What if the government’s role in commuter rail was analogous to its role in highways?
Today, highways and roads are the property of the government. The government is responsible for maintaining them. The private sector then pays license fees and such for the right to use them for privately-owned vehicles.
What if commuter rail were done the same way? What if the state acquired and owned the right-of-way, and private individuals and companies then paid license fees and such for the right to use them? In this model, market mechanisms would govern passenger fares much as they do bus fares today.
It seems to me that this allows a more organic and evolutionary bottom-up approach to addressing the interurban needs that Christopher has raised. The government could build out the right-of-way, and private companies could then use that right-of-way (very much like taxis, as stomv observed) to carry passengers based on demand.
Routes that became popular could be built out to expand capacity. Routes that languished could be, after some reasonable trial period, reverted to (temporary) use as linear parks/trails.
Update
This 2011 report describes more specifically the constraints that govern the MBTA ownership of the right of way between Worcester and Boston (emphasis mine):
Starting in earnest in 2006, the MBTA began to negotiate with CSX to acquire the Framingham to Worcester right of way, the South Coast Lines, the BTRT and Grand Junction. Rather than beginning the negotiations with the thorny issues stemming from future sharing of the right of way, the parties sought to identify their fundamental priorities. For both parties, arriving at the right purchase price was important, but a central aspect of the business deal became a joint reconstruction project for state-owned bridges that would allow double-stacked freight cars. In the final deal, MassDOT agreed to raise or otherwise reconstruct approximately 17 state-owned bridges, while CSX agreed to lower the track in 14 locations to allow double-stacking.
I think the analogy here is to states licensing private trucking companies to operate on state highways.
is a private company that runs on the MBTA’s rails, right? So how is that different from what you’re proposing?
that the rails and cars would be government own and ran. The railcar would be the “highway” and my person would be the vehicle licensing the use of it.
Am I reading that correctly?
The MBTA owns some, but not all, of the routes served by commuter rail, at least according to this undated report (with data through 2010). This 2013 announcement by the MBTA references “control”, and uses the word “acquisition”, to describe the Worcester-Boston line. I don’t see references to ownership or maintenance, though.
For those segments that the MBTA owns, then you’re absolutely correct. So the next question is why make the deal so restrictive? Why insist that just one company run the entire system? If the state proposed that there could be only one state-negotiated contract for buses on highways in the state, surely we would say “that’s insane”.
I’m suggesting that the state set reasonable standards for private operators, put in place reasonable protocols for signaling and scheduling (analogous to traffic signals and regulations), and go from there.
I note that the agreements still force the commuter rail to share trackage with freight. Better would be to build out separate passenger-only tracks, so that both freight and passenger capacity is increase.
This was done highways decades ago, when truck-only lanes were added to interstates and turnpikes. We should do the same with rail in MA.
Who owns the equipment that Keolis operates? Who decides what equipment to purchase and when? Who determines the schedules?
How “private” is Keolis?
The price you pay for an MBTA ticket would go up, because not only does the state subsidizes the rail, it also subsidizes the service of operating the cars. If you loose that subsidy, ticket fares might double.
I could be wrong though, because peter pan costs about the same as the T, but they have competition and have to stop for cars. Also I’m not really sure you can have two different operators on the same system of tracks.
I’m not sure why rail equipment can’t vary as much as buses. We don’t seem to mind the occasional low-end bus catching fire on the highway between NYC and Boston — we rely on “market mechanisms” to sort out and punish the losers. Somehow Megabus seems able to buy and operate very nice modern two-level coaches, and it doesn’t take them ten years to accomplish. I note that no government tells Megabus where it must build its buses or how much “local content” must go into them.
We do the same with air travel. The government builds the airports, operates the air traffic control systems, and pays for the NTSB and various regulatory agencies to assure safety. Private companies (heavily subsidized) operate a variety of equipment, purchased by private companies from private companies. Some carriers still fly “classic” DC-3s. Freight haulers like Fedex and UPS still operate venerable DC-10s.
I agree that we should not oversimplify the problem. We should not, however, over-complicate it either.
Oh, and by the way, I see no need at all to insist that commuter rail equipment all carry the MBTA logo and heraldry.
Open the rails, invite private operators, and let them compete.
To my knowledge, there is only one passenger rail route in the entire United States that isn’t a money loser, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service. Every other route requires some form of subsidy to operate, let alone turn a profit – and this is without Amtrak or regional commuter rail agencies needing capital to build or maintain track infrastructure, which in most cases (including many of the MBTA’s commuter rail lines) they simply lease from existing freight railroads.
The problem with your proposal, Tom, is that in all likelihood, if Massachusetts state government got out of the business of providing passenger rail service in this state, with the exception of Amtrak there wouldn’t be any. It’s simply more profitable for private railroad companies to use rail infrastructure to move freight than to move human beings, so if the allocation of rail resources were governed entirely by the profit motive instead of by the public good, goods movement by rail is all we would get.
Once upon a time, all of the rails in MA were controlled by private railroad companies such as the New York, New Haven & Hartford and the Boston & Maine, each of which ran commuter rail trains which competed with each other. The whole reason state government got into the business of providing commuter rail service as a public good to begin with was that by 1960, these companies were ending this money-losing service left and right – unless they were paid by the T to keep it going.
My view is this: commuter rail service is a public good – just like subway service, bus service, police and fire protection and public schools. Both economically and environmentally, we can’t succeed as a Commonwealth without it – and that’s why it remains a public good worth paying for, and fighting for.
I think you are absolutely correct that passenger rail service requires government subsidies. In my view, the question is therefore how we best structure those subsides so that they result in the outcome we desire.
Government already subsidizes air and highway travel; it should do the same for rail. It is absurd that a passenger pays more to travel from New Orleans to Boston by rail, taking two days, than by making the same trip by air, taking a few hours. This disparity is, in my view, prima facie evidence of failure in our actual current national transportation policy.
I’m not therefore not proposing that Massachusetts state government get out of the business of providing rail passenger service. I don’t expect private railroad companies to provide passenger service — as you observe, freight is far more profitable. To the contrary, I propose that the state jump into the business of providing rail passenger service far more aggressively, through building out infrastructure and (if need be) through direct subsidies to rail passenger operating companies.
This would have the benefit of making existing private railroad companies more profitable, by making it possible for them to run more freight trains.
I note that a significant factor in the abandonment of passenger rail service by private railroad companies was the compellingly greater profitability of carrying freight. A segment of track can only be used by one train at a time. If the owner of that track must maximize profits (as every private railroad company is required to do), then the owner must prefer that train to be freight rather than passenger. The state, as owner of the track in question, would NOT be driven by the profit motive. It would, instead, be driven by the demand that it provide convenient, affordable, and safe passenger service. The new passenger rail companies I envision would not be allowed to operate freight trains.
I enthusiastically agree with you that commuter rail service is an indispensable public good that modern society requires. I think the opportunity is to craft a new and sustainable model for providing that required public good.
n/m
It sounds like, in addition to having the state/MBTA purchase the remaining commuter rail lines that are owned (and dispatched) by the various freight railroads (CSX, Guilford Transportation Systems, etc.) the key here is to split up the state’s commuter rail contract/business between multiple different firms that directly compete with one another, potentially even on the same line/route, as opposed to simply giving the entire system over to Keolis/MBCR/Amtrak/whoever-had-the-contract-before-Amtrak for a set number of years. If the key is breaking Keolis’ current monopoly, I think that can only result in better service for passengers.
I’m also with you on buying the remaining trackage and rights-of-way throughout the commuter rail system, so that they will be owned and dispatched by the MBTA. I think that one of the principal underlying reasons that people aren’t aware of regarding why some MBTA commuter rail lines have MUCH better on-time performance than others is who is dispatching the trains. On MBTA-owned track (such as the Greenbush line), commuter rail trains receive priority over freight trains, while on freight railroad company-owned track (as was the case with the Framingham/Worcester line until relatively recently), the inverse in the case. In fact, as I recall that this issue of “dispatch priority” was one of the principal reasons that the MBTA was so interested in spending tens of millions to acquire the trackage for the Framingham/Worcester line in the first place, which they had been leasing from CSX for decades.
In short: yes.
Buying the trackage and rights-of-way, and making the necessary improvements will doubtless cost substantial amounts of money.
But breaking Keolis’ monopoly and ending the MBTA’s current practice of contracting for commuter rail service with one single company throughout the entire system, and using a contract that will last multiple years regardless of that one contractor’s performance, may actually save money while providing better service for rides.
I think the big idea that ST has buried is this: parallel lines for freight and for passenger rail, and more of each please.
Ultimately, we want more passenger-only rail so that it can connect more communities, do it more safely, do it faster, and get those cars off the highways. Ultimately, we want more freight-only rail so that it can more efficiently ship goods throughout New England, do it more safely, do it more cheaply, and get those trucks off the highways.
But look, this is back to our expansion vs. existing debt conversations. Rail acquisition, right of way expansion, and building additional tracks is expensive.
Due to the excessive swerving I have had to do lately to avoid potholes, I did some reading about why our roads last such a short amount of time between repairs. A major reason is because of truck traffic.
The amount of strain put on a road by an 80,000 lb truck is not 20x the strain put on that road by a 4,000 lb car. The damage done to the road is exponentially greater. According to the GAO, a single truck has the same impact on the road as 9,600 cars. We are heavily subsidizing the damage to our roads by truck traffic.
If we more accurately assigned the cost of the damage to the truck (and bus) traffic, it would make freight rail a much more reasonable option.
I don’t believe in privatization. Railroads should be run by the state, as they used to be in much of Europe before the present vogue for privatization took hold.
Congressman John Mica, a Florida Republican, has called Amtrak “a Soviet-style train system”, clearly revealing that, like many Republicans, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I made several trips on Soviet trains in 1974 and 1975, to Moscow, Leningrad (as it then was), Petrozavodsk, and across the Finnish border to Helsinki. Those trains were comfortable, well built, and ran more or less on time (the one from Murmansk to Moscow was 15 minutes late into Petrozavodsk). Amtrak would kill for such an infrastructure as the Soviets had; Amtrak is a poorly funded, half-hearted joke by comparison to the Soviet SZD.
In the world as I would have it, it would be possible to travel virtually anywhere in Massachusetts by train, over track sufficient to accommodate both passenger and freight traffic. The Soviets, and a good many western countries for that matter, demonstrated that these services could be provided admirably by state employees, without the need for private contractors; why should we not do the same?.