Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/amtrak-asks-federal-regulators-to-investigate-union-pacific-handling-of-sunset-limited/

by eternalban • 4 years ago

130 121 4 years ago

trains.com

SoftTalker• 4 years ago

Why doesn't Amtrak simply pay UP adequately to get priority? UP is prioritizing freight because it pays better. Fix that.

toomuchtodo3• 4 years ago

Alternatively, nationalize the rail lines and make UP pay for access. Privatization of critical infrastructure, historically, leads to poor outcomes with profits getting siphoned off in the process.

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?

jeffbee3• 4 years ago

You don't even need to nationalize it. It makes perfect sense for the federal government, or even a large state like California, to simply buy it on the open market, as a hostile takeover. The UPRR is dirt cheap compared to how much it is costing society for the UPRR to exist. We're talking low tens of billions. If the Obama administration had funded a takeover of the UPRR ten years ago it would have slashed the future costs of the Calif. High Speed Rail project.

AnimalMuppet4• 4 years ago

You say "nationalize" awfully glibly. Private enterprise, on private land, not bankrupt. Nationalizing that isn't an easy thing to do in the US.

abduhl• 4 years ago

This is fixing that. Prioritizing freight now pays less because of the fines that can be levied.

crooked-v2• 4 years ago

UP already has legal obligations to this effect, the violation of which has been ignored by the government up until this point.

jrockway• 4 years ago

Here's a brief history of railroads in the US:

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.)

noahtallen• 4 years ago

Completely agreed, and to expand even further:

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/.

Aloha2• 4 years ago

Between usurious property tax at the state level, and the machinations of the former ICC, whatever value that the Railroads got for that land has largely if not completely paid back in public goods. Furthermore those landholdings are largely long gone too.

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.

AnimalMuppet4• 4 years ago

Not completely free of charge. The deal was that they had to carry the US mail at a rate that was beneficial to the US government and less than beneficial to the railroads. That added up over a few decades. The railroads bought themselves out of that part of the deal during World War II, when the government was eager to take short-term money even if it was long-term a bad idea.

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.

stonogo4• 4 years ago

Because the federal government already ordered freight carriers to prioritize Amtrak. This has been on the books for nearly fifty years; over a decade ago deliverables were defined to establish target metrics for this. Sunset Ltd. has not been meeting these requirements and Amtrak is asking for this to be investigated. The rules are already in place.

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.

pengaru• 4 years ago

Why doesn't Amtrak simply pay UP adequately to get priority? UP is prioritizing freight because it pays better. Fix that.

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.

rsj_hn2• 4 years ago

To put thing in perspective, US rail moves:

    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

So you have a problem in that increasing the costs to freight will affect all Americans in making them pay more for goods, whereas it will only benefit those passengers using rail. So politically, this is a tough sell. I think you need to put down dedicated track for passenger rail if you want it to be prioritized in our existing rail system, as it's currently a rounding error compared to freight.

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.

crote4• 4 years ago

The interesting part is that freight companies are intentionally running trains longer than the sidings. Amtrak trains are legally supposed to have priority, but they made it physically impossible for freight trains to pull over.

chiph• 4 years ago

Yep. Amtrak runs the longest passenger train in the world in the Auto Train, traveling the Virginia to Orlando route. It's usually about 45 cars long, while a UP freight train can be 100 cars or more.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGJJLwJK0PU

woodruffw4• 4 years ago

The history of the US's Western freight lines is fascinating (and frustrating): we've allowed these massive companies (UP, BNSF) to extract rent for well over a century, in exchange for having laid down the original lines (which, mind you, were also paid for in land and bonds[1]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts

IIAOPSW2• 4 years ago

Its long and complicated. Amtrak exists in the first place because once upon a time these freight operators were also the passenger operators. While today they look like "extracting rent", once upon a time they were forced by regulation to carry the burden of passenger service. The situation with Amtrak was basically the government agreeing to take over that before it killed the companies, but Amtrak would retain certain rights to demand the use of rail lines which an otherwise private operator might not be able to successfully negotiate over.

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.

woodruffw4• 4 years ago

This is all important context, and I thank you for including it.

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.

LargoLasskhyfv• 4 years ago

Which begat Donald Trumps entry into speculative projects.

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 )

dwighttk• 4 years ago

used to have a higher annual revenue than the Federal Government

I’d be interested to know how much of the switch was the company shrinking and how much was government revenue going up.

AnimalMuppet4• 4 years ago

Extract rent? Seriously? They sell transportation. They face competition from the highway system, which is provided at public expense. Nothing about this looks like rent (even in the economic sense).

woodruffw4• 4 years ago

Selling transportation doesn't make it not rent extraction: these companies were given the land they operate on, plus government bonds to offset their capital expenses. Most operate as monopolies or duopolies in their regions, which is the efficient condition for rent-seeking behavior.

(The fact that they experience brisk competition from other subsidized forms of transportation doesn't alter this.)

twoodfin• 4 years ago

The interstate highway system for many years paid for itself via the gas tax and other user fees, and could easily do so again.

pstuart3• 4 years ago

We should look at nationalizing the rail lines and then investing in them to accommodate freight and passenger traffic more effectively. Positive Train Control[1] and judicious expansion of switches/bypass lanes should allow us to better saturate the rails so that throughput is maximized.

This could even enable new passenger services other than Amtrak to operate in competition.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control

mlindner6• 4 years ago

Nationalizing them would be a disaster. They were deeply unprofitable until the federal government de-nationalized them after it had nationalized them and practically ruined them in the process of that nationalization. Let's not ruin what good things there are.

mlindner6• 4 years ago

I'm confused why you think that private rail owned, operated, and built by private companies is somehow "rent seeking". Amtrak is even only allowed to use their rails by forced act of Congress. If things followed normal commercial rules Amtrak would have no right to use them at all. More so, they operate below the cost of any freight rail of anywhere in the developed world. They're incredibly efficient in operation.

US Freight rail is a massive success story.

stetrain4• 4 years ago

From 1850 to 1871, the railroads received more than 175 million acres (71 million ha) of public land – an area more than one tenth of the whole United States and larger in area than Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts

crote4• 4 years ago

It depends on how you look at 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.

Aloha2• 4 years ago

Amtrak is allowed to use their rails in exchange for the railroads being let out of the obligation to run passenger trains.

No one expected Amtrak to last 50 years.

MarkusWandel• 4 years ago

I'm surprised PSR hasn't been mentioned in this. "Precision Scheduled Railroading" primarily means miles-long trains (with locomotives embedded rather than all at the lead end). They can take 10+ minutes to pass at a crossing, which is bad enough, but absent full double tracking, they also don't fit on the passing sidings, so while a passenger train could wait on one to let the freight train pass, the opposite is not possible.

woodruffw4• 4 years ago

It is mentioned!

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.

bmc7505• 4 years ago

As a frequent Amtrak passenger, I can attest to the unpunctuality of the Union Pacific and other freight operators. On several occasions we have been delayed by a passing freight train that was an hour or more behind schedule, causing us to miss our scheduled connection. During one such occasion, while traveling on the Coast Starlight from Eugene this summer, I was treated very rudely by the conductor, who kicked me out of the dining car despite having a reservation. Precision scheduled railroading is anything but precise.

nopenopenopeno9• 4 years ago

The real problem here is that freight trains have so much priority in the US, unlike every other major country in the world.

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.

vinay427• 4 years ago

Nit: I couldn’t find a source that indicated the US leads in carbon consumption per capita, although it is near the top.

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.

b3morales• 4 years ago

They only have de facto priority; officially passenger trains are supposed to be prioritized. This is in fact the basis of the complaint described in the article.

mlindner6• 4 years ago

This isn't true. Amtrak has priority by law over freight in the US as long as they are on time. They don't get priority once they area late. What happens is that Amtrak becomes late and then they lose their slot and become further late.

bobthepanda3• 4 years ago

Honestly we need to build parallel rights of way anyways.

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.

ericd4• 4 years ago

Haha wow, like 30% more passengers who are 3+ hours late than are on time (11k 3+ hours late vs. 8k on time). That's impressively bad. In aggregate, 4x as many passengers late as on time.

mlindner6• 4 years ago

The solution to fixing problems with Amtrak is to privatize it and shut down the unprofitable long distance lines or require states that want them to pay for them. Amtrak is already profitable in areas of high density if they weren't held back by all the unprofitable lines.

thfuran2• 4 years ago

Should we shut down all the unprofitable highways too?

coryrc2• 4 years ago

Yes, we have far too many.

mlindner6• 4 years ago

The federal highway system funding originated as a method of defense. Unless the military switches to using rail for transport then throwing highway funding into the military budget seems fine to me.

adgjlsfhk13• 4 years ago

This take is very wrong, but it does have a kernel of truth. The unprofitable services Amtrak provides are incredibly necessary for rural communities, but having to operate them is a major drain on Amtrak's resources. IMO, Amtrak's lines in extremely low density areas should be separated from Amtrak's portfolio (not shut down but moved to a separate agency) to allow Amtrack to massively expand service in areas where it could do so properly without having to support tons of inherently unprofitable routes. The east coast specifically should have way more and much higher quality trains than it does.

eeixlk• 4 years ago

Do you feel the same way about private highways? All infrastructure is subsidized to hopefully benefit the economy. Obviously no private company would want an unprofitable long distance highway. These arguments mostly just show we have different priorities and you would rather drive or fly and i would rather not. And i would rather not wait 2 hours behind the air mail / freight plane when waiting to take off and i'm guessing you would not either.

readthenotes1• 4 years ago

I have taken one round trip train journey in the last 30 years. The outbound trip made me late for my daughter's wedding because Union Pacific swung so many freight trains in our path that we were 3 hours late

Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

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