Ever been in Billings, Montana and wanted to go to El Paso? Or have you been in New York and wanted to spend 36 hours traveling to Dallas? How about going from Minneapolis to Denver via Pierre, South Dakota? Or Detroit to New Orleans? These are just some of the 15 new long-distance trains that the Federal Railroad Administration has tentatively proposed to add to Amtrak’s network.
Click image for a larger view. Click here to download the full draft proposal that was released last week.
Some of the proposals would restore Amtrak routes that have been discontinued, including trains from Salt Lake City to Seattle, Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, Chicago to Florida, and Chicago to Seattle on the former Northern Pacific route through southern Montana. Other proposals would restore trains that were discontinued even before Amtrak, such as New York to New Orleans via Chattanooga and Montgomery, which would be in addition to Amtrak’s current New York-New Orleans route via Charlotte and Birmingham.
Most of the routes, however, would be nothing like any train route in history. There were once trains from New York to St. Louis and other trains from St. Louis to Dallas, but the FRA is proposing a single train from New York to Dallas via St. Louis and Oklahoma City. Similarly, there have been trains from Detroit to Cincinnati and trains from Cincinnati to New Orleans, but the FRA is proposing a single train from Detroit to New Orleans via Cincinnati.
Even more bizarre are proposals for a train from Billings to El Paso. The FRA recently gave Colorado a half-million-dollar grant to study the idea of a passenger train from Fort Collins to Pueblo. This would become a part of any Billings to El Paso line.
Billings to El Paso is at least a fairly straight shot. The FRA proposal also includes a rather circuitous line from Minneapolis to Denver via Sioux Falls, Pierre, and Cheyenne. The proposal also includes not one but two lines from Minneapolis to Kansas City, one via Omaha and one via Des Moines. The Omaha line would make a left turn at Kansas City and head out to Phoenix, while the Des Moines line would continue south from Kansas City to Dallas.
The trains from Minneapolis and New York to Dallas are just the first steps of the proposal to make Dallas a major rail hub. The FRA also calls for lines from Dallas to Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, San Antonio, Denver, and weirdest of all, San Francisco. The San Francisco line would parallel Amtrak’s current New Orleans-Los Angeles line, which is currently the least-used long-distance train in Amtrak’s network, so obviously it needs a second line competing with it.
The FRA developed this plan as a part of a rail study that included meetings with members of the public in meetings in six different regions around the country. The FRA invited about two dozen representatives of state and local governments, the railroads, and rail advocacy groups to each meeting. For some reason, representatives of groups skeptical of Amtrak funding did not receive any invitations.
Not surprisingly, most members of the groups were enthused about proposals for just about any new passenger trains. Judging from the meeting notes, the meetings were managed charrette-style, which means any dissenters wouldn’t have had much of a chance to express negative opinions anyway.
If your gut reaction is that most if not all of the proposed passenger trains are impractical, you would be right. The United States is not Europe, with lots of closely spaced major metropolises. Passenger trains don’t even work that well in Europe, carrying only about 6 percent of passenger travel (see page 100). The airlines carry more and air travel is growing much faster despite gigantic subsidies to passenger trains from the governments of most major European countries.
Currently, Amtrak carries less than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. passenger travel. The FRA proposal would double the number of long-distance routes, but since long-distance trains carry less than a third of Amtrak’s passenger-miles, doubling those trains won’t come close to doubling rail travel.
There are two good reasons why airlines carry well over 100 times as many passenger-miles per year as Amtrak: planes are faster and they are less expensive because they don’t require costly infrastructure every foot of the way between any two cities. Air fares in 2022 averaged 20.1¢ per passenger-mile while Amtrak collected fares averaging 36¢ per passenger-mile in its FY 2022.
Comparing government revenues and expenses associated with air travel, subsidies to airlines averaged about a penny per passenger-mile before the pandemic but reached 4¢ in 2020; no data are available since then. Amtrak, meanwhile, required operating subsidies of 44¢ per passenger-mile in FY 2022.
So if airlines are faster and cheaper, why do we need more Amtrak money pits? The answer, some will say, is that some communities aren’t served by airlines and that the airlines are mainly good for long distances while trains are supposedly best for trips under 500 miles. They’ll also point out that the proposed trains will go not just from, say, Billings to El Paso but stop at numerous cities along the way.
The idea that trains have a competitive advantage for trips of 100 to 500 miles flies in the face of reality. Portland and Seattle are only 175 miles apart but the airlines have 20 or more non-stop flights a day while Amtrak has just seven. Many airline passengers are connecting from other flights, but many are not, as Alaska has almost hourly service between the two cities from 5 am to 9 pm.
The frequent stops trains make are supposed to be a feature, but they are actually a defect in the passenger train model, and not just because frequent stops slow the trains down. If ever a train is started between Billings and El Paso, it is likely to carry quite a few passengers between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, but north of Fort Collins or south of Colorado Springs it is going to empty out. As a result, a lot of money and energy will be used running near empty trains over most of the route.
This is going to be an issue on almost any Amtrak route and it explains why Amtrak passenger-miles are only 55 percent of its seat-miles. The airlines, however, have mostly non-stop routes, which allows them to select the right size plane for every route. As a result, except during the pandemic, they tend to fill about 85 percent of their seats.
I personally love passenger trains, but because they are slow and economically wasteful, they have been rendered obsolete in the United States (and, for that matter, most of the rest of the world) by planes and automobiles. The FRA proposal is about as realistic as a passenger-train map drawn by a 12-year-old rail fan and should be given as much credence.
I would certainly enjoy passenger trains to return.
A cessation of interdependent transportation subsidies might permit that revival but it’s unlikely because the infrastructure costs for it are beyond.
NorthEast, Pacific northwest, Texas triangle and Chicago/Great lakes area are prime areas for rail.
Building 241 miles HSR thru Texas triangle, cost $70-120 BILLION. 50x the revenue of domestic flights ?? then…. they have to amortize its infrastructure costs before tracks lifespan + pay off loans construction.
IN the same timeframe, Airlines will have a next generation of new planes… Aviation industry regardless of it’s faults and need for some subsidies, is running it’s own capital to finance next generation airliners.
The “Bypass ratio” of jet engines, was how much air flows thru engine core, vs. how much flows past it to the wings. Old days of aviation, average ratio was 2 or 3 to 1, meaning 1 unit of air went the core of the turbofan and 2 or 3 units went to the wings. As was the same for turbojet engines which is why Concorde was a miserable failure except as luxury livery for guzzling too much fuel.
Today bypass ratio modern average jets by the 2000s was 10:1 and newer generation engines promise 12:1.
GE NX engines offer a 15:1 and true next gen will offer 25:1 In any case, it means fuel economy of jets will rise 50% in a decade. And huge advantage because said new planes don’t require new infrastructure.
If/or when synthetic or new aviation fuel blends supplement jet fuel, trains will have lost most their ridership to planes that can fly twice the fuel efficiency of said predecessors.
NASA encourages private industry to invest in technology and think about how airplanes might fly in the future. An advanced concept from Lockheed Martin uses a “boxed wing,” or closed wing—a concept that has long been studied for its aerodynamic advantages. Meaning the wing surface area can be doubled without increasing the wing span.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS7gvFP0yqP9pcXbntegOczN5Ks1g9YzmJ_1-kqMhbH77K1vUmf_c3sVQgchNyNts0Feqs&usqp=CAU
The other is the “Double Bubble”
NASA engineers have investigated this design with an extra-wide, lift-generating cabin, in which the plane’s engines are moved aft of the wings and melded into the fuselage and the air being sucked into the engine is permitted to flow over the body as a lifting surface.
In a world where the survival of passenger rail depends almost entirely on the generosity of gullible and manipulable politicians, growing the number of congressional districts served by passenger rail becomes very important.
i rode the zephyr from reno nv to chicago. then i think some train to dc cardinal maybe maybe the crescent to charlotte and then finally on the Caroilinan to raleigh, nc …for a holiday visit. the zephyr got delayed in indiana and threw everything else off…coach smelled like farts and body odor. 3 days? after that ride i thought to myself no amtrak should really be over 500 miles…and if you have to make some weird dustbowl-midwest connection, have the amtrak brand busses connect with the trains when you are out in the middle of nowhere.
I would use High Speed Rail and Personal Rapid Transit (end point) from Las Vegas to Southern California.
My last airline trip from Burbank to Las Vegas miserable. Flight delayed three times! Insane!
Not to mention driving can be hassle with constant construction, trucks imploding out of nowhere, accident delays, and worst of all no alternative routes from I-15. You also add plenty of mileage and repair costs driving.
Personal Rapid Transit costs 1/10th of light rail.
I am still also in favor of expanding the interstate highway system as well.
I-11 should go to Reno and PNW.
Fri, Mar 15
Los Angeles Union Station
09:10 AM
Las Vegas Strip (Las Vegas Blvd)
03:00 PM
1 Adult
Total (incl. TAX)
$69.97
FlixBus
That is about the same price Brightline charges from Orlando to Miami with much nicer service and bypasses car traffic.
The same trip Miami to Orlando, same day, same time, costs about $40 more than FlixBus; 50% more.
Maybe Brightline and Greyhound service would be better if they split a $25 million grant from the United States Department of Transportation like Brightline got.
Oops, too late:
US DOT approves $2.5B in bonds for Brightline West rail project. The 218-mile line, estimated to cost $12 billion in total.
I wonder what it would have cost to add a dedicated bus lane on I-5 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas?
The original HSR Central Valley segment was estimated to cost $6.0 billion in 2011. In 2023 that had ballooned to $35 billion. Little doubt Brightline West will end up costing six times more than the $12 billion estimate today.
This looks like another waste of money that was included in the so-called ‘Investment and Jobs Act’ that mainly further eroded the value of a dollar and accomplished more studies like this. Good for the FRA employees who no doubt travelled the country in search of more places for Amtrak to run, bad for everyone else.
Never mind that Amtrak lacks the equipment to operate its existing network, every route is a 36+ hour slowfest across the country. Every route is served by multiple airline departures from both the proposed endpoints and many of the proposed intermediate stations.
The return of the Floridian? I recall the old Floridian was a poster child for everything wrong with Amtrak: Slow, expensive, and poor ridership. That’s why Jimmy Carter’s DOT killed off the train in 1979. Southwest hauls more passengers to and from Florida every day than this train will carry in a month.
Modern ‘limiteds’ are anything but, and we are to believe in the return of the National Limited? Another slow, low ridership snail train.
BNSF is going to allow Amtrak on the Transcon? Over the old NP? These FRA intellectuals should be drug tested.
Any train from Mobile to Jacksonville will have to go via Waycross. Given the insane demands that CSX put on the teeny NOLA-Mobile segment, look for the moon and the stars ask for access to Waycross. The FGAR is short lined and not PTC, plus the track and bridges aren’t conducive to speeds above 35, so that route is no longer an option.
You might get MSP to KC over the old RI Mid Continent Route, but that’s not equipped for passenger speeds and frequencies either. Plus, the air options on that route are robust versus the usual one-train-a-day service offered by Amtrak.
This was an expensive study showing nothing but pipe dreams. It will end up on the shelf like every study of this type since 1975.
I wonder if the FRA employees who led all of the regional meetings got to them on Amtrak.
“Ever been in Billings, Montana and wanted to go to El Paso?”
Why is there a road connecting them, since no one would want to go between them?
Jane,
There’s a road connecting every city in the contiguous 48 states with every other city. That doesn’t mean there will be demand for a passenger train from every city to every other city. FRA says its plan will reach some “underserved” communities. But by their definition almost any community that isn’t currently served by Amtrak is underserved. it would cost trillions to reach every community in the U.S. and yet few people would ride those trains.
We’ll look back on these years as the Golden Age of Passenger Rail…Studies.