BOSTON — As MBTA commuter rail passengers walk briskly through the dirty glass doors at South Station to their idling ride home, their expectations are low nowadays, reported the Boston Globe.
Efforts to bolster the service with scheduling gadgets have faltered. On-time reliability is good but not great. And it’s hard to stay in love with a mode of transit where there are so few conductors that sometimes no one asks to see your $169 monthly pass – a rail rider’s badge of loyalty.
But at noon last Friday, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s commuter rail lines fired the first shot in what could become a rail revolution in the United States.
Three rail carriers, two with foreign ties and none of them being Amtrak, made their pitch to run the MBTA’s commuter rail operation, the fourth largest commuter rail network in the nation.
Rail specialists said the winner of the T contract gains a valuable foothold in the US rail market that could eventually lead to head-to-head competition with Amtrak for passenger rail service around the country. That injection of free-market competition into the long-socialized railroad could bring about a positive change for commuters in Boston and elsewhere.
The winning group will be officially announced in December after a thorough review of the proposals, MBTA officials said.
The new contract ”is absolutely going to determine Amtrak’s future in this business and how willing other companies are going to be to compete with Amtrak,” said Charles D. Chieppo of the Pioneer Institute, a public-policy think tank in Boston.
Amtrak has run the lines under contract with the T since 1986. But faced with an uncertain future – in part because of congressional resistance to further subsidies – Amtrak officials have said they will not bid on the lucrative T contract because its terms are too financially risky.
But in losing Boston, Amtrak loses its commuter rail flagship, a stellar piece of America’s railroad pie for anyone wishing to prove they can do the job better, rail specialists said.
With 140,000 daily passengers, the T is the largest contracted rail operation in the nation and carries more passengers per day than all of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor train runs combined.
Based on the performance of the winning firm and how well it interacts with the sometimes-fussy railroad union, T general manager Michael H. Mulhern said last week that the bidding process could largely determine the future of commuter rail in America.
”It’s conceivable that [this contract] could serve as a model for the rest of the country,” said Mulhern.
”With that in mind, I want to make sure I have a robust competition.”
Thomas Till, former executive director of the Amtrak Reform Council, a group appointed by Congress to study rail alternatives, agreed.
”If [the new contractor] does a good job and demonstrates they can run this thing, then I think it’s going to give the whole issue of franchising rail operation and maintenance a new look,” he said.
Amtrak spokesman Bill Schulz said the fact that the national railroad is surrendering the T contract doesn’t mean it’s not prepared to compete.
”We recently got the Caltrain contract in the San Francisco Bay region, and where the economics make sense, given our experience and our talent, we think we’ll be very competitive,” he said. ”We’re very proud of our performance.”
The T contract paid $180 million annually for Amtrak to operate the line. Although T officials said they cannot reveal the current bids, Mulhern estimated the new deal has the potential to bring in $1 billion over the five-year contract.
Battling for the right to move Boston commuters are some of the giants of the rail industry:
British rail giant Stagecoach Group has joined with Herzog Transit Services of St. Joseph, Mo., to form Bay State Transit Services Inc.
Stagecoach runs Britain’s largest rail system, South West Trains, encompassing 1,690 trains daily that serve 217 stations and employ 4,500 people, Stagecoach said. The line is based out of London’s Waterloo station. Since taking over the service in 1996, the Scotland group boasts that it has added more than 12,000 seats and increased train runs.
Herzog Transit Services has been here before, and many are surprised it’s back.
In an attempt to slash what was called a bloated Amtrak maintenance payroll, Massachusetts transportation officials in 1999 bid out the commuter rail’s maintenance contract to Herzog and its partner at the time, Boise Locomotive.
The joint venture underbid Amtrak by some $116 million. Soon thereafter, Herzog officials asked that all Amtrak maintenance employees reapply for their jobs, which were to be cut from 550 to 400. A furious political battle followed. Unions called on local politicians – including late US Representative J. Joseph Moakley – to intervene. The politicians then cited federal labor-protection regulations to keep Amtrak workers from being fired.
Eventually, after federal agencies threatened to withhold $200 million in grants to the T unless it accepted Amtrak’s bid, the T did, extending Amtrak’s contract for three years and leaving Herzog out of a job.
The firm later filed a federal antitrust suit in Washington, D.C., against both Amtrak and the unions. That suit is still active.
France’s CGEA Connex, the parent company of Connex North America Inc., is the largest private passenger transportation company in Europe. It operates 25 passenger rail systems worldwide, 10 of them being commuter rail systems.
Connex is the major shareholder in the new partnership. It is owned by Paris-based Vivendi International, which is in turn owned by Vivendi Universal, the multinational powerhouse that owns Universal Pictures and other entertainment businesses.
In 2000, Connex lost its contract to run a segment of British rail after just four years of a seven-year contract. The British rail authority accused the firm of poor on-time reliability and of using old trains on the southern England line.
In one case, a train was canceled after an infestation of fleas attacked the engineer, according to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Connex was Britain’s first rail company to be stripped of its franchise.
Connex is partnered with Canada’s Bombardier of North America, the firm responsible for building Amtrak’s high-speed Acela trains.
The third partner in the group is Alternative Concepts Inc., a Boston-based transportation and management consulting firm whose principal is James F. O’Leary, the former T general manager who, it so happens, engineered the transfer of the commuter rail contract from the former Boston & Maine Railroad (now Guilford, another bidder) to Amtrak in 1987.
Jane F. Daly and Richard M. Brown are the other ACI principals with MBTA ties – Daly served as deputy general manager from 1981 to 1989, the same time Brown served as treasurer. Jack Leary, another former T executive, is serving as managing director.
The firm is already attempting to make inroads with local labor, having hired Kevin Lydon, the former head of Amtrak’s commuter rail operations in Boston who was fired by Amtrak for refusing to make job cuts. Lydon is well liked by local rail unions.
Although Leary said the firm was formed exclusively to serve the MBTA contract, its members are aware that a good job here could position the firm for rapid expansion.
”But in all honesty, I think that’s down the road,” Leary said. ”But yes, if you’re successful here, so goes Boston, so goes the rest of the country.”
Guilford Rail Systems of North Billerica has been down this path before, having given up the MBTA commuter rail in 1986 after severe labor disputes and complaints by state transportation officials of poor service.
Guilford, a privately held corporation, is the only pure American company bidding on the contract. It operates freight lines in every New England state except Rhode Island, and bought the former Boston & Maine Railroad in 1983. It is owned by Portsmouth, N.H.-based Guilford Transportation Industries. Its main stockholder is Timothy Mellon, of Pittsburgh’s Mellon banking family.
Guilford made news in 1997 when it offered to buy or lease Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service for an undisclosed price. At the time, an Amtrak spokesman said, they were not taking the offer seriously.
In ending its service on the MBTA commuter rail line, the firm ended its 141-year hold on passenger service.
David Fink, executive vice president for Guilford, referred all comments on their bid to the MBTA.