Amtrak OTP
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
A report came out this week from the Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General (available here) entitled Amtrak’s Future Outlook and Budgetary Needs. The report is in part, to be honest, what we’ve come to expect from the current administration, a transit agency requesting funds and having the actual appropriation falling short of the request.
That said, the budget numbers aren’t the interesting part of the report. The interesting discussion is when the report discusses Amtrak’s on-time performance (OTP), or lack thereof.
“Amtrak’s OTP had been declining steadily since FY 2002, from 77 percent to 68 percent in FY 2006. However, the OTP increased in FY 2007 to 69 percent and to 72.7 percent through January 2008.”
Now, an OTP hovering around 70 is far from desirable, but it isn’t unheard of in transit agencies across the country.
“In FY 2006, average OTP across Amtrak’s long-distance routes was only 30 percent.”
What?! Now that is a shocking number. A 30 percent on-time performance explains a lot about lack of consumer faith in Amtrak. Wow.
So who is to blame for this poor performance? Pick a group and see who they are pointing fingers at.
“…there is little agreement between Amtrak and the host railroads on whose track Amtrak operates regarding the cause of this poor OTP…”
Yep, everybody is blaming everybody else. In defense of the freight railroads whose tracks Amtrak largely operates on, they barely have enough room for their own trains, let alone Amtrak’s, as the report states.
“The capacity of the freight rail network is insufficient to handle the mix of fast (passenger and inter-modal freight) and slow (bulk commodity freight) trains operating according to different business models, i.e., scheduled versus unscheduled or loosely scheduled service.”
The report points out that most of the tracks outside the Northeast Corridor are single tracks with bi-directional traffic, necessitating the use of sidings. It also states that increasing OTP outside the Northeast Corridor to 85 percent would generate a net gain of $136.6 million.
Taking a look at this report, is there any clearer indication that there needs to be a concerted effort put into designing and building a high-speed rail network in the United States. The freight rail network is strained to the point of bursting for its own trains. Amtrak’s OTP for long-distance trains is 30 percent. And neither group is willing to give an inch to help the other out, as the report found, “certain practices intentionally delay Amtrak trains.”
We have an infrastructure crisis on our hands. We need to expand not only the freight rail network, but also implement a better plan for Amtrak other than just shoe-horning it onto existing tracks. And until we do that, Amtrak will continue to operate at losses with poor OTP.
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April 11th, 2008 at 10:16 am
For many years after WWII as the highway infrastructure was improved and expanded with heavy government spending, railroads were saddled with thousands of miles of lightly or seasonally-used branchlines. Abandonment of these weedgrown ribbons of rust was time-consuming and costly, and between the ICC, rail labor and government red tape, the rails were forced to spend millions to keep alive rail lines that were no longer economically justified.
However, when the Staggers act was passed back in the late seventies, the railroads ripped up thousands of miles of branch line trackage, furloughing employees and saving millions of dollars of annual operating cost.
Unfortunately, by this time, Wall Street had invaded the boardrooms of the nations railroads, and mainline trackage deemed “excess capacity” was also abandoned wholesale, resulting in the current mess of inadequate rail capacity that we see today.
The truth is, however, that even though many of the major rail corridors outside of the northeast are choked with far more freight traffic than can be reasonably handled on those lines, the operation of a handful of daily passenger trains should be a routine matter.
Even the ‘hot’ intermodal trains on these rail lines end up sitting outside of terminals for hours waiting for yard space or crew availability while Amtrak’s few trains sit behind them. This occurs on a daily basis around every major city with intercity rail passenger service. It appears to be nothing more than intentional poor planning on the part of rail management at times.
We certainly do have a rail infrastructure crisis on our hands. Problem is, it was caused by the very industry that now needs government intervention (read: $$) to help replace capacity that never should have been eliminated in the first place.
Finger-pointing, of course, won’t solve the problem. The administration in Washington needs to get its collective head out of the sand and out of the auto/highway lobby’s pockets and realize that intercity rail passenger service is necessary for our continued mobility in an age where fuel prices are starting to affect that very mobility.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
While not disputing your conclusions or Cliff’s re the desirability of new HSR lines in the longer term, we should not tar all the freight railroads as bad actors. I haven’t checked more recently, but in May 2006, “good” and “bad” among long-distance train hosts were:
“GOOD”
* CN, City of New Orleans, 93.5%
* BNSF, Empire Builder, 87.1%
* BNSF, Southwest Chief, 75.8% (on BNSF’s super-busy Transcon route)
“BAD”
* CSX, Cardinal, 34.6%
* CSX & NS, Lakeshore Limited, 19.8%
* NS, Crescent, 19.4%
* UP, Texas Eagle, 14.5%
* UP-1,400 mi & BNSF-1,038 mi, CA Zephyr, 14.5% (UP the main “culprit” as westbound CHI-DEN OTP similar to other BNSF stats above)
* CSX, Silver Meteor & Silver Star, 11.3%
* UP, Sunset Limited, 7.7%
* UP-1,203 mi & BNSF-186 mi, Coast Starlight, 3.3%(UP the main “culprit” as soutbound SEA-PDX OTP similar to other BNSF stats above)
What is needed now and for the short/intermediate term is more rigorous enforcement of 49 USCA 24308(c) Preference over freight transportation. If CN and BNSF can do it, so should others - no excuses.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Good afternoon: I’m surprised that nothing was stated about Amtrak trains 7 & 8
(27 & 28 to Portland, Oregon), the Empire Builder.
The Seattle section has been running On Time, or even arriving
in Seattle 30 minutes early. That train runs
on BNSF for the most part. Then, you have
the planned resumption of The Coast Starlight
between Los Angeles and Klamath Falls, Oregon,
then a bus bridge run to Eugene, where
a stub coach/cafe/lounge section will
operate between there and Seattle. The dates
are April 14th and 15th according to a notice posted on an Amtrak
Group. The results of the Coast Starlight resumption will be looked at very closely, while we all wait for Union Pacific to complete repairs on the Oregon Rock Slide
situation.
Mike Gitlin-Seattle, WA.
April 12th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Balkanizing the existing system into passenger and freight lines isn’t the near-term answer, IMHO. This isn’t France or Germany or Japan where there was a post-war tradition of heavy passenger train use before dedicated high-speed (300 km/h) lines were ever built. This is America where we’ve done our best to kill the passenger train, actively and passively, since the Second World War!
If we don’t begin to add more capacity to existing lines, the economy *will* begin to suffer (even more). Adding capacity, even simple things like removing choke points as was recently done with Chicago’s Brighton Park junction, helps the landlord railroads but also helps the tenants, Amtrak and the commuter lines.
If we try a Big Bang high speed system, we’ll still not have the freight capacity we need and we’ll have a system that may or may not be successful but one that sure can’t move goods!
Now, add capacity, i.e. put back all the second, third, and fourth main tracks that were ripped out over the last 30 years, and the whole system, passenger and freight gets better.
Eventually so many folks will be riding the train that new lines will be needed just for that … THEN start building high speed lines.
But don’t do it before then.