Back for the first time in a while, here’s some weekend recommended reading — rail news and features from various media outlets:
— The website Urban Milwaukee reports on an ambitious/unrealistic (take your pick) proposal for a privately developed commuter rail system that would serve 32 stations in a five-county area around Milwaukee, using existing freight lines. Funding would come from grants and real estate development around stations sites.
— Washington Post cartoonist Christine Mi illustrates her experiences on a cross-country Amtrak trip on the California Zephyr and Lake Shore Limited, offering a rail neophyte’s take on the experience. (Use of a subscriber’s “share” option should mean this is not behind the Post’s paywall.)
— Canada’s Global News reports that two executives for BC Rail — the vast majority of which was sold to Canadian National Railways in 2004 — earned a total of more than CA$500,000 in the 2023-24 fiscal year, even though the company now exists mainly to manage 40 kilometers (25 miles) of track to the Roberts Bank terminal in Delta, British Columbia; other port infrastructure; and real estate.
— A Toronto Sun columnist points to the involvement of Germany’s Deutsche Bahn in a new company taking over back-office operations at Toronto’s GO Transit in January as a sign that the system should run far better — apparently unaware that Deutsche Bahn itself is now characterized as “travel hell,” as the Financial Times reported in July.
Another ironic fact is that the map ROW’s duplicate the deeply missed TMER&L’s ROW.
Sure, the Milwaukee commuter rail system would require no operating subsidies. Of course we believe that.
Tomorrow these fools will tell you that it will also cover capital recovery through its revenue. Yeah, sure
The more we learn about the economics of commuter rail, the less it seems to sink in. Here’s the deal:- Give a classroom full of sixth graders a map of Milwaukee-area rail lines, and some sharpies, and have them go at it! This is what they’d come up with. Thus the roundabout schlep on slow-speed freight lines, because that’s where the freight lines go.
Many stations in the west suburbs? Fifty-three years into Amtrak, we can’t come up with a west suburban stop for the existing trains, the Empire Building and the Boring Alice. Meaning when people out here in Waukesha County want to go west on Amtrak, they first have to drive east to downtown Milwaukee. In fact, Mrs. L. and I do have exactly that planned.