It’s not only that the US is too big, it’s also functionally too distributed. Trains work well where business is centralized – the spoke and hub model – such as in the Northeast, Europe, and Japan. The US is becoming L.A. become large. Point A is anywhere and point B is anywhere. That’s why I think the very light jet concept (see above) is such a dire threat to Amtrak’s long-term prospects, business-wise and politically. Of course, probably something else will kill the long-distance trains before that.
I think there will always be a market for the kind of cruise train experience that the Canadian and Ocean and Chaleur offer and that the Capitol Limited, the Cardinal, and all the five transcontinentals to the West Coast offer, for business travelers who wi***he trip to be a mini-vacation, get away from it all, and for tourists, and the elderly and handicapped -IF Amtrak gets the kind of decent funding that bring its standards up to the Canadian trains mentioned. But that is definitely a different market than air. Similarly, the kind of people who summer in the northeast and winter in Florida will continue to provide a market for Florida=New York trains. This is a very heavy market and enough people prefer trains, even though maybe only 5% of the market, to make it viable. Other than that, what has been said is correct. But in addition to the Northeast Corridor (which really should be Richmond, VA - Portland or Bangort, ME, with Boston connector tunnel) and the Capitol Corridor in CA, I’d say Milwaukee - Chicago - St. Louois - Kansas City could be aq worthwhile corridor operation with the right invenstment.
It will take a much denser population overall in the USA before passenger rail becomes #1 over airlines. So maybe in a hundred years, assuming technoligy doesn’t change much in all that time.
But who cares about #1 ! The airlines are #1 now and they #@*k!
I think I have figured out what Amtrak is all about, although this may not be news to a lot of people.
You start with the NEC. The NEC, in terms of the bulk of use, is basically a series of local commuter operations on top of which Amtrak runs (a premium fare) New York-Philadelphia “commuter run.” There is a long history involving the NYC, Pennsy, New Haven, the Penn Central, and Conrail, but Amtrak ends up owning its own NEC railroad, and the bulk of Amtrak’s capital budget goes into the NEC.
So the NEC commuter lines are essentially getting a back-door Federal subsidy, although there is a mass transit budget that gets gas tax money for new projects while Amtrak does not see any gas tax money. Using Federal money to support the NEC, its raft of commuter lines, the thick Amtrak NY-Phily run and the thinner runs to Boston an DC is as good a use of the Federal dollar as any other, given the highway and airport pork and all of that. Also, putting the squeeze on the states to fund the NEC in its entirety is a difficult proposition given the trouble of getting states to agree on things, and that is why James Madison gave as the Federal system to begin with.
Along the lines of James Madison and William Randolph, the trouble is that if a Federal program is just going to the Northeast, the folks in Mississippi, Arizona, South Dakota, and other places will complain about it being fair. Heck, Pennsylvania is pretty much divided into a West and East Coast, and the West Coast (Pittsburgh) is always moaning about the money to run SETPA (Phily).
So what you get is the NEC, a few state-supported corridors, and the long-distance trains. The other-than-NEC corridors are probably a non-starter on account of the freight railroads and schedule keeping, and then you have the long-distance trains, where the people on them seem to put up with the multi-hour delays as just part of the travel experience.
From what I hear, given that the long-distance trains share trac
I agree, that aiming at the higher end people is better… But Amtrak and the politicians can’t ever seem to let go of the “cheap alternative” mentality. Half the time they act like they want to be a cheap alternative, then the other half, they try and sell themselves as luxury. Meanwhile, they satisfy no one, because they really aren’t fully either. The public and the government are probably never going to back anything that even remotely looks like it’s aimed at higher income types. So to go that route, the whole thing would probably have to be privatized. So they keep on with the cheap alternative thing, but it’s never cheap enough. Plus either way, the freight roads know the government is really on their side, so the passenger trains are always going to be low priority. You can have the nicest trains in t
Rail could be the dominate land based transportation if those mysterious powers would invest in as much time and effort in that mode as they do with the auto. There relentless bombardment of advertising and through that conditioning that the auto is far better than the train will ever be and that if a faster mode is required, use the airplane.
I find it ironic that thease same powers that desire the reduction of the black crude from those who are of terrorism and yet they continue to advocate the use of autos which in turn consumes the non-terrorist country’s oil supply thus maintain to some degree, a dependency on thease same evil doers as they are the only suppliers left. Notice that the governments are desperately attempting to find other oil supplies as their large oil company friend or should I say campaign contributors instructed from the “backroom”.
Technology is not the issue. The basic technology is there; it just hasn’t been perfected yet. The Maglev is a start in the right direction, the Europeans through my observation, are already attempting to improve its electric high-speed corridors and improve its efficiency. The only power of great significants that has not truly embraced alternative land-based transportation is because as I previously mentioned to sum up; conditioning. That is why the general populace is not in favour of funding Amtrak and forbiding the politicians to sabatoge its role left, right and centre. The populace through no fault of there own has been fed a bunch of garbage since the “big three-GM, Ford and Chrystler” began that they essentially need there product and are nothing without it until low and behold, it has become a tragic reality.
There is no way I forexample can get to and from where I will eventually will work because mass transit is slow to improve because of the lack of funding because it is low on priority. Even Canada that is proud of VIA has the same problem identicle to the U.S’ only on a much smaller scale as our poli
This is probably the most intelligent and rational thread of discourse on the subject seen yet.
Railroads cannot be #1 or a close second, nationwide, because distance issues cannot be overcome at reasonable expense. Neither SUVs nor buses offer compelling competition to air travel for 500-mile-plus distances., either. The “great trains of Europe” don’t overflow with long-distance riders. During my travels on Germany’s ICEs, I found most seats marked as reserved for distances under 300mi.
Rail has the potential to be a viable transporter in the shorter sectors, say 100 to 500 miles, especially where track congestion problems can be solved and adequate public transport (or a car rental agency) is available at most city terminals. Corridor services, daylight-hours “cruise” trains that could also provide seasonal local service along their routes (and spur economic development at “terminal” communities), and regional “spoke” services from major air terminals (EWR and BWI today, ORD and LAX tomorrow) could all become increasingly viable, with adequate funding and regulations.
Subsidization in one form or another is inevitable. Perhaps it’s impossible to fund rail service entirely Federally without such embarassing money pits as Harley’s Hornet, Tommy’s Trolley, and the Kentucky Cardinal. But Federal funding could be made available on a matching basis, as for air and highway infrastructure, to those states, municipalities, and consortiums that see rail as an important part of their transport schemes. And cross-state authorities have worked in other situations, such as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Tenessee Valley Authority, etc.
As I noted in another thread, getting from here to there is a challenge in a political environment that only considers the short term and thrives on sound bites. If an adaptive process had been adopted to restructure passenger rail 10 years ago, we would now be well on our way to something better and certainly more cost
The VLJ concept would require a very large increase on the number of licensed pilots, which is questionable, safety-wise.
Jack
There is this David Lawyer fellow who tells an interesting tale about transportation, rail, auto, and related energy consumption (http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/).
His point is that the introduction of autos actually reduced energy consumption on a passenger mile basis, but it increased energy consumption enormously on account that we are travelling around in a way never imagined possible. The problem with autos is not that they are gas guzzlers but that they are so convenient. Back in the day people travelled by train when they travelled, but by and large they just plain didn’t move around that much.
I suppose you could get people to stay put by “New Urbanism” shoving people back into condos in high-density city housing (or there is that Brazilian architect fellow with his “Archology” – ultra-high density urban mega buildings – the idea is to cram everyone together into a mega-condo-mall structure – you wouldn’t need trains to get around as much as elevators. His idea of the ultra high density is that you would pack the people in and leave a lot of green space around).
I suppose you could force people to use trains by restrictions on parking, high gasoline taxes, etc., but I think most of the ecological gains are from reduced travel (like any kind of conservation measure there are two approaches – one is the austerity of doing without, the other is a kind of efficiency of higher density living arrangements which means you need to travel less to meet the same number of friends, go to work, shop, etc.).
Also, in terms of these great conspiracies to make us dependent o
It would be sufficient to have a commercial pilots license. I’m pretty certain there are plenty of un- and under-employed pilots. You wouldn’t need a transport rating that an airline pilot would have to fly heavy aircraft. As the article says, light aircraft do have a higher crash rate and there might be a problem of overcoming public perception.
In addition to VLJ, I understand the French and Japanese have announced the development of a replacement for the Concorde SST. It remains to be seen if newer technolgy can make this more economically viable, but it could change things on long distance flights if the FAA doesn’t kill it like they did last time.