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All Aboard: Too Many for Amtrak
Surge in Ridership leads to Crowding On Intercity Trains

By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
August 8, 2008; Page A2

WASHINGTON — The number of people riding Amtrak surged 13.9% in July from a year earlier, as high gas prices caused more commuters to rely on intercity rail.

Despite record ridership, Amtrak's most popular trains suffer from delays and out of date equipment.

But many Amtrak trains are getting overcrowded, and a backlog of infrastructure problems stands in the way of expanded service.

Since last fall, Americans have been driving less while Amtrak usage has steadily increased. The latest figures suggest that the migration from highways to rail is accelerating.

In July, Amtrak said, only one of its services saw fewer riders compared with the previous year. Elsewhere, there were major gains, such as a 33% jump on the Capitol Corridor between San Francisco and Sacramento, Calif.

Even on Amtrak's already heavily traveled Northeast Corridor line from Washington to Boston, passenger counts are up by nearly 8% over last year. Overall, Amtrak is on pace to serve a record 28 million passengers in its current fiscal year, up from the previous high of 25.8 million last year.

Amtrak's newfound popularity has made an impression in Congress, where lawmakers view the rail service as an environmentally friendly, energy-efficient approach to reducing gridlock and expanding transportation options.

The House and Senate have passed by veto-proof margins legislation that could increase Amtrak funding by 33% or more in the new fiscal year beginning October. The legislation would also establish a grant program to encourage states to expand rail offerings.

Amtrak's president and CEO Alex Kummant cautions that much work needs to be done just to bring the nation's intercity passenger rail system up to speed.

In recent decades, much of the federal support has gone to highway construction and, to a lesser extent, mass-transit systems.

"We are certainly optimistic," Amtrak President Alex Kummant said in an interview.

Mr. Kummant, a former executive at Union Pacific Corp., welcomed the prospect of increased funding but says policy makers and consumers should understand that Amtrak faces many challenges just to maintain current service levels.

Besides higher commodity prices and rising personnel costs following a recent set of labor agreements, Amtrak is grappling with aging, overcrowded trains. The railway often doesn't have enough cars in stock to expand train capacity or increase service frequencies.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon train, travelers boarding at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station toward Washington discovered passengers were already crammed together between cars. Crowding is also a problem on the higher-priced Acela Express service in the Northeast Corridor, which Amtrak launched in 2000.

"We're literally beginning to bump up against some of the capacity limits on Acela," Mr. Kummant said. "We have basically no equipment left to start new services."

In the Northeast Corridor alone, he said, it will take upwards of a decade and $3 billion to replace Amtrak's rolling stock, including its 20 Acela train sets.

"Amtrak doesn't have enough trains to meet this growing demand," said Sen. Tom Carper (D., Del.) last week. He introduced a bill that would authorize nearly $3 billion in borrowing by Amtrak to replace out-of-date rail cars and would channel $400 million in gas taxes each year to set up a new fund for it to buy engines and railcars.

Senate Democrats may also seek to include money for Amtrak to replace rail cars, if a second economic stimulus bill is introduced.

Amtrak faces an enormous infrastructure challenge with its aging network of bridges, tracks and tunnels. In late June, it suspended service between Boston and New York to replace part of a bridge spanning the Thames River in Connecticut.

Amtrak estimates it needs to do nearly $5 billion of work along the Northeast Corridor to bring things to a state of good repair.

One measure of progress will be how long it takes to get from Wall Street to the nation's capital, a trip which currently takes two hours and 45 minutes on the Acela. (More people take the train than fly between New York and Washington, Amtrak says).

Mr. Kummant told Congress last year that with $625 million in additional investment, the trip could be shaved to 2½ hours. But he said the 227-mile route needs billions of dollars more to replace aging critical components such as bridges and tunnels.

Among other needs, the 75-year-old system of overhead wiring that provides electric power to the trains requires upgrading. Currently, trains can go only 30 miles an hour through the Baltimore & Potomac tunnel in West Baltimore, and streams of water streak under its dilapidated 19th-century archways.

A provision in the House's Amtrak bill would have the Transportation Department study the possibility of high-speed service between Washington and New York, with trains running as fast as 200 miles an hour and a trip time of two hours or less.

Mr. Kummant scoffs at the idea of European-style high-speed service in the congested Northeast, which could require a dedicated corridor established through years of eminent-domain proceedings.

"There's two railroads out there," Mr. Kummant said. "There's the one we run every day, and there's the one everybody imagines is out there."

He said it would be better to focus on improving the connectivity and performance of the current system, and establish 100-miles-per-hour regional corridors. In some corridors, like Chicago to St. Louis, the task is more complicated because freight railroads own the tracks.

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Posts: 566 | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Henry Kisor:
Another vote for VIA. Haven't the funds already been earmarked by Parliament? Someone in the know please correct me if I am wrong.

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Posts: 216 | From: Mississauga, Ontario, Canada | Registered: Jul 2000  |  IP: Logged |