Passenger Trains > NPR backstabs Amtrak long distance network, NARP ignores.

In its May 17 Sunday Weekend Edition, National Public Radio, by
mindlessly quoting the Brookings Institute 2013 report, skewered
the long distance trains.

In a reply to NARP's May 20 blog item, "Passenger Train Hype Machine
Gears Up, Yet Again," commenter R. W. Rynerson brings up the
NPR piece, and says:

> NARP's statement above is certainly important, but it is missing
> something important. NPR picked up on the Brookings Institute view
> that no one rides trains west of Harrisburg and made false
> statements (in college logic class, a half-truth is false). As a
> history student, I learned that some of the most interesting eras are
> when opposite parties agree on something. So, we have right-wingers
> who want to kill Amtrak this afternoon and left-wingers who think
> it's okay to keep chopping away the rest of the country, as long as
> they can see trains going in and out of Washington Union Station.
>
> Most of the modern commuter rail and regional rail projects depended
> partly for their development on the national system keeping a thin
> network of infrastructure in place. Killing the national system, as
> planned by right-wingers and Eastern liberals, means saying that
> other growing urban areas are screwed.

> The worst thing about this particular example is that it was
> presented in a format that claims to analyze statistics, but uses the
> fallacious passenger boarding counts, rather than passenger-miles. By
> that logic, the free 16th Street Mall Shuttle in Denver is more
> successful than the Acela. In fact, the escalators in Washington
> Union Station may be more successful than running trains.


The NPR hit piece:


As Amtrak's Train Cars Age, Ridership Skew Young
May 17, 2015 8:19 AM ET

> Weekend Edition Sunday

> The number this week is 750,000. That's how many passengers travel
> Amtrak's Northeast Corridor daily. NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with
> data expert Mona Chalabi about facts and figures of rail travel.
>
> RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
>
> This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.
>
> UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Fifty-two...
>
> UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: ...452...
>
> UNIDENTIFIED MAN: ...25...
>
> UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: ...6.112...
>
> UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: ...225,840.
>
> MARTIN: Time for some number crunching from our data expert Mona
> Chalabi from fivethirtyeight.com. And she has given us this number of
> the week.
>
> UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: 750,000.
>
> MARTIN: That's the number of daily passengers who ride through the
> Northeast corridor where the train derailed on Tuesday killing eight
>  people and injuring hundreds. The crash has brought attention to one
>  of the busiest passenger rail routes in the United States. Mona
> Chalabi has been looking more closely at this route. Hey, Mona.
>
> MONA CHALABI: Hi, Rachel.
>
> MARTIN: How does this particular area, this route, compare in terms
> of ridership to other train routes in the country?
>
> CHALABI: So this is one of the most important passenger routes in the
> country. In fact, it is the most important. Every day over 2,200
> trains travel along that corridor carrying with them 750,000
> passengers. Those are daily numbers that come from the commission
> that's tasked with taking care of this route. They say that almost
> half of all passenger trips that happen nationwide take place along
> this one route. Now when it comes to Amtrak specifically, Amtrak says
> it carried 11.6 million passengers along the Northeast corridor in
> the 2014 fiscal year. That was their highest ridership year yet.
> Ticket sales from those passengers generated $1.2 billion in
> revenue.
>
> MARTIN: OK, $1.2 billion, that sounds like a lot. But we hear all
> these news headlines that Amtrak has had all this financial
> difficulty, right?
>
> CHALABI: That's right. In the same fiscal year, Amtrak still managed
>  to report an operating loss of $227 million. And Amtrak gets help
> from Congress to cover that operating shortfall.
>
> MARTIN: So operating shortfall - so this is just an operating budget
>  to keep the trains running on time? Or is some of this money
> supposed to be used for maintenance or upgrading infrastructure?
>
> CHALABI: No. The way to think about this is kind of, like, a bit of a
> snapshot. I'm looking at the balance sheet here. And it's the
> difference between Amtrak's revenues - and that comes from things
> like passenger ticket sales - and the money it spends on things like
>  salaries and fuel. So it's not the same as the money it needs to
> actually improve the service and invest. That sum is way higher. So
> in 2010, Amtrak said it needed $52 billion for repairs and capacity
> expansion on the Northeast corridor over the next 20 years.
>
> MARTIN: So what kind disrepair are we talking about?
>
> CHALABI: Well, the Bureau of Transportation statistics collects
> numbers on this, and they are surprisingly detailed actually. They
> found that in 2013, the average age of an Amtrak passenger train car
>  was 28.6 years. In 2001, the average age was just 18.5 years.
>
> MARTIN: But is it just about replacing old trains and improving
> infrastructure because, you know, Amtrak, as you've pointed out, the
>  busiest passenger lines are along the East Coast. But they are also
>  subsidizing routes throughout the rest of the country in parts of
> the Western states, in particular, that are far less populated and
> people aren't using those routes. Is there something systemic that's
> at play here, especially when it comes to the financial problems of
> Amtrak?
>
> CHALABI: Yeah, I think you're right. There's a much bigger question
> here even beyond kind of small scale investment which is the way that
> Amtrak is actually run. So we know that some routes just aren't all
> that profitable, as you say. In 2013, Brookings released a detailed
> report into this. They basically found that you can split the Amtrak
> system into two. On the one hand, there are 26 Amtrak routes that run
> to 400 miles. They actually operate at a profit. They made $47
> million in 2011. On the other hand, there are 15 routes that are
> really long. They're over 750 miles, and they don't do so great. That
> same year, those long routes resulted in a loss of $580 million. In
> its recommendations, the Brookings report argued that if a path is
> losing money, Congress needs to make a deal with the states along
> those routes about how best to make it financially viable. If states
>  can't do that, they have to be prepared to see those routes just
> disappear.
>
> MARTIN: Mona Chalabi of fivethirtyeight.com. Thanks so much, Mona.
>
> CHALABI: Thank you.



 

It's probably worth noting that a huge majority of the 2,200 trains each weekday are not Amtrak's. In many cases, they are tenants paying rent to Amtrak.

In the MetroNorth New Haven stretch, it's the other way around. Amtrak pays the rent.

I'd like to see Martin's proof that "not many people" ride the western trains.

raytc1944 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'd like to see Martin's proof that "not many people" ride the western trains.

Proof?  Most NPR listeners could not imagine that what they hear could be incorrect. 
They heard it, ergo it must be true. 

Not looking good for the LDT network....the "N" will no longer stand for "National" Rail Passenger Corporation, and NRPC will become NECRPC. 

It is worth noting that Brookings is a conservative "think tank" charged with pushing "free market" talking points.

Unfortunately in this era of austerity, NPR and PBS have had to find alternatative revenue streams.  Groups like Brookings and their backers are only too happy to help out, and the programming has started to reflect the funding.  You don't want to offend your funding source, now do you?

The end result is programming that lets provably false claims go unchallenged.

There is a saying I'm fond of: figures may not lie, but liars can figure.

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions

Brookings a "conservative 'think tank'"?  Only in Rolling Stone  magazine, perhaps. 

Here is a reference link that says the general view is that it Brookings is centrist or left-of-center.  Otherwise I doubt NPR would have used them.  You'll rarely hear them refer to the Heritage Foundation...which actually IS  a conservative think tank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution
 

hazegray Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> raytc1944 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I'd like to see Martin's proof that "not
> many people" ride the western trains.
>
> Proof?  Most NPR listeners could not imagine that
> what they hear could be incorrect. 
> They heard it, ergo it must be true. 

You mean like Fox News viewers?
Really,you are making a lot of assumptions about NPR listeners that you can't back up with facts. Let me know when your scientific poll of NPR viewers is completed. I'm sure many of us will be interested in the "Proof" of your claim.
>
> Not looking good for the LDT network....the "N"
> will no longer stand for "National" Rail Passenger
> Corporation, and NRPC will become NECRPC. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/15 09:06 by ATSF3751.

MaryMcPherson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It is worth noting that Brookings is a conservative "think tank" charged with pushing
> "free market" talking points.
========================================

It is not.  I feel that it is even a stretch to consider them "centrist."  Most would probably
also identify them as part of the Eastern establishment "who think it's okay to keep
chopping away the rest of the country, as long as they can see trains going in and
out of Washington Union Station."   -commenter R. W. Rynerson, on the NARP blog

"NPR often does a lousy job of identifying the background of think tanks or other groups
when quoting their experts."    -source: National Public Radio (!)


> Unfortunately in this era of austerity, NPR and PBS have had to find alternatative revenue
> streams.  Groups like Brookings and their backers are only too happy to help out, and the
> programming has started to reflect the funding.  You don't want to offend your funding source,
> now do you?
>
> The end result is programming that lets probably false claims go unchallenged.
>
> There is a saying I'm fond of: figures may not lie, but liars can figure.


NPR is free to express whatever political opinions it chooses...but does this excuse bias on the part of NPR when it
purports to express fact?

Has anyone written to NPR yet?

Getting on a producer's rolodex is an excellent outcome

Posted from Android

MaryMcPherson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It is worth noting that Brookings is a
> conservative "think tank" charged with pushing
> "free market" talking points.
 

LOL, you've got it backwards.  97% of their employees' donations go to Democrats.

darkcloud Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> MaryMcPherson Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > It is worth noting that Brookings is a
> > conservative "think tank" charged with pushing
> > "free market" talking points.
>  
>
> LOL, you've got it backwards.  97% of their
> employees' donations go to Democrats.

Brookings / other foundations are often where Democratic politicians, undersecretaries, etc go when their party is out of power. Republicans will often go to the Cato Institute, Hertiage Foundation, Federalist Society, etc. Democrats will also go to various colleges or the Clinton Global Initiative, from which many campaign and government staff members are being recruited.

Gives these folks of either party a paycheck, a DC office, staff, a platform from which to write, appear on MSNBC, NPR, ABC, Fox etc. Thousands of unemployed Democratic staff members on the Hill went to their foundations, lobbyists, etc when their party lost control of the Senate. Just like thousands of Republican staff members will when their party (eventually) loses control of one or the other house.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/22/15 10:18 by Lackawanna484.