Yeah, lets have the governement who took on the responsibility, abrogate it, breach numerous agreements, violate statues, laws, regulations and even the U.S. Constitution and force the railroads to take back it’s mess…
FOFLMAO…yeah, right…
Jim, whatever you are smoking, you need to pass it around…LOL…
LC
If we cut out passenger trains that don’t make a profit, we should do the same for cars. The military, which had the roads built in the first place, spends four times what we do on gas to keep if flowing from all those pesky Arab states. So that gas which now costs you $2 a gallon actually costs $10 and the road fuel taxes are not paying all the cost. Would you like to pay that additional $8? At the Georgia Association of Rail Passengers meeting today, someone joked, “Buses (correct spelling) are the preferred mode of public transportation of people who never take buses.” I thought that was pretty astute. Guess that’s why he’s the club president. Buses rely on the federal gov. and our gas taxes to transport people cheaply. If railroads had someone to build their tracks, maintain them and only charge them a fraction in taxes of its true value, they’d be siting pretty. But railroads, as the first big business, have always been the govermental piggy bank.
I like the convenience of my car too. Except when I can ride the train or when I get onto the interstate at the beginning of a vacation and realize all the driving I have to do. I don’t consider that convenient. I think I would have taken a plane on my last vacation, but I don’t think they fly into Orbisonia, PA. Hurricane Ivan sure did the night before I arrived.
Jock Ellis
Cumming, GA US of A
Long distanced passenger trains are a necessity to many people but don’t ear money. So are John;s in Supermarkets, handicapped access ramps in all public buildings, assisted listening systems for hard of hearing in concert halls, theatres, movie houses, and sports stadiums, emergenyc hotline numbers for the police (indeed, the police in general), the fire department, and much else. Most civilized countries, inmcluding those with a lower population density than the USA believe their citizens are ENTITLED to have access to their entire country without being FORCED to drive, fly, or be cramped for long distances in a bus. They have government owned railroads that probide decent service. Or they subidize private railroads sufficientlyi. Canada is one such country. Australia is another. And New Zealand . Do you want an elderly American on the shore of one ocean to be forced to take his transcontinental journel of a life in Canada instead of his own coutnry?
The railroads don’t want it back…they were happy to unload it a few decades ago…
Yes, Amtrak isn’t profitable, and will probably never will be profitable… However, the only country in which there are a large number of people willing to end passenger rail service is US…no other country even thinks about ending passenger rail subsidies, not one…
I read the other day that the federal government would have to spend $87 billion to rebuild and widen I-95 to increase its capacity to make up for the loss of the NEC’s capability… today… not over a period of years… Either we keep Amtrak and lose or don’t keep Amtrak and lose…
As for buses, I have said this before and I will say it again, Greyhound has been in receivership for years. It has cut its service from several times a day in Granbury, Texas, to once a day, to once a week, and now doesn’t serve this town at all… A county of over 40,000 citizens… It seems Greyhound is only interested in running expresses and throughs along interstates, it has forsaken the small towns…
Its also difficult for a railroad to match the prices of airlines, which are all over the place. For example, it only costs a couple of hundred dollars to fly non-stop to Las Vegas from DFW, but if you wanted to fly to Reno instead, its eight hundred dollars with no non-stops… Nearly 80 percent of the towns Amtrak serves have no schedule airline service…over 80 percent…
That’s the reason we need Amtrak…
I believe it was Don Oltmann who posed the question what is the purpose of Amtrak and what kind of Amtrak do we want – the corridors, the long-distance trains, is the purpose congestion relief, etc?
OK, so the reason for Amtrak is public accomodation. Why does this have to be on rail? Why can’t this public accomodation be on the bus? Or even on planes?
And if the bus is too cramped, why not pass highway legislation to allow for an articulated bus that carries the same number of people, but 3 across seating with more leg room? And what is wrong with “being forced to fly?” The plane is as safe or safer than any other mode, so you are not imposing on anyone to take an unreasonable risk. The airplane is a common carrier, if you have some flexibility when you take your trip, fares are as low as any common-carrier mode is going to get (passenger transportation is primarily a service industry and most of your cost is paying the people to provide that service, a cost well ahead of your direct operating expenses, and any replacement for air has to replicate that service structure).
So the bus gets stuck in traffic. So does the passenger train given the surge in freight traffic and the prevalence of single-track rail lines. The bus takes too long – OK, show me where, outside the Hiawatha and the NEC where Amtrak beats over-the-highway travel times.
OK, the reason for Amrak is the long-distance trains (there can be multiple reasons). One market for trains is the long-distance “cruise ship on rails.” Last time I mentioned “cruise ship on rails” I got a talking to about how the long-distance trains are lifelines to all the cities along the route. OK, how many people have boarded the Empire Builder in Minot at 2 AM?
Your hypothetical elderly taking the transcontinental journey – presumably a wealthy person who has saved up enough money for sleeping car fares so they can tour the country in style and comfort. Also a person who has a lot of time for
It has been suggested by folks from the National Association of Railroad Passengers that despite Pres. Bush’s attempt to kill Amtrak, our representatives, ever mindful of their role in Congress - to get re-elected - won’t dare let Amtrak fail on their watch for fear of the consequences which would be that their opponents in the next election will have a field day with that issue just as Bush did with Kerry’s Vietnam service. They would never get to talk about anything else.
Anyone wanting to do so might call the local offices of their state representatives and senators and tell them what a wonderful opportunity they have to prove that they are more than stooges for the administration by restoring funding for Amtrak.
I don’t see how Amtrak’s gas mileage can be as bad as one member pointed out. On the GE Transportation intranet, a piece about our Evolution engine says the V-8 gets 4 gpm (gallons per mile) under load. Say your Amtrak flyer gets that with 300 passengers behind it, that’s 37.8 mpg. In the NEC, they are using electric so that should be even more efficient. But I don’t have Microsoft Excel on my Mac so I cannot go to the spreadsheet which spells out the information.
In the mid 70s, Seaboard Coastline RR Pres. Rice made a speech at the opening of the appropriately named Rice Yards in Waycross, GA and told the crowd that SCL had made a $3 million profit on passenger trains their last year of operation. But he pointed out that one lawsuit would have wiped out that profit. Thirty years later, it would have wiped out way more than that.
Jock Ellis
Cumming, GA US of A
Wow - no scheduled airline service and yet ironically, people in these towns still don’t use the train…at least based on my experiences. I understand that Amtrak serves about 500 stations nationwide. What about all of the other cities and towns in the US that have no scheduled airline service or passenger trains? They all seem to be surviving just fine. What is it that makes these 500 cities special that they deserve train service while the rest get nothing?
In fact passenger service in Canada has often been the focus of controversy and government cut backs over the years. Remember, even VIA’s flagship, the Canadian only operates three times a week and on the “second” choice route due to gut wrenching cutbacks 15 years ago. By the way, the arguments made for and against retaining passenger train travel in Canada sound very similiar to those in the US - society has an obligation to people who don’t like to fly, no alternatives transportation in some communities, politicians concerned to face the electorate after the cuts are made, nostalgia etc. And just like in the US, despite all of the arguments people make for keeping the train, very few of the people who make the arguments end up using the train.
My understanding is that even Australia’s transcontinental train came very close to extinction and was in sorry shape before a private train operator revived its fortunes.
Jim-
The freight RRs tried to get relief from passenger losses going back to the late 1940s. The gov’t didn’t create Amtrak until nearly 25 years of fighting and having the largest RR go bankrupt (PC).
The ICC used to regulate passenger train operations. RRs couldn’t abandon unless the public agreed to the train-off. There were cases where the RRs were obligated to run empty trains day after day because the public demanded the train be there in case it snowed - when a few would show up to ride.
The ICC is gone and so is that “pubic interest”/common carrier regulatory oversight of RRs. Should you somehow force the passenger trains back on the RRs and get the STB to provide regulatory oversight, the RRs would immediately file to stop running the trains, and they’d provail. Passenger trains lose money - and RRs are private enterprise and regulated as such.
Unless you frequently in and out of the 500 Amtrak stops your experience is anecdotal.
You can assume all you want about the cities and towns that don’t have rail passenger service doing just fine, but you might want to ask the people living in those towns who on occasion travel more than 250 miles out of town if they are happy that they have no option but travel by car.
So long as the Freight Railroads have as say…the will say NO WAY! If there is to be valid passenger rail transportation it will have to be done as it is in the rest of the world…Governmental Operation of rail passenger transportation.
No rail passenger system in the world is profitable on its own, why should we expect the USA to be any different. Rail passenger transportation is a Public Service and should be treated as such.
I’d say the evidence Amtrak provides is more than anecdotal. Everytime Amtrak makes cutbacks they seem disproportionately affect the small towns. It is the small towns that don’t have any alternative that have hours cut, station agents removed. These are typically the same towns that do not have other alternative forms of transportation. If there were so many people boarding at these stations then why they the first places to get affected? However, if you have non-anecdotal evidence to refute my position, I am certainly willing to listen.
How does the argument that Amtrak serves 400 or so locations w/o air service square with the fact that there are thousands of towns without air, rail or bus service?
When counting stations w/o air service, are we counting places like Princeton Jct which is only 15 miles from Trenton’s airport? Or Tyrone PA, which is only 15 miles from State College’s airport?
There are people who cannot fly for medical reasons and many of those reasons prevent them from being on a bus more than two or three hours. But they can travel in a reclining seat day coach. Hint: One medical problem is having to use the john for one of several purposes while the seat belt light stayes lit for the whole trip.
…Paul: Why are you trying to cram everyone into airplanes…?
I got it! The solution to Amtrak. Let’s go “offshore” and give it to Mexico. Using Mexican labor and labor rules, Amtrak could actually turn a profit.
…he said tongue in cheek!
I am sorry but I think I am missing the point. Are you implying that all other towns in the US that Amtrak doesn’t serve do have either air or bus service?
This is a common argument raised on this site for continuing long distance Amtrak service. It may very well be valid although I would be interested to find out how many of the travelling public actually fall into this category. However, I presume there must be many people that in this category that do not live in an Amtrak served city. How do you propose that these people travel if Amtrak is not an option? Of course I assume whatever the solution for these people outside of Amtrak served areas, it is the governments responsibility to provide the solution.
Lower amtraks flag - it is way overdue.
Its kind of fun to read the replies. I see some good thinking going on here, I also see most folks bias, and yes I have one too.
But, if a viable Long Distance passenger train network is to continue, it will have to be operated by those carriers that own the rails. The freight railroads.
This ball needs to go back to the begining court from which it came. Yes, a government subsidy is nessecary to make it a profit center for the freight railroads, this making it interesting to the stockholders.
Jim - Lawton, NV MP 236