Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd
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But its more complicated than that even. Because passenger rail was dying in the first place due to the massive subsidy the government gave to competing modes of transit in the form of the interstate highway act and later the subsidized construction of airports. So yeah, Railroads were supported by the government to begin with, but live by the subsidy die by the subsidy.
So really the history of railroads isn't at all a clear cut line between private and public interest. The current "massive companies" are a shadow of what they once were. Pennsylvania RR used to have a higher annual revenue than the Federal Government itself. New York Central wasn't far behind. By the 50s, these titans were in such decline they were forced to merge into "Penn Central". By the 60s, Penn Central was dead. Could you imagine Amazon having to merge with Walmart to survive by the 2030s, and going bankrupt anyway by the 2040s? This was more extreme than that.
I agree it's not as clear cut as "public versus private." But there's a recurring theme here: public money enabling private growth, followed by public money softening private decline. Railroads are just one instantiation of this pattern: it shows up in agriculture, industrial manufacturing, medical and materials research, &c.
At some point, it should make us stop and think about why we're transferring public money to private institutions and also paying for their mistakes, rather than just having the public institutions do the work themselves. One wonders what the US's rail infrastructure would look like had the US Government bought (and continued to operate) it outright, rather than merely socializing the losses in passenger sales.
> One wonders what the US's rail infrastructure would look like had the US Government bought (and continued to operate) it outright,
US federal government certainly is not known for providing high quality service at low cost, quite the opposite in fact.
The Post Office stands as a prime example of an extremely high quality service provided at a comparatively tiny price, and one that's successful and self-sustaining even while dealing with the immense costs of reliable delivery to extremely rural areas.
Really? When's the last time you had to go do something at the post office? It is a nightmare. Dirty building with disinterested workers, and long slow lines. The bulk of the mail I receive is junk mail, and multiple times a week I get my neighbor's mail.
"The United States Postal Service (USPS) on Wednesday reported a net loss of $4.9 billion for the year ending Sept. 30."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_En...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Service_Reform_Act_of_2...
Of course that separation isn't complete and strict and there is political influence from that level and they have influence via specific post laws especially on the letter side (government has oversight on tarifs and requires deliver to everywhere in Germany etc. via monopoly laws)
It's not surprising that as volume has collapsed, prices have increased. However, I don't have any problem with the service, or with going to a kiosk or other shop to collect a parcel.
The qualifications for postmaster general had more to do with campaign contributions than talent or interest.
Thankfully, largely reformed with the merit based civil service changes, but passing those was a struggle! So I'd be hesitant to assume than anything lucrative and government-run won't face substantial corruption pressures.
There was a Postal Service Reform Act of 2022[1], which apparently allows USPS to avoid funding pensions in advance, which had led to billions of dollars of debt. It also shifts new retiree health insurance to Medicare, which may be a zero sum game of sorts but good for the USPS budget.
Then there's that ongoing reliance on fees for delivering junk mail... I am somewhat disappointed that there isn't a junk mail non-delivery option. At least FedEx and UPS don't deliver junk mail. Yet.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Service_Reform_Act_of_2...
Medicare is a great example to the contrary. They provide healthcare to the sickest groups, and do so with roughly 3x less overhead than the private healthcare industry.
Not in the US. The railroad industry is built on a mountain of bankruptcies, failed mergers, etc. Look up the history of the railroad boom and busts in the US if you aren’t familiar.
Ladies and Gentleman! May I present to you TELEVISION CITY!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_South,_Manhattan
(Now playing "Living in America" by James Brown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5BL4RNFr58 )
I’d be interested to know how much of the switch was the company shrinking and how much was government revenue going up.
(The fact that they experience brisk competition from other subsidized forms of transportation doesn't alter this.)
This could even enable new passenger services other than Amtrak to operate in competition.
Many other countries use a system where one government-related entity manages in the infrastructure, and many private companies can pay to operate rail services on that infrastructure.
This would actually allow market competition instead of geographic monopolies.
The whole thing should be nationalised.
Companies (private or public) operating trains pay a fee to use the track.
This seems to be working much better.
What value is a private operator adding to the system when tracks, signalling, timetables, and fares are managed by the public body? Especially given they aren't providing the rolling stock themselves.
Note that the private operators did such an awful job of managing timetables and fares that the responsibility was taken from them.
[0] https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/how-britains-railways-co...
I agree the private operators bring nothing. Train tickets are one of the few things that are more expensive in Britain than here in Denmark, and I can't think of anything at all that's better about trains in Britain, other than the more varied scenery.
(Advance ticket tomorrow morning London-Manchester, £40, walk-up peak fare £184. 2½ hours, 260km.
Advance ticket tomorrow morning Copenhagen-Århus... £38, walk-up peak fare £48. 2¾ hours, 310km by land.)
That was the intention of my post.
Because Conrail was created because the private railway system was collapsing due to mismanagement, and many railroad companies were going bankrupt. After nationalization Conrail quickly turned into a huge success, and was sold off to private investors after a decade for a massive profit.
If anything, privatization was the best thing that had happened to the railways in decades. And that's not exactly a one-time-thing only - the railways were previously also nationalized during WWI, which had a similar success.
US Freight rail is a massive success story.
They were giving it in the expectation that they would put in rails to make money for themselves, and as a byproduct, there would be rail service for customers.
Sellers remorse after 150 years is not grounds to claim that they don't actually own it
Purely from a $/tonne/mile perspective, it is a massive success. There is no doubt about that.
However, the technology is literally decades behind compared to the rest of the world. Electrification basically does not exist, and basic safety systems are in their infancy.
Precision Scheduled Railroading has resulted in a system with very little flexibility which makes extremely poor use of the infrastructure available. Working conditions are appalling, and the resulting stress has major safety implications.
Meanwhile, passenger transport - which was the reason they were developed in the first place - has been reduced to a rounding error, and is the laughing stock of the Western world.
Europe transports 35% of its freight by boat, 12% by rail, and 55% by road. The US transports 5% by boat, 11.6% by rail, and 75% by road. The observed success of American freight is primarily due to geographic restrictions: there are virtually zero waterways in the western half, and cross-continent barge transport is impossible. Combine that with a country which is incredibly big and mostly empty, and rail ends up being the only viable method for bulk cargo transport.
The way I see it, US freight is deeply troubled by operating issues, and is only economically successful due to geography making it the only viable option.
No one expected Amtrak to last 50 years.
> On the latter point, it asks the board to look at such matters as “how UP has reconciled its decision to implement Precision Scheduled Railroading with its obligations to host intercity passenger trains over the UP network.” It suggests that the board split its proceeding into two phases — an investigative phase to determine the cause of delays, and whether they are due to a failure to provide preference to Amtrak, and a remedial phase to determine possible damages and corrective action. It also offers a broad range of procedural suggestions regarding documents and interviews that should be part of the proceeding.
It doesn't matter how many or what kinds of trains we have. This sort of policy will always makes trains an unreliable and therefore impractical mode of transportation.
And this is a major reason for the US leading the world in carbon consumption per capita.
For instance:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
More to the point, as several other comments noted the official policy is to prioritize passenger rail, which clearly wasn’t happening, so hopefully events such as these will begin to change that.
Define "official"
>hopefully events such as these will begin to change that.
What events?
If you think this was a rare case, you obviously don't ride Amtrak long distance much. Most interstate Amtrak trips get delayed by freight, and it has been that way for decades.
The result is that an on-time Amtrak train has to wait for a delayed freight train, because it is physically impossible to do anything else. This of course results in the Amtrak train now being late, through no fault of its own.
I'm going to give the tried and true answer everyone receives (at airports at least): it doesn't matter why your late. It's your responsibility. You should've left earlier and predicted the future.
Amtrak should've already built their own rails and should be serving much more of the country. I dont know anyone who can even consider Amtrak for travel.
The freight rails are slow and dilapidated. It would make more sense for passenger railways to be separated from freight railways entirely rather than to try and squeeze into inadequate trackage. We don’t try to unload air freight through passenger terminals or vice versa.
The I-5 coast and everything west of I-35 represents most of the US population. In particular, Chicago, Atlanta, and New York form a triangle roughly 700 miles on each side. This is roughly the distance between Beijing and Shanghai, or Tokyo to Fukuoka, both of which see high speed trains regularly making the full journey.
No, I can't, but I don't have to imagine the insurmountable resistance when the government merely suggests using eminent domain on a rich person's property.
Besides, poor people don't own property in the US anymore.
It's a lot harder to make the ROI claim for highways and roads, especially considering increasing road capacity does not decrease congestion -- added capacity tends to increase demand by over 100% of the difference, as little as 5 years later.
Rail workers aren’t getting sick days and trains are longer (leading to delays) because of investors squeezing rail infra and those who operate it. Why allow it to continue? The whole “privatizing profits socializing losses and externalities” is getting old, no?
That's on top of the other things that UPRR does, like preventing any semblance of reasonable service between the Bay Area and Sacramento.
My proposal is quite simple. Spin off virtually all of the UPRR into a new operating company with the same name and almost all of the capital assets, but retain the rights of way under Not A Bunch Of Dicks Track Corporation.
I don’t believe I used it in so much a glib fashion, but more matter of fact. It is a tool, and it can be used.
Important to keep in mind this exposure is graded on a curve. You don’t have to be the fastest when the bear is chasing you, just faster than your slowest friend.
If trust in foreign currency holdings declines (say, if we decide to unilaterally cancel other countries' holdings in our currency when we want to punish them), then I'd assume that creditor nations would start looking at replacing some or all of their US treasuries holdings with real assets that carry less counterparty risk. If we start nationalizing onshored assets, then the field of suitable assets starts narrowing a whole lot to portable things like commodities.
We should work very hard to maintain a reputation as a trustworthy counterparty if we want to be able to continue running large deficits.
> State governments granted charters that created the business corporation and gave a limited right of eminent domain, allowing the railroad to buy needed land, even if the owner objected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transportation_in_the_Uni...
And yes rail got to use eminent domain, because you can't build a rail line without it for the most part.
Public land given to them for free with the expectation that they'll maintain their ROW in proper working order and adhere to a certain social contract.
1) The federal government gave railroads massive amounts of land completely free of charge.
2) The federal government applied some regulations, including around transporting passengers. The automobile and plane hadn't been invented yet, so it wasn't that oppressive to railroads. Passengers were making them money.
3) The world changed and passenger service became massively unprofitable. Amtrak was formed to keep the trains running without the private railroads having to bear the losses. All Amtrak asked for was a few hours a day of clearance to run their trains.
4) Fast forward to today, and the railroads aren't complying with their obligations, that were granted in exchange for immense value.
A handout and a bailout later, and you want the taxpayers to give the railroads even more money?
(These original benefactors still exist today. Union Pacific was around when this was all happening. The "N" in BNSF is one of the original benefactors as well. It's pretty amazing to see companies around 160 years after their formation. Pretty generous government grants throughout their history didn't hurt.)
1. It’s not like the delays are minor. On the line from Portland to Seattle, it’s common for the train be delayed for multiple hours by freight. In what world can a transit service be considered a viable option when even boarding is 2 hours late? Freight is having a really massive negative impact.
2. Massive amounts of land is surprisingly even an understatement! Union Pacific railroad alone was given 12 MILLION acres in this grant: https://www.loc.gov/item/75690778/.
Why 10 miles? We always get treated to 'wild west' stories but it sounds like Washington DC was pretty wild itself. Many steaks were consumed and cigars chomped. Here's your land grant.
Consider how long railroads were required to offer service that was unprofitable, underutilized, or forced to price itself in an uncompetitive way - all in the name of the public good.
While I think both BNSF and UP (as well as CSX and NS) have an obligation to make sure Amtrak can run on time an under a reasonable schedule. Also, if the railroads dont like it, the alternative is being forced to resume operating the passenger trains they were operating in 1971, and continue to operate that or a similar network in scale and size for at least 10 years without subsidy.
The interesting thing about Amtrak is, if USPS had continued to route first class mail by train, Amtrak might not exist, it was the removal of the indirect subsidy - which turned passenger trains from a break even proposition, which helped generate goodwill for the company to a solid money loser - at a time when the railroads were least able to afford such things. So in exchange the feds agreed to directly subsidize passenger rail via Amtrak, and the railroads were removed of obligation to run passenger trains. This is the obligation at question in this case.
In any case, I dont think they owe the public something anymore because of those land grants. The debt to us from that has been long paid off.
I've seen one set of calculations that the railroads lost quite a bit of money on the deal. It's been decades since I saw it, though, so I can't give you specifics.
Since Amtrak is a quasi-public corporation, asking Amtrak to pay commercial lines for preference is equivalent to directing public funds into private pockets for the use of federally-subsidized rails. That's a recipe for grift.
If the rules already in place can be freely ignored by private companies, there's no way Amtrak can ever be taken seriously as a transportation solution. Since it's already policy that it should be a serious contender, it makes sense to enforce the rules trying to further that goal.
Is it really that simple?
Freight trains are _long_, Amtrak passenger trains are relatively short. It's far easier to sideline an Amtrak train to let a multi-mile-long freight train pass than it is to sideline that same freight train for Amtrak to pass.
It's not my area of expertise at all, but I assume there aren't huge quantities of such long parallel rails scattered throughout the network for freight trains to move over and wait.
61 tons of freight per American each year
94 tons of freight per mile for each passenger-mile on rail
1/3 of all export goods move by rail
1.7 trillion ton-miles of freight
40% of US long distance freight by volume uses rail
That said, I think you will find that there are transportation corridors where there is the political will to fund laying down dedicated track for passenger rail. The way to think about it is that rail maybe costs $X per mile of track, but provides 100000X benefit for freight, and maybe 10x benefit for passenger traffic, so while you would never prioritize passenger traffic over freight, or even treat them equally, it still makes sense to build dedicated tracks for passenger rail.
That's problem -- yes, if you spent $X demand would go up, but would it go up enough to justify spending the $X or not? Merely observing that demand would increase in response to a higher quality of service is not an argument, it's just a truism that doesn't provide any new information.
That is why I said elsewhere on this thread that passenger rail needs its own dedicated track. Because the rail we have is so valuable to freight that it's not plausible that passengers or the general public would be willing to pay the price necessary to deprioritize freight. That price is enormous, but it's much more than the price of building out new dedicated rail just for passengers. Go back and redo your argument from the point of view of whether the increased demand would justify building out new track. If that's not the case, there's no hope of it being large enough to justify reducing the focus on freight. I think, in a few places, it is enough to justify laying down dedicated track. But not in all places.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjmkVy6UbY4
I agree that the freight companies need to invest in their tracks and right-of-way if they want to ship more. They need to double-track, electrify, and upgrade bridges & tunnels to handle double-stack container cars. India's dedicated freight corridors are a good example.