Volume 1, Number 15

William Lindley of Scottsdale, Arizona has issued a declaration of victory for the passenger rail world in North America. His compelling commentary:

Gentle Readers,

These past few weeks you have witnessed the beginnings of the new Golden Age of American passenger rail.

Fifty years of negativism on the subject of passenger trains, and the resulting spirit-crushing socialist bureaucracy, are finally crumbling. The codifying document of the disconsolate movement was the April 1959 special issue of TRAINS magazine entitled “Who Shot the Passenger Train?” which saw the symptom of shrinking schedule-books but utterly misunderstood the disease. It called not for making trains more competitive with the new super-highways and jetways, but saw only a world where over-regulation, over-taxation, and inflexible union rules were beyond the ability to change. Indeed, the magazine effectively calls for the demolition of allegedly useless edifices like New York’s Pennsylvania Station — realized only four years later in “a monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance.” (“Farewell to Penn Station,” The New York Times, October 30, 1963.)

You have seen in the past few weeks here in this space, some of the history of the Northeast Corridor. And you may wonder why — Why, on God’s green Earth, would the Pennsylvania road wish to build an absurdly expensive new station in New York City, which for many years already had the perfectly good Grand Central Station? (That facility became properly known as Grand Central Terminal upon completion of its 1913 rebuild.) And why would the Pennsylvania resort to nearly unproven new technology like underwater railway tunnels, two of them, and a station and connecting tracks requiring the purchase, leveling, and excavation of a huge swath of prime Manhattan real estate?

The answer lies in two seemingly forbidden words: Competition and Profit.

In 1898, the Pennsylvania Railroad derived $14,576,724 in income from its passenger operations, $17,530,769 including mail and express — 26.67% of the total, with $47,122,172 or 71.67% being from freight. Meanwhile the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad had $16,189,359 or 35.33% of its income — well over a third — from passengers, mail, and express. (Source: “Eleventh Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways in the United States for the Year Ending June 30, 1898″, Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington DC 1899, page 348.)

The Pennsylvania road was after the passenger business, particularly the high-dollar through passenger; and, in competition with New York Central, the direct and through traffic of mail, express, and freight between the Mid-Atlantic states and New England. Not to mention the free advertising that the imposing grandeur of Pennsylvania Station would inspire.

New York City’s grand railway edifices did not descend upon the metropolis as gifts from unseen gods. No, Gentle Reader, one hundred years ago — as today — it’s all about money. And those evil words, Competition and Profit. The Grand Central and Pennsylvania stations were, to be blunt, temples of commerce. If you wish to read the details, please pick up a copy of “Conquering Gotham: Building Penn Station and Its Tunnels” by Jill Jonnes.

Now, separated from those years by two World Wars, the advent of super-highways, the Jet Age, and the Space Age, and their passing fancies of tail-finned rockets and Cadillacs, we find ourselves fifty further years removed from those technologies’ heyday. The glamour of the 707, the Saturn V and the Bel-Air convertible has become the reality of “your papers please,” invasive pat-downs, the retirement of the bloated Space Shuttle, and collapsing highway bridges in Minneapolis. All of these have set the stage for America to catch up to what Europe rediscovered two decades ago: Trains make economic, social, and ecological sense.

More passengers are riding trains in Great Britain than ever before, a decade and a half after the railways were privatised. It has not been a perfect process, but the numbers speak for themselves. In France, Veolia – a French company operating buses and passenger trains around the world – has a license to operate passenger trains in competition with SNCF. Germany’s DB has undergone privatization starting in 2008. The list goes on.

Here at home, in the past months we have seen Ed Ellis’s Saratoga and North Creek Railway, part of the Iowa Pacific Holdings group, begin operation of its privately run passenger train. We have seen Caltrain move to recommend that TransitAmerica Services, not Amtrak, operate that San Francisco peninsula railway. We have seen Florida move to work with Florida East Coast on a new passenger train arrangement. Meanwhile in Boston, the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company, not Amtrak, operates MBTA trains. Keolis runs the Virginia commuter trains. New state-sponsored trains in Virginia and Illinois have attracted far more riders than expected. Norfolk Southern has spoken positively about passenger trains from Washington DC to Roanoke and beyond. Even Union Pacific has a good relationship with the Front Runner commuter trains in Utah.

This week I have seen trucks of DB Schenker – Deutsche Bahn’s freight subsidiary of the German railroad – all around Phoenix, a city whose buses are operated by Veolia and the American branch of First Group PLC (a British company who operates buses and passenger trains around the world). And speaking of British passenger train operators, the Palm Beach Post today reported that Virgin Trains was also consulted on the Miami passenger train service. Also please consult the website of the Association of Independent Passenger Rail Operators: There is money to be made, and the eyes and ears of business are open.

Yes, it is at last clear that the new golden age of American passenger trains is upon us; a new age of competition and profit… for the despondent era of “we-can’t-do-it” has been broken.

- William Lindley, Scottsdale, Ariz.

Gil Carmichael, former FRA Administrator during the Bush I years, and former Chairman of the Amtrak Reform Council, as well as the Founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver has started a new series of reports, entitled the Gil Carmichael Report, Investing in Interstate 2.0. The reports are free, informative, and a must read for anyone serious about the future of railroads in the United States. Contact the report distributor at geoff@jdmandassociates.com for your very own copy.

J. Craig Thorpe, noted Amtrak and railroad illustrator is available for all railroads, railroad-related companies, and organizations for his dramatic illustrations on a custom basis. Mr. Thorpe’s impressive gallery of work and contacts for engagement may be viewed on his web site, which is listed below.

“Vice President – Passenger Services” is a title which may be returning to the corporate roster at Florida East Coast Railway. Yet another major railroad is more than flirting with the idea of operating passenger trains; this time, South Florida commuter services for Tri-Rail between West Palm Beach and Miami, and possibly northward along the Florida coast above West Palm Beach.

The Palm Beach Post reported in today’s editions officials with the FEC and the Florida Department of Transportation have been talking in secret – so secret, even members of the Tri-Rail board of directors were unaware of the talks.

Tri-Rail, currently operated under contract by Veolia Transportation between West Palm Beach and Miami, is routed over former Seaboard Air Line Railroad/CSX tracks which run parallel to the FEC tracks, but to the west in suburban areas parallel to mega-laned Interstate 95. The FEC tracks were the original railroad tracks in South Florida, opening South Florida for development early in the 20^th Century. In those pre-historic, pre-air conditioning days, the vast majority of development in Florida was along the coasts, taking advantage of refreshing ocean breezes for relief from the broiling heat. The Seaboard didn’t arrive until the 1920s during the Florida Land Boom.

If Tri-Rail abandoned the former CSX suburban area tracks in favor of FEC’s tracks which go directly through a number of downtown cities such as West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami, it is likely the federal government would demand repayment of a $275 million federal grant which paid for adding a second set of tracks in 2006. A longtime proposal on the table has been for maintaining the current former CSX trackage, but adding the FEC trackage and simultaneously expanding Tri-Rail northward on the FEC to reach coastal counties north of Palm Beach County and areas such as the town of Jupiter. The expanded system would form an upside down “Y” in shape, with West Palm Beach being the only interchange between the two legs of the system.

The Palm Beach Post story says it is likely legislation will be introduced in the next session of the Florida legislature when it meets in early 2012 to allow private firms to bid on the entire operation of Tri-Rail, perhaps completely usurping the current structure. As part of the awarding of the bid to run an expanded system, the winning company would have to agree to operate the system at a price below the current taxpayer contribution.

The cost of operating Tri-Rail has been in the news the past three years on two fronts. There has never been a dedicated source of state funding for Tri-Rail; the system has been operating on a combination of contributions from the federal government, state government, and three local county governments which host the system. Farebox revenue is only about $11 million a year. Contributions from the three counties total $13 million, the State of Florida kicks in $30 million a year, and the balance comes from the federal treasury. Typically for a mass transit/commuter system, farebox revenues are a low contributor to operating costs. Numerous attempts to fund Tri-Rail through a local $2.00 tax on rental vehicles in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties have repeatedly failed.

The second thing shoving Tri-Rail in the spotlight has been the attempt by Florida Governor Rick Scott to use Tri-Rail as an example of everything wrong about passenger rail commuter systems, citing the cost of Tri-Rail as an excuse not to go forward with Central Florida’s SunRail system. That argument eventually failed, and SunRail is now in a development phase, with the system scheduled to be up and running at the end of 2013.

Can one, single, proven, private operator run an expanded Tri-Rail better than a governmental-run system? Tri-Rail says it already has privatized 80% of its operations by bringing in Veolia Transportation to run the system for a seven year, $64 million contract, and Bombardier Transportation to take care of rolling stock maintenance, also on a seven year contract, for $90 million. Tri-Rail itself is overseen by the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, a governmental body.

The FEC is part of RailAmerica, owned by Fortress Investment Group, which manages $44 billion in investments. The FEC, which runs 351 miles down the Florida coast from Jacksonville to Miami via St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, Titusville, Cocoa, Melbourne, and Stuart, has struggled with profitability during the past months. Overall, however, it is part of a rock-solid entity which counts its money in billions, not millions. Even before being acquired by RailAmerica, the FEC for decades has been considered to be a well-run and profitable railroad with good operating ratios and savvy management. It interchanges in Jacksonville with both Norfolk Southern Railway and CSX Transportation.

Politics in Florida for years have skewed towards privatizing as many state functions as possible, and the possible privatization of the operation of Tri-Rail fits the mold Governor Rick Scott is trying to use for many areas of public entities. The governor, elected in November 2010, had never held political office before his election and holds very few political allegiances, even within his own Republican Party. He has constantly confounded politicians and voters of both parties in Florida with his autocratic style of governing and outward disdain for the news media and public opinion since his inauguration in January of this year.

FEC tracks are the only tracks available northward from West Palm Beach for future Tri-Rail expansion into the heavily populated coastal area. CSX tracks north from West Palm Beach take a sharp westward turn, skirting the north short of Lake Okeechobee, and then head up the middle of the state. The Palm Beach Post article says if Tri-Rail expands to the FEC, plans call for the FEC to add two new tracks to its existing 100 foot wide right-of-way to accommodate Tri-Rail operations. The FEC is currently expanding its South Florida footprint through enhanced intermodal and yard facilities to accommodate expected larger freight loads from the wider ships which will be transiting the soon-to-be-completed, newly enlarged, Panama Canal.

An interesting note is both Veolia Transportation, current contract holder and operator of Tri-Rail, and RailAmerica, the parent company of the FEC, are members of the Association of Independent Passenger Rail Operators, the Washington-based lobbying group formed to promote private operation of passenger trains.

Would, perhaps, the FEC, recognizing the professional body of knowledge held and used by Veolia, simply subcontract the actual operations to Veolia, as Veolia now operates the existing part of Tri-Rail, and the FEC find its profits elsewhere? There have been no passenger rail operations over the FEC since before Amtrak Day on May 1, 1971, and, as professional as the management of the FEC and RailAmerica is constantly shown, it’s doubtful a completely new area of expertise would be ramped up from scratch.

The Palm Beach Post article pointedly refers to the huge opportunities in real estate profits the FEC would accrue by running new Tri-Rail trains down its tracks. A lucrative part of the FEC before its purchase by RailAmerica was its real estate operations, often tied directly to railroad right of way. That real estate has been transferred in most part to another part of RailAmerica, but is still in the corporate family. It’s a given real estate values boom around commuter rail stations, and FEC/RailAmerica/Fortress could make several new fortunes exploiting real estate along the commuter rail route.

When railroads think globally, often passenger rail can fit into an overall investment/planning strategy which fully exploits all facets of the business, as the FEC is demonstrating with this exercise.

The hostility of the past demonstrated by freight railroaders not wanting any interference in the operations of freight trains and hotshot intermodal trains is being tamed by a new generation of senior railroad managers focused on making profits from every possible source as opposed to protecting the freight railroad franchise at any cost. While the freight railroaders are still extracting a high and specific price for operating passenger trains on their right of way, including restrictions on high speed passenger trains, they are not ignoring the potential profits of passenger trains while balancing the benefits against the headaches.

And, one final note. The proposed expansion of Amtrak up and down the FEC is not a dead issue. The State of Florida has committed the requisite millions of dollars to make this expansion happen; the hold-up is the federal government share. Considering these crisis economic times, it may be a while before that much-needed expansion takes place. Perhaps, when a more robust economy returns to Florida, that state may be able to fund all of the FEC expansion, without help from the federal government. Of course, at that point, it may be an all-FEC passenger operation, with interchange and connections in Jacksonville with Amtrak.

Gil Carmichael, former FRA Administrator during the Bush I years, and former Chairman of the Amtrak Reform Council, as well as the Founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver has started a new series of reports, entitled the Gil Carmichael Report, Investing in Interstate 2.0. The reports are free, informative, and a must read for anyone serious about the future of railroads in the United States. Contact the report distributor at geoff@jdmandassociates.com for your very own copy.

J. Craig Thorpe, noted Amtrak and railroad illustrator is available for all railroads, railroad-related companies, and organizations for his dramatic illustrations on a custom basis. Mr. Thorpe’s impressive gallery of work and contacts for engagement may be viewed on his web site, which is listed below.

1. Finally, at last, after waiting oh, so very long (Too long, in fact.), SunRail, the 61 mile long commuter rail system in Central Florida serving the Metropolitan Orlando area is about to be a reality.

   Just hours ago, the Florida Senate, meeting in a special session, passed HR 1, a bill to create SunRail and to also permanently fund South Florida’s Tri-Rail system.

   Life is good.

   SunRail had failed twice before in the Florida Senate, two years in a row in the legislature’s regular annual sessions. The Florida House each time overwhelmingly passed the proposal, but a spiteful state Senator from the small city of Lakeland, Senator Paula Dockery, did her best to kill SunRail because she was mad her husband’s original, too-expensive, ill-advised bullet train scheme was made to go away by former Governor Jeb Bush almost a decade ago.

   In a rare change of places in politics, the Republicans were pushing for SunRail, and the Democrats were mostly against it. Senator Dockery, who is now running for governor in next year’s state elections, is also a Republican.

   Overall, SunRail had bipartisan support on many fronts, but the trial lawyers were originally against it because the original bill protected CSX, which is selling the track and infrastructure to the State of Florida for hundreds of millions of dollars wanted reasonable risk protection for any freight trains it would continue to run in off-hours when SunRail wasn’t running between Deland, a far northern suburb of Orlando in Volusia County (near Daytona Beach), through the heart of downtown Orlando via Sanford (home of Auto Train’s southern terminus), Casselberry, Longwood, and Winter Park all the way down to Poinciana, to the southwest of Orlando, near the theme park area of Orlando (Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal Studios).

   There was a fuss by the unions, who claimed the Republican-ruled State of Florida government was union-busting. At the last moment, they came to an agreement through some sort of backroom deal, and the unions relented and allowed the Democrats to vote for SunRail.

   But, mostly, for the first two years, SunRail failed because of one Senator, Paula Dockery. She used every piece of disinformation and distortion she could find to kill SunRail out of spite, and she cut deals with as many other senators as she could on unrelated topics to buy their votes in her favor. It took the untimely death of a longtime Senator from here in Jacksonville, who supported the concept of SunRail, but voted against it due to a deal cut with Senator Dockery, for the bill to finally pass. The dearly departed Senator’s elected replacement was one of the chief paid lobbyists for SunRail the previous year, so his vote was an automatic “yes.”

   In the end, it all came down to politics and perception. SunRail was touted as a job creator (no doubt about that), and it was touted as a budget buster, taking money out of the mouths of babes and education opportunities away from school children, not to mention all of the alleged hospitals and clinics which wouldn’t be built because of the cost of SunRail.

   It was only when the Republican majority in the Florida Senate realized it wouldn’t be prudent to go against the Republican President of the Senate and the Republican Governor that some sense came into focus.

   In the mean time, United States Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood came to Florida earlier this year and made it very, very clear if SunRail was not approved, and a funding source found for Tri-Rail, then Florida would be completely out of the running for any federal stimulus funds to build the proposed high speed rail routes in Florida. Added to Secretary LaHood’s admonishment were similar dire warnings from Republican Senator George LeMieux and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson (of NASA and space travel fame), as well as a varied assortment of Members of Congress.

   So, no matter how good the plan, how good the plan is for the citizens of Florida and Central Florida’s tens of millions of annual visitors from around the world, it all came down to a few votes and a lot of political pressure.

   Is that any way to run a railroad?

2. Here is who will benefit from the SunRail/Tri-Rail bill:
   • The majority of SunRail will run fairly parallel to Interstate 4, the main highway through the very middle of downtown Orlando. Interstate 4 is best described as a slow moving parking lot any time between 7:00 A.M. and about 8:00 P.M., and if there is a wreck, well, don’t plan on being home for dinner on time.

     As with all commuter rail systems, the sudden appearance of commuter trains will do nothing to alleviate traffic congestion; you couldn’t run enough trains with a two minute headway on a triple track mainline to take care of Central Florida’s driving problems. The benefit of SunRail is it will provide a reasonably priced, reasonable time alternative to driving on Interstate and surface roads, so almost every commuter in and out of downtown Orlando or commuters traveling from one side of Metropolitan Orlando to another will have the opportunity to take the train and possibly benefit.

   • The Orange Blossom Expressway, a second proposed commuter rail system in Central Florida will also benefit. This much smaller system will connect in downtown Orlando with SunRail, coming from far suburban counties to the north of Orlando. This system will travel over rails currently owned by a short line railroad. The start of SunRail could prompt this feeder system to get off the ground faster.
   • Everyone in the engineering and related fields, plus many in the construction industry will benefit, almost immediately.

     SunRail is probably one of the projects which is actually “shovel ready” and will have a relatively short construction window before beginning service. The current CSX infrastructure is excellent, and it won’t take much to upgrade what is already there to make it commuter-system ready. There will be some double tracking required, and the construction of local stations will take place, but none of those are years-long projects, especially with the year-round, construction friendly warm climate of Central Florida.

   • CSX will hugely benefit; it’s selling 61 miles worth of infrastructure it currently pays taxes on to the State of Florida for over $400 million, and it still gets to run as many freight trains as it wants over the tracks in off hours for – are you ready for this? – $1.00 a year. (Yes, one dollar.)

     Additionally, CSX gets more tens of millions of dollars to upgrade the former Seaboard Air Line Railroad main line through Ocala to divert trains from the former Atlantic Coast Line Railroad main line through Orlando it is selling to the State of Florida for SunRail. The money for diverting the traffic will go to more infrastructure improvements on the old SAL line such as grade crossings, more sidings, better signaling, and the construction of several highway and road overpasses in congested areas.

     CSX will also build a brand new Intermodal facility southwest of Orlando in Polk County, abandoning its older, smaller, more expensive to operate facility in Orlando that is currently on the SunRail route. The upgraded CSX/SAL line via Ocala will handle the diverted traffic from Orlando and the old Intermodal facility and take it all to the new facility.

   • Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade Counties, the host counties of Tri-Rail, will all benefit from this legislation. In lieu of the desired $2.00 per day surcharge (A nice synonym for “tax”) on rental cars in each of the three counties, excess state transportation funds will be used for Tri-Rail. Each of the three counties will still contribute to Tri-Rail finances on an annual basis, but the three counties will not be solely responsible for funding the commuter rail system.

     This will also most likely clear the way for a huge expansion of Tri-Rail into a “Y” shaped system. The former inland SAL main line Tri-Rail now calls home parallels – in some cases just by a matter of city blocks – the current main line of the Florida East Coast Railroad (FEC), a private subsidiary of RailAmerica, based here in Jacksovnille. The FEC for years has been hoping for a similar deal CSX received over two decades ago to sell its track and infrastructure to an expanded Tri-Rail system, while retaining similar rights as CSX has to run over Tri-Rail in off hours.

     As with CSX, the FEC would be relieved of the tax burden of ownership and the costs of maintenance and insurance on about 75 or so miles of very expensive, urban track and infrastructure if Tri-Rail buys its line from the north of West Palm Beach (Around Jupiter, Florida.), south all the way into downtown Miami.

     Since Henry Flagler and the FEC in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries were the original builders of all of the East Coast of Florida south of St. Augustine for all practical purposes, the FEC line has a superior route through the middle of downtowns and urban areas than the old SAL line which was not completed into South Florida until the Florida Land Boom in the 1920s. The FEC had all of the downtowns and track which hugged the South Florida beaches, and the Seaboard was forced to build further to the west in the suburbs and swamplands on the edge of the Florida Everglades south of West Palm Beach where the line swung east from its route through Winter Haven, Sebring, and skirting Lake Okeechobee.

     Tri-Rail plans to keep its current system, and add trackage to the north and south of West Palm Beach on the FEC. This is the same trackage which is part of Amtrak’s high speed rail proposal for Florida, vying for part of the $8 billion in stimulus money to be awarded later this Winter.

   • Every other proposed commuter rail system in the country will benefit from the passage of the SunRail bill because from the beginning, the bill has been a model of rational, reasonable planning, with no pie-in-the-sky ridership figures, too-conservative costs, or too-extravagant revenue figures. SunRail was conceived and planned using real world numbers and real world expectations. Like the Northstar system in Minneapolis, and the Trinity system in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, SunRail most likely will exceed expectations on opening day.

     The deal struck with CSX, similar to the deal the Commonwealth of Massachusetts struck with CSX to expand its state commuter system outside of Boston, most likely will become a model for all future deals with CSX, which is good. CSX will receive huge benefits from the deal, which is to be expected as CSX acts on behalf of its shareholders. While CSX will benefit, the public will also benefit in any number of ways, not the least of which is access to private railroad infrastructure CSX has no duty to share with anyone else it doesn’t choose to do business with on any particular day. But, both the SunRail and Massachusetts projects demonstrate how everyone can win, and life goes on with everyone benefitting.

   • Amtrak will greatly benefit from SunRail; it will have the benefit of the upgraded infrastructure necessary for SunRail, plus the upgraded shared station facilities, and more friendly dispatching since there will be very little freight train activity south of Jacksonville (Where ALL freight trains came into Florida to be funneled south into Florida’s peninsula) on the former ACL line/now SunRail line for 61 miles in Central Florida. For about 210 miles from Jacksonville to the Auburndale cutoff where Amtrak trains turn from the former ACL line onto the former SAL line for the run into Miami, Amtrak trains should have a mostly clear shot of clean dispatching with very little freight train interference. This could lead to a shortening of Florida schedules since the northbound Silver Meteor and Silver usually arrive into Jacksonville ahead of schedule.

     Another benefit to Amtrak will be a heightened awareness of passenger rail travel by the commuters on SunRail; passenger-train-aware people are more likely to be receptive to long distance train travel. Hopefully, Amtrak will make the most of this by heavily promoting Amtrak trains at commuter stations.

   • U.S. Railcar, which is now the proud owner of the former Colorado Railcar designs for both single and bi-level commuter trains should benefit greatly from today’s vote. The original plan, when Colorado Railcar was still a viable company, called for that company’s DMUs to provide all of the motive power and consists for SunRail, and it’s highly likely any expansion of Tri-Rail in South Florida will also use these same DMUs which have undergone field tests on Tri-Rail in the past few years. Perhaps this will help U.S. Railcar with its request for a federal grant to construct a factory in Ohio to build these self-propelled railcars.
   • Transportation planners in Jacksonville to the northeast of Central Florida, and in the Tampa Bay area to the southwest of Central Florida have won a major victory. In addition to the creation of SunRail and the funding of Tri-Rail, the enabling legislation also creates two new state programs to deal with all present and future commuter rail systems in Florida. As far as state government is concerned, commuter rail in Florida “has arrived.”
   • Real estate developers and entrepreneurs will benefit greatly. Even though Central Florida is very densely built-out and populated, look to new mixed use housing and retail and office developments to spring up within walking distance (Even in the Florida heat and rain in the Summer.) of the new SunRail stations.
3. Here is who will not benefit from the SunRail/Tri-Rail bill:
   • Anyone who intentionally buys or builds a home near an existing railroad track which has been in place since the late 19^th Century. The NIMBYs lost; the train tracks which were built to handle traffic will continue to do so, and those opposed to trains will have to find a life elsewhere.
   • The anti-rail talking heads who make careers out of making arguments which are usually a couple of French fries short of a Happy Meal against commuter rail and any other type of rail. Often, what’s old is new, and commuter rail is making a comeback in this country and will have a happy life alongside the automobile and sport utility vehicles of the world. While the return on investment in SunRail and Tri-Rail may not happen in exactly the same way or following the same formula which works for building more and more roads and highways, the ROI on commuter rail has a proven record of success beyond the tired “green” and “sustainability” arguments which are – by themselves – no complete arguments at all for huge projects such as commuter rail.
   • Asphalt and concrete manufacturers. Instead of laying literally miles and miles of asphalt and concrete on new roads, these folks will have to settle for acres of new asphalt and concrete on new commuter rail station parking lots and access roads.
4. As a final note, we should examine Amtrak’s role in all of this. Some had suggested in order to go around various liability questions with CSX and other issues before this bill was passed Amtrak should simply be the operator or SunRail, and many of those issues would go away.

   Amtrak is consistently the most expensive commuter system operator in the country, with a less than stellar record (See the immediate previous issue of TWA to this issue and the discussion of Amtrak’s failures in California operating the Pacific Surfliner service on behalf of California.).

   Here is something to think about: If Amtrak were no longer America’s best kept secret, and the company promoted itself like any other American company, more Americans would know of and understand passenger rail.

   Reading the online news articles about SunRail and the accompanying idiotic, knee-jerk reactions to SunRail by uninformed readers was a tragic exercise. It appears a certain element of our society absolutely hates anything to do with passenger rail, and think it should be consigned to museums and Third World countries. These people have no idea, nor rational concept of the many economic and social benefits of passenger rail. Many of these people would rather give up their firstborn child than their automobiles.

   There is nothing wrong with choice, just as there is nothing wrong with someone choosing to only travel in their personal vehicle. That’s the kind of choice we take for granted in this country, and we cherish to right to make that choice.

   But, while keeping that same right to choose, we should not be taking away the rights of others who choose to travel by a means other than a personal vehicle.

   Amtrak carries two tenths of one percent of America’s travelers, which is hardly a blip on anyone’s screen. Amtrak is – and remains – statistically irrelevant to American transportation.

   If Amtrak chose to be a healthy, relevant passenger carrier, then many of the arguments made against SunRail out of ignorance simply would not have added anything beyond puffs of hot air to the discussion. That was not the case, however; SunRail failed twice because no one knew how to make a rational argument for passenger rail against a determined foe, because no one knows about passenger rail.

   That is something Amtrak can do something about; it can stop being statistically irrelevant, and create a vision for the future which includes conventional passenger rail as part of our domestic transportation network. Until that happens, more prospective commuter rail systems are going to be delayed or shot down in flames because no one can talk intelligently about the sins and virtues of passenger rail in America.

If you would like to print a nicely formatted copy of this post, simply press the “print the post” button at the top.

see also: (Wikipedia)SunRail, Orange Blossom Expressway

1. Here is the text of a speech delivered to the Florida Coalition of Rail Passengers here in Jacksonville, Florida on Saturday, November 7, 2009 by this writer.
   

   It’s been an interesting week for the railroad business; changes we couldn’t imagine a decade ago have suddenly become true. America again has a “railroad robber baron” – but, this time, it’s a benevolent man who may be the smartest businessman in the world.

   Warren Buffett said he would cheerfully pay $34 billion for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, and BNSF said they would cheerfully accept his offer.

   While many people agree this is not going to launch a series of mergers – there isn’t much left to merge other than creating a transcontinental railroad – this is a game changer. BNSF under private ownership no longer has to act by the dictates of Wall Street.

   Think of the BNSF deal as a giant-sized version of what happened to our own Florida East Coast Railroad: going private allowed it to think radically outside of the box.

   The FEC – after over a decade of waiting – has partnered with the Florida Department of Transportation and Amtrak to restore passenger service on its coast route between Jacksonville and Miami. Now, start thinking about BNSF and passenger service – they have already publicly indicated if the right business opportunity comes along, they will talk about it.

   Reading the FEC/FDOT proposal – which is part of the national grab for high speed rail stimulus money – gives any reader respect for the Florida DOT.

   Amtrak has its usual equipment demands, because both the Silver Meteor and Silver Star will again be split here in Jacksonville, and half of the consists will go to Miami via Orlando, and half go on the FEC.

   The best part is the request for additional local regional trains running between Jacksonville and Miami to provide a higher level of frequencies. The most obvious part left out is extending the Palmetto south of Savannah and running it down the FEC or perhaps over to Tampa.

   The only part of Florida’s rail plan found wanting is mention of doing something to bolster Tampa’s conventional train service. In the Tampa Bay area we have Florida’s second largest metropolitan area, and its level of train service is less than that of Sebring and Palatka.

   If you really want to look at the unfairness of it all, take a look at Florida’s panhandle. The people living there pay all of the same taxes we pay, but their train – the Sunset Limited – went away because Amtrak doesn’t want to bother restoring the train after a hurricane that happened over four years ago temporarily tore up some track.

   As I join you today on behalf of United Rail Passenger Alliance, my late friend and predecessor, Austin Coates, was no stranger to this group or many of you personally. We’ve never forgotten Austin’s most famous line regarding Amtrak – “it’s just business as usual.”

   More than half a decade after Austin’s passing, we need to help Amtrak stop its continuing “business as usual.”

   Let’s look at how Amtrak has treated us here in Florida over the past 25 years or so.

   Going back to the pre-Amtrak days, Florida had so many passenger trains you couldn’t walk very far without tripping over one. Florida was a state built by the passenger train.

   We had the Seaboard’s Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Palmland, Sunland, and Gulf Wind. Not only did we have service to Miami, but we also had service down the middle of the state and from Tampa down the west coast to Venice.

   The Atlantic Coast Line provided us with service on the East Coast Champion, West Coast Champion, Gulf Coast Special, seasonal Florida Special, and the Everglades. The ACL on the west coast would take you to Fort Myers.

   From Chicago and the Midwest, you could catch the City of Miami, South Wind, Seminole, or Dixie Flyer.

   Until just a couple of years prior to Amtrak, the Florida East Coast even operated its daily two car train between Miami and Jacksonville.

   Then came Amtrak Day in 1971.

   Amtrak Day wasn’t as bad for Florida as elsewhere, for we still had the Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Champion, and South Wind. We lost the Gulf Wind, and that huge – and currently unfilled gap – between Jacksonville and New Orleans opened up. We lost service south of Tampa on the west coast. But you could still get to Florida from Chicago with single train service, and you had three choices from New York to Florida, and both coasts and the middle of Florida through Ocala were still served.

   We all know what has happened since then.

   The once busy crew and maintenance base in Tampa is gone, with just a single daily train remaining. Naturally, this occurred only after the City of Tampa decided to spend a king’s ransom on the breathtaking restoration of Tampa Union Station.

   Miami, once the golden goose of passenger railroading, now has two trains a day.

   The South Wind, then the Floridian, with direct Chicago service, is gone.

   The Cross Florida service between Tampa and Miami came and went.

   The extended Palmetto from Savannah to Jacksonville, and eventually to Tampa, and then turned into the Silver Palm to Miami – is gone.

   We now have Auto Train, but unless you’re taking along your car and only have a destination of Northern Virginia or beyond, it’s not the most useful service in Amtrak’s stable.

   Then, there is the sad saga of the Sunset Limited. We all worked hard in Florida to bring the Sunset to us in 1993. The State of Florida ponied up over $7 million to help upgrade the CSX line in the panhandle.

   We knew prior to the Sunset’s extension, there was an average of 75,000 calls per year into the Amtrak res centers seeking a train between New Orleans and Florida.

   Now, the Sunset is almost history. I say “almost” because it never officially went away, just in reality went away. As [FCRP member] George Bollinger often asks, “what if it had been the Seaboard and L&N that had suddenly decided to stop running the Gulf Wind, just because it was inconvenient?”

   For a while, unknowing people tried to blame our friends – yes, make no mistake about it, at CSX they are our friends – for not allowing Amtrak to resume service on the Sunset. But, we know CSX gave Amtrak written notice the line was available for the Sunset on April 1, 2006.

   By law, when Amtrak cancels an entire train route, it is supposed to post a 180 day notice of cancellation. This minor technicality to Amtrak has never been honored, with the ongoing excuse of not only did the dog eat Amtrak’s homework, but Amtrak merely “suspended” the service due to conditions wrought by the hurricane.

   A number of union jobs on all levels were lost by the suspension of the Sunset. Yet, Amtrak’s unions have chosen to do nothing about this. No union filed a lawsuit, no union screamed at the top of its organized lungs about this flagrant abuse of the law.

   Congresswoman Corrine Brown put $1 million into last year’s Amtrak reauthorization to study the restoration of the Amtrak route. We know the result of that; a lot of paper with a lot of excuses and reasons why Amtrak doesn’t want to restart the service.

   The quickest, cheapest, cleanest way to restore service is to extend the City of New Orleans from New Orleans to Orlando.

   Because of bad equipment scheduling, the City trainsets sit for a full day in New Orleans before they return to Chicago. On any given day there are two trainsets in Louisiana, the one just departing New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal and the one about to arrive at NOUPT. By extending the route to Orlando, only one extra trainset would be required to bring the train to Florida.

   Amtrak will instantly whine about stations; the only real station problem is at Mobile, where the Eisenhower-era relic of the L&N Railroad’s poor choice of architect station building was mercifully torn down after Katrina. The only problem for Mobile is finding a new spot for a platform and placement of a temporary Amshack.

   Remember, the only manned stations between New Orleans and Jacksonville were Mobile, Pensacola, and Tallahassee. Everything else was just a platform and city-run shelter.

   Many of my readers of This Week at Amtrak know I talk about the Sunset and the City of New Orleans a lot, and there’s a reason for that. From 1996 to 2000, I was a paid consultant to the Gulf Coast Business Group, working with both of those trains, plus the Crescent. My late business partner and I specialized in marketing for these trains, creating onboard services programs, the highly successful 24 hour dining car test runs on the Sunset, and handled special events, such as station openings and helped with the inaugural of the Gulf Coast Limited. Even today, those are still my trains.

   From 1999 to 2000, we ran the Sunset Limited and City of New Orleans Promotional Office for Amtrak from our offices here in Jacksonville. We worked a number of projects that brought new riders to the Sunset and City through radio and television station promotions, worked with local media, and even hosted a dining car gathering in Memphis for local and regional media food critics.

   Like any large company, we found white hats and black hats inside of Amtrak. Some very good people left because of the constant problems caused by the black hats, and others left merely because Amtrak was not the most pleasant place to work if you weren’t part of the good old boy network.

   But, there is a shrinking core group of dedicated people who are there because they like running passenger trains.

   What can we do to help those at Amtrak who want the company to succeed?

   First, everyone must realize there is more than one answer to Amtrak’s problems. Those who constantly plead “we all have to work together” generally mean we all have to agree with them, and forget about any other solutions.

   Second, we have to realize the reality of passenger rail around the world. Amtrak constantly wants us to believe no passenger rail system in the world makes money. This is only an excuse to enable Amtrak’s dysfunctional behavior.

   I invite you to do your own research; scan credible publications like the International Railway Journal and read the stories about passenger rail systems in The Netherlands, Germany, and Japan which make money.

   Doubters say this isn’t true, these companies are still propped up by their governments. Wrong. Some of these systems may operate over government owned right of way – just as trains do on the Northeast Corridor – but they still pay a train mile fee. Some of the systems share the rails with freight trains – just like Amtrak – and they receive a benefit – just like Amtrak – from the shared cost of infrastructure.

   For years, URPA has been crunching numbers and seeing almost every long distance train in the Amtrak system makes money “above the rail.” This is the same system used by other countries – based on operating costs, not full infrastructure maintenance costs – and revenue passenger miles.

   One thing URPA has talked about for decades is Amtrak’s erroneous use of warm body counts in the form of ridership instead of the real world metrics of load factor and revenue passenger miles. Amtrak wants us to be wowed by warm body counts, which are meaningless. What matters is how far you carry a passenger, and what revenue you derive from a passenger, not how many passengers.

   Which passenger would you rather have: one passenger traveling the 608 mile average length of trip on the Silver Meteor at 15.7 cents a revenue passenger mile … or four passengers on Oklahoma’s Heartland Flyer, traveling an average length of trip of 175 miles at 12 cents a revenue passenger mile? That one passenger on the Meteor not only makes Amtrak more money than the four passengers on the Heartland Flyer, but that one passenger will also spend more money onboard in the diner and lounge, had less cost to the national reservations system, less to reach through marketing, and tracks all the way through Amtrak’s accounting system with less costs because Amtrak is handling one passenger instead of four.

   When the late Graham Claytor – without a doubt Amtrak’s best president – retired from Amtrak in 1993, the company was generating internally enough money to cover 72% of its 1989 $1.7 billion operating budget, up from 48% in 1981. Today, that number has slipped dramatically, down to about 60%.

   Since Mr. Claytor retired, we have seen a virtual parade of permanent and semi-permanent interim chief executive for Amtrak, from Tom Downs to George Warrington to David Gunn to David Hughes to Alex Kummant to today’s Joe Boardman.

   Every new Amtrak president seems to have made the company worse in so many ways. We’ve seen the Heritage fleet – which is highly valued and treasured by VIA Rail Canada today – sold off. The original Pennsylvania Railroad Metroliners were scrapped. The Turboliners were rehabbed with someone else’s money, and then suddenly hidden and stored, and are now for sale.

   We have seen the delivery – and subsequent running off the wheels – of the too small order of Viewliners, with a promise, but no firm order for any more. We’ve seen a more than decade old order of Superliners, but those numbers are thinning due to neglected maintenance. We’ve seen the much heralded arrival of the Acela trainsets, but their mechanical troubles, too, have become legendary.

   In short, Amtrak has no reserve equipment pool it can activate quickly to expand or create new services. Even though there are still nearly 200 cars sitting in the wreck line, most of that is needed just to restore existing consists to previous levels of productivity, or put a service back east of New Orleans.

   During all of this while we have seen meaningless ridership numbers rise, we’ve also seen abysmal systemwide load factors; during some years more than half of Amtrak’s highly perishable inventory goes unsold.

   We have seen train consists shrink and shrink.

   So, Amtrak is running fewer seats miles for occupancy, creating less of a chance for success. Its equipment is old and getting more worn out by the hour. We know some equipment is being rehabbed by this year’s stimulus money, but it’s only token amounts for the national system.

   Which brings us back to, what can you do to help change Amtrak?

   I urge everyone in this room to start a new campaign.

   The Cardinal is the only train in Amtrak’s entire system which is run by federal mandate. Senator Robert Byrd slipped into federal law that his train – the Cardinal running through his home state of West Virginia – has to be operated. Amtrak uses and abuses this train, but it’s helpless to cancel it the way it did the east end of the Sunset Limited.

   My conservative soul is tortured by this next suggestion, but it may be necessary until Amtrak can be made to run like a real business. FCRP needs to convince the Florida Congressional Delegation the Silver Meteor, Silver Star, and an extended Palmetto south from Savannah to Jacksonville and beyond, and some sort of restored service east of New Orleans, must be mandated to be operated by federal statute.

   Your sister organizations in other states need to do the same with their trains. Remember – if it happened to the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans – it can happen to any train. Most of you know the very most basic rule of railroad safety: when on railroad property, be prepared for a train to be coming towards you at any time, from any direction. You know the second most basic safety rule – the one which separates real railroaders from rail fans – never, never, never, step on top of the rail; always step over the rail.

   Florida – and every other state – is currently standing on top of the rail, unaware a train is bearing down from an unknown direction. Amtrak’s management is much more interested in seeking free federal monies than in operating trains.

   We’ve seen no new equipment orders to date – just promises of a single-level order for Viewliner cars – and the just released update of Amtrak’s ongoing five year plan calls for no new cars.

   If Amtrak is serious about keeping its system intact, it would be at least talking about a new car order, especially for Superliners. But, the silence is all we need to know.

   Paul Dyson, President of the Railroad Passenger Association of California and Nevada, has openly raised the question of whether or not Amtrak is actually planning to exit the long distance route business because of a lack of equipment order.

   A few weeks back, one of our URPA associates was attending a rail fair in the Northeast. He ran across an Amtrak Engineering Department intern who wanted the world to know how important he was – after all, he was an intern at Amtrak.

   The question of equipment orders came up, and this young man offered a glimpse into Amtrak’s corporate thinking. He said, “Amtrak isn’t interested in slow trains, it’s only interested in fast trains.”

   Just shortly after that, Tom Carper, Amtrak’s Chairman of the Board, gave a presentation to the Midwest High Speed Rail folks touting Amtrak as the logical and national operator of all of the nation’s high speed systems. When you read Mr. Carper’s presentation, you realize the young intern wasn’t just whistling “Dixie.”

   So, if you’re [FCRP member] Jerry Sullivan and you want to travel west to visit your grandchildren in Texas, it’s not likely to happen any time soon on a restored Sunset Limited. If you’re George Bollinger and you just want to ride trains, you better plan your trip early, because too often you can’t get there from here.

   Until Congress mandates Amtrak must operate its long distance trains, every one of those trains is in danger. The train may not go away today, but it’s consist will be constantly shrinking, the level of service will deteriorate worse and Amtrak will remain – as Union Pacific’s official spokesman labeled it – “novelty transportation.”

   Amtrak today accounts for only two tenths of one percent of America’s transportation output, hardly enough for anyone to take seriously. Even worse, Amtrak isn’t doing much to change that.

   The only people Amtrak listens to is Congress, when it mandates Amtrak do something. It’s time for Congress to mandate – without exception – Amtrak must run all of its long distance trains, and throw in some restorations like the Sunset back to Florida, the Pioneer, with a full second frequency operating all the way between Chicago and Denver, the North Coast Hiawatha, and take the Sunset and the Cardinal daily.

   Amtrak will kick and scream and whine everyone is being mean to it by making it run trains it doesn’t want to run. But, if someone doesn’t do something this drastic soon, long distance passenger rail in America will be only a memory like steam locomotives, dome cars, and Pullman berths.

   Thank you so much for allowing me to be with you today; it’s a pleasure to be here.

2. Warren Buffett’s privatization of the venerable Burlington Northern Santa Fe rocked the railroad world. Here is what William Lindley of Scottsdale, Arizona had to say.
   

   Warren Buffett’s offer for BNSF the first week in November might prove to be a pivotal event for intercity passenger rail, having come at a time when, as Don Phillips in his recent Trains magazine column recently highlighted, dissatisfaction over Amtrak’s seeming refusal to participate in a renaissance of train travel is at a peak.

   Undoubtedly, Buffett has a record of making sound business decisions; and BNSF, being among the best managed and progressive of large railroads, does fit a motif of acquiring something good and making it better.

   Over the next weeks we will look at some of the synergies (much as that word is overused, it does apply here) and economies of scale that could apply to an enlarged role for BNSF in the passenger train business. But right now a single move would signal a positive direction. Words and attitude cost little but mean much; as you may know, trademarks, unlike copyrights and patents, are most defensible when they are in continuous business use. BNSF could gain much publicity, and build on its widespread and long standing – even if subconscious – recognition, by reviving its classic red, yellow, and silver “Warbonnet” scheme.

   A new interpretation of their classic corporate symbol would show a revived interest in being a participating citizen in every railroad town and city. Not to mention the free advertising garnered from rolling under practically every child’s Christmas tree. Renewing interest in today’s youth will perpetuate the recent industry rediscovery that trains are good for more than just hauling coal – they are the future of transportation, as well as the history.

   Yes, we undoubtedly will consider details in our upcoming columns here, but for now, Mr. Buffett, we simply convey – Welcome to the world of railroading.

3. Professor James McCommons of Northern Michigan University has a new book out this month, and it’s required reading for anyone interested in the business of passenger railroading.

   For full disclosure, this writer was interviewed for the book here in Jacksonville by Mr. McCommons. The interview was full of serious, well thought out questions and observations; it’s very clear the product of all of his interviews and research has led Mr. McCommons to creating a book far any beyond anything else on the market today regarding passenger rail as it stands in America.

   “Waiting on the Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service – A Year Spent Riding Across America” is much more succinct than its title, and presents a wide variety of honest opinions and thoughts about passenger rail. More than just the usual viewpoints are presented with conclusions both obvious and left for the reader to determine.

   The book is actually too short; Mr. McCommons reports his publisher, Chelsea Green (www.chelseagreen.com) had him remove about 40,000 words of his original text to fit into a predetermined format. What a shame; when you read the book, you are wanting more, and another brief 40,000 words would be welcomed by any reader.

   There is a lengthy review of the book in the current issue of Passenger Train Journal magazine by Karl Zimmermann for those wishing more detail, but, please, if your buy just one railroad book this year, buy “Waiting on the Train;” it’s time and money well spent. We can only hope Mr. McCommons will one day do a follow-up book.

4. Speaking of the latest issue of Passenger Train Journal (2009:4, Issue 241) which just hit the newsstands in the past week or so, there is an ever-so-timely article on Amtrak’s Pioneer, the subject of much discussion for an expensive route restoration, as well as the usual mix of good articles and photos. Editor Mike Schafer’s On The Point column – as always – not only hits the mark about the Pioneer, but covers some other good points, too. Other rail magazines may publish more frequently, but Passenger Train Journal remains the magazine of record for the business of passenger trains.
5. And, this e-mail to TWA arrived shortly after the last issue was published regarding VIA Rail Canada.
   

   I am a big fan of VIA and have been doing a yearly trip from Toronto to Vancouver on that lovely train, the Canadian for quite a few years. About a year ago, I wrote a comment to Crain’s Chicago Business online about Amtrak and their lack of interest in taking care of their equipment. When we board the Canadian in Toronto, she is shining, the windows are spotless,  (glass, not micro scratched plastic), flowers are fresh and the crew seems happy to see us!

   A couple of weeks ago, we went from Portland, Maine to New York City, and while waiting in Boston to transfer trains, several Acela’s came and went: they were already grimy and neglected looking. One of my stories about VIA involved what I consider to be a remarkable piece of quality railroading when the Canadian from the west was delayed by a blizzard and a freight accident making it too late east to turn. VIA put together a very spiffy “shuttle” consist which left on schedule from Toronto with a complementary lunch, complementary wine too!, and in several hours we rendezvoused with the now turned train and proceeded west, right on schedule. I asked a supervisor how this feat was accomplished, to which he replied, “it is all a matter of attitude.” Says it all about the difference between VIA and Amtrak.

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1. Here at home in an adjoining county to the south is St. Augustine, which bills itself as the Ancient City. St. Augustine, Florida has been around as a point of civilization since 1565, and was pretty much a sleepy, colonial town, even after Florida statehood in 1845. It wasn’t until the notorious Henry Flagler, business partner of John D. Rockefeller (Some historians say Flagler was the smarter of the two ruthless business partners.) came vacationing in Northeast Florida in the 1878 that he noticed sleepy St. Augustine.

   Mr. Flagler came to Jacksonville for the temperate climate. (A century ago, oranges were still a cash crop in Northeast Florida.) He crossed the might St. Johns River (The only major river in North America which flows north.) and traveled by passenger train to St. Augustine in 1883. There, he found a slumbering city of Spanish descent which afforded cooling ocean breezes, a pleasant bayfront view, and a rural county seat.

   Mr. Flagler took a liking to St. Augustine, and starting building hotels and the Florida East Coast Railway. His first hotel, the Ponce de Leon – begun in 1885 and which today is the home of Flagler College – became an overnight success as a playground for the Gilded Age rich and famous. More hotels followed, with Mr. Flagler becoming St. Augustine’s most prominent part-time denizen.

   Not content to stop at St. Augustine, Mr. Flagler pushed his new railroad and string of hotels and resorts southward, creating such famous Florida hot spots as Ormond Beach/Daytona Beach, Cocoa Beach, Melbourne, Stuart, Palm Beach (Where Mr. Flagler eventually built his permanent home and today’s world famous The Breakers hotel and resort, the only remaining asset of the original Flagler System.), Ft. Lauderdale, and, in partnership with Julia Tuttle and her family, Miami and Miami Beach. Mr. Flagler’s railroad entrepreneurship didn’t end in Miami; he gazed further southward and saw Key West, the southernmost point of the United States, and promptly in 1905 began building the Florida Overseas Railroad, one island at a time from South Florida to Key West, completing the huge project in 1912.

   Depending on your favorite Florida historian, there is debate as to whether or not Henry Flagler or Henry B. Plant, who owned a freight shipping company and small railroads, and in 1879 combined his holdings into the Plant System (Later, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.), building to the west coast of Florida via Orlando, invented modern Florida by the strength of their iron horses.

   Of course, it was the common use of residential air conditioning in the late 1950s which created the most modern version of Florida, and allowed inland cities and towns away from cooling ocean and Gulf of Mexico breezes to grow and prosper. The coming of the Space Age at Cape Canaveral on the Florida East Coast Railway really put Florida on the international map.

   But, no matter who your preferred railroad robber baron was prior to the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, it was the railroad which created Florida, and especially St. Augustine.

   St. Augustine was the home of a violent and deadly railroad strike in 1963; FEC non-operating employees went out on strike over several issues. The FEC continued to run trains with management personnel, but the strike turned violent with numerous bombings of bridges and trains, resulting in deaths, permanent injuries, and general mayhem.

   By the time of the strike, Florida was served by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, the Atlantic Coast Line, the FEC, and, into the northeast corner of Florida, the Southern Railway.

   While the Seaboard’s Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Palmland, Sunland, and a host of local trains traveled down the middle of the state on SAL’s mainline through Ocala, the Coast Line trains, the East Coast Champion, the Everglades, and the trains it operated in conjunction with the FEC, such as the famed Winter-only Florida Special, the Havana Special, and the trains from the Midwest, including the Royal Palm, Dixieland, South Wind, Seminole, and City of Miami all stormed through St. Augustine on their way to and from Miami.

   The 1963 strike ended all of that. The FEC’s named trains simply disappeared, annulled because of the strike and the continuing violence and threats of violence. The trains handled by the Coast Line moved inland westward, from the FEC to soon-to-be merger partner’s SAL lines down the middle of the state.

   By court order, train service briefly returned to the FEC from 1965 to 1968, with a lone locomotive and two trailing cars – offering coach seating and parlor car seating, but no food service – running up and down from North Miami to Jacksonville’s union terminal. (The main FEC station in downtown Miami had been torn down by 1965 as part of urban renewal in downtown Miami.)

   Even FEC retirees who chose to come to Jacksonville from Miami when traveling by train, went via the Seaboard or Coast Line because it was safer, had more frequency offerings, and full train service.

   In the late 1990s, in the George Warrington era of Amtrak, there was a brief flurry of activity in St. Augustine because discussions and negotiations were underway to return passenger train service to the FEC, courtesy of Amtrak and a ton of money (Now allocated elsewhere.) from the State of Florida.

   Plans were laid, station sites were identified (The FEC, like so many other railroads which exited the passenger business had executives at the time who wanted to make sure those pesky passengers stayed away, so all but one or two FEC passengers stations were either demolished, sold, or had their tracks ripped up.), and cities and towns along the east coast competed to see whether or not they could snag one of the limited number of station stops planned for the new service.

   St. Augustine, once the railroad king of Florida and still the corporate home of the FEC until 2008, decided to build a new station on the FEC main line directly across the street from St. Augustine’s general aviation airport, claiming it was creating an “intermodal” center of transportation. No one ever quite explained what the attraction would be for private pilots to fly into the St. Augustine airport, tie their planes down, and then board a passenger train, but that was the plan.

   All of those plans came to a screeching halt when Mr. Warrington’s Acela bubble burst, and the Northeast Corridor Service which was supposed to save the entire company ended up having the company coming close to being liquidated.

   Now, in the third century of trains through St. Augustine, once again there is talk of passenger trains calling at St. Augustine. Several local government groups along the FEC are petitioning popular Florida Governor Charlie Crist to apply for free federal monies to pay for restoring service between Jacksonville and Miami via St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, Cocoa Beach, Melbourne, Fort Pierce, Jupiter, and into West Palm Beach where a new connection would be built for the trains to join the former SAL main line (Now Tri-Rail commuter line and present Amtrak line.) to take the train into Amtrak’s Miami/Hialeah southern terminal.

   The scary part of this is the news media is reporting these funds are being asked for to use for high speed rail, not conventional rail. While the FEC is a very good piece of railroad with excellent infrastructure, no one would ever confuse it with high speed rail. Some of the logic goes the incremental approach should be taken, first restoring service, and then eventually upgrading the service to high speed over a specified period of time.

   What is interesting about this is the current ownership of the FEC, RailAmerica, Inc., which in turn is owned by Fortress Investment Group. RailAmerica, in addition to owning the FEC, owns nearly four dozen other short line and regional railroads in the U.S. and Canada.

   RailAmerica is a solid company, with good financial performance. Fortress Investment Group is a giant fund which controls many companies, all on a private basis. This means there are no individual stockholders or Wall Street money managers demanding RailAmerica do this or that to shore up stock prices, and no public reporting of financial results. In other words, the managers are free to carry out any prudent business decisions they see fit (Within the framework of the law and overall regulations.), including striking a deal with Amtrak to run trains on their property.

   If it makes money and doesn’t interfere with RailAmerica’s other mission of supplying outstanding freight service, then there is an interest.

   If the State of Florida does strike a deal for stimulus money for this route, there isn’t much standing in the way of restored passenger service between Jacksonville and Miami via the FEC, with the exception of creating a new equipment pool.

   Initial plans were to move the Silver Meteor from Orlando to the FEC, which is a very, very bad idea. Why would anyone want to take service away from one of the world’s busiest vacation destinations in Central Florida to serve the towns of Florida’s east coast?

   A better solution is to find additional equipment, or, perhaps split a train in Jacksonville (Which Amtrak did from its very beginning until the horror of the common consist in the 1990s, and the closing of the Tampa crew and maintenance bases.), with half of the train traveling via Orlando and half of the train traveling via St. Augustine. Other options are to extend other trains from the Midwest or Northeast south to Miami via the FEC, such as the Capitol Limited or City of New Orleans via Mobile, Alabama. Extending an existing Superliner train would require less equipment than starting a complete new route.

   As usual, it’s all going to come down to politics. Which state (Other than Illinois.) has the most juice in Washington? Which state has the best planning? Which state can move the quickest?

   St. Augustine may or may not have train service again, 125 years after Henry Flagler became serious about hauling passengers into Florida to fill up his elegant hotels and resorts. If it does, yet another of the dozens and dozens of gaps in America’s passenger rail system will be rightly filled.

2. Inquiring minds want to know: With all of the money being thrown around Washington, and every city, town, village, hamlet, and their dog making plans to snap up as much money as possible to expand everything from local trolley systems (A good idea.) to major commuter rail systems to sprucing up stations, where are Amtrak’s plans for the future? What about fleet expansion, Rail Passenger Association of California President Paul Dyson wants to know? The single-level sleeping car order for the east coast trains doesn’t do anything to expand capacity; it just keeps enough new equipment floating into a maintenance-weary fleet to delay total breakdown.

   What about new routes? We know three restart routes are being studied (The Sunset Limited east of New Orleans, the Pioneer, and the North Coast Limited/Hiawatha.), but, what about bold, new plans to fill in so many of the other gaps in the country outside of the Northeast Corridor?

   And, the easiest thing of all, what about all of the other dozens and dozens of pieces of equipment sitting around in the weeds on wreck line tracks, waiting to be re-loved and repaired? When will Amtrak ask for money to fix this stuff, too?

   A dose of reality for True Believers is Amtrak is lagging behind everyone else in vision, if not outright bold management. Yes, Amtrak Interim President and CEO Joseph Boardman seems to be nudging things in the right direction – only marginally and slightly so – but, when is he or the Board of Directors going to give things a major shove in the right direction?

   Wise gray head Gil Carmichael has called for at least 150 new trainsets to ready Amtrak for his brilliant Interstate II strategy. While to some that may seem a big number, it’s only a starting point.

   Remember, Amtrak today has considerably less than 2,000 cars on its total roster, including active cars and cars sitting in the weeds on the wreck line. In the mid 1960s, just before the invention of Amtrak, there were over 5,000 passenger cars in the combined national fleet of America’s passenger carriers, and that was a depleted number from the halcyon post-World War II days of rebuilding the worn out war time fleet of cars.

   Now is not the time for timidity and reliance on the graciousness of others for survival. Now is the time for bold plans, bold action, and an understanding of how easy it is to bring America’s passenger rail system from an asterisk on the charts of transportation output to a real figure representing growth and prosperity.

3. While we’re on the subject of history, News From 1930 blog on the Internet came up with this fascinating gem, reporting what was written in The Wall Street Journal from June 16th through the 21st in 1930:
   

   Pullman Company [Operator of the nation’s sleeping car business over the majority of passenger railroads.] purchases in the last year: 1,165,000 towels, 444,000 pillow slips, 387,000 sheets, 63,000 porter’s jackets, 5,786,000 paper bags for women’s hats. Launders 278 million items annually.

   That’s a lot of items, especially for the first year of the Great Depression. At one point early in the 20th Century, it was said the Pullman Company made up more beds every night than the largest hotel chain in the country.

4. Now, what? Amtrak’s highly respected Inspector General, Fred E. Weiderhold, Jr. suddenly retired from Amtrak after 35 years, including being the watchdog who kept the contractors honest when the NEC was electrified north of New Haven, Connecticut.

   This happened practically overnight, and was unexpected by most. The Boston Globe wondered in its news columns what brought on this sudden urge to retire, but no one is talking. It should be noted in the same several day period Mr. Weiderhold retired, at least three other government IGs were forced out of their jobs by the Obama Administration without reasonable explanation.

   National Railroad Passenger Corporation
   60 Massachusetts Avenue NE
   Washington, DC 20002
   www.amtrak.com

   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

   ATK-09-047

   Contact: Media Relations (202) 906-3860
   June 18, 2009

   Amtrak Inspector General to Retire

   Fred E. Weiderhold, Jr. Served Amtrak for 35 Years

   WASHINGTON – Amtrak Inspector General Fred E. Weiderhold, Jr. today informed the Chairman of the Amtrak Board of Directors that he is retiring after 35 years of loyal service to the railroad.

   “As Amtrak’s first and only Inspector General, Fred has made important contributions in helping the Board of Directors understand key issues facing the railroad and made useful recommendations to improve how we do business,” Amtrak Chairman Thomas Carper stated. “We thank him for his dedicated service to Amtrak and wish him well in his retirement.”

   Carper added that under the federal Inspector General Act, the Amtrak Inspector General is appointed by the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Carper said he takes this responsibility seriously and will soon undertake a search for a replacement that can continue to maintain the integrity, independence and objectivity required of the position.

   In addition, Carper said that he has confidence in the Inspector General staff and expects them to carry on their important work during this interim period, including providing effective oversight of how Amtrak is handling the stimulus funds it received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

   Mr. Weiderhold has been the only person to serve as the Amtrak Inspector General since former Amtrak Chairman W. Graham Claytor, Jr, asked him to establish the Amtrak Office of Inspector General (OIG) in 1989. Previously, he was Amtrak’s first Special Assistant to the Chairman for Employee Relations, conducting special investigations and acting as the company’s first employee ombudsman. He has been one of the longer serving Inspectors General within the OIG community.

   About Amtrak

   Amtrak has posted six consecutive years of growth in ridership and revenue, carrying more than 28.7 million passengers in the last fiscal year. Amtrak provides intercity passenger rail service to more than 500 destinations in 46 states on a 21,000-mile route system. For schedules, fares and information, passengers may call 800-USA-RAIL or visit Amtrak.com.

5. The Holland, Michigan Sentinel on Monday, June 22, 2009 reported ridership on Amtrak’s Pere Marquette is down 12.7% this May compared to a year ago, and a state senate committee which funds the service is looking to slash funding for the train.

   Only 8,500 people boarded the route in May of 2009, or an average of 137 passengers per departure. All of the usual reasons were given for low ridership, including low gas prices and the slowed economy.

   Here’s the problem no one seems to want to understand: As long as government funding as the primary source of revenue for these short, perpetually money-losing routes is necessary, politicians are going to always be looking for ways to cut budgets, and low return on investment programs are usually the first to go.

   Too much of Amtrak relies on this very type of funding. There are unceasing stories from New England about those states wanting to cut funding for local trains (This, of course, does not include Amtrak Interim President and CEO Joseph Boardman’s home State of New York where he previously served as head of the state department of transportation. New York only funds one Amtrak train, the Adirondack, even though the entire Empire Service trains, with only an average load factor of 35%, gets a free ride with an all-federal subsidy.). Oklahoma pays big bucks for the tiny Heartland Flyer with even worse transportation output performance.

   What will it take to make Amtrak and its True Believers understand a healthy and robust long distance system throws off enough excess cash (profits) these short distance trains can be mostly internally subsidized? Why perpetually fight these annual political battles when the simple answer is vision and expansion, even if it’s just making the existing skeletal long distance system train consists longer?

   Why is this such a difficult concept to understand? Why do so many ill-informed people think it’s perpetually okay to support failure when success is within easy grasp?

6. Here’s some heartburn for those who believe the passenger business can never be profitable: Carnival plc, which owns Carnival Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Cunard Line, and The Yachts of Seabourn in North America; Costa Cruises in Europe; P&O Cruises, Cunard Line, and Ocean Village in the Untied Kingdom; AIDA Cruises in Germany; Ibero Cruises in Spain and Brazil; and P&O Cruises Australia in Australia and New Zealand, operates 88 cruise ships with a passenger capacity of approximately 169,040 souls. Carnival also marketed and operated 16 hotels or lodges with approximately 3,500 guest rooms; approximately 560 motor coaches used for sightseeing and charters, 24 domes rail cars, which run on the Alaska Railroad between Anchorage and Fairbanks, Whittier and Denali, and Whittier and Talkeetna; 2 luxury dayboats; and sightseeing packages.

   Carnival plc, headquartered in London, when tracing its heritage back through P&O Princess Cruises, was founded in 1850. Television fans may remember the real Princess Cruises happily loaned its ship, the real Pacific Princess, to Aaron Spelling and ABC to create the wildly popular television hit, The Love Boat, which spurred the modern cruise line renaissance.

   All of this, by the way, is somehow accomplished without any government subsidies and is effected through private capital and entrepreneurship.

7. William Lindley of Scottsdale, Arizona has some thoughts on state passenger rail organizations. Mr. Lindley, a longtime professional associate of URPA, is a past president and treasurer of the Arizona Rail Passenger Association, and currently serves as a writer and editor for the group’s newsletter.
   

   What does a rail passenger association really need to do? A recent report illustrates how what looks like failure to uphold principles may have helped doom a major city’s plans for modern passenger train service.

   In Atlanta, Georgia, a proposed green space called the “Decatur Beltline” would remove track connections which permitted trains to connect in all directions from Atlanta’s downtown yards and stations. According to the National Association of Railroad Passengers Newsletter of May 2009, this “pitted local environmentalists against passenger train advocates (Georgia ARP remained officially neutral to minimize bad blood among erstwhile allies.)”

   Say, what? Since when would a responsible passenger advocacy group roll over and play dead when the future of any kind of sensible passenger train operations is threatened? When I saw that I had to do some digging.

   According to a November 30, 2005 Associated Press report, Ed McMahon of the Urban Land Institute called for using Atlanta’s “unused” railway tracks for a linked system of parks, paths and transit. Now, while this is certainly an admirable goal, according to AP, “A panel of transportation experts raised concerns when it found isolated parts of the loop would not have riders to support trains, trolleys or whatever transit options are proposed.” In other words, here we go again with removing a vital railway link – which can’t be relocated – in favor of some green space which can be placed anywhere.

   This conflicts with the goals of a long-proposed and eagerly anticipated downtown intermodal terminal at approximately the site of the original Atlanta Union Station, and with an immediate connection to mass transit MARTA’s hub, the Five Points subway station, from which trains radiate north, south, east, and west.

   Atlanta’s other former main station, Terminal Station, on the Southern Railway, had south-facing stub-end platforms and was on Southern’s mainline just west of Union Station. Although the Richard B. Russell Federal Building replaced Terminal Station in the 1970s, a single through-track connection to the Union Station area still exists … but neither Terminal Station nor the current Peachtree station used by Amtrak can reasonably be expanded for the demands of an expanded modern passenger operation.

   The Five Points site is within walking distance to Georgia State University buildings, the popular Underground Atlanta shopping and nightlife district, and the downtown sports arenas. Furthermore, there is potential at a downtown terminal for a building with visual and interpretive ties to Atlanta’s historic train stations and its growth as the key city to the “New South” – building on the idea of the station as gateway to the city.

   The City of Atlanta, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper article of March 5, 2009, said that the State Department of Transportation’s “vision of high-speed rail would discourage future residential development.” Amazingly, the city seems thereby to value a few new apartments over connecting the entire metro area with its downtown transit center.

   With the Georgia DOT’s March 2009 removal of its objection to the park project, trains will only be able to reach downtown via the west side connection. Amtrak’s Crescent and commuter trains from the north and east would have a two-mile backup move to reach a new downtown station.

   Now, without the eastern loop connection, Amtrak would likely have to stop at a new station with a MARTA connection – a new stop miles further northeast from downtown than even the existing Peachtree Station. This would mean requiring longer trips for most users, and a
   change of subway trains for many. This site, like Peachtree, has little potential for filling the perceptual role of a Gateway.

   So, now, let’s return to that quote again:

   “… pitted local environmentalists against passenger train advocates (Georgia ARP remained officially neutral to minimize bad blood among erstwhile allies.)” – NARP Newsletter, May 2009.

   I wasn’t privy to the discussions but this certainly sounds like a failure to uphold the principles which should govern a passenger rail association. Rail passenger associations are neither historic preservation groups (the National Railway Historical Society fulfills that goal) nor are they railfan groups. Our associations are not yes-men to Amtrak, the railroads, local transit operators, real estate interests, sports teams, or environmental groups.

   Indeed, the whole point of such a rail passenger association, as a non-profit institution, is a fiduciary (meaning: a relationship of confidence and trust) and a moral obligation to guide the progress toward modern and expanded passenger rail service. This is a charitable goal because passenger trains improve our quality of life, offer transportation options to everyone, improve our economy, and improve our environment … everyone wins with better public transit.

   So was Georgia ARP’s failure to object to the removal of a vital transportation link a breach of trust for the objective of advocacy? Again, I wasn’t there so I can’t say, but if NARP’s account is correct, placing “not upsetting so-called environmentalists” above “fulfilling the confidence placed in your organization to preserve and enhance passenger train service” seems
   highly suspect.

   Because detailed coverage has proven difficult to find in newspapers or on-line, I dearly hope one of our Gentle Readers more familiar with the subject can soothe my fears.

8. Six months from today is Christmas Day!