As I pack for a trip to New Orleans, La., to cover the inaugural run of Amtrak Mardi Gras service between New Orleans and Mobile, I am thinking about state-supported passenger trains and the investments required to get such trains started—and to keep them going. The Amtrak Connects US plan that was announced in April 2021 proposed almost 40 new state-supported routes that would include corridors, as well as routes with only one or two daily frequencies. While the proposal uses 2035 as its planning frontier, we are already in the 52nd month of that 176-month period, which means that nearly 30% of that time has gone by before the first new trains inaugurated under the program start running next week.
Transportation economist and Railway Age Contributing Editor Jim Blaze, who usually covers freight railroads, often talks about Return on Investment (ROI), whether in his writing or in private conversations (with this writer, at least). Most of the freight side of railroading is in the private sector, and most of the passenger side of railroading, including regional “transit railroads” that serve a city, is in the public sector. The ROI calculations are different. The private sector is concerned almost exclusively with how much money the shareholders make, in their capacity as investors. There are other considerations for stakeholders in the public sector, because public investment takes variables other than “profit” into consideration: public needs (mobility in this case), the environment, social equity, and bringing business into the area and improving the business climate generally. The concept is, therefore, broader in the public sector than in the private sector.
Nonetheless, in today’s political reality, the public sector is shrinking, starting with POTUS 47 getting rid of federal employees and cancelling or reducing the services that the federal government has been providing or supporting until now.
Outlook Still Grim
In my “2025 Passenger Rail Outlook” article (which ran Jan. 7), I noted that the picture doesn’t look good for state-supported trains and corridors. In the past seven months, recent events have proven that prediction to be accurate.
Texas discontinued its share of funding for the Heartland Flyer between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City for the coming year. Fortunately, the North Texas Council of Governments is willing to pick up the tab for the coming year, so the train got a reprieve. Given today’s political turmoil in the Lone Star State and the likely results that will come out of that mess, the embattled remnant of the historic Santa Fe’s Texas Chief and the Lone Star Limited of the 1970s will continue to occupy the railroad on a year-to-year tenancy, for as long as somebody in Texas helps pay the rent. Further north, the days for local Northstar commuter trains between Minneapolis and half-way to St. Cloud appear to be numbered.
Even California’s massive investment in the middle segment of the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) project is again in danger of losing its federal support, after losing it during the POTUS 45 era and regaining it during the POTUS 46 (Biden) period. Can California still build the full system that it envisions without help from the feds, or will the state come up with a less-expensive scaled-down project that will still improve intercity mobility in the Golden State? Time will tell.
Are Mega-Projects Worth the Cost?
Essentially everybody cares about the cost-effectiveness of any project, whether it’s proposed in the private sector or in the public sector. This is especially true in the public sector, where taxes pay part or all of the cost; the general public wants as much “bang for the buck” as they can get. The Great Depression period of the 1930s saw the private sector contract severely. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies expanded the public sector with new agencies and many projects to build government-sponsored infrastructure that kept workers busy and were popular with voters, who turned Republicans out of office and gave Democrats resounding landslides.
Today’s political climate is vastly different. POTUS 47’s claims notwithstanding, Republicans did not win the 2024 election by a landslide, but they did well enough to capture the entire government. Many current policies are the opposite of what voters wanted and got in the 1930s and until recently. While getting a new passenger train or transit line going can be a small project, and operating costs are modest compared to construction costs, mega-projects like CAHSR and the Gateway Program in New York City and nearby New Jersey seem to dominate discussions, both public and within the industry.
Ongoing events concerning CAHSR, and possibly concerning the Gateway Program, will reveal much about the cost-effectiveness of projects of that magnitude and scope in today’s economic and political climate. To be sure, there will always (or for the foreseeable future, at least) be plenty of money for highway projects, due to the special political position occupied by the motoring majority, along with all the industries that benefit from the nation’s continually expanding highway system. Highways, however, are beyond our purview.
In a recent commentary, I examined current developments concerning the CAHSR project and asked two questions: Would it have been more cost-effective if California had upgraded the Coast Line and the San Joaquin Line for high-performance passenger trains (110 to 125 mph) rather than pushing for true high-speed rail (HSR)? And would it have made more sense to build a high-performance railroad between Los Angeles and Bakersfield first, rather than putting the money into the Central Valley, where there is already a relatively strong conventional passenger-rail corridor that also requires every passenger to take a long bus ride between its terminal at Bakersfield to the City of Angels, where millions of Californians live?
Considering a growing indifference, and perhaps even a growing antipathy, toward passenger trains and rail transit exhibited by many current holders of power at the national level, the question becomes: Can states afford to allow mega-projects to crowd out smaller projects that could improve mobility on the local level? In other words, could small projects be more cost-effective?
Are There Other Possibilities?
It would not necessarily be prohibitively expensive to start a new corridor-length line. Costs vary from one line to another and from one host railroad to another, but if a state or locality could build and operate a new service without breaking the bank, that could be a useful investment.
There is a novel approach being implemented in Virginia, called Transforming Rail in Virginia. The Virginia Passenger Rail Authority (VPRA) is sponsoring a program to purchase portions of rights-of-way in and near the Old Dominion as a means of expanding the frequencies of passenger services. There are also plans for expanded and new services within the Commonwealth and into North Carolina and Washington, D.C. (A September 2024 report on the real estate acquisition project can be found at https://vapassengerrailauthority.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/VPRA-Real-Estate-Acquisition-Management-Plan.pdf. A November 2024 report ordered by the VPRA and produced by the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia that examined the economic and social impacts of the Transforming Rail in Virginia project can be found at https://lmronline.org/wpcontent/uploads/2024/11/VPRA_report_11_14_24_final.pdf.)
If the purchases are done properly, there would essentially be two adjacent railroads; one privately owned and primarily for freight, and the other publicly owned and primarily for passenger trains, with the flexibility to rent trackage rights to each other, as needed.
Another approach would be for the public entity sponsoring the project (typically a state or subdivision of a state) to keep the improvements it builds to facilitate a new passenger service, rather than giving all the new infrastructure to the host railroad as a gift, especially if the new service does not last long. Alabama strongly opposed the new Mardi Gras service that will bring riders from New Orleans and Mississippi to Mobile, but the City of Mobile ended up helping with the funding. CSX is receiving most of the benefit of new capital funding, because it owns almost all the line (the New Orleans & Mobile, which was later part of the Louisville & Nashville system before CSX took it over). Time will tell how long the line keeps running; it might only last for a few years, although local officials, rider-advocates, and probably plenty of future riders hope it will become permanent and last for many years.
It’s About Innovation and Cost-Effective Deals
New rail starts, especially at the local level, are not dead. In March, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (the T) in Boston opened South Coast Rail, with trains running between Boston on one end and the historic towns of New Bedford and Fall River on the other. The Y-shaped “line” runs a full span of service, with trains going to and from one of the destination towns and meeting a shuttle train at Taunton (at the junction of the Y) bound for the other destination. New starts or extensions of rail transit and on the “transit railroads” are fewer and further between than they were even a few years ago, but a few still get started every year.
Given current economic and political conditions, there does not appear to be much money available for mega-projects, when less-expensive, smaller-scope projects might allow for several modest, but useful, new starts or extensions. Building a new project and getting trains running, as with South Coast Rail, might help the dual causes of improving mobility while gaining public favor for rail projects.
Roughly 25 years ago, New Jersey Transit proposed a program of projects that were slated to be built by 2020. The plan included new rail and light rail lines around the state, and rider-advocates at the time backed it. None of those projects was ever built, although talk of building them has not faded away. Will there ever be enough money to build many, or any, of the projects? The only answer is that time will tell. New Jerseyans and visitors to the state might get to ride on some of those lines someday, but it won’t be anytime soon. In the meantime, the Gateway Program progresses slowly.
Two-thirds of the grant requests for new starts or expanded capacity now before the Federal Transit Administration are for busway projects; the other third still call for rail improvements. There appears to be no time like the present to start thinking about new ways to get new services going, if they can be done for a modest cost. The upcoming Railway Age and RT&S Light Rail Conference to be held in Pittsburgh at the beginning of October will feature a panel about one such idea: Pop-Up Metro, which would add passenger features to a host railroad’s line, and run passenger services for an experimental period to determine whether or not there will be enough riders to keep the service going long-term. The current plan calls for running cars that previously ran in transit service in London and were later converted for battery operation.
Innovation and creative thinking plus relatively inexpensive operation are key to implementing new service. Efficient construction and operation will make the difference.
