(The following story by Ed Marcum appeared on the Knoxville News website on July 6.)
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Asked to speculate about passenger rail as an alternative for a nation dealing with high transportation costs, Pete Claussen, chairman of Gulf & Ohio Railways Inc., said there are possibilities but many obstacles, too.
The last passenger train to regularly serve East Tennessee – Southern Railway’s Birmingham Special – had only 12 paying riders on it when it passed through Knoxville on its final run Aug. 12, 1970, from Bristol to Chattanooga.
Local media marked the event with stories and called it the end of an era. It was an end that had been coming for decades, brought on largely by competition from the automobile and the airplane.
In 2008, with gasoline hovering around $4 per gallon and airlines reducing service and eliminating flights, it would be more than a little ironic if the current crisis was to set the stage for a rebirth of passenger rail.
There already are supporters who would love to see it happen. The National Association of Railroad Passengers has been pushing for a national passenger train network since 1967. Lately it has seized on the fuel and airline situations to renew this call.
As reasons to put more emphasis on rail, the organization cites American Public Transportation Association figures showing that light rail use was up 10 percent and commuter rail up 5.7 percent in the first quarter of 2008 compared to last year. It also cites Federal Highway Administration figures showing that vehicle miles traveled in March were down 4.3 percent nationally from the previous March.
On the state level, the Tennessee Association of Railroad Passengers touts the success of the Music City Star, a commuter line that provides service from Lebanon, Martha, Mount Juliet, Hermitage and Donelson to Nashville. The group quotes newspaper reports that ridership on the Music City Star is up 25 percent compared to the same time last year.
“Other states are investing in passenger rail, including North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia,” said Jarod Pearson, secretary of the Tennessee rail organization. “I would like to see Tennessee be a leader in this area and not wait any longer. I would like to see us ahead of the curve when it comes to passenger rail.”
The bus test
How far-fetched is it to think this could happen or that Knoxville could be a part of it?
Pete Claussen, chairman of Knoxville-based Gulf & Ohio Railways Inc., said he likes the concept of passenger rail and doesn’t want to pour cold water on the idea, but there are some tough realities that have to be addressed.
One is that somebody is going to have to pay for passenger rail, because it generally won’t pay for itself.
“Nobody in the world makes money hauling passengers,” he said. “There are no passenger train operations in the world that sustain themselves with the money they get selling tickets.”
Though many observers deride Amtrak’s financial record, it is actually one of the most successful rail systems in the world, recouping 75 percent to 80 percent of its operating expenses through revenues, Claussen said. Remaining expenses, as with most all rail systems, have to be subsidized.
Next, there has to be a Point A and a Point B, each with sufficient population density and demand for travel between the two. He used the example of a railroad to the Great Smoky Mountains.
“This is why a rail to the Smokies won’t work,” he said. “You’ve got B – you’ve got the Smokies- but you don’t have A, because people come there from everywhere,” he said.
And then, there is the “bus test.”
“Let’s suppose you have A and B, which is Knoxville to the (McGhee Tyson) airport,” Claussen observed.
Many people want to get from one destination to the other, so would a rail link succeed?
No, according to Claussen, because there is no regular bus service between Knoxville and the airport and that would come first.
“If you can’t support a bus, you can’t support a train,” he said.
The issue is about public transportation and there must be more of a willingness for people to try public transportation, whether a bus or a train, before passenger rail will succeed, he said.
Rising fuel, food and other costs may push people in that direction, but Claussen doesn’t think the traveling public is there yet. At least not judging by the bus test. On a recent trip to Roanoke, Va., he said the lanes were clogged with thousands of cars and trucks, “but I didn’t see one bus.”
Claussen speaks as a railroad industry insider, running a company established in 1985 that owns eight railroads across the Southeast. Most of them haul freight, but one is the Three Rivers Rambler excursion train that runs from downtown Knoxville along Fort Loudoun Lake to the Marbledale Quarry.
Expensive to build
Jeff Welch, director of the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization, speaks as a planner and director of the agency charged with comprehensive transportation planning for Knox, Blount, Loudon and Sevier counties. Claussen and Welch make similar points about obstacles needed to be overcome to make passenger rail a viable alternative in the Knoxville area.
Both agreed rail is expensive. Claussen said a proposal by Norfolk Southern railroad to build a stretch of rail along 400 miles of Interstate 81 in Virginia as part of a state project amounted to a cost of $6.5 million per mile of track. Welch said the Metropolitan Planning Commission, of which he also is in charge of transportation planning, has data on three or four light rail projects in Southeast cities that show an average cost of about $40 million per mile, including stations, bridges and other infrastructure. Light rail generally depends on an elevated track.
Welch and Claussen noted that, while government sees little problem in subsidizing road construction or the airline industry, political leaders tend to view subsidies for railroads as hand-outs to private companies.
The Republican and Democrat parties share some blame. In 1979, President Carter mandated that Amtrak cut services to trim costs. This resulted in a passenger train from Chicago to Florida being eliminated, causing the Tennessee Association of Railroad Passengers to form, said the Tennessee Association of Railroad Passengers’ Pearson. And President George W. Bush has made draconian budget cuts involving Amtrak, Claussen said.
However, there some change seems to be under way, Welch said. He noted that when the House Appropriations Subcommitee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development submitted its proposed fiscal 2009 spending bill on June 20, $1.5 billion was earmarked for Amtrak, nearly double the $800 million originally proposed, and $60 million was designated for intercity passenger rail service, also double the original proposal. Still, the amounts compare to $40 billion proposed for highways.
A cultural shift
“So, we have just not had a national rail policy for 60 years; a passenger rail policy,” Welch said. “And the rail system has traditionally been a private enterprise. CSX, Norfolk Southern and all of those are private companies and you have to develop a serious relationship with those organizations in order to get an effective passenger rail system.”
One local example illustrates difficulties in even a seemingly straight-forward project. A commuter line from Knoxville to Farragut or to Lenoir City via the existing Norfolk Southern rail line would seem possible.
“You have one track and there are probably 18-20 trains a day on that line and you’d have to be able to find a window in there that you could put passenger rail on a single track line, and again, this is private track and the preference is hauling freight and it’s much cheaper to haul freight,” Welch said.
It might be necessary to build an additional parallel line.
“Do you build along the interstate? Or do you build along Kingston Pike? Where do you find the right-of-way to build a rail system?” Welch said.
Knoxville and other parts of the country might not be at the point of dealing with such issues yet, but awareness of the role passenger rail can play in solving the country’s transportation problems seems to be growing among national leaders. Welch has a copy of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission report, released Jan. 15 to the White House and the U.S. House of Representatives.
It calls for an increasing emphasis on passenger rail.
According to the report, on trips from 100 to 500 miles, passenger rail can offer time savings compared to highway or air travel, especially considering air travelers who need to check in early and rising rates of flight delays. The study cites the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s 2005 Energy Data Book, which reports that intercity passenger rail service consumes 17 percent less energy per passenger mile than airline travel and 21 percent less per passenger mile than automobiles.
“Our nation will need to put more emphasis on transit and intercity passenger rail and make them a priority for our country. A cultural shift will need to take place across America to encourage our citizens to take transit or passenger rail when the option is given,” read one of the recommendations in the report.
In a Feb. 4, 1968, News Sentinel article, staff writer Bill Register dealt with the decline of passenger rail. The biggest factors were cost and time. In the example of a trip from Knoxville to Miami, a person could fly for only $7.01 more than the cost of railroad fare and get there 24 hours earlier.
Though written in 1968, Register’s last paragraph could almost have been written today.
“As a whole, the United States is lagging far behind Europe and Japan in modernizing rail travel, but there have been some recent efforts to develop crack, high-speed trains in this country. Many people who have a romantic attachment to trains are hoping that these efforts pay off before the passenger train vanishes completely,” he wrote.