-5 parallels the San Andreas fault for much of its distance, and the approach to the Bay Area would take you through at least 2 more fault zones. Track geometry is undoubtedly more critical on high speed lines, and given the level of seismicity of the area, it's not at all unreasonable to expect that daily inspections of every inch of track might be required to make sure everything is within acceptable tolerances, driving up the cost to operate the line.
Mixner - you asked for sources. John Thacker rightly pointed out that US rail quotes around 2100BTU per passenger mile, that's about 1.38MJoule/passenger km. I was surprised by that as it is quite poor when compared to East Japan Railway who claim 0.35MJoule/passenger km [ http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/environment/pdf_2005/report2005e_22_23.pdf ] and dramatically worse than TGV [ http://www.inrets.fr/infos/cost319/MEETDeliverable17.PDF ] which comes in at 0.15MJoule/passenger km for medium distance intercity routes.
It's probable that the US numbers are more honest since the likely stock is mostly Diesel-Electric where the total energy cost is quite direct. The Japanese\French examples possibly exclude generation and distribution losses which would degrade the claimed values by 30-40% depending on how much of that power is originally derived from fossil fuel electricity generation. Even so outside the US the all in energy cost for modern rail is in the range of 0.3 - 0.6MJ / passenger km. Low occupancy rates, long haul sleeper car use rates being high and being stuck with old and highly inefficient track are likely the main reasons for that but it is also possible that the trains are just not designed to be that efficient for passengers given that freight is the priority in the US.
The most efficient passenger jets flying under ideal conditions and with 100% loading can just about hit 1MJoule / passenger km [ http://www.airbus.com/en/myairbus/airbusview/the_a380_the_future_of_flying.html with 555 passengers, no cargo and no luggage ] so it is likely that real world jets average about 20-50% less than that. That makes John's statement about Jets coming up to par with American trains in the early 70's sound a bit optimistic but they are almost certainly on par today.
So my claim of 5x more efficient for AMTRAK trains was incorrect but the reality is still that a good high speed modern [non US] train can be 3x as energy efficient under average conditions as the best possible jet can be under ideal conditions. Trains can get significantly better too - getting a real world end to end efficiency of under 0.1MJ / passenger km is certainly doable but planes are unlikely to significantly improve on 1MJ/passenger km anytime soon.
The current problem with trains in the US is that without the investment in the train lines those potential gains are pointless. $10-$15m per mile is probably a low ball but then again that price is not vastly different to the price of building highways and rail lines require about an order of magnitude less to maintain and have far longer operating lifetimes (as does the rolling stock) so over the long term changing to building more rail than roads for example is viable without any significant change in capital costs. If the cost of energy continues to rise then at some point the [at least] 3:1 efficiency advantage that rail has [because of physics] will become compelling and provided energy prices continue to climb it is inevitable that the market will force that to happen at some stage, even if the capital outlay required appears to huge today. If energy costs plateau or drop then the question becomes one of whether the long term disadvantages to the US economy of having an inefficient transport system when compared to other economies really matters significantly at all.
High-speed pax rail would in most cases require construction of new track...rest assured that *every single mile* of this construction would face protracted litigation and regulatory maneuvering. The protest industry in the U.S. has become very powerful, and can stop or severely delay just about anything.
"Environmental" bona fides will not save a project from attack. Burlington Northern is currently trying to build an intermodal transfer yard (in LA) which will take tremendous amounts of truck traffic off the roads: they are encountering severe opposition from local residents. Similarly, a project to bring "alternative energy" (solar, wind, and geothermal) to San Diego is being denounced by those who object to the construction of the transmission lines.
I would be very interested in knowing which freight railroad is "rumored" to want to take back passenger service. The freights are also a mess, because of how they are managed.
For the last half century or so, railroads have been managed with the highest priority that of going out of business in an orderly fashion. Track is expensive to maintain, so millions of miles of track has been taken up. Pension costs are outrageous, so they have specialized in clever ways to get employees to voluntarily quit. (For example, the time to train a conductor to be an engineer is significantly less than the time to train an engineer from scratch. So railroads would like to train the new hires as conductors while training conductors as engineers -- start with a conductor, end up with a conductor and and engineer, for only a fraction of the time.) The problem is that when the conductor-to-engineer program was started back in the 70's, it was a scheme. The conductor must give up his conductor job, seniority, etc. to go to engineer school, and if he washes out then he can only go back as a conductor as a new hire. Pretty clever when you are trying to come up with schemes to cut headcount and cut costs, but when you have a gazillion containers coming over from Asia needing to be moved across country it is a recipe for gridlock. A single equipment failure can send the entire schedule into a death spiral, with the sidings clogged up with trains without engineers, which leaves fewer sidings for trains to pass, forcing trains with engineers to park for longer periods, which consumes more and more of the engineers' work hours sitting in trains that aren't moving. This is why the CA Zephyr spent months and months and months coming into Chicago 5, 10, 15 hours late.
No, if a freight line wants to take over passenger service, it's to kill it off. Because that's all that railroad managers know how to do -- efficiently kill things off.
I wondered about this comment. As I understand it, The Empire Builder, Amtrak's only Montana train is usually fully booked and requires advance reservations. In fact, it is often mentioned as Amtrak's most successful long distance train.
http://www.whitefishpilot.com/articles/2008/03/13/news/news03.txt
I don't think I'm quite as cynical as Cathy F, but sometimes I wonder about certain things our government (or political elites, if you prefer) are doing to us and believe it's not happening by accident.
But I digress. Let's say that there is something to the rumor that one of the Class I railroads wants to get back into the business of running passenger trains. Business sometimes does the right thing, sometimes it does the wrong thing, but in the end, it's all about money. To put it in the simplest possible terms, whether there's an Amtrak or not, passenger trains are probably going to be with us for some time, and somebody thinks (or is rumored to think) that there's at least some money to be made.
Megan:
The routing of HSR from NYC to Chicago via Buffalo has to do more with the desire to follow LOW GRADE routes between the two endpoints than any backroom political deal. It's the same reason that the New York Central originally assembled this routing...it has the least hills to cross, making for easy construction of the track and fast & low cost operation.
Other "minor" errors in your screed...
-The current NYC-Chicago train, "The Lake Shore Limited" DOES NOT travel via Detroit, the nearest it passes is Toledo, OH.
-While persistant rumors have NS taking back passenger service from Amtrak, that has little to do with scheduling....and more with the possibility of several states using eminent domain to seize portions of its track it views as needed to long term growth strategy.
-The Empire Builder, your "half-empty tourist trains through Montana" is has the highest number of revenue passenger miles of ANY of Amtrak's long distance passenger trains....and actually has more riders who use it for short and intermediate length trips in remote North Plains communities w/o good air or bus service than "tourists." If you insist on bitching about "half empty trains," the issue comes with the Southwest Limited....wich has been butchered to 3 day a week service by an unwillingness to provide it with the equiptment and the railroads unwilling to give it the priority they promised when Amtrak was founded.
Responding to a few comments:
As I understand it, The Empire Builder, Amtrak's only Montana train is usually fully booked and requires advance reservations. In fact, it is often mentioned as Amtrak's most successful long distance train.
Please read Amtrak's own financial reports, pages 65-67 have specific route data.
Yes, the Empire Builder is the most successful long distance train that is not the Auto Train, in terms of loss per passenger mile or per seat mile. It has lost only 15.5 cents / passenger mile, or 8.2 cents / seat mile. You will see from the ratio that only somewhat more than half the seats are filled. It lost a little bit less in FY 2007, because the additional ticket revenue has not been enough to make up additional fuel costs. OTOH, it covers a lot of miles, so the raw operating loss from the route is among the largest at Amtrak, ranking up there with the California Zephyr in losing $40 million per year or so. That $40 million would be a lot better served implementing the high speed corridors, IMO.
That makes John's statement about Jets coming up to par with American trains in the early 70's sound a bit optimistic but they are almost certainly on par today.
My statement is that the other poster's claim, that trains were 5x as efficient as jets, was true in the 70s but is not at all true today, at least for the aggregate Amtrak number. Sorry if I was misunderstood. However, the Amtrack number is misleading because it's an aggregate; inefficient long distance routes swamp the short routes due to number of miles.
The Puget Sound Corridor has multiple daily commuter routs that are always packed. The Seattle to Portland run? Packed. Seattle to Vancouver? Packed. Hell. The high speed Hydrofoil ferry between Seattle and Victoria is packed.
So now what?
For Seattle? There's a lot of room to upgrade the speed on the Cascades service. Seattle to Portland and Seattle to Vancouver times are still far off what WADOT's long term plan proposes. Going anywhere else from Seattle on a train is probably foolish, but 3.5 hrs from Seattle to Portland and over 4 hrs Seattle to Vancouver, BC can and should be improved upon. If improved, the frequency of trains could then be upped. There's only 1 roundtrip train per day Seattle to Vancouver (the rest are bus connections, one additional train goes to Bellingham, WA), and 4 Seattle to Portland.
Oh, and the California High Speed Rail Authority was created in 1996. Since they're just now finishing their EISes, it looks like they may be ready to start thinking about actually building. They're beginning with a rail bond November 2008-- complaints in the past have been that federal monies would only provide a 50% match, but it looks like it may be going up to an 80% match.
Joe,
So my claim of 5x more efficient for AMTRAK trains was incorrect but the reality is still that a good high speed modern [non US] train can be 3x as energy efficient under average conditions as the best possible jet can be under ideal conditions. Trains can get significantly better too - getting a real world end to end efficiency of under 0.1MJ / passenger km is certainly doable but planes are unlikely to significantly improve on 1MJ/passenger km anytime soon.
Okay, for the sake of argument, let's stipulate that good rail outside the U.S. is currently about 3-5 times as energy-efficient as air, and that if the U.S. matched current Japanese/French effciencies, its intercity rail system would average about 0.3MJ/p-k. How do you propose to achieve that additional three-fold real-world improvement you mention (to about 0.1MJ/p-k)?
Of course, the overall environmental benefit of any energy-efficiency advantage for rail would depend crucially on passenger-mile volume. Rail's current share of total passenger-miles is tiny, so even if it could be doubled or tripled or quadrupled, the overall benefit to the environment would probably be very small.
And the economic advantage would depend on how large a share energy costs are of total costs. In fact, not energy, but fuel.
The current problem with trains in the US is that without the investment in the train lines those potential gains are pointless. $10-$15m per mile is probably a low ball but then again that price is not vastly different to the price of building highways and rail lines require about an order of magnitude less to maintain and have far longer operating lifetimes (as does the rolling stock) so over the long term changing to building more rail than roads for example is viable without any significant change in capital costs.
These claims sound very dubious to me. But even if they are true, simply comparing per-mile costs for rail track vs. highways isn't very meaningful. What matters is the cost per passenger-mile. If the average passenger volume per mile of road is much higher than the average passenger volume per mile of track, then road may still be cheaper than track per passenger-mile even if track is cheaper than road per mile.
Again, is there any intercity rail system in the world that competes effectively against air and road alternatives without a much higher level of subsidy? If there isn't, that strongly suggests that rail simply isn't inherently competitive.
take the bus. branson has no train, but is the #1
bus destination in usa.
There is already a government built route that goes from NY to Chicago the shortest possible way - it is called "I-80". High speed buses anyone?
I wonder if the energy use comparisons include the initial energy required to produce the equipment, allocated over its expected lifetime. For highway, this would be the road and the car. For air, it would be the plane and the airport. For rail, it would be the track, the locomotive, and the cars.
I suspect that this analysis would have more negative effect on auto and rail than on air, since for these modes, every single mile of the route must either be covered with concrete or with steel.
Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
Japan has a great rail system because the country is not built for cars. It makes sense to go from place to place INSIDE the city by mass transit. Therefore it is reasonable to go from city to city by mass transit.
I live 200 yards from a train station that goes directly to New York City. When I want to go to New York, I take the train. When I want to go to Baltimore or DC, I drive. Why? Because I need a car in Baltimore or DC.
When I go to Japan I almost always take the train. I flew from Nagoya to Shikoku and I flew from Hiroshima to Tokyo. Every other trip was by train although I did rent a car a few times to see out of the way places.
It would be great to have high speed trains from New York to Chicago. You could either go through Albany or Philadelphia or you could follow Route 80 and not go through a major city until Cleveland.
The problem is that it will take decades to change the cities along the way into places where you wouldn't need a car and people could get to the train stations by mass transit.
All those commuter lines in Japan? Privately owned.
I live and Japan, and this is incorrect. There are a small number of privately owned lines, mostly in and around major cities. But the vast majority of Japan's rail lines, including all the high speed lines and most of the most heavily trafficked commuter ones, are owned and operated by JR, the national railway.
Slightly off topic: Could some eccentric billionaire out there please start a semi-luxury ferry service from NYC to Europe? Please? Stop flying around in balloons and do the public a favor. If the fare were competitive with air fare, I would never fly again. There are ferry boats that could do this route in about 3.5 days. Between Amtrak and VIA in North America and Euro rail and the trans-siberian railroad, flying would become entirely unnecessary.
Flying is nothing but a vulgar, despicable vice of those who suffer from a false understanding of time. As far as I am concerned, Amtrak trains are INFINITELY fast, because I can work or sleep on them. Their speed on the ground is largely irrelevant.
Imagine taking the train to NYC, boarding a semi-lux ferry and cruising across the pond with your choice of restaurants, or just pack your own food. Once in Europe, continue to your destination on the rail system.
And then there is the small stupid stuff that adds up...
Example -- Naperville, IL. Has two daily trains to and from California (Southwest Chief and California Zephyr). There is nowhere within 2 miles of the train station where you can pay any price to park a car overnight. Naperville is a southwest suburb of Chicago, and is the most convenient Amtrak station for a couple of million people. But they can't drive their cars to the station, park, take a train west, and come back. There is ample commuter parking around the station, at $2/day, but overnight parking is not allowed in any of those parking lots.
One of the main reasons why government is often less efficient in the USA than in other countries is because of exactly the sort of dismissive attitude evidenced by the author.
Unlike in Europe, where government work is prestigios, ambitious and more talented people have a much stronger preference for the private sector in the US. This is not just a matter of material incentives, but also the soft factor of prestige.
Our universities pay much less than the private sector, but university work is still (for now!) rather prestigious, so it attracts talent and ambition.
The same can be said of government work only at the very highest levels.
This is a serious cultural problem which has been fed by decades of Republican anti-government ideology.
Unlike in Europe, where government work is prestigios, ambitious and more talented people have a much stronger preference for the private sector in the US.
You obviously haven't interacted with very many European bureaucrats, have you?
European government is just as bollixed up and inefficient as American government, just in different ways that mostly relate to different power structures and distributions of authority.
secret asian man:
Today's statistic: No government-owned transit system in America has ever been able to break even. Nearly every private one has.
ROTFLMAO
You must know NOTHING about the history of American transit.
Essentially every major railroad of the 1950s-70s was driven to the edge of (or into) bankruptcy due to their passenger service. The number of private airlines that have failed is staggering. Tell me, are there *any* American flagged cruise lines left?
Maybe you'd prefer to talk local transit...
My home town of Los Angeles lost EVERY significant local rail or bus company to financial difficulty by the 1960s.
Hell, EVERY private commuter railroad in the nation EXCEPT the Chicago, South Shore, & South Bend Railroad had either gone bust or been taken over by a public transit agency by 1963. (it went bankrupt in 1989....because of passenger operations, which it spun off to a public entity....and returned to profitablility as a freight carrying short line)
Let's keep in mind that the only truly profitable Shinkansen line in Japan is the one between Osaka and Tokyo; the others, such as the line to Niigata, are boondogles. If you buy a Japan Rail Pass, the Osaka-Tokyo Shinkansen line isn't included although all other Shinkansen lines are.
Many lines in Tokyo proper are private, but not all. Tokyo City owns most of the subways and JR owns some key routes, especially the Yamanote Line that rings the metro area. Tokyo is densely populated, so trains work, but recall that to go anywhere can quickly add up. Were it not for employers paying commuting costs, it would be even costlier; however, with some Japanese employers ending housing subsidies, I expect more companies will quit paying commuting fees as well. Trains will feel much less economical then.
Try going anywhere by train in rural Japan, such as Shikoku--ha. Their diesels, not electric. You might be lucky to get a train every thirty minutes, if even that frequent. No wonder people in rural areas travel by car until they become too old to drive.
kevino,
Right; you can tell a Real City™ (London, Paris, Stockholm, etc...) because the streets are virtually empty of traffic: who would use cars when they have such wonderful subways?
Corky Boyd,
OMG! Please, please tell me that the rescinding act also disenfrachised everyone who voted for this in the first place.
The politics of passenger rail is sausage-making at its finest. You could well be forgiven for averting your eyes, but to disabuse you at least of the fanciful notion that the Buffalo and Detroit Chambers of Commerce are stubbornly standing in the way of high speed rail, here are some of the players involved and a basic take on their respective interests.
First, the railroad industry. The railroads NEVER made any money on passenger rail service. They provided the service at a loss but made huge profits developing real estate. Whenever real estate profits on a line dried up, they demanded and got public subsidies to continue the service. Amtrak was their ultimate inspiration - foist the whole thing off on the government and get them to maintain the track you use for freight service at passenger speed quality, provided, of course, that the scheduling of passenger service never conflicts with the scheduling of freight service. For the railroads, the status quo is just about perfect.
Second, the airline industry. Their position is straightforward: however the laws are written they must ensure that competitive passenger service is never accomplished.
Third, environmentalists. Not a factor. (See Mancur Olson.)
Fourth, the "rail buffs". The primary lobby for passenger rail service. You can give them credit for passion, but while there is a fairly strong case to be made for public funding of a competitive passenger rail system, the rail buffs are the least competent people to make it.
Finally, the consultants. These are large engineering firms (e.g., Parsons Brinckerhoff) that actually do high quality passenger rail work around the world, but for whom the U.S. is a peculiar market. Since rail projects in the U.S. are constantly put on the agenda at the behest of rail buffs, but have next to no chance of ever coming to fruition, they have perfected a "fleecing the lambs" strategy. The planning requirements in Federal law (including those lavish EIS's) are the work of their lobbyists (with eager input from environmentalists, of course) and guarantee that every proposed project will provide them with many man-years of hourly billings before the inevitable no-build decision is finally taken. And a little accounting magic will neatly disguise the billing of those hours spent helping the rail buffs get the project on the agenda in the first place.
The suggestion of replacing air from Europa to the US with a fast ferry is not a good one. Energy costs per passenger mile is higher for ships than it is for airplanes.
There's so much drivel being spouted on both sides of this argument that we can't even have an honest debate, much less do something about our transportation problems.
I personally expect the present troubles to play out in the form of a massive decline in travel of all kinds. Different regions of the country will become very separated from one another. As all intercity passenger transportation is inherently unprofitable given today's energy prices, and the government is inherently paralyzed on the issue, there will be a lot less of it in the future.
We have the road lobby denying the fact that a vast chunk of the northeastern, eastern and central US -- reaching all the way down the eastern seaboard and all the way to Chicago -- is more densely populated than France, where high speed rail has been a success in maintaining convenient and affordable and energy efficient intercity transportation.
And we have the rail lobby clinging to Amtrak and its dysfunctions and in denial about the corrosive effect of cookie-cutter federal regulations on the railroads now and going back more than a hundred years.
I found the comment that no-one takes public transportation under 200 miles particularly amusing. I guess all those packed trains between Chicago and Milwaukee must be full of mannequins then. Or take the fanciful notion that Amtrak's long-distance trains are carbon-efficient by world standards. Well, they're better than driving alone. And they're better than flying on an MD-80. But that's not saying very much. Two people together in a car do better, as would the airlines if they would give up their small jet addiction and have fewer, larger flights. The problem is that Amtrak cars, with old-fashioned body-and-frame design mandated by federal regulation, weigh twice as much as their European counterparts, even though modern monocque designs are now just as safe. That doesn't do much for your fuel consumption.
Ideally, we would have electrified passenger rail routes over a large swathe of the country. The trains would take advantage of modern designs and be both lightweight (therefore energy efficient) AND crash-safe, rather than being forced to add needless weight by federal regulations that act as if technology hasn't changed in 40 years. The federal government would take over the rail infrastructure. And private operators could use the track on an open-access basis -- passenger or freight.
Dave Foster, don't forget the energy to design and maintain. The food for the people and other resources they demand.
Actually, dollars are probably the easiest, best measure.
I kind of like Dan's idea of electric cars pooling resources. It's creative without being completely nonsensical like some ideas (e.g. upgrading every mile of interstate highway in the US with a system that drives people's cars for them). It's novel because it actually increases efficiency while allowing people to still have an individual vehicle that goes straight to their destination. Of course it wouldn't be trivial to implement, but it sounds like something worth looking into.
Good article, but I wish you didn't pick on Buffalo so much. The fact is that JetBlue began operations with it's Buffalo to NYC route, and it is now their busiest and most profitable route in their entire schedule.
I assure you that local politicians would welcome a high speed train between Buffalo and NYC not because of pork (although that would certainly be a benefit) but because it would provide competition with the airlines, who charge a lot to fly in and out of Buffalo.
Additionally, although Detroit is way off line between NYC and Chicago, trains would still have to go through Buffalo, as those are the rail links. A stop in Buffalo and Cleveland, for at least some high speed trains (a 'local', if you will) would certainly make economic sense.
Furthermore, you ignore the possibility of high speed cargo trains. The port of NY is built to capacity. None of the super cargo planes can fly in or out of NY. However, good could be shipped via high speed train to Buffalo, where the underutilized Niagara Falls airport, which has one of the longest runways in the country, can handle the large planes. IN this scenario, everyone benefits.
So please don't assume that smaller cities have nothing to offer for high speed trains -- they actually can make it MORE popular and cost effective.
"That would be efficient - especially for people who don't want to rent cars or rely on unknown public transportation systems in strange cities -- or people who don't want to stay in the (decaying) city centers."
So you mean railroad should have opportunities for you to take your car along with you, just they do on airplanes?
Sheesh -- one of the problems we face is tha people demand of railroads things that we never demand from airline industry. With airplines, we drive out to the far suburbs and leave our car there for $11 a day, fly to another city, rent a car for $50 a day, and the fly home and pick up our car to go home.
But for railroading, this isn't acceptable! We have to take our car with us -- for free, naturally -- or else we won't ride a train! What next, you will insist that we have gourmet meals on trains, or you won't ride them either?
Most trains station I've seen are right in the heart of the city. (Oooo, the scary, *decaying* parts of the city). From there, you usually have bus lines and highways leading you wherever you need to. Perhaps if a trains station became the main intermodel center, the city around it would revive. And perhaps your business might actually be in the downtown area, where it should be, not the suburbs.
As for right of ways, the country still have many rail right of ways in existence. The route from NYC to Chicago is already there -- you don't need to buy up much new land to make it work. Additionally, we have an extensive highway system around the country. Putting a high speed train between or next to the roads would cost very little in terms of land acqusition.
In China, they are on schedule to build a high speed train that will connect all major coastal cities from Beijing to Shanghai. Yes, they actually WANT to stop at all the cities inbetween, although there will surely be express trains as well. The trains all enter an intermodel place from which you get off your train and take a bus, subway, taxi, car or (gasp!) bicycle to where ever need to with in the city. In short, you won't even *need* car to go door to door between any of these cities.
Damn communists.
c.o.jones, you've got your faults wrong. The San Andreas fault is nowhere near I-5 until you get into SoCal. Any route from SF to LA would have to cross the San Andreas, once. A large earthquake with large fault movement would obviously close the route until it could be repaired, but small movements could be designed around; and the rail authority would only have to check a few spots for movement on a regular basis.
"There's not room enough to lay an 800 mile track in Japan or Europe."
I'm not sure what is meant by "room enough" in Europe, but Paris-Berlin is 550 miles in a straight line. Paris-Madrid over 650. Paris-Rome almost 700. Madrid-Berlin almost 1200. So there certainly are routes that are over 800 miles. At the outer limits, Lisbon-Moscow is 2400 miles.
This is an interesting piece, but be sure to note that the Amtrak route from New York to Chicago does not run through Detroit. The only way to get to Detroit from New York on Amtrak is to TRANSFER in Cleveland. There is no direct direct train to Detroit from New York (not one that goes through Chicago or any other city). These are two completely different routes. I know this only because I have gone from New York to Detroit a few times--but no more, with this crazy routing system.
Putting a high speed train between or next to the roads would cost very little in terms of land acqusition.
It would also be impossible because of grade and turn radius. Hell, putting a low speed rail next to interstates would be impossible in many places. Have any of you rail advocates ever crossed the Continental Divide by car? Familiar with a place called Loveland Pass? Driven I-90 over Lookout and 4th of July passes in Idaho? Hell, why, go out west: ever seen Afton Mountain on I-64 on the east side of the Shenandoah Valley, or the Appalachians on the west side?
Trains can and do get through (or around) all of those places, thanks to massive-radius switchbacking, large bridges, and loooooooong tunnels. Sometimes, they use all three at once, resulting in somewhat humorous routings which seem to be at war with the topography. Like all wars, they are rather expensive.
John Thacker wrote: There's a lot of room to upgrade the speed on the Cascades service. Seattle to Portland and Seattle to Vancouver times are still far off what WADOT's long term plan proposes. Going anywhere else from Seattle on a train is probably foolish...
This pretty much encapsulates the point I was going for. There is significant unmet demand for commuter rail connecting the various communities in the Pacific Northwest Metroplex. There is essentially no demand to extend passenger rail beyond that because of the distance involved.
"Putting a high speed train between or next to the roads would cost very little in terms of land acqusition.
It would also be impossible because of grade and turn radius. Hell, putting a low speed rail next to interstates would be impossible in many places"
Of course. But in some places it would be feasible. I never said all places would work. But to suggest that you would need to buy up all new land for high speed right of ways is just as silly. There are some solutions, even if there is no easy solution for 100% of the problem.
in some places it would be feasible.
In which of these feasible and cheap places--which do exist, I concede--is there the slightest demand for high-speed rail? Land is expensive in the Northeast no matter where it's located, there are mountain problems not far from the Eastern Seaboard, and the flat Midwest has low demand.
Anthony - Re-read my post, please. I said "parallels," not "is on top of." Go to the USGS website, or any other resource on the internet about the San Andreas fault, and you'll see what I mean.
Yes, the Empire Builder is the most successful long distance train that is not the Auto Train, in terms of loss per passenger mile or per seat mile. It has lost only 15.5 cents / passenger mile, or 8.2 cents / seat mile. You will see from the ratio that only somewhat more than half the seats are filled. It lost a little bit less in FY 2007, because the additional ticket revenue has not been enough to make up additional fuel costs. OTOH, it covers a lot of miles, so the raw operating loss from the route is among the largest at Amtrak, ranking up there with the California Zephyr in losing $40 million per year or so. That $40 million would be a lot better served implementing the high speed corridors, IMO.
This gets to a point that I always notice about railfans. They like long distance trains, for sentimental reasons, when what we really need is more short distance and moderate distance trains, including especially high speed rail. Calculating everything per passenger mile makes long distance trains look good, because they travel a lot of miles so the losses don't look as big.
Just to correct an earlier comment.
Japan's JR are very definitely privately owned and have been since 1987. About the only Japanese railways still in state ownership are the two subway/underground systems in Tokyo.
We've just returned from a 30 day trip around the States on Amtrak. It was incredible. We're both writers so we managed to
complete a couple of articles plus work on a translation on the train. The service was amazing. We paid extra for a couchette which meant we could get up in the morning and have a shower and go to the dining car for a civilized breakfast, Meals were included and at every sitting we met interesting people. The crew were always terrific -- they were funny and helpful and personable. Amtrak wins big kudos from us. It was just such an amazing experience!
We don't fly into the States any more -- we're Canadians -- because we've had such hassles from customs at ariports -- it takes hours -- the atmosphere is hostile -- and once when flying to Florida to cover a conference on Cuba my husband was hauled off into a room and interrogated! Enough of that!
For this trip we took Via Rail to Sarnia, Ontario, caught a cab and crossed the border -- no problem -- to Port Huron, and boarded the train to Chicago at 5:00 am -- it was a breeze!
The United States is an amazing country -- so vast and so different in all it's myriad landscapes -- the best way to understand that and to see it with ones own eyes is by train.
It's not a question of carbon footprints as much as a question of experiencing space and time in a different way. Travelling my train is the way to go.
Our experience with Amtrak was terrific.
PG
I'm curious what the arguments against the National Defense Highway System were at the time. I'm sure there were interesting eminent domain/cost etc discussions back then too (I'm guessing it's probably why it was passed under the guise of National Defense); regardless, it appears as though this network is now indispensible.
My take away from this discussion, is that the major reason practically nobody travels on the rail networks now is because they are crap; inefficient and cost prohibitive (especially when factoring in lost productivity) - I would rather subject myself to 2hrs of hell travelling by plane, than 10 hrs of hell traveling by rail - but just because they are currently crap, doesn't mean they have to be. As many people have pointed out, direct efficiencies (improved rail networks) and indirect efficiencies (internet connectivity) can dramatically improve the overall viability (although it begs the question, if we’re getting to the point where we can effectively work from home, where do you see business travel heading?).
The argument that there is little demand makes perfect sense – there is obviously little demand for a transportation system that (currently) takes many multiples of time longer to get you from point A to B than other existing means (the proposal is for a new MORE efficient system). I know numerous people who take over an hour to get to work; high speed trains are able to travel at > 215mph using existing technology; you could theoretically commute between LA and San Diego, Austin and Dallas, Phoenix and Tucson, Seattle and Portland, Chicago and St Louis, NYC and Philadelphia etc ad nauseum…in about an hour or less – I’d be interested to find an employer wouldn’t want to squeeze an additional 2 hrs of work out of their employees – hell, some might even be willing to subsidize their transport costs. It concerns me that so many Americans look for reasons not to do something (this from a country that put a man on the moon). In the end we should be looking at this from the long term benefit side to figure out its worth.
As for cost, we can apparently find hundreds of billions of Dollars to spend on national defense and foreign wars that provide little or no benefit, long term or otherwise (argumentative - I know). If cost is the only consideration in any significant infrastructure project, we wouldn’t have any significant infrastructure (in the end it all depends how you factor in costs and benefits and the time horizon that you look at it over).
In the end, the government failures are our own, we expect our government to cater to everybody, and in the end, end up with one that caters to nobody.