Amtrak, Virginia Railway Express, and the Future of Privately Run Transit

Virginia Railway Express (VRE), the commuter network that links northwest Virginia to Washington D.C., today refused
a challenge by Amtrak to its decision to switch operating providers to
the U.S. arm of Keolis, a private French transit company.

Chicago's earliest rail transit line, pictured here, was run by a private company. (Photo: Franzosenbusch Project)

Although
Amtrak based its challenge on Keolis' inexperience operating American
rail lines, the latter company maintains a sizable transit presence as a subsidiary of SNCF, the French national high-speed railway.

Moreover, Keolis submitted a
markedly lower bid to take over VRE operations, undercutting Amtrak by
$500,000 on first-year transition costs and $300,000 in annual
operating costs. The French-owned company's winning bid totaled $85
million for five years, offering VRE workers the option of shifting to
another Amtrak line or staying on under the new management.

Looking
beyond the local implications of VRE's switch to Keolis, the new
contract is part of a larger trend toward transit privatization that has seen recent deals struck in New Orleans, Savannah, and Phoenix. The Obama administration is encouraging
greater use of public-private partnerships to help fund and operate
transport networks, making these agreements something of a portent.

But
substantial hurdles remain to the effective participation of private
companies in the business of transit. Independent auditors at the
Government Accountability Office submitted a report [PDF]
to Congress last week after taking a yearlong look at how the federal
transit funding process affects the ability of local officials to join
forces with the private sector.

And what the GAO found was a whole lot of hurdles, many of them unique to the cumbersome rules of Washington's New Starts transit program. From the report (emphasis mine):

Dulles Silver
Line sponsors also nearly lost the tax-increment financing that was
intended to fund the project, according to the GAO, when a full funding
agreement under New Starts took five years instead of the estimated two
or three. A similar situation arose in Houston, where a public-private
partnership on a local light rail network told auditors "that FTA
required them to submit and resubmit entire project documents to FTA
multiple times, which led to delays."

By contrast, private
participation in new transit projects on the international level has
included equity financing in addition to operations and maintenance of
the new lines. Citing World Bank data, the GAO found international
public-private transit projects in the United Kingdom, Thailand,
Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, France, Malaysia, the Philippines, and South
Africa.

Given the already considerable obstacles to
successful public-private partnerships in U.S. transit -- the need for
private companies to cede the right to hike fares, for one -- it would
seem grievously counter-productive to keep a system in place that
impedes the use of the same "creative" financing methods being urged by President Obama.

But
for now, the New Starts funding process remains in effect and providing
that disincentive.The GAO's report recommends that the FTA introduce
more flexibility into its current public-private partnership pilot
program and "better equip project sponsors" to take advantage of
alternative approaches, but large-scale change was not discussed.