TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

Last Monday evening around 10:15pm, a Capitol Corridor engineer was assaulted by a group of trespassers in West Sacramento, CA. The Sacramento-bound train was halted shortly before the I-Street bridge because debris had been placed on the track. Apparently, the conductor then left the train to investigate. When the engineer saw that the conductor was being threatened by a group of juveniles, he also descended from the train in order to assist the conductor. Subsequently, the engineer was assaulted and severely beaten. He had to be hospitalized after the assault. Apparently, no passengers were harmed in the incident.

This is very disturbing - don’t these people have better things to do? Do they seriously think it’s fun to just stop a train and then beat up the engineer?

[via sfgate.com]

The lesson: we think of government-owned Amtrak as money-losing socialism, but the money-losing airline industry as a bunch of noble capitalists. Maybe we should re-examine our national transportation policies the way JetBlue is rethinking its customer-service policies.

[Quoted from Allan Sloan: Lessons From JetBlue’s Meltdown ]

That comment about the airline industry - my feeling exactly. As we all know, Amtrak is a money-losing entity. Lots of people think it could be otherwise, but I just don’t think so. But then, the much touted airline industry is also a money loser. Nobody really knows about the road transportation industry, because there is no single entity at whose income statement one could look at, but last I heard, most of the roads are paid for by the taxpayer and can therefore be considered a subsidy of the road transportation industry, so they’re probably not real profitable either. Looks like the only profitable transportation entities are freight railroads - they pay for their own infrastructure and still make a profit.

Well, maybe the general conclusion should be that transportation in general is just too cheap nowadays, i.e. the operators don’t charge as much money as they should in order to pay all the bills. I believe the general public in the USA somehow has the notion that transportation is/should be “free” and that cheap airfares are as much a basic human right as freedom or free speech… That’s just not true - especially with “Global Warming” showing up on people’s horizon more and more, I hope that those same people will soon have to recognize that transportation is a major factor. And the only way to really teach them is through their pockets - get them where it hurts most: charge more money for it. And then they might well recognize that trains are a much more efficient means of transportation than either air or road.

(via TicketPunch).

It looks like it has been a bad week for Capitol Corridor riders, due to the fact that Union Pacific had to undertake some urgent bridge replacement work on that route. Here are a couple extract from Gene Skoropowski’s “Message to Riders“:

Then the bottom fell out of the plan. Union Pacific engineering forces discovered major deterioration of two bridges in the middle of the planned tie renewal work area. (…) So, this week, UP bridge forces undertook a major effort to get the bridges replaced. (…) Due to the ongoing bridge replacement, this week has been a colossal mess, especially on the later morning trains and the early afternoon trains. Throw in a few signal problems, a drawbridge opening or two, a couple of vehicles and assorted debris intentionally placed on the tracks, a freight train with a crew that reached its legal ‘hours-of-service’ limit (federal law says the freight train stops when the crew uses up their allotted work hours, and the train then sits on the track until a relief crew can be found and sent out by van, taxi …or helicopter…!!) and we have the basic ingredients for the collapse of service.

I am really amazed by all this. I mean, seriously: do bridges just suddenly go bad from one day to the next (short of something like a washout)? Aren’t they (Union Pacific - they own the track) doing some sort of ongoing maintenance and checks on their trackwork? Shouldn’t they detect issues like that early on? And also, how can a crew just ‘die’ on the road? Shouldn’t the dispatchers, etc. know about this? Wouldn’t it be way more efficient to run all trains in a scheduled manner? They’d be much more predictable that way.

This almost seems like an impossible task for Amtrak and the Capitol Corridor folks: they are trying to run a frequent, scheduled, reliable service, but they have to do that in an environment that is completely unstructured (it appears), unscheduled, unmaintained and thus unreliable.

I also wonder if Amtrak and/or the State of California receives some kind of compensation (at the very least refunds of track usage fees, better would be some kind of money to reimburse for damages) in cases like this? I mean there must be a contract in place that has certain incentives for Union Pacific not to let this happen … I’d be very curious to see this contract …

The Lott-Lautenberg Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, formerly known as Senate Bill #1516, has been reintroduced as the Lautenberg-Lott Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act under Senate Bill #294 in the new Congress.

Washington, D.C.—Senators Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Trent Lott (R-MS), appearing at a joint news conference this noon at Washington Union Station, announced that they were introducing today their Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act. The new bill, S. 294, is similar to S. 1516 in the last Congress, except for changes in the dates and technical amendments.

[via NARP Press Release]

This proposed legislation would, among other things:

• Reauthorize and provide funding for Amtrak for 5 years
• Establishes an 80% federal match funding mechanism for capital projects.
• Requires the development of a long-range Federal rail policy

The state-supported service on the Chicago-St. Louis route will be known as “Lincoln Service” and will consist of a total of five daily round-trips. Three of those are state-sponsored trains and the two others are part of the national Amtrak network (those are the Texas Eagle and the Ann Rutledge).

This latest announcement completes the service increases on three Illinois routes for the October 30 timetable change.

[ Amtrak Press Release ]

On November 5, 2006 (a Sunday), Capitol Corridor trains #727 (southbound Oakland - San Jose) and #734 (northbound, San Jose - Oakland) will be making exceptional stops at Niles. This has been arranged by the Train Riders Association of California with the help of Capitol Corridor, Amtrak and Union Pacific. The reason for the stop is a special excursion organized by the group following their Annual Meeting and Conference at Oakland on November 4. In between the trains, the Niles Canyon Railway will operate a train up to Sunol and back. Both the extra Capitol Corridor stop and the Niles Canyon Railway trains are available to the public.

Approximate schedules:
- Arrival of train #727 at Niles: 10:00am
- Departure of Niles Canyon Railway excursion: 11:25am
- Departure of train #734 at Niles: 1:25pm

Riding the Capitol Corridor trains requires a ticket to/from Fremont, the next scheduled regular station on the route. The fares for the Niles Canyon exursion is $10.

If this extra stop is successful and enough people participate in the event, this may eventually lead to future additional stops at Niles.