Monday, November 22, 5:35am
Monday, November 22, 5:35am
From South Station it feels like forever to reach Back Bay tonight, and just when I’m convinced that we’ve long since passed this first outbound station – we’re just now arriving. It’s going to be a long ride.
I’m antsy because instead of Track 3 where I’d been standing, at the last moment this 5:30pm local was announced for Track 5 and I wound up settling for a lesser seat. With even fifty would-be passengers storming down the platform ahead of me I can usually grab a single-seater. The trick is to bypass the first few cars entirely then whip around through the far end of the third or fourth carriage heading back against foot traffic. But there were more like a hundred people ahead of me tonight.
Perhaps I’m also antsy because I’d planned to take this week off from work, but a last minute design change was needed, and taking vacation time would have set the whole program back a week.
One of the things I didn’t mention this morning was how the first railroads cost a lot more to build and operate than early planners had expected. Yet it turned out not to be a problem – least not right away. Instead of horse-drawn carriages on iron wheels as originally presumed, powerful steam engines were invented at about the same time, and because of their huge pulling capacity these engines generated immense revenue to overcome higher investment costs – so much revenue that a bubble began to form in 1835 with investors scrambling to build new rail lines as fast as tracks could be laid.
Just as we saw in the laying of fiber optic cables in the 1990s, every conceivable rail connection was made between cities and towns far and wide until 1838 – when the bubble blew out and they realized suddenly how there was far too much capacity and no way to ever repay most investors. With real money flushed into bad investments and all those railroad assemblers suddenly without a paying job, the booming economy quickly fell into a deep depression leaving many New Englanders to worry about their next meal.
As often happens, not long after1838 the more mundane economics of supply and demand consolidated the railroads bringing sustainable prices on genuinely useful routes while poorly conceived railroads to nowhere went into bankruptcy for good.
After this time an uneasy stability reigned where even into the 21st century railroad freight trains generally make money, whereas passenger trains weave in and out of trouble – most recently in the form of Amtrak perpetually teetering on the brink of economic ruin with their hugely unproductive long haul trains and aging carriages and locomotives running across rails in serious need of overhauling and reconstruction. Yet with an annual $800 million operating deficit improvements are unlikely – especially on those lines where only passenger trains run.
The Worcester Line is in pretty good shape because CSX owns and maintains these rails for freight traffic, but Amtrak doesn’t have the internal resources to keep their tracks in proper shape – and some of these are really expensive to maintain because it’s not just tracks running through woodlands and across deserts. They also include things like giant bridges crossing major rivers and tunnels plowing through massive mountains – none of this lasting forever no matter how well maintained.
Amtrak might do better financially if they’d abandon their worst money losing routes where actual costs often extend $100 above the face value of a one way ticket. But they’ve positioned themselves as a national rail service and cutting long distance money losers cuts across the grain of their identity.
The last best hope for any national passenger railroad is the European model of making a little bit of money on the main lines while subsidizing important rural routes with public funding. This is just about how Amtrak lives right now, except for the proportions of money-makers versus money-losers leaving them overextended and underfunded.
Nobody has ever made a lot of money hauling passengers – including the airlines – which, in sum total since the beginning of aviation have lost as much money as they have ever made. And in a sense this is no different than the debate in 1830 about rail lines being a public service versus for-profit. All situations hinge on the bigger reality that we need high-capacity transportation systems, and with no easy way to make these consistently profitable across the board, some form of government involvement needs to be a guarantor of last resort since we can’t derive the economic strength of an entire country while leaving vast regions under-served and isolated.
Without governments of all sizes standing behind transportation systems of one form or another, commerce would grind to a halt – whether at sea or on rails or over roads or in the air – and the only valid argument is how to support the most useful and wide-ranging solutions – not taking pot-shots at one’s favorite bogeyman. We saw this sort of commitment after 9/11 with the bailout of the airlines keeping them afloat as they hemorrhaged dollars on half-empty flights, and we see this all the time whenever the government builds and maintains public highways.
I’m no particular fan of AMTRAK anymore than I am of the $16 billion Boston Big Dig project or multi-billion dollar rescues of airlines from time to time or even a $100 billion dollar space station providing lovely transportation for a crew of three. If we factor all the costs – not just immediate operations – passenger railroad travel can actually cost less per passenger mile than many other modes, and so what we need is an honest debate, not money shoveled this way and that via political whim and ideological infighting.
Back to the present, if I am to believe the unseen Pavlovian signal calling the usual horde to its feet, West Natick is fast approaching. Apparently this is the work of the invisible hand in the form of our passage beneath the invisible Speen Street Bridge because soon thereafter the engineer eases the throttle allowing the to train coast for nearly a half-mile before the brakes engage and I feel any sort of earnest deceleration itching to slide me off my seat.
