Today on CBS radio News there was a headline that stated US Airways had filed for bankruptcy for the second time in a few years. It is in Chapter 11 (re-organization), but one of the analysts they interviewed gave US Airways only a 50-50 chance of surviving this round.
US Airways serves the same market as the NEC and also flies to Florida, among other places.
I don’t know if this will do much for Amtrak’s passenger loads in the NEC…
well… just as much of my tax money wasted on them with the fedeal loans as with amtrak… no wonder the middle class cant get ahead anymore… next thing your going to see is AmAir…the government airline formed from all the major bankrupt carriers…just like conrail was… hell who knows…maybe they might be able to work out a nice schedualing arangment where you can take a train and then a plane…ahahaha…yea right…youll never be able to make your connections becoues either the train or the plane will be about 3 hours behind shecdual…
csx engineer
Amtrak has a chance now…will the government seize opportunity?
Stay tuned…same bat time, same bat channel…
[:D][:D][:D]
…I’m not very close to the NEC transportation area. I do understand though there must be a pretty serious need to move people up and down that quite a few hundred of miles corridor and business area of our nation. Amtrak seems to be well patronized to help get people to where they need to be {and their RoW soon needs major work}, but I don’t know how well the US Airway planes were filled, or are being filled. So I believe we can all agree people must be moved in that area by some means…
Can they build lanes of highway wider and wider or on top of already existing parkways to handle the need…I’d think not in most cases…So anyone have any ideas to solve the problem that seems to be present in that corridor…People need to be moved but money seems to always be a problem in doing so…Anyone have ideas how to solve what seems to be looming larger by the month…?
US Air is trying to reorganize into a low-cost carrier. If they in fact come out of bankruptcy as a low-cost carrier, it could be an even bigger threat to Amtrak than it was before hand.
Modelcar – you should be so glad you don’t live in/have to move around in/ the northeast corridor! Additional lanes on superhighways in the corridor are a non-starter – there are places already where you have 16 lanes total (8 lanes in each direction!) – not counting exit and entrance ramps. Plus there is this little problem of real estate costs to add new lanes… and double decking isn’t cheap.
Then, no matter how good the air connections are, one must remember that there are no airports downtown – and you still have to get from the airport to wherever you are going. If that happens to be midtown Manhattan or midtown Boston or midtown DC, that’s not hopeless, but if it happens to be somewhere else on the corridor… I hope you have lots of time. Never mind getting on an airplane in the first place. Even if USAir manages to reorganize as a low-cost carrier, these barriers remain.
The solution, it seems to some of us anyway, is to take the money which just go sunk in USAir (some 718 million US $ looks like it just went west) and invest the same cash into Amtrak, which has proven it can provide the needed services. But… don’t hold your breath.
Actually! Amtrak is downtown. Airports are a taxi or transit ride away. Most of the NEC Highways are not 8 lanes - I can only think of Northern NJ. 4 Max. Only a small % on NEC highways are big. Most of southern NJ is only 3-2 lanes wide (each direction), Delaware is 2-4, Maryland is 2 -4. Rush hour sucks! I work about 10 miles from home and on Fridays it can take up 1 hour to get home.
More highways and wider highways are not the answer. You have to repave lanes quicker than you have to replace railroad ties. Railroad lines even 4 tracks, take up less space than a highway does. It is cheaper for the upkeep of the railway lines than the highways over several years. The tax payer would find it cheaper for them if the government spent more on the rails than on the road.
Forget money, what about health? Do you realize how much pollutants come from all those cars? It’s bad enough that the planes do it, but the cars are a land transportation and their are alternate forms of land transportation and the technology is there to operate the alternative.
Which would the tax payer prefer, cancer or money? It’s a lot easier to cure money shortages than cancer.
Tom – I was thinking of that lovely spot in north Jersey where there really are 8 lanes each way on the Jersey Turnpike! One is not really aware of it… Most of the Connecticut Turnpike, as far east as New Haven, is 6 (and a parking lot at rush hour) as are most of the highways within 40 miles or so of Boston (and ditto). Quite right, rush hour sucks. Not to put to fine a point on it! Amtrak’s whole advantage is that it is downtown – in lots of towns. The airports aren’t, and I don’t regard that taxi or transit ride as much fun… !
Jamie - Yes the northern part of the NJ Turnpike is nice. The only problem is it quickly get cut down to 4 lanes as well, so 1 minute you are making great time and the next you are stopped.
The problem I have with Amtrak is once I want to travel outside the NEC there are limited cities to travel too. I looked into using AMTRAK to travel to COLUMBUS (NOPE!). I looked into AMTRAK for Travel to Texas, I don’t have 2 days! That’s a major disadvantage. USAIr or any airline can place me there in a few hours or I can drive.
…In rational thinking one would arrive at the premise…Amtrak has the RoW in place to do the job…so perhaps that’s where the money should go to strengthen and even modernize that system that’s already in place. I realize politically now it seems impossible…but what is their workable solution…and why are the rail systems so damned by them…If it works and we need some system in place, why not support it and make something that is in place better.
10 miles in 1 hour ! Man you should get a bycicle, it will keep you fit , has low “overhead costs” , doesn’t require huge tax spending like the hiway or rail transit, and doesn’t pollute as much as anything unless you fart alot.
There are some drawbacks of course like weather protection and safety like other car drivers mowing you down as you are using very little space. Some people bycicle and if many more did then…
US Airways filed for Chapter 11 (reorganization) but the talk is that it will soon become a Chapter 7 (liquidation). It’s hard to say who will pick up the pieces but I would guess that Jet Blue is most likely it is primarily an East Coast based operation.
The situation with US Airways and the other old-line airline operations is that their costs are still tied to the regulated era and they aren’t able to get them in line comparable to the newer carriers that came up with dereg.
There is a lot of people who don’t like the plane. What about those people? Some people can’t or refuse to drive and so they would rather commute by letting someone else drive for them. It is all in service. Lets face it, the airlines are no better. Even with them cornering the market for alternative transportation other than car, they still have financial problem…ask Air Canada, US Air and Delta Airlines. You can’t just allow all your transportation to go to problems.
Amtrak is a logical solution to commuter because even places that don’t have airports or where destinations don’t warrent air travel (which there is a lot of) and it is a major pain in the butt for the road using traffic to go through. Do you know how frustrating it is to get between St. Catharines (near Niagara Falls) to Toronto in the morning and than to come back from Toronto? You spend at least a half an hour in the city just to get on the highway. It takes an hour to two hours to get from Toronto to Oakville. Double or triple the time if their is an accident or a car fire. It can last like that until almost Hamilton on the QEW. Than add another hour or so just because of distance. I take the train and it only takes two hours to get home( I would get there sooner if CN didn’t have so many slow order on the Hamilton to Niagara Falls line). Granted it costs me almost 40 canadian for a return ticket but at least when I leave about 6pm, I don’t get home around 9 to 11:30 pm.
Now than Toronto is nothing in comparison to what folks in Los Angelas, Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other major cities have to go through.
Airports are fine but how many delays and problems does one have to go through in between connections even? By the time you get there, sometimes you would have been better off in the Amtrak train. Plus you have a better chance of surviving a train cra***han a plane crash if you want to be morbid about it.
I don’t want to rain on everybody’s “what if” parade here, but USAir filing for re-organization will have zero impact on Amtrak. USAir is still flying passengers from here to there, just like always. What this filing does, is allow them to renegotiate their payments to their creditors (a/c manufacturers, a/c leasing co., airports, fuel suppliers, banks, and employees among others). This filing “buys them time” to work out new loans and leases, etc. that they think that they can pay. If all goes well, they will re-emerge and keep on flying, though they may change where and when they fly.
Even if they cannot get an agreement and file for liquidation (i.e. close the doors) it will still have next to no impact on Amtrak in the NEC. The airlines are still suffering from overcapacity in many markets, so their competitors in the shuttle market will absorb USAir’s passengers without too much difficulty. And if they can’t handle it, a half-dozen low-cost airlines are ready to swoop in and take a piece of the action with only a moment’s notice.
Without a pardigm shift in how we Americans view travel, and demand that Congress adjust transportation funding accordingly, not much will change.[V]
I thought US Airways stopped operating their special NEC aircraft (Metrojet?) a few years ago anyhow.
I read in today’s paper that metroJet, created by US Air ended up being its own competitor against US Air, so, it was discontinued. Years ago, Eastern Airlines was the #1 carrier of passengers between Wash DC and New York when Amtrak was #2. That changed when Amtrak had bumped Eastern to the #2 spot. On the Northeast Corridor, the train can be more convenient for travel vs. a plane. Especially, when the train station is usually downtown and not a 45 minute cab ride from the airport (I’m thinking of NY City here).
A few years ago I rode a Metroliner north from WashDC that had a whole crew from US Air. Fog or low clouds had grounded aircraft in the area.
I agree if US Airways “closes” and a new carrier takes over it won’t make a huge difference, but maybe there will be a “bump” for Amtrak?
Amtrak already is # 1 in the Washington - NY market. The real question is what will US AIR’s (or as I call them USELESS AIR) Chapter 11 filing do to the Washington - Boston, the Washington - Hartford, or the Philadelphia - Pittsburgh markets assuming some of the experts are right and US AIR is liquidated?
US AIR is an amalgamation of several regional airlines, among them Pacific Southwest Airlines which flew shuttle service from the San Francisco Bay area to the Los Angeles area. What will happpen to that if US AIR is liquidated as some expect? Even if US AIR reinvents itself successfully as a low cost regional carrier in the East Coast, who will take its West Coast routes? At present Amtrak couldn’t take up the load of fast hourly service between those cities, and it looks as if the California High Speed Rail won’t fly. (No pun intended)
This time the bankruptcy court should let US Air die a merciful death and liquidate. Note that today the stocks of the other carriers have risen, anticipating that they’ll get US Air’s business.