CORRIDOR TRAINS FOR THE AGE OF $3 GASOLINE: HOW THE STATES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WILL RESUME WHAT THE RAILROADS LEFT OFF IN 1950

 

 

 

 

Remarks prepared for delivery by

James E. Coston

Chairman

Corridor Capital LLC

 

October 29, 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

13th Annual Transportation Summit

TOLEDO METROPOLITAN AREA COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS

 Owens Community College

Perrysburg, Ohio

 

 

 

 

Thanks, Diane.  It’s a pleasure to be asked to come to Toledo and talk about my favorite subject—passenger trains.

 

I mean both parts of that sentence, by the way:  It’s always a pleasure for me to talk about passenger trains.  But I’m getting a particular kick out of talking about passenger trains in Toledo.   Why Toledo? 

 

Because 50 years ago Toledo was the poster child for how not to run passenger trains.

 

I know that statement sounds blasphemous coming from a passenger-train advocate, but I’m not kidding. 

 

Once you clear away a lot of the nostalgic railfan rhetoric and look at the facts, you can only conclude that Toledo—and hundreds of other smaller and medium-size U.S. cities—were not particularly well treated by the railroad industry.  Even during the so-called Golden Era of the American Passenger Train, the service those railroads provided to Toledo was inadequate.

 

So inadequate, in fact, that poor passenger-train service probably was one of the leading reasons why public officials in Toledo—and in hundreds of other cities across the country—lobbied Congress for a federally financed airport program, which we got in 1946; and a federally financed Interstate highway program, which we got ten years later, in 1956.  Millions of Americans asked for these programs because they had essentially given up on passenger trains.

 

Before I left Chicago I looked up some railroad timetables from 1954 to see what kind of passenger-train service Toledo enjoyed before we had Interstate highways and jet travel.

 

I paid particular attention to the timetable for all trains between New York and Chicago on the New York Central Railroad, which was the railroad that offered the most service to Toledo.   

 

Those timetables showed Toledo had 13 trains a day running eastbound out of Chicago, including one that terminated at Toledo and one that ran through but terminated at Cleveland.  The other 11 ran all the way from Chicago to New York or Boston.  The same number of trains ran westbound.

 

That sounds like a wonderful slate of departures to pick from—until you start looking at when these trains stopped in Toledo.

 

Four of them passed through in the wee hours of the morning: 2: 45 a.m., 3:50 a.m., 4:16 a.m. and 5:01 a.m.  A fifth came in at midnight.

 

There was only one train decently timed to give somebody from Toledo a convenient morning trip to Chicago.  Interestingly, it was the Lake Shore Limited, the only New York-Chicago train Amtrak is still running.  It left Toledo at 7:28 a.m. and arrived in Chicago at 11 a.m, and you could have a nice breakfast in the dining car.

 

But after the Lake Shore left there was a four-hour gap in westbound train movements until train No. 59, the Chicagoan, went through after 11, and then No. 35, the Iroquois, left at 1:17. 

 

Then there was another big gap—four hours--no trains west until No. 35, the Prairie State, left at 5:22.  This was a good train for a Chicagoan just winding up a day of business in Toledo.  It carried both a dining car and a lounge car, so you could arrive back in Chicago well fed at 8:45 p.m.  The trip took about 5 hours and 20 minutes to cover 234 miles, with six stops.

 

But that was about it.  There was another departure at 8:45, but it was a local, No. 43, that made 10 stops and took six hours to reach Chicago at 1:45 in the morning.  It carried no food-service car.  Trains left again at 12:30 and 3 a.m.  Then the cycle repeated itself.

 

Eastbound, it was even worse.  Say you wanted to go from Toledo over to Cleveland for a day of business.  The first train out was No. 32, a Chicago-Cleveland overnight mail train that carried a coach.  It left Toledo at 7:30 and reached Cleveland at 10:30—106 miles in 3 hours and no food-service car.

 

And what happened after No 32 left at 7:30 in the morning? 

 

Nothing.  Not a single eastbound New York Central train passed through Toledo until the Interstate Express left at 3:05 p.m.—a 6 ½-hour gap on one of the busiest railroads in the country. 

 

And then, mysteriously, the rails started to hum again with eastbound trains in late afternoon, the Fifth Avenue Special to New York at 4:57, the Cleveland Mercury to Cleveland at 6:46, the New England States to Boston at 7:01, the Pacemaker to New York at 7:54, the Commodore Vanderbilt to New York at 8:35 and the Lake Shore Limited to New York at 11:27.  Then nothing again until 3:32 a.m., the Chicagoan, to New York, and 4:10 a.m., the overnight Forest City from Chicago to Cleveland.

 

Why did trains come and go at Toledo at such odd hours? 

 

Because the New York Central was scheduling its trains basically for long-distance overnight passengers traveling all the way from New York or Boston to Chicago.  We call this “end-point timing.”  Intermediate stations like Toledo tended to be served at inconvenient times—especially if they weren’t as large as the end-point cities. 

 

Toledo was just one of hundreds of mid-point communities from coast to coast that had to subsist on the crumbs that spilled from the railroad industry’s long-distance overnight trains schedules.  Cities like Toledo were the railroad version of what coast-to-coast airline travelers today call “flyover territory.”

 

Today, almost all transportation experts agree that passenger trains make the most sense when they run on fast, frequent, convenient daytime schedules between end points less than about 300 miles apart.  These trains not only can serve the end points well, but also can serve smaller cities spaced every 30 to 75 miles along the route.

 

In Europe and Japan, where they have high-speed trains that cruise at speeds between 150 and 200 miles per hour, the ideal daytime train itinerary gets even longer—500, 600 miles or more. 

 

A train doing 200 miles an hour could cover the 340 miles between Chicago and Cleveland in about 2 hours.  That’s faster than you can do it by air, plus the train can make intermediate stops—including Toledo. 

 

In Spain today the trip from Madrid to Córdoba—which is the same distance as Toledo to Chicago—is done by high-speed trains in 1 hour and 45 minutes…and there are 30 trains a day in each direction.

 

This kind of operation is what we call a corridor train.  The ideal length of a corridor can be 200 miles, 300 miles or more—depending on how fast the trains run.  The corridor train is the most successful and the most useful kind of passenger train for people living in densely populated, urbanized regions.

 

And may I remind you that the population density of Ohio is greater than that of France.

 

In fact, if you look at the map, Ohio, plus the southeastern corner of Michigan and the western end of New York, adds up to a virtually ideal corridor-train network.  You’ve got the 3-C Corridor, plus the Cleveland-Toledo-Detroit Corridor, plus a direct route from Toledo down to Columbus and Cincinnati, plus the prospect of reaching out along the lake shore to Buffalo.

 

This is the kind of passenger-train system that the railroads should have been developing 50 years ago. 

 

Why didn’t they do it? 

 

They couldn’t, because they didn’t have the money. 

 

 

 

 

We all know what happened.  The railroads in the Eastern third of the United States went broke trying to compete with the government’s highways, waterways and airports.

 

Updating their tired passenger-train fleets—and building additional tracks, bridges, signals and stations to operate a truly modern and customer-responsive passenger service—was simply beyond their means.  The investor-owned railroads were scrambling to get out of Bankruptcy Court.  They did not have the resources to compete with the government’s shiny new highways and airports.  They needed to adapt their passenger trains to modern needs by operating fast, frequent daytime corridor trains—but there was no money, either in the private sector of the public sector—to create that system.

 

Now here we are 50 years later.  The highways and airports are getting old and crowded and expensive to operate.  Their efficiency is not growing, and taxpayers are suffering sticker shock over their costs.

 

So some of the wiser and shrewder taxpayers are asking: “Why can’t we resume the development of passenger-rail technology that stalled 50 years ago?  Can we dust off some of those plans and designs, update them to meet current and future needs, and give people an opportunity to travel by passenger train instead of forcing them to drive or fly?”

 

I’m not talking about a passenger-rail “restoration” or “revival.”  That would mean simply bringing back the old system that failed.

 

Nor am I talking about leaping into the future with a totally new high-speed rail system like those built in Europe or Japan.

 

Rather, I’m talking about a resumption of development—taking American passenger rail up to the next level--from the level where it stalled 50 years ago.  The wiser railroad executives knew back then that we needed to run faster, more frequent daytime corridor trains, but they simply lacked the resources to do it.

 

Today we can do it.  It’s being done today—in California.  Let me show you some pictures.  I’ve borrowed a short slide show from our friend Joe Szabo, the Illinois Legislative Director of the United Transportation Union.

 

 

 

 

 

Switch on Joe Szabo’s slide show.

 

Slide 1

 

This is a typical train that Amtrak operates for the California Department of Transportation.  It’s got a modern locomotive, three or four very comfortable, high-capacity, double-deck coaches, and a food service car.

 

California pays Amtrak to operate 60 of these trains every day—30 round trips—on three different routes. 

 

Last year these trains carried more than 4 million passengers—and the ridership has been growing at about 10 per cent per year. 

 

Since most of that growth occurred before gasoline went to $3 a gallon, we are probably safe in assuming that when the most recent figures on ridership are released the growth slope will be even higher.

 

Slide 2:  (Map of California system, with bus routes)

 

Here are the three routes where the California trains run:

 

Slide 3:  (Map of Surfliner route w/frequency breakdown)

 

The busiest one is the Pacific Surfliner route, extending from Los Angeles south to San Diego and from Los Angeles north to Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.

 

 L.A.-San Diego is 129 miles.  L.A.-San Luis Obispo is 222 miles.  Between L.A. and San Diego there are 11 departures a day in each direction.  North of L.A. there are five.

 

Slide 4:  (Map of Capitol Corridor route—no frequency breakdown)

 

 

On the Capitol Corridor route there are four round trips per day between San José and Oakland and 12 between Oakland and Sacramento. 

 

Next April Caltrans will add two more round trips between San José and Oakland, making a total of six per day, and four more trips between Oakland and Sacramento, for a total of 16 per day. 

 

That is a level of frequency you see in Europe and Britain, where people think nothing of just dropping in at a station, buying a ticket from a machine on the platform and traveling a couple of hundred miles.  You come and go as you please, with no need for a reservation, no need for a security check, no need for a car—just go when it’s convenient and come back when it’s convenient

 

Slide 5: Map of San Joaquin route, with “bus connections omitted”)

 

 

On the San Joaquin line there are six trains a day in each direction.  This route is less populated than the others and can’t yet justify more frequencies. 

 

Also, it’s handicapped by not being able to reach Los Angeles.  L.A. should be only about 90 minutes from Bakersfield, but because there’s only a single track full of freight trains over the Tehachapi Mountains, passenger trains can’t go there. 

 

Here’s what it looks like up on the top of Tehachapi Pass.  The grades are so steep and the curves are so tight that freight trains actually cross over themselves. 

 

 

 

Slide 6:  Freight train crossing over itself on Tehachapi Loop.

 

By the way, not all of the maps show it, but all of California’s passenger rail routes are connected by buses to smaller towns located off the railroad lines.  California contracts with private motor-coach companies for buses to meet every train, and you can only get on these buses with a train ticket.  The program is for railroad passengers only. 

 

And these are not city transit buses.  They’re comfortable highway coaches with reclining seats and rest rooms.  The buses connecting with the San Joaquin trains alone serve 127 communities.  Because of the feeder-bus program, 95 per cent of the California population is within practical distance of the railroad system.

 

Slide 7:  Blond kid with book bag and crowd boarding Surfliner 

 

One reason these California trains got to be so popular is that California didn’t wait for Amtrak to provide them with good trains.  Instead, they bought their own modern cars and locomotives and built their own stations.  Amtrak operates the trains for California—but California owns the trains and tells Amtrak when and where to run them. 

 

Slide 8 (it seems to flip automatically):  Train at Santa Barbara station

 

When a state controls its own fleet of trains, and when it provides money to renovate classic old railroad stations or build entirely new ones, the crowds come out to ride.

 

Slide 9:  “Phantom” view of Surfliner interior.

 

Here’s one reason why California’s trains are so user-friendly:  They were designed that way. 

 

A typical Surfliner coach carries over 90 passengers on two decks.  Because the lower deck is almost even with the platform, passengers can get on board quickly. 

And because these cars were designed with two 54-inch-wide sliding doors on either side, lots of people and lots luggage can be accommodated without the train’s having to stand in the station for five or six minutes.  Stops are very short.

 

Slide 10:  “Phantom” view of Surfliner food-service car.

 

Notice that this Surfliner car has its lower deck configured as a lounge with food service.  Every single California train carries a food-service car, so passengers can travel at any time of day without having to miss a meal.

 

Let me make it clear at this point that none of these beautiful new trains uses high-speed rail technology.  These are conventional cars and locomotives adapted to the current American railroad system.  They are designed to run on existing freight railroad tracks and to mix with freight trains.  They don’t need a separate right of way.  They use the same signals as the freight trains, and because the signals are conventional these trains travel at a maximum speed of 79 miles per hour.  The cars and locomotives are capable of cruising at 125 miles per hour, but California does not yet have any track or signals that permit such high speeds.  There’s only one short track segment—about 30 miles long—on the L.A.-San Diego route where the signaling permits 90-mile-per-hour operation.  Otherwise, 79 is the top speed everywhere.

 

Slide 11:  Figure 3B—Cost chart

 

As far as operating costs are concerned, California pays Amtrak about $73 million per year to operate these 60 trains.  That’s in addition to the money collected in passenger fares.  The trains do not break even, so Caltrans makes up the $73-million deficit.  Gov. Schwarzenegger thinks the state is getting a bargain.  To put all those railroad passengers on the highway would force the state to build billions of dollars worth of new freeway lanes—for which space cannot be found in any case.

 

Now, how much did California have to invest in capital projects to make its train service work?

 

 Since it started financing its own infrastructure improvements in 1976 and began buying rolling stock in the late 80s, California has invested about $1.7 billion on capital investments such as additional track capacity, signals, stations, bridges, maintenance shops, locomotives and passenger cars.

 

Most of this money was raised as a result of three bond issues that the voters passed in 1990:

 

Slide  12:  Prop. 108

 

Proposition 108 raised $225 million for intercity passenger rail programs.

 

Slide 13:  Proposition 116

 

Proposition 116 raised $1.99 for various rail and transit projects, including some $382 million for new rolling stock and locomotives and $20 million for track improvements on the San Joaquin route.

 

Slide 14:  Proposition 111

Proposition 111 authorized the state to begin raising the motor-fuel tax, which had been stuck at 9 cents a gallon for 20 years.  It also allowed the state to raise the truck-weight fees so it could finance some long-overdue highway improvements.

 

So why have I included a highway bill in this story about a passenger-train system?

 

Because State Sen. Jim Costa designed these three bond issues in an interdependent fashion:  No single one could become effective unless the other two also passed. 

That meant the highway lobby had to get behind the railroad measures, and the rail advocates had to support the highway measure—or nobody would get anything.

 

I’m happy to say that my friend Jim Costa has been rewarded appropriately by the voters for his legislative skills.  He’s now the congressman from Fresno.

 

Now, before I close, let me show you a couple of pictures that show why California thinks it’s getting its money’s worth from these trains. 

 

Remember in movie “The Graduate” when a helpful family friend gives the young man some career advice?  He says, “Benjamin?  Benjamin, I have one word for you, and that word is ‘plastics.’”

 

Well, I have two words for municipal officials who are looking to develop their urban economies, and those words are “real estate.”  Passenger trains, it turns out, are very good for real-estate development.  We haven’t got a lot of time, so let me show you just one tantalizing example from California.

 

First, how many people here have ever heard of Emeryville?

 

I thought so.  Until about 10 years ago, Emeryville was a dump, a brownfield site just north of Oakland built on 1.6 square miles of landfill in San Francisco Bay.  Nobody lived there, but in the old days a lot of people worked there—in railroad yards, chemical plants, factories and at petroleum tank farms, all of which left a lot of toxic gunk in the soil when these businesses closed down and left Emeryville nearly ghost town.

 

Slide

 

Slide 15:  Emeryville “before”

 

Emeryville looked pretty much like this.

 

Then, in 1990, Caltrans started building up its Capitol Corridor service to San José and Sacramento. 

 

And to make the trains accessible to people coming across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, they built a new station at Emeryville in 1992.

 

Twenty four Capitol Corridor trains stop there every day now, and each of them is met by four or five connecting buses. 

 

Amtrak’s Coast Starlight stops at Emeryville on its way between Los Angeles and Seattle, and so does the California Zephyr, which originates at Emeryville and makes a 48-hour daily trip to Chicago.  And the buses meet those trains too.

 

The result:

 

Slide 16:  Emeryville “after”

 

This is what Emeryville and Caltrans accomplished in about 13 years.  New high-rise and mid-rise developments like that building beyond the station now house about 7,000 permanent residents.  The area just across the tracks from the station now has three huge hotels, including the Woodfin Suites you see behind the train in the picture on the right, a new Courtyard by Marriott just out of the picture, and a third high-rise hotel, the name of which I can’t remember. 

 

Out of the picture across from the Marriott is a giant new retail center, there’s a big Safeway just down the street, and across the street from the station are several blocks of former loft factories now converted into Yuppie condos, with the usual nice restaurants and bars at ground level.  Farther from the station, Chiron Laboratories has opened its $1-billion world headquarters and Life Sciences Center. 

 

Anybody here recognize the name Pixar Studios—the company that produced Toy Story and Finding Nemo?  Their CEO, Steve Jobs, chose Emeryville for the headquarters of his company too.  About 500 people work in the new building.  Passenger trains have been a critical part of making Emeryville a success.

 

And I could show you more pictures of beautiful stations—new and restored—that Caltrans has created as part of its 20-year capital-development program.  There isn’t time now, but if anybody wants to stay at the end of this presentation I can run another disc with a couple of dozen great photos on it.

 

Slide 17:  A “simple” success

 

To summarize how California succeeded:  They employed the KISS principle.  They kept their passenger-train program simple.  They took conventional North American locomotive and rolling-stock designs and updated them to provide greater higher levels of comfort and convenience.  The trains are compatible with freight-railroad tracks.  They are compatible with the existing signal system, so they run at 79 miles per hour. 

 

Someday California will move on to true high-speed rail.  But for the time being, the state rail program is exploiting the overlooked potential of conventional rail to demonstrate the basic feasibility of passenger trains and to build public credibility and public appetite for what will come later.

 

In other words, California is resuming.  It is picking up the ball the railroads began to fumble 50 years ago and finally dropped in 1971, when Amtrak was created.  It is creating American corridor trains.  And it is successful.

 

Unfortunately, California is not able to continue its ambitious program of infrastructure improvements and equipment acquisitions that began following the three 1990 bond issues.  The state has run out of money.  

 

Just after the 1990 bond issues passed, the Cold War ended, wiping out thousands of jobs in Southern California’s aerospace industries.  When another bond issue was submitted to the voters during the 1992 recession, it failed. 

 

In March of 2000, the puncturing of the “Tech Bubble” wiped out 400,000 jobs in Silicon Valley.  The state’s tax receipts fell, leaving the new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a $40-billion deficit. 

 

The Caltrans people tell me there won’t be any more bond issues for a while.  The state isn’t as rich as it used to be.

 

In other words, California is pretty much like the other states, including Ohio.  Caltrans people say they expect to put more money into their passenger-train buildup—but only after Congress passes legislation providing states with matching funds for passenger-rail investment--like the matching funds it provides for airport and highway development. 

 

It’s just too hard for a single state to bear the entire cost of a passenger-train infrastructure alone.

 

 And it’s also not fair:  After all, highways have been enjoying federal financing since 1916 and airports since 1946.  No state is expected to provide air and highway transportation all by itself.

 

If I can close on an upbeat note, several bills have been introduced in Congress that would create a federal matching fund for state passenger-improvements.  Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi introduced one during the summer.  I’ve seen it, and I think it’s a good start, although I wish it had more money during the first two or three years.

 

Congressman John Mica of Orlando introduced his own bill last week, but I haven’t yet seen the full text, so I can’t comment on it at this time.

 

 

 

What I do think is encouraging is that two conservative Republicans have now stepped forward with legislation aimed at creating an American passenger-train system based on the federal/state matching-fund models that we used so successfully to build up the world’s biggest and best highway system and airport system. 

 

The good news is, a federal/state passenger-rail program is coming.

 

The better news is, because of what happened in California, we know it will work.

 

Thank you.  I’ll be glad to answer your questions. 

 

Also, if anybody wants to look at some really nice pictures of other California railroad stations, I’ve got another disc here that I can slip into my laptop and run for you in the time remaining.