Freight and Passenger Rail: Present and Future Roles, Performance, Benefits, and Needs

Statement of

Ross B. Capon

President

National Association of Railroad Passengers

 
Submitted to the

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, U.S. House of Representatives

Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials

The Honorable Corrine Brown, Chairman

 * * *

 Hearing on “Freight and Passenger Rail: Present and Future Roles, Performance, Benefits, and Needs”

 
January 28, 2009

Statement Submitted for the Record on February 11, 2009

Thank you for this opportunity to present our views for the record.  We are pleased to be part of the OneRail Coalition and to endorse the statement of your witness Anne Canby.  I will not repeat what other witnesses said, or what was in my statement for the record in the full committee’s October 29, 2008, infrastructure hearing.

The Committee and its leaders have our thanks for your role in securing $1.1 billion for intercity passenger rail in the House-passed economic recovery bill.  The funding, among other things, will help Amtrak get more cars back into service and let states that have been awaiting a federal funding partner get to work on their passenger train improvement projects.  We of course continue to look forward to full funding of the authorization that reflects your hard, successful work. 

It is significant that that Amtrak ridership outside the Northeast Corridor continued to rise through the first quarter of Fiscal 2009.  In the most recent month for which we have data, December, passenger revenues (“unadjusted”) on the overnight (“long distance”) trains were 7.4% above the year-earlier month, while ridership was up 4.0% and passenger-miles (one passenger carried one mile) were up 4.6%.

For the shorter-distance “state corridors,” revenues were up 2.0%, ridership 1.3% and passenger-miles 1.7%.  In the Northeast Corridor, the trends were negative – 5.8%, 6.2% and 6.8%, respectively.

The most important message is that people desperately want the train travel choice and that choice needs to be provided for many more trips than currently.  That positive numbers persisted on most Amtrak routes in the face of sharply lower gasoline prices and a severe economic recession suggests that travelers are looking beyond the price of gasoline to total driving costs and may be more inclined to leave the car at home and take the train as a way to prolong the life of a car that they cannot afford to replace. 

Other factors in play probably include:
• Growing senior population that has above-average interest in avoiding the hassles of long auto trips.
• A changed psychology among young people, who increasingly are “forced” into driving when they see that public transportation doesn’t meet their needs rather than eagerly getting their license at the youngest possible age as a “rite of passage.”
• Mistrust that gasoline prices will stay low, giving sharp price volatility, especially over the past several months.
• Many people trying the train for the first time like it and stick with it. 

The decline in Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is partly explained by the high number of business travelers, the very high fares Amtrak charges, even on the Regionals, and perhaps by new bus competition.  For example, checking departures 24 hours hence, Amtrak’s basic fare Washington to New York was $103 for the 1:05 PM Regional departure on February 12 and $124 for the 3:02 PM, while BoltBus was asking $22 for both its 1 PM and 3 PM departures, the majority of the fleet brand new, offering AC outlets just like Amtrak and—unlike Amtrak—free Wi fi, 45 minutes slower schedule (offset for some by greater choice of departures).  For taxpayers to realize the greatest benefit from the billions they have invested and will invest in the Northeast Corridor there needs to be a re-look at how Amtrak service is priced.

In an op ed that I co-authored with Dr. Vukan Vuchic of the University of Pennsylvania which was published by the Newark Star-Ledger on Sunday, February 1, we discussed the need for greater track capacity under the Hudson River, with one major rationale “expansion for Amtrak’s future capacity needs, which will be much greater than what today’s overpriced and often sold-out services require.”

The main focus of the column was on our continuing effort to alert the public and legislators all along the Northeast Corridor that design of New Jersey Transit’s Access to the Region’s Core must be changed if any of us are going to live to see intercity train capacity under the Hudson increased, a subject discussed at length in my statement for the record of the full committee’s October 29, 2008, infrastructure hearing.

Thank you for considering our views.