trains

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AMTRAK EXPANSION NOW!!


I was pretty discouraged about writing after my last post that admonished people against voting for Trump and yet they did and now where are we?

I saw an article that attempted to say AMTRAK is reasonably similar to the European rail system. I can only wonder what that guy was smoking. First of all, all major routes are electrified, something AMTRAK needs to expand. Secondly, all large cities are connect by many trains each day. Only the Northeast Corridor, Chicago to St. Louis, and the L.A. to San Diego route can claim that. There may be one or two I missed but I hope I made my point. For example, if you want to go to Chicago from New York there are two trains but they take different routes. The old “Water Level” route of the New York Central Railroad was the prime route to Chicago with many trains each day. Today there is but one train connecting New York to Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago. This route is begging to be a high speed rail corridor for people going from New York to Buffalo or Cleveland. There are probably more the 25 million people along this route who, if there was decent frequency, would use it over the hassle at the airport. Think of someone wanting to go from Rochester NY to Cleveland. There is only one train and it leaves Rochester at 11:29PM and arrives in Cleveland at 3:53AM. They couldn’t do better than that? This train only works well for people in New York who are going all the way to Chicago. Coach is only $47 and private rooms are $265 one way and $467 the other. AMTRAK needs to go to a single price policy rather than using airline schemes of fares.

The U.S. Department of Transportation, Surface Rail had designated a number of corridors across the U.S. Several regional corridors do not even have rails meaning they are considered one thing while being another. Priorities are at odds with the states, especially more conservative states like New Hamshire.

Then there are the missing lines that cannot be made sense of. For example, there is a bus but not train from Detroit to Toledo. Trains are much more efficient and passengers will take a train before a bus. There once was a route that went from Cleveland to St. Louis connecting many intermediate sized cities. There is no such train today. Then there is the St. Louis to Los Angeles train that only runs 3 days a week. I have never heard why this is that way. And the big hole in the system is the Chicago to Miami route. AMTRAK actually had such a route at one time but it got eliminated because of Congressional foolishness.

There used to be an AMTRAK train that went from L.A. to Salt Lake City which included a stop in Las Vegas. Airlines love the LA to Las Vegas route, a real money maker but no trains. If you look at an AMTRAK map you will see blue lines that indicate AMTRAK’s Thru-Way Buses. Most of those routes are former train routes! If the U.S. truly wants to make AMTRAK at the level of European trains, it has a lot of catching up to do.

Electrification of routes in the East and on the West Coast are a must. Energy efficient and cost effective routes. Right now the only expansion of AMTRAK is happening in Maine where the progressive state is looking at its future and is actively upgrading existing track to accommodate passenger rail. This route sees 5 trains a day and is quite profitable for AMTRAK. It would seem to me that a state like Wyoming which currently has no AMTRAK trains, although they once did, would do well to promote rail travel through their state to Salt Lake City.

One last thought. Before all the rail mergers started in the 1960s, there used to be seasonal trains to ski resorts. Anyone who has been to one of these knows how horrible both driving and parking is. The old railroads used to run what they called “Ski Trains.” Such trains were very popular.

AMTRAK needs to go back to before it existed, the 1950s, and see what routes were serviced by rail and the frequency of the trains and make plans use those routes as a baseline.

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Study: World has 9 years to avert [climate] calamity


First, I must give credit to the Boston Globe, November 12, 2022, p. A4, for that heading, it being, excepting the setoff word, climate, a direct copy of its subtitle to “War may have put climate goals out of reach.”

I found this article absolutely stunning until I read its contents and then did a bit of research. It amazes me the amount climate change deniers still in the world today. Even more, those in political power who take no, or little action towards changing their nation’s responsibility towards reducing our greenhouse gas epidemic. It must be noted that most scientists, probably an overwhelming number, are agreement over our impended doom from these emissions.

The chart below lists the greenhouses emission by each country’s total in descending order. Notice the United States, which claims to be doing so much, is in the number 2 position! This is entirely unacceptable. Number 3 India is an interesting case that along with its status on this chart, it also has the ignominious reputation of have amount the 10 most polluted cities in the world, mixed in are Pakistan and other 3rd world countries.

Conservative Americans are amount the first to deny global warning and liberals are shouting about it. But in truth, it is the liberals who are failing the most simply because most compromise on issues where holding your ground is called for.

For the United States, there needs to be a much more concerted effort to reduce CO2 emissions by about 80% and well before 2031, the deadline. The United States cannot be a world leader in this fight when it comes in 2nd in total emissions worldwide. But the above chart is only referencing CO2 pollution. The chart below is referencing Methane pollution for the purpose of this discussion. I have not been able, thus far, to find a country-by-country accounting for this sort of pollution. In the United States, however, two of the most prolific forms of this comes for natural gas leakage at drilling sites and their pipelines, and also from fracking where the search for oil always finds a collection of natural gas which is supposed to be burned off but that only adds to the CO2 pollution.

For at least 30 years now, Europeans have been taking the problem with pollution seriously. Many cities, excepting England, have taken the tack of making their inner cities less friendly to automobiles, and in some cases, banning them altogether. In place of automobiles, they have doubled down of rail transportation and well set out bicycle ways.

Such tactics in the United States would be met with heavy opposition and politicians bent on saving their political butts would bend to that opposition rather than doing the right thing.

Consider, there is no city in the United States that can properly handle 4 lanes of traffic entering its limits with any ease at all, leading to a 40-mile commute taking as much as 1.5 hours or more. All cities on the East Coast plus Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and a host of other cities cannot continue to maintain these roads and the problems that go with them for much longer.

Consider that the average length of a railroad coach is 67′ and that of an automobile almost 15′. Simple math tells us that even the 4 automobiles, were each carrying 3 individuals totaling 12 total is a far cry for the 60 to 100 passengers a single railroad car can carry. A rapid transit car can carry at least 50 people, light rail cars and buses the same. Highway maintenance on average, costs $14,500 per year. By shutting down one lane of a 4-lane highway in both directions for 25 miles saves $750k per year. Now, take the New Jersey turnpike which extends 41 miles from the Garden State parkway to Exit 7, Bordentown and is 8 lanes wide. Remove the 4 inner lanes in each direction, a total of 328 miles, and you have a total savings of $4.7 million a year. New Jersey has an exemplary commuter rail system as well-as an extensive bus system.

In probably every city their existing commuter rail, rapid transit, light rail and buses systems would have to be both modernized and expanded first. But this would give the public several years to plan on the eventual shut down of highway traffic lanes.

Such a bold step forward would cost in the 10s of trillions of dollars to properly implement. Couple that with all cities denying entry to their city center by private automobiles, another public screaming point, and inner-city pollution declines dramatically.

Right now, when it comes to public transportation, the United States is little more than a third-world country. Countries like Italy, Germany, Holland, France and a host of others, put the U.S. to shame in their approach to public transportation. Even China, the world’s greatest polluter, has a rail transportation superior to ours.

Why is this true. First, it America’s continuing love affair with the automobile, next, politicians of all stripes failing to inform the public of what should, by now, be painfully obvious, global warming is happening, and at an ever-increasing rate, just ask Floridians.

There is, however, one form of public transportation, which is one of the largest polluters in the U.S., the nation’s airlines! How do we reduce that? Simple, convince Americans to take AMTRAK on medium length journeys over air travel. This, of course, will require a heavy investment in AMTRAK but the rewards far outweigh the costs. Already, the Northeast Corridor of AMTRAK, from Boston to Washington DC, is heavily traveled by businessmen as well as private travelers. But routes such as Cleveland to Chicago, Atlanta to Miami, Dallas to Houston, Chicago to St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Detroit.

Americans, living near to large cities, must learn a new way of getting around or be culpable for getting the globe to “point of no return,” that point where warming accelerates at a rate no one can stop. Is that nine years hence? I do not know but it seems many scientists are thinking that way. Who are you going to believe, your next-door neighbor, you politicians, or the scientists?

I am only showing the pollution type below, that of “particulate matter” and in this case, that of plastics.

On final note on this. When I was taking a course in Astrophysics at Harvard University, my professor made a point of saying that anything which produces heat adds to global warming. That polluter is nuclear power and everything else which has the side effect of producing heat.

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New England Passenger Rail Transportation


I recent saw and article exhorting the idea of running an overnight passenger train from Boston to Montreal via Portland Maine and then up through Berlin NH. Nice idea but it will not go anywhere, I believe for two reasons. First, I do not think there is enough enroute population to support such a train and the train itself would rely almost entirely on people from greater Boston and Portland Maine for its passengers to Montreal. Not likely. Next, an overnight train means that it will be traveling between Portland and Montreal between midnight and 6AM, not a good time to gain passengers en-route.

But this idea did prompt me to think about how to go about providing a might higher intercity rail transportation route than now exists. That all starts with Boston, the largest city in New England. At present it sports a large number of trains southbound through Rhode Island and Connecticut to New York City. The route is very popular and, of course, has lots of passengers.

The first problem is with Boston itself. It has two stub-end terminals. That means North and South stations are a terminus with no possibility of through trains. In 1991, prior to the beginning of the “Big Dig,” there was a lot of support for running a tunnel next to the sunken highway to provide a connection between the two stations. For reason, that are purely political and lacking any reasonable thinking, the plan was scuttled with a myriad of illogical explanations. As someone who was working in transportation and had been at a transportation seminar given by the late Paul Tsongas at the University of New Hampshire, civil engineers who were fully involved with the “Big Dig” explained how easy and inexpensive the plan was. And so here we are, 30 years later, and no closer to a solution.

Back in the 1940s, the solution between the Maine Central, the Boston and Maine, and the New Haven railroad was to run trains from Portland and points northward south through Worcester and then to Norwich and onward to New York and Washington.

Today, the state of Massachusetts and the MBTA, are trying to go it alone and increase east-west rail service with no eye towards any north-south service. While that is laudable, it falls far short of what is truly needed.

First, the six New England states needs to come together in a passenger rail consortium. In this manner, plans for passenger rail in all directions and involving all the states could be addressed. For instance, one of the easiest ways to get some much-needed inter-city rail, AMTRAK must be involved. The states themselves are going to have to pick up a large portion of the cost for upgrading the existing rail, and in some cases, relaying rail on long abandoned right-of-way.

First, the MBTA needs to stay out of the intercity rail service save that within Massachusetts and the long-established route to Providence. Most people in southern New Hampshire are looking to the MBTA to provide rail service to Nashua and Manchester with the possibility of Concord being included. The state would be better served by AMTRAK much in the way eastern New Hampshire and the cities of Exeter, Durham and Dover are now. This has become a very popular route. The same should work in going to Manchester. But in the longer term, this could also open up the possibility of rehabilitating the rail route north of Concord all the way to White River Jct. and then provide service to Montreal, a long tried and true route in our now distant past.

At this point, it is proper to suggest that the MBTA be dropped as a provider of much increased service to Springfield and Pittsfield and that AMTRAK be the entity of choice, of course with state assistance. This might also open up the possibility of extending such service to Albany and beyond. Amtrak does provide a number of trains out to Buffalo, in addition the Lake Shore Limited which starts in Boston, there are three other trains passing through Albany on their way to Buffalo.

In the end, the only way any of this happens, or happens to any degree, is if all the New England States take part.

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Taking the Train Across America


I have taken the train across the United States, Boston to San Francisco, both ways twice.  It is a trip like none other.  You do not have to be a lover of trains to truly enjoy the trip either.  There are not a lot of such cross-country trains, but they do exist.  You can leave from any large city in the Northeast to start your trip.  It is necessary, with one exception, that you go through Chicago to make a connection for the rest of the trip.

That one exception is a train that runs from Washington D.C. to New Orleans, and from there onward across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to Los Angeles.  The only difference with this train, the link that goes from New Orleans to Los Angeles only runs three days a week while all the routes departing Chicago daily including all holidays.

One of the routes leaving Chicago heads in a southwesterly direction taking you through Las Vegas before reaching Los Angeles.  The next route, leaves Chicago for Denver, and thence through Salt Lake City before reaching the outskirts of San Francisco.  The fourth train takes a northern route traveling Chicago to Milwaukee, Minneapolis and then across the northern states to Seattle.

My trip started in Boston.  At the time the train left in the late afternoon and is named the Lakeshore Limited.  It travels through Worcester and Springfield Massachusetts before reaching Albany New York.  At this point the train is linked up with another train from New York City.  From there the train travels through Syracuse, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toledo before reaching Chicago.  Unfortunately, the lateness of the day keep the beautiful upstate New York scenery from view, however that is remedied on the return trip where the train enters western New York in the early dawning hours.  This train is equipped with a diner, sleeping accommodations, along with regular coach cars.  The sleeping accommodations give one a private compartment for daytime travel.  Service aboard the train is friendly and the food is really pretty good, far better than anything any airline has to offer.

Once reaching Chicago you have a layover of several hours while you wait for your next train.  The Chicago station is an entirely renovated facility that is very clean and offers good restaurants and other places for people to shop or just lounge.

The San Francisco leg of the trip leaves Chicago early in the afternoon.  As with the previous train accommodations include coaches, a diner, and sleeping facilities.  But unlike its eastern brother, it also has several high level cars from which one can enjoy a 360 degree vista of the passing countryside.  This is particularly attractive after the train leaves Denver early the next morning and follows the Green River valley through some remote territory.  You go a long time with no road in site as you hug the side of a river with the valley walls sweeping upwards on either side.

The next morning as you depart Nevada you enter the eastern edge of the Rockie Mountains.  One stop, Colfax, is particularly close to Lake Tahoe, one of the most beautiful lakes anywhere in the U.S.  During this portion of the journey the train slips through numerous short tunnels before re-emerging in the gorgeous mountainous countryside.

Unlike air travel, people on trains recognize they are going to be in each other’s company for quite some time, and there is a certain friendliness that arises from these circumstances.  Even if you are making the trip alone, you will find many people who are more than happy to pass the hours in interesting conversations.

Also, as good as the food on the train is east of the Mississippi River, it is that much better to the west of it.  AMTRAK has worked hard to maintain some of the old-time romanticism of rail travel and its good food and friendly atmosphere.  On these trains, because of space limitations, you may well find yourself sharing your table with a stranger but that becomes an opportunity to meet someone new and interesting.  The waiters are polite and efficient, and you never feel rushed.

I cannot recommend that everyone try this at least once in their lifetime.  It is well worth the investment.

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What Happens When Oil Runs Low?


Many experts believe we have discovered, and quantified, pretty much all the oil available on Earth.  If that is true, and there is good reason to believe it is, at our current rate of consumption, it is unlikely we will make it half way through the century with affordable fossil fuel.  Think of it this way, in the past 20 years we have used as much oil as we did in the 80 years prior to that.

I filled up my tank today.  It cost me about $35.  It occurred to me as I finished pumping that the money I had just spent on gasoline is equal to half a day’s pay for a lot of people.  And with the price going up as it is, it will not be long before a tank of gas will be equivalent to a lot people’s pay for a full day of work.  That means a 20% outlay of gross income for gas?  That is a problem.

Now consider that aircraft use a petroleum derivative that has historically cost 25% more per gallon than what you put in your car.  True, it is aviation grade fuel, kerosene actually, but the point is, the consumer pays for that fuel in the price of the ticket of course.  Now think down the road to 2050.  By that time oil has become a lot more scarce than it is now and the price of fuel has taken many people out of the car ownership market.  Those people are not going to be opting for a high-priced airline ticket either.  The thing is, until someone comes up with something revolutionary as a fuel for aircraft, they are stuck with petroleum.  While automobiles will be switching to batteries, ships to nuclear power, aircraft do not have any alternative on the horizon.

I think as soon as 10 years from now you will be seeing the effects of skyrocketing aviation fuel causing a steady decline in passengers as tickets become too expensive.  Many airlines will go under, small cities will lose air service all together, and you may well see the re-introduction of trans-oceanic passenger travel as an affordable, though slow, method of overseas travel.

How many of you heat your houses with oil?  That is going to be a problem.  And even natural gas, though far more plentiful now, is not renewable.  Do we switch back to coal-fired furnaces or will industry give us affordable solar alternatives?  Will the nuclear power plant suddenly become popular?

 

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The Immediate Need For Greatly Improved Public Transportation


When I was a kid, I remember my father buying gasoline for twenty-five cents.  That was in the late 1950s.  Then, in 1967 and early 1968 I worked at a service station where I saw regular gasoline prices at thirty cents.  But that was when we imported less than 50% of  our oil.  In 1974 we saw that changed suddenly with the organization of OPEC.  Whatever people may think of OPEC, it was formed as a result of American and British oil companies in the middle east indubitably sharing their profits.  The main American company was called the Arab American Oil Company, or ARAMCO.  Justifiably the hosting nations took exception to the many decades of foreign oil interests in their countries.  Our import oil prices doubled which led to a quick increase at the pumps, from an average of 35 cents to 55 cents.  I remember rationing and long lines at the oil pumps.  The 24-hour service station temporarily ceased to exist in many places.  That meant traveling at night required a lot of planning when you were going long distances.  At the time I was traveling from Virginia to Massachusetts.

I do not see such things happening again in our immediate future but it is in our future.  There is no debate that it will happen, just when it will happen.  America’s foray into the world of alternative sources of portable energy have been slow, mostly because at present the demand for such vehicles is still small.  Also, Americans have adjusted to increasing oil prices rather smoothly and without a lot of complaint.  The American love affair with the automobile has yet to end but it has been altered slightly.  The old behemoths of the roadways are largely a thing of the past although relative gas economy really has not increased all that much.  Large and mid-sized American cars are still wont to get much over 22 miles to the gallon in urban operation, and not a whole lot more in highway driving.  For as much as automobile companies like Toyota and Honda boast about how economical their small car are, are they are, they still pale to known possibilities.  But the known possibilities, electric primarily, lack for power and are somewhat limited in their distances.  The problem is a simple one, once you leave your home with an electric automobile, the availability of a place to recharge you automobiles batteries are minimal.

That said, we have in place, somewhat, a public transportation system that can to some degree offset the use of automobiles.  Unfortunately, most of the public does not understand the basic necessities of building, operating, and support of a comprehensive public transportation system.   Simply put, Americans are spoiled by the Interstate highway system and lack confidence in the present public transportation system to fill their needs.  The lone except to this are their airlines.  Americans are very knowledgeable where airlines are concerned.

I read in the Boston Sunday Globe today that a plan for high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco is meeting with a high degree of opposition.  Cited as the reasons are the high price of building such a rail link and the link’s lack of service to many of California’s major cities.  It is obvious to me that the people have missed the most basic idea of the rail link, how to provide high-speed, in excess of 120 MPH, service between its two largest cities.  The planners knew that building such a link along the coast, which would link most of California’s major cities, would have been unreasonably costly.  But putting the line up the central valley and avoiding the coastal mountains, allowed a much lower price tag and a sure way to gain the high speeds necessary to make it a true high-speed rail link.

America trails the rest of the world in high-speed rail and other forms of public transportation.  It is understandable that people living between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River may not see the need for increased public transportation in their areas.  But the  people in the rest of the country absolutely need it and sooner than later.  Our day of gasoline reckoning is much closer than many want to admit but when it gets here unless we have made proper plans, we will be hurting for a long time.

Let me be clear on one point.  Public transportation systems almost without exception bring in less than 50 cents in revenue for every dollar spent.  Most public transportation systems have not covered their operating costs since the 1950s and some even before that.  That means tax dollars make up the difference.  We have to accept that for our future and learn how to properly fund our public transportation.  What every American has to understand that public transportation exists for the common good.  There is a trade-off regardless of what you support.  If you decease public transportation then you necessarily increase the use of private cars on our streets and highways.  Those are your only options.

All of our urban transportation systems were designed in the early 20th Century when most Americans lived in urban areas.  The mass production of the automobile shifted our population centers and created the suburbs.  In the early 1900s when you left the city you were almost immediately in the country.  That is no longer true.  If you look at the rail route from New York City to Philadelphia you find almost a continuous urban and suburban type of population.  In 1900, you left New York and Newark urban areas and went into the countryside until you reached the small city of Trenton.  Then back into the countryside until you reached Philadelphia.  There is virtually no countryside left along that stretch with the invention of the suburbs and their linking highways.  Even more, the now populous urban centers in Florida, Texas and California were virtually non-existent in 1900.  In the case of California, an extremely well planned and extensive public transportation system was virtually dismantled by 1960 and has cost the state billions of dollars to just start its recreation.

In the early 1990s U.S. transportation planners gathered and invited urban planners from Europe and Japan to help identify and plan a comprehensive U.S. system of public transportation.  All forms of public transportation were taken into consideration to include bicycles and pedestrians.  To put this all in perspective, the U.S. is roughly 3.7 million square miles and Europe is roughly 3.9 square miles in area but there is no comparison between the two in transportation.  While the U.S. has a vastly superior road system, it has a vastly inferior public transportation system.  To be fair, the population of Europe is more than double that of the U.S.  But that only excuses the U.S. relative to those areas west of the Mississippi.

Massachusetts has invested billions of dollars in its public transportation systems, primarily the MBTA which now carries more than $3 billion in debt.  The MBTA is threatening serious service cutbacks if the status-quo is maintained.  At the heart of the problem is an aging system, both in infrastructure and equipment.  Reductions in service only provide a disincentive to the public to use the system.  The MBTA, of course, is not the only system that is being forced into making such decisions.  People want a high level of public transportation but do not understand how much it costs to maintain such a system.  Large fare increases can only be offset but increased tax subsidies.  Such subsidies are generally collected at the gas pump in the form of state and federal taxes, and sometimes city taxes.  People in urban states wonder why their gasoline taxes are higher than the more rural states and this, along with road maintenance, is precisely why.

the AMTRACK system has been under attack almost since its inception.  It has been threatened with elimination numerous times if it did not cover its operating costs with its fares.  Such a suggestion is ludicrous.  It also goes against the basic premise of public transportation, a service for the public good.  Long distance AMTRACK service has been the most seriously attacked.  Such attacks are penny wise and pound foolish.

People need to understand that the standards used for freight service and passenger service are extremely different.  The standard for passenger service requires a certain type of rail be used and that the rail be at a particular condition as regards the speed of service allowed.  That is, while freight service at speeds between 40 and 60 MPH maximum are acceptable along a particular route, passenger service along that same route at such speeds is unacceptable and unsupportable.  The concerns for the right-of-way in determining the speed at which a passenger train can travel is the weight of the rail per foot, the age of the rail, the signaling available, the upkeep of the rail bed, and the straightness of the rail.  Freight trains can operate safely in lesser conditions.

Then there is the capital equipment needed.  A single six car train with a diesel-electric engine can cost close to $5 million or more depending on use.  They have a lifetime of about 20 years.  They must be maintained and maintenance costs for any particular piece of equipment necessarily goes up with age.  Again simply put, imagine yourself having to maintain a car you bought in 1992.  That is exactly what many transportation systems are having to do with the rail and bus equipment.  It defies logic except that funding for new equipment is not supplied.

I am putting this in terms of rail transportation because railroads are abandoning rail lines that are no longer profitable.  The thing is, some of these lines are extremely desirable in terms of inter-city and long distance passenger travel.  But once abandoned, these rights-of-way will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to resurrect.   Not only that, the cost of bringing a line in disuse to a level where passenger service is viable is very expensive and that price will only increase as time goes on.  What I am saying is that even minimal service along many routes is desirable in the long-term.  Those long distance trains that ply rural states such as Montana and Wyoming may seem like a waste of funding but they are not.  There is a level of maintenance that is happening that when the need for these routes increases it will be no great problem to increase service along them.  That day will come.  It is not an “if” but a “when.”

There are three investments which need to be made now.  The first is in urban transportation, the second in inter-city transportation, and the third in long distance transportation.  The price tag will be in the many tens of billions of dollars per year but it is an investment that will yield large returns for all Americans.  Such investments will reduce the wear on our roads and highways.  It will decrease our need for imported oil.  It will guarantee us a via transportation system in an emergency.  It is a delayed gratification benefit which is always one of the best benefits anyone can experience.