On Amtrak Cuts And Handling The Truth
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Breaking News — Comments (34) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
First the Amtrak cuts. Their feasibility is discussed here. Very much worth a read.
Secondly, let us address Dan Drezner's cynicism that cutting pork is not politically viable. To be sure, one person's pork is another person's Very Important Public Service and so, it is hard to get rid of. And Dan is right in saying that while it is easy to be outraged in the abstract over pork, that outrage does tend to dissipate a bit when we identify specific programs for the axe. To some extent, it is like asking people whether they are happy with Congress. Invariably, the answer is "No!" and sometimes "F*** no!" but ask those same people whether they are happy with their own Representatives and Senators and suddenly, the responses get a whole lot more positive.
And yet, there is little denying that there is an awful lot in the budget that cries out for elimination (as Dan notes in his second update). The key for the anti-porkers is to stop thinking that this battle will be won in the short term on pure outrage alone. It may be that small government advocates will have to settle for a mere 30% of what we want this year. And perhaps another 30% the next year. And the year after that. Etc.
Eventually, the gains add up and we have a more responsible budget. But they will only add up if we are patient enough to dedicate ourselves to a long term fight in order to bring about that more responsible budget. That will require changing an entire national mindset about the entitlement state and that will require a process that sometimes works in fits and starts. But if the fits and starts frustrate us to the point where we are hesitant about beginning the project itself, then we are defeated even before the fight has begun.
Another thing we ought to remember is that we are not merely after cutting spending. We are also after cutting the growth of regulations in the Federal Registry. Spending works hand in hand the growth of the regulatory state and it is impossible to address the former without addressing the latter. Too many people forget that.
Easy to say, hard to do. I know. But I know no other way to make it easy to bring an axe to wasteful spending and to get the growth of the budget--and the growth of government itself--under control.
Update [2005-9-23 10:51:25 by Pat Cleary]: A fun (and little-known) fact -- if you are laid off from your job at Amtrak, you get six years' full pay and benefits. Do you have a deal like that? Us neither.
« Toward an Understanding of the Obamian Language — Comments (4) | Saddam Hussein Goes on Trial — Comments (20) »
On Amtrak Cuts And Handling The Truth 34 Comments (0 topical, 34 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Seriously. Trains move a lot of people very quickly. We need more of them. Particularly when planes can't fly.
Is Amtrack well run or efficient? No. However the basic concept and the demonstrated need is great.
We could have used a massive train evac of both Houston and New Orleans to make things happen quickly for evac.
Redundancy is expensive yes, until you need it and it's too late.
Shuttling between Boston and New York (sometimes Washington as well.) I paid a huge premium to take the train (and business class when I missed the Acela) -- mostly because I wanted to be able to work while in transit. I forget the exact numbers (blocked them out), but it was many -- many -- times more expensive than the bus, and barely cheaper than flying (if JetBlue gets its act together, then it will soon be twice as expensive as flying.)
This is ridiculous. This should be a milk money run for Amtrak. They should be cleaning up and lowering prices. AFAIK, New York has one of the lowest car ownership rates in the country. The tracks go through one of the highest-density centers anywhere. New York to Boston is just about the right length for a train to beat a plane once you factor in airport transit delays (although the Acela could be faster.)
Not to mention the delays. I would say the trains were on time perhaps 75% of the time to be generous. Sometimes they were an hour late. (To be fair, they seemed to have gotten better recently, though I stopped taking the train during the Summer, right when the Acela brakes blew.)
And yet I find out my expensive ticket is being subsidized!
On the other hand, I do have enough miles to take a train from New York to Chicago, where I'm moving soon. The journey is nineteen hours and they run a train every day, actually, more often I think. Are you kidding me? Who rides that thing?
The Acela is quite nice actually, nice environment to work in, quiet. Two main problems: expensive (you need a spendthrift boss) and a non-zero probability that the train will be significantly delayed and you will miss the meeting you were oh-so-importantly trying to make. With the shuttle, you knew it was going to leave on time and land on time.
I love riding the train. The thing you notice when looking at current rolling stock, though, is that it's really, really badly designed for the modern world. Very heavy, nowhere near as many passengers per pound as a plane, and the tech involved is pure 1950s.
A modern, lightweight, medium-speed train should be able to run for a fraction of the cost of a plane. The high-speed Acela is nice and all, but is a special high-tech case for limited routes.
I'm in favor of making it easier to run trains in place of Amtrak, and the major thing keeping a private venture from doing so is the subsidies from the Federal government that kep Amtrak alive on many runs (along with regulations that protect the Amtrak routes).
...I'm pretty sure Amtrak is profitable in the Northeast corridor.
What was really happening was that your expensive ticket (plus some taxpayer money) was helping to pay for that daily train to Chicago.
worked with the same business model as either airlines or highways it would be profitable. The ownership and maintenance of the tracks/stations should be a federal responsibility as much as building and repairing the interstate highway system.
Opening the tracks to all comers instead of having lines owned and monopolized by private companies would, IMHO, get more trains in operation.
IMO trains are the big underutilized transportation resource in the US.
As Jim Rockford points out, they move a lot of people quickly. They go downtown to downtown, so no extra time spent driving from airports to city centers. Train stations soak up far less downtown real estate than airports (although the rail beds and rights of way chew up some real estate out of town). They also move a given number of people for a much smaller fuel cost than pretty much any other form of transportation, a far from insignificant consideration these days.
Trains are slower than planes, no doubt, but you can get more done on a train than on a plane. If we had the infrastructure for high speed rail in this country, the range of cities for which rail would be a reasonable alternative would increase far beyond the northeast corridor. If we could support 200 mph train travel, 1,000 mile train trips would be quite attractive as compared to air travel. 1,000 miles, for reference, is roughly NYC-JAX, LA-Denver, or NOLA-Chicago.
What is lacking is the railbed infrastructure. Passenger rail in the US shares track with freight, and outside of the northeast the freight carriers own the responsibility for maintenance. They, frankly, don't give rat's behind about passenger traffic, and do just enough maintenance to keep freight traffic happy. If you ride Amtrak on the east coast, for instance, you'll notice the difference as soon as you get south of DC, when CSX takes over railbed maintenance.
I agree with streiff's point, that rail infrastructure should be seen as a federal responsibility, comparable to the highway system. I don't know if there would be much support for this here on free-market-friendly RS, but as a blue-stater government investment in crucial infrastructure makes complete sense to me. I'm not sure we need multiple passenger carriers on given routes, but I agree that we don't necessarily need a national, federally owned passenger carrier. We would, however, benefit enormously from a reliable, high performance intercity passenger rail service.
They tried this in the UK, and it was a complete and utter disaster.
The fact is, the rail companies in this country ARE profitable, even if they maintain their own tracks. They've just eliminated the passanger service because it lost ground to the airlines and busses.
Amtrak is unique in that it both isn't profitable and it doesn't own most of the tracks it rolls over.
Amtrak's problem is that all these stupid Congressmen want them to keep doing these runs where Amtrak is losing $200/seat so they can say they have train service in their district, even if only three people a week use it.
Amtrak makes money between Richmond, VA and Portland, ME. It makes money on the trains to Buffalo and Harrisburg from New York and Philly. It makes money on the route from Chicago to Milwaukee. It makes money on the AutoTrain. It makes money on the Talgo trains out West. It makes money on the state-subsidized trains (the Vermonter and Carolinian, among others) The problem is these stupid cross-country trains that need to go, but Congress keeps mandating their existence.
Heck, maybe passenger rail service could return to the Midwest if the market was allowed to come into play. I could see Amtrak buying some Diesel Multiple Units (small, efficient one or two car trains) and competing better with the busses by offering more frequent service and a better ride. But that won't happen so long as Congress is involved.
Amtrak makes money on the East Coast.
The problem is the various two-and-a-half day trains from Chicago to LA.
in the UK work quite well elsewhere: exhibit A - Shoes. exhibit B- food. exhibit C - automotive engineering.
You are combining two separate problems.
The ownership of the rail lines by the railroads limits their usefulness. I commute by passenger rail over track that is owned by CSX. The signals malfunction with regularity, but there is little consequence if a coal train is stopped for two hours. For the passenger line there is a consequence. By the same token, passenger trains are bumped off their schedule to accomodate CSX trains. I understand that they do that because their money is in freight, but this practice hurts the passenger rail service. And there is no reason it has to be this way. We don't have airlines owning airports and bumping their competitors from landing slots.
The problem with Amtrak being forced into unprofitable routes is well documented. But I don't see where that fact undercuts my argument. In fact, if the government was merely responsible for the rails and roadbeds, Amtrak could be completely privatized and they could drop the unprofitable routes.
Here's a thought you don't see much of. When Rails-to-trails was conceived, it included "railbanking" (http://www.railtrails.org/whatwedo/policy/railbanking.asp).
In other words, all those wonderful hiking and biking paths include a possible future reversion to rail use. Granted, a lot of them are useless for passenger purposes, but they represent an enormous pre-existing resource of rights-of-way which the railroads have already giving up on for freight use. Ergo - there's your dedicated passenger line. Also, they contain huge capital improvements in terms of gross engineering - bridges, embankments, grading/filling, etc..
The "union" stations and terminals scattered about were the industry's original effort at coordination, and to totally separate the service (private) and infrastructure (public) should be the model, paying due regard to Britain's experience.
They lose money on every route, north, south, east and west. I believe that's still true.
The Amtrak Accountability and Reform Act of 1997 ended it.
I have never understood how Amtrak could lose money running trains from Boston to DC. There's a big city every hour on the line, and it would seem to be a perfect fit. Oh well. Here in California, we have Amtrak running the Capitol Corridor train from near San Francisco to Sacramento, which is about 70 miles. Planes are useless. The 7 hour drive between SF and LA could be a wonderful market for high speed trains, but here in CA we are bogged down in debt and we are hearing it would cost 20 billion to build. TWENTY BILLION for a train track? How in the world does Europe manage to run trains everywhere and make them work. (Don't argue, even French trains are super, and fast.)
If you can convince James that he is misunderstanding the constitution, you probably have a legitimate idea.
Thanks for this, it's a very interesting link and I appreciate your including it.
What are your thoughts on the interstate highway system in the context of Madison's letter?
Was that initiative unconstitutional?
Would Madison have approved?
If so, what's different about that vs the waterway system Madison discusses?
If not, was it wrong to build it?
Thanks -
well before New Deal. He was defeated by the C&O canal, the Erie Canal, and the Transcontinental railroad.
That was then, this is now.
Was that initiative unconstitutional?
Yes
Would Madison have approved?
He would have vetoed. He might have approved. Thats what I think we are missing these days. A politician willing to vote against what they think is a good idea.
If so, what's different about that vs the waterway system Madison discusses?
None. He mentioned roads also.
If not, was it wrong to build it?
It was unconstitutional. Wrong is a different question that Im not sure Im qualified to answer. A current example is the War in Afghanistan. Regardless of views on Iraq, it seems that everyone except some complete nutballs think the war in afghanistan is a good idea. It is still unconstitutional because congress never passed a declaration of war.
is that Madison was wrong.
We talk about the free market, but when it comes to transportation, the only vector that seems to be expected to run in a free market is rail. Trucking companies and Greyhound don't own or maintain the highways, and neither, for that matter, do you or I. The airlines don't build or run the airports, and shippers don't build or run ports and harbors. They are all run by, and/or heavily subsidized by, public expenditures. I understand that historically, the railroads have had to own their rights-of-way, but shouldn't we change this?
They merely proceeded over his dead body. :)
Just because we have been doing things wrong for the last 150+ years doesnt mean we should continue down the same course.
His rationale is clearly laid out. Prove he was wrong and Im willing to accept it.
a dead man.
His philosophy might have a romance about it for some, and understandably so, it simply isn't my vision for how the government of the United States should function.
To me its the exact opposite. But still many today agree with him. He takes what I consider to be the definition of a strict constuctionist/originalist view of the constitution. Of course, its easier to know what the original writer meant when you are said original writer.
As a quick aside, does anyone know if Article I, Section 8 was primary written by Madison or if it was Wilson? They were the primary drafters with the convention making all kinds of changes, of course.
Its why Madison's writings are still important to read. This veto gives us a very good view into what the convention meant for the role of the federal government to be.
I just don't think it is very relevant today and I'm not sure we would have a better or stronger nation if we adhered to Madison's vision.
You're also combining issues and leaving stuff out.
A federal takeover of the national rail network (just the tracks) would probably cost tens of billions of dollars, and then re-building it to the point.
Passenger rail, at least you want the kind of passenger rail that's anything like what exists on the East Coast where it's actually competitive with busses or even planes on shorter routes, requires a lot more trackage than freight. In a lot of places, that means adding a second track and straightening the right of way, and if you're really going to get serious about it, you need to sink money into grade separations.
I like trains. But not enough to believe that the federal government should invest tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in taking over part of a profitable industry so we can have marginally more people choosing whoever succeeds Amtrak instead of Greyhound.
And the reason why those freight trains pre-empt you is probably because not every freight train is carrying coal to a power plant that keeps three weeks' supply on hand. Lots of companies have gone to just-in-time delivery, and that means that being on time is extremely important.
If we want to improve commuter rail service, we can just build a few rights-of-way instead of taking over all the track in the country. It's just complete overkill.
Admit it, fiscal responsibility is a myth in the modern Republican Party.