Ticket Punch

President-elect Obama's private car

2009-01-18T11:03:00.001-06:00

AP moved an article on the Georgia 300, which he used Jan. 17 for his Philadelphia-Washington trip.

Bail 'em out the old-fashioned way

2009-01-02T11:34:00.002-06:00

First it was the auto industry. Now the steel industry is looking for federal help. Quoting The New York Times:

The industry itself is turning to government for orders that, until the September collapse, had come from manufacturers and builders. Its executives are waiting anxiously for details of President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, and adding their voices to pleas for a huge public investment program — up to $1 trillion over two years — intended to lift demand for steel to build highways, bridges, electric power grids, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and rapid transit.

Quick, can anyone think of a type of public infrastructure that uses lots and lots of steel?

Make NY-DC a no-fly zone, says former airline CEO

2008-11-18T09:21:00.003-06:00

Former AMR Corp. CEO Robert Crandall has a reputation for not mincing words. Admirers and detractors agree that Crandall calls 'em like he sees 'em. Here's how Dow Jones reporter Aude Largorce summarized some of Bob Crandall's remarks at the Airline Strategy Summit in London on Nov. 11:

Crandall made a few recommendations for the U.S. airline sector to be returned to health more permanently.
First, the U.S. needs a national transportation plan that takes into account emissions, the planet's fast-diminishing oil reserves and the need for good jobs to be created.
"Four percent of the world's population can't keep consuming 25% of its oil," he said, referring to the U.S. Crandall went as far as saying that flying should be banned between cities efficiently linked by rail, such as New York City and Washington D.C.

Wait, don't Japanese passenger trains "make money"?

2008-05-26T13:48:00.004-05:00

From AP via msnbc.com
Purr-fect station chief brings passengers back

The Kishikawa line had been losing $4.9 million a year as passenger numbers fell steadily to as low as about 5,000 a day, or some 1.9 million a year.

Facts can be so inconvenient, can't they?

Northwest loses $258 per passenger in the 1st quarter

2008-04-26T09:04:00.002-05:00

$4.1 billion loss

divided among 15.9 million passengers boarded in the 1st quarter.

Yessir, Northwest plays second fiddle to no one, not even its putative merger partner.

All these losses are being borne by shareholders. For now. But what happens when a company runs out of shareholder equity? Who picks up the tab then?

Delta loses $244 per passenger in the 1st quarter

2008-04-26T09:00:00.005-05:00

$6.261 billion loss

divided by 25.6 million passengers boarded in the 1st quarter.

Breaking: Subsidized carrier loses $36 per passenger last quarter!

2008-04-22T18:33:00.005-05:00

But since you won't find this pseudo stat quoted in any financial news story or press release mentioning United Airlines, here's how to calculate it.

1. First, take United's 1st quarter loss of $542 million.

2. Then add up all of United's passenger boardings in January (4.8 million), February (4.7 million) and March (5.7 million).

3. Divided $542 million into 15.2 million, and you get (ta da!) $35.70 loss per passenger.

Show of hands, now: Who's ready to break this thing up and liquidate it?

Why connections matter: Skybus edition

2008-04-05T10:11:00.003-05:00

Critics of Amtrak service prefer to characterize the national network as a collection of discrete trains. They find it convenient to completely ignore the network effect that occurs in places like Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington.

Why does the network effect matter? Consider the curious case of Skybus, the Columbus-based carrier that just failed yesterday, April 4.

Until the day it shut down, Skybus warned its passengers that its hub wasn't a hub. Here's some text from the "Where We Fly" page cached at Google (as of April 5), with emphasis added:

Currently, Skybus does not offer any connecting flights (for example, from Los Angeles through Columbus to Boston). And we don’t offer flights between our destination cities (for example, between Los Angeles and San Francisco).

Please note: It’s possible to create your own multi-point trip through our Columbus and Greensboro bases, but we don’t recommend it. Our flight schedules are very tight, and you may miss your connection. If you do create your own multi-point trip, please keep the following in mind:
You must claim and recheck your baggage between flights. If you create your own multi-point trip, you must collect your own baggage at each stop and re-check it yourself – Skybus does not move your bags automatically. For more information, see our Help Center section on baggage.
Leave enough time between flights. If you book a multi-point trip, we recommend that you allow at least two hours between your flights. This will help ensure that you have enough time to retrieve and re-check your bags, and be at your gate in time. All of our check in and gate deadlines still apply if you purchase multiple flights.

In other words, the Skybus route system was a collection of discrete routes. With no connection between them.

Don't let any critic or so-called rail fan tell you different: Networks matter.

"Fixing" a bridge with commuter rail

2007-08-07T10:18:00.001-05:00

The collapse of Minneapolis's I-35W bridge is forcing thousands of commuters to seek alternate ways to get to work.

Might those ways include commuter rail?

There's precedent for the concept of temporary commuter service, just next door in Wisconsin. Nearly 10 years ago, WisDOT undertook major reconstruction of I-94. Its responses included extending two Amtrak Hiawathas north and west--all the way to Watertown.

Once the interstate was back on line, the Hiawathas reverted to their normal route.

Latest news is that even a fast-tracked bridge replacement won't come on line until late 2008 at the earliest. How quick can trains come on line?

"Nobody" rides Amtrak's long-distance trains? Tell the AP

2007-07-22T08:07:00.000-05:00

which reports that floods temporarily stranded the Sunset Limited about 75 miles west of San Antonio. AP reports 176 people on board.

One hundred seventy six.

That's on the Sunset, a train regularly derided as some kind of poster child for Amtrak's network of supposedly empty long-distance trains.

Well, what's empty today?

Why it's time to expand the passenger-train network: China edition

2007-07-11T10:38:00.001-05:00

American Airlines is pushing for a nonstop between Chicago O'Hare and Beijing. So it's asking for lobbying help from St. Louisans, who would presumably connect there. By flying, of course--on one of American's 10 daily nonstop round trips. Over a distance of 258 air miles.

Amtrak already runs 5 daily round-trips between St. Louis and Chicago, but the service terminates at Chicago Union Station, which leaves you 17 miles and a ride on the Blue Line from O'Hare. A built-out passenger-train network would be able to carry passengers direct to the airport. Save those O'Hare gates for flights that are impractical or impossible for train travel. And maybe even make the place a little less miserable.

Do planes cover distance faster than trains? Even with higher-speed train service, they would. But when you're connecting to/from a trip that United makes in 13 hours 20 min, what's your hurry?

Airline delays: worse than you think

2007-07-05T10:56:00.000-05:00

If it wasn't enough to read that only 77.9% of airline flights arrived on time in May--a record low--read what can happen the rest of the time.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a study several years ago and found that when missed connections and flight cancellations are factored in, the average wait was two-thirds longer than the official statistic.

Here's one way delays expand without tipping off the FAA:

If a flight taxies out, sits for hours, and then taxies back in and is canceled, the delay is not recorded. Likewise, flights diverted to cities other than their destination are not figured into delay statistics.

Southwest thinks there's a market there.

2007-07-01T13:30:00.000-05:00

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that Southwest Airlines is adding service between Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and Orlando starting early November.

Before Katrina hit, Orlando was the eastern endpoint of Amtrak's Sunset Limited. Today the Sunset terminates in New Orleans.

The Sunset Limited's detractors keep saying there's no market for the Sunset east of New Orleans. We'll see, won't we?

Planes packed, flights late--how to fix? How about a stiff dose of "reform"?

2007-06-26T09:33:00.000-05:00

The nation's air-travel network is in bad, bad shape. Despite decades of taxpayer subsidies that run into the billions, it's doing a lousy job serving passengers. U.S. News just compiled and released a list of the nation's "most miserable airports." Tops on the list, which is to say worst: Detroit (DTW), Chicago O'Hare (ORD), Charlotte (CLT) and JFK.

At Chicago O'Hare, for example, 42% of the flights are late.

What do these big airports have in common? They are all big, big money losers. Each is heavily subsidized by federal tax dollars. Fortunately, certain transportation experts know exactly how to relieve the misery:

1. Cut their subsidy. As the so-called experts have told us over and over, subsidy = inefficiency. If you want an O'Hare that will run more than 57% of its flights on time, the very first thing to do is to end the federal subsidy. Force the authority to find efficiencies by casting off the bloat and shrinking to its most productive and profitable size.

2. Establish an "Airport Reform Council" to monitor the airport on its "glidepath to self-sufficiency." And if it's still losing money,

3. Bring in private operators to run it. Like, for example, BAA, which has "full operating responsibility" for the Indianapolis airport (way down the list at No. 29).

Unthinkable? Not exactly. Influential people like Rep. John Mica of Florida have been proposing these kinds of solutions for years. Thing is, though, they're only for Amtrak.

New York subways packed? No problem--just choose Amtrak!

2007-06-26T09:23:00.000-05:00

New York City Transit just released an analysis that paints a grim picture of jam-packed subway trains, maxed-out capacity and mediocre on-time performance.

If only straphangers had a choice. Fortunately, according to one Joe Boardman, they do! In a letter to the Baltimore Sun last week, Mr. Boardman noted:

Nearly 550 million people board trains each year in this country, yet fewer than one in 20 of them chooses Amtrak.

In other words, commuter trains, subways and Amtrak are interchangeable. Choose one, choose the other, doesn't matter. Someone must tell the poor A train riders pronto!

One reads some boneheaded opinions expressed in the letters column of the newspaper. What makes this one stand out? Joe Boardman runs the Federal Railroad Administration.

And the passenger trains wouldn't be late either.

2007-06-26T08:57:00.000-05:00

Coal is a very big cash generator for freight railroads. How big? Consider this:

In Wyoming's Powder River Basin, source of the low-sulfur coal that fires so many power plants, BNSF and Union Pacific are expanding their 50-50 joint venture, which when complete

will include 270 total miles of triple and quadruple tracks. It's designed to give the two competing railroads the most freight capacity. The lengthy trains, each with 135 cars, need enough track to get through. Rose compares the track expansion to driving on an eight-line highway.
"There's nothing like it in the world, in terms of freight rail capacity," Rose said. "It is the heaviest tonnage railroad in the world. ... If the entire U.S. network railroad system looked like the joint line, quite frankly, we would not have transportation problems in the United States."

We know there's congestion on the rails. Thanks to Amtrak, we even know where it's worst: where the Amtrak trains run latest. What would it take to secure a public stake in building more of these "eight-lane highways" of steel rail so that goods and passengers--not just coal--can move freely?

In France, what "TGV" really means.

2007-06-10T20:27:00.001-05:00

The new TGV Est line just opened between Paris and the border city of Strasbourg. Trains on this line, which is exactly 300 kilometers long, will run at a maximum speed of 320 km/hr.

So that means you'll get from Paris to Strasbourg in less than a hour, right? Er, no. Scheduled time, end to end, is 2 hr 20 min. For an average speed of 129 km/hr, or 80 mph.

A comparable distance on the Northeast Corridor is New York-Baltimore. Acelas cover that distance in . . . wait for it . . . 2 hr 15 min.

Now on to Plan B: Double-track the Sunset Route.

2007-05-25T08:50:00.000-05:00

AP reports that Union Pacific Railroad was considering a new rail line from Yuma, Arizona, to the Mexican port of Punta Colonet--but that proposal is now effectively dead.

The idea was to find a new way to move goods from Pacific container ships inland. But Yuma farmers, among others, objected to the proposal, fearing eniment domain. Further, UP already has plenty of right of way from the busiest port on the Pacific coast: the historic Sunset Route from Los Angeles to El Paso.

The Port of Los Angeles already has several initiatives underway to shift containers from trucks to trains. One involves UP's Colton yard, which is on the Sunset Route.

What's this got to do with passenger trains? Two Amtrak trains use the Sunset Route, the Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited. Just as with highways, more capacity means less congestion and higher average train speeds. So doesn't it make eminent sense for UP and other stakeholders to find a way to add track to the Sunset Route?

OKC: First the trains came back, then the hotels.

2007-04-15T12:15:00.000-05:00

AP reports (via CNN) that Oklahoma City's historic Skirvin Hotel has just reopened, as a Hilton. It's about 5 blocks from the Amtrak station. Here's an interesting comment from the article:

Built by William Skirvin, who participated in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 and later made a fortune in land and oil, the Skirvin is near railroad depots and is an example of the grand hotels that prospered during the golden age of railroad travel, said Bob Blackburn, executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
"If you went anywhere in style and you could afford it, you went by railroad," Blackburn said.

When the Heartland Flyer began running, there was one upper-end hotel near the station, the Westin (now Sheraton). Then came the Renaissance. And now the Skirvin.

Now to be sure, Amtrak plays a smaller role in driving downtown hotel activity than, say, Bricktown, Myriad Gardens and the Ford Center. But the train's in there.

Why it's time to expand the passenger-train network: Jersey edition.

2007-04-13T14:32:00.000-05:00

Here's a brutal fact: Highway accidents are no respecter of persons.
A bad one just happened to Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, en route from Atlantic City to Princeton.

Why was the governor on the road? Connections, the train kind, may have something to do with that. You can get from Atlantic City to Princeton Junction by train, but you'll have to change trains at Philly. Is it time for New Jersey Transit, Amtrak or both, to initiate one-seat service between Atlantic City and the Jersey cities of the Northeast corridor plus New York Penn Station?

Why it's time for Congress to grow the Amtrak network: Montana edition

2007-04-10T10:55:00.000-05:00

In today's New York Times, "connection man" Andrew Field describes business travel when your closest airport is Bozeman, Mont.

There’s always some trepidation when I leave Livingston. We pay practically double for any flight we take, even with advance notice. And I usually have to leave earlier than most other business types. For an event on Saturday out east, most folks would leave Saturday morning, take a flight, and maybe get home the same day. I leave Friday morning and hope for the best.
I wish there was a better way to do this. I wish the airlines would actually use their systems and pay attention to folks like me who have to make a lot of connections. But I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. I’ve gotten pretty good on the treadmill in the last couple of years. And my cardiovascular health has never been better. I don’t even break a sweat running through the airport. After all, I am Connection Man.

Decades ago, the North Coast Limited served not just Bozeman but Livingston as well. Is there a market today for train service that includes these cities? We will never know until Congress provides the capital and mandate to start building out the Amtrak network.

Why it's time for Congress to grow the Amtrak network: Raleigh edition

2007-04-03T09:15:00.000-05:00

In an article on congestion in the air and on the tarmac, The New York Times travel writer Joe Sharkey offers this anecdote:

It’s clear that more business travelers are choosing to drive rather than fly. Will Allen III, a Raleigh, N.C., management consultant who is on the road five days a week, monitored delays piling up at O’Hare International Airport one day in March, and decided instead to drive from Raleigh to Chicago, renting a Toyota Avalon for the 1,700-mile round trip. . . . .
Mr. Allen is a kind of business traveler Everyman, and I take his temperature on occasion. I’ve never heard him sound so unhappy about air travel.
“The next time I feel I’m being held hostage by the airlines, I’m calling Hertz,” he said.

Why wouldn't he call Amtrak? Unfortunately, that's an easy one: Raleigh-Chicago is a 30-hour trip that includes a 4-hour layover in Washington, to connect from the Silver Star to the Capitol Limited. It just doesn't work for business.

Now if you're a rail "fan," your first impulse is to bash that stupid Mister Amtrak, but the truth as usual is a bit more complicated--and way less satisfying. Call this another example of the consequences of chronic undercapitalization and a year-to-year mandate. Congress's neglect has frozen Amtrak's national network in time. Specifically 1971.

Back at the dawn of Amtrak, Chicago-Raleigh wasn't much of a city pair. But in the last 30 years, the Raleigh-Durham metro area has more than doubled in population. In the last 3½ years alone, the city of Raleigh added nearly 40,000 new residents all by itself.

It takes analysis and vision to identify new markets. But that's the easy part. Developing them takes time and capital. It's way past time for Congress to supply Amtrak with both. Because 1, 700 miles is too long to drive on business.

France breaks TGV speed record--as Californians watch.

2007-04-03T07:48:00.000-05:00

AP's all over this story (via CNN and others), but let's skip down to paragraph 12 for this interesting detail:

Transport Minister Dominique Perben received a California delegation hours before Tuesday's record attempt. California is studying prospects for a high-speed line running from Sacramento in the north to San Diego, in the south, via San Francisco and Los Angeles.

California's economy depends on mobility. And if Congress and the DOT won't provide it, Californians will look elsewhere for it.

A man's gotta scoot when a man's gotta scoot.

2007-03-19T15:57:00.000-05:00

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was spotted heading to New York today. On Acela. Now we'll never know whether he'd have taken the train even on a normal day for US Airways, but it's always nice to hear about high-powered people using Amtrak.

More cars for UK trains, thanks to Her Majesty

2007-03-14T08:54:00.000-05:00

Britain's trains are running fuller than ever. Standee conditions are common on many commuter services. So the government has announced plans to buy up to 1,000 rail cars and lease them to the train operating companies.

Let's repeat: The government places the order and pays for the cars up front. Then leases them to the operators.

Literally from day one--when it took over a rag-tag fleet of legacy rail cars--Amtrak has been undercapitalized. Congress's habit of stringing the company along year to year hampers any ability to make meaningful capital expenditure.

Might this be one way to move forward--have DOT place the car order and lease the cars to Amtrak?

Or even--if you're one of those big privatization fans--put the fleet out for bids and see who comes forward with the best lease terms?

FRA says no to DM&E's new Powder River line.

2007-03-05T09:20:00.000-06:00

Robert Novak's column today, "A Senator's Railroad No-Brainer," focuses on the project's champion in Congress, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

To review: "DM&E applied for the [$2.3 billion] loan guarantee under the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) program to build and renovate a railway from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, across South Dakota and into Minnesota to carry coal, ethanol and other agricultural products."

This project was the subject of a previous post on this blog a full year ago. Your conductor can't help wondering if the outcome might have been different if there had been a passenger component to this deal. Remember, only 2 of the 48 contiguous states have no Amtrak service. They are . . . wait for it . . . Wyoming and South Dakota.

JetBlue: Newsweek's Allen Sloan nails it!

2007-02-25T08:39:00.000-06:00

Last 2 paragraphs of his column on JetBlue's Valentine's weekend meltdown:

What still intrigues me is how a smart, customer-focused outfit like JetBlue shut down service to markets like Richmond, Va.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Portland, Maine, that are an easy one-day drive from New York and let those passengers sit in JFK for days instead of chartering buses. JetBlue's Dervin says it's because the company felt that roads were still unsafe for days after the storm.
A final note: Amtrak runs trains from New York to Richmond, Raleigh and Portland. I should have asked JetBlue why it didn't put its passengers on trains, but even I—an Amtrak Select Plus customer, yet—never considered rail service as an option. The lesson: we think of government-owned Amtrak as money-losing socialism, but the money-losing airline industry as a bunch of noble capitalists. Maybe we should re-examine our national transportation policies the way JetBlue is rethinking its customer-service policies.

Perhaps Mr. Sloan will pick up this topic in his comment, "The Sloan Sessions," on public radio's "Marketplace Morning Report." In any case, you can e-mail him here.

UK's First Group buying Greyhound Lines--

2007-02-09T09:09:00.000-06:00

specifically its parent Laidlaw. Let's hope First Group's experience is better than that of its countryman Stagecoach, which bought CoachUSA in 1999 for £1.2 billion and within 3 years wrote down 73% of its value.

What do the credit analysts think of First's purchase? Not much. They don't like Laidlaw's weak balance sheet and worry that it may taint First Group's.

So how's this about trains? First Group is also a major train operator in the UK. So was a company called Sea Containers, through its subsidiary GNER--until it filed for bankruptcy and got its train license yanked.

Senators pondering airline re-regulation?

2007-01-29T09:21:00.000-06:00

Passenger-train critics like to cite the success of airline deregulation in lowering the cost of travel for "the traveling public." They conveniently ignore, of course, the fact that airline deregulation has produced losers as well as winners.

But a few U.S. senators have been paying attention.

U.S. Airways' CEO Doug Parker went to Washington last week to defend his company's bid for the bankrupt Delta Air Lines--and ran into a little turbulence from some senators who wondered aloud whether airline consolidation has gone a little too far.

On the subject of airfares, Sen Byron Dorgan "believes deregulation of the airline industry has been bad for smaller markets, saying it costs twice as much to fly to his home state from Washington than it does to fly to Los Angeles, which is twice as far away.

"'I think the market system is best way of allocating goods and services but I think it needs a referee," he said. "It's quite possible the market would say that air service only exists between the major cities.'"

Sen. Dorgan's home state is North Dakota, whose northern tier is served daily by Amtrak's Empire Builder.

Could this be the Amtrak of the airwaves?

2006-11-27T16:13:00.000-06:00

Shoestring budget? Check.
Board of directors stuffed with political appointees eager to put their stamp on the company's operations? Yup.
A resultant spottiness of service that leads people to question the company's relevance? Mm hmm.
New chief executive with a lot on his plate? You betcha.

Read this New York Times feature on the Voice of America and see what you think.

Washington Union Station treatment for JFK's TWA terminal?

2006-11-16T14:46:00.000-06:00

The iconic TWA building at JFK International Airport closed to air travelers 5 years ago. Now its owners, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, are looking for a developer to revive it - not just preserve the shell but bring the spaces back to life.

Where might they look for inspiration?

[Aviation Director William DeCota] said the developer would be responsible for renovating the terminal (this includes asbestos removal), restoring historical elements to “strict maintenance and preservation guidelines,” undoing recent alterations, adapting the building in a “minimally intrusive manner,” finding tenants and operating the new center — whatever it turns out to be. Perhaps the principal model is the commercial redevelopment of Union Station in Washington.

Why Amtrak doesn't serve St. Louis Union Station

2006-11-15T14:44:00.000-06:00

It's this simple: The station's owner doesn't want trains there. And may even pull the last tracks out - presumably to make double sure that they won't come back.

NY-DC: The flight that's never on time

2006-11-13T12:27:00.000-06:00

Today's Washington Post examines the effects of congestion on short-haul airline service in the East--specifically Delta flight 5283, operated by Comair. "Its average delay: 1 hour and 19 minutes. Actual flying time: 53 minutes."

Your conductor liked this passage, which concluded the piece:

Susan Cypra, a 37-year-old consultant, was on Washington-bound Delta Connection Flight 5283 on Tuesday. She took the same flight a month ago, and it was an hour late, she said.
At first, she said, the flight seemed like a good deal: It left at a convenient time and cost less than comparable trips out of New York's other airport, La Guardia.

But as she sat on the cramped commuter jet and listened to the pilot announce there were 25 planes ahead of them for takeoff, Cypra began to reconsider her decision to fly the country's least punctual flight.
She quickly did the math in her head: The cost and time of a cab ride to the airport, and then time lost in security, waiting at the gate, lingering on the taxiway and finally getting into the air. She arrived in Washington at 8:22 p.m., 50 minutes after the scheduled arrival, according to the airport monitors.
"I'm not going to take this plane again," Cypra concluded as she left the airport. "I'm going to take the train."

Washington Post: Federal money upgrades 86 train stations

2006-11-12T08:19:00.000-06:00

One catch: They're in Iraq. "But few trains run because of security concerns."

Northwest's "loss per passenger" $67 last quarter

2006-11-01T11:24:00.000-06:00

That's a $1.179 billion loss divided by 17.6 million passengers boarded in the months of July, August and September.

Of course you'll never see a pseudo stat like "loss per passenger" in a Northwest news release or a stock analyst's commentary, and for a very simple reason: It doesn't tell you anything worth knowing. So why do people in the anti-Amtrak crowd still push it?

The limits of "loss per passenger," courtesy of Ford

2006-10-25T09:29:00.000-05:00

The Ford Motor Company lost $5.8 billion in the third quarter of this year. The company planned to build 1.1 million vehicles in the quarter. So that's a "loss per car" of $5,500.

If you apply anti-Amtrak thinking to Ford, what should be your attitude? Don't buy a Ford! Because if you do, you've just caused the company to incur another $5,500 loss!

More bad news from the UK privatization experiment

2006-10-13T13:32:00.000-05:00

GNER's parent company is filing for bankruptcy. The labor union RMT warns that GNER may have to cut up to 300 jobs.

What else might GNER cut?

The operating company's franchise agreement requires it to pay a fee to Her Majesty's Government--in other words, negative subsidy. In 2005-2006, GNER paid £68.8 million, about $120 million US. Your conductor speculates that GNER might well plead hardship and ask to be let out of that agreement. Unless, of course, it lobbies for the same deal as its next-door neighbor Virgin West Coast, which received £92.2 million.

GNER is already starting to make the case for hardship in this Aug. 11 release from Sea Containers, as well as this one. And the warning bells are clearly sounded in this release, in the ominous words "Looking ahead, GNER does face a number of challenges, which in the current financial environment need urgent attention."

Got all that? "Number of challenges," "current environment," "urgent attention." In the understated world of financial reporting, this means our hair is on fire. And all of this just 16 months into a brand-new 7-year franchise agreement.

Study Virgin Trains, Rep. John Mica tells Amtrak's new CEO

2006-09-28T14:26:00.000-05:00

That's the word from Alex Kummant's appearance today before the U.S. House's Subcommittee on Railroads of the
House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Such good advice.

Virgin operates 2 franchises in the UK: Virgin West Coast and Virgin CrossCountry. Together they received £578.1 million in subsidy in 2003/04:
http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/nrt0304-yr.pdf
(page 51)

The following year, Virgin's combined subsidy came down to £200.8 million.
http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/nrt0405-yr-rev.pdf
(page 51)

A trend? No. In 2005/06, subsidy went up, to £243.1 million.
http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/294.pdf
(page 73)

Remember, these are pounds, not U.S. dollars.

Take Congressman Mica's advice, folks. Study Virgin Trains.

At Dulles International, spending $1.3 billion to get passengers from concourse to terminal

2006-09-14T11:23:00.000-05:00

Mobile lounges bad. Trains good. Good enough, in any case, for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to spend $1.3 billion on a railroad that doesn't even leave the airport.

What does $1.3 billion buy?

At Dulles, it will buy a people-mover that moves at 42 mph, compared with the 15 mph speed of the mobile lounges. Which means it will shave a whopping four minutes off the "travel" time between concourse and terminal.

In Amtrak's case, it electrified the Northeast Corridor from New Haven to Boston, a distance of 157 miles, and cut at least an hour off the travel time between Boston and New York--not just for the Acelas but for every Amtrak train .

The point isn't whether Dulles's investment is justifiable. The question is why Amtrak investment isn't judged by the same criteria. Improved operating results are a function of capital investment.

In the East, gas tax to boost rail capacity

2006-09-08T11:17:00.000-05:00

AP reports a 5-way partnership that will spend $150 million to upgrade select Norfolk Southern rail lines for double-stack container trains.

The Federal Highway Administration will pay the lion's share, $95 million, with the other 4 partners kicking in the other $55m: Norfolk Southern and the states of Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.

Is this the way to break the logjam over using motor fuel tax for capital improvements in the rail network? AP's David Hammer seems to suggest as much.

The project also has the support of the trucking industry, even though it was funded under last year's federal highway bill as a way to reduce trucking traffic. Tim Lynch, senior vice president of American Trucking Associations, said more efficient rail transport between Norfolk, Va., and Chicago should improve trucking business at each end of the route and at the planned terminals along the way.

Lynch said the trucking industry's only concern is that a rail project is being funded by the highway bill, which largely draws on fuel taxes paid by motorists.

The Heartland Corridor project sets a new precedent for federal highway dollars, Lynch said. "If that will grow in priority, we have to evaluate where the revenues are coming in from," he said.

What does this have to do with passenger trains? Clearances raised to accommodate double-stack container trains are high enough for bi-level passenger cars like Amtrak's Superliners.

On NPR, privatized roads and a late Coast Starlight

2006-08-23T08:49:00.000-05:00

NPR's Morning Edition ran a story on public toll roads in Chicago and Indiana that have recently been privatized. That story led straight into a piece on the hours-late Coast Starlight, with some emphasis on the Union Pacific Railroad, principal "host" for the Starlight. Host Renee Montagne noted that passenger-train advocates have asked the Surface Transportation Board to review whether freight railroads are giving priority to Amtrak trains as they are supposed to.

UK: Privatizing British Rail was a mistake, say the people who did it

2006-07-19T08:23:00.000-05:00

At a rail industry meeting in London, the Conservative Party's shadow transport secretary said that it had been a mistake for Britain's last Conservative government to break up and privatize British Rail, back in 1993.

Why might the Conservatives come to such a conclusion. The Guardian's Simon Jenkins offers these statistics:

Within seven years [of being privatized] the railway was costing the taxpayer three times what it had cost before de-nationalisation (up from £1.3bn to £3.7bn). . . . In the 1980s fares covered 76% of rail costs, last year 42%.

Got that, railfans? Privatization cost taxpayers more money, and resulted in a far greater loss per passenger. (Of course the trainspotters made out handsomely, what with all those snazzy new paint schemes.)

So where do the Conservatives want to take the rail system now? They want to re-integrate it. Said the shadow secretary Chris Grayling: "We think, with hindsight, that the complete separation of track and train into separate businesses at the time of privatisation was not right for our railways."

This is very bad news for anyone who advocated breaking up Amtrak using the UK experiment as a model. For it appears that the experiment has failed--and that the Tories are ready to make the network look more like. . . wait for it . . . Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.

US Airways to put ads on airsickness bags

2006-07-19T08:16:00.000-05:00

reports AP. That's in addition, of course, to the ads on tray tables, commercials over the PA and ads on boarding passes. It's enough to make you . . . well, you can fill in the blank.

Mineta resigns as Secretary of Transportation

2006-06-23T10:49:00.001-05:00

Read the resignation letter (PDF) at DOT's website. Guess you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.

In Indiana, a road-privatization "poker game"

2006-06-14T10:13:00.000-05:00

as reported in the Washington Post.

No telling whether this gamble will pay off, but apparently gambling is now government policy. Here's Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta: "We are like a poker game. We are inviting more people to the table and saying, 'Bring money when you come.'

Transit riders = newspaper readers?

2006-05-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

Interesting quote toward the end of a David Carr column on newspapering in today's New York Times (emphasis added):

With mass transit, a downtown full of history and warm bodies, a tabloid (The Philadelphia Daily News, which is also owned by McClatchy [along with the Philadelphia Inquirer] and also on the block) to stir the pot and newsstands on many corners, Philadelphia is a glorious newspaper town.

Gut instinct suggests that people who aren't driving themselves to work can use their commute time to read the paper. With so many cities putting in their first light-rail and commuter-rail systems in the last decade, it should be possible to see if you can correlate transit use and newspaper circulation.

Interesting thought, the idea that "transit-oriented development" can refer to culture as well as real estate.

The pseudo stat you'll never see in a Northwest Airlines news release:

2006-05-11T16:58:00.000-05:00

Northwest's "loss per passenger" was $87.60 in the first quarter of this year.

Where did that calculation come from? From the airline itself. Sorta.

In this release Northwest reported a net loss of $1.104 billion in the first quarter.
And in this release, the airline reported boarding 12.6 million passengers in the same period.

As always, the only people who reguarly cite "loss per passenger" are Amtrak critics, who keep insisting that it means something. But real investors are not fooled.

US Airways swings to the black. Guess how?

2006-05-09T13:00:00.000-05:00

The old fashioned way, of course--by raising fares.

First off, recall that the airline we now know as US Airways is a merger between the "old" US Airways and America West Airlines. Now, with that out of the way . . .

Reuters reports that revenue per available seat mile on the America West side rose 16.2%, to 10.27 cents. "Old" US Airways' RASM rose 27.7%, to 13.34 cents.

RASM is a useful measure because it takes load factor into account. An empty seat generates zero revenue per available seat mile--so if you pack the planes fuller, RASM will rise. But the planes were already pretty full to begin with. You don't get those kinds of RASM increases with higher loads alone. Fares have risen, too.

This is bad news for the so-called railfans who clamor for Amtrak to be "run like a business" even as they complain that Amtrak fares are "too expensive."

Coming to an Amtrak competitor near you:

2006-04-28T14:17:00.000-05:00

Advertising on tray tables!
Advertising on boarding passes!
And according to the Washington Post's Caroline Meyer, onboard commercials over the PA.

Be careful, railfans, when you clamor for an Amtrak run "like a business." Unless you specify, you could get one run like US Airways.

How does Amtrak compare to driving? Ask AAA.

2006-04-27T12:45:00.001-05:00

First get a fare estimate from tickets.amtrak.com
Then use AAA's Fuel Cost Calculator, which estimates your total gas cost based on prevailing average prices, make and model of car, and the mileage between the points you select.

Example: For a one-way trip from Dallas to San Antonio in a 2005 Chevrolet Impala, AAA estimates a total fuel cost of $28. Walkup Amtrak fares are in the $28-35 range.

But once you start counting all the other costs of driving--including the wear and tear on the driver--that Amtrak trip looks better and better.

"Bandits" on the train? (And no robbery?)

2006-04-19T12:53:00.000-05:00

Jon Bonné has a piece up on MSNBC.com about the new 250-ml single-serve wines from Three Thieves. But instead of a bottle, these come in paper-based aseptic packs--juice boxes for grownups! (Bonné says the wine's pretty good, too.)

Because there's less packaging, "Bandits" store more compactly than bottles, and they take up far less space in the wastecan. On a train, where space is reckoned in cubic inches, the mini-winebox offers a signficant advantage over single-serve bottles. Will Amtrak put these on? Don't know--can't say. Something to watch for, however, in any case.

They say Sen. Lott is a big Amtrak supporter, but . .

2006-04-19T00:37:00.000-05:00

it's hard to see how that reconciles with his and Sen. Cochran's proposal to relocate CSX's Gulf Coast main line way inland. And turn the current CSX right of way into a new U.S. Highway 90.

We're speaking, of course, of the route of the Sunset Limited, when it resumes running east of New Orleans.

Something you can't fix with Amtrak 'reform'

2006-04-13T11:34:00.000-05:00

A bridge is out in eastern North Carolina, on a route that six Amtrak trains use daily. CSX owns the bridge and promises to try to repair the bridge in 24 hours.

Now keep in mind that this isn't some lightly-used branch line to Hooterville. This is a main line that sees, according to Reuters, 50 trains a day.

And once again we see the value of Amtrak trains as the canary in the coal mine. It takes the delay of passenger trains to make an important point about the state of the rails in general, and CSX's in particular: There isn't enough profit in railroading to keep the plant in good repair.

And you're not gonna fix that with any plan to "reform" Amtrak.

Unless your aim is to take trains off--in order to move the larger rail issue to the back burner.

Next time, Mr. President, take the train.

2006-04-12T08:25:00.000-05:00

President Bush spoke yesterday in Jefferson City, MO, having flown there (to Columbia, actually) on Air Force One.

What makes this interesting from our point of view? Nearly as many people take trains as planes in this metro area.

In 2004, Columbia Regional Airport (COU) boarded 20,268 passengers. That same year, Amtrak's Jefferson City station boarded or detrained 40,014 passengers. If you assume that boardings = detrainings, you get about 20,000 passengers boarded. Your conductor scores this a dead heat.

What's more, there are places where Amtrak outboards all the airlines combined. Consider Modesto, CA, where 19,798 passengers boarded at Harry Sham Field (MOD). Amtrak boarded an estimated 36,345 at its Modesto station. And with a 2000 metro population of 447,000, Modesto isn't exactly just a wide place in the road.

Your conductor has always found it a little silly to compare a single carrier, Amtrak, against "the airlines," as some so-called railfans insist on doing. Nevertheless, there really are places where Amtrak competes quite well, thank you very much, with "the airlines." Now you know two of them.

- - - -

P.S. It's too bad Air Force One didn't land at Jefferson City Memorial. JEF could use the traffic; it boarded only 154 passengers in 2004, 78 in 2003. (Source: FAA, 6.7MB PDF). Air Force One seats 102 including crew. All by itself, it could have swelled the passenger count by 40%!

In Sanford, Fla., big welcome (and subsidy to match) for a small carrier

2006-04-05T10:45:00.000-05:00

Last week Icelandair transferred its service from Orlando International (MCO) to Orlando Sanford International (SFB).

The Orlando Sentinel's Beth Kassab reported that the maiden flight March 27 got one of those fire-truck "under the arch" salutes. And to sweeten the deal, Sanford is kicking in half a million dollars over the next 7 years to promote the service.

This is all well and good--Icelandair is a fine way to cross the pond--but keep in mind that we're talking about a carrier with exactly one arrival and one departure every day--handling 378 passengers per day at most. Which is 32% fewer passengers than Amtrak handled in its single daily arrival and departure at Sanford's Auto Train terminal in 2005.

In Chicago, what it takes to get rid of 'intolerable delays'

2006-04-03T08:37:00.000-05:00

The way now seems clear for Chicago O'Hare International Airport to expand capacity and "make intolerable delays a thing of the past," according to one expert.

Price tag: $15 billion
Completion date: 2013

On today's congested railways, it will take more than gumption and org-chart shuffles to purge Amtrak's network of delays. It will take capital investment. And the time to see the investment all the way through.

Hooters Air goes buh-bye - plus the triumph of hope over experience

2006-03-30T08:26:00.000-06:00

After a week of hemming and hawing, they came out and said it. Sorta. The official announcement is no more Hooters Air reservations past April 17. But since that's also the date of the last flight out of Myrtle Beach, SC, that's probably the end.

Hooters is the second high-profile airline shutdown this year; Independence Air quit flying Jan. 5. Some of Independence was bought by the bankrupt Northwest Airlines, which plans to use it to launch a regional carrier called Compass Airlines. That is, if the pilots union and a bankruptcy judge approve.

As a note to all the Amtrak-bankruptcy fans out there, here are 2 unpleasant facts of life in bankruptcy:

Judges rule. You have to get a permission slip from the bankruptcy judge to do much of anything beyond continuing operations.
Getting all those permission slips costs big money.
- United paid its bankruptcy lawyers $335 million in its 38 months under Chapter 11.
- Delta's lawyer bills are running about $10 million a month.
- Northwest's are running just under $5 million a month.

Meanwhile, ~~airfans~~ investors in Columbus plan to start their own airline. They even have a fun little name for it: Skybus. But of course naming is the easy part. As a skeptical Tom Parsons, founder of bestfares.com, told the Dispatch, "There is no such thing as the friendly skies anymore."

More great observations about the extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of startup airlines appear in this IAGblog entry.

Once again, your conductor must ask: Is it possible that it's just a wee bit more difficult to make money carrying passengers than critics and railfans would have us believe?

Megastunt: $1 bus trips out of Chicago

2006-03-28T08:51:00.000-06:00

to places like Detroit, St. Louis and Minneapolis. Coach USA's new Megabus brand is launching service here in the USA out of its Chicago hub.

Maybe this will be some good news for Coach USA's owner, Stagecoach Group plc--which has a rough time of it since buying Coach USA for £1.2 billion ($1.7 billion) in 1999.

In 2001, the company was forced to write down the value of Coach USA by some £376 million
In 2002, it took another £575 million writedown for Coach USA and accelerated plans to "restructure" the subsidiary by selling off big "non-essential" chunks of it.

Got all that? Stagecoach paid £1.2 billion for Coach USA and within 3 years marked it down nearly 80%!

To shed load, Stagecoach sold its Coach USA business in New England to Peter Pan Bus Lines in 2003.

Stagecoach is also in the train business big-time. It holds three passenger-train franchises in the UK and has a 49% share of Virgin Trains.

Does Megabus represent a competitive challenge to Amtrak? To some extent, sure. Amtrak killer? Probably not. Back east, LimoLiner hasn't exactly pushed Acela off the rails.

In Gary, Ind., what it takes to move forward

2006-03-26T11:10:00.000-06:00

As the name indicates, Gary Chicago International Airport (GYY) nurses hopes of becoming a reliever passenger airport for the Chicagoland region. In February. the airport got some good news: the promise of a 10-year, $58 million loan program from the FAA.

Why is this such a big deal? As the Northwest Indiana Times reports, the airport

will no longer have to depend on annual congressional funding allocations. Instead, it can move forward with long-term efforts outlined in a 20-year master plan -- including railroad relocation and runway extensions.

One of the biggest hobbles on Amtrak is, of course, its dependence on annual congressional funding allocations. Congress prefers to string Amtrak along one year at a time. Critics like to bash Amtrak for pursuing short-term goals--but if the short term is all Congress gives you, what other terms are there to manage for? If we want an Amtrak planned and managed for the long term, it's time to tell Congress to give it one.

P.S. Note the word "hopes" in the first paragraph. Although several airlines have flown out of GYY in recent years, the airport appears to have no current passenger service.

Southeast shut down in November 2004
Pan Am pulled out June 30, 2002
Hooters Air's last GYY flight was Jan 9 of this year. (UPDATE: Looks like Hooters' last flight, period, will be April 17.)

For photos of the airport's two (yes, two) passenger boarding bridges and its baggage claim area (yes, area), click here.

UK update: Sunderland gets direct trains to London

2006-03-25T09:53:00.001-06:00

Britain's Rail Regulator approved Grand Central Railways' new service on March 23, over the objections of the operator GNER, the primary user of the East Coast Main Line.

Seems a little odd to your conductor that even though GNER doesn't own the tracks (Network Rail does), it would still claim dibs on who gets to use them.

Grand Central now joins Hull Trains and the airport shuttle Heathrow Express among the "open access" operators on the UK's rails. And so the Great UK Rail Privatization Experiment rumbles on.

There really aren't many parallels between the UK passenger-train network and Amtrak (a topic we'll examine regularly), but here's one: Outside the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak functions much like an open-access operator. It gains access to the rails only through careful negotiation and occasionally government intervention--and the process can take time. Lots of it. No clearer example of that, of course, than what it took to get Amtrak's Downeaster running between Boston North Station and Portland, Maine.

Why transportation matters: It means jobs

2006-03-08T14:08:00.000-06:00

According to this Newsweek story on low-cost European airlines, "[a]ccording to a standard industry measure, every extra million passengers in the sky bring 3,000 jobs on the ground."

To restate this on an Amtrak-appropriate scale, every 10,000 passengers means 30 jobs.

Now let's be conservative and cut this figure in half. Train passengers probably create fewer jobs than airline passengers because trains require less in the way of "ground services." That still makes 15 jobs for every 10,000 passengers.

Direct v. connecting service: Passengers know the difference

2006-03-05T10:15:00.000-06:00

Amtrak-watchers occasionally clamor for Amtrak to extend the Heartland Flyer south to San Antonio and reroute the Texas Eagle west from Fort Worth to El Paso. Under this scenario, passengers who want to travel from, say, Texarkana to Austin would have to change trains in Fort Worth. As would passengers from L.A. to San Antonio. Currently these are one-seat rides on the Eagle.

But here's a news flash from the UK: Passengers are smart enough to know the difference between direct and connecting service.

Residents of Sunderland will know tomorrow if Britain's rail regulator will allow a new "open access" carrier onto the East Coast Main line--giving them a one-seat ride to London. Current service involves a change in Newcastle. At best.

Sunderland isn't exactly a wide place in the road. Grand Central Railways claims "more than a million people" in its proposed service area. And in a country where 70% of all train service has one endpoint in Greater London, direct service there is a very big deal.

It's one thing to draw lines on a map--quite another to change human behavior.

We saw that on the Amtrak system about a decade ago, when Amtrak's board cut all but one western full-line train to less-than-daily service. The consultant who cooked up this plan figured that travelers would simply adjust their schedules to fit the train's. But they didn't. As the Amtrak board learned the hard way, people want to go at their own convenience.

As Amtrak's network expands, a key goal should be to expand the number of city pairs with direct service. For example, your conductor favors one-seat service from Milwaukee to St. Louis, Indianapolis or even Detroit. That would require run-thru capability at Chicago Union Station. The good news: The track is already there. All that's needed is targeted capital investment to make it passenger-train-friendly.

Something you'll never read in a Delta news release:

2006-03-03T16:32:00.000-06:00

Delta lost $36.60 per passenger in January.

On March 3, the company reported a $300 million loss for the month. On Feb. 3, it reported boarding 8.24 million passengers in January.

You'll find all kinds of ratios reported in those news releases:

yield (revenue per passenger mile)
revenue per available seat mile
cost per available seat mile
earnings/loss per share
average load factor (revenue passenger miles per available seat miles)

But you'll never see "loss per passenger" quoted in an airline's investor-relations news release.

Why? Because it's a pseudo stat. It doesn't tell an investor anything worth knowing. So why do Amtrak critics continue to cite "loss per passenger" in their news releases?

In South Dakota, billions for freight, not one cent for passengers

2006-02-28T09:31:00.000-06:00

Fortune reports that Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) added an earmark to last summer's transportation bill that greased the skids for a $2.5 billion loan to the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern for a new rail line from South Dakota to Wyoming's Powder River Basin, a source of low-sulfur coal.

Hmm . . . South Dakota and Wyoming. What do those two states have in common? Why, they're the only 2 states in the "lower 48" with no Amtrak service.

In an unfortunately unrelated development, folks in Aberdeen--a city DM&E considers a "partner in progress"--are restoring their historic downtown depot. The restored building will serve many different functions. "Train station," however, won't be one of them.

To be sure, better access to relatively clean coal is a public good. The nation's economy depends on coal-fired power plants. But should this be the only public good required of a public-private rail venture? Your conductor doesn't think so.

Next time the FRA loan program gets revisited, what if some senator reconfigured it to require a passenger component for the projects it funds? Call it a kind of Community Reinvestment Act for the railroad industry.

Remember, it's the Federal Railroad Administration, not just the Freight Railroad Administration.

In St. Louis, private train operator throws in the towel

2006-02-20T09:02:00.000-06:00

Visitors to St. Louis Union Station may recall seeing the green-painted cars of RailCruise America parked on a siding west of the train shed. The "Green Train" was a popular choice for dinner excursions and charter moves, running "full to sold out" most of the year. At least one politician whistlestopped from its observation car.

Now its owner has sold the train to Kansas City Southern Railway and moved out of Union Station.

Rising costs were cited as one reason for the owner's decision. Another was the stunning realization that passengers hate late trains.

[T]he increasing congestion on the railroads resulted in a certain unpredictability of departure and arrival times. Higher prices with uncertainty do not make for good customer relations.

Moral of the story: Congestion and delays are not isolated to Amtrak. They are a fact of life on the nation's railways for all operators: freight, passenger, public, private, excursion, scheduled. At some point it will become necessary to make the condition of the national rail network a national priority.

The secret subsidy for Japan's railroads

2006-02-17T15:08:00.000-06:00

NARP's Feb. 17 hotline makes an excellent point about debt service. Amtrak carries about $4 billion of debt, and servicing it will cost the railroad about $295 million this year.

When Japanese National Railways was broken up and privatized, in 1987, JNR carried 37.1 trillion yen of debt on its books. The government handed about one-third of this debt to the private companies and retained the remaining 22.7 trillion.

The plan was for the government to knock down the debt through asset sales. Not only did that not happen, the old JNR debt actually rose to about 25 trillion yen. How much is that? At 118 yen to the dollar (check here for current exchange rate), that's $210 billion.

Remember, debt you don't have to carry is debt you don't have to service.

So what's the cost of servicing that debt?

Interest rates in Japan are extremely low by U.S. standards. In 2004, yields on 10-year government bonds ranged from 1.3% to 1.9%. If we take the midpoint of this range, we can calculate that the Japanese government still shoulders a burden of more than $3 billion a year.

Remember, interest is an operating expense. Interest forgone is therefore an operating subsidy.

Some privatization fans continue to insist that privatization would end operating subsidy for passenger trains. But that didn't happen in Britain, and it clearly didn't happen in Japan either.

Harris poll: We want more passenger-train travel

2006-02-15T08:25:00.000-06:00

Harris Interactive reports that Americans "would like to see an increasing proportion of [passenger and freight] traffic going by rail."

44% want a greater share for commuter trains
35% want a greater share for long-distance trains

Who should pay for transportation improvements? For "the nation as a whole," as opposed to "your community," 68% said that's the federal government's responsibility.

Survey was taken Dec 8-14, 2005, and released Feb. 8. Read the news release here.

Your airport's closed? Ride Amtrak to one that's open!

2006-02-12T14:38:00.000-06:00

The Northeast got a little snow over the weekend.

Boston Logan Airport is shut down. La Guardia, JFK and Newark Liberty were shut down Sunday morning.

But Philadelphia International is open, and Washington Reagan National reopened Sunday afternoon.

And though some trains have been cancelled, Amtrak is still running over the Northeast Corridor. Delayed, to be sure, but running.

That's good news for someone like Emily Hughes, the New York-based figure skater who needs to catch a flight to Turin, to take Michelle Kwan's place on the U.S. Olympic team.

In Minot, selling bricks to renovate the Amtrak station

2006-02-09T09:58:00.000-06:00

In nearly 3/4 of its stations, Amtrak is a tenant. It is not in the station-building business. So when Minot, North Dakota, prepares to renovate its Amtrak station, it draws on block grants and local matching funds. Those sources are good for $360,000. But the estimate is for $500,000. To make up some of the difference, Minot plans to sell paving bricks engraved with personal messages.

Minot's Amtrak station, busiest in North Dakota, handled 33,314 passengers in 2005; that's up from the 29,511 passengers handled in 2004. Exactly two trains call there daily, the eastbound and westbound Empire Builder.

The bricks are a great idea, but can you imagine an airport financed that way?

Amtrak en español

2006-02-08T13:45:00.000-06:00

It's up: Amtrak's new Spanish-language sister site: http://espanol.amtrak.com

In Festus, Mo., corporate pilots seek federal subsidy

2006-02-06T08:24:00.001-06:00

The city of Festus, Missouri, is looking at options for its municipal airport. At 2,200 feet, the runway is too short for most corporate aircraft, and a pilots association has a plan for airport expansion:

Get the feds to pick up the tab.

The group Citizens for Airport Economic Expansion, which currently runs the airport for the city, wants Jefferson County to take over the airport, in which case,

the federal government could conceivably pay for 95 percent of the purchase of the airport and its expansion through a matching grant program, CAEE maintains.

With an estimated $7 to $8 million price tag for the purchase and expansion of the facility, the county would be on the hook for about $350,000, according to CAEE estimates.

Pay $350K and get $7 million of improvements, to benefit owners of corporate aircraft. For a airport that hangars all of 30 planes and saw 20 operations/day in 2005.

It's enough to make one wonder how much it would cost to establish Amtrak service in Festus--a town the Texas Eagle already passes through. Not to mention what other train stations would look like if FRA ran a 95/5 matching program.

Whatever happened to baby JetBlue?

2006-02-03T09:28:00.000-06:00

Seems like only yesterday that the rail "fans" were clamoring for Amtrak to be more like JetBlue. Maybe it already is.

JetBlue just reported a quarterly loss of $42.4 million.
Its executives don't expect JetBlue to make money again until next year.
They bungled the opportunity to lock in fuel deliveries at predictable prices, as Southwest's managers have done, through a financial technique known as hedging.
Investors clearly don't like any of this news. (For latest JBLU quote, check here.)
And according to the government's latest Air Travel Consumer Report, JetBlue ranks dead last among the majors in on-time performance. Dead last. Just 63.1% of its flights arrived within 15 minutes of the time published in the timetable.

Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.

Guardian: Passengers abandon northern flights for Virgin's [trains]

2006-02-02T10:11:00.000-06:00

In September 2004, Virgin Trains' West Coast service had a 40% share of the London-Manchester market. Then everything changed.

Virgin rolled out new Pendolino trainsets, in a launch timed to coincide with new timetables that cut 35 minutes off the travel time between the 2 cities.

When those shiny new trains hit smoother, faster rails, guess what happened?

Share rose to 60%, as reported in The Guardian
Virgin West Coast's operating results improved and subsidy dropped--from 12.1 pence per passenger-km in 2003-04 to 3.3 pence per passenger-km in 2004-05.
And the airlines are on the defensive. The regional carrier BMI saw its London-Manchester trade cut 26%.

What brought the speeds up and travel times down? A £7.6 billion public investment in the West Coast Main Line, the corridor that connects London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. (PDF map here.)

That's billion with a B, and we're talking about pounds, not dollars. (Look up today's exchange rate here.)

And with these improvements in place, Virgin launched an ad campaign trumpeting "the return of the train." Download the MPG file of Virgin's TV commercial here.

Moral of the story: Where appropriate capital investment occurs, more travelers consider trains and more travelers choose them.

Guardian: "Why does anyone fly to Brussels any more?"

2006-02-02T10:02:00.000-06:00

Ros Taylor from the UK's Guardian reports that 2/3 of the passengers traveling between London and Brussels go by train.

The piece of transportation infrastructure that makes this possible is, of course, the Channel Tunnel. The passenger carrier Eurostar carried nearly 7.5 million passengers through the tunnel in 2005.

It is fashionable in this country to deride the passenger train as obsolete. But as this story proves, where appropriate capital investment occurs, a reporter can credibly ask, "Why would anyone fly when he/she could take the train?"

How much do freight delays cost Amtrak?

2006-01-27T12:23:00.000-06:00

In a Jan. 23 filing with its bankruptcy judge, Delta Air Lines claimed that delays cost it "$38 per minute per flight."

Now we don't know how much an en-route delay costs Amtrak. But we do know how many minutes Amtrak trains are delayed. They're in Amtrak's own Monthly Performance Reports.

In the month of September 2005, Amtrak incurred 309,000 freight-related delay minutes:

Amtrak operated nearly 1.76 million train miles over its major host railroads. Amtrak trains were delayed 1,594 minutes for every 10,000 train miles over this portion of its network. Total delay: 281,000 minutes.
Amtrak ran another 268,000 train miles over smaller host railroads in September, over which it was delayed 1,041 minutes per 10,000 train miles. That makes 27,900 more delay minutes.

Over the whole fiscal year? 3.84 million delay minutes. How much do they cost Amtrak? Enter a figure and click "Calculate."

Cost to Amtrak for each minute of delay: $
Total estimated cost: $ million

Whatever cost figure you choose, there should be no question about these points:

Delays cost Amtrak money.
3.84 million minutes is a lot of delay.

Bombs away - again

2006-01-27T08:38:00.000-06:00

A contractor and an engineering firm are suing each other over problems with DFW Airport's Skylink train. Joining the fun is Bombardier, which is suing the contractor for

an unspecified amount of "additional costs, expenses and damages" that Bombardier said it incurred from not being able to use the bridge to test the Skylink train, according to court documents.

Bombardier, you'll recall, is the company that designed and built the Acela trainsets and pre-emptively sued Amtrak in November 2001, seeking $200 million in damages, before the final order was even delivered.

Many railfans found Bombardier's claim credible: that Amtrak ordered the Acelas four inches too wide to allow full active tilt over a portion of their route. Tilt is a passenger-comfort feature, not a safety feature; it allows trains to pass through curves at speeds that might otherwise be disorienting.

The suit was settled with no finding as to who was responsible for the extra four inches. Let me repeat that: no finding.

Recall also that Bombardier bought the Adtranz railcar maker from DaimlerChrysler in April 2001 for $725 million--then turned around the very next year and sued DCX for $1.4 billion claiming that the seller misrepresented the value of Adtranz's assets. (Wonder what part of "due diligence" BBD didn't understand.) This action was settled in 2004 by shaving $209 million off the sale price.

And by then, Bombardier could probably use the money. This chart shows the price of Bombardier's Class B shares over the last 5 years. Check here for their current price.

FT: Ryanair to charge fee for luggage check-in

2006-01-26T10:59:00.000-06:00

The unbundling of passenger travel continues. The European discount carrier Ryanair will start charging £2.50 for each checked bag--while planning to cut each ticket by a like amount. The carrier estimates that half its passengers check only one bag. Those who carry on--up to 10kg, or 22 pounds, allowed--will save money.

Will this practice spread to other carriers? If it goes down OK with Ryanair's customers, the answer is probably yes.

Something tells me that the people who claim they want Amtrak "run like a business" didn't have this particular business in mind.

In China, passenger trains are mass transportation.

2006-01-26T10:40:00.000-06:00

Newsweek reports that over the Lunar New Year period, some 144 million Chinese will travel by train. That's about 11% of the population.

Compare that with the United States. AAA estimated that 63.5 million Americans traveled at least 50 miles over the Christmas-New Year period. Of those, 12 million went by common carrier: plane, train or bus combined.

What makes China's mass holiday movement possible is that China continues to invest in its railway network: between expansion and modernization, some $20 billion this year alone. And we're not talking about a Riding the Iron Rooster network anymore. China's rail network includes a new rail line to Tibet as well as a 19-mile maglev line connecting Shanghai's airport and central business district.

Investment in the passenger-train network yields significant social benefits. You get what you pay for.