WI: Better American Passenger Rail?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Because I need a distraction from the bad news about the Orbiters...

What steps, in your opinion, could be taken for the US to have a stronger passenger rail system than IOTL? This includes not only the obvious intercity rail, but also mass transit systems.
 
Because I need a distraction from the bad news about the Orbiters...

What steps, in your opinion, could be taken for the US to have a stronger passenger rail system than IOTL? This includes not only the obvious intercity rail, but also mass transit systems.

Your bad news is my cause for celebration. ;) Still, Enterprise would be better placed in Long Island, where the wings were actually built.

Anyway, I'd suggest a really big oil crisis sometime in the 1950s. If you can find some way to make the cost of oil in the US at that time skyrocket, cars become less popular.

The trick is then, how does one make the cost of oil skyrocket in a US that still produces most of its own oil?
 
Well, there has to be some way to mitigate the influence that the big oil companies and auto manufacturers had in replacing rail lines with interstate bus services. Prior to the rise of the automobile in the '20s, many American cities operated electric trams, which pretty much vanished within the next decade.
 
A streamlined, modern regulatory process for one, and someone other than Eisenhower running the U.S. in the 1950's for another.
 
A streamlined, modern regulatory process for one, and someone other than Eisenhower running the U.S. in the 1950's for another.

I actually think Eisenhower is a good choice. What requires a change is the idea that passenger trains are obsolete, a common problem in the 1950s and 1960s. Having seen American railroads move heaven and earth to keep the war effort rolling in World War II, he'd decide that they would be a key part of any war effort and help them out while also building the Interstate Highway System.
 
I actually think Eisenhower is a good choice. What requires a change is the idea that passenger trains are obsolete, a common problem in the 1950s and 1960s. Having seen American railroads move heaven and earth to keep the war effort rolling in World War II, he'd decide that they would be a key part of any war effort and help them out while also building the Interstate Highway System.

Where is he getting the money to do both?
 
Where is he getting the money to do both?

Presumably the total dollar value will be the same, but I suspect you'll find that the rail system will be improved much faster than the highway system is degraded as funds get shifted. If for no other reason that te rail system is so underfunded OTL that there are a lot more non marginal rail projects available than highway.

Realistically though the difficulty is coming up with a plausible model for a combined transport program in this era. The state led model used for the highways and later FTA just doesn't seem likely to cut it. Maybe setting up something like the highway fund for local projects (where the states are more likely interested in rail) and give the private railroads the status states had for highway funding? End result could would probably be the loss of the more marginal interstates (and most of the urban ones) but a subway building boom, the salvage of some of the last interurbans (thinking PE, Key System and North Shore here) and a rail system better able to continue delivering passenger service privately (assuming the market stayed regulated but that the regulators gave more flexibiltity and rationalization raterthan Amtrak, probably through a new system introduced with the funding...)

The more I think about this the more realisitic it seems actually, with the initial push being for the same defense reasons as te OTL highway projects, and later on rail fundig being as entrenched as highways became.
 
Population density is really the first problem for Passenger rail in the US (cargo/freight rail on the other hand is very strong in the US, moreso as a fraction of good-miles travelled than in Europe). Only a few corridors really have the density to make it potentially profitable (with the caveat that if liquid fuel costs go crazy and the rail is electrified, this calculation can change). Another big deal is that passenger rail in the US weighs something like 1 ton per passenger---so you'd probably also need to significantly raise the risk tolerance of the American traveller and the associated politicians. If you could halve that---needing only say a half-ton per passenger on average, some possibilities open up without getting into 'packing them into cattle cars' territory.
 
Easy Answer: Avoid the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, or somehow avert the regulatory capture of that agency. The Commission steadily gained power from the moment of its creation, and forced railroad companies to get approval from the government for any significant projects. In return, the Commission allowed the railroads to stifle potential competitors by imposing high barriers to entry for potential entrants. Might not make US passenger rail the best in the world, but it would make it more nimble and responsive to market pressures. Meaning that while US rail system may loose a lot of capacity up until the 1970's, but once gas prices start going up, the remaining rail companies would be well positioned to respond to the new demand by upgrading their old/underused freight lines to passenger lines.
 
Could we make it a simpler POD by just moving railroad regulation over to the pre DOT as part of being included in the interstate highway act? You'd still have the ICC doing it's damage up to '56, but there would presumably be more room to breath afterwards (which is also, conveniently, when things started getting really bad). I guess the real question is what kind of standard would they apply, assuming that there was still a basic requirement that passenger service be provided...

That said, the real crisis hit the railways years after the interstate funding started I think the realistic speculation would be what happens with OTL regulations, but accompanied by the same 90/10 capital funding the highways got becoming available for railroad projects? The financial problems seem like they would happen, but in certain (especially northeastern) cases would be delayed by not having an infrastructure collapse compound things. Meanwhile the government would seem less likely to be willing to step in with an Amtrak like bailout, or at least more willing to give Amtrak teeth to access the publicly supported network...

I wonder if there wouldn't be a lot of electrification in the late 50s, and a wave of mergers in the 60s and 70s. I guess with a continued passenger mandate the short haul lines would die faster than OTL, but the capital funding would result in a healthier core network, and a passenger service that, while still money loosing, is in considerably less danger of dragging down the industry and hence no real need for Amtrak. I'd guess that we'd see some very good service from the likes of Santa Fe on long haul and whatever emerges out of the Northeast on short, and a lot more minimalist regulation satisfying services that have a lot in common with Greyhound (at its worst) on rails.
 
Could we make it a simpler POD by just moving railroad regulation over to the pre DOT as part of being included in the interstate highway act? You'd still have the ICC doing it's damage up to '56, but there would presumably be more room to breath afterwards (which is also, conveniently, when things started getting really bad). I guess the real question is what kind of standard would they apply, assuming that there was still a basic requirement that passenger service be provided...

Yes, that's possible. I had that very idea in my Transport America TL. In the post-Interstate world, the ICC's regulation of railways was far too stringent, and the railroads' inability to raise additional revenue was what ultimately doomed a lot of them. As far as what standards and where does the money go, that's easy. You co-ordinate such efforts with the Aassociation of American Railroads and the ICC, and go from there.

That said, the real crisis hit the railways years after the interstate funding started I think the realistic speculation would be what happens with OTL regulations, but accompanied by the same 90/10 capital funding the highways got becoming available for railroad projects? The financial problems seem like they would happen, but in certain (especially northeastern) cases would be delayed by not having an infrastructure collapse compound things. Meanwhile the government would seem less likely to be willing to step in with an Amtrak like bailout, or at least more willing to give Amtrak teeth to access the publicly supported network...

Truthfully, if you have funding support for capital projects, many of the biggest problems in American railroadign can be easily avoided. But in the Northeast, there was too many railroads, and short-haul traffic was just not there for them to make it.

Me, I think that something like Conrail is pretty much inevitable, even if you dodge Penn Central and keep the Pennsy and NYC apart. Best way to go on that one is to have the NYC and Erie Lackawanna deal with the Chicago-New York runs, where the EL has the shortest route but the NYC's Water Level Route through the Mohawk Valley is better for grades. The Pennsy focuses on coal hauling and picks up the pieces of what is left in New England. None of the New England or Coastal Plain lines - New Haven, Boston and Maine, Reading Lines, Central of New Jersey, Lehigh Valley, Delaware and Hudson - are large enough to survive on their own, with the short haul market moving to trucks. The Pennsy picks up the pieces of these in the late 1960s and early 1970s, making its primary rival Chessie System rather than the New York Central or Erie Lackawanna. That makes more sense considering their route network anyways.

In the south, the Seaboard Coast Line merger is probably inevitable as well - the two lines were after the same market. Norfolk and Western is gonna have a bear of a time with both Chessie System and the Pennsylvania aiming for its market and probably is forced to merge, which makes Norfolk Southern a probable inevitability. CSX doesn't need to happen - between the Seaboard Coast Line, Louisville and Nashville and Chessie with their own markets and concerns, that merger, and all of the problems it spawned, doesn't have to happen. (CSX is getting infamous for maintenance problems. Not Penn Central bad, but they have had way too many fuckups, from the train burning under Baltimore to bridge collapses to the runaway in Ohio that inspired the movie Unstoppable.)

Midwest has the same problem as the Atlantic States. A couple companies could make it by focusing up and down the Mississippi River valley, with Illinois Central Gulf and Kansas City Southern best placed to do that. North of Chicago, Burlington Northern is another inevitability (The Great Northern, Northern Pacific and Burlington Route had been run out of the same building since the 1920s) and the best thing to do here is have the Milwaukee Road not abandon its Pacific Extension, taking advantage of the fact that its route is lower and shorter than BN's lines, particularly the one over Stevens Pass.

Across the plains, Union Pacific rules the roost for a reason. The Santa Fe and Southern Pacific are to its south, with only smaller competitors like the Rio Grande and Western Pacific in the area. However, that alone could toss a curveball. The two aforementioned lines largely run from Denver to San Francisco, and they could hook up with somebody at Denver to go to Chicago, with either the Rock Island or Missouri Pacific able to do that, and then hand off traffic to the eastern lines. Santa Fe and Southern Pacific would be handling the southwest.
 
Sure wouldn't hurt to have an earlier start to the Pennsylvania's northeast corridor electrification, with an expanded scope:
  • Expand the catenary west of Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, and beyond, ultimately reaching Chicago
  • Electrify the tracks between Baltimore and Harrisburg
  • In conjunction with the New Haven, get the catenary to Boston
Other electrifications that would help:
  • The Cleveland Union Terminal electrification could be expanded eastward to Buffalo: certainly in the early-to-mid-20th century the traffic density in that corridor would have supported it. Ultimately it too could have gone as far as Chicago. And it sure wouldn't hurt to have that terminal relocated closer to Lake Erie, since the routing wasn't popular with the B & O, New York Central, and Nickel Plate roads.
  • Somehow persuade the New York Central to mimic the PRR and convert that route's third rail DC operation north of New York to 11000 volt / 25 cycle AC catenary: easier interchange with the New Haven and the PRR, and no problems with the live conductor at grade crossings. That would have facilitated NYC electrification going toward Buffalo and Cleveland.
  • The tunnel-driven electrifications in the Rockies / Cascades could have gone westward into Seattle, using hydro power
To be sure there would have to be changes of head end power at, say, Chicago
 
The late fifties and early sixties saw great airport expansion. That was the exact time when passenger railroads began to fold. Solution: connect the rail lines to the airports. Travel can be a combination of air/rail travel with the latter picking up local service. To make it work, it would have been necessary to "force" the construction of rail lines to terminals before the airports were expanded. That would have taken money and regulation, perhaps too much for a country that just embarked on a grandiose Interstate highway program. Another problem is that new airports were often too far separated from rail lines. Suppose Chicago built connecting rail or light rail lines. If a vast majority of other cities did not follow suit, travelers would still get stuck without connections. And where light rail commuter-oriented subways or el-trains are in service, most are not user friendly to luggage-loaded travelers. As I recall, it took decades before Chicago finished its light rail connection to the airports.
 
Top
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top