Amtrak, freights, and the states (article)
 

Great article on Amtrak's operational problems and what (some) states are doing about it, by Josh Goodman in this month's Governing magazine:
Full text online at http://www.governing.com/archive/2007/mar/trains.txt

There's an error (sort of) in the article:

The California Zephyr has been on time -0- percent of it's trips since last fall (at least)! :eek:

That 4% number is from Amtrak's fiscal year, which ended on September 30th, 2006. The writer probably should have been a bit more careful with saying "last year". But as of the end of the fiscal year, the CS was the worst at 3.9% its real number. The CZ however didn't fare much better for fiscal 2006, coming in at 6.9%.

You are correct though with your statement, so far in this fiscal year that started last fall, the CZ has not had an on time arrival. By contrast the CS as of November 2006, the least reported numbers available, is running at 33.6%. A dismal number to be sure, but nonetheless a huge improvement over last year's number.

Anyway, stats like that only tell part of the story. You can take the Coast Starlight btw Seattle and Portland, or Portland and Eugene (for example) and expect it to run reasonably close to schedule (southbound, anyway...you can't buy a ticket northbound for those segments). So even a train like the Coast Starlate can be on time for SOME travelers.

There's an opinion article in today's NY times about Amtrak and freight interference which mentions a new bill being introduced by senators Lautenburg and Lott to improve track use inforcement.

Ah! There may be hope yet...

On a completely unrelated note, Mr. Hallock says: "Rather, the argument here is about strengthening Amtrak as an energy-efficient alternative to transportation systems threatened by terrorism (jet travel) or that use fuel wastefully (automobiles)."

He didn't mention (probably because most people don't know) that airliners not only produce more pollutants per passenger-mile than trains--they actually produce more than cars! Yes, that's right--it's actually better for the environment if you drive from Los Angeles to New York than if you fly. (The concept breaks down when you consider that the jets fly anyway, regardless of whether there are 180 or 181 people on board, and traveling by car with more than one person in the vehicle divides the pollutants-per-person-per-mile figure by an equivalent factor.)

I don't remember specifically what the measurement was or even where I saw it, but I distinctly remember being shocked that aviation was not nearly as fuel-efficient as I had supposed it was. If my very vague recollection is even close to being in the ballpark, it was something like 2,000 somethings-per-somethings (parts per million? cubic centimeters per liter of exhaust? something like that) per passenger mile for vehicular transport, 2,200 for the average airliner (close, but ever-so-slightly more), and then something like under 1,000 for trains (and that may have even been figuring using diesel-electric locomotives).

Edit (not really--just too lazy to rewrite the above): Come to think of it, the paper I read that in may have actually been figuring on pollution or even fuel per ton-mile of freight. Regardless, the point was that air travel uses more fuel and/or produces more exhaust than road transport, and rail transport is by far more efficient and/or produces much less waste. I do think it was referencing human beings traveling, however...

While the private sector (freight roads) are largely responsible for the congestion mess they now find themselves in, the Federal Government is also culpable due to disinterest and lack of foresight. So many miles of mainline track was abandoned, ripped up and the corridors (ROW real estate) parceled out during the 1970s and 1980s that the freight railroads now find themselves with too much traffic and not enough plant (lines) to route it on. Instead of the Feds stepping up and preserving the corridors many millions of dollars of investment in building these national infrastructure links were squandered and lost to the wind, likely never to return. Billions now would be required to rebuild them, and years of litigation by the affected landowners and NIMBY forces. Even those corridors that miraculously were saved by rails-to-trails “preservation” are unlikely to ever have the rails reinstated due to NIMBY and recreational (pro-trail) pressure.

Yesterday I was using Google Map's satellite feature to trace the former Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad's Pacific extension. The railroad, popularly known as The Milwaukee Road, is abandoned from Terry, Montana to Seattle-Tacoma, Washington State when the bankrupt company retrenched back to the Midwest in 1980-82. Montana growers are complaining about their sole remaining rail option’s (BNSF) rate policies in the current climate of deregulation and the Port of Tacoma is bursting at the seams with Asian container traffic and the two remaining BNSF corridors to directly serve the port – the former Great Northern Hi-line and Northern Pacific, now joint BNSF-MRL - are congested and can't handle the surge in traffic. IMO it's only a matter of time until the Empire Builder's schedule begins to become affected and to think that only a few year’s of railbanking would now have Union Pacific operating this route providing an important relief valve in this corridor and added rate competition to the affected regions.

This is just one example of regulatory incompetence and disinterest later hurting our nation's ability to compete globally with other industrialized nations. To allow the best engineered route over the northern Rockies and Cascade ranges to disappear is inexcusable and will be paid for in increased transportation costs and delays for both people and freight. No one can reasonably argue that the few dollars needed back then to preserve these routes for future reactivation would have not been money well spent. It would have likely been recouped at a premium by infrastructure-hungry class 1 railroads and their investors today.

While Amtrak is more fuel efficient than other modes the difference is not that great. This from the Amtrak website:The Amtrak link is HERE.

Thanks for the info.

One thought to consider: it seems to me, anyway, that load factors on airlines are typically much higher than on Amtrak trains (especially long-distance trains). Bad fuel efficiency spread over 95% of the capacity of the plane is going to be better than great fuel efficiency spread over 30% of the capacity of the train. (I have no idea what Amtrak's average load factor is, but every train I've been on in CA seems pretty empty. NEC trains are better but--at least from the three trips I've taken--still not always full all the time.)