FRA L-D Study Reveals ‘Interesting’ Numbers

The Federal Railroad Administration released the latest update of its Long-Distance Service Study in mid-June. While there is nothing definitive revealed as far as routes (if any) likely to be recommended for funding, the study does give some parameters about equipment, cost, benefits and running times. When stating the findings for each of the 15 proposed new routes, the FRA repeated that the study was “conceptual”, and that “further analysis and identification of funding” will be required. Infrastructure upgrade was based on creating a 79 MPH Class 4 railroad operating one daily passenger train round trip. Still, the study does provide information that should be heeded by passenger train advocates.

Some of FRA’s numbers seem bizarre, such as the total number of avoided highway crashes. However, the cost numbers supply insight. The price tag to launch all 15 routes is just shy of $53 billion (in 2025 dollars) and range from the low of $1.7 billion to implement a Fort Worth-Atlanta train (the shortest route at 855 miles) to a whopping $7.15 billion for a train from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Denver via South Dakota, which though most expensive, is the third-shortest in route-miles.

Costs are broken down into three categories to create the service initially: Rolling Stock (20%), Stations and Maintenance (41%), and Track, including Positive Train Control (39%). Also indicated is the expected cost of annual Operations and Maintenance (O&M). Rolling stock (or “vehicles” in the study) have a generic cost assigned based on the number of trainsets, which is based on anticipated running time. Specific station costs were not indicated, nor were all proposed station stops. Station costs for all routes ranged from $1-$2 billion, except for Seattle-Chicago at just over $2 billion, likely due to its length (though it shares about a third of itsroute-miles with the existing Empire Builder).

Because the study “does not include capacity improvements to accommodate existing or future traffic, structural improvements, grade crossing improvements and freight railroad onboard PTC improvements,” track costs on most routes were generally low, though the caveat does suggest such costs would balloon should the project ever approach implementation. But even in the study, two routes stand out accounting for 40% of track costs: Dallas-New York at $3.12 billion and Minneapolis/St. Paul-Denver at $5.16 billion. The Dallas-New York route includes upgrading large segments of short line railroads in Oklahoma and Ohio, a tedious trackwork arrangement in Oklahoma City and a lengthy backtracking maneuver to access Cincinnati. The Minneapolis/St. Paul-Denver proposal is largely dark territory and spends more than 500 miles meandering across South Dakota (where current track speeds range from 10 to 40 MPH) on a route 200 miles longer than the direct route via more-populous Des Moines and Omaha.

The clear takeaway here is (except corridor and some state-supported lines), proposing passenger train routes with minimal freight traffic is specious simply due to astronomical cost, and doesn’t benefit the freight railroad. The South Dakota route is the perfect example of this: Except on 64 track-miles in two sections on opposite ends of the state and with one shipper in Wyoming, there is no U.S. freight traffic that needs to traverse South Dakota. Much of the track on other proposed routes corresponds to existing busier freight routes and reminds us how U.S. freight railroads subsidize L-D passenger trains well beyond what Amtrak pays for access by providing high-capacity infrastructure. We also know how a passenger train on a railroad with little or no freight traffic doesn’t work. Amtrak’s Southwest Chief traverses 280 miles between La Junta, Colo. and Lamy, N. Mex., where freight trains fear to tread tackling grades of 3.5% with only one intermittent shipper. It’s no wonder the Southwest Chief recovered only 35% of its operating cost and required $81.8 million above its operating revenue in FY2023: It’s expensive maintaining a high-speed signaled railroad for two trains per day. Replicating this in Oelrichs, S.Dak. and Coshocton, Ohio (though the terrain is more level) would not be wise.

The other major measure of cost in the study is O&M, which equates to the annual cost of operating each proposed route, what Amtrak calls “Operating Expense” in its Performance Reports. In FY2023, Amtrak’s 14 L-D routes (excluding Auto Train, an anomaly as all travel is between endpoints) posted an operating expense of $474 million with a cost recovery of 44%. The projected O&M cost for the 15 proposed routes in this latest study is $1.369 billion annually. Assuming similar accounting methods (since the operator would likely be Amtrak) and a similar cost recovery (the 44%), the additional trains would increase Amtrak’s annual appropriation by about $755 million, or 31% of the entire FY2024 Amtrak appropriation. While this amount would be significant on its own, we should remember such additional monies are not guaranteed. After all, it was Congress’s unwillingness to fund operations of trains added to the basic system following Amtrak’s establishment in 1971 that lead to demise of the Floridian and National Limited in 1979. We need not attempt a repeat performance unless long-term operating funding is assured—especially after huge capital expenditures.

While this latest version of the FRA L-D study is short on specifics, it does send a message about the financial consequences of arbitrarily choosing speculative new passenger train routes without existing freight infrastructure to support them. Hopefully, the FRA will heed its own study, and focus on expanding passenger rail service first on existing routes—even beyond making the Sunset Limited and Cardinal daily trains. With stations and most infrastructure already in place, adding service to severely underserved routes such as New York to Chicago and New York to Florida could be accomplished with minimal investment—mostly in new equipment (again, the current study indicates as only 20% of total capital cost). By making existing routes more relevant to communities they serve (usually not the case for Amtrak’s spartan L-D “network”), a stable framework can better be developed for future sustainable new service.

Mark Meyer is retired after spending 40 years in railroad operations at Burlington Northern and BNSF, most recently managing the locomotive fleet on North Operations, which included South Dakota and adjacent states.