The second daily Amtrak train between Seattle and Vancouver will continue. Canadian Border Services has agreed to not charge Amtrak for customs and border inspection services. Unlike past announcements, this one seems to be permanent.
Crosscut has a good summary of the news:
Canada relents on cash demands for late Amtrak run from Seattle
Amtrak Cascades sign at Pacific Central
Transport Action BC members raised concerns about Canada Line service incidents that seriously affected its passengers, with no publicised action taken against the line’s private sector operator (InTransit BC / Protrans BC) by TransLink.
The Canada Line is, possibly, the most vigorously debated of the provincial government’s Public-Private Partnerships (P3) projects. Under the P3 model, a private sector concessionaire may finance, design build, and /or operate a specific project and assumes some project risk, in return for a guaranteed investment return. However, the concessionaire contracts to provide a certain level of service. Penalties should be considered by the project’s owner (in this case TransLink), if contractual obligations are not met. Essentially, the concessionaire does a detailed risk-analysis and decides how best to do the project while minimising its costs, maximising its returns and avoiding penalty payments.
There are two incidents that concerned Transport Action BC. Both incidents resulted in significant and lengthy disruptions to Canada Line passengers.
Canada Line train at Templeton Station
The first was the morning-long shutdown of the line on 26 November 2010 due to snow and ice build-up on the line’s 3rd rail. Transport Action BC felt that the Canada Line operator should have been able to handle a snow storm that, while uncommon, can reasonably be expected in a Vancouver winter. The fact that TransLink’s SkyTrain lines successfully operated under similar conditions shows that it could be done. Our concern was that the concessionaire had underestimated weather-related risks in the design of Canada Line elevated structures and inclement weather operating procedures. Under our understanding of a P3 scenario, this should have resulted in a penalty to the concessionaire.
The second incident was a series of late-night, service reductions to Canada Line service for track maintenance in February, March and April. Customers had to deal with reduced rapid transit service, shuttle trains or use the parallel bus route (albeit with more frequent service). This level of maintenance was a concern because the line was barely 1 ½ years old. Was there some underlying design flaw that resulted from the concessionaire’s risk analysis?
Transport Action BC sent letters to the TransLink Board of Directors after each of these incidents and received responses each time.
The first response indicated that the November 2010 shutdown was part of the two-year “learning curve” for the new transit project and penalties were not justified.
In addition to the track maintenance issue, our second letter questioned the rationale for a “learning curve” on a P3 contract. We felt that the concessionaire had made design decisions based on its risk-analysis. It should be responsible for those decisions and held accountable for any significant passenger impacts.
TransLink’s response to this letter stated its contract with InTransit BC / Protrans BC included a moratorium on performance penalties for the first two years (until 2011 August 12). This was a revelation to Transport Action BC and, we suspect, most members of the public are unaware that such a loophole exists in the Canada Line contract.
There are several concerns with this. What is the reason for this contract concession? It certainly violates the spirit of the P3 mantra as presented by P3 supporters. Do other P3 contracts include similar conditions? And, most importantly, how would the customers affected by Canada Line service failures feel if they were told that, other than some bad publicity, the line’s operator was not penalised for its failings?
Inside a Canada Line train on opening day Aug 2009
Yet again the Amtrak Cascades service between Vancouver and Seattle has been canceled due to a landslide along the track. This is the twentieth time this season! See below the picture for more information about this story.
Sign at Pacific Central says no trains.
Stories
The April issue of Trains magazine has a special 48 page report on fast trains. It describes new high-speed trains in China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Europe, relative speed, why some Americans can’t seem to embrace high-speed rail, a map showing the highest speed portions of tracks in the USA (70 mph (112 km/h) is considered high-speed for Amtrak) and many other articles.
A special article on Amtrak Cascades describes how Washington state has grown their system slowly and steadily over the past 10 years by focusing on small incremental improvements to increase the average speed over time, instead of trying to focus on top speeds. It is frequency, reliability and comfort that will bring people back to the train, not absolute top speed. This article especially should be required reading for folks at the BC Ministry of Transportation who are overly focused on roads.
At the last minute, a deal was made to continue the Amtrak train for another year. Canadian Border Services (CBSA) wanted to charge Amtrak $1500 per day ($550,000 per year) for border inspections. Amtrak refused to pay and was going to cancel the second daily Vancouver-Seattle train at the end of October if a deal wasn’t going to be made by October 15th. Transport Action has learned that the CBSA has agreed to a one year extension,
Thanks to everyone who spoke out on this issue including Transport Action members who contacted politicians, publicised the story on blogs, and talked to friends and colleagues. A special thanks go to Ian Burkheimer at PNWER who organised a group of tourism officials, government people, and public transport advocates. Ian brought together everyone with conference calls and emails to try to get the government to listen to common sense.
This issue isn’t dead yet, only delayed for another year. The fact that the CBSA made another extension instead of dropping the idea of cost recovery means that we haven’t heard the end of this story. At least it will give Amtrak Cascades another year to grow and improve the service over the next year.
Border fee needs to be waived for Amtrak trainRead more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Border+needs+waived+Amtrak+train/3595413/story.html#ixzz114izaBMS
Regarding the proposed cancellation of the second daily Amtrak train due to Canadian Border Services.
You can make a difference by sending a brief email or letter to one of the following people to make it known that the CBSA should back down on their proposed charge of $500,000 on Amtrak.
You may want to mention:
You can contact the following people:
Federal Ministers
Opposition Critics
Provincial Politicians
http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E
Please send your letter for free (no postage necessary), to any MP to the following address (NO POSTAGE NEEDED):
House of Commons
Ottawa, Canada
K1A 0A6
There are rumours that Canadian Border Services Agency may be getting ready to impose the $1,500 fee and kill the second train. …
In related news….
Amtrak Cascades reports highest second-quarter ridership since 1994
The Province Newspaper reports that “Daily trains from Seattle to Vancouver to Double”
Matthew
Rick