Opposition to Amtrak privitisation

[bikkuri bahn]

Opponents of Amtrak privatization point to Britain

http://wvgazette.com/News/201106260085

 

First off all, I'm getting more and more ambivalent to whole passenger rail situation in the states as I live longer here in Japan, and see how polarized and ossified politics have become in the U.S., so whatever becomes of Amtrak is not really my main concern.  However, whenever the opposition to passenger privitisation points to Britain's example, I always wonder why nobody also looks to Japan's example of privitisation that is generally agreed to have been successful.  In another vein, anti-rail forces (usually conservatives and their ilk), like to repeat the mantra that that are no examples of passenger railway transport anywhere that are profitable without government subsidy/aid, which ignores the fact that roads and airports, as well as inland waterways are heavily subsidized by taxes, and that private railways in Japan are profit making ventures constructed with private capital.  I suppose it's the "Japan effect"- where the West ignores successful Japanese examples, and tends to focus on the negative. Oh well.  Next month I'm riding the Kyushu shinkansen.  Glad I can experience something in my lifetime (a newly constructed HSR line) that likely I would not have, had I stayed in U.S. permanently (as the majority of Americans don't venture out of the border).

[disturbman]

Somehow, I can't make up my mind about Mica's plan to privatized operations on the NEC. I mean, in and all, there is no intrinsic reasons for a private entity to fare better than a public one. And Amtrak seems to do particularly good in the NEC, the only piece of infrastructure it owns. For me, what the NEC needs more than anything else is a major upgrading program to cut journey times and get rid of the actual bottlenecks. It needs capacity and quality investments.

 

In this case, it doesn't seem to me particularly wise to put Amtrak in pieces in order to sell off operational rights in the only rail corridor that makes money. I mean, what the NEC needs is a strong and integrated regional operator that will own the tracks it's using. It could then use its ownership of the infrastructure to take up loans in order to implement upgrades along the road. Something that I can't see happening in Mica's plan of selling operational rights on the NEC to private entities.

 

I also don't think the US can emulate Japan style of rail business. It would mean putting the rein of urban planing and development in the hands of a company.

[westfalen]

During four weeks traveling Britain's railways from Thurso to Penzance last year I found things running pretty smoothly. Apart from a railcar between Ipswich and Felixstowe that looked like it hadn't been washed since it was built the trains seemed well maintained with service and time keeping almost on par with Japan, certainly better than Germany and way better than France. There were times when trains were crowded because a nice new two car railcar had seemingly replaced the six car loco hauled train of the past, but I've seen that on JR too.

 

Putting aside what the accountants say, a couple of hours beside the West Coast Main Line gives the impression Britain's railways are doing ok.

[Guest ___]

Amtrak should either be privatizes or just let die and put a dead dog out of its misery. I had attended the monthly BoCC TSAC meeting this month to learn my county pays about 10k a year in to a state fund for Amtrak but yet we have zero passenger stops for Amtrak.

[Mudkip Orange]

Nope.

 

You need Amtrak because:

 

(i) The NEC already dominates the NYC-DC market, and is profitable on an O&M basis (excl capital costs). But the NEC is severely track-constrained and will require substantial infrastructural investment for things like additional tracks, bridge replacements, and new tunnels under Baltimore and the Hudson. These sort of major investments are more efficiently conducted by the public sector, since the interest rates on government bonds are substantially lower than private ones. And if the major improvements are to be publicly-funded, so should the trains be operated publicly. With a private lease (UK-style), any unforeseen ridership/revenue increases go to the benefit of the concessionaire. With a public operator they can be used to pay down debt, or cross-subsidize other services.

 

(ii) Amtrak is uniquely useful as a "pass-through" operator for state-supported services. Because Amtrak was negotiated into existence as a way for freight railroads to discontinue money-losing passenger services, it received favorable agreements regarding liability and track usage that simply could not be obtained today. Amtrak's personnel base has a vast litany of institutional knowledge that has been passed down continuously from the parent railroads, and provides a centralized pool of labor and equipment that greatly simplifies state-subsidized startups. Without Amtrak, state-subsidized startups would have to start from "square one" every time, and the added expense of this added complexity could impact their viability.

 

(iii) Neither NS nor CSX nor UP nor BNSF nor KCS really wants to let a concessionaire use its rails. This is the big difference between the American network and the Euro-Asian ones. In the case of UK and Japan, the starting point was full nationalization, and from there they were able to move to private trains on quasi-public track (UK) or private trains on private track (Japan). In the US, you have public trains on private track, which is a fairly unique situation and not particularly amenable to privatization. Of course, the freight haulers don't really like Amtrak either, but they're stuck with them because of the legacy agreements struck at Amtrak's formation. See (i).