Weirdness in Amtrak seat-miles

I've been busy staring at YouTube videos of trains lately, not because they're all that exciting, but because I'm trying to figure out what typical consists are for various Amtrak routes. A few videos have been fun, though, like this one featuring Metro-North Railroad maintenance-of-way crew moving through after the fourth train. It keeps going, and going, and going...



Anyway, thanks to Paul Druce's table of annual train-miles from earlier this year, it's possible to calculate average passenger and seat counts with some level of precision.

The good news is that this seems to solve one question Paul had about why different services seem to have such a variation in the cost charged per unit distance: There's a strong correlation between numbers of seats and cost per train mile.



The bad news is that the number of seats per train seems really bogus in a lot of circumstances. I've been fumbling my way around Wikipedia, some railroading forums, and spending time watching a lot of videos to try and determine typical consist sizes, and therefore actual seat counts. It's an error-prone process, but I think I've put together some figures which are at least in the ballpark.

The numbers I've calculated for what Amtrak is recording for seats-per-train are also subject to some error. I know there is some level of error in my calculations because I'm working backward from figures for overall contribution/loss per route and contribution/loss per passenger-mile found in Amtrak's September 2011 year-end report (FY2011), but most of those figures have at least 2 digits of precision, and would only be off by a small amount. There are a few situations where Amtrak's figures are only known to 1 digit of precision, but that should still generally be less than a ±10% variance from reality (or reality according to Amtrak, at least).

Similarly, the train-mile calculations I'm using are only accurate to within a few percent because of the method of calculation (number of trains per week multiplied by 52 weeks, though that gives some allowance for canceled trains).

Still, given all of those problems, several of Amtrak's corridor trains in the Northeast (though not necessarily NEC trains themselves) stand out as having highly questionable figures.

The standout case revolves around the Adirondack, Empire Service, Ethan Allen Express, Maple Leaf, Vermonter routes, which all appear to operate with exactly the same passenger car consist of 5 Amfleets: 4 coaches and 1 cafe car. There does seem to be some non-obvious mixing of the individual carriages: some are high-capacity Amfleet I cars, while others are lower-capacity Amfleet IIs (the second-generation Amfleets were generally intended for long-distance service). But even accounting for that variation, some numbers are really outlandish.

My calculations based off of Amtrak's figures come up with an average of 554 seats per Maple Leaf, for instance, an impossible number for a 5-car train. On the other end of the scale, my math produces an average of 87 seats per Vermonter. It would seem that each of those trains has a typical capacity around 340, so something isn't right.

I'm not sure what's happening here, but it seems that Amtrak—typically operating fixed-size consists—is charging routes based on the number of seats the trains would have had if they were actually shrinking or growing trains in accordance with demand.

In some ways, I can see how that's not really a problem—4 out of 5 of those trains terminate in New York City's Penn Station (the last, the Vermonter in Washington, D.C.), where the added hassle of switching out train cars might gum up the works so much that it's better to just run with interchangeable fixed-sized trains. In the name of operating efficiency, some accounting tricks might not be a bad idea in order to keep the charge per route equitable. But it still seems to be covering up the true costs of running these trains while also inflating the overall cost of operation. Trains would need to be sized for the maximum load on any of the interchangeable routes (which in this case appears to be on the Maple Leaf).

Nationally, there seems to be a pretty consistent practice of under-counting seats by about 15%, though some routes work out to be very precise: Some state-run and mid-continent corridor trains seem to have pretty close numbers, and the Acela Express, with a fixed consist of 304 seats, is just about bang-on as well. My local long-distance route, the Empire Builder, is also low by a considerable margin for FY2011, though I believe that was due to a long string of annulments west of Saint Paul due to flooding which dropped ridership by about 12%. FY2010 numbers were almost a perfect match in comparison.

Anyway, here are the basic results of all this work (with further details in my spreadsheet):

"Amtrak 90" plan

I just came across an interesting report called "Amtrak 90" put together back in 1982 which proposed a new route structure.   It is a much better mesh than what we have today, even featuring cross-border links to Winnipeg, Manitoba and Calgary, Alberta, though I consider a few links to be missing (Rochester, MN and Green Bay, WI, for example).  But then again, the plan only looked at an 8-year time horizon.

Anyway, some weekend reading.

Finding solutions for the Empire Builder's capacity problems

Amtrak passengers disembarking in Saint Paul.

Despite its unreliability and low frequency of service, Amtrak's Empire Builder often faces capacity issues. The train serves 45 stations along the way from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, resulting in an immense possible number of trip combinations.  Some trips become impossible to book because of other riders who overlap on part of the route.  Despite the common wisdom, not everyone is traveling the entire 2,200-mile distance: The average trip is around 720 miles, taking about 15 hours.

In recent years, stations in western North Dakota have seen growing ridership because of the oil boom in the Bakken formation.  This past year, Williston—smack in the middle of the train's route—surpassed Minot to become the busiest station in the state of North Dakota.  While the numbers aren't huge (Williston sees about 82 boardings and alightings each day), it does make a significant impact on a train that's only running once daily in each direction and is making 44 other stops along the way.  Calls for extra capacity on the line have become common in recent years, and two weeks ago, Montana's two senators reiterated that request.

The fleet of locomotives and rail cars used by the Empire Builder is actually pretty large.  Because the journey between Chicago and the coast takes about 2 days, there are 4 or 5 sets of equipment in use at any given time.  The typical train is 2 locomotives plus 11 cars, and that grows to 12 cars for the run between Chicago and Saint Paul—an extra car gets added to the train for that segment because of typically higher demand between those large metropolitan areas.

Going by the consist listed on Wikipedia, the minimum fleet size is 67 vehicles, broken down like this (not counting spares for use during maintenance periods):

• 10 GE Genesis locomotives
• 5 baggage cars (Seattle)
• 5 transitional crew/sleepers
• 5 coach/baggage cars (Portland)
• 15 sleepers
• 17 coaches (3x per train plus 2x CHI-MSP cars)
• 5 diners (Seattle)
• 5 sightseer lounge/cafes (Portland)

Personally, I'd love to see the Empire Builder running two or three times daily, but considering that the going rate for each new passenger rail car is somewhere north of $4 million these days, plus the political environment of the moment, it's hard to see anyone plunking down the hundreds of millions of dollars required to double or triple the fleet size of one route, plus what may be hundreds of millions more for track upgrades along the 2,200-mile distance.

(It is a lot of money, but the train fleet listed above is probably cheaper than a single Boeing 747.  A new individual set of equipment probably has a value around $55 million.)

Other options involve adding extra cars to each existing train.  These wouldn't help solve the problems with on-time reliability or frequency of service, but they would help alleviate capacity problems.  Amtrak always claims that they don't have much equipment to spare, so it might be an issue to lengthen the Builder.  Since there are 5 sets of equipment needed for regular operation, adding one car per train means you must find 5 rail cars.  This really shouldn't be a problem, but Amtrak's acquisition of new equipment has been very bursty over time, with new Superliner cars only being built about once a decade.  There are only 430 active Superliners across the country according to this roster, and they're divided among about a dozen different routes.

Rather than finding 5 cars to lengthen every train, it might be possible to find 1 or 2 cars to run on just part of the route.  The extra car running from Chicago to Saint Paul could be extended to run to service stops in Minot, North Dakota (with one additional car acquisition) or Havre, Montana (with two).  This seems like the cheapest and simplest option, and could be scaled up to become an extra car over the entire route over time, possibly by restoring some rail cars previously damaged in crashes (costing $1 to $2 million per car rather than the $4 million for new equipment).  Hopefully that could be implemented in the short term, but it might take time to acquire equipment and negotiate the switching operations with BNSF (looking at track layouts, it appears that adding/removing a car would be easier in Havre than Minot, but either location might require track work too). 

But another option which would free up capacity on the Empire Builder while also improving reliability for many users would be to add more trains in shorter corridors along the route.  Amtrak is currently studying a second train between the Twin Cities and Chicago, with a report due around February 2013.  We can estimate what the report might conclude because a second daily train was previously studied in 2008–2009, though that was for the restoration of the North Coast Hiawatha all the way to Seattle.  That report suggested it would cost around $47 million to improve the line between Chicago and Saint Paul, and there would be other costs for purchasing equipment and training crews.

The first things that leap to my mind when I think about new train cars for this corridor are the two Talgo trains that were being built for Wisconsin's Hiawatha train between Milwaukee and Chicago.  The contract for those was canceled in a fit of political shenanigans last year, but they still sit, waiting to be used.  The pair only cost $47.5 million, though there are additional costs: They need locomotives, a maintenance base, and a contract with Talgo to maintain the trains for the next 20 years.  In all, a second train to the Twin Cities will probably cost $150 to $200 million.

We'll see if Amtrak's estimates come out in that range or not—the nature of freight traffic has been changing along the route due to dropping coal traffic and increasing movements of oil and frac sand, so costs could go up or down.

Giving riders on the busy eastern segment of the Empire Builder route another option should free up seats for people who do want to travel west of the Twin Cities, which will hopefully help residents of western states who rely on the train to get around.

Untangling the busiest rail chokepoint in Minnesota

A Friends of the 261 excursion train crosses the lift bridge in Hastings. A second bridge is proposed here if passenger traffic increases.

We in the Twin Cities are underserved by intercity trains. In a region of 3.3 million people, we only have Amtrak's Empire Builder stopping once each direction each day as it plies its way between Chicago and Portland/Seattle. However, this is still a significant hub of rail activity. Transcontinental lines of two railroads connecting the Pacific Northwest to Chicago mingle here. The Empire Builder uses both—BNSF Railway's route to the west, and Canadian Pacific's line to the east.

One of the great mixing bowls for freight traffic in our region is located just east of the Saint Paul Union Depot. Up to 150 mostly long, slow trains run through or shuttle around the area on busy days, moving about 10,000 rail cars in the process. The twin lines of BNSF and CP actually share track for a few miles before criss-crossing each other in Newport and again just north of Hastings. There are three significant rail yards in the area, one each for BNSF and CP, and another from Union Pacific, just to keep things interesting. BNSF and CP also each have big offloading facilities for automobiles along the tracks—the former near Dayton's Bluff and the latter in Cottage Grove.

Major rail traffic flows in the Twin Cities.

It's a busy area, expected to get even busier in the coming years. The freight railroads are expecting to see traffic go up by 3 to 5 percent annually (though some of that traffic increase comes from lengthening rather than adding trains). Proposed passenger services (5x daily roundtrips for the Red Rock commuter service and 6x daily roundtrips for higher-speed train service to Chicago) would also have a significant impact. Some additional tracks will be needed in the area, plus possible commuter train platforms. This turns out to affect a lot of different things along the corridor, and so the Ramsey County Regional Rail Authority partnered with the railroads and several other organizations to plan things out with the East Metro Rail Capacity Study (currently available in a draft form).

The study has identified dozens of possible improvements in the corridor from downtown Saint Paul to Hastings on the east side of the river where passenger trains run, plus a few things on the east side also thrown in to help with overall traffic flow.

A big problem in the area is speed: Trains often slow down to a crawl of 10 miles per hour or less as they switch between tracks, cross bridges, and climb some significant grades. Tracks also get blocked for extended periods as trains move in and out of yards. One of the first improvements recommended in the study is the replacement of 50 to 60 existing low-speed switches with ones capable of moving freight at 40 mph, which alone should make for significant differences in capacity. Mile-long trains whit may have taken 6 minutes to move past a point should then be able to pass by in 90 seconds.

Speeds are also planned to be improved throughout the corridor by realigning existing rails to even out curves which currently require slowing.

Another issue has been trains blocking main tracks as they serve yards and other facilities adjacent to the main line. In particular, Canadian Pacific's automobile offloading site in Cottage Grove has a siding that's too short, often leaving the head end of the train sticking out on the main track. New or lengthened sidings are planned in that spot and in several others to help keep the through tracks clear.

Now, goods can tolerate a fairly significant amount of delay as they move by rail, but people are much more finicky. In order to provide the best service, a couple of flyover bridges for passenger trains are outlined in the plans. These sound exotic, but it's worth noting the presence of several major road bridges in the immediate vicinity. The first flyover is planned just east of the Saint Paul Union Depot and would skip over tracks at the Division Street wye and drop trains right into an area known as the Hoffman Interlocking. The bridge will be relatively steep at a 2.5% grade (2.76% accounting for curvature), so it could only be used by passenger trains. Heading southeast, the flyover would lead straight into a dedicated passenger track.

(It's worth noting that a tunnel had also been proposed here, but that idea was discarded because it would have put the tracks below the water table and well within the 100-year floodplain of the Mississippi).


Proposed Saint Paul Union Depot flyover. View East Metro Rail Capacity Study in a larger map

Another flyover is planned down near Hastings where the BNSF and Canadian Pacific lines split in order to traverse opposite sides of the river. This would lead to a new lift bridge next to the existing one, which would be aligned to direct trains straight to the west side of the existing Hastings depot.

The last big operational issue I'll mention is the crossing over of traffic between BNSF and CP at both Newport and again just north of Hastings. There's little need for this traffic to cross over twice, and one major change put forth in the plan is a relocation of BNSF's existing tracks down along the river to a new alignment next to the CP tracks which closely parallel U.S. Highway 61. This would move the tracks out of the Mississippi River's 100-year floodplain and open up the opportunity to use the old rail alignment as a recreational bike path.

It's not clear whether all of this will be needed, so it's important to note that many improvements will either move forward or be put on the back burner on a case-by-case basis. However, it was an important exercise to go through, since the changing track layouts affect other projects in the area. The Union Depot flyover has impacts on where the proposed Bruce Vento Trail bridge can be situated, and other changes farther down the line affect things like the placement and type of support columns for the replacement Warner Road bridge over the tracks (now planned to be built of steel rather than concrete), and siting of potential Red Rock Corridor stations (the study recommends changing the proposed platform locations for both the Lower Afton Road and Cottage Grove/Langdon Village stations).

How much traffic growth will actually occur remains to be seen. The study planned for an overall increase of 36%, but that value isn't tied to any particular year in the future. But certainly some growth will happen, and it's important to be prepared.

Area transportation planners learned from their experiences with the Northstar commuter line that it was important to get the host railroads involved in discussions early and keep them involved. Past efforts at computer modeling had not gone over well since the railroads didn't know what assumptions had gone into them. This time around, the study group interacted with the railroads frequently and tried to get as much detail about current operations that they could.

The overall price tag for the proposed improvements is projected at $827 million, though transportation officials estimate that about 2/3 to 3/4 of that will be paid for by the railroads themselves, since many of the changes are needed by them regardless of whether additional passenger service happens. It's likely that this will be divided up into a number of smaller projects as need arises and funding becomes available.

If and when—hopfeully when—passenger traffic increases on the line, riders will be assured a much less delay-prone ride.

Good transit needs good roads

Construction proceeding last year on what was one of the worst stretches of pavement on University Avenue.

rattle rattle rattle RATTLE rattle
rattle rattle
KA-BANG! rattle RATTLE rattle
rattle rattle

I still remember my early excursions on Metro Transit's old #6 bus to Roseville. Peering out into the dark as I felt the vehicle vibrate as it bounced over every little bump. Those rides were often an assault on my senses, forcing me to gird my stomach against pitching and rolling motions while I restrained my fears that the bus would shake itself to pieces.

I grew up in a suburb of Rochester and had hardly set foot on buses at all until I came up to the University of Minnesota after high school. The value of the on-campus shuttle buses was very clear (especially since they were, and remain, free to use). While they often lurch and rattle as much as the regular city buses, my early trips on them were pretty short—rarely more than a mile. Shifting over to using regular transit buses after college was never as easy as I'd hoped.

The Hiawatha Line was in the midst of being constructed when I graduated, and I followed many of the ages-old bus vs. rail debates at the time. I attended the line's opening ceremony in 2004 and took as many opportunities as I could to ride it, learn how it worked, and compare it to how the bus system operates. Some of the reasons I'd heard in favor of rail were debunked, at least in part, while others were enforced and refined.

For instance, I always used to hear about how rail vehicles were silent. While Hiawatha Line trains are often pretty quiet, they aren't silent—in some cases they make loud screeching sounds (most noticeable on the Hiawatha Avenue flyover just north of Lake Street). Similarly, ride quality is much better on Hiawatha trains than it is on a typical bus. Riders still get jostled when passing through switches and might get caught off-guard as the train speeds up or slows down, it's still vastly better than a typical bus ride. I have a much more difficult time reading text in books or on my phone when riding the bus than on the train, simply because the bumpy ride and vibrations from the diesel engine make everything shake so badly.

While part of the difference in ride quality between buses and trains has to do with the vehicles, much of the gap is due to the surface that they ride on. Railroad tracks have to be maintained within a certain tolerance, otherwise trains derail. As rails wander out of tolerance because of use, the speed limit on the tracks is reduced progressively until it becomes impractical to actually carry any traffic.

Roads are different, however. They just degrade and degrade, yet vehicles still go at the same speed because there's usually little risk of cars crashing if the surface has simply become a bit bumpier. (I have certainly wondered about some roads, however.)

Buses seem to be affected by bumps much more than cars since their immense weight makes it hard for the suspension to deal with poor pavement. Small imperfections get amplified, resulting in almost invariably bad ride quality.

Streets and highways that see lots of bus traffic should be prioritized for repair and repaving projects, and not just because it would help the bus glide along more smoothly. Much like the broken windows theory of crime, I feel that there's a strong case for a similar "broken pavement theory" related to the quality of life in a neighborhood.

Minneapolis and Saint Paul have begun attacking some long-damaged streets in the past few years, and it's often remarkable to see the road surface and sidewalks in a pristine state. Battered pavement is often a sign of bureaucratic paralysis brought on by budgetary belt-tightening over the course of years and decades. As freeways were built in the latter half of the 20th century, city streets were often left to rot.

While a lot of attention goes into designing and maintaining parks and plazas as public spaces, streets are the most basic type of public spaces I can think of. They should be treated with respect, and designed to facilitate many different modes of travel. Better surfaces don't just help cars or buses—well-designed spaces make things more comfortable for cyclists and pedestrians, and improves the value of properties along the way.

Next time you feel that busted old street, think about the decisions that led to it becoming a low priority, and try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

"Climate Change is Simple"

Bill Lindeke included this video in his most recent Sidewalk Weekend linklist. David Roberts of Grist.org says this is what you need to know when talking to climate change skeptics.

Location, location, location

I'll start this off by mentioning that Metro Transit is accepting comments on their Central Corridor Transit Service Study until this Monday, July 9th. When I attended a meeting last week, many concerns circled around the reduction of route 94 bus service. I've slowly been convinced that this is a reasonable idea, since the projected travel times for the Green Line make it only 9–12 minutes slower than the direct 94D for downtown-to-downtown trips, a difference that shrinks rapidly when compared to the 94B which circles around the state capitol.

Whatever comments you may have, they're due in by 5 PM on Monday. Metro Transit expects to modify their existing plans before they get implemented in 2014 with the start of light-rail service.

***

A view of Target Field station
(Flickr/chief_huddleston)

A groundbreaking for the Interchange, the expansion of Target Field station in Minneapolis's North Loop, is also scheduled for Monday. Plans by Hennepin County to first add new light-rail platforms and then expand the heavy-rail platforms below (in hopes of one day hosting intercity trains to Chicago, Duluth, and elsewhere) have come under many of the typical criticisms for rail projects these days. There are always questions about cost and whether such a project is needed or not, but the Interchange project—often known as "MTI" for "Minneapolis Transportation Interchange"—also gets barbs thrown at it for having a less-than-optimal location for people trying to get into downtown Minneapolis. I thought it would be a good idea to put this into a bit of a historical context.

The Interchange site is not all that from the downtown core—only half a mile or so, depending on where you're measuring from. But half a mile easily becomes 10 minutes on foot, probably farther than many people—especially commuters—would like to hoof it once they've arrived in town.

Transit planners know this, of course. That's partly why the station is where it is. When the Hiawatha Line opened in 2004, the northernmost station was at 5th Street between Hennepin Avenue and 1st Avenue. By simply extending the light-rail line a few blocks further, it intersected the only remaining heavy-rail line through the city center. Putting the station anywhere else probably would have required tearing down buildings, digging trenches or tunnels. Thinking through those ideas is a good mental exercise, to be sure, but extending LRT tracks to Target Field already inflated the costs of the Northstar commuter rail project by a big margin, and attempting anything more complicated than that would have made it vastly more expensive.

Timed right, a light-rail ride can shave several minutes off the last leg of travel to work, even if a rider is only going 2 or 3 stops into downtown. There are also numerous bus routes originating in the "B" ramp a block away, including route 20, specifically created for Northstar commuters headed toward the southern end of downtown and timed to meet each train. Oh, and of course, the "B" ramp gives fairly easy access to the city's skyway network, so you can get across town in climate-controlled comfort without having to worry if those "Don't Walk" signs are going to slow you down.

Okay, but Minneapolis is an old railroad town. Surely some of the city's old train stations did a better job of connecting riders to the city center, right?


View Minneapolis railroad stations in a larger map

Well, maybe. There were basically four significant rail stations serving the city center back in the heyday of rail transportation. Residents of and visitors to Minneapolis should be familiar with the old Milwaukee Road Depot at Washington Avenue and 3rd Avenue, now converted to a hotel. The big station in town was the Great Northern Depot, located along the riverfront at Hennepin Avenue, using land now occupied by the Minneapolis Federal Reserve and the central post office. The remaining two were smaller, respectively operated by the Luce Line (also serving two other regional railroads) and the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway.

Back when the city's commercial center was up near the river, the Great Northern and Milwaukee Road depots likely would have been the closest to the action. However, the central business district drifted southward along Nicollet Avenue over time, and nearly all of the Gateway District near the river was obliterated as the city took a heavy-handed approach to urban renewal. Today, the sites of the former rail stations and the Interchange's site are pretty much equidistant to the core of downtown. Certainly a traveler arriving at Target Field would now face a slightly shorter walk to the IDS Center than if they'd arrived at at the old Great Northern Depot, but only slightly.

Rail stations are often touted over airports because they allow people to arrive in the center of town. Perhaps that refrain has gotten a bit overplayed—certainly there are examples across the country and around the world where rail stations don't quite land you in the middle of the action, even if they get you pretty close. Still, I'll pretty happily take the 3,000-foot hike in downtown Minneapolis if the need arises: Even MSP airport's heavily-used Hiawatha Line station is a good 1,600 feet away from the baggage claim and ticketing areas, let alone the actual concourses.

The Interchange might not be in the best location ever devised, but it was among the best of a limited number of options. It will feel more connected once the Central Corridor is up and running, doubling frequency on the light-rail tracks through downtown. Now we should work to ensure that it becomes a great facility.