Who or what killed the railroad?

October 8, 2009 3:20 PM

Why don't we have a great railroad system in this country?

Watching the National Park series on PBS reminded me that the railroad barons of the late 19th and early 20th century had a firm grip on the economic reins in this country. Enough hold to push the railroads into all the major national parks and cities in North America. Enough hold to influence legislation that was attempting to protect the natural treasures. It would seem given the headstart the railroads enjoyed and the incredible power they once wielded that America should have a better railroad infrastructure than it has now. Obviously, the automobile became America's mode of transportation but what killed the railroads? Was it simply Americans choosing cars over trains? Or the auto industry out-lobbying the railroads? Point me to some answers or recommend a good book on this subject. Thanks.

posted by birdwatcher to travel & transportation (40 comments total)

Because cities are small and far apart, relative to most countries that have large passenger rail systems. Our highway system won out over local freight due to the economies of trucking. Rail is still a primary conduit for large quantities of goods.
posted by craven_morhead at 3:24 PM on October 8

Lots of roads + love of cars = death of trains.

I think our lower overall population density compared to Europe may have had an impact as well.
posted by Aizkolari at 3:25 PM on October 8

"this country"- by which you mean your US of A. Please recall that the internet and this board isn't restricted to one country.

Anyway, I thought the answer was Detroit. The cartel/oligopoly of rairoad barons got complacent and were forcibly broken up, and politicians thought that the best way to avoid that in the future was to invest in roads, particularly aided and abetted by automobile kings.
posted by wilful at 3:27 PM on October 8

The relative lack of population density (compared to Europe) was likely a significant factor, but don't discount the role of General Motors and the other automakers. They certainly played a direct role in the dismantling of streetcar rail systems in cities throughout the US.
posted by dersins at 3:36 PM on October 8

Because the government subsidizes the rail system. They won't run it like a real business. And we all know how well the government can run anything. The politics of the various routes. They can't change an unprofitable line because of all the little local politicians. If they let private enterprise run it then those routes that are huge losses would be eliminated. Politicians will not allow that.
posted by JayRwv at 3:38 PM on October 8

I should have added that the Truckers Union fights tooth and nail to not let the railroad get contracts. The trucker unions are powerful and keep local politicians in check.
posted by JayRwv at 3:40 PM on October 8

the railroad barons of the late 19th and early 20th century had a firm grip on the economic reins in this country.

And they had those reins right up until the moment someone figured out a way to develop cars that were fast, cheap and more useful for day-to-day chores.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:51 PM on October 8

JayRwv: If they let private enterprises run those routes, there would be no passenger railroad access for most of the US. Be glad the government is keeping this alternative alive; we (the US) will want to expand on it in the near future. The gain in convenience and flexibility provided by our current transportation network is not going to look so great in the harsh light of higher fuel prices.

The immense railroad/trolley network the US developed by the early 1900s was a mix of public and private. As people mentioned above, it disappeared thanks to General Motors and other large automakers bought out and dismantled this mixed public/private infrastructure. They did so because they could make more money selling cars, trucks, and buses. Not because those modes of transport were socially (not to mention ecologically) better or even initially more popular, but because they were more profitable.

"Hey, Los Angeles, we just bought your awesome trolley system, but we don't make trolleys, we make buses, so we're going to destroy that infrastructure. What, you liked your quiet, pleasant electric trolley more than this diesel behemoth? Well buy a fucking car. We're going to get rid of the buses anyways." Los Angeles, the city of deadlock, once boasted one of the largest trolley networks in the US. I'd rather get there on time in a trolley with other people than fume impotently in my car.

When I was working for the Kansas Energy Office, one of the random databases I happened across tracked total railroad mileage in the US. It had been steadily declining until 2007, when it ramped up again. I hope that trend continues.

Off the top of my head, read Ecology of the Automobile, which covers a lot of the dismantling that occurred.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 3:52 PM on October 8

We have an excellent rail system. For carrying freight. But passenger trains are not cost efficient, especially because the freight companies control the rails.

In terms of Amtrak, only the NE corridor trains are profitable.
posted by Ironmouth at 4:16 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]

Because the government subsidizes the rail system. They won't run it like a real business. And we all know how well the government can run anything.

Who do you think pays for roads? Ebeneezer Scrooge?
posted by randomstriker at 4:19 PM on October 8 [5 favorites]

Our freight railroad system is more than decent, and might well be the best in the world. See this piece (PDF) linked from the U.S. rail industry page on Wikipedia.

For passenger rail, not many regions whose density, residential patterns, and employment patterns can support rail lack good rail. You would only find a gross failure of public policy if you think that residential and workplace development should have been forced to conform itself to a footprint congenial to rail.

People can talk all they want about big bad GM trashing the LA trolley in the middle-20th-century, but the fact is that choice and preference for cars and car-friendly geography is far more powerful than that.

(Which is another way to say, why haven't the immaculately-politically-correct tech behemoths moved themselves from their suburban campuses in Silicon Valley to fill up a skyscraper or two in downtown Oakland or San Francisco?)
posted by MattD at 4:22 PM on October 8 [2 favorites]

People can talk all they want about big bad GM trashing the LA trolley in the middle-20th-century, but the fact is that choice and preference for cars and car-friendly geography is far more powerful than that.

Dude, they bought the trolley and then shut it down. Choice and preference are irrelevant when there is only one option.
posted by dersins at 4:28 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]

The cost calculation for air transit and rail transit don't scale the same way as distances increase. Airports cost the same whether they're 50 miles apart or 2500 miles apart, and the air in between is free (to the airlines). Rail costs per distance because you have to lay the rail (and pay property tax on it every year).

So when your country is very spread out (as is the case in the US compared to western Europe or Japan), then if it can afford airlines that is a more cost effective solution than passenger rail. It's also faster and thus preferred by the customers.

That's why American passenger rail started dying in the 1950's when the first high capacity passenger aircraft started flying routinely between major cities.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:38 PM on October 8

What killed the railroad? Airplanes. According to this history, "By 1970, airlines carried 73% of passenger travel." That was all once train business.

That page has various other reasons too:

• Trains were used for the military during WW2, and the public was discouraged from using them.
• The rail companies made more money on freight than passengers so they cut schedules and raised fares.
• The highways and airports were subsidized and the rail lines were not since they were a mature business.

That's what killed intercity passenger service, at least. And on the other hand, most of the local train service from the popular days of trains still seems to be around: Boston, NYC, DC, Chicago, LA, etc. all have commuter rail systems that are heavily used.
posted by smackfu at 4:43 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]

I read an article some years back which stated that one of the reasons rail sucks in the United States is that we have the ownership between business and government backwards for who owns the rail versus who owns the cars, as compared to what other countries do. I look for that article every few years and never find the damn thing.
posted by adipocere at 5:04 PM on October 8

JayRwv writes "Because the government subsidizes the rail system. They won't run it like a real business. And we all know how well the government can run anything."

This is a complete red herring. The goverment both owns and controls the vast majority of the intra and inter state road system and it seems to work pretty well.

The problems with passenger rail in the US are myriad. Some of the most tangible are:

• relatively low population density. Switching is expensive in rail compared to roads so the traffic at any particular point need to justify a siding is higher than with roads.
• NIMBY. Railroads need to secure right of way without the advantage of eminent domain. And rail beds are grade limited reducing the choice of right of way.
• Classism? People would rather drive their cars than be forced to share space with the weird or smelly or fat or homeless

posted by Mitheral at 5:26 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]

- Disproportionate subsidies for the competition (cars, trucks, roads.)

- Heavy regulation in the past.
posted by Nameless at 6:08 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]

N-ing the responses to JayRwv. Look at any European passenger rail system and (after you're done drooling over the ease and utter comfort of travel between major cities compared with steerage-condition airtravel in the U.S.), you'll see that it's government run and/or heavily subsidized.

As an aside, I've always wondered why we don't use all of that empty right-of-way along and between interstate traffic lanes. Out here in the midwest and western U.S., the government already owns more than enough empty median space along both sides of any given interstate highway to build at least two rail lines. Just my own pet concept.
posted by webhund at 6:26 PM on October 8

I've always wondered why we don't use all of that empty right-of-way along and between interstate traffic lanes

That is often the only option nowadays in populated areas, but it is still horrifically expensive. You would have to rework every single highway crossing and exit.
posted by smackfu at 6:42 PM on October 8

Given the technology of the last century, and the lay of the land, rail just isn't economical for most of the US. I don't know much about Australia, but I bet it's the same way.

Not to mention, it takes forever, and is probably one of the most expensive options for travel, even with the subsidies.

And it's not all that terribly efficient either. I just did the math for Metra, Chicago's commuter rail system. 78.59 miles per gallon of diesel per passenger. You could approach that with a VW Golf tdi. And then you have to add in all the fuel used to get to the train station, and by all the cars idling at rail crossings, all day long.
posted by gjc at 7:24 PM on October 8

Although most of the comments above have a handle on part of the answer, the main reason why passenger railroads largely died out in the US was due to how government subsidies were structured after WWII. Prior to WWII turnpikes Construction and maintenance of road networks and airports were entirely financed by local, state, and national governments, while rail networks only received construction subsidies -- operational and improvement costs had to be borne by the rail operators. This is fine for freight operators, who don't require keeping up with the latest safety improvements for their tracks or trains, but not so good for passenger operators, who need to be very vigilant about accidents.

Another related issue is that with railroads, you have an integrated system of tracks and trains; with automobiles, you have a separation of the roads from the cars which drive upon them. Trains are an integral part of the network upon which they run, and each system was built by a single company, which then ran its own trains on that system. Roads, on the other hand, were built as a network without any integrated way of moving people -- users brought that themselves in the form of automobiles. Instead of paying a fare that supported an entire system, you paid a usage fee (in the form of a toll) that was supposed to cover your use of the road. This was generally replaced by gas and other taxes for publicly-built roads -- but the fee charged to use a road became largely hidden to the user, and often did not actually cover the cost to use it. This made automobile travel artificially cheap compared to rail travel, and passenger rail suffered a corresponding drop in usage from this "competition."

This is the problem that most anti-transit and anti-rail people don't quite seem to understand -- the subsidies to the road network have been much higher than that to the rail network for many decades now, and that has in turn caused our urban and suburban areas to develop in a very spread-out way -- making it even more difficult for rail to effectively compete as it did when urban areas were denser in the early 20th century.

There are a lot of factors that have combined to make rail travel less competitive, but nearly all of them come back to changing government subsidy patterns. If rail is to become effective again, transportation subsidies as a whole need to be reexamined.

(P.S. I fully acknowledge that rail travel is not effectively for distances over 800 km -- air travel fills that void quite well. However, for most travel under that distance, trains and automobiles should be able to take a very large share of passenger travel ceteris paribus.)
posted by armage at 8:22 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]

This is the problem that most anti-transit and anti-rail people don't quite seem to understand -- the subsidies to the road network have been much higher than that to the rail network for many decades now, and that has in turn caused our urban and suburban areas to develop in a very spread-out way -- making it even more difficult for rail to effectively compete as it did when urban areas were denser in the early 20th century.

I'm not sure that's universally true. I can't speak for anywhere else, but here in Chicagoland, the suburbs generally follow commuter rail lines, and that has been going on since the 50's.
posted by gjc at 8:50 PM on October 8

A different perspective: the goods a country produces are affected by the ratio of its cost of capital (interest rate) to its cost of labor.

In the US of 1950, labor was much cheaper relative to capital than it is today. In 1950, building a mile of train line might have cost as much as 100 new cars. In 2009, we have a well-developed banking system that keeps interest rates incredibly low; it's cheap for the car company to borrow money to build a car factory, and it's cheap for the consumer to borrow money to buy a car. Meanwhile, our economy has grown faster than the population, so wages are relatively high. Building a mile of track today might cost as much as 1,000 new cars. *

Airplanes are an even more extreme example. Building a plane doesn't take that much labor, but requires an enormous amount of capital: the manufacturer has to borrow billions of dollars to design the plane and build the factory, then the airline has to borrow billions of dollars to buy the planes. So planes are a good fit for our current economy, in which labor is relatively expensive and capital relatively cheap. Trains were more suited to the economy of 1950, when things were the other way around.

* Of course, someone still has to build the road for those cars to drive on -- but paving a road seems to be a lot easier than building a train track.

Also, the numbers here are completely made up.
posted by miyabo at 8:53 PM on October 8

miyabo, your argument might carry some weight if it wasn't completely made up. How does building and operating airplanes, airports, 3 vehicles for every 4 people in the county, and an interstate highway and road network require less labor than laying railroad track and building rail cars? You have some work to do to convince us that this is plausible.
posted by Chris4d at 10:26 PM on October 8

crap. country, not county.

Anyway, transportation in the USA is a terrifically complex issue. To try to answer your specific question, I think it's a combination of the following:
- the united states is big, and a lot of the long-distance trips are more effectively served by airplanes.
- right of way is expensive for private operators, who cannot compete with government's ability to take land via eminent domain and hold it tax-free.
- virtually all modes of travel are subsidized (yes, especially private cars, even before we bought up detroit). However, rail transit was already a mature business when the pattern of subsidy began, and it didn't start receiving subsidies until it was really too late for the industry to compete.
- These days, because the other transport modes' subsidies are largely transparent, people don't even realize the subsidies exist. Therefore, when rail lines are proposed, people fight violently to oppose public funding for them -- but without public funding, they're not feasible alternatives to the other already-subsidized modes of transport.
- auto manufacturers worked hard to kill commuter rail and supplant other modes of transport with private automobiles as much as possible.
- cars are marketed as sexy symbols of individual freedom, and americans love to feel like free individuals, even if that means they sit in traffic for two hours every day with millions of others just like them.
- the united states had a government mandate after WWII to develop a national transportation system suitable for mass evacuations and troop travel in case of nuclear war or invasion. That's why you can drive 75 MPH between cities -- your tax dollars at work.
- the USA (especially the western states) has only grown up in the age of the automobile. The cities on the east coast that have rail today? They had rail before the private automobile was around.
posted by Chris4d at 10:44 PM on October 8

However, rail transit was already a mature business when the pattern of subsidy began, and it didn't start receiving subsidies until it was really too late for the industry to compete.

Not so's you could notice it. During the great period of rail expansion in the west, the government gave the railroads half the land within six miles (I think it was) of any rail line they built, in a checkerboard pattern. That was to encourage them to lay track. The railroads sold a lot of that land to incoming farmers later and made out like bandits. That was in the latter half of the 19th Century.

In some places, that encouraged the railroads to build their tracks in a sinuous pattern, just so they could score more land.

The government has always subsidized major transportation when it first develops. This includes docks for steamboats and sailing ships, the early railroads, building roads and highways for cars, and airports for the air lines. And I think it has always been a good policy, too, yielding huge benefits to the people and the nation as a whole.

There's a lot of nostalgia for passenger rail, but the fact is that for America as it exists now, laid out the way it is (placement of cities), the only place it makes sense is between DC and Boston. Irrespective of any other factors, for most of the country it's just too damned slow.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:06 PM on October 8

One other big factor that works against rail is convenience and load flexibility. On most rail lines, schedule is pretty tight, simply because several trains are running in sequence on the same tracks, spaced by controllers for safety. If demand for rail goes up or down, the only effective response is to add more cars, or take them away from trains - adding and subtracting whole trains on the same lines gets tricky.

Airlines, within the more elastic limits of 2 minute landing and takeoff slots at key hub airports, are far more able to flexibly change schedules, adding and removing flights as market demand for certain routes changes. If you want to haul an additional 800 passengers between New York and Dallas on weekday mornings, you just need 3 or 4 more 767 departure and landing slots at two airports, and the equipment (aircraft) time to do the job. If that market need changes, you can redeploy the aircraft and airport slots to other markets, very flexibly, with the whole nation as a your market scope. By comparison, rail scheduling is a complete straightjacket.
posted by paulsc at 11:24 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]

The US did have a great railroad system on par with any European systems. Distance between cities had no bearing. Post-war development of interstate highway systems and heavy marketing/lobbying from Detroit changed the transportation focus to automobiles.

An argument to paulsc's post is that given the same system of traffic control as airlines, railways can operate as efficiently as airlines. Sidetracks and beltlines can overcome all problems associated with routing. The technology available today can easily be adapted to increase rail efficiency even on limited tracks.
posted by JJ86 at 6:58 AM on October 9

Sidetracks and beltlines can overcome all problems associated with routing.

At a great construction cost, where additional routes for airlines cost nothing.
posted by smackfu at 7:17 AM on October 9

So to sum up the comments to this point, the cause for the railroad's demise is the choice the US government made in the 20th century on allocating subsidies. Pressured/lobbied by the auto industry, the trucker's unions, the airlines, and state govenments, US public policy pumped money into the local economies around the country by funding labor intensive construction of highways, bridges, airplaines, and airports rather than more cost efficient railroad lines. Railroads became an easier target because they were slower than planes and less attractive than the freedom afforded by the auto. Struggling to make a profit, the railroads could only attract freight and not passengers which became their business plan. Did I miss anything?
posted by birdwatcher at 7:46 AM on October 9

Did I miss anything?

IMO, you're focusing way, way, way too much on the role of government and lobbying pressure, and not nearly enough on the simple results of supply and demand curves.

Cars are often more convenient for people to use than trains, so when they became cheap enough to purchase, people did so. Same with air travel -- what used to be non-existent was first a luxury before becoming commonplace. Moreover, airplanes are faster than trains. People are (largely) rational economic actors that want to get to places as fast and as cheap as possible, so they elect to spent their money on the means that they perceive as being the most efficient use of their dollars and time.

People with different needs spend their money differently. Hence the usage of passenger trains as sightseeing vehicles.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:25 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]

Dwight D. Eisenhower.
posted by togdon at 9:41 AM on October 9

IMO, you're focusing way, way, way too much on the role of government and lobbying pressure, and not nearly enough on the simple results of supply and demand curves.

The key question, in my mind, is when people moved to suburbs that were inaccessible by rail. Was it before or after the highway system had greatly increased subsidies?
posted by smackfu at 9:45 AM on October 9

The key question, in my mind, is when people moved to suburbs that were inaccessible by rail. Was it before or after the highway system had greatly increased subsidies?

I don't think this is a chicken-and-egg question, but an evolution driven (in part, if not large part) by consumer demand. The very term "suburb" was used by Dickens to describe parts of 19th century London. The Model-T was available for purchase starting in 1908.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:17 AM on October 9

smackfu posted: At a great construction cost, where additional routes for airlines cost nothing.

You have got to be joking.
posted by JJ86 at 1:54 PM on October 9

So Cool Papa Bell - you're saying that supply and demand through the choices made by the American people influenced public transportation policy and triggered the construction of the national highway system rather than a push by big business and government? Put another way, business and government were just responding to the public's preference for highways over railways. Is that your theory?
posted by birdwatcher at 2:09 PM on October 9

You have got to be joking.

No, but maybe I wasn't clear. You specifically mentioned sidetracks and beltlines, and the equivalent for aircraft is "free" since they don't use fixed routing. Other route limitations, like terminal space or station platforms, obviously cost money for both modes of transport.
posted by smackfu at 2:37 PM on October 9

Put another way, business and government were just responding to the public's preference for highways over railways.

Yes, but I'm also saying that any blanket pronouncement, like the one you made upthread ("the cause for the railroad's demise is the choice the US government made in the 20th century on allocating subsidies") is missing several points.

But yeah ... if you waved a magic wand and made it so that people simply didn't like the freedom of cars and/or made it so they were prohibitively expensive, you'd see far fewer cars and more usage of trains.

You know all those people riding the Tokyo subways? They like cars as much as everyone else does. But Japan is a tiny country with an enormous population and real estate costs heaps of money, so there's no free parking. Because of these (and many other) market forces, these people want to ride trains.

But if you magically made Tokyo as big as and as relatively sparse as Los Angeles (and you drove down the price of gas and cars correspondingly), they'd all want to drive, and the roads would be jammed with commuters demanding government to build nice, shiny roads.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:34 PM on October 9

"... Sidetracks and beltlines can overcome all problems associated with routing. The technology available today can easily be adapted to increase rail efficiency even on limited tracks."
posted by JJ86 at 9:58 AM on October 9

Actually, due to right-of-way and terrain issues in the Eastern half of the U.S., particularly in the Northeast, that's not really an option. Accidents and maintenance activities on particular grade systems like Horseshoe Curve have continental level scheduling implications, as it is. When the weekly northwest joint UP/CSX Produce Express train is being assembled and loaded in Washington state, scheduled maintenance, weather conditions, and availability of helper engines to make Horseshoe Curve are checked, 4 to 5 days in advance of the Produce Express leaving Washington State.

If there is an accident or a major weather event affecting Horseshoe Curve, the Produce Express may terminate that week in Chicago, or Ohio, with as much of the produce as possible going into truck delivery. It's a huge logistical bottleneck, for East-West rail shipping, and has been for more than 100 years, but it is still the most feasible route to traverse the Adirondack and Allegheny mountains.

To snap your fingers and suggest otherwise is to ignore American rail history and terrain engineering, of more than a century.
posted by paulsc at 11:40 PM on October 11

You know all those people riding the Tokyo subways? They like cars as much as everyone else does. But Japan is a tiny country with an enormous population and real estate costs heaps of money, so there's no free parking. Because of these (and many other) market forces, these people want to ride trains.

I don't think anyone will argue against the idea that market forces have historically expressed a preference for private automobiles; that's why we have them today. There are plenty of negative externalities that individual consumers can conveniently ignore, at least until it's too late to un-build the sprawling suburbs or fix the wrecked environment. The market doesn't always make the best decision, especially when the game is rigged.
posted by Chris4d at 10:58 AM on October 12