High-speed rail predicted to travel much slower than advertised

By Abhi Sivasailam and Audrey Spalding
Show-Me Institute

On July 27, governors from eight Midwestern states met in Chicago to sign a memorandum committing to develop a strong high-speed rail corridor in the Midwest. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was among the signatories.

In recent months, Nixon has called for high-speed rail projects for the state: one in Missouri, for rail between Saint Louis and Kansas City, and the other stretching from Saint Louis to Chicago. At a June press conference held with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, Nixon and Quinn promised that trains traveling between Chicago and Saint Louis could reach speeds of more than 100 miles per hour.

But trains traveling the route between Kansas City and Saint Louis would travel much slower. According to the state’s preliminary application for federal funding, those trains would travel an average of 55 mph after improvements, a 5-mph increase from the current average speed.

On Aug. 24, the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) will submit its final application for federal stimulus money to upgrade the existing Amtrak route between Saint Louis and Kansas City. The state is not asking to build a new route.

“It would cost something like multiple billions to get a high-speed rail system between Saint Louis to Kansas City — you would basically have to start over,” said James Noble, an engineering associate professor at the University of Missouri–Columbia who was commissioned by MoDOT to evaluate high-speed rail projects.

Instead, according to its preliminary application, MoDOT is seeking to make siding and crossing grade upgrades, and install a passenger communication system, among other improvements, (see a map of those here) for a total cost of $151,350,000. Most of that cost, $124 million of it, would be paid by the federal government out of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds (ARRA), if the project is approved.

The remainder would be paid by Missouri and Union Pacific Railroad, with the state paying about $15 million.

Currently, trains running between Kansas City and Saint Louis run at an average of 50 mph — slower than any posted speed limit on highway I-70, which links the two cities.

In order for passenger trains to reach a maximum speed of 110 mph on the route between Kansas City and Saint Louis, a large portion of the track would need to be rebuilt as a double track, Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said.

“I don’t think anyone is seriously thinking of higher than 90 between Kansas City and Saint Louis,” said Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who studies transportation issues.

COSTS
Amtrak currently runs a sizable deficit. In September 2008, Amtrak posted a net loss of nearly $119.9 million. According to O’Toole, Amtrak lost about $51 for every passenger that took the train from Kansas City to Saint Louis during the same month.

O’Toole said he had calculated a per-passenger loss for each Amtrak route, based on figures released in Amtrak’s monthly performance reports. For most short distance routes, he said, losses run anywhere from $10 to $95 dollars per passenger.

Although Amtrak consistently posts losses, it can afford to continue to run trains because of state funding.

“The legislature allocates money every year to keep Amtrak here,” said Lisa Lamons, railroad operations manager at MoDOT. “If we didn’t get that money from the legislature, Amtrak wouldn’t be here.”

Amtrak operates the trains that run from Kansas City to Saint Louis, but Union Pacific, a private rail company that makes its money from transporting freight, owns the entire route, according to Lamons. “Which is pretty common in the western United States,” she said.

Because Union Pacific owns the tracks, it decides when and where to make infrastructure improvements, which are intended to improve its bottom line, not improve passenger train travel speeds.

“Most or all of the improvements were geared toward freight train improvements,” Lamons said. Though occasionally, she noted, some improvements designed to help freight traffic end up helping speed up passenger train travel as well.

“The idea behind these proposals was trying to address benefit for both Union Pacific and Amtrak,” Noble said.

But if needed infrastructure for passenger rail travel isn’t being built, MoDOT can’t use its operating budget to fund the construction. According to Rodney Massman, MoDOT’s administrator of railroads and high-speed intercity passenger rail application contact, MoDOT isn’t authorized to make railroad infrastructure improvements.

“One thing is right now we don’t have any kind of fund for actual rail improvements,” he said. “MoDOT is still funded like a highway agency. Most of those road funds can only be spent for roads.”

“We’ve never had a budget for infrastructure improvements until last year,” Lamons said.

In this case, although MoDOT has offered a contribution of nearly $15 million toward rail improvements, the money is not coming from MoDOT’s own funds. “It’s coming from two sources,” said Massman. “One is a federal program where money can only be spent on rail highway crossings. The other is a state program for the same thing.”

Although the federal government and state governors interested in a slice of the $8 billion high-speed rail funding pie label the improvements as one-time costs, that’s not strictly true.

According to O’Toole, an often-overlooked portion of the cost of railroads is the rebuilding cost. It’s not an annual expense, he said. However, “Every 30 years you’d have to go in and completely redo it. Rebuild fences, rebuild extensions … Technically, that’s an operating cost — not a capital cost. All you’re doing is make sure what you’ve got stays there.”

According to Noble, there would be some other small maintenance costs.
“The maintenance costs for sidings are minimal,” he said. “The only place you’re going to see maintenance costs along the line is from Jefferson City to Saint Louis. Those rails will see costs from running along the river and carrying heavy coal trains.”

GAINS FOR MISSOURI
The real gains for Missouri are not in increasing speed, but may be in getting trains to arrive on time. According to the preliminary application, only 18.6 percent of trains running between Kansas City and Saint Louis arrived on time during the federal fiscal year of 2008.

There isn’t an overwhelming number of train passengers causing the large delay — O’Toole estimates that Missouri train travel averages 54 miles per year per Missouri resident — but instead, a large amount of freight traffic.
Noble’s 2007 study, commissioned by MoDOT, attributed the majority of train delays to freight train interference (FTI) at more than 53 percent.

Passenger train interference (PTI) was cited as the cause in only 9.7 percent of delays.

Massman and Lamons confirmed that very few trains arrived on time during 2008, but said that with the economic recession, freight traffic has dropped dramatically — it’s about half of what it was, according to Massman — freeing up more track space for passenger trains.

“Since January, it’s been above 90 percent pretty much every month,” said Massman.

The late-train problem will likely resurface as the economy recovers, bringing back the need for some of the infrastructure improvements MoDOT is proposing. “Railroads are very resilient and very enterprising, and they’re going to grab a lot of freight traffic,” O’Toole said. “Most recently, they’ve been carrying 40 percent of freight. They bounce back as fast as the economy, and a little faster in some cases.”

MoDOT estimated on its application that with the listed improvements, 80 percent of Amtrak trains would arrive on time, a large jump from pre-recession performance.

Abhi Sivasailam, a student at the University of Missouri–Columbia, is an intern at the Show-Me Institute.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 4:00 am. Both comments and pings are currently closed.