Planes to the trains
Coming to America?

It's happening in Europe, and just beginning to gain attention here. Don't be surprised if, one day, you settle in for a flight and never leave the ground.

By James P. RePass, for Railway Age

	Amtrak's Acela Express high speed trains serving the Northeast Corridor figure prominently in an SAS Airlines plan to make travel easier for international customers on SAS flights to and from Europe via Newark International Airport. Short-hop passengers to destinations like Boston and Washington could be using the train in the near future. Photo by William C. Vantuono

Seasoned travelers already know that when they fly to one of Europe's smaller cities and need to change planes at Paris, Frankfurt, London, and a growing number of other airports, the second hop of their flight may be a train, not a plane.

For example, when you buy a ticket on United Flight 1021 from Washington to Lyons, the French connection used to be a Paris-Lyons plane. Today, your second ticket is a "code share" with French National Railways. Instead of an Airbus, a TGV high speed trainset awaits you at Paris-which you pick up right at Charles DeGaulle Airport's train station outside of Paris.

Even more radical to Americans abroad is that when you call Air France to buy a ticket on the route from Paris to Brussels, you will learn that your "plane" leaves from the CDG train station, and it is a Thalys TGV that gets you to downtown Brussels much faster than flying.

But perhaps most interesting of all for those interested in what appears to be the ongoing revival of passenger rail in America is the ongoing effort-still in the planning stage-by SAS Airlines to market U.S. East Coast cities as part of one travel package.

SAS and Amtrak are now working to see if they can devise a way to make travel easier for their international customers utilizing SAS flights to and from Europe via Newark, and the new Amtrak Acela Express high speed trains serving the Washington-New York-Boston Northeast Corridor.

"We are still at the planning stage and the details are still not yet worked out," says SAS General Manager-North and Central America Joergen Hoe-Knudsen, "but when the [NEC high speed rail] system is set up, that is the direction we want to go."

SAS is already selling through tickets from Newark to destinations in Scandinavia beyond their usual Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo destinations, where the second part of the ticket is actually a rail ticket for trains operated by Swedish and Danish state railways, replacing shorter flights with rail trips.

How soon will the Acela connection become the U.S. counterpart for air-rail links to SAS inbound international flights? "When the monorail from Newark Airport to the new train station on the Northeast Corridor (near Newark) is completed sometime next year," says Hoe-Knudsen.

These air-rail links are not well integrated technologically. Although called a code share, it is really a somewhat cruder system. "When you get on the train, the conductor doesn't lift your airline ticket. You have to exchange the airline ticket for a rail ticket at the station, then board the train," according to interlining expert Stephen Boedinghaus of United Airlines. "The rail systems have different internal systems than the airlines," he says, "and there is no way for them to communicate."

"What we are doing is a stopgap right now," says Boedinghaus. "When the customer shows up [with an airline-issued ticket], they get a rail ticket. The reason is that one airline knows that another airline flying a 737 has a certain seating arrangement on that plane, and can issue tickets that mesh directly. But they don't have well- defined internal maps of the equipment consists used by Europe's highly- developed intercity network, so true code-sharing is still some years away."

SAS is a bit further along than that, at least in Europe, where the conductor can indeed take the airline-issued ticket directly. However, for the most part, true code-sharing is still a technological issue.

Indeed, according to David Briginshaw of Railway Age's sister publication International Railway Journal in England, this trend is going to accelerate. "The problem is a physical lack of space and roadway network congestion around airports, so there is a big push to make air-rail connections," he says. "The high speed rail network in Europe is rapidly falling into place." Briginshaw sees a true HSR network in Europe within three years.

Of course, most Americans who travel think Europe already has a HSR network, but the best is yet to come. In Germany, Lufthansa has worked closely with DB (German Rail) for a number of years, even going so far as to buy a passenger train and emblazoning it with the Lufthansa logo. Now, however, for certain trips connecting at Frankfurt it merely secures and sells sufficient seats. As frequencies increase at Frankfurt's new InterCityExpress rail station at Frankfurt Airport over the next few years, air travel is expected to simply disappear between some cities, such as Frankfurt-Cologne, where three ICE trains an hour will make air travel obsolete.

According to International Air-Rail Association Director Andrew Sharp, Lufthansa and DB actually designed the new air-rail link in a deliberate "strategy of cooperation" that will yield major shifts of air travel to ground-based HSR over the next few years. "With three Cologne-Frankfurt trains an hour taking just 58 minutes by 2002, and seven Frankfurt-Stuttgart trains by March 2001, flights will simply disappear," he says.

Driven by the increasing fuel, labor, and capital costs of operating large jets to go short distances, and the wear and tear on equipment and crews of multiple landing and take off (LTO) cycles within relatively short time frames-in other words, for the same reason they do it in Europe-some major U.S. air carriers are looking at the option of selling a flight's second or third leg as a train ride, and Amtrak is working with several to make that happen.

But aside from SAS's ambitious plans, only one U.S. airline, Continental Airlines, is actively working with Amtrak today. On an as-needed basis (mostly in bad weather), Continental switches passengers hubbed through Newark to Amtrak Northeast Corridor trains, rather than continue them on short-hop flights to some Northeast cities. In addition, Continental is looking to permanently replace short Newark-Philadelphia hops with Amtrak trains.

While not in place yet, Continental says that, for strategic and cost reasons, it plans to replace turboprop planes with jets, and those are better suited to longer flights. Where Amtrak service is available, it may not only be a less-costly alternative to a short-hop airplane ride, it may well be more convenient because it will deliver its customers, in most cases, directly to a downtown area, where many train stations are already located.

Says Continental Director-Alliance Marketing Cyndi Hunter, "We are still in the preliminary stages of building a meaningful intermodal network. We have developed an alternate re-accommodation process in Newark where customers are provided rail transportation to any destination Amtrak serves in the case of irregular operations. We will be expanding that program to other outstations (Baltimore-Washington International, for example) for the winter operations season. Continental does not currently provide air to rail connections but we are exploring that opportunity."

Amtrak does not want to identify other domestic airline partners other than Continental but will say that work is ongoing with "several" airlines to see if similar plane to the train arrangements can be created at BWI, Reagan National, and other airports that provide close proximity to rail.

One ambitious air-rail project making progress is the North-South Rail Link in Boston, which would connect North and South stations in that city but more important would instantly create one of the most flexible regional rail systems in the U.S. by providing service to virtually all of New England and tying directly into the NEC. In conjunction with the extension of rail service to Portland, Me., (beginning this winter) down to booming Green Airport in Providence (where the NEC is only 1,200 feet from the air terminal), and Worcester Airport, the Rail Link would connect Boston, Providence, Worcester, Manchester, Portland, and dozens of other towns and cities in the region to regional airports, enabling air carriers to sell through-tickets.

Freight connections?

As important as passenger air rail links may be, freight air-rail links are also getting attention, especially for high-value cargo. Major airports are becoming so land-bound and congested that using smaller regional airports for freight distribution makes sense, provided that those airports have good air-rail facilities.

One of the more interesting projects for an air-rail freight connection is only at the proposal stage, but is backed by a transportation-savvy Congressman John Cooksey (R-La.). Cooksey is proposing a $40 million combined air/rail/truck/bus multi-modal facility for Monroe, La., to be funded by FAA and local monies, at a former air base now used as a regional airport. He was inspired by the highly successful Hunstville, Ala., multi-modal facility built over 20 years ago that serves large freight jetliners with direct rail access and has attracted much regional industry. The Hunstville facility has more than 12 miles of rail line on-property. One user is Mercedes-Benz, which flies in containerized parts to Huntsville that then move to its SUV plant at Tuscaloosa. "It's not about air or rail or trucking," says Cooksey. "It's about economic development."

James P. RePass is President and CEO of The National Corridors Initiative, a rail advocacy organization (www.nationalcorridors.org)

Planes to the trainsComing to America?

It's happening in Europe, and just beginning to gain attention here. Don't be surprised if, one day, you settle in for a flight and never leave the ground.

Freight connections?

Planes to the trains
Coming to America?