Amtrak Late to Station With Onboard WiFi

From the Wash Post's Comings & Goings col:

Okay, let's see if we've got this straight. You can get WiFi on a $20 bus traveling the Interstate 95 corridor from Washington to New York, but you can't get it on Amtrak. Really?

For years, travelers have wondered why the nation's premier rail company couldn't provide wireless Internet service to its passengers, especially on Acela trains, which are heavily patronized by business travelers. Most national train services in Europe provide WiFi, as does Canada's Via Rail.

But hey, don't give up hope yet.

"Presently Amtrak is testing systems on the Acela express train, and we hope to have some results on that front soon," said Cliff Cole, spokesman for the rail line. "Our goal is to provide WiFi service," he confirmed, although no launch date has been announced.

More here.

Isn't Joe Biden the Amtrak czar or something? Can he do something about this? Whatever else you can say about the nation's generally awful and useless national passenger rail service, the service between New York and Washington, D.C. is popular (actually has more passengers than employees on it!), on-time, and a decent (though pricier) alternative to flying between the two cities. If Amtrak did get WiFi, I suspect even fewer people would fly, given the massive hassles that entails.

But when your lunch—and at the Amtrak Cafe Car, that means a nuclear-meltdown bagel breakfast sandwich microwaved to the point where the egg, cheesy substance, and plastic wrapper have fused together in a novel sustance—is being eaten by cheapo bus operators (also good, but generally less reliable than flying or training), it's time to go to the big engine switching yard in the sky or something.

Reason on Amtrak here.

Hat tip: Alan Vanneman

Comments

[Chris Grieb]

Your description of the sandwich Amtrack sells is totally correct. It should probably be cut back to DC-NYC route.

[Alan Vanneman]

"novel sustance"? Is that a portmanteau of "substance" and "sustenance"? Congratulations, Nick, you're another fucking Lewis Carroll!

[Hugh Akston]

It's not that easy. Sure, AmTrack could just throw some wireless routers onto their passenger cars and let any old body access any old thing with them.

But what happens when someone uses the routers to access racist materials? Or terrorists use it to detonate some kind of intertube bomb? Or, worst of all, someone uses the government-provided web access to download pornography? People could get hurt. And by people I mean people who work for Amtrack, and by "get hurt" I mean be held accountable for their decisions.

No, no, this needs to be done right-with full Congressional approval. That way we can ensure that the routers will be purchased from the manufacturer with the right lobbyists, installed by the politically popular minorities with the loudest union, and feature last years technology accessible to the homeless, the mentally handicapped, and the non-english speaking. Even if no such people will ever ride that train or use the service.

Best of all, after it becomes an act of Congress, any semblance of accountability will dissolve like salt into the sea.

[Fluffy]

[Cough! Cough!]

There is significant competition for bus service in the Bos-Ny-Wash corridor.

If New York - Washington is anything like Boston - New York, the busses probably have WiFi already because if they didn't some Chinatown bus company would steal all their customers.

We just need Chinese-American entrepreneurs to get into the train business too.

[ed]

Hugh's satire above is probably more fact than fiction. Somewhere there's an Amtrak bureaucrat stealing time, visiting H&R, and chuckling.

[Adam]

"If New York - Washington is anything like Boston - New York, the busses probably have WiFi already because if they didn't some Chinatown bus company would steal all their customers."

The Chinatown buses are the ones who DO have wifi. After taking the Boltbus for $25 bucks from Washington to NYC, I'll never use amtrak or a plane to do that trip again. Boltbus blows both out of the water.

[not the real jb]

Isn't Joe Biden the Amtrak czar or something? Can he do something about this?

I know that was TIC, but shouldn't we remind everyone that Joe Biden couldn't remember "the website number" for recovery.org.

He's either completely tech illiterate, or he's so tech olde school he refuses to use DNS.

Biden + Amtrak = No wifi, obviously

[P Brooks]

For years, travelers have wondered why the nation's premier rail company couldn't provide wireless Internet service to its passengers

the nation's premier rail company

That weird rumbling sound you hear is James J Hill spinning in his grave.

[Allen]

Has Amtrak been slow to do this because they know they'll be forced to roll it out on all their trains?

[Rhywun]

We just need Chinese-American entrepreneurs to get into the train business too.

Over Amtrak's dead body.

[Ben Kenobi]

Since when is Amtrak ever on time? For the price of a NY-Boston or NY-DC ticket the service is absolutely horrible.

[John Thacker]

The Chinatown buses are the ones who DO have wifi. After taking the Boltbus for $25 bucks from Washington to NYC, I'll never use amtrak or a plane to do that trip again. Boltbus blows both out of the water.

BoltBus has stops in Chinatown, yes, but they're not what I would consider "Chinatown buses." For example, BoltBus is a 50/50 joint venture between Greyhound and Peter Pan Bus Lines, the two largest bus companies.

BoltBus is a competitive response to the Chinese-owned Chinatown buses.

[Chad]

Libertarians just refuse to understand transport systems, and how they scale non-linearly. The implication of this fact is that their utility scales much faster than their size (typically quadratically), which further implies that as the system gets bigger, each additional line generates more revenue than the previous ones while simultaneously increasing existing lines' revenues as well. The first few lines are never profitable. Neither is the 50th. But the 100th, or the 101st, or the 102nd? At some point you cross the threshold and the system becomes self-sustaining.

If you take a look at a country with a good rail network, like Japan, you see new lines being built all the time with private money. This isn't because of population density but rather that any new line piggy-backs on the existing network.

Government policy killed rail and massively subsidized its competition. This has turned out to be a regrettable mistake that we will spend decades un-doing.

[John Thacker]

In fairness, Amtrak is generally cheaper than flying on the Northeast Corridor, though the cheapest specials flying are cheaper than the Amtrak prices (especially Acela) at popular times. But by price Amtrak is a flying competitor for the most part.

Given the air traffic congestion in the NYC airports (and what that causes to the rest of the country), trains fast enough to kill off the air shuttles wouldn't be a terrible idea, though pricing landing slots would also be a sensible one.

Politics always forces Amtrak to keep alive money-losing routes elsewhere, though, including the long-distance ones. I've had conversations with friends that insist that it's absolutely necessary to have a "national train system" for some reason, and I've never understand the argument. Not when people who live in less-dense areas could take buses, for example.

[John Thacker]

The first few lines are never profitable. Neither is the 50th. But the 100th, or the 101st, or the 102nd? At some point you cross the threshold and the system becomes self-sustaining.

No Chad, this is backwards. The first shinkansen line in Japan, Tokyo-Kyoto, is profitable. The subsequent ones aren't. Just like how the NYC-Boston Northeast Corridor is profitable, but others aren't. There is some synergy effect, sure, but the system doesn't become "self-sustaining."

If you take a look at a country with a good rail network, like Japan, you see new lines being built all the time with private money.

Oh, you see some lines, like the Minato Mirai line in Yokohama that are new, but there have also been a lot of old lines shut down for being unprofitable, particularly after the Kokuren became Japan Railways through privatization.

Government policy killed rail and massively subsidized its competition.

Subsidies? No, it didn't. Rail has been massively subsidized, on a per passenger-mile basis. Roads and drivers have been net contributors through the gas tax, though Obama and the Democratic Congress have been using general funds for roads through the stimulus and last year's transportation bill, trying to change that and subsidize roads. (Republicans wouldn't raise the gas tax, but refused to spend from non-gas tax sources. Democrats won't raise the gas tax, but happily spend general funds on roads.)

There is government policy that helped kill rail, but it's mostly government safety policy through the FRA that requires extremely high level of safety devices (higher than elsewhere in the world) to travel at high speed, despite rail's safety record. Preventing new rail projects now is mostly due to the National Environmental Policy Act and its requirements of long Environmental Impact Studies.

[R C Dean]

Chad is trying to apply network analysis to rail lines. It doesn't work, because the cost structures are flipped. IT networks have their costs front-loaded, while each additional node costs virtually nothing and adds value for high marginal returns. Rail lines have high fixed costs, so adding additional lines costs a lot, for declining marginal returns.

[P Brooks]

I've had conversations with friends that insist that it's absolutely necessary to have a "national train system" for some reason, and I've never understand the argument.

There is currently a consortium of special interest groups agitating for [federally fun ded] passenger rail service across southern Montana. What a bunch of fucking imbeciles. The government could just give everybody a new Chevrolet and a thousand gallons of gas and come out ahead.

[P Brooks]

Libertarians just refuse to understand transport systems, and how they scale non-linearly. The implication of this fact is that their utility scales much faster than their size (typically quadratically), which further implies that as the system gets bigger, each additional line generates more revenue than the previous ones while simultaneously increasing existing lines' revenues as well.

Nice gibberish, Chad; did you hear that from Al Gore?

[Ike]

I'm not sure Amtrak takes longer than flying, when you calculate the time it takes to get out to JFK from Manhattan vs. Penn Station, the hour early you have to be there for "security", and the 20 minutes you have to wait for your luggage.

Train travel really is much nicer than air for the DC to Boston corridor

[Chad]

No Chad, this is backwards. The first shinkansen line in Japan, Tokyo-Kyoto, is profitable. The subsequent ones aren't. Just like how the NYC-Boston Northeast Corridor is profitable, but others aren't. There is some synergy effect, sure, but the system doesn't become "self-sustaining."

Actually, the Sanyo line is profitable as well, and the others lose only small amounts of money - much less than the Tokaido Osaka/Tokyo line makes. Either way, such a simplistic analysis ignores the synergy effects. These "unprofitable" lines increase ridership on the profitable lines (making them more profitable!) and on the feeder lines, as well as business at the stores, restaurants, etc outside the stations, which are often rail-company owned. JR isn't in business to lose money, and they aren't. They are quite a healthy company, and Japan's rail system is quite self-sustaining.

Subsidies? No, it didn't. Rail has been massively subsidized, on a per passenger-mile basis. Roads and drivers have been net contributors through the gas tax, though Obama and the Democratic Congress have been using general funds for roads through the stimulus and last year's transportation bill, trying to change that and subsidize roads. (Republicans wouldn't raise the gas tax, but refused to spend from non-gas tax sources. Democrats won't raise the gas tax, but happily spend general funds on roads.)

The biggest subsidies occurred back the 50s and 60s, which paid for the most expensive elements of any transport network (land and basic infrastructure). These are now fully amortized, making roads look cheap. However, roads are still subsidized as well, as most state and local spending is not paid for with gas taxes. Nor are pollution costs fully accounted for with respect to driving, nor are other externalities related to oil procurement.

Just imagine if we had built a massive rail network in the 50s as well. It would also be fully amortized and very profitable.

And yes, RC Dean, this is network theory. Coincidentally, I happened to have a conversation on this topic last weekend with someone who did his PhD work on modeling suburban growth. He also advocates a strong rail network. Why am I not surprised.

[spambot]

It all sounds good Chad but the reality is there are more people interested in using the Golden Dollar coin than riding light rail for the simple reason they prefer their car. Why would I take a train from Atlanta to Chattanooga? I am still going to need a car when I get there. So then I have to rent one. WHY??? I can just drive it.

Rail is an expensive non starter. I wish it wasn't that way but it is.

[R C Dean]

And yes, RC Dean, this is network theory.

IT networking dynamics can't be transferred whole to train networks, Chad, because of the different cost models each has.

Color me shocked, BTW, that a grad student would be all in favor of light rail.

[PapayaSF]

Let's not forget that Amtrak is unionized. WiFi is not in the union contracts, so it's probably tied up in negotiations: is it installed and maintained by electricians or maintenance crews, etc. etc.

And Chad, if your massive rail network existed, it wouldn't be profitable not just for the reasons mentioned above, but because it would be unionized. Haven't you noticed that all unionized industries eventually shrink or collapse? Railroads, automobiles, steel, shipping, etc.

[Chad]

IT networking dynamics can't be transferred whole to train networks, Chad, because of the different cost models each has.

Ummm, networking theory is general and applies to many things, including IT, social networks, neurology, and transportation systems. I am not applying an IT-specific variation, and I have no idea why you think that I am.

I am comparing roads and trains, which have the SAME up-front capital requirements. It is precisely because of this that roads have such an advantage, as we paid those up-front costs long ago. Just imagine if we had built a world-class train network with public money while ripping up almost all the roads, and then claimed building new roads is just too expensive because it costs so much to move houses, businesses, etc.

[Unsubstantive Kurt]

the nation's premier rail company

Is that like being America's premier soccer team?

[Unsubstantive Kurt]

I happened to have a conversation on this topic last weekend with someone who did his PhD work on modeling suburban growth. He also advocates a strong rail network.

His name wouldn't happen t be 'Joe', would it?

[Xmas]

FYI, AirTran has started offering WiFi on their planes. It's a bit expensive, $6 to $8, but about the same cost as connecting in a Starbucks or in an Airport.

[R C Dean]

I am not applying an IT-specific variation, and I have no idea why you think that I am.

Because the model that you seem to be relying on assumes that additional lines add value. That is a pretty safe assumption for IT, but not for rail.

I am comparing roads and trains, which have the SAME up-front capital requirements.

You seem to be comparing the railbed itself with roads, rather than looking at trains and passenger lines.

My point is that, even without laying any new rails, adding a new passenger line costs a shitload of money just in rolling stock.

The first passenger route you put in will likely be your most profitable, with additional lines presumably having lower (and lower) returns, while still requiring significant investments.

Are there networking benefits, so that the return on adding a new line is likely to be better if it is part of a larger system? Sure. But you still have large startup and fixed costs for passenger lines, so it is hardly a no-brainer that adding lines with lower and lower rates of return will add to your bottom line.

[P Brooks]

Just imagine if we had built a massive rail network in the 50s as well. It would also be fully amortized and very profitable.

Good one, Chad. We had a rail network in the fifties; unfortunately, "we" were too busy making it impossible for the railroads to actually make money.

[PapayaSF]

Networking theory ultimately fails to justify passenger railroads in the U.S. because: 1) the U.S. is too big, 2) railroads can never go as many places as roads, 3) railroads have very restricted schedules compared to independent vehicles, 4) railroads have limited capacity for passengers with large amounts of cargo: you can't buy 10 bags of potting soil at the garden center and bring them home on the train, and 5) the aforementioned unions make it unprofitable in any case.

[MattXIV]

The first few lines are never profitable. Neither is the 50th. But the 100th, or the 101st, or the 102nd? At some point you cross the threshold and the system becomes self-sustaining.

The first line should be the one connecting the destinations with highest demand, so it should have the best revenue to operating costs ratio. It's theoretically possible for a network with unprofitable first two nodes to become profitable eventually, but the more profitable the initial nodes are, the more likely the network is to be profitable at any given higher numer of nodes. This is a particularly bad indicator in rail since network effects are much more limited in rail because unlike IT, the distance between the nodes is a signficant factor in operating costs, which makes profitable networks a function of geography and population distribution. The ROI should peak and then begin to decline as the network expands.

Also, we need to invest more in rail lines does not automatically follow from the fact that rail lines have network effects. 56k modems have network effects, but that doesn't mean that if we just keep building them they'll keep getting worth more. You need to actually do cost benefit analysis showing profitable nodes to add, since even nodes that have significant network effect benefits may not be profitable if the expense of operating them is too high and even if there are profitable nodes to be added, the analysis is necessary to identify them. As there are many lines that aren't even meeting operating costs (largely because of excess capacity) that it would benefit Amtrack's profitability to cut at the present, we may reasonably conclude the network is overextended and/or the lines are being allocated ineffeciently, neither of which implies further investment is a good idea.

If you take a look at a country with a good rail network, like Japan, you see new lines being built all the time with private money. This isn't because of population density but rather that any new line piggy-backs on the existing network.

Japan's population density is over 10x the US, which I'd very much expect to make a difference on how many useful rail lines could be constructed.

[John Thacker]

Either way, such a simplistic analysis ignores the synergy effects. These "unprofitable" lines increase ridership on the profitable lines (making them more profitable!) and on the feeder lines, as well as business at the stores, restaurants, etc outside the stations, which are often rail-company owned. JR isn't in business to lose money, and they aren't. They are quite a healthy company, and Japan's rail system is quite self-sustaining.

Sure, there are synergistic effects, as I said. But that doesn't mean that every single line makes the system more profitable on the whole-- otherwise JR would not have closed many unprofitable lines since privatization since, as you note, they're not in business to lose money.

Even in Japan, people don't take rail for trips in excess of 500 miles, according to the Japanese Ministry of Transportation's own figures. People fly. If Japanese prefer to fly rather than ride for trips from Fukuoka to Tokyo, then why would rail work for long distances in the US? It's a 90 minute flight from Fukuoka to Tokyo Haneda, and a 313 minute shinkansen ride. Even taking security (which is easier for Japanese domestic flights than in the US) into account, it's considerably faster to fly.

Of course, even in the case of JR you have huge government subsidies to capital costs, which it then transfers to JR, which makes an operating profit. If one counted those as subsidies, then roads look even better, since the vast majority of the capital costs are paid for by gas taxes (and at the federal level roads and gas taxes are net contributors). You can't compare operating profits only for rail to operating costs plus gas tax paid capital costs for roads. JR is more similar to things like the Indiana Toll Road, where taxes build the road and a private company buys the concession.

Building a line from B to C generally makes the line from A to B more profitable as people take trips from somewhere along A to B to somewhere along B to C, sure. But that doesn't mean that the additional benefit it generates is actually guaranteed to cover the cost. Surely you grant that eventually some proposed line is so useless that the additional business it generates on other lines isn't worth the cost of building it?

The reason that RC Dean brings up IT networking theory is that in a situation where the marginal fixed costs of a new node are very low, as in IT, the network effects dominate. But in rail, that's not really the case; new rail stock is expensive, operating costs are significant, and the costs of actually laying high speed track are particularly expensive.

It's certainly the case that, e.g., the proposed Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor from DC to Charlotte is more profitable since the Northeast Corridor exists, and that building it would help the Northeast Corridor some.

But just because synergies exist doesn't mean that the synergies are large enough to justify building in all cases, and your hand-waving won't change that. In the case of Amtrak's long-distance trains, it's unlikely that the added business on other Northeast Corridor trains justifies their existence.

[lexslamman]

Idiots. The reason we don't have WiFi on Amtrak is because conservative republicans have been trying to destroy Amtrak for the last 30 years. It is a miracle we have any intercity passenger rail left. Good thing Republicans are incompetent, because now we have something to build our high-speed rail infrastructure upon.

[John Thacker]

lexslamman,

I guarantee you that if conservative Republicans had had their way, and Amtrak had shed its most egregiously money-losing routes and concentrated on the Northeast Corridor, perhaps as a private operator, we would have WiFi on Amtrak. It's the "fans" who have been fighting to "save" Amtrak who have decided that it needs to limp along as a money-losing pit.

I fully expect GM and Chrysler to be the same.

[Tulpa]

Far be it from me to defend Amtrak, but I haven't noticed any WiFi service on our privately owned airlines either.

[TickleStick]

You know why trains suck? Because you can't take your dog on one. If I want to go from Boston to DC with Heather, my delightfully charming German Shepherd dog, I can't even bring her in her veri-kennel and have her travel as a checked bag. I can do that on an airplane and I can do that in my F-150, but not on the freakin' train.

Amtrak hates dogs, which is extremely un-American.

[R C Dean]

Far be it from me to defend Amtrak, but I haven't noticed any WiFi service on our privately owned airlines either.

Northwest does. Dunno about the others.

[Chad]

But just because synergies exist doesn't mean that the synergies are large enough to justify building in all cases, and your hand-waving won't change that. In the case of Amtrak's long-distance trains, it's unlikely that the added business on other Northeast Corridor trains justifies their existence.

Surely synergies cannot justify building in all cases. My point is that it is very possible that we can find ourselves in a situation where there is no new line that could be built that would be profitable, yet a much larger profitable system could be built. If the size of the profitable system outside the scope of a single company or consortium, as it likely is, we could be trapped in a sub-optimal local maximum. Imagine that lines 1-10 would be profitable because of the very high density of the places they would be connecting, but lines 11-49 would be unprofitable because the density would be two low while synergies not strong enough. Yet at line 50, profitability re-emerges due to strengthening synergy, peaking at line 250. Now given such an example, it is very possible that only the 10-line system would be built, because the jump to higher profitability would require such a large investment that no private organization could make it.

In Europe and Japan, the governments built the system up to a size large enough to push towards the higher maximum. In the US, we ripped up the lines and massively subsidized the competition. The result is a failed system.

As fuel prices go higher, trains will only gain in advantage over private cars and especially airplanes. The current "break-even" distance for high-speed train vs air is around 500 miles, as you noted, but will only grow longer as oil becomes more scarce. It is almost certain that oil prices will rise faster than electricity prices, as both our coal reserves and renewable options are more applicable to electricity than liquid fuels. Therefore, we should be planning on increased interest in trains, not the reverse.

[TrickyVic]

It's not a bad idea as long as you don't mind the taxpayer funding it. Because that's the only way it will happen. Amtrak doesn't have cash.

I use train all the time, NYC subway, Long Island Railroad, MetroNorth, NJ Transit, SEPTA. They are great if you have a friend picking you up that has transportation once you're there.

I've taken Amtrak many times, until their prices went up. Now it's cheaper to fly most places.

[TickleStick]

1) 1-10
2) 11-49
3) 50
4) ???
5) Profit!

[John Thacker]

Imagine that lines 1-10 would be profitable because of the very high density of the places they would be connecting, but lines 11-49 would be unprofitable because the density would be two low while synergies not strong enough. Yet at line 50, profitability re-emerges due to strengthening synergy, peaking at line 250.

Theoretically possible, but in reality almost impossible with a linear system like rail where the travel time between points is a real issue, especially when alternatives like flying exist with higher fixed costs (security, etc.) of traveling but much higher sustained speeds. This has entirely failed to exist anywhere where rail has been built. In Europe and Japan, rail in general was profitable before the high speed rail was built. Indeed, in Japan, the regular low speed rail was more profitable than the overall current system, and it remains much more significant to Japanese daily life than the shinkansen.

Given a rail line from DC to Boston, the addition of upgrades along the New Orleans-Atlanta-DC line will have a limited network effect on the DC-Boston line, and there will be almost none on the NYC-Boston portion affected by the New Orleans-Atlanta portion of the line.

Again, you must be coming from the perspective of IT and network effects there, where connections are made at the speed of light, an we have different types of network topology. Train lines have much more of a linear bus type of network topology, which is not as conducive to network effects; if they don't take the fastest point-to-point route between two cities, then they lose out to air travel. (Just as traditional hub-and-spoke air carriers lose out to point-to-point LCCs like Southwest.)

Particularly when you're admitting that few people, even in Japan, use rail for trips over 500 miles, the idea of having 50-250 different lines that would have synergies with each other is ridiculous. (And some of them would steal traffic for each other, in the way that upgrading Amtrak's Crescent corridor would steal traffic from an upgraded SEHSR, as Charlotte and Greensboro travelers went to DC via the straighter path.) The 50th line would not have synergies with all of the previous 49 lines, nor even most. The 500 mile distance limitation and air alternative-- and the two-dimensional manifold that is the Earth's surface-- limits the size of the synergies, and prevents true increasing returns from appearing.

[warren1949]

I think it's amazing that people actually fly when they don't need to.

[Mike Laursen]

Good thing Republicans are incompetent, because now we have something to build our high-speed rail infrastructure upon.

I'm trying to reconcile this statement on your part with what I'm actually witnessing with my own eyes.

I live near a traditional passenger rail station in Northern California. In the planning discussions of California's new high-speed rail, the fact that there's an existing right-of-way isn't making projections of the cost of constructing high-speed rail project cheaper in any way. There is no coherent plan on how to run the high-speed rail in the same space as the traditional rail service, which everyone wants to retain, except that it will almost certainly involve expensive and disruptive grade separations and sound walls.

[R C Dean]

Oh, c'mon, Mike. We all know there must still be a few Republicans in California. It must be their fault!

[John Thacker]

Mike,

Good point. Of course it gets back to the question of whether when we say "high speed rail" we mean 110-150mph on existing right of way, or something like TGV/shinkansen speeds. The latter generally requires all new track, which means all new land acquisition and all sorts of Environmental Impact Statements. (Certainly other countries have done it on separate tracks; Japan even has a different size railway gauge for the shinkansen.) It's also really expensive.

The former is cheaper, though not as fast, and requires various complexities to run both types of trains without interfering too much.

If we're only spending $8 billion, then we can accomplish mild upgrades throughout the country that won't waste too much and will be useful to freight as well. Or, we could spend all the $8 billion on a fraction of the California plan.

[GILMORE]

though pricier...

I dont recall the exact #s, but when factoring in, say, cabs to and from NYC and DC airports, I seem to remember the train wins out, albeit by a narrow margin. I almost always take the train to DC when going down on business, largely for the convenience, speed, comfort, and most importantly = Not having to deal with retarded TSA screeners.

[Mike Laursen]

John T., you'll be interested to hear that the latest news is that the local committee of the Light Rail Authority wants to be exempted from the environmental impact review, because they don't want to have to talk to any of the local Bay Area city governments about their plans.

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