The mayors talked about clogged highways, the high price of gasoline and an air transportation system that seems to get more pitiful by the day. Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian, Miss., called on the presidential candidates to take a bold, creative approach to the nation’s transportation needs, including substantial investments in railroad infrastructure.

Mr. Smith believes the nation should devote the same level of commitment to developing a first-rate passenger rail system as was marshaled for the interstate highway system in the Eisenhower era.

He also noted this gem from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

At a press conference after the meeting, Mayor Bloomberg said, “We’ve got to make infrastructure investment a national priority,” and he took the federal government to task for “walking away from its responsibility in this area.”

We couldn’t agree more: The federal government needs to wake up.  See my guest entry in The Hill‘s Congress Blog that was published yesterday.

--Matthew Melzer

Also see coverage from The Passenger Rail Blog and the CAHSR Blog.  Thank you, Heydn and Malcolm, for your efforts to raise awareness of passenger trains!

--Matthew Melzer

Back in the ‘80s, the Amtrak Timetable still had a section of connecting or other services. This once was where the Southern Railway’s Crescent, Piedmont, Asheville and Lynchburg services, the Rock Island’s Peoria and Quad Cities Rockets and D & RGW Western services resided.

Knowing that it would likely soon disappear, I wanted to ride the Georgia Mixed from Augusta through Social Circle to Atlanta.

I wish I had time and money to have ridden the other services—Macon-Camack, Barnett-Washington, Athens-Union Point—but life moves on.

It seems the Georgia Railroad received a tax break if they maintained passenger service, so they hauled a boarded up passenger car behind their freights and allowed the public to buy tickets. In practice, I learned, you were offered the opportunity to ride in the caboose instead of the stifling or freezing coach. 

The week before this odyssey, I called the Georgia Railroad to see how it worked I was politely told in a classic southern dialect that I was welcome to come down, but to be aware that the trains ran on a “leisurely” schedule. For instance, while the schedule called for an 8 or 8:30 departure, it was 11 AM And “We ain’t left yet!”

I booked a seat on the Silver Star to Columbia, wandered about town and departed on a Greyhound to Augusta in the wee hours of the morning.

Arriving early, I found a cab and went to Harrisonville Yard of the GA RR.

The departure being delayed as predicted, I was advised to take some nourishment along.

I called another cab, went to a 7-Eleven and bought a cooler, ice, Cokes and snacks.

Back at the yard, I was invited to the caboose and never even looked into the decrepit passenger car with unpainted plywood panels instead of window glass.

We finally got under way with 4 locomotives that I never saw because we had 133 cars.

I soon learned the powerful blows of slack runout and other things the professional railroader copes with daily.

We set out and picked up cars along the way.

I think it was at Social Circle, but it might have been one of the above mentioned points, that my conductor and guide led me to an old wooden- floored country store where we bought apples, bananas and a sandwich to go.

At 10 PM or so, we arrived at Decatur, GA and I was informed that the crew had “died” on the hours of service rule.

I was left with the whole train under my “command” while we awaited a taxi to bring the new crew and my conductor and the voices I had become used to by radio went their ways.

The new conductor boarded and we were soon underway to Atlanta.

As we approached Hulsey Yard, the new conductor asked me where I was going, the hour now being 11 PM or so.

I replied that I had a hotel room and wanted to get near MARTA.

He said he did not have a radio, but that we were coming near a parallel MARTA line and station.

He asked if I had ever jumped off a moving train as he had no way to signal the engineer.

I replied that I had (I will reveal that tale in a subsequent article and the danger, caveats and apologies to rail advocacy to go with it).

I donated my cooler to the railroad crews, handed my bag to my new conductor and, in my safest and most professional form, followed his detraining with the correct foot first that would throw one away from the train in case of tripping.

It was very dark. I was told I had done the jump like a professional and that I was always welcome to come back and buy a ticket on the Georgia Mixed!

He directed me to an iron walkway over the Georgia yard to the MARTA station.

Alas, the service soon went away and the only remnant left are the lyrics to a great Hank Williams tune: “They took me off the Georgia Main and locked to a ball and chain...”

--Jim Churchill
NARP Vice President

Text does acknowledge Amtrak’s ridership (“up 12%”) and says “Wabtec, a brake manufacturer, is the only U.S.-traded play on passenger travel.”

Also, as noted in our September newsletter, the September issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine (now on news stands) sports a letter from editor (and NARP member) Fred W. Frailey which discusses the decline of air travel and the need for passenger trains. Publisher Knight Kiplinger (editor in chief of this and two other publications) also has a column with good comments on the U.S. and its use of energy.

--Ross Capon

You can read my first post here.

--Matthew Melzer

“What’s going on here is a battle between commuters who want to get to work and a bunch of people who don’t want to look at trolley cars while they play golf.  If the public understands that’s what this fight is about, then the Purple Line will be built.”

--Ben Ross, president, Action Committee for Transit (Montgomery County, MD)

This quote, one of the more effective rebuttals to anti-transit advocacy that I’ve seen, appeared in a July 13 Washington Post article about a strange web site fighting the Purple Line.  The Post reported that “the site’s owner is listed as a company based in the Madeira Islands off the coast of Portugal that allows clients to register Web sites anonymously…State tax records shed a little more light: Its founder is a board member at Columbia Country Club in Montgomery, whose 100-year-old golf course would be bisected by the transit line.”

Perhaps the Columbia Country Clubbers should visit Newton Massachusetts, where the Woodland Golf Club, founded in 1896, has long coexisted first with steam and diesel-powered commuter trains and, since July 4, 1959, with the Riverside branch of MBTA’s Green Line.

Next to the above article, The Post ran a nice report on plans for streetcars in Washington, DC, with a map showing potential linkage (at Silver Spring) with the Purple Line. Some trolley cars could even enter service late next year, said the headline.

--Ross Capon

Sunday’s (June 29) Week in Review (under big article on Nigerian oil production problems) has a bar graph showing gasoline pump prices for 27 nations (once the page loads, click on the graph to enlarge it), plus--for most of them--tax and non-tax portions of those prices and “cost to fill the 26-gallon tank of a 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe”.

The eye-opener: US tax (federal + average state) is 49 cents a gallon vs. $1.26 in Canada. European per-gallon taxes range from $3.37 in Spain to $5.57 in Netherlands.

The cost to fill that Tahoe ranges from $6.50 in Venezuela to $104 in the US, $189.80 in Spain and $261.30 in the Netherlands.

The total per-gallon pump price is $8.98 in Germany, $8.78 in France and $8.71 in the UK.

(The latest AAA average US prices can be found here where current, day before, and month and year before prices are shown for regular, mid, premium, diesel and E-85, plus a BTU-adjusted figure for E-85 to reflect its lower energy content. There is also a graph with a one-year history for cost of wholesale, “national average” and crude oil. Finally, there’s a link to click “for information on using public transit to reduce fuel use.")

On Saturday, June 28, a front-page story gave comprehensive overview of planned airline service reductions: ”Travelers Face Deep Flight Cuts by Summer’s End”

Some key quotes: “[Labor Day] is when significant cuts in the airlines’ fleets and schedules will begin taking effect, making for a particularly jarring end to summer. 

“Across the United States, airports from La Guardia in New York to Oakland in California will be affected by flight cuts, bringing the industry down to a size last seen in 2002, when travel fell sharply after the 9/11 attacks.

“Over all, the cuts will reduce flights this year by American carriers by almost 10%, industry analysts estimate, with even deeper cuts in store for 2009.

“‘The U.S. industry is undertaking a historic restructuring,’ Gary Chase, an industry analyst with Lehman Brothers, wrote in a research report Friday. Air fares, which are up about 17% this year on average, may rise as much as 40% within the next four years, Mr. Chase predicted.”

A related story gives tips for those planning to fly.

--Ross B. Capon

On November 9, 1971, just six months after Amtrak began operations, a House hearing addressed the fact that Amtrak’s “expenditures and losses have been running at a much higher rate than anticipated,” and an additional $170 million (on top of the initial $40 million appropriation) was under consideration. At that hearing, Rep. Adams said, “I am not convinced that any part [of Amtrak] can break even under the way it is being run now, at what is in effect cost-plus to the railroads.”

Eventually, in 1978, Congress softened Amtrak’s profitability mandate by inserting the italicized words in the following phrase: “[Amtrak] shall be operated and managed as a for-profit corporation.”

So it is misleading to jump from the 1970 law to 1997 without acknowledging what went on in between.

A huge proportion of passengers on the long-distance trains are traveling between major city-pairs, not the small markets. These are people who do not want to fly; in some cases, they may be medically prohibited from flying. Others may have found air fares too high, particularly if traveling on short notice. So, while many people certainly like to ride trains, it trivializes Amtrak’s transportation importance to suggest that everyone on the long-distance trains is either going to a small community with no alternatives or is “going for the train ride itself.” Citing GAO’s reference to “low ridership” cross-country trains also demands a specific rebuttal—these trains in fact are heavily used, as some of the reporter’s other comments and statistics attest.

H. Glenn Scammel spent much of his House career badmouthing the long-distance trains, so his latest comments are no surprise. His suggestion that long-distance equipment should be transferred to short-distance routes is problematic. That equipment is not designed for short-distance travel and, if Amtrak had funds to spend on remanufacturing existing equipment, that money would better be spent on enlarging the fleet by putting back into service cars that are currently sidelined.

The GAO bean-counters have never been sympathetic to Amtrak and especially the long-distance routes, and the GAO paragraph quoted by The Times seems oblivious to the fact that much of Amtrak’s ridership growth in recent years has come from development of state-sponsored corridors that fit GAO’s apparent definition of the “only” appropriate use for intercity passenger trains. But, even though long-distance train capacity has only gone down the past decade, the Times sidebar showed 15.0% ridership growth in May (vs. May 2007) for the long-distance trains compared with 14.0% for state corridors and 9.2% for the Northeast Corridor. And the individual routes cited included Texas Eagle up 27.0% and Sunset Limited up 25.2%.

The statement that Amtrak “is not radically more energy-efficient than other means of travel” must be viewed in the context of an airline and automobile fleet that is constantly replenished with newer, more fuel-efficient models while Amtrak’s youngest over-the-road locomotives are seven years old with no new acquisitions in sight. Also, energy consumed per passenger-mile reflects load factors which on Amtrak have risen since the 2005 data which is the most recent published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The ORNL figures do not reflect the additional damage done by aviation emissions at high altitudes and of course do not give Amtrak credit for the fact that, in many cities large and small, the train station serves as a transportation center and a magnet for transit- and pedestrian-friendly development.

One cannot overstate the importance of the federal government actually setting up a fund to match state passenger train investments on an 80-20 basis, a vast improvement over the current federal share of zero percent. Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE), a former governor (and Amtrak board member) who should know, put it this way in yesterday’s Senate hearing on transportation and climate change: “When I was Governor of Delaware, if we wanted to build a road or a highway or a bridge, the federal government paid for 80% of it.  If we wanted to do transit investment, the federal government provided 50% of it.  If we wanted to invest, if it made more sense to put in inter-city passenger rail, the federal government provided nothing.  And I’m sure we made investment decisions which were probably wrong decisions because of the difference in those measures of federal support.”

Notwithstanding strong demand for Amtrak, and lots of talk in the media and from politicians about the need for more trains, nothing has changed yet. The House appropriations subcommittee took the first step in the Fiscal 2009 appropriations process on June 20 and came up with a freeze for Amtrak with two exceptions: doubling to $60 million the small amount that matches state investments (it was $30 million this year); including $114 million for the back pay recommended by Presidential Emergency Board 242. Transportation has the misfortune to be lumped together in the same subcommittee (and budget allocation) as housing. The Project Based Section 8 housing program is the one place in Chairman Olver’s prepared remarks where he said “I wish we were able to provide more.” (In that program, the subcommittee provided $7.3 billion, $300 million above FY08 and $918 million above President Bush’s request.)

Bottom line: the transportation funding process is still largely business as usual, but the impending bankruptcy of the Highway Trust Fund will have interesting consequences.

--Ross B. Capon

The pendulum may be starting to swing.  On Sunday, The Washington Post, which in recent decades has endorsed just about every local superhighway proposal in sight, ran an editorial under these headlines:  “Screeching to a Halt; On mass transit, the nation is falling perilously behind”.  Here is the last paragraph:

“Last year, a bipartisan commission recommended sharply higher levels of funding for transportation of all kinds, including mass transit. The panel’s recommendations included raising the gas tax. Although Transportation Secretary Mary Peters was on the commission, she declined to endorse its findings. Her head-in-the-sand posture neatly captured the administration’s abdication of responsibility.”

So, we believe, does the Bush Administration’s threat to veto the House’s Amtrak bill.

And the lead story in today’s Washington Post is headlined “Fuel Prices Challenge Cars’ Reign; $4 Gas Transforms Buying Habits, Affecting Everything From Vacations to Pizza Orders”.

Of course, the Commission advocates spending big bucks on all forms of transportation, which implies that no tough choices need to be made.  However, that is not necessarily true, since both Presidential candidates are sounding like fiscal hawks on government spending.  From our perspective, a key test of public policy is the ability to tilt towards energy-efficient transportation—trains, bicycles, walking—regardless of whether overall transportation spending increases significantly or at all.  Energy efficiency and sustainability should be a crucial determinant of our transportation spending priorities. Period.

--Ross Capon

On May 28, The Wall Street Journal ran a story “Europeans Protest Fuel Taxes but Accept High Prices.” Journal reporters Guy Chazan and Marcus Walker quoted anonymous “analysts” citing “fatalism” for the puzzling failure of European motorists to protest high gasoline prices.  A named source, British trucking official Geoff Dossetter, was quoted describing motorists’ behavior as “dumb acceptance.”

Actually, the behavior of European motorists is not puzzling, but rational.  Unlike Americans, Europeans are not dependent on their cars because fast, frequent intercity trains, commuter trains, rail rapid transit and streetcars connect most of their residential neighborhoods, workplaces, shopping areas and vacation spots.

In Dortmund, Germany, a town of fewer than 600,000, 130 intercity and commuter trains a day serve the downtown rail station, which connects with an extensive network of local light-rail lines that pass through the center of the city in a 6.5-mile subway.  On the busier lines, the light-rail trains include a café car.  Dortmund is not unique; scores of smaller European cities from Seville to Szeged and from Bordeaux to Bratislava make rail travel the centerpiece of their local and intercity mobility options.  Some of those cities are on the fast-expanding European high-speed rail system, now carrying passengers at 200 mph—the equivalent of traveling from Chicago to Kansas City or Pittsburgh in about three hours. 

Dortmund is smaller than Jacksonville, Nashville or Columbus, yet the mobility choices it offers to its citizens and visitors makes those three American cities look truly backward:  Jacksonville has four Amtrak frequencies per day but no commuter rail, streetcars or rapid transit.  Nashville has three daily commuter-rail round trips, but only from its eastern suburbs.  All other daily work trips must be performed by car.  There is no light-rail transit and, despite the city’s immense popularity with tourists, no intercity rail service (Amtrak reservation agents report Nashville is the most requested destination their company does not serve—what a huge missed opportunity).  Columbus, the largest city not served by Amtrak, has no commuter trains or light rail either.  Except for a small bus system it is completely auto-dependent.

Except for the very largest cities on the two coasts plus Chicago, most of America is stuck in the same car-dependent environment as Jacksonville, Nashville and Columbus.  Not one American city in the 500,000-600,000 population range—not even Portland OR – approaches Dortmund’s level of rail mobility.  In fact, a May 27 CNN poll showed that 78 per cent of 86,207 people queried said they had no transit options available to them.

If European motorists are responding to fuel-price increases with a “What, me worry?” attitude, it’s for a very good reason:  They have nothing to worry about.  The trains are running, the subways are running and the streetcars are running, most of them powered by electricity generated without oil controlled by hostile foreigners.  The Europeans have cars, and they enjoy them, but their cars are a discretionary item, not a necessity.  American policy makers need to look across the Atlantic and learn a lesson.

--George Chilson
NARP President