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One rare instance where I can contribute some inside information. I met the director of all of Amtrak's development efforts a few week ago over a cookout. And h
by xiaolingxiao 7y ago
One rare instance where I can contribute some inside information. I met the director of all of Amtrak's development efforts a few week ago over a cookout. And he laid down how the whole system works. Basically, Amtrak was created as part of a government bailout effort to rescue the train companies, who were making money from freight but losing money on commercial routes.
The train companies went to the US government and said "bail us out or we all go out of business". So the senate created Amtrak as a private company, and purchased all of the money losing assets (all passenger routes) from the train companies. The US government owns all voting shares, and the train companies owns all non-voting shares. So Amtrak is a quasi public-private utility companies, where the cost is bore by public in tax money.
Here is the kicker, the special interest group that lobbied for the US government to create Amtrak was ... the US airlines. They bet that passenger trains would be obsolete in a few decades, so the tax payers would not be holding the bag for too long.
50 years later, we are still holding the bag. According to my sources, they will be break even across all routes in a couple of years. By the way, all passenger trains in Europe , China and Japan lose money too.
- iso-8859-1 7y agoWhat's the value of saving the environment? It doesn't make sense to look at just the balance sheet in matters like these. PS your website is down
- xiaolingxiao 7y agoAgree with the sentiment. I don’t know about Amtrak’s carbon foot print relative to airlines so I don’t know how the score tally out. The trains run on electricity but I’m not sure how it’s genrates. And fixed the link thank you
- boulos 7y agoIt’s purportedly [1] better at ~1500 BTU per passenger-mile versus ~2300 for air travel, but I couldn’t find any methodology there. Most of the long-distance trains are diesel. If you read their full sustainability report [2] you can see that diesel fuel is their second largest cost, which means it’s also the primary source of energy. Caltrain, for example, is still trying to raise funds for electrifying the system here in the Bay Area. It’ll soon be thirty years, since it was first proposed apparently [3]. [1] https://m.amtrak.com/h5/r/www.amtrak.com/travel-green https://m.amtrak.com/h5/r/www.amtrak.com/travel-green [2] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/environmental1/Amtrak-Sustainability-Report-FY18.pdf https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrification_of_Caltrain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrification_of_Caltrain
- toomuchtodo 7y agoImagine the equation if the diesel fuel burned had a carbon tax on it, and the electricity (provided by overhead wire) was almost free due to the exceedingly low cost of renewables. Of course it would be an enormous effort to electrify train lines across America; it should still be done.
- Gibbon1 7y agoI've wondered if battery electric multiple unit trains will/would make electrification cheaper since you then don't have to electrify the whole line. You can avoid having to put overhead lines where inconvenient, expensive, or potentially dangerous as well. Like tunnels and stations.
- entee 7y agoI love this idea, are you thinking a hybrid model? i.e. Overheads where possible, battery to bridge the gaps? that way in some places the trains could charge en-route.
- Gibbon1 7y agoThat's exactly what I think is interesting. It's actually an old idea. I think with modern batters the design becomes a lot more viable. There are already some of these in service and more on order. Found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NpqPP5SMfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NpqPP5SMfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxZQeS__6sE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxZQeS__6sE
- jimmywanger 7y agoWell, we'll have to look at the cost benefit analysis. It should be done if it makes sense. Would it be more economically feasible to invest the money into fourth generation nuclear technology and then research solid aluminum batteries that are hot swappable? That would cut down on costs for copper or steel for electrification. "Enormous effort" and "it should be done" without an economic analysis is generally ill thought out.
- yokaze 7y agoWell, at least JR East and West are profitable: https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Japan-Update/JR-East-West-on-track-for-record-profit https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Japan-Update/JR-East-... It seems it is bolstered by profit by non-passenger _transport_ related revenue, but I think, is an example that train companies can have monetize their positive impact on society
- xxpor 7y agoThe JRs are real estate companies that happen to run trains on the side.
- kalleboo 7y agoWhile they do have a large real estate business, transportation is still their largest source of both revenue and income
- bobthepanda 7y agoEast, Central, West, and Kyushu seem to be doing well, while Honshu and Shikoku are struggling: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japan-s-23-year-train-fare-freeze-ends-in-Hokkaido https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japan-s-23-year-t.... There is also a separate JR Freight which seems not to be doing well either. The true story is also a little more complicated: in general the profitable ones are profitable now with operations, but the predecessor company JNR was privatized and split because it was struggling under the load of heavy Shinkansen construction debt, which got split into a sort of "bad corporation".
- oeoeo00 7y agoAnd by lose money, it’s generally meant the rich didn’t get richer. Generally available social services are not for profit. Who knew?
- steve19 7y agoCan you explain why the Airlines wanted amtrak created? How did it benefit them?
- xiaolingxiao 7y agoI wish I could but he didn’t give a very detailed answer. If I had to punt I’d say it’s because they didn’t think the government could offer a compelling experience once they took it over from private companies...
- brownbat 7y agoFascinating. In the lead up to that, passenger trains used to be heavily subsidized by the mail cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_post_office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_post_office Postal employees would sort the mail while it traveled. Parallel processing! Centralized automated sorting helped kill that model, along with the fact that an air and truck system really squeezes the viability of rail. I read once that there's a sweet spot for passenger rail at about 250 miles, but it loses to air any farther and roads any shorter. Can't seem to find that source though, and I might be off by 50 miles. TSA might be one of the best things to happen to Amtrak, hard to say.
- redis_mlc 7y agoMail subsidized the aviation industry for the first 35 years after the Wright brothers. The first passenger airplane that made money without carrying mail was the DC-3 with 21 passenger seats.
- Terretta 7y ago> TSA best thing to happen to Amtrack In both NYC and Boston, the track for boarding isn’t shown to the waiting area until arriving passengers had a chance to leave the train. Once your track number is shown you have only a couple minutes to board, and depart. This means you can arrive at NYC’s Penn Station or Boston’s South Station 5 minutes before departure and walk right onto your train. When I factor the terminal location and the boarding convenience at both ends of my trip, I can get door to door from midtown NYC to downtown Boston faster by Acela than by air. Before TSA, the flights won. I could hit LGA curbside 15 minutes before gate close and be in my plane seat. Now, the variability is much too high, and TSA is too likely to be completely mismanaging surge situations, so typically 2 hours buffer is needed as a guarantee instead of 15 mins.
- gautamnarula 7y agoIn that specific case, it's hard to justify taking Acela over a bus. Acela is at best an hour faster and something like 4x the cost (or more) It is certainly more comfortable, but unless we get true high speed rail that shortens the travel time between Boston and NYC to < 2 hours I can't ever justify personally paying for it. I've only ever taken Acela between Boston and NYC when an organization I was working for was willing to foot the bill. In Europe, I took trains that hit speeds of 195 MPH for long stretches. That sort of speed would make rail a real viable third way between car/bus and air for long distance travel.
- Gys 7y ago> By the way, all passenger trains in Europe, China and Japan lose money too. Not all. The Dutch Railway company is profitable: https://www.statista.com/statistics/748940/net-profit-of-ns-group-in-the-netherlands/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/748940/net-profit-of-ns-... I think in part because they also own all stations and really pushed very hard do the same as the airports: create a pleasant atmosphere and maximize the food and non-food offers.
- otabdeveloper2 7y ago> By the way, all passenger trains in Europe , China and Japan lose money too. Not true. Russian passenger rail is profitable and growing.
- craftyguy 7y ago> By the way, all passenger trains in Europe , China and Japan lose money too. Do you have a source for that? I have a really hard time believing this is true when many of the areas you mention have multiple competing passenger train companies operating at the same time.