Corridor Capital LLC
INDOT’S DEVELOPER-DESIGNATE FOR THE HOOSIER STATE
Company founded in Chicago in 2004
• Chairman: James E. Coston, an equipment-leasing attorney and cofounder of the Twentieth Century Railroad Club, which produced and
marketed more than 50 chartered passenger trains 1981-1986.
• Scott Braverman: Successful entrepreneur specializing in hospitality
businesses in California and Illinois.
Original business plan: Help states that sponsor
trains to “unbundle” the Amtrak service package
• Buy some of Amtrak’s used rolling stock.
• Rebuild and modernize cars for state-supported corridor trains.
• Customize car exteriors and interiors to reflect state sponsorship
(branding).
• Lease or sell equipment to states.
• Use local catering contractor to provide food-&-beverage service.
• Retain Amtrak as train operator.
Discussions were held with California and Wisconsin.
Second business plan
• Acquire the former Santa Fe Railway Hi-Level cars that Amtrak sold to private
collectors in 2001.
• “Tube out” cars down to basic stainless-steel shells.
• Rebuild to contemporary standards with modern interiors and electro-mechanical
systems, daytime corridor seating configuration, ADA-compliant rest rooms.
• Sell or lease cars to state DOTs for state-supported corridor service
• Provide contract maintenance, food-&-beverage service, Wi-Fi, “branded” exteriors
and interiors.
Hi-Level cars were purchased or optioned,
are still stored outside St. Louis
…and then came Indiana
CC had never offered to rebuild Hi-Levels for Indiana because…
• state was viewed as indifferent/hostile to passenger trains
• Amtrak provided Cardinal/Hoosier State service free
• No state support meant CC had no state customer for CC equipment
Passenger Rail Investment & Improvement
Act of 2009 Changed Everything
• Indiana would lose the Hoosier State if it did not contribute financial
support.
• Community movement to sponsor Hoosier State broke out.
• INDOT agreed to share support with communities, but only if Hoosier
State was opened up to private-sector management.
• Bids submitted by four competitors.
• Corridor Capital won.
What will Corridor Capital provide? I.
• Rolling stock (but not the Hi-Levels; they still have not been rebuilt; a 3-4car train would take 12 months to deliver; work could be done in Indiana
once INDOT authorizes a long-term fleet-development plan).
• Conventional, single-level cars from will come from an existing privately
owned pool. All have been certified to Amtrak 110-mph standards and
have been used for chartered moves behind regularly scheduled Amtrak
trains.
• Some cars will undergo a quick reconfiguration to meet ADA rest-room
guidelines. Wi-Fi and electronic passenger-information screens will be
installed in each car. Luggage towers will be installed between boarding
doors and seating area. All interior surfaces, including carpets, wall
coverings and upholstery, will be replaced. Cars will be Indiana-branded.
What will Corridor Capital Provide? II.
Motive power:
Two diesel passenger locomotives, one to be used as a spare, will be
leased from a locomotive dealer. Compliant locomotives now coming
off lease from commuter authorities, are available.
What will Corridor Capital Provide? III.
Locomotive and car maintenance. Our maintenance sub-contractor,
RailPlan, Inc., of Baltimore, is the most respected private-sector
provider of passenger-train maintenance in North America, currently
caring for the fleets of three government-sponsored passenger-rail
operations:
• North Carolina Dept. of Transportation Piedmont service (2 daily
intercity passenger trains connecting Raleigh and Charlotte)
• Virginia Railway Express, providing commuter service into
Washington, D.C., over two routes originating in Virginia
• MARC, the State of Maryland’s commuter-rail service into Baltimore
and Washington
Structure: Who reports to whom
• Corridor Capital will be INDOT’s prime contractor for delivering
Hoosier State service.
• Amtrak will remain as the operator of the trains—providing train and
engine crews, dispatching, and statutory access to host railroads and
liability coverage.
• Amtrak will be one of the sub-contractors reporting to the prime
contractor, Corridor Capital.
• Other sub-contractors, including RailPlan, a potential food-service
provider and a prospective computer-reservations-and-ticketing
contractor, will report to Corridor Capital.
The Mission: First make today’s Hoosier State
better, then build on it with:
• Food service
• Business-class service
• Additional frequencies—first seven days a week on its own timetable
not tied to the Cardinal’s—then a second frequency, then maybe
extensions.
Everything depends on improving the existing 4-day-a-week schedule
first by rolling out a handsome new train on Oct. 1 and running it right.
If that nice new train attracts more passengers, it legitimizes additional
improvements.
Not all needed improvements are under CC
control
• Infrastructure restricts train to 60 mph—we can’t fix that. State,
federal funding and agreement with CSX needed to upgrade track.
• Routing between Dyer and downtown Chicago is too circuitous--need
to switch onto Canadian National’s former Illinois Central main line at
Harvey for shorter route saving 20 minutes’ running time. Must
install two power switches before reroute can happen.
• Fastest trains between Chicago and Indianapolis in “good old days”
took 3 hours and 40 minutes. Megabus on the Interstate takes 3:15.
The train has to equal that time to compete.
The stakes for Indiana are huge: a history and
geography lesson
Really good passenger-train service is a bigger deal than most people in
Indiana imagine, with a potentially huge payoff in economic development,
job growth and new business opportunities.
The reasons are historical and geographic.
• Historically, Indiana never had really good passenger-rail service. The state
never was able to exploit its position on the railroad map effectively [show
old timetables here]
• Geographically, Indiana is an ideal state for the kind of passenger-rail
service and technology that are now emerging—fast, daytime corridor
trains. [show map of Indiana and neighboring states here].
Railroad timetables betrayed Indiana’s needs. The
trains ran through Indiana but did not serve
Indiana.
Even in the so-called “Golden Age” of passenger trains, the railroads
did not treat Indiana well.
• The best trains were scheduled to cross Indiana at night on their way
from Chicago and St. Louis to the East or from Chicago to the South.
• Indianapolis’s hub position was not acknowledged. Trains rarely
originated there; they just passed through on their way to
somewhere else.
20th-century railroad service did not allow
Indianapolis business travelers to schedule a oneday out-of-town trip
• Only the Monon had a convenient early a.m. departure for Chicago—
6:30 a.m. (with arrival at 10:35 a.m.)
• The New York Central’s first train for Cincinnati didn’t even arrive from
Chicago till 2 p.m.
• The Pennsylvania Railroad’s first train to Louisville didn’t arrive from
Chicago till 12:42 p.m.
• The first train out of St. Louis, New York Central’s Southwestern
Limited, didn’t leave for Indianapolis until 9 a.m. and didn’t arrive till
1:45 p.m. , too late for a day of business.
Now, imagine an “Indy-centric” passenger-train system, with
trains originating in Indianapolis reaching out to neighboring
cities with convenient, business-friendly schedules: Fast, 110mph coach and business-class trains leave Indianapolis each
morning between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. and deliver travelers to:
• St. Louis—3 hours
• Chicago—2 hours
• Louisville—75 minutes
• Cincinnati—75 minutes
• Columbus—90 minutes
• Detroit—3 hours
Schedules include intermediate stops.
…and it works both ways…
…between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. trains from all those cities deliver their
passengers to Indianapolis in time for a full day of business. By using
rail to exploit the central location of Indianapolis, Indiana can free
business travelers from the struggle with the Interstate and the TSA so
they can relax, focus on work and travel at the same time—to Indiana.
Location. Location. Location.
(and transportation)
And because Indianapolis remains the only large city in the region with
its railroad station right in the heart of downtown, passenger trains
make Indianapolis the logical choice for any conference or convention
targeted at visitors from the Lower Midwest.
Modern passenger trains can make Indianapolis the capital of a
regional commercial empire.