Amtrak Cascades to receive unified management

Passenger rail service on ideal track:

Faster, more reliable passenger rail service between Vancouver, B.C., and Eugene, Ore., is one of the likely outcomes of a new partnership between the Washington and Oregon transportation departments.
The two state agencies have agreed to manage the route for Amtrak Cascades service as one continuous rail corridor, instead of two separate state operations.
This is a welcome move that should eventually lead to improved service for a growing customer base of rail passengers.
The goal is to have a unified plan for governance, scheduling, budgeting, capital planning and fleet management. This should lead to increased efficiencies and cost savings.
...
As gasoline prices continue to soar, more people are turning to passenger rail service as a viable transportation alternative. Amtrak Cascades ridership in 2011 totalled 850,000 passengers, which is a 51 percent increase in the past 10 years.

It would be interesting to see if they expand this further into a unified operation with British Columbia as well, though that would come with certain issues. I'm not personally aware of how this would immediately affect any plans or other issues with the rail service, other than reduction of redundancies. One potential, however, is a joint selection for future operators in accordance with the Passenger Rail Improvement and Investment Act.

It does point to an interesting trend in centralization amongst various regional groups however, with LOSSAN, the San Joaquins, the Northern California Unified Service, and now this being bandied about within the past year.

GAO: NJ governor was less than truthful about ARC cancellation

From the New York Times:

The report by the Government Accountability Office, to be released this week, found that while Mr. Christie said that state transportation officials had revised cost estimates for the tunnel to at least $11 billion and potentially more than $14 billion, the range of estimates had in fact remained unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said the cost would be no more than $10 billion.
Mr. Christie also misstated New Jersey’s share of the costs: he said the state would pay 70 percent of the project; the report found that New Jersey was paying 14.4 percent. And while the governor said that an agreement with the federal government would require the state to pay all cost overruns, the report found that there was no final agreement, and that the federal government had made several offers to share those costs.
...
A spokesman for the governor, Michael Drewniak, said Mr. Christie’s statement of costs had included $775 million to build a new portal bridge, which was required as part of the project. The 70 percent state share, he said, included the costs that would have been paid for by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is run by both states, as well as federal highway and stimulus funds earmarked for New Jersey. Counting those costs, which the report does not do, would put the state’s share at 65.5 percent.

The GAO report itself.

The problem with grade separations

Rail crossings are a real annoyance for those sitting at them, especially when one is unfortunate to get stuck behind a mile long train going only a few tens of miles per hour. Such prolonged stops can easily introduce produce major traffic snarls, extending the misery, although a passenger train will not produce a delay longer than a typical 90 second red light. Additionally, there safety issues whenever a crossing between two directions of traffic occurs, resulting in the occasional strikes of vehicles or pedestrians by trains, leading not only to deaths of the trespassers, but also delays to passengers aboard the train as well as passenger fatalities in extreme situations. Conceptually, at least, separating rail lines from roads where they currently cross is a good idea.

However, the problem is that these are extremely expensive and generally paid for by rail funds.

Consider, for instance, OCTA's current grade separation projects. Nearly 600 million dollars buys only seven grade crossings with minimal benefit to rail operations. While it does prevent the occasional delay from vehicular and pedestrian strikes, the benefit as seen by rail travelers is minimal to nonexistent. To make matters worse, that sum could easily pay for the electrification of the rail line from Los Angeles Union Station to Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo Metrolink station with all the accompanying benefits of electrification, including significantly faster acceleration and average travel times, as well as agency benefits from the resulting higher ridership and fare figures and lower operating costs.

Thanks to the positive train control mandate, however, there is the potential to eliminate safety issues arising from most vehicular strikes. With readily available technology, one can use a variety of means, from radar to inductive loops, to determine whether a particular crossing is blocked or free of vehicular traffic. In addition to raising gates to permit the egress of offending vehicles, as Amtrak's four-quadrant gates in Connecticut do, a temporary "mini-block" may be overlaid upon the normal block with the gate crossing transmitting its normal information to the system. With this mini-block system, the engineer is easily notified as to whether any problems such as an obstructing vehicle await at the crossing and may take appropriate action, or even have the train automatically brake in response to a sudden change in situation. With the use of additional safety measures such as medians and quad-gates, this reduces the risk of vehicular strikes to last-second ramming through the gates, for which additional safety measures are available. This additionally prevents accidents arising from human error in crossing repair. To my knowledge, the positive train control system used in Michigan, ITCS, operates in this fashion.

Delays from suicidal or terminally oblivious pedestrians will not, of course, be affected by such a system.

Doing this does require that a train be able to stop in time, of course. FRA regulations require that lights are flashing for a minimum of 20 seconds prior to the arrival of a train, which comes out to a distance of 2,317 feet for a train traveling at 79 miles per hour. Courtesy of this document*, page 21, we have an equation for determining the stopping distance in Imperial units, provided we know the braking rate, which can be estimated for the FLIRT at approximately 2.8 mphps. For our 79 mile per hour train, that comes out to 1,634.5 feet, allowing for a a shade under 6 seconds for complete clearance of the tracks prior the train necessitating a halt. Of course, stopping distance may take longer depending upon equipment and this is only the minimum warning time, with many signals providing a much greater warning period. The point is not to establish a hard and fast rule about how it ought to be done, but merely to demonstrate that it can be done and provide for rail nearly all the safety benefits of grade separation at a fraction of the cost.



*Worth reading if purely for the amusement factor of the Department of Defense spending money to definitively say "No, the TGV is not suitable for hauling M1 tanks."

Then and now

1958
Los Angeles-Santa Barbara: 2 hours, 14 minutes Southern Pacific fastest scheduled time (#98)
Los Angeles San Luis Obispo: 4 hours, 32 minutes Southern Pacific fastest scheduled time (#98)

1964 (via)
Los Angeles-Santa Barbara: 2 hours, 15 minutes Southern Pacific fastest scheduled time (#99)
Los Angeles-San Luis Obispo: 4 hours, 33 minutes Southern Pacific fastest scheduled time  (#99)
Los Angeles-San Diego: 2 hours, 40 minutes ATSF fastest scheduled time (#79)

1971 A-Day

Los Angeles-Santa Barbara: 2 hours, 13 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#98, #12)

Los Angeles-San Luis Obispo: 4 hours, 30 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#98, #12)

Los Angeles-San Diego: 2 hours 45 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#11, #12)

2012

Los Angeles-Santa Barbara: 2 hours, 23 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#14)

Los Angeles-San Luis Obispo: 5 hours, 5 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#14)

Los Angeles-San Diego: 2 hours 28 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time

Now, to give Amtrak some credit, some of the delay is due to extra stops and there has been a major increase in frequencies as well. Additionally, this may ignore periods of faster running. For instance, while today, only the oft delayed Pacific Surfliner Express ran San Diego-Los Angeles in 2 hours 28 minutes, with the remaining trains running 2:40 or longer, from 1975 until 1980 the San Diegans 12 daily trains ran at 2 hours, 35 minutes.

With that said, after billions of dollars in investment including the deployment of coach fleets designed to minimize dwell times (California and Surfliner cars), the fact that it takes just as long, or longer, now as it did then is absolutely atrocious. 

Oil boom leads to Amtrak passenger boom in North Dakota

ND train depot booms with oil patch passengers

The number of people getting on and off Amtrak's Empire Builder trains at the seven stations in North Dakota dropped 10.6 percent in fiscal 2011, to about 111,000 passengers, compared with the previous fiscal year. However, at the stations in the heart of the oil patch, Williston and nearby Stanley, ridership increased despite several months of disruptions due to flooding and track damage.
Williston's ridership grew by more than 5,330 people in the last fiscal year, and it served nearly 30,000 passengers. Stanley depot served 6,146 passengers, or nearly 1,600 more than it did during the previous 12 months, railroad records show.
In Minot, which is on the fringe of the oil patch, passenger service was interrupted for five months last year due to flooding. The number of riders who passed through the station dropped from 40,360 in fiscal 2010 to 29,179 in fiscal 2011.
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the Williston stop on Empire Builder is on track to be among the busiest along the Chicago-to-Pacific Northwest Empire Builer route, surpassing ridership in passing through stations in some bigger cities, such as St. Paul, Minn.
Some 4,500 people got on or off the train in Williston in January, which were the latest figures available. Magliari said the railroad expects the numbers to climb as oil production increases.
Ridership on the Empire Builder from October to February was jumped more than 10,000 passengers to 207,417 compared to the same period a year earlier, Magliari said.
The 5.1 percent ridership increase on the line -- much of it attributed to oil patch passengers in western North Dakota -- compares to a 3.2 percent rise in ridership nationally, Magliari said.
North Dakota's oil rush is boosting ridership all along the railroad's network as itinerant oil workers travel by train to the state and head back home during time off, Valley said.

Amtrak costs per train-mile per route

After doing a bit of research with my last post and being both intrigued and perplexed by some of the disparities, I thought I'd go through and expand this to the entire Amtrak network and see how it broke down per individual route. The methodology involved is using the October 2008 schedule and assuming that it holds true for the entire year as a simplification while using Amtrak's FY 2009 annual report for cost information. Weekly one directional runs were calculated and it was assumed that the other direction would mirror image it. Total train miles were calculated by multiplying the weekly run by 52. There was no attempt to take note of special days of extra running or not running and it was assumed every single train ran and was not annulled. This was actually a fairly accurate simplification as it lead to a total of 37,943,672 calculated train miles against a reported 37,439,000 train miles. Additionally, the train miles and costs of the Northeast Regional, Washington-Newport News, and New Haven-Springfield were combined together into one accounting.

Draft Revised Business Plan is out: The Sanity Strikes Back

The Draft Revised Business Plan for CAHSR is now available at their website. There is also a summary of changes. Some stream of consciousness commentary as I read through it:

They have indeed dropped the Initial Construction System as an entity and moved straight to building an Initial Operating System, which is IOS-South down to the San Fernando Valley. Interestingly, they plan on moving the San Joaquins over as soon as what used to be the ICS is finished and tie it in with Altamont Commuter Express.

The new price tag is $68.4 billion and is "for delivering the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles/Anaheim system, in accordance with Proposition 1A performance standards."

Lot of talk of building up ridership base with the blended plan and bookend improvements. Referring to it as a blended system which is far better, in my opinion, than their previous "We're separate from everyone and everything" approach.

The ICS is now "IOS-First Construction" thanks to switching the San Joaquins, although this apparently isn't distinct from the actual IOS?

San Joaquins, Capitol Corridor, and ACE are referred to as "Northern California Unified Service." I'm not sure if this is supposed to be just an ease of use term or whether they plan on actually unifying the responsible agencies.

New completion date: 2028, five years earlier. Up to 9 trains per hour, average ticket price of $81 between LA and SF in 2010 dollars. Cost in 2011 dollars is 53.4 billion.

San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission, Caltrans Division of Rail, Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, and Sacramento Regional Transit have developed the NorCal Unified Service, working on a MOU for improvements to non-HSR system for increased speeds and frequencies to San Jose, Oakland, and Sacramento by the 2018 opening when they'll use the former ICS until the IOS begins.

Currently, the IOS is defined as extending from Merced to the San Fernando Valley, and high-speed revenue service would only start once the full IOS is built and operable. Should ridership and revenue forecasts and financial projections demonstrate that revenue service compliant with Proposition 1A could begin earlier, with a shorter IOS, appropriate reviews would occur to consider and implement earlier service, if appropriate.

There's actual discussion of Phase 2 in this business plan. No costs or anything however.

 Most of the cost reduction seems to be by getting rid of the full build out and being satisfied with a blended system. A slight reduction in inflation estimates, not enough to vastly change anything.

Constant dollar cost of IOS is $26.865-31.339 billion in constant 2011 dollars. Breakdown of costs on page 3-8.

A mildly odd tidbit

An important step forward in demonstrating the viability of the model and the reliability of its outputs was to use it to test actual circumstances in the Northeast Corridor. To do that, the Authority developed a California HSR scenario that has service levels comparable to those offered by Acela service between Washington D.C. and Boston. The model forecasts 2.7 million annual interregional riders on California HSR with Acela-like service in 2008, which is 79 percent of the ridership on the Acela in 2008. A comparison of mega-region population shows that the California HSR corridor had 76 percent Northeast Corridor population in 2000. The outcome therefore could be explained by the difference in population between the corridors.

They need to hype the predicted advanced fare prices like crazy instead of letting the media focus on the average fares ($52 vs $81 LA-SF as example).

So the new look of CAHSR: Dedicated HSR from Los Angeles to San Jose, blended between Anaheim and LA and San Jose to San Francisco.