HIDDEN DEVOLUTION?

Craig Sanders expresses reservations about Amtrak's revised timetabling providing additional regional connections in Chicago.  It's a good news, bad news sort of thing.

Yes, some travelers connect in Chicago to other Amtrak trains, including the long-distance trains, but how many people think about getting on in Milwaukee and going to Detroit or St. Louis?

Well they might think about it and some do it every day, but Amtrak hasn’t always made such connections convenient. Some layovers last for hours.

The schedule changes made this summer are designed to address that, at least on paper, or in Amtrak’s case on pixels given that paper timetables are a thing of the past.

Amtrak touted its “new” schedules, noting that you can travel between Milwaukee and Detroit twice daily, and Milwaukee and St. Louis three times daily. Of course that means changing trains in Chicago.

A long time ago, there were through trains between Milwaukee and St. Louis (explicitly) and after that, implicitly there were through trains between Milwaukee and Detroit. The problem that arose was the mid-day westbound train from Michigan was supposed to continue as the 4.30 commuter-heavy departure for Milwaukee, and delays on Penn Central or Conrail meant a lot of disgruntled commuters. Thus began the era of two train sets ping-ponging between Chicago and Milwaukee.

To be sure, Amtrak gave a nod to the long-distance trains, noting that in making the departure of northbound Hiawatha train No. 333 from Chicago to Milwaukee later, it enabled connections from long-distance trains from the East Coast.

As for the student discount, it is 15 percent and designed for Midwest travel. Amtrak also plans to soon allow bicycles aboard the Chicago-Indianapolis Hoosier State.

When the new Siemens Charger locomotives went into service on Midwest corridor trains, they came with the tagline “Amtrak Midwest.”

Those locomotives were purchased by the states underwriting Amtrak’s Midwest corridor routes. Those same states are also underwriting development of new passenger cars to be assigned to the Midwest corridor routes.

It is getting to the point where Amtrak is becoming a middleman of Midwest corridor routes, offering a station and maintenance facility in Chicago; operating, service and marketing support; and a brand.

The brand is becoming a questionable one, but the institutional structure for collecting public moneys is already in place.  Moreover, you have to be living right to connect off the Lake Shore or Capitol to 333, new timings or not.  But if your train's on time, you can hit one of the bakeries upstairs at Union Station to get some food, what with the etiolated food service on the eastern trains and the snack cart withdrawn from the Hiawatha Service.

Perhaps, though, Amtrak management are trying an updated version of the Brosnan Trap.

For now, the state-funded corridors combined with the long-distance trains provide intercity rail passenger service to many regions of the Midwest, including to such states as Iowa, Minnesota and Ohio that do not currently fund Amtrak service.

That might well change if Amtrak follows through on its proposals to chop up the long-distance routes into state-funded corridors. Would Ohio step up to help pay for, say, a Chicago-Toledo, Chicago-Cleveland or Chicago-Pittsburgh route in lieu of the Capitol Limited?

Would Iowa agree to fund a Chicago-Omaha train in lieu of the California Zephyr?

Would Minnesota agree to fund a Chicago-Minneapolis/St. Paul train in lieu of the Empire Builder? What about Chicago-Fargo, North Dakota, with funding from Minnesota and North Dakota?

The original Brosnan Trap was a discovery by the Southern Railway's legal department that a train crossing a state line could be discontinued at a state border if its only stop across the state line is its initial and terminal station.  Thus, for instance, Southern trains making only one Florida stop, at Jacksonville (to interchange cars onward to Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard, or Florida East Coast) could be cut back to Swampy (well, Council), Georgia without the rigamarole of a hearing before the Interstate Commerce Commission.  Those Detroit or Cincinnati snowbirds who wanted to ride to Sarasota or West Palm?  Sorry.  It's then relatively easy to show that the Atlanta to Council stub loses lots of money, and that might be a decision for the state's railroad commission alone.

The variant these days is that under the current Amtrak funding procedures, the state departments of transportation are on the hook for any run shorter than 750 miles, Chicago to Pittsburgh is something like 480 miles and Chicago to Buffalo about 540 miles: the good news is that Dodge City is 782 rail miles on the Atchison Topeka and-a Santa Fe.

The past record of state departments of transportation in supporting the regional rail services is not encouraging.  Moreover, if the states that are paying for service put the "Amtrak Midwest" up for bid, and Brightline or one of those other aspirants to build from Orlando to Tampa win it, something tells me that the airline gang running Amtrak might be happy to be rid of it.