I ahd contacted my Congressman (and senetors, but they didn’t reply) about the state of passenger rail service in the US. In his first letter, he stated he was pushing hard for more passenger rail services, and would forward my concerns to the Secretary of transportation as well as look into it himself.
well, in his second letter, he sent me the response from Mark E. Yachmetz, associate administer for railroad development in the FRA. Here he stated “The Bush Administration strongly supports intercity passenger rail service as part of a multi modal approach to meeting this country’s passenger mobility needs…”
As well as this, the latest Transportation legislator passed recently contained a large sum for rail service in it as well, including a local amount for the construction of a fast rail service from Elgin (Chicago Metra suburb) westward into rockford and possibly north to Madison, WI later on.
So we can now stop bashing this administration in saying it’s trying to kill passenger rail. it’s not, it’s trying to bring it into the 21st century.
Read the fine print. This would remove from Amtrak all rights of way. This is a token measure since the only right of way Amtrak owns is the Northeast corridor.
Who would own and maintain it is not clear. It also requires a lot of funding from the States which may or may not happen.
For the first time in my memory Amtrak has a real “railroad” man running it. David has said many times that congress should determine whether the counry wants a passenger rail or not. If it does then it must be properly funded. It seems that neither party is willing to do that.
It’s nice to talk about passenger rail systems in other countries but remember that they are well funded by state governments. I don’t think there any systems that are not subsidized.
…Smoke and mirrows talk from the Adminstration…Simply look at the budget reccomended to support Amtrak next fiscal year…“0”…That is not too much support for the folks out in America…Perhaps the NEC will be provided some crumbs and the rest will head for bankrupcy. I simply hope Mr. Gunn pulls the plug on IT ALL if no funding is forth coming for the Amtrak routes across America to operate. I realize most Adminstrations have tried to get by with not quite enough to operate the system but the present leaders simply want to “0” out the account…Simple as that.
Steamerfan, you need to reread the link in your message above. These so called “reforms” are probably the worst situation that Amtrak, or any other operator of commuter services can be put in.
There’s no dollar amount stated, why, because they want to zero out the Amtrak budget, obviously since they don’t give big kickbacks to Bush’s cronies.
They state the example of Japan where they claim commuter rail is profitable. This is a country that is about the size of the area served by the Northeast Corridor. It’s comparing apples and oranges, they have no long distance rail because they have no long distances.
Also on Japan, they state that the Japanese split the railroads into six smaller companies, NOT that they separateed the operating and right-of-way into separate companies. Where did THIS come from.
Just another ill advised, idiotic idea from a White House with a great reputation for them.
I guess people will read what they want into it. I read it, reread it and still see a better solution than what is presently running, however seems others read it and see a pestimistic Doom and Gloom future. what would you rather have, change or death? I guess death from the way you read it.
As far as i can tell, it’s based on studies of passenger systems that have worked, sliding some costs from the Amtrak budget to other Agencies (primarily states, even though they’ll still get big chunks of money from the Feds to fund the service).
maybe you all should read everything in that link instead of skimming it and prejudging it to a “Doom And Gloom” proposal. At least this administration has opened it’s eyes and realized the system is failing and needs to be refined to better serve the people, unlike the previous Adminitration that wouldn’t touch it with a one hundred foot pole, and treated it as if touching it wouldbe like touching a third rail.
And on that note, I’m out of town for a week (unfortunatly without internet access), so hopefully those who understand how to read and have open minds will respond. see you all in a week.
…Have a good visit out of town but I believe to think the present Adminstration is pro rail passenger…is to be in denial. The states have no money beyond what has been spent and they are having a hard time with that even. It is really rather clear, the leaders in government now want to trash our rail passenger system with exception of a few dollars to let some commuters run so they don’t have to find a solution to that too. I would rather they say “Trash it”, as opposed to hiding behind sentences of complication and slanting the intent to the public…
The statement you quoted by Yachmetz is the equivalent of a digestive event of a bull and only adds to the pile of the same thing already put out by the Department of Transportation and others in the Bush administration.
The objectives may be very fine, but just stating the objective will not get anywhere without a real plan of action and a willingness to spend the money decessary to implement the plan.
Anybody who believes that the Bush Administration really wants to do something other than end rail passenger service would also believe they would be successful in meeting an objective to make pigs fly.
I read Mineta’s comments, and the thing that caught my eye was the 29 billion dollar figure. Was that 29 billion spent over the last 34 years??? If so, that ain’t much, especially when you consider the money wasted on airline bailouts, homeland security, Iraq war, etc, etc, etc. How much money was spent on one new aircraft carrier?
LOL, you worded your response very “Eloguently” and ever so accurately, IMHO.
(I couldn’t stop laughing for the longest!)
I’ve used Amtrak as an alternative to flying when traveling from Florida to New York. It upsets me greatly that if Mineta has his way, my options will be Greyhound (too cramped, too slow), driving (I-95 is an accident prone concrete nightmare), or flying (two bad experiences already).
No, the Bush administration, with its “good intentions” is simply trying to dump the service knowing fully well that most states can’t afford it…
The states can afford what they want to afford. Their legislators just must have the will to tax and spend for rail. There are some places, Oregon, etc., where they have the will.
This adminstration has proven time and again that it is the best friend of big business. This includes the railroads. Is it not true that the railroads would love nothing better than to be free of the burden of Amtrak. The problem is that there are still a few members of congress who put the needs of the people before the needs of big business. They seem to be a dying breed though.
…The state of Indiana is preparing to tax and spend for a new sport complex in Indy for the Colts, but our Governor is not interested in passenger rail…
If this goverment really wanted to show support for reforming and modernizing passenger rail, they would put their money where there mouth is: into a nationwide HSR network… Instead of providing zero dollars, they should be willing to spend up to $10 billion a year over a score of years… But that ain’t so…
Why should W support passenger rail each passenger traveling is using less fuel that they would driving tthemselves to their destination. Remember BOTH OF THE HEADS OF TEH EXCEUTIVE BRANCH ARE OILMEN.
Apart from the politics of transportation subsidies, what inherent advantages does rail have over other modes?
Fuel efficiency:
A train is, well, a train – a set of multiple vehicles in single file. Since one train car rides in the draft of the train car ahead, that reduces air resistance. What about low rolling resistance? At the speeds at which trains (and buses) operate, the rolling resistance advantage of trains is a minor factor as air drag dominates.
A Ford Taurus gets 30 MPG on the highway at legal speeds and seats up to four for long trips (there are seatbelts to squeeze six into mine, but it is a tight fit) – 120 seat miles/gallon. An intercity bus that sets 40 gets about 6 gasoline-equivalent MPG (say 7 Diesel fuel MPG) – 240 seat miles/gallon. Obviously a single-driver Taurus is getting only 30 passenger miles/gallon, a packed bus is getting 240 or 8 times as much, but a lot of intercity trips are taken with a driver and a passenger (two people) while it is difficult to run buses (or any other common carrier conveyence) at full load all the time.
We can spend all day splitting hairs, but just as a car has reasons not to operate with every seat occupied, common carrier transport has reasons not top operate with every seat occupied on account of fluctuating demand, so I say a seat is a seat and an intercity bus operates at twice the fuel economy of a fuel-efficient car.
What about rail? A train car is taller and wider than a bus, giving more frontal area for more drag, but a train can have many more seats than a bus. My engineering intuition says a train could have double the economy of a bus and hence four times the economy of a Taurus – in theory it could do even better. In practice, and somebody please point me at numbers if I am wrong, Amtrak gets about half the economy of a bus or about the same fuel economy as a Taurus. So, if you are just going by yourself, take the train, but if you are taking a friend, taking the trai
…You make many good points…Comment: The 30 billion subsidy over the time period since 1971 was most likely needed for daily operation and to keep the equipment in a condition safe to use…and so on…not too much would have been left over for “building trains of high fuel economy” or even hardly enough to repair what they had. Much equipment in need of repair languishing, waiting for that to be done at Beech Grove for lack of money to do so.
Modelcar – Yes, a lot of the 30 billion went to operating subsidy, but over that time Amtrak purchased the SDP40F, the F40PH, the P42s, converted everything over to HEP (HEP is a big energy waster in electric heat mode in winter – yes, steam generators take looking after, but a lof the steam generator/steam ejector AC troubles was mixing and matching of incompatible Heritage fleet equipment along with crews without the proper training). You have the Amfleet, Superliners, Horizon cars – all of which are 1950s technology, all of which purchased under Amtrak.
The closest thing to any new technology is the Alan Cripe/United Aircraft TurboTrain, which was part of the pre-Amtrak Pell Plan for the NEC – the gas turbines are gas guzzlers, but a Diesel version of this train was in Alan Cripe’s patents from the C&O days.
From day one, no one in the rail activist community thought of Amtrak as anything more than a bare minimum network. It could either move forward as a museum piece of what had been or as a technology demonstrator of what could be – the original Pell Plan NEC Demonstration that gave us the Metroliner and Turbo Train I am imagining was done on much smaller budgets than Amtrak, and it gave us some new tech.
OK, there was some lightweight/streamlined/European train tech in the form of the RTG Turbines, but turbines are never going to be fuel efficient in railroad applications. Apart from the AEM-7’s, all of Amtrak’s purchases were tried-and-true-don’t-rock-the-boat 1950’s railroad tech. I guess that is the way to go for reliabilty (to quote Donald Rumsfeld, you go into railroading with the trains technology your have).
But both cars and especially planes have been a moving target on the fuel economy front. Airplanes have made drastic improvements in fuel economy – part of it newer engines, part lighter airframes, part cramming the people in like sardines. Cramming people into trains can also make them more fuel efficient and cost effective – the J
Paul…I’m sure most of Amtrak’s managers over the string of years would have loved to have had the freedom of developing features in rail travel such as you bring to light in your conversation…but it is my thoughts they simply didn’t have the money to rock the boat hardly at all.
From my memory of Amtrak’s operation it just seems their main objective has been to stay alive and not make very many waves…use conventional stuff available and hope it all works, etc…
Too bad we’ve not had the ability to plan ahead {we as in Amtrak}, and make some improvements instead of just trying to stay alive from one fiscal year to the next.