Will Delta Return to CAK in September? Changes in Store for America’s Transportation Network

When Delta Airlines stopped flying to Akron-Canton Airport more than a week ago, it framed the move as a temporary suspension of service.

Airport officials said Delta’s flights between CAK and Atlanta would return in September.

But not everyone believes that and even the airport’s CEO sees turbulence ahead.

The airport, located in Green between its namesake cities, may be doing well to get back much of the service it had before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

It has lost 95 percent of its normal traffic and is down to a handful of flights that leave in the morning and return after the dinner hour.

In recent weeks there has been much speculation about what the airline industry and America’s air travel network will look like post-pandemic.

The emergency aid given to the airline industry runs out at the end of September and at that time the industry will no longer be obligated to maintain service to all cities that had it when Congress approved the assistance in March.

Some have predicted airlines will become smaller and have fewer employees and routes than they did as recently as early March.

Some believe that changes are coming to transportation generally.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont told Bloomberg TV the Monday through Friday commute by rail to New York City to go to work “may well be behind us, especially if you can do “two-thirds of your job from home in Stamford.”

Others have argued that having found employees can work from home some companies will rethink the need to maintain large expensive office facilities.

The economic downturn also has resulted in a sharp decline in revenues for state and local governments, which could mean some state-funded Amtrak corridor service may become a casualty.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation, which funded four roundtrips a day between Charlotte and Raleigh before the pandemic, is only paying for one.

In Michigan, Amtrak service has been suspended to Grand Rapids and the Detroit route is down to one daily roundtrip versus the normal three.

Similar service cuts have occurred in Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin.

Earlier this year, Amtrak was talking about seeking additional funding from Congress that would be used to seed development of new corridors in unserved and underserved areas of the country.

Given the current situation it seems unlikely that intercity rail passenger service is going to be expanding in the next year or two.

The airline industry needed three years to recover from traffic lost following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Some predict it will take at least that long for the industry to recover from the pandemic.

Yet if telecommuting and conducting meetings online catches on as the new normal, that raises the question of whether business travel, which is where the airline industry makes a substantial amount of its money, will go back to what it was.

In the meantime, officials at Akron-Canton airport have fallen into survival mode.

Ren Camacho told a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland that his discussions with airlines these days have switched from talking about including CAK on new routes to trying to persuade them to add back service that has been suspended during the pandemic.

Before the pandemic, Akron-Canton hosted 25 flights a day provided by four airlines to Atlanta, Chicago, New York (LaGuardia), Newark, Houston, Washington (Reagan National), Charlotte, Orlando and Philadelphia.

The airport had seasonal service to Tampa and Fort Myers.

Now CAK has three flights a day with one each to Chicago, Charlotte and Philadelphia that on good days carry 20 to 25 passengers per flight.

It was worse. In late March and early April some flights into CAK carried a mere five passengers.

However, even before the pandemic hit, CAK had been struggling to attract travelers.

In 2012, Akron-Canton hosted 1.8 million passengers. Last year it hosted 834,365.

Much of CAK’s recent woes can be traced to changes happening 50 miles north at Cleveland Hopkins Airport.

For several years Continental Airlines operated a small hub at Hopkins and average air fares from Cleveland were among the highest in the nation.

But after Continental merged with United, the hub closed in June 2014 with United reducing the number of flights and destinations it had from Cleveland.

During the Continental hub days at CLE, Akron Canton Airport marketed itself as a lower cost alternative to Hopkins.

Most of those flights were provided by AirTran, which later merged with Southwest Airlines.

For awhile, Southwest continued most of the AirTran routes, but eventually it consolidated its Northeast Ohio service at Hopkins.

Akron-Canton also attracted low-cost carriers Allegiant, Frontier and Spirit.

Allegiant and Frontier ended service at CAK in favor of expanding service at Hopkins in an effort to fill the void left by service cutbacks by United.

Spirit continued to fly to CAK, but suspended its service there last month although it tentatively plans to return in July.

Some industry observers believe the future for airline service at CAK is bleak.

Transportation analyst Seth Kaplan told The Plain Dealer there’s no guarantee Delta will be back in October, or at all.

“They’re free to do whatever they want,” said Kaplan. “A lot of things aren’t going to make the cut.”

An analysis published by Forbes predicted that as a secondary airport Akron-Canton will struggle even after businesses reopen because there is likely to be less business travel and airlines will be hard pressed to make money.

The analysis drew a distinction between airports versus markets.

In a post-pandemic world, airlines will see Akron-Canton as a subset of the Northeast Ohio market based in Cleveland.

In effect, Delta has made that decision by dropping service to CAK. It presumes that whatever business there is to be had from the region around Akron and Canton can be accommodated by flights from Cleveland, which the carrier sees as its primary airport in the Northeast Ohio market.

The Forbes analysis said airlines are losing more money at secondary airports than they are at primary airports in the same market.

It concluded that although demand will largely, but not completely, return at those primary airports by the end of this year or early 2012, that is less likely to be the case for secondary airports.

The analysis said that historically airlines did well to fill 60 percent of the seats on most flights. But high demand for air travel in the past decade has led to 80 percent or more of seats being filled.

The Forbes analysis said that level of demand is unlikely even after the industry recovers from the pandemic, a process that will be measured in years and not weeks.

In time Delta might return to Akron-Canton but that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, CAK’s Camacho is eyeing using some of the $4 million in a fund established by JobsOhio that was created to help Ohio airports lure new airlines sevice.

However, at CAK, that money will be used to try to get airlines to return service they previously provided.

“The best we can do as an airport is to continue to dialogue with our airlines, to compile the cases to bring back the airlines,” Comacho said.

He said getting the local business community involved is key because corporate business travel is a massive industry.

Comacho is also working with local businesses such as Timken, Diebold and Smuckers as part of the effort to get service back.

“Where do they want to travel, either through this pandemic or post pandemic whether it’s six months from now or two years from now,” Comacho said.

CAK officials are trying to show airlines that there is enough potential business travel from CAK to merit a return of service those carriers once provided.

“The first premise for any airport is to make sure you retain existing service and then how can we build upon that, so we have to be mindful of all of those factors to ensure that we can rebound and rebound quickly,” Camacho said.

Still, he knows this won’t happen overnight.

“By the end of the year, I think we’ll see some uptick in traffic, but it’s not going to be what it was pre-pandemic. I don’t think we’ll get true air service restoration for maybe a year and a half, or two years.”

The timing of the pandemic could not have been worse for CAK. It is working to finish this year at $34 million airport terminal modernization project to spruce up a facility built in 1962.

A study commissioned by the airport last year found that it generates $1 billion in economic impact, including $663 million in direct benefits from airlines, hotels, restaurants, retail and rental car agencies.

The federal CARES Act provided direct assistance to U.S. Airports and CAK received $7.6 million, which Camacho said is enough to tide the airport over for now.

“We are optimistic that the airlines will return,” Camacho said. “The question is, ‘What does that resumed service look like?’ I wish I had a crystal ball, but I don’t.”

It may be that longer term what might save CAK is another coming of low-cost carriers looking to cash in on a finally thriving air market.

It may be that for now many people are unwilling to travel by air but you can’t enjoy a Florida beach or theme park or a Las Vegas casino online the same way you can in person.

If the fare is low enough people will return to the skies. If there is money to be made, airlines will find a way to tap make it.

In the short term businesses may have found that they don’t need offices and can conduct much of their business virtually, but once the pandemic is well in the rear view mirror CEOs might decide that there are benefits to in-person contact and having employees in the same building.

But nothing is guaranteed. The Youngstown-Warren airport was once served by United Airlines. In fact some United flights paired Youngstown with Akron-Canton.

Various airlines have come and gone and Youngstown has been without service since Allegiant pulled out in January 2018. Efforts to find another carrier have yet to pan out.

The “new normal” for air service may in the next three to five years look much different than it did as recently as February, yet that is not to say that “new normal” won’t change.

And if it does CAK officials hope to be able to take advantage of it just as they did years ago.

Until then, Camacho is looking and hoping for incremental progress.

“I think if we get to like 30 or 40 percent more traffic than where we are today, say by the end of the year, I think that’ll be a victory,” he said.

Silent Spring

Someday trains will again roll over these rails but at the moment we don’t know when or how long it will take to recover from lost revenue and ridership.

The rails in the Cuyahoga Valley are gaining rust in the spring rain as they await the trains to resume operating.

Amtrak has curtailed service in most corridors and suspended service altogether on some routes in the face of sharply reduced bookings and skyrocketing cancellations.

Ridership of public transportation has plunged by high double digits. Most agencies continue to run buses and trains, but at reduced levels.

Tourist railroads that operate in the spring have shut down. Restrictions on large gatherings have led to cancellations of railroad club meetings and train shows.

The nation’s railroads are reporting a downturn in intermodal traffic and bracing for more traffic volume declines due to an economic downturn that is the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are likely to be fewer trains for railfans to watch and photograph. Then again this is not an ideal time to go railfanning even if you can probably get away with it.

This will be long remembered as the silent spring when such terms as “flattening the curve,” “sheltering in place,” and “social distancing” became part of the everyday lexicon.

No one can say yet when life will return to normal. Even when it does the economic effects are expected to last a while, perhaps for months.

There will be a recovery, but how long will it take?

Like the virus itself, there is much uncertainty surrounding that question, but a few conclusions seem likely.

Amtrak executives had been boldly talking about 2020 as the year it achieved the financial break-even mark from an operational standpoint.

That won’t happen now and the intercity passenger carrier is saying it needs $1 billion to overcome losing millions from lost bookings and trip cancellations as well as other expenses related to combating the pandemic.

Earlier, Amtrak has been talking up a program of service expansion if Congress would give it a dedicated pool of money to help states get corridor services in unserved or underserved areas up and running.

That proposal, which is tied in with the carrier’s fiscal year 2021 appropriation as well as a new surface transportation law that Congress needs to approve to replace the existing law that expires on Sept. 30, was always going to be a long shot. Now the odds of it receiving funding seem even longer.

Passengers will in time return to Amtrak. Suspended services will be reinstated. Many trips that were canceled or postponed will be moved to another time.

But not all of them. Some trips that were scrapped won’t be made. Those who didn’t ride during the spring will not necessarily increase their patronage to make up for missed trips.

Public transit faces a similar situation. Ridership will increase as people return to work in their offices, major public events resume, and social distancing restrictions are eased.

But it may take months for ridership and revenue to recover and budgets are going to be tight even if public money is offered to transit agencies to help them make up what was lost.

Tourist railroads, including the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, were fortunate, if that is the right word, that their shutdowns occurred in the off season.

The pain for the CVSR would be greater if the shutdown had occurred during the summer, fall and Polar Express seasons when ridership peaks.

But much of the ridership and revenue the CVSR lost this spring is gone.

People are not going to double or triple their patronage once the trains resume operating to make up what they missed in March and April.

The wild card in all of this is how the economy performs. The recession that some economists are predicting will dampen business for Amtrak, public transit and tourist railroads because fewer people will be traveling for work or pleasure.

Some predict the recession will be relatively short and the economy will be juiced by pent up demand once life returns to normal.

Railroad restoration efforts could take a hit if charitable giving falls off during a recession as seems likely. The timeline for some if not most projects will be extended.

It may be that some operations will not survive the pandemic-induced economic downturn.

Just as some with underlying health issues will die as a result of contracting the virus, some organizations that were already operating on tight margins may succumb when lost revenue pushes them over the edge.

Rail passenger advocates may find that their agenda will shift to an all out battle to save existing levels of service rather than pushing for expansion.

Congress is spending trillions of dollars on fighting the pandemic and trying to shore up the economy.

Later this year deficit hawks in Congress can be expected to take aim at such things as Amtrak and public transportation funding in the FY2021 federal budget as a way of offsetting emergency funding approved months earlier during the depths of the pandemic.

The budget process may not be business as usual.

Back at the onset of the Great Recession of 2008, I remember Henry Paulson, who was secretary of the treasury at the time, say amid the talk of what the government should be doing to bolster the economy, “first we must make it through the night.”

As I write this we are still seeking to make it through the night of the pandemic. We keep hearing medical experts say it will get worse before it gets better. It takes time to flatten the curve.

In the meantime transportation has shifted to survival mode.

We may not have been in this exact place before, but we’ve been in similar places and managed to get through the night. Yet what a long night it can be.

So What is a Tourist Train if Not Transportation?

Several years ago I was interviewing Wheeling & Lake Erie CEO Larry Parsons for a magazine article I was writing when the subject of excursion trains came up.

At the time the Wheeling hosted excursions sponsored by the Orrville Railroad Heritage Society and the Midwest Railway Preservation Society among others.

Parsons made it clear that he disliked passenger trains, particularly excursion trains.

“I mean, there’s no transportation function here,” he said about them.

That comment came to mind recently when I read about a fight in Pennsylvania involving the Reading & Northern and the borough of Jim Thorpe.

The R&N announced it would cease operating its Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway tourist train out of Jim Thorpe in the wake of a dispute over an amusement tax the municipality insists the railroad must charge per ticket.

R&N owner Andy Muller Jr. argues that the Lehigh Gorge is not an amusement and he refuses to collect the tax.

The mayor of Jim Thorpe, though, says the Lehigh Gorge is an amusement. “You go out and you come back,” said Mayor Michael Sofranko.

As the mayor sees it, that is entertainment and not transportation.

The news stories reporting on the dispute, which includes a lawsuit filed against the railroad by the borough and local school district to force collection of the tax, have not explicitly said what purpose Muller believes his tourist railroad serves. But a quotation from Muller offers a clue.

“I have offered passenger excursion rides to local communities as a way of thanking them for support over the years and to educate young and old in the glorious role railroads in this region played in our country’s industrial revolution,” Muller said.

Based on that, Muller thinks the purpose of his tourist trains is education and public relations.

As is often the case in any dispute, the way that the disputants frame what is at stake is not necessarily a complete picture of what led to the conflict.

There probably are underlying agendas and without knowing the participants I won’t speculate on their motives.

Whenever there is a dispute over taxes, though, it is because someone doesn’t want to pay it because it will result in less money in their pocket. Tax disputes also have roots in differing philosophies about the roles and purposes of government.

Yet the dispute in Pennsylvania also raises a question of what constitutes transportation and how it overlaps with such other functions as entertainment and education.

Closer to Northeast Ohio, we have the example of the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, which would not exist today were it not for public money.

Public money purchased the tracks when CSX abandoned them; public money has rebuilt the tracks and established an infrastructure of stations and repair facilities, and public money has rebuilt the tracks when flooding washed them out.

And where did that public money come from? Taxes.

The CVSR doesn’t receive a direct stream of public funding to pay for operations as does Amtrak, but it is a private-public venture that is supported by the National Park Service, which does receive such a funding stream.

But does the CVSR provide transportation, entertainment or education?

If we adopt the viewpoint of W&LE CEO Parsons and Jim Thorpe Mayor Sofranko, the CVSR is not transportation because its transportation function is ancillary to its other purposes. It is transportation as a form of enjoyable consumption.

Most CVSR passengers just happen to be riding a means of transportation, a railroad, as they view the passing wonders of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

They depart from point A and return there at the end of their ride even if they might get off at Peninsula for a layover to have lunch, browse some shops, or take a hike on the Towpath Trail.

But what about Bike Aboard? Much of the time, bicyclists are using the train to move from Point A , where they stopped or are started their bike trip, to Point B where they are ending or starting their bike trip.

That would seem to be a pure transportation function.

Yet, arguably, biking in the CVNP is still entertainment even if many would argue that it’s recreation.

Even if the CVSR provides a sort of transportation function, it differs greatly from hauling, say, raw steel, minerals, food products or containers with packages of auto parts that are used in business and commerce.

I haven’t seen any statistics about the matter, but I would expect the percentage of bicyclists who use Bike Aboard is a small slice of those who ride bikes in the park.

People would still ride their bikes in the CVNP even if the CVSR didn’t exist to give them a lift back to their cars.

But if railroads were to stop hauling raw steel, minerals, food products and containers of auto parts the economy of the United States would take a major hit that all of us would feel.

The transportation function that railroads provide is significant whereas by comparison the transportation provided by tourist railroads is minuscule. That is not to say it is meaningless.

Entertainment is significant, too, and provides its own substantial share of the U.S. economy. And entertainment makes our lives better although some would argue that it is subordinate to our purpose in life as worker bees.

Not all entertainment is the same, but that’s an argument for a different day.

Tourist railroads are a tiny fraction of the entertainment industry or for that matter the education industry.

Tourist railroads such as the Lehigh Gorge or CVSR do provide education. But is education their primary purpose? I rather doubt it.

I can understand why tourist railroads might want to emphasize their role in providing education. It comes across as serving a larger and more important purpose than entertainment. That could matter a lot when you have to argue for continued public money for support.

If the lawsuit against the R&N over its refusal to collect and pay the amusement tax in Jim Thorpe goes to trial, Andy Muller will have his day in court at explaining why his tourist railroad is not an amusement.

That might be a tough one to get a judge to accept.

Making Sense of Amtrak’s Anderson

To paraphrase a well-known remark made by Marc Anthony in Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasar, I come not to bury or praise Richard Anderson but to explain him.

Since taking the sole helm of Amtrak last January Anderson has become public enemy No. 1 among some railfans and passenger train advocates.

In short order he triggered intense anger by approving such changes as ending everyday discount fare programs, banning most special and charter movements, restricting operations of private rail passenger cars while sharply raising handling fees, threatening to suspend service on routes that do not meet the federal positive train control installation deadline later this year, and ending full-service dining cars on the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited.

It is a common belief among his critics that Anderson doesn’t understand railroads because he came from the airline industry.

There may be some truth to that. It is probably true that Anderson does not view intercity rail passenger service in the same manner that many railfans and passenger train supporters do.

It also may be true that Anderson is overseeing a movement toward ending long-distance passenger trains that would leave vast swaths of the country without intercity passenger rail.

That doesn’t mean Anderson knows nothing about intercity passenger rail and its role in the nation’s transportation network as some of his critics would have you believe.

He is just not as convinced as many passenger train advocates that America needs 1950s style streamliners with full-service dining cars, sleepers and lounges.

Having spent much of his career in the airline industry, Anderson came to Amtrak with well-formed ideas about transportation that he would have expressed during his interview with the Amtrak board of directors.

During that interview he no doubt was asked to lay out his vision for Amtrak. He would not have been hired had that vision been incompatible with the board’s own views of Amtrak’s purpose and future.

Anderson may, indeed, have an air travel bias, which would not be surprising given his airline industry background.

He knows most long-distance travel in America is by air. Few business executives travel long distance by rail and most Americans who are not rail enthusiasts rarely, if ever, do so either.

If Anderson has a “bias” against long-distance intercity passenger trains, he would not be the first person in the transportation world to have that.

You can go back to the 1960s when Alfred Perlman of the New York Central acted as though long-distance trains were expensive dinosaurs to be removed.

Stuart Saunders of Penn Central infamy also declared that any rail passenger service beyond 500 miles was dead. So did a lot of other railroad CEOs.

Since Amtrak began in 1971 the U.S. Department of Transportation has ranged from outright hostile to benign indifference to Amtrak’s national route network.

What Amtrak appears poised to do under Anderson’s stewardship to the long-distance trains is not unlike the vision that Norman Mineta had when he was Secretary of Transportation.

Mineta pushed the corridor concept and said that long-distance trains should not stop at stations in states that do not help to underwrite the costs of those trains.

That vision did not prevail, but it is part of a long history of antagonism toward long-distance trains.

For that matter, Amtrak management itself has tolerated long-distance trains, but not since the 1970s has a new long-distance route been created.

There is much that we don’t know yet about Anderson’s views toward transportation and the role that intercity rail has to play even if he has been dropping hints about it.

Anderson said at a conference in California of passenger rail officials that Amtrak’s best marketing prospects lie in corridor services of no more than 400 miles served by DMU equipment.

During that same conference, he also was said to have emphasized the high financial losses of long-distance trains and that he must follow the law in making Amtrak a more efficient operation.

During his apprenticeship as co-CEO of Amtrak with Charles “Wick” Moorman, Anderson would have been schooled on the political realities that Amtrak faces, including why the long-distance trains remain in place decades after some believed their usefulness as transportation had expired.

Moorman would have pointed out that these trains continue to run because of long-standing political support. But maybe Anderson already knew that. Remember, Anderson is not necessarily a transportation neophyte.

Of late Anderson has come under fire from former Amtrak President Joesph Boardman, who has accused Anderson and the Amtrak board of launching a campaign to eviscerate long-distance trains.

In an interview with Trains magazine Boardman told an anecdote of how he responded when asked by the board to name Amtrak’s most important train.

“I told them it was all of the long distance trains. Did that ever make it out into the rail community? No, because it wasn’t my job to (do that),” he said.

Maybe Boardman should have made it his job. And that brings me to what may be Anderson’s most significant shortcoming.

Boardman hinted at that when he wrote in an email to public officials across the country that “Amtrak is not really a ‘private business,’ it is a “state owned enterprise.”

It may be that Amtrak was set up in 1970 as a for-profit company and ostensibly it is expected to cover its operating expenses from the fare box.

But in practice Amtrak is more like a government agency, a reality that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in a case involving a dispute over the efforts by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to establish on-time train standards that Amtrak could use to hold its host railroads accountable for excessive delays.

The head of a government agency does not have the luxury of thinking and acting like a Fortune 500 CEO if he or she wants to be successful.

Yet that is what Anderson has been doing by playing defense rather than offense.

Anderson has done little thus far to share his vision of Amtrak’s future with the public, let alone the constituencies that have lone manned the bulwarks to provide political support when Amtrak funding was threatened.

Boardman touched on this in his email when he said Amtrak “has begun to do surgical communications in a way that does not provide a transparent discussion of what they are doing.”

What Amtrak is doing, Boardman believes, is transforming Amtrak out of the long-distance passenger train business without saying upfront that that is the objective.

If so, it is because Anderson and the board that hired him have beliefs about transportation that are at odds with those held by many rail passenger advocates who don’t want to see Amtrak change much.

Rail passenger advocates have legitimate beliefs and visions, even if they are not always well-grounded in solid economic understanding. But so does Anderson and Amtrak’s board.

Anderson and his critics would agree that Amtrak is in the transportation business, but they have different views as to how that is to be pursued. It has nothing to do with lack of understanding of “railroading.” It has everything to do with ineffectively trying to sell that.

Crystal Ball Look at 2018 and Railroads

With a new year upon us, it’s time to look ahead to what 2018 might bring in the railroad industry. Such predictions are fraught with peril given that unexpected developments can occur at any time that dramatically changes the trajectory of the industry or its individual components.

A year ago at this time we thought E. Hunter Harrison was living out his days as CEO of Canadian Pacific. Few knew that he was plotting with a hedge fund to take over CSX.

Even fewer knew that Harrison was in his final days of overseeing any railroad and would die before the year ended.

With that in mind I press ahead in reviewing four stories to watch in 2018.

What now for CSX? The patriarch of precision scheduled railroading left before his model could be fully implemented.

Look for CSX to continue the PSR model under new CEO James M. Foote, although with some modifications.

Much of the early months of 2018 will see Foote finding his way at CSX while assuring investors that he was a wise choice to replace Harrison.

Industry analysts have pointed out that Foote is thin in operating experience. Much of his industry time has been spent in marketing and sales.

That could turn out to be a good thing for CSX because customer relations was not Harrison’s strong suit. He was an old school operating man who wanted to dictate terms to shippers not the other way around.

Look for CSX to appoint an operations vice president so that Foote can focus on what he knows best.

Both Canadian National and CP have done quite well post-Harrison. Will the same be true for CSX? Perhaps, but if that is the case it will be due to Harrison having laid the foundation not from having built the house as was the case at CN and CP.

What now for Amtrak? Richard Anderson is firmly in control of the nation’s rail passenger carrier with Charles “Wick” Moorman having retired.

Anderson, the former CEO at Delta Air Lines, has hired a supporting team that includes former airline executives. It remains to be seen what that means.

These airline executives cut their teeth during the airline deregulation era when airlines learned ways to squeeze every last dollar out of passengers through such things as baggage fees and seat assignment fees, among others.

Remember the last time that an airline served you a not meal in coach as part of your fare? Yeah, it’s been a while.

Anderson won’t necessarily remake Amtrak in that model but look for him to move in that direction.

The name of the game will be maximizing revenue yield – something Amtrak has already been doing – as the carrier seeks to recover even more of its expenses from the fare box.

Anderson will have his hands full this year attending to matters that grabbed a disproportionate number of headlines in 2017. This includes the rebuilding of New York’s Penn Station and dealing with the aftermath of the derailment of a Cascades Service train in Washington State.

Much of the latter has focused on the fact that positive train control was not yet in operation on the route. Questions are being raised about the adequacy of training of Amtrak operating employees and the railroad’s safety culture.

These matters will continue to attract attention in 2018 and take up much of Anderson’s time.

Rail passenger advocates in places such as Ohio will continue to be disappointed in Amtrak in 2018. But that is nothing new.

Little, if any, progress will be made in terms of route expansion, new equipment for long-distance trains or expanding the frequency of such tri-weekly services as the Chicago-Washington Cardinal.

Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that the aging Superliners will get a new interior look starting later in the year.

Will Railroads Make the PTC Deadline? The last day of 2018 is the deadline for the railroad industry to implement positive train control systems on routes that handle passengers and/or carry hazardous cargo. The deadline has been moved once already.

The Federal Railroad Administration has warned that waivers won’t be issued again, but that was during a different administration.

The Trump administration might be far more sympathetic to railroad industry pleas for a little more time due to the expense and complexity of PTC systems.

Some railroads will make the deadline, but others are going to be cutting it close.

Will the Trump Infrastructure Plan See the Light of Day? Candidate Donald Trump liked to talk about his big plans to revamp the nation’s infrastructure. President Donald Trump has barely mentioned it other than to pay it lip service on occasion.

The administration has been tight lipped about the scope of the plan other than a few broad details, such as $200 billion in federal funds will be used to leverage $1 trillion worth of infrastructure improvements.

Supposedly, the infrastructure plan was being held in abeyance until Congress passed a tax bill, which it did in late December.

In theory, an infrastructure improvement plan should have bi-partisan support. But in a hyper partisan environment during a midterm election year bi-partisan support might be hard to come by. Political hardball will be the rule.

There remains the question of how much the railroad industry would benefit from an infrastructure plan once or even if it is implemented. Few rail infrastructure plans come with a private developer other than than the railroad itself to provide matching funds.

Passenger rail should be a prime beneficiary of an infrastructure plan, but given the current political climate it might find little to feed on except for a few token crumbs that will be eaten by Northeast Corridor infrastructure needs, of which there are many.

Freight railroads might fare a little better in getting funds for some projects, e.g., enlarging tunnels or replacing bridges that they agree to help fund.

But don’t be surprised if the infrastructure plan winds up benefiting highways and even some areas that only a strained definition of infrastructure would incorporate, e.g., a veteran’s hospital. It will hinge on how the terms of the plan are written.

A lot of hungry government agencies and private companies are going to be looking for a slice of the infrastructure pie and might provide tortuous explanations as to how their project constitutes infrastructure.

I’m reminded of that famous response from bank robber Willie Sutton in the Saturday Evening Post as to why he robbed banks: “I rob banks because that’s where the money is.”

The infrastructure plan might make available money not available otherwise so there are going to be a lot of hand out seeking a part of it.

Conservatives in Congress will not necessarily offer automatic support for an infrastructure plan, which they might fame as a stimulus plan. That would remind them too much of something they despised during the early years of the Obama administration.

And conservatives absolutely, positively dislike spending federal money on passenger rail. They are not all that more supportive of public transportation even when it uses rubber tires on asphalt and concrete surfaces.

Infrastructure Plan May be 3 Smaller Plans

The Trump Administration has signaled that it plans to break up its $1 trillion infrastructure plan into three components.

White House director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney said last week during a conference of state transportation officials that most funding will be offered to projects that currently have private or local money secured.

However, the administration has suggested it will focus on a less ambitious $200 billion infrastructure plan, as opposed to the $1 trillion that President Trump campaigned on.

Details of the infrastructure plan have yet to be released, which has led some transportation officials to fear that the funding will be spread too thin and fails to provide adequate resources for projects.

Transportation officials have noted that the administration has said that its plan will cover a wide range of investments, including roads and bridges, broadband, energy, and veterans hospitals.

Some universities are seeking to have research labs included in the rebuilding effort.

Infrastructure Plan to be Released by Late May

Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao told a Senate committee this week that the Trump administration’s U.S. infrastructure revitalization plan will be released before the end of May.

However, Chao said in her testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that it will be fall before a more detailed plan is presented.  She said that will coincide with a congressional timetable.

“In the interim, obviously the president is very impatient, and he has asked that principles be released, so they should be coming out shortly,” Chao said.

She declined when pressed to provide any details other than to repeat earlier statement that the plan will be focused on using federal dollars to attract additional funding from state and local governments, and the private sector.

“The infrastructure proposal is being put together with a much greater view of principles,” Chao said. “Given the decentralized nature of our transportation infrastructure, there will be seeding of federal dollars that, hopefully, will leverage other monies from the private sector, state and local to $1 trillion.

“Federal funding often displaces state and local funds. We believe that the infrastructure needs are so great that all entities need to collaborate,” she said.

Some senators used the hearing to actively promote transportation projects in their states, ranging from transit capital funding to the Caltrain’s Peninsula Corridor Electrification Project to the need to rebuild Northeast Corridor infrastructure.

Some senators also expressed concern about the future of DOT TIGER and FASTLANE competitive grant programs.

Chao acknowledged that TIGER grants were popular with Congress. A Trump fiscal year 2018 budget blueprint has proposed ending TIGER funding, but Chao said it could re-emerge in a different form.

“The thought was that going forward there be a more holistic approach to infrastructure, and these TIGER grants would be recast some way in the future,” Chao said.

One ‘Law’ Won’t Change Following the Infamous United Airlines ‘Re-Accomodation’ Incident

Whenever I read about an incident in which police are alleged to have used excessive force, I think about a comment made by a political science professor who taught a course I took titled Introduction to the Legal System.

On the first day of class the late Charles A. Hollister told us that law is a very jealous mistress that won’t tolerate competition.

The incident last month aboard a United Express flight at Chicago O’Hare Airport during which a Kentucky doctor was dragged off the plane by airport police officers reminded me yet again of professor’s Hollister’s missive.

He was talking about the legal system, but law is a concept that transcends the courts and its officers.

Every transportation company has a central “law” that is sacrosanct. Though shall not interfere with operations. Planes must fly, ships must sail, and the wheels of trains, buses and trucks must turn. Moving objects are, after all, the essence of transportation.

News reports indicate that the United Airlines incident began when four crew members showed up at the gate and said they had to get to Louisville, Kentucky, on this flight because they were scheduled to operate a flight for the company the next day.

United officials chose four passengers already aboard the plane to bump, three of which agreed to accept the airline’s financial incentive.

By law airlines must compensate passengers denied boarding, a rule that apparently also applies to those already aboard a plane.

But the Kentucky doctor balked. He had his own “law,” which he is reported to have described as “I need to get back home to attend to the needs of my patients.”

What happened after that was the logical result of everyone acting like a jealous mistress and holding fast to their “laws.”

Airline officials called police and millions have seen how they drug the recalcitrant doctor down the aisle of the plane after grabbing and pulling him out of his seat.

Those images resonated with many because it represented one of our worst nightmares about flying.

It was also an aberration. Most people get to their destination aboard the flight that they booked without getting bumped or physically assaulted.

Most people would not defy four police officers telling them to get off the plane. We are conditioned to obey police officers because if we don’t, well look what happened to that Kentucky doctor.

Police generally do not respond well to those who resist or refuse to recognize their authority and they have the legal right to inflict physical punishment upon those who defy them.

Much has been written about how the airline should have handled the situation. Commentators have written that everyone has their price and if the Kentucky doctor was unwilling to take the airline’s initial offer, then the gate agent authorized to make the offers should have gone to another passenger or upped the ante until the Kentucky doctor agreed to take the money and walk.

But whoever decided to choose the doctor for involuntary removal from that flight, or as United CEO Oscar Munoz infamously described it as “re-accomodate” him, also decided to become a jealous mistress and dig in his/her heels and insist on bumping this particular passenger.

How dare a passenger defy an airline employee telling him to get off the plane?

In the wake of the video made by passengers of the Kentucky doctor being drug down the aisle going viral, United has been falling all over itself apologizing, announcing rule changes and seeking to put the incident behind it as quickly as possible.

After attorneys for the doctor said he would sue the airline, the two sides quickly settled out of court for an undisclosed sum – possibly in the millions – and issued statements praising each other.

The rule changes that United and other carrier have announced may lessen the probability of another violent bumping incident from occurring again, but won’t change the basic “law” that came into play in the United Airlines incident.

Planes must fly, wheels must turn and ships must sail and the owners of those vessels will continue to insist that it is they and not those being transported who will dictate the terms of operations.

Chao Says Infrastructure Plan Will Cut Back Regulations, House Committee Approves Passenger Rail Legislation

It’s not the money it’s the red tape. Or so Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao wants everyone to believe is the reason why more isn’t being done to rebuild America’s infrastructure.

Speaking during an open house to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Chao said the Trump Administration’s infrastructure proposal that has yet to be delivered to Congress will include proposals to eliminate regulations.

“Investors say there is ample capital available, waiting to invest in infrastructure projects,” Chao said.” So the problem is not money. It’s the delays caused by government permitting processes that hold up projects for years, even decades, making them risky investments.”

Chao said the Trump infrastructure plan “will include common-sense regulatory, administrative, organizational and policy changes that will encourage investment and speed project delivery.”

Although she did not provide details, that infrastructure proposal will include a “a strategic, targeted program of investment valued at $1 trillion over 10 years,” Chao said.

She said the proposal will cover more than transportation infrastructure. It will also include energy, water and potentially broadband and veterans hospitals.

Public-private partnerships will be a focal point of the plan as a way to avoid “saddling future generations with massive debt.”

In an unrelated development, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure this week approved a bill involving passenger rail.

The committee reported out H.R. 1346, which repeals a rule titled “Metropolitan Planning Organization Coordination and Planning Area Reform.”

In a statement, the committee said the rule exceeds what is required in law, is contrary to congressional intent, and increases burdens on MPOs and states.

The committee said H.R. 1346 maintains MPO and state flexibility in planning and making transportation investments.

Also approved was H.R. 1093, which mandates the Federal Railroad Administration to notify Congress about any initiation and results of passenger and commuter rail comprehensive safety assessments.

NTSB Acting Chairman Named

Bella Dinh-Zarr has been named as acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board after the term of incumbent Chairman Christopher Hart expired last week.

Hart remains a member of the five-member board and had served as chairman since March 2015.

He had served as acting chairman for nearly a year before being nominated by the Obama administration to be the permanent chairman.

Dinh-Zarr has served as vice chairman since March 2015. Before joining the NTSB, she served as director of the U.S. Office of the FIA Foundation, an international philanthropy organization that promotes safe and sustainable transportation.
NTSB members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate for five-year terms. By law, a board member is designated by the president to be the chairman while another is designated to be the vice chairman for two-year terms.