[Wizened Variations]

As this factor has not yet been discussed:


A huge problem with Amtrak concerns the vast majority of its route total that runs on private rail operated tracks, with emphasis on downtown cores.

Private railroads, as their downtown warehousing business died in the 1950s and 1960s, saw the redevelopment value of the land that was in the 1970s lying idle. With the railroad consolidation in the 1980s and 1990s, this idyl land became even more redundant in the mindset of the times, and, paying even minimal upkeep on the properties an ever more pointless decision, so the private railroad urban property owner became a property developer.

Railroads were even bought for their downtown properties. In Colorado, Phil Anchultz, using all borrowed monies, bought the Rio Grande railroad for the express purpose of quick selling the downtown rail yard properties piece meal to first tier property buyers, using his skill set and a couple of billions dollars as proof of good credit (he later bought Southern Pacific for the same purpose). He was in the business to make extra money quick, using the railroad cash flow to service debt and then selling the gutted resource to pay off his creditors and pocketing the difference through shell corporations.

This type of quick buy and quick sell of railroad property has occurred throughout the United States, and, has produced some of the world's worst railroad interconnections at urban cores. So, while the portions of BNSF, UP, CSX, CN, NS, and KCS between urban markets has been kept in great shape, the downtown through rail traffic has been forced in too many locations to move at crawl speeds. ((In addition, this trend has been accelerated by the rapid rise of railroad inter-modal terminals being built in neighboring towns and at the suburban fringes of metropolitan areas (due to the rise of container traffic and the more spacious environment to transfer containers to and from trucks.))

The bottom line is that passenger trains cannot enter, exit, and, travel through urban cores at nearly the speed possible into the 1950s and early 1960s. In Denver,for example, as late as the early '60s, a train could travel at 50 or even 70 mph a mile or two north or south of city center on private rail lines! Multiply this problem by the number of metro areas with similar speed reductions, and, average speeds for interstate passenger trains drop significantly.

IMO, then, if we ever actually think in terms of steel wheeled interstate transportation on any large scale, urban rail connections must be improved just to get back to close the average speeds present for private railroad operator passenger trains clear into the early '60s.

This is far more important than HSR idealism to increase the average speeds of public (and potential private) passenger train service in the US. We should quit trying to replicate the Japanese or Western European solutions, and, put money into solving the traffic bottle necks created by very ignorant, short sighted profit taking over the last 30 to 40 years.

This is as important as double tracking, and, lengthening sidings to speed up passenger train movement between cites on private rail lines. And far less discussed.