Suburbanites who leave Chicago by rail can expect to arrive home on time. Trains are frequent on every route. And ticket prices are lower than the cost of driving. But rail passengers who travel from Chicago to downstate destinations have no such assurances.
Metra, the commuter rail authority that serves the Chicago region, and Amtrak, the passenger rail company that serves the nation, are comparable in some ways, of course. Both are subsidized with taxpayer dollars. They use the same tracks and share some stations.
But there is a fundamental difference: Metra enjoys success, while Amtrak is struggling for its life.
Why?
The scope of the operations differ, certainly. Amtrak locomotives haul passengers over a 22,000-mile rail network nationwide; the Metra system covers 546 route miles.
But a key factor appears to be politics, not infrastructure. Or, more accurately, politics, operational practices and personnel. Metra is simply more insul-ated from political forces than Amtrak, and its managers do a better job keeping tabs on potential problems, according to sources in the rail industry.
“[One] big difference [between Amtrak and Metra] is that the state of Illinois doesn’t tell us how to run our railroad. We’re not a department of the state of Illinois. Amtrak has some independence, but Congress tells them where to run their trains,” says Metra spokesman Frank Malone.
In fact, the Amtrak Reform Council, appointed in 1997 by Congress to monitor the progress of Amtrak in its attempts to gain self-sufficiency, recommended insulating Amtrak from the annual federal appropriations process. “They have to go to Capitol Hill every year with a tin cup,” explains council member Jim Coston, a Chicago lawyer.
Last February, the council suggested setting up a board to oversee operations and infrastructure and to serve as a buffer between Amtrak and the government. Coston says he hesitated to sign on to the idea because he believes the premise of creating an independent passenger rail system is “bogus.” Ultimately, he backed such a board, considering it the only viable plan under discussion for turning Amtrak around.
Indeed, there is intense pressure from Congress to make Amtrak financially self-sufficient by the end of 2002. But the council announced last fall that Amtrak would miss the mark. Now Congress must decide whether to continue subsidizing Amtrak at all.
Formally called the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Amtrak has never lived up to expectations that it could pay its own way. In 1970, Congress planned to bankroll the passenger service for two years. Amtrak missed that deadline and nearly a dozen others.
As for its local counterpart? To begin with, Metra has never faced such expectations. Metra estimates it will take in $203.9 million from sales tax revenue in the 2002 fiscal year, which amounts to 45 percent of its budget. The agency is required by state law to cover 55 percent of its operating costs with ticket sales. The other 45 percent comes from a special sales tax in the six-county metropolitan region Metra serves.
But Metra also has incentives to recoup as much of its costs through the ticket box as possible: The authority can put any money it raises beyond its 55 percent mandate toward capital improvements. “We have a saying around here, and it’s kind of corny, but it’s: ‘The more you capitalize, the less you have to subsidize,’” says Malone. Improved infrastructure attracts more customers, which means more cash from fares, he explains.
For its part, Amtrak may simply be faced with a losing proposition.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, argues that subsidies for passenger rail are small compared to public support for other modes of transportation. The country spends $300 billion a year on highways and $50 billion annually on air service, notes Durbin spokeswoman Stacey Zolt.
In contrast, Amtrak received $939 million from the federal government last year, though more than $300 million of that was held over from the previous year. Before he stepped down to head New Jersey’s commuter bus and rail agency, former Amtrak President George Warrington warned the operation will need $1.2 billion next year or it will be forced to slash many of its long distance routes.
That could be bad news for Illinois. Union Station is the fourth-busiest Amtrak station in the nation. The company employs 2,000 Illinois residents and purchases $45 million in local services. Of the 19 long-distance routes operated by Amtrak, 11 terminate in Chicago.
Some of those routes lose enormous amounts of money. The most popular, the Washington- and Oregon-bound Empire Builder, loses $114.14 for every passenger who climbs aboard. Matters are far worse for the Pennsylvanian, which racked up $292.34 in losses per ticketholder in 2001. Labor absorbs most of those costs. Drastically scaling back the overnight trains could save Amtrak about $200 million; eliminating them completely could reap $300 million in savings, says Federal Railroad Administrator Allan Rutter.
Even then, Amtrak would lose money, he predicts.
Customer revenues don’t cover the costs of running shorter-distance trains, either. Individual states pitch in to support routes in their area, but it’s not enough money to put Amtrak in the black. Illinois, for instance, shells out $10.3 million a year to subsidize shorter-distance routes that start in Chicago and run to St. Louis, Carbondale, Quincy and Milwaukee.
But state support can help. State subsidies play a large part in the success of long-distance commuter trains in California, considered by many to be a bright spot on the Amtrak network. California boosted ridership and capacity on its intercity routes, which are run by Amtrak but paid for by the state.
Furthermore, California worked closely with Union Pacific railroad to improve the lines by adding signals and laying double track in congested areas. The state also bought 17 locomotives and 88 rail cars, says John Robin Witt, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation.
Original guidelines called for ticket sales to account for at least 60 percent of the operating costs of the routes, but all of the trains recover more than that now, Witt says. “Intercity rail never paid for itself, but it’s getting closer,” he adds.
California transportation officials found that increasing the frequency of trains on popular routes added to the popularity of those trains because people came to rely on them more as they became more convenient, Witt explains.
One other factor that both California and Metra officials say is key to their successes is a close working relationship with the freight companies that own the track.
Under federal law, Amtrak passenger trains have priority over freight trains. But, fully one-third of the 40,000 hours of delay to Amtrak trains in a recent nine-month period were caused by interference from other trains, according to Rutter, the federal railroad administrator.
On the Illinois-supported routes, only trains running between Quincy and Chicago were on time more than 80 percent of the time in 2001, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Railroads. Trains moving from St. Louis to Chicago fared the worst, with less than a 60 percent on-time performance. An overnight train on that route was punctual less than 10 percent of the time.
In contrast, Metra officials report that while they run more than 700 trains a day, 96 percent are on time, though that agency, too, must operate largely on freight tracks.
“We live or die according to the freight railroads,” Metra spokesman Malone acknowledges. But there is no state law specifying that Metra trains have priority over freight trains, only contracts hammered out with the railroads. “None of it is legislated; all of it is negotiated,” he says.
That collaborative approach is one ingredient missing from Amtrak’s business practices, says Joe Szabo, Illinois state director of the United Transportation Union. In order for Amtrak to improve, he says, it must work more closely with the communities it serves, the freight rail companies, its employees and, of course, its passengers.
“[What] Metra does so well is to understand who the stakeholders are. They have strong relations with all of them,” says Szabo, who represents the interests of passenger and freight railway workers.
In the case of a delay caused by a freight train, it means Metra officials would get on the phone immediately to find a solution, while Amtrak is willing to tolerate excessive delays, he says. When it comes to labor management, Metra consults with its employees regularly, but Amtrak “will only reach out when there’s a crisis,” Szabo contends.
Further, Amtrak’s cost-cutting efforts have only made the situation worse, he argues. He says the railroad has increasingly pushed employees to work the maximum 12-hour shifts allowed under federal law, even if it means stopping trains in the middle of cornfields to swap crews, which often further delays already tardy trains.
The UTU also objects to Amtrak management’s threat to eliminate longer routes on the network. “You can’t amputate yourself into health,” Szabo says.
Amtrak faces many other problems: more than $3 billion in debt, a decline in long-trip passengers and the staggering costs of developing a high speed Northeast corridor.
Nobody expects solutions to those issues to come easily, but the ride might not be as rough if Amtrak were to pick up a few tips from Illinois’ other major passenger rail service.
Daniel C. Vock is the Statehouse bureau chief for theChicago Daily Law Bulletin.
Illinois Issues, April 2002
