Fourth and Final in a Series: Where Would the Model Work Best? The process for getting a New Starts grant (or a Small Starts grant, for that matter) from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to initiate new passenger rail service is expensive and time-consuming. On top of that, U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) officials, including Secretary Sean Duffy, appear to be displaying a negative attitude toward transit, including rail transit, these days.
Henry Posner III, Ida Posner and Nate Asplund of Rail Development Corp. are promoting a solution that gets new rail starts going without the need for such grants, because the cost can be low. Their system is called Pop-Up Metro, and they are prepared to set up and lease everything needed to get a “transit railroad” going. The applicants for grants and their projects are changing, too. In November 2023, 39% of applications before the FTA were for rail projects, the rest were for building busways. Today, less than one-third of the applications were for grants that would help build rail projects. That’s a speedy and sharp decline.
Earlier in this series, I examined some proposals that Pop-Up Metro has made for new passenger rail starts: West Chester, Pa. (a historic town west of Philadelphia that had trains until 1986), Princeton, N.J. (including operating the famous Princeton Dinky train), and running service along the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia, which hosted trolley car service during the 1990s. I also examined how the Pop-Up Metro plan could save a transit agency or other sponsor significant money compared to the cost of applying for a grant from the FTA and complying with all of the rules.
Pop-Up Metro uses cars that ran on the London Underground (metropolitan transit), with refurbished interiors and using batteries instead of overhead wire or third rail to collect power to move the train. The system also includes places for maintenance and storage, as well as platforms. According to Nate Asplund, President of Pop-Up Metro, the company would work with lessees to deliver the sort of operation they want, and would lease the platforms, trains, and other assets needed to get the operation started.
In the previous article in this series, I indicated that Asplund sent us some data about the high cost of complying with the process to get a federal grant. Those costs can amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. As the federal government cuts services of all sorts, and some of the costs that the feds used to pick up devolve to the states, states and their political subdivisions will find it more difficult to fund transit, whether it’s the capital side or transit operations.
At a time when new rail starts are so costly and state and local budgets become tighter, Pop-Up Rail’s greatest selling point is that it helps start a new passenger rail line inexpensively. Because of that, as I highlighted in the previous article in this series, a sponsoring agency can begin operations and later have accurate data on the number of riders on the trains, where they go, and how much fare revenue they contribute. In other words, for less (often significantly less) than the cost of the study that the FTA requires as a precondition for awarding a grant, that agency can have actual ridership data, including costs and revenue.
I rode on Pop-Up Metro’s two-car train at the company’s demonstration site at Rockhill Furnace, Pa., far from an Amtrak site and even further from the rail transit in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. As I reported, it rode smoothly and impressed the delegation from West Chester, who are attempting to convince the town to support new train service using Pop-Up Metro.
Where Would Pop-Up Metro Work?
There are certain conditions where Pop-Up Metro would work well, although it would not work with all rail lines. To some extent, though, the Pop-Up Metro system could provide service on the type of lines that some transit providers have already turned into successful transit lines.
Some transit providers, such as DART in Dallas and RTD in Denver, have turned old rights-of-way into transit lines. If those lines are intact, or at least in sufficiently good condition that they can be brought into operating condition with affordable upgrade work, the Pop-Up Metro model would work. While many rail lines have been ripped up since the country hit its maximum rail mileage more than a century ago, some lines still are still available for a new start. They might even see light freight service.
Clearly, a line that carries a significant number of freight trains would not be suitable, because transit cars like the ones that once ran in London and are now running as Pop-Up Metro’s demonstration train are not sufficiently crashworthy that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) would allow them on a line where freight trains, and even conventional passenger trains, are running. At the very least, the FRA would impose a temporal separation that keeps the lighter cars off the line at certain times of day.
Several light rail lines are required to observe such temporal separations. They include New Jersey Transit’s River Line between Trenton and Camden, Sacramento’s Blue Line to Folsom (shorter turns are allowed when service to Folsom is not), San Diego’s line to Santee, and the Sprinter between Oceanside and Escondido, California. There are others, and lines of this sort typically run with electric light rail equipment or Diesel Multiple-Unit (DMU) cars. On lines with temporal separations, service typically ends about 9:00 PM, an early end to the service day, although some agencies are threatening to terminate service at such an hour if they can’t get more money to replace the COVID-19 relief money that will soon run out, if it hasn’t already. An agency that is considering a new start on a line that carries freight must be willing to work out a schedule for the freight-carrying railroad, which means giving up the possibility of running service at certain times, usually after mid-evening.
Another issue is the location of the line. If a line goes through established neighborhoods, it could be an easy matter to build some platforms and start running service, at least if the track is in sufficiently good condition. Some of the light-rail lines that opened for service in the 1980s and 1990s were built that way. They were in urban or inner-suburban areas where the freight business that once justified the railroad had fallen off, leading to minimal freight use (which would allow a “transit railroad” line, but with a temporal separation), or no freight at all. In that case, the agency could lease trackage rights for a period and lease the services of Pop-Up Metro to get the line into shape for passenger service and then run it. If the line succeeds in attracting enough riders, the agency could purchase the line or renew the lease with the railroad, with the other choice being to extend the lease agreement with Pop-Up Metro or operate the line some other way.
Condition of the line counts, too. As Asplund said in the previous article in this series, Pop-Up Metro can arrange for upgrading the track to suitable condition for a passenger operation. Except for a long corridor where stations are far apart, Class 3 track would suffice for any sort of operation that could be run with the existing “Class 230-D” train that Pop-Up Metro uses for demonstration purposes. Class 3 track allows 60 mph operation for passenger trains, which is also the top speed of the 230-D equipment. In some cases, especially densely populated urban areas where stops are close together, some of the track might only need to be kept at FRA Class 2 condition, which allows passenger trains to run a top speed of 30 mph. As Asplund explained, getting the track into suitable conditions could be part of the job contracted to Pop-Up Metro.
Private-Sector Railroads?
Most, if not all, railroads in the United States and Canada started in the private sector. They are still there on the freight side, but not on the passenger side. In 1971, most of the passenger trains operated by the private-sector railroads were discontinued, although Amtrak kept some corridors (the Northeast Corridor is the busiest) and a few long-distance trains going. Other corridors came along in the 1970s and 1980s, and Amtrak also operates them, some as state-supported trains. As private-sector railroads got rid of local passenger services, government agencies affiliated with the states or political subdivisions of those states took over the transit, including “transit railroads” that succeeded the private operations.
There is a small amount of renewed interest by the private sector in passenger trains. Brightline in Florida runs a full span of service between Miami and Orlando Airport, including on new railroad rated for 125 mph (FRA Class 7). Brightline is also building Brightline West, with plans to run at higher speeds between Las Vegas, Nevada and points on Metrolink for connections to Los Angeles. A private investor in Fort Worth also proposes to take over stalled Texas Central project that was slated to build a new line and run high-speed rail between Dallas and a location in the Houston area. So a local private-sector company could also establish a local railroad on a line that had fallen into disuse or slight use. If the passenger service could fit in with that company’s freight operations, the Pop-Up Metro model could get the track into condition and run the passenger trains.
More New Ideas?
There might be some other issues and ideas concerning how the Pop-Up Metro model could work. Henry Posner and his colleagues pride themselves on their ability to come up with innovative railroad plans and operations, and they seem prepared to take on new challenges.
I have heard a lot of interesting and innovative ideas from rail managers and rider-advocates over the past several years, and I have reported about some of them here in Railway Age. The indications from POTUS 47 and Secretary Sean Duffy are that they are opposed to passenger trains and transit, especially rail transit. Time will tell if that fear comes to fruition. In the meantime, transit providers are turning to building roads for buses, rather than rail lines.
I don’t know if the Pop-Up Metro model can turn transit’s current negative spiral around. That’s a tall order, especially with most providers experiencing financial woes. Still, under certain circumstances, Pop-Up Metro could provide a means for getting some new lines going at low cost, which means each passenger brings more revenue to the operation than is the case when the agency must spend more money to get the railroad into shape and buy equipment before welcoming the first riders on board.
Time will tell how successful Pop-Up Metro is at expanding America’s mobility map for non-motorists as well as motorists, a few miles at a time. The conditions might be right for its success, though. Under the conventional §5309 statutory scheme for New Starts and Small Starts grants, those projects are declining in number, most likely because they are too expensive for the providers who would run the services. Will the alternative offered by Pop-Up Metro succeed in expanding local passenger railroads at an affordable cost?
Time will tell, and I will be ready to report the results as they happen.
