My Rail Musings: August 2021

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

The King of Passenger Trains

Background: This three-part series (1 2 3) is a good place to look

Part 1: Starting things up

After a half century, the time has come to hit the reset button and start over because the Amtrak experiment has only resulted in mediocrity with passenger rail. I would split the intercity into two categories--regional and overnight. The former would be run by the companies that also handle commuter routes while letting new companies run the overnight services.

I would rely on experienced people in the travel industry and implement the best aspects. My main focus would be on long distance trains and leave the shorter runs to multistate pacts. Since the overnight trains are in need of an overhaul, I would revert back to sleeping cars' roots as hotels on wheels as a way of luring travelers.

Speaking of night trains, luring executives from Europe or Asia would be a good idea since they're miles ahead of us at this point.

Part 2: The Matrix

The matrix theory connects passengers to previously unimaginable destinations. For my hypothetical rail company, I will use the Crescent's original route via Montgomery and Mobile as my sample service. Atlanta would be a matrix point as it would be a transfer point for regional routes to Savannah, Chattanooga and Nashville. The current Crescent route would also be used as the Gulf Coast Corridor for daytime travel between Atlanta and New Orleans, a New York-Fort Worth overnight route and a transcontinental Atlanta-Dallas-Los Angeles service.

Part 3: Operations

The trains would be daily and would run every six to eight hours. My Crescent Group would have the namesake train as a premium train alongside a second frequency, and I would also own the Fort Worth service and L.A. transcon as a way of diversifying.

Instead of the depersonalization that has been a main part of the Amtrak Era, stations would be staffed with people who actually know a thing or two about train travel. When it comes to the future of train stations, the Brightline model--which resembles the airline model--is the best way to go.

The statement about host railroads' stance on infrequent trains goes against everything I've seen on message boards.

Monday, August 16, 2021

The New Passenger Paradigm Five Years Later

I remember reading up on a Railway Age article five years ago on something called the New Passenger Paradigm. In the article, AIPRO's Ray Chambers laid out how things were shifting in the world of passenger rail.

Given where things are now, I say that the pace to a post-monopoly environment has been glacially slow. Consider the evidence:

Congress has consistently failed to back up its action (i.e. it has talked about the need for more competition among corridors and overnight trains but did nothing to make sure the proper provisions in PRIIA and the FAST Act were followed)
Once the Tea Party backlash happened, the Obama Administration largely lost interest in even building a decent passenger rail system
The Trump Administration aside from its open hostility towards CAHSR, was all talk and no action on even regular passenger rail, belying its campaign gripes about China having faster trains than America
The AIPRO itself dissolved last year to no fanfare after it received virtually no support from the rail community and scant media coverage while some of its members formed a separate mass transit trade group
The U.S. still hasn't had more than one private passenger rail organization at a time since 1983 (the Rio Grande and Georgia Railroad's mixed trains)--or the end of 1978 (Rio Grande, Rock Island, Southern, Reading) if you're talking about true passenger trains. While Brightline started up in early 2018, the Saratoga & North Creek became a fallen flag shortly thereafter
When it comes to bidding, Herzog's operation of CT Rail is the closest that any Amtrak commuter competitor has come to running intercity rail
Other than Pennsylvania and the San Joaquin Valley, no state entity is even willing to challenge Amtrak (see the 2018 fiasco with the loss of discounts where only California's three JPAs pushed back against the Anderson regime and kept said discounts)

Even after reading this article and understanding some behind the scenes actions, it still isn't much comfort when it seems like getting there from here is a near impossibility when rail activists are much more comfortable defending the status quo and ridiculing any non-Amtrak passenger operator. Calling the national network skeletal at this point is being way too kind when expansion should have been on the agenda decades ago--oh wait, Graham Claytor did that only for that to be undone by his NEC successors and Congress implemented prohibitions after the collapse of the Mail and Express plan in 2001.

Alternative for Charlotte-Atlanta approved

The Greenfield Corridor being selected last month was a shocker. Just like with the station location at the southern terminus of the Texas Central project in early 2016, it was the FRA that made the final decision. This could potentially lead to all three alternatives being used--the Greenfield being used by a future operator while being the official SEHSR route south of Charlotte; the I-85 Corridor possibly being used by Brightline; and the Crescent Corridor being used by Amtrak. It goes without saying that the Crescent route should have already had a daytime New York-Atlanta alternative to #19 and #20 at a minimum.