Amtrak testimony about Missouri Services Woes

Near the end of the Missouri Legislative session, Ray Lang testified on the troubles Amtrak has in running the St. Louis to Kansas City routes. Here is his testimony.

Good morning. My name is Ray Lang. I am the Senior Director of State and Local Government Affairs for Amtrak, based in Chicago. In this position, I am responsible for Amtrak’s day-to-day relationships with state governments all across the country. Since I’ve been in Amtrak’s Government Affairs department, I’ve spend a great deal of time here in the Capitol Building in Jefferson City and it is a pleasure to be back here this morning. Thank you for this opportunity to address you. Amtrak has been a partner with the State of Missouri in operating daily, round-trip trains between St. Louis and Kansas City since 1979. Although in some years there have been discussions about operating on a single round-trip, service frequency has been steady during the past few years at two round-trips. However, ridership on these trains has been far from steady. In fact, of all the state-supported routes managed from Chicago, the service on this route through Jefferson City is the only one to show a year-to-year ridership decline from 2005 to 2006. In the 12 months ending last September (which constitute the Amtrak fiscal year), ridership on the trains called the Missouri Mules and the Ann Rutledge fell by more than 17-thousand to end up at about 119-thousand, a nearly 13-percent drop. That’s a big fall from the nearly 140-passengers just three years ago, and a far cry from the all-time high of nearly 180-thousand passengers in 1998. And it’s down again this year, by nearly 12-percent between October and April. What’s happened? The service suffers from poor on-time performance and inconsistency due, in large part, to the extremely heavy freight traffic on this Union Pacific corridor. Over the past several years, the corridor has seen a sharp increase in the number of coal trains from the Powder River Basin and it is also a key U-P route for intermodal and general merchandise trains, with the total number of trains around 60 per day. Union Pacific indicates that train volumes will continue to rise over the next several years. The congestion problem, and thus Amtrak’s operating performance, is further aggravated by the fact that Union Pacific has been performing extensive and lengthy maintenance activities on this route for each of the past several years. Because of the nature of the physical plant and ever-increasing impacts from growing train volumes, it is anticipated that heavy maintenance activity will continue in each of the future years, thus continuing to disrupt traffic flow. Last Friday, we cancelled Amtrak trains because U-P told us the route was too congested with freight trains to operate without huge delays. The night before, one of our Kansas City to St. Louis trains arrived in St. Louis five hours late on a trip that is supposed to last fewer than six hours: that’s an 11-hour trip across Missouri that began at half-past-noon and mercifully ended at 11:25 p.m. And all of this is happening after we’ve lengthened schedules and changed departure times – with the consent of U-P and the Missouri Department of Transportation – in order to try to promise a schedule and deliver passengers according to that timetable. Unreliable trains will never be popular. In fact, on-time performance is the biggest single factor in customer satisfaction. An on-time performance figure that shows fewer than ____ of the trains on time – and several many hours late – damages your credibility and ours and leads all of us to ask if this is sustainable. Simply put, status quo with the current passenger rail service on this route is un-sustainable as practical business matter, even with congested highways and gasoline prices of more than three-dollars. Almost certainly, without a major change, our trains and your dollars can be better used elsewhere. What can be done? As you will hear in other testimony, this Union Pacific route needs a massive amount of capital spending to improve capacity in order to operate passenger trains reliably and attract passengers to relieve congestion on Interstate 70. The good news is Congress is taking up a Senate Bill 294, an Amtrak re-authorization bill that would finally provide Missouri and other states with a federal partnership for capital costs such as those sorely needed here. There are 37 co-sponsors of this bi-partisan bill. However, even if this bill or a House counterpart is passed and funded by Congress, you can count on many of the 13 other states with state-supported Amtrak service to line up with ready-to-go plans and matching funds. Some, including California, Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina, will argue the tens-of-millions they have already invested in capital costs will put them at the head of the line. And the 35 other states without state-sponsored trains, including Minnesota, Montana, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, will probably want to be in queue, too. Amtrak stands ready to work with MoDOT, U-P and others to prepare a plan to make targeted improvements to this route in order to be ready if Congress acts and Missouri provides the matching funds. What else can be done? There are two other Amtrak routes in Missouri that do not now receive state-support: the Southwest Chief through Kansas City and LaPlata on its way to and from Chicago and Los Angeles and the Texas Eagle through St. Louis and Poplar Bluff and its way to and from Chicago and San Antonio. Together with this Kansas City-St. Louis route, Missouri has the makings of a passenger rail network. That’s why we were excited to work with MoDOT on a study of new service to Springfield and want to look at other routes that might be of interest to you and others in the Legislature. A network of connecting trains, some state-supported and others not, is what is leading to successes across the country. When I travel throughout the country discussing Amtrak and passenger rail, I regularly refer to the California model -- expenditures of roughly two-billion-dollars toward the expansion and upgrade of passenger rail during the last decade, with no matching Federal funds, and regular double-digit growth in ridership and revenue. Now our partnership with your neighbors in Illinois is often my point of reference. Illinois is now Amtrak’s second largest partnership. We operate passenger trains on four different State corridors, with at least three more routes being studied. Last year, the Illinois legislature more than doubled prior-year funding for Illinois D-O-T’s Amtrak program to add train frequencies on the first three of these corridors and we are looking forward to the 28-million-dollars in operating funding, plus a capital program, in the coming year’s budget. The expanded service began on October 30th of last year, and I know it is safe to say that all of us at Amtrak, as well as our partners at Illinois DOT, are thrilled with the success of the new trains. Specifically, ridership on the Chicago–Springfield–St. Louis corridor has increased by almost 45 percent since the introduction of the two new frequencies on that route last fall. Ridership on the Chicago-Quincy route has increased by more than 33 percent since the second round-trip was added, and ridership on the Chicago-Carbondale route has gone up by more than 55 percent since the second daily round-trip was added to that corridor. Two of these Chicago round-trips end within two miles of the Missouri border at Quincy and five of these round-trips go into Missouri at St. Louis. All this terrific news equals more than 100-thousand additional passengers in the first six months and demonstrates a demand for the new service, despite a noticeable need for infrastructure, equipment and service improvements. It also demonstrates the importance of the new service to the communities served. Based on experience, let me assure you that demand across the country will continue to rise as infrastructure, equipment, operating performance and service quality makes the rail alternative increasingly appealing, and as rising fuel costs, congestion and environmental concerns further enhance that appeal. And with leadership and the state and local level, it can happen in Missouri, too. We are glad to have Missouri as our partner as we move forward; we hope to be just as good a partner for you as you move forward. And, I'll say it once again, we need to move forward in Missouri to grow a network of passenger trains, where one route can step up if another is faltering, where safe and economical passenger trains are also considered reliable and comfortable. The alternative to investment and growth is un-sustainable. The annual struggle to keep running un-reliable trains is un-supportable. As passengers try trains once and say “never again” because of delays that are both un-ending and predictable, ridership will continue to tumble and the state’s contract costs will rise. If driving is faster – at least much of the time – passengers will opt out of trains almost all of the time. Thank you again for the invitation to join you this morning. I will be happy to answer any questions.