Orphan Road

France's state-owned rail agency is going gangbusters:

[T]he new SNCF chairman sees rail stations, mainly in the regions, becoming new transport (and commercial) hubs not just for trains but for buses and trams – "all those places where people don't want to bring their cars."

SNCF executives believe rail can take market leadership from air and road on journeys up to four hours long and point to the success of Eurostar (part owned by the group) in increasing traffic so far this year by around a fifth on the back of shorter journey times between London and Brussels/Paris. You can even get to Marseille from Paris in little more than three hours.

Pepy is, therefore, unfazed by the recent move by Air France-KLM to join forces with French freight operator Veolia and launch its own TGV services to, say, Charles de Gaulle airport. "SNCF is not going to be an airline-style operator as we need to operate regional and local services as well."

This comes via Savage via AutoblogGreen, who both focus on SNCF's $1.7B profit in 2007. While that's certainly encouraging, I'd caution against focusing too much on those numbers. SNCF runs both freight and passenger service in France, as a government monopoly. I'm pretty sure that if the US congress decided to nationalize BNSF, Union Pacific and the rest and roll them up into a huge ball with Amtrak, the resulting agency would be profitable.

Still, it goes to show that if you invest consistently in rail infrastructure, you can expand it pretty rapidly when demand rises. On the other hand, if you let it decay for 40 years and then try to throw a hail mary at the last minute, it's going to be pretty difficult to achieve anything significant.

Try doing this with a bus:

DART is updating its fleet of 115 light rail vehicles (LRV) by inserting a new, low-floor insert between the existing sections of the vehicle adding seating capacity and improving access through level boarding. The newly modified vehicles began service on June 23, 2008.

Known as Super Light Rail Vehicles (SLRV) because of the greater length and added passenger capacity, the SLRV will seat approximately 100 passengers compared with 75 on the current vehicles. Standing passengers on the vehicle can nearly double the capacity.

(via)

Funny, when the service is equivalent, and people are given the chance to take a high-speed train instead of a plane, they will:

[T]he country where high speed trains are growing the fastest is seeing the effects as well: The Madrid-Barcelona high speed link in Spain (AVE), which started operating in March, has reduced by about 18.4 percent the air traffic between the two cities.

That's almost 1 in 5 flights, eliminated! Think of the relief that brings to overstretched airports. And, of course, it makes perfect sense. When you can go 400 miles in 2 hours -- downtown to downtown, with no security checkpoints -- why would you ever fly?

They built too much around DC's Columbia Hights Metro Station, apparently.

Here's a fascinating history of the Cincinatti Subway, which was planned and built in the 1920s, but never finished or opened.

I just got back from a weekend in San Diego, and I have to say, it was really spectacular. I'd been there once as a little kid, but not since. Balboa Park is one of the best city parks I've ever seen:

Oh, and I caught sight of the Sprinter, San Diego's DMU commuter rail:

One nice thing about an area like that -- not unlike Seattle -- is that you have a relatively well-developed coastline, with a rail right-of-way running right down it. And since it's prime coastal beach real estate, the population density around the little downs is actually fairly high. Add to this the super-nice weather that makes it easy to bike or walk to the station, and you have the makings of a pretty decent transit system.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that SoCal is still very auto-dependent, but it's a good start.

Photos by Flickr users chrisclark and ericharmatz used under a Creative Commons license.

The new interactive map on California's HSR site is very cool.

That is all.

Around the country, local governments are relying on existing freight tracks to provide commuter rail service quickly and cheaply. In the Puget Sound we have the very popular Sounder running on BNSF tracks, South Florida uses CSX tracks to run Tri-Rail commuter rail, and Utah's FrontRunner and New Mexico's Rail Runner operate with similar arrangements.

These services require complicated leasing arranements with the freight companies involved, and service is often limited or delayed because the freight trains have priority on the tracks. This is the major reason Sound Transit hasn't been able to offer as many round trips as it would like to.

Today I came across not one, but two stories from back East on this issue: one involving Florida and CSX, and the other related to Massachusetts and CSX. Both issues center around liability agreements: CSX is saying to both states, in effect, "sure, you can lease our tracks, but we don't want to be liable in the event of a passenger train crash, even if it's caused by our neglegence."

Lawmakers are understandably skeptical about agreeing to such conditions. But what else can they do? We've let our passenger rail system atrophy over the last 100 years, and building new rights-of-way is time consuming and expensive. Even Amtrak only owns the Northeast Corridor tracks -- their trains run on leased freight rail everywhere else in the country, as far as I know.

Add to this the fact that demand for freight rail is surging in America. You've no doubt seen the factoid being pushed by the freight rail industry that it can move one ton of freight 400 miles on a gallon of gas. With business booming, freight companies have little incentive to give up track capacity to passenger rail.

And so we have a bit of a crisis simmering between local goverments and big rail companies, one that could evenutally come to a boil as demand for rail -- both for freight and passenger travel -- continues to rise. Could we nationalize the freight rail industry like France? I very much doubt our Congress would do something that bold. Yet even if the two sides can come to an agreement on the liability issue, the capacity problem will still be there, and getting worse.

Wouldn't you know it, with gas prices on the up, Clark County residents are driving less frequently into downtown Portland:

Traffic across the Interstate 5 and Interstate 205 bridges, which has gradually ticked upward for most of the past decade, nudged down a fraction in February and dropped 3.3 percent in March, according to preliminary figures from the Oregon Department of Transportation. No figures are out yet for April or May, but those who watch the bridges each day say drives are getting easier.

“My morning commute hasn’t really felt different, but coming home traffic has been lighter,” said Vancouver Heights resident Amanda Brown, 26, who works in downtown Portland and crosses the I-5 bridge each day.

...

More people are taking the bus as well. C-Tran gave 532,026 rides in March, up 36,500 from the same month a year earlier.

“There seems to be an increase in the number of people taking the train,” said northeast Vancouver resident Marjorie Johnson, 65, who daily drives across the I-205 bridge then takes the Max light rail to work near Portland’s Lloyd Center. “I see new faces every day. We fill the train.”

ODOT and WADOT are currently working on a replacement for the current bridge. The most controversial aspect has been whether or not to leave room for putting light rail on it. Given the current situation, light rail ought to move from "controversial" to "no-brainer."

The Philadelphia Inquirer takes a look at the board of directors that run SEPTA, their city's transit agency, and how the relationship between the city and the regional authority is changing:

Geopolitics is always a driving force on the board. SEPTA's board makeup gives the four Republican-dominated suburban counties more clout than Democrat-dominated Philadelphia, although the city provides most of the riders and most of the local subsidy.

So the relationships between the board members and their sponsors are key.

Two members represent each of Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties. The governor has one appointee, as do the Republican and Democratic leaders in the state House and Senate.

The board has no representative of the transit-riding public, although SEPTA gets about 40 percent of its operating budget from fares.

Unlike Sound Transit, the regional leaders appoint someone to the board, rather than serving on the board itself. I'm not sure if one is better than the other, but it's an interesting distinction. As for the political makeup, I have to wonder how that will shift given that Democrats swept the 2006 congressional races in Philly's suburbs, and if that will impact the agency going forward.

Oh, and 40 percent farebox recovery is pretty damn impressive.