Is America’s rail infrastructure really crumbling?

With five deadly Amtrak crashes in the past three months, the news media has been beating the drum for increased railroad safety and beating it hard.

Let me make it clear that, in my opinion, much of the media, and that includes most newspaper reporters, most television reporters, and many magazine and internet new reporters, has a demonstrated lack of understanding of how railroad safety systems work. That said, the media have picked up on two things and decided these two things are must-have items in the whole pantheon of what the news media want for this country.

First, they want a computerized train control system that will prevent all train crashes, and they cannot understand why a mandate for Positive Train Control, which they think is their miraculous computerized train system, has been ignored. Second, they want federal, state, and local governments to come up with money to completely and totally repair America’s “crumbling infrastructure.” These guys aren’t going to settle for second best. It’s prevent all crashes and fix all infrastructure or explain why not.

I’ve gone over the whole Positive Train Control nightmare in this blog. More than once. I’ve concluded that the media is just not going to understand the major investment in computer science and infrastructure that Positive Train Control represents, and they really don’t want the public to understand this either.

So, this time, let me address infrastructure. For railroads, infrastructure is any fixed asset that contributes to the job of the railroad, which is to move people and goods from one place to another. Fixed, as opposed to moving. Locomotives and train cars are not infrastructure. Parts that wear out or have limited lifetimes are not infrastructure. A bridge is infrastructure. A section of track is infrastructure. A tie bar or a railroad spike is not infrastructure, nor are the people and tools needed to maintain the section of track.

Keeping that definition in mind, we also must think about two kinds of railroad infrastructure. The first kind is owned and maintained by privately held companies or corporate railroads. The second kind is owned and maintained by government or government-created entities. An example of the first is a bridge or track owned by Union Pacific. An example of the second is a bridge or the overhead wire on part of the Northeast Corridor owned by Amtrak.

To understand the argument I’m about to make, I would also divide each category further into infrastructure that has an impact on safety, and infrastructure that has no impact on safety whatsoever. It’s not hard to imagine that track and bridges have an impact on safety, but what about the power supply that feeds those wires? If it fails, does it impact safety or just delay an electric train?

The big Class I railroads spend billions (with a b) on infrastructure maintenance and improvement every year. (The big Class 1s are CSX, Norfolk Southern, BNSF, Union Pacific, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific. Kansas City Southern is a smaller class I.) None of these is going to let its infrastructure crumble, because both safety and profit are paramount. There is no profit without safety and vise versa.

Now, let’s say that the State X Department of Transportation doesn’t have enough money to maintain its tracks to the FRA maximum speed limit. It doesn’t have to, and it won’t impact safety. It just means slower schedules, as long as State X’s railroad employees (not infrastructure) adhere to the schedule. If State X doesn’t want to replace a broken rail (crumbling infrastructure), that impacts safety.

If you follow the logic I’ve laid out, the clear majority of railroad infrastructure in America is not crumbling or being poorly maintained. As the media and certain politicians who want control over some federal funds would have you believe, any safety issue is probably due to crumbling infrastructure. We see here that that is not so.

A corollary is that the clear majority of infrastructure that is crumbling is already under government control. What makes anyone think that those who have let it happen will fix it if we vote them more money?

©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.)