Lots happening

Sometimes, I find it hard to pick a subject for this blog. Other times, like right now, there seems to be so much going on with railroads and passenger rail, that it’s impossible to cover each with a full blog. Stringing them out week after week would just make the events that much less current, and that much less interesting as subjects for a blog.

Here, then, is a compendium of what’s current and my pithiest comment for each, in the hopes that by next week at this time I’ll have only one topic of supreme interest:

(Clue: Ain't gonna happen.)

So far, the big railroads have reported income gains (on a per-share basis) for the fourth quarter of 2017 that should please all but the most aggressive investors.

Speaking of aggressive investors, according to a report in Railway Age, CSX has begun a program of increased rates and line sales. CSX, of course, is the big railroad that sold its soul to Mantle Ridge to get the now deceased Hunter Harrison at its helm--or some combination of the above. When James Foote was installed as replacement CEO after Harrison’s untimely passing, there seemed to be a window where CSX was catching its breath—enough to make me think that Foote wasn’t going to piss off CSX’s captive shippers as much as Harrison intended. With the new rate increases, that’s not the case; and, with the proposed line sales, Foote is also treading on the STB’s “welcome” mat for the Time-Out Room of Broken Promises.

CSX, while still under Harrison, had promised to keep the STB informed as to addressing shipper complaints and as to the state of the railroad. Though the Surface Transportation Board may not have authority over line sales, these actions have all the sincerity of a Kmart grand opening. With a reported possible 40% of the railroad up for sale… well, if it sounds like a duck, but it walks like a liquidation sale… we’ll see.

Meanwhile, California High Speed Rail is going nowhere fast, and seeking more money to get there even faster than that. Columnist Victor Davis Hanson, writing in The Mercury News has gone so far as calling the partially finished overpass pillars dotting the landscape in Central Cal “a modern Stonehenge.” A week ago, the project’s main consultant, WSP, forecast costs for the first 119 miles of (as yet unfinished) line had ballooned from $6 billion to $10.6 billion. Some Cal state legislators are doing what politicians do best and calling for an audit, an investigation, or something else that makes it look like they care. Meanwhile, they are also searching for methods to avoid the new federal tax law’s local tax deduction cap, while doing another thing politician’s do well, asking for more federal funding. That tingle down your leg is California reaching into your pocket for your wallet.

Oh, and the drumbeat you hear in the background is the media continuing their clarion call for Positive Train Control (PTC) to be implemented on all United States railroads, yesterday if possible. One article I read cites the fact that even lowly Mozambique (but it's not a sh--hole) has this complicated safety system on its railroads to prevent crashes.

Such a comparison exhibits the sorry state of understanding of the news media when it comes to the complexity of the North American rail system. In the same article—I won’t name the author because his editor has embarrassed him by letting their ignorance go to print—the author starts out calling the system Positive Train Control and then lapses into calling it Positive Track Control for the rest of the article. Perhaps, during the writing of the article over a particularly heady--or spiked--cup of Starbuck’s, he invented a new system that can, in fact, be installed yesterday?

(By the way, Mozambique also has armored locomotives. Is the left-leaning media confusing train control with gun control? Naw! They want both; and yesterday!)

In Good News, Florida’s Brightline has started up. That’s a true higher-speed rail link between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach (currently 40 minutes one-way). It’s privately owned and operated, something government hates. Throughout its construction, Florida state and local governments have sought a way to get more control over it, which means they think it will succeed. Now that it’s operating without any significant input from government, there are efforts to scuttle it for “safety” reasons. Granted, there have been accidents already, mostly involving knuckleheads who don’t know enough not to get in front of a moving train… ever. That’s E. V. E. R.

Let’s hope they don’t scuttle it. We need more public accommodation run by private enterprise, not less.

And folks, if you DO think it's a good idea to step in front of a moving train, you may as well try it. Pick one that's running on PTC and see if it stops. The Darwin effect is going to get you soon anyway.

Next week: Lots more happening.

©2018 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)