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Commuter Rail Reform Faces High Labor, Infrastructure Costs

https://www.governing.com/community/...tructure-costs

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- Today the future of America’s commuter rail model, including its heavy staff levels, is in doubt because of COVID-19. Unlike their counterparts in Europe or eastern Asia, these lines are a boutique service and offer few options on the weekends or weekday non-peak commuting periods. That’s because U.S. regional rail systems have long been oriented toward suburban white-collar commuters. --- Rail operators and transportation policymakers have begun to grapple with this existential challenge. In Boston, commuter rail is running more frequently during non-peak hours and the contractor operating the service hopes to run even greater frequencies in the future. At both SEPTA and Chicago’s Metra, policymakers have discussed making similar changes. A report released by the city of Philadelphia promoted subway-style service every 15 minutes throughout the day.

- But skeptics say that there are myriad challenges confronting such a transformation. One of the biggest is inefficiently allocated labor costs. American commuter rail systems operate on an antiquated model, employing not just engineers who drive the train but multiple conductors who punch tickets and help passengers on from platforms that are (in many cases) much lower than the train doors. For example, the staffing levels on the Berlin S-Bahn, the German capital city’s regional rail network, are about one-third the size of the Long Island Rail Road (America’s busiest commuter rail system), which in turn serves only about a third of the passengers. --- “In Spain or Germany, you just have the train driver, there’s no one else on the train,” says Roger Senserrich, transportation advocate in Connecticut and a longtime commentator on Spain’s rail system. “Trains are complicated technology, but they are not the kind of thing that needs so many people supervising how they are used. They are doing less with more and doing it in an extremely inefficient way.”

- Most American commuter rail services date back to the days when private companies owned mass transit operations. When the public sector took over these essential services, they also inherited many of the antiquated practices that private operators hadn’t updated as they sought to divest themselves of these no longer profitable ventures. In addition to heavy staffing, other holdovers include diesel locomotives, which are more polluting and don’t accelerate as fast as their electric counterparts, and low-level platforms that don’t allow for easy boarding. All of this makes it harder to reduce the number of workers per train, because conductors are needed to check tickets and help people aboard. --- For reform advocates like Senserrich and transit researcher Alon Levy, the upfront capital costs of such a transformation wouldn’t be a deal breaker.

- They calculate that bringing Boston’s commuter service up to international standards would cost about $10 billion, primarily because the MBTA needs to build a north-south connector tunnel and electrify their rail lines. In Philadelphia’s case, the tunnel is already built and the lines electrified, so the cost would be far less. A bigger barrier, in Levy’s opinion, is that it costs $13 a kilometer to run the Long Island Rail Road, while even SEPTA and the MBTA cost a little less than $9.50 a kilometer. In European systems, the costs range from $5 to $7 a kilometer. To sustainably run service more frequently, those costs would need to fall. --- “They [American transit professionals] speak with perfect confidence and say that things are impossible that happen thousands of times a day in other parts of the world,” says Levy, who lives in Berlin. “You have a country that doesn't really learn from Europe. You have railroad workers who don't learn from anyone except themselves. It’s not a question of resources. It’s all institutional.”

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