Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

trains.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 128 posts

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#41

Post by eternalban »

noahtallen wrote: post #13
jrockway wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a brief history of railroads in the US: 1) The federal government gave railroads massive amounts of land completely free of charge. 2) The federal government applied some regulations, including around transporting passengers. The automobile and plane hadn't been invented yet, so it wasn't that oppressive to railroads. Passengers were making them money. 3) The world changed and passenger service became massivel…

Completely agreed, and to expand even further: 1. It’s not like the delays are minor. On the line from Portland to Seattle, it’s common for the train be delayed for multiple hours by freight. In what world can a transit service be considered a viable option when even boarding is 2 hours late? Freight is having a really massive negative impact. 2. Massive amounts of land is surprisingly even an understatement! Union P…

This is all TIL for me. That pink strip in your map is wild. So these guys got 10 square miles per 1 mile of track. And then they went and leased that land to towns and businesses! All those Western movies finally make sense.

Why 10 miles? We always get treated to 'wild west' stories but it sounds like Washington DC was pretty wild itself. Many steaks were consumed and cigars chomped. Here's your land grant.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#42

Post by CrazyStat »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #40
b3morales wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only have de facto priority; officially passenger trains are supposed to be prioritized. This is in fact the basis of the complaint described in the article.

That is just plain wrong. In practice, of the 30+ interstate Amtrak trips I've taken in the past 10 years, the overwhelming majority of them are delayed by freight rail. It is standard operating procedure.

Yes, that's what de facto priority means. Since the railroads operate the lines and the freight trains, they (illegally) give their own freight trains priority over Amtrak passenger trains, which by law are supposed to have priority.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#43

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #21
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, nationalize the rail lines and make UP pay for access. Privatization of critical infrastructure, historically, leads to poor outcomes with profits getting siphoned off in the process. Rail workers aren’t getting sick days and trains are longer (leading to delays) because of investors squeezing rail infra and those who operate it. Why allow it to continue? The whole “privatizing profits socializing loss…

You say "nationalize" awfully glibly. Private enterprise, on private land, not bankrupt. Nationalizing that isn't an easy thing to do in the US.

> on private land

Public land given to them for free with the expectation that they'll maintain their ROW in proper working order and adhere to a certain social contract.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#44

Post by crooked-v »

xyzzyz wrote: post #26
woodruffw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all important context, and I thank you for including it. I agree it's not as clear cut as "public versus private." But there's a recurring theme here: public money enabling private growth, followed by public money softening private decline. Railroads are just one instantiation of this pattern: it shows up in agriculture, industrial manufacturing, medical and materials research, &c. At some point, it should ma…

The railroads were sure funded by public money, but it most certainly has not been taxpayer money. Instead, it was money invested by private individuals. Government did help the railroads with vast grants of lands, but most of the value of the granted land stemmed from the railroads that were built nearby. It was in fact a great deal for taxpayers, a win-win situation. > One wonders what the US's rail infrastructure…

> US federal government certainly is not known for providing high quality service at low cost, quite the opposite in fact.

The Post Office stands as a prime example of an extremely high quality service provided at a comparatively tiny price, and one that's successful and self-sustaining even while dealing with the immense costs of reliable delivery to extremely rural areas.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#45

Post by mlindner »

woodruffw wrote: post #7

The history of the US's Western freight lines is fascinating (and frustrating): we've allowed these massive companies (UP, BNSF) to extract rent for well over a century, in exchange for having laid down the original lines (which, mind you, were also paid for in land and bonds[1]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts

I'm confused why you think that private rail owned, operated, and built by private companies is somehow "rent seeking". Amtrak is even only allowed to use their rails by forced act of Congress. If things followed normal commercial rules Amtrak would have no right to use them at all. More so, they operate below the cost of any freight rail of anywhere in the developed world. They're incredibly efficient in operation.

US Freight rail is a massive success story.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#46

Post by mlindner »

pstuart wrote: post #38
woodruffw wrote: post #7

The history of the US's Western freight lines is fascinating (and frustrating): we've allowed these massive companies (UP, BNSF) to extract rent for well over a century, in exchange for having laid down the original lines (which, mind you, were also paid for in land and bonds[1]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts

We should look at nationalizing the rail lines and then investing in them to accommodate freight and passenger traffic more effectively. Positive Train Control[1] and judicious expansion of switches/bypass lanes should allow us to better saturate the rails so that throughput is maximized. This could even enable new passenger services other than Amtrak to operate in competition. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posi…

Nationalizing them would be a disaster. They were deeply unprofitable until the federal government de-nationalized them after it had nationalized them and practically ruined them in the process of that nationalization. Let's not ruin what good things there are.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#47

Post by mlindner »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #17
bmc7505 wrote: post #16

As a frequent Amtrak passenger, I can attest to the unpunctuality of the Union Pacific and other freight operators. On several occasions we have been delayed by a passing freight train that was an hour or more behind schedule, causing us to miss our scheduled connection. During one such occasion, while traveling on the Coast Starlight from Eugene this summer, I was treated very rudely by the conductor, who kicked me…

The real problem here is that freight trains have so much priority in the US, unlike every other major country in the world. It doesn't matter how many or what kinds of trains we have. This sort of policy will always makes trains an unreliable and therefore impractical mode of transportation. And this is a major reason for the US leading the world in carbon consumption per capita.

This isn't true. Amtrak has priority by law over freight in the US as long as they are on time. They don't get priority once they area late. What happens is that Amtrak becomes late and then they lose their slot and become further late.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#48

Post by bobthepanda »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #17
bmc7505 wrote: post #16

As a frequent Amtrak passenger, I can attest to the unpunctuality of the Union Pacific and other freight operators. On several occasions we have been delayed by a passing freight train that was an hour or more behind schedule, causing us to miss our scheduled connection. During one such occasion, while traveling on the Coast Starlight from Eugene this summer, I was treated very rudely by the conductor, who kicked me…

The real problem here is that freight trains have so much priority in the US, unlike every other major country in the world. It doesn't matter how many or what kinds of trains we have. This sort of policy will always makes trains an unreliable and therefore impractical mode of transportation. And this is a major reason for the US leading the world in carbon consumption per capita.

Honestly we need to build parallel rights of way anyways.

The freight rails are slow and dilapidated. It would make more sense for passenger railways to be separated from freight railways entirely rather than to try and squeeze into inadequate trackage. We don’t try to unload air freight through passenger terminals or vice versa.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#49

Post by bobthepanda »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #39
vinay427 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: I couldn’t find a source that indicated the US leads in carbon consumption per capita, although it is near the top. For instance: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit... More to the point, as several other comments noted the official policy is to prioritize passenger rail, which clearly wasn’t happening, so hopefully events such as these will begin to change that.

>the official policy is to prioritize passenger rail Define "official" >hopefully events such as these will begin to change that. What events? If you think this was a rare case, you obviously don't ride Amtrak long distance much. Most interstate Amtrak trips get delayed by freight, and it has been that way for decades.

The official policy, in that it is literally US law. The subject of the article is an attempt to enforce said provisions.

Re: Amtrak asks fed regulators to investigate Union Pacific handling of Sunset Ltd

#50

Post by mlindner »

pessimizer wrote: post #35
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "nationalize" awfully glibly. Private enterprise, on private land, not bankrupt. Nationalizing that isn't an easy thing to do in the US.

> Government support, most especially the detailing of officers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – the nation's only repository of civil engineering expertise – was crucial in assisting private enterprise in building nearly all the country's railroads. Army Engineer officers surveyed and selected routes, planned, designed, and constructed rights-of-way, track, and structures, and introduced the Army's system of…

Much of the US rail network was built long after 1802 to 1866, so this doesn't really hold water.

And yes rail got to use eminent domain, because you can't build a rail line without it for the most part.

Post reply on HN