What Happened to Speed?: Scheduled Speeds and Travel Times of North American Passenger Trains, 1965 to 2015

Abstract

Most larger North American railroads provided intercity passenger service until the 1970s, when the industry experienced a difficult restructuring period. During that decade, the U.S. and Canadian federal governments took responsibility for intercity passenger trains while financially troubled railroads (especially in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest) were downgrading lines and deferring maintenance. Although railroads returned to financial health in the 1980s and 1990s largely because of deregulation, track capacity was substantially reduced compared with the 1960s level, and most lines were optimized for freight service rather than passenger service. To assess the effects of these changes on scheduled travel times and speeds, intercity passenger timetables for specific routes were examined for selected years between 1965 and 2015. Although certain long-distance routes were scheduled for noticeably slower speeds in 2015 than in 1965, other scheduled speeds decreased only marginally. On long-distance routes and in corridors outside the northeastern United States, track capacity reductions, freight train interference, or both seem to have placed downward pressure on scheduled speeds. Scheduled speeds have increased, or at worst, decreased slightly on lines that have received substantial investment. Massive federal investment in the Northeast Corridor since the 1970s has resulted in considerably faster schedules.