Slightly Higher Speed Rail

New York University’s Marron Institute just released a report saying that Amtrak and commuter-rail lines could improve their service by making what the institute believes are low-cost changes to their operations. Specifically, the report suggests that railroads replace Diesel locomotives with electric, place platforms at all stops so passengers don’t have to go up and down stairs, and widen the doors on their cars so multiple passengers can board at one time. Based on this report, Bloomberg concludes that “America’s railroads are losing ground when it comes to infrastructural innovation, especially compared to other countries.”

Click image to download a 32.4-MB PDF of this 146-page report.

Because wider doors and level platforms would allow people to board more quickly and electric locomotives accelerate faster than Diesels, the report estimates that making these changes would save an average of 2 minutes per commuter stop and 4 minutes per intercity rail stop. This means that Amtrak’s trains between, for example, Seattle and Portland, which have six intermediate stops, could go the distance in 24 fewer minutes.

It’s worth noting that the state of Washington recently spent more than $700 million improving the Seattle to Portland line and managed to cut all of five minutes from the route’s travel times. So there may be some merit to the Marron Institute’s ideas.

The Marron Institute has done a lot of research on why transit projects cost so much in the United States. This is their idea for some supposedly low-cost projects that could be more successful.

Color me skeptical. On one hand, electrification is enormously expensive. California recently electrified the 51-mile double-tracked route between San Francisco and San Jose at a cost of $2 billion. Doing the same for the Seattle-Portland route would cost several times more — especially since Amtrak would not be happy changing locomotives for trains going through Seattle and Portland, which means it would want to electrify the entire 467 miles between Eugene and Vancouver.

Raising platforms also means substantially altering existing cars to install automatic doors that are wider than the cars are now designed for. Frankly, it would probably be less expensive to simply buy all new cars, but that would still amount to tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars per route.

On the other hand, subtracting a few minutes from the schedules of these trains will not make them significantly more attractive than they are now. The real problem with trains is not that they are slow but that they don’t go where people need to go. That won’t be fixed by widening the doors.

For what it’s worth, Caltrains completed its electrification on September 21, 2024, and monthly ridership since then has been about 30 percent more than the year before. But ridership in August and September was 30 percent more than the year before as well, so it may be that the increase in ridership is due more to people returning to work in downtown offices than to slightly faster trains.

Just where does the Marron Institute think that these changes would make a difference? If I recall correctly, legacy (i.e., older than 50 years) commuter-rail lines in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and of course San Francisco are already electrified. That leaves Chicago, which has about 580 miles of commuter-rail lines that, before the pandemic, was carrying 235,000 riders per weekday, now down to around 120,000. That represents about 400 riders per mile before the pandemic about 200 today. Since many of Chicago’s rail lines are currently in poor condition, it doesn’t make sense for the city spending more than $20 billion just to speed up its commuter trains by a few minutes.

Then there are the more recent commuter rail lines ranging from Florida’s TriRail to Los Angeles’ MetroLink. Before the pandemic, the only one of these that carried more than 300 weekday passengers per mile was Denver’s, and it is already electrified. The Dallas-Ft. Worth’s Trinity Rail, Florida’s TriRail, Seattle Sounder, the Utah FrontRunner, and Virginia’s Virginia Regional Express all carried around 200 weekday riders per mile and most others carried far fewer.

Austin’s MetroRail, Denton’s (Dallas) A train, Minnesota’s NorthStar, Nashville’s Music City Star, New Mexico’s Rail Runner, San Jose’s Altamont Express, and Sonoma’s SMART train all carried fewer than 100 per mile, while Orlando’s SunRail, Portland’s Westside Express, and the San Diego Coaster were only a few more than 100. Most, of course, are even lower today. There is no way it would make sense to electrify these trains as the few extra passengers improvements might attract would not be worth the cost.

It’s possible that Denver’s did well because it was electrified and thus was able to go an average of 37 miles per hour between downtown and the airport. But it’s also possible that Denver’s was more successful because it connects two major economic centers. Most recent commuter rail lines only connect some suburb to downtown and some, including Denton, Portland, and Sonoma’s, don’t even serve one major economic center.

The line was originally planned to be Diesel-powered and was supposed to cost $554 million, but Denver’s Regional Transit District decided to electrify it, bringing the cost up to $1.1 billion. (The final cost was closer to $2 billion, but not necessarily because of electrification.) So was it worth an extra $500 million or more to boost weekday ridership?

I just can’t see it, especially when we have another technology that is less expensive and can go more places than trains, namely buses. Buses can easily connect multiple economic centers without building any new infrastructure. Buses can be as comfortable as any train and can be designed for rapid loading and unloading of passengers for high-volume routes. Because buses are smaller, they can be operated non-stop between pairs of economic centers, which can make them faster than just about any conventional train.

Contrary to Bloomberg’s conclusion about the U.S. losing ground, we have the most productive rail system in the world, mainly because most of it is dedicated to freight. When it comes to moving passengers, buses and automobiles make more sense because Americans have so many destinations to go to that aren’t served by rail.

The Marron Institute’s view may be distorted because it is in New York, a city that is unlike any other in the U.S. whose commuter trains are all or almost all already electrified. Most transit ideas that seem to work in New York probably make no sense in other American cities, even Chicago and Los Angeles. This is one of those ideas.