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Republican take-over muddies US rail future
The unfortunate result of this election is that so many Republicans are so fearful of the Tea-baggers that we can probably expect another see-saw funding of Amtrak and continued shortsightedness with regard to infrastructure spending that is the hallmark of of the current error GOP. Too many of my fellow Americans are drinking the kool-aid!
Wow…And what has six years of the Obama administration done for Amtrak? Nothing.
So, what should we do? Ride everything we can while there is still time?
they don’t have the courage to eliminate Amtrak. They’ll just cut funding and micro-manage it until it’s a total wreck.
It’s so ironic, or tragic, that the reddest anti-government states are the first in line at the regulatory and fiscal troughs to put their interests ahead of what the market (the same market that the reddies worship) demands. What a bunch of hypocrites. And we all pay the price with crappy gasoline and overpriced bread.
Amtrak service in Illinois will be gone by the end of next year. And the proposed Chicago-Rockford and Chicago-Moline services are likewise DOA the day Rauner becomes Governor. Likewise, I expect CTA and Metra to go on starvation diets under Mr. Rauner. It’s a sad day for Illinois, and for the thousands of people who will lose jobs as a result of his budget cuts (including two members of my extended family).
I’m sorry, I thought this page was a NEWS line, not political commentary. At least when DPM was the editor he had the decency to mark the news page as “News and Editorial Comment” so that everyone knew his personal opinions and comments were part of the copy.
So election results are not news? And politicians have nothing to do with infrastructure? What planet is David McKinlay living on? I’d like to go there. Speculation about the effects of politicians’ biases on the future of the rail industry seems to me to be rather far from editorializing.
Amen to Mr. Norton’s comment. @Mr. Nadolski, can you expand on what you wrote? What has Gov-elect Rauner said during the campaign to indicate he will take the actions you mention? Understand, I’m not doubting your word. I feel rather scared. I’m a Metra retiree. I’ve moved out of the region but I have friends still working. And I’m well aware of how Amtrak Illinois and Metra service and ridership has grown over the last 20 years. A great deal of hard work by a lot of dedicated people went into making that reality.
Unfortunately comments on rail ARE political commentary, since certain teabag factions seem focused on killing it for both freight and passenger rail. How the economics of hauling 1,000 passengers for 30 miles on a train for 2 HP per passenger for a commuter rail system versus 1,000 people driving 200,000 HP of vehicles for the same distance is beyond my comprehension as to why certain dolts don’t get it.
Depressing.
How can it get any worse? Biden has been the VP for 6+ years (and a huge Amtrak advocate), but nothing has been done to improve Amtrak service during that time.
Malcom, Mark and Nathan,
Bob Johnston’s report is 99 per cent reporting and the remainder, opining.
That one per cent (the last sentence) is wholly dispute-proof…my opinion.
Reporters use facts in their productions. They quote people. They find two or more people who tell the same account of an event. They use, ideally, no adjectives nor adverbs.
Read one more time Johnston’s report with those criteria foremost, please.
Facts don’t need attribution…
To report that:: “the sun rose yesterday at 610 AM PST alleges, a government astronomical agency”…that’s excessive attribution.
“just the facts, ma’am”
There was plenty of opportunity in 2009-2010 for the Democrats in control of the House, Senate, and executive to raise fuel-taxes to cover the billions spent on highways. The straw man of the attack ad is a great excuse for doing nothing. Fact is 99 per cent of voters (which includes both Dems and Repubs) want government to build better highways but prefer the funding come from the 1%.
Yes, American businesses want less regulation of their businesses, want government’s hands off. However, when it come to other businesses, not their own, they will file against them and be in court with motions against faster than a French High Speed train with a Mistrial at its back. What Congress and the state houses have to do is raise taxes where there is money to pay for what is needed be it US Government’s Amtrak or a freight railroad who pays dues to the RNC.
To Mr. Norton; Nothing happend due to blocking of any meaningful funding of Amtrak that would give it long term stability thanks to a branch of one party. Hoping for the best.
During one of the debates prior to the Republican primary, all 4 gubernatorial candidates were asked whether they supported the recent Amtrak expansions in Illinois. Bruce Rauner, Bill Brady, and Kirk Dillard all said they supported expanding Amtrak service. We will see.
Republicans are about making money, Dems are about handing out money. Reps are for big business, Dems are for the poor. I been told that for yrs, now if that ignorant analysis is true, well Amtrak is screwed!!!
What Mr. Nichols wrote resonates with me. The moniker “Amtrak Joe” [Biden] must have been a creation of an overly optimistic NARPy. Now VPs don’t usually have much power (Dick Cheney may have been a notable exception) but Mr. Biden, especially in the beginning when the Democrats held both houses, could have tried a lot more than he seems to have done to live up to that moniker.
A friend of mine who is also a reader of Trains made the point that the administration early on moved on the repair of all or most of the Amfleet 1s George Warrington disgracefully shoved into the dead line in his “glide path to [Amtrak] self-sufficiency”. Yes, those cars being returned to service allowed the train frequency expansions such as occurred in Illinois. But it wasn’t nearly enough. Amtrak needed route expansion to get into more markets and it needed a whole lot more short/medium distance cars then just those re-built Amfleets. But encouraging the re-birth of the American passenger railcar industry he and the VP did not do. But they sure took good car of the failing auto/personal truck/SUV companies. And “Amtrak Joe” still brags about that.
Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA aka the Stimulus) gave pasenger rail a pittance compared to what it disbursed to road projects. By some accounts at the time, much of the road $$$ went to roads that didn’t need attention and not to the roads that did.
If Mr. Obama had put 1/4 the effort, maybe even only 1/8th, the energy and zeal he put into reforming healthcare into re-ordering transportation priorities, where intercity and urban/suburban passenger rail got a truly fair shake, we would not be having this discussion. Mr. Obama sure had everybody fooled. Even the Senior Editor of the premier rail industry trade magazine, Railway Age, wrote editorially after the 2008 election that we were finally going to have an administration that cared about Amtrak and wanted to build rather than