I’ve been keeping a keen eye on what Amtrak is working on towards resumption of service in the Amtrak Cascades corridor, and what actions are being taken around implementation of PTC. In the last week and some odd days several pieces of information to clarify what is being done and the next steps being taken by Amtrak, WSDOT, Sound Transit, and others.

The first key news is Amtrak wrote a letter to WSDOT and related parties with information about next steps and current actions. You can give it a read here (if it’s ever moved for some reason, I’ve copied it locally to my blog here). From this letter I’ve extracted a few pieces of information as follows, all of which I’ve paraphrased into key points:

Immediate Actions

1. Amtrak has started and continues a number of safety training and related exercises company wide.
2. Increased managers and supervisors at pre-trip crew briefings.
3. Hired an Executive VP & Chief Safety Officer.
4. Did something about some process that has to do with safety standards and related activities.
5. Launched a root cause and corrective action process related to over-speed conditions.

Mid-Term Actions

1. Achieve operation of the I-ETMS or the Electronic Train Management System Positive Train Control System across the entire Amtrak Cascades route.
2. Onboard locomotives have 51% coverage on the diesel engine fleet. 151 have been fully commissioned and are ready to operate. All unites will be ready by September, 2018 and Amtrak will provide PTC-ready locomotives for use in the Amtrak Cascades service concurrent with system operability, as needed.
3. Complete I-ETMS installation and activation for the Washington owned Siemens Charger locomotives.
4. “The host railroads for the Amtrak Cascades Service – BNSF, Union Pacific, Sound Transit – are in the process of completing and testing trackside systems on all subsivisions in Washington and Oregon…” with the completion estimated for 3rd quarter of 2018.
5. Amtrak’s BOS (Back Office Servers) will be federated with the host railroads BOS in 1st Quarter of 2018.  BOS being what is used to manage and communicate with the PTC via dispatch.
6. Rollout for PTC is planned for 2nd and 3rd quarter of 2018.
7. Amtrak has taken the lead on organizing the pertinent meetings to ensure this implementation takes place on this corridor.
8. Re-qualify all Amtrak Cascades operating crews for operations over the Point Defiance Bypass in accordance with new standard protocols prior to restarting service.

Long Term Actions

1. Develop and institute a comprehensive new Safety Management System process to improve safety and… some regulatory FRA stuff in the document that amounts to the intent to implement a new safety program that is more rigorous.

Ok, that’s the key points. Here are a few takeaways that I’ve noticed after reviewing the letter thoroughly.

My Observations

1. The first thing I noticed is there is nothing about where or what Amtrak would do or if they would take action to acquire another Talgo trainset for the corridor. The simple fact is, additional Superliner, Amfleet, or related traditional passenger equipment can’t effectively be used in the corridor like the Talgo sets can be since they’re the only equipment we have in the United States that actually has the tilt mechanism for turns. This corridor, specifically, has a lot of twists and turns between Seattle and Portland, and north toward Vancouver BC. I’d like to know what they plan to do in this regard, since it isn’t exactly a quick process to get a new Talgo set. It would likely take at minimum, if a purchase agreement was signed tomorrow, 2 to 5 years to get a new set.
2. There was a quick mention in the letter, but no real specifics about resumption of the 6 trains per day per direction between Seattle and Portland service levels. Currently we’re back to the previous schedule of 4 trains per day each direction.
3. Honestly, much of the talk about safety improvements is likely for confidence building those that don’t understand how railroads are operated in the United States. To me, that’s fine, I realize how safe passenger rail is in the United States and a better focus on safety is great, but the real game change is the PTC system and the removal of the ideology around equipment/person survivability and instead a refocus on wreck prevention instead. There’s a reason that trains in Europe are, one could argue, exponentially safer than passenger trains in the United States. The focus on wreck prevention and the systems to prevent wrecks instead of the notion of survivability, which is misguided and has left us in a place where our rail is technically more dangerous then their rail systems. Albeit, I write this, with the reality that passenger rail is vastly safer than getting into a car any day, and safer than most other modes of transport except maybe airline service. Overall, it’s all pretty safe, and trains are a very safe option.
4. Not one time have they mentioned that BNSF has PTC operational and working on their freight trains. Why has it lagged on the trains that truly need it, for the safety of human lives? The equipment is obviously there between Seattle and Portland, but I suspect poor funding support and Government mismanagement of the situation has exacerbated the problems for Amtrak and related groups involved.

Summary

Overall I’m personally satisfied with Amtrak’s efforts to mediate, mitigate, and manage safety improvements. However, the real safety improvements will be in political and technological advancements around things like PTC and changing the attitudes around what passenger rail should do, and shouldn’t do (like have 30mph turns right smack in the middle of 79mph tracks!) So their work is very much appreciated, but I’m more than aware that the actual improvements are going to need to come from outside of Amtrak as well as a few from inside.

In summary, I’m still left with one significant question though, which is, “how on earth is Amtrak going to resume the aforementioned level of service (6 trains each way between Portland and Seattle) and when is this going to happen?” I don’t have much hope or expectation around and answer for this soon, but I hope we find out in the next few weeks or months. If not, I’m not sure there will be much hope of service resumption for a number of years.

Recently I was checking out a map of transit in Kraków, Poland. I traveled there a couple of years ago and took a number of pictures, traveled via transit a lot, and even got to bike around their fantastic bicycle infrastructure. Here’s links if you’d like to read about those adventures in The First Week, Observations of Kraków, The First Bike Rides in Kraków – Part I – Good Morning!, and The First Bike Rides in Kraków – Part II – Lunch Time Mission.

I may have mentioned it when I wrote about Krakow, but I’ll mention it again. Krakow makes US cities seem strangely outdated, draconian, and 3rd world like in so many ways. Kraków’s roads, transit, biking, and pedestrian facilities were dramatically better than anything in the US by a remarkable degree. The vehicles were more modern and capable, their buses smoother riding and cleaner, and the overall city was cleaner and more well put together. Even in the proverbial “slums” it seemed like the housing graded several levels above even what middle class neighborhoods or lifestyles would allow here in the United States. (If one can pretend there is even a middle class lifestyle these days, much of that is now gone) To note, what makes this even more impressive is that Kraków was under draconian Soviet authority for many decades. The US wasn’t, we’ve got no excuse to be so behind while Kraków has plenty of excuses and it isn’t behind!

I don’t write this to bash on US cities, we haven’t really taken care of them very well. But I do write this to make note that what we have here is something that needs dramatic work at massive levels. We’ve neglected cities for decades even though they’re the centers that bring in wealth and distribute it (via capitalism, socialism, or whatever method of economic distribution) more so than any other part of the nation. We should, and financially there’s no excuse, that our cities couldn’t be the most advanced, connected, enabling, empowering, quality, safe, and wealth generating cities on the entire planet. But instead we have barely sustained them by draining them of the wealth they generate. We’ve then – politically speaking both Democrats AND Republicans then went about distributing that wealth out in the most inefficient of ways for a whole slew of things; military waste, auto-dependency, subsidies to suburbs, and similar pet projects and other petty nonsense.

But that leaves us in a position with a lot of improvements to make. I’d argue the greatest improvement we could make today would be making the way we make improvements faster, more efficient, and more focused. We spend years, often decades, preparing for, fighting about, and eventually making improvements. Sometimes we spend and waste all that energy and then don’t actually make the improvements.

This belies one of the huge problems about deciding what improvements we should or should not be making. This battle is intense and one of the massive time destroying horrors of modern America. Take for instance the endless battle of the Portland metro area. It can easily be divided into “bridge and tunnel” crowd and the city crowd. Here I’ve drawn a map of the “We hate transit buses are for the poor and sickly evil people build more roads“, the “middle mixed area of maybes“, and the “please let’s build options to more efficiently travel about instead of relying on the evils of auto-dependency“. Note this is not a scientifically derived map, but one that’s based on the demographics data that is available. I create this to show a general outline of where and the conflict is, but also attempt use the stereotypes of either or group to add a bit of jest to the matter.

2000’s Era Split

The pink + area is the “please let’s build options to more efficiently travel about instead of relying on the evils of auto-dependency” crowd, while the section between the core and the black outlined area are the “middle mixed area of maybes”, then finally the massive area of few people in the “we hate transit buses are for the poor and sickly evil people build more roads” crowd. The overall split among the overall metropolitan population is about 60% of the population is in the pink core, 35% is in the area outlined in black, and about 5% is in the in between section of the map.

2017’s Era Split

This map, which I goofed getting Forrest Grove in there even though it ought to be included is basically that same percentage split of the population. Notice how with the increasing population though the area in which people definitely will support and want more options has increased. As the population has increased in those area it has also increased in the demand for improved transit, biking, and related options. Meanwhile, the outlying areas are still full of lots of naysayers and “we hate transit buses are for the poor and sickly evil people build more roads” crowd.

The demographic that wants options, higher quality, and improved transportation choices is growing in Portland, Seattle, and almost every city in the United States.

The real question however, as we’ve seen with poor support for transit in Washington as the Democrats go in to seriously gut funding for Sound Transit projects that the voters chose by a large margin, is will the politicians get their act together and get things built for their constituent populations that want improved situations?

The answer, for the most part right now seems to be, they’re trying but failing to truly deliver effectively what could be good solutions. We continue to get halfway done or meagerly built transit options at extremely high costs (Compare our costs vs. Europe’s). Part of it is our politicians, but lots of it has to do with our latent inability to work with our own system to get things done.

Maybe I’ll draw a map of Seattle later, but currently it’s basically the same mess. Now that I’ve written this I sadly admit, I’ve no solution to the problems of getting things done. Nor do I have any insight into ideas of my own at this point. This blog post is merely pointing out with some clarity the divide that causes our cities so much pain in moving forward. It’s the same split, almost the same, minor geographically different lines, that divides us on housing and housing solutions. It divides us on free parking versus paying one’s own way. In all of it, everyone is often confused or misinformed about who is or isn’t actually paying for who’s stuff. But rest assured, we’re all paying for each other’s stuff when we’re in a metropolitan area. As no matter what political alignment you are, cities are and forever will be some level of functional socialism.

Until those next thoughts, discoveries, and research, happy transiting.