NS’s Moorman: “Passenger trains are a very good thing—in the right circumstances.”

In recent years, the freight railroads’ perspective on hosting passenger trains on their lines has been leaning toward the favorable. Led by CEOs like David Goode of Norfolk Southern (now retired) and Matt Rose of BNSF, they’ve become cognizant of the benefits that could accrue to them by being good landlords.

That perspective hasn’t changed very much, but it’s now tinged with a bit more caution. The railroads have been beating back attempts at reregulation, trying to get their arms around a costly federal mandate to install Positive Train Control on most of their lines, and exercising extreme caution on widespread plans to turn some of their lines into shared-used freight/higher speed rail (HrSR) passenger corridors.

At Railway Age’s 17th Annual Passenger Trains on Freight Railroads Conference, held Oct. 18-19 in Washington, D.C., keynote speaker Wick Moorman (pictured), chief executive of Norfolk Southern, delivered an optimistic but expectedly cautious message. “Norfolk Southern has had a lot of success stories—VRE, North Carolina,” he began. “Our relationship with Amtrak is a strong one.”

“This is an unusually interesting time,” Moorman noted. “For the first time, we have a rail-friendly Administration. Freight railroads are profitable. There’s a growing awareness among policy makers that rail is important. But there’s not a whole lot of spare capacity. How do we respond to the increased impetus for more passenger trains?”

A main sticking point over HrSR is speed itself. While advocates talk about 110-125 mph, the railroads generally aren’t in favor of speeds “much beyond 90, and in rare instances, 100 mph,” Moorman said. “Beyond that, considering factors like track geometry, safety, and ride quality, it’s a bad idea.” However, “every corridor is different,” he offered. “It all depends on where you are. Every project must be considered on a case-by-case basis. You must understand what the railroad looks like, what the requirements are.”

Moorman said that $1.2 billion of the initial $8 billion in federal high speed rail grants affect Norfolk Southern lines. The routes in Virginia, such as Norfolk to Petersburg, “make sense,” he said. “The state got it right. Another good example is Chicago, the CREATE flyover to relieve a bad bottleneck. In North Carolina, we’ve had a relationship for some time now. There’s a lot of positive things going on, and we’re committed to making that work.”

Another major HrSR sticking point for the railroads is the set of guidelines the Federal Railroad Administration released in May (but has since pulled back on and is revamping). They “were surprising and frightening to us,” Moormann said. “They introduced an element of risk that we could not tolerate. We’re business people, and we work on the basis of risk and reward. The rewards of hosting passenger trains are small, and we’re never going to make a lot of money running them. That’s OK, but the risks have to be mitigated. Our main responsibility is to grow our freight business.”

PTC, said Moorman, “is well-intentioned, but a very bad piece of legislation.” The railroads have been talking to legislators and policy makers on Capitol Hill, with the intent of educating them on PTC’s high cost, poor cost-benefit ratio, and potential to drain capital from other areas like capacity expansion. “The uniform reaction on The Hill is ‘we didn’t understand that,’” Moorman said.

Moorman concluded his remarks by commenting on what he calls “the bipolar nature of Washington.” “Many of the policy makers on Capitol Hill understand us, but there is this ongoing drumbeat from a few shippers to reregulate the freight rail industry,” he said. “You should be aware of that. If we cannot invest in our infrastructure and make at least a moderate return on investment, we’re not going to be interested in running more passenger trains. We are committed to working with you, and I would urge all of you to make your voices heard.”

—William C. Vantuono, Editor