Thinking that it might be antithetical to posit these thoughts on the HSR threads, may I respectfully suggest that at least I, and perhaps others, am quite satisfied with present Amtrak LD route speeds, albeit an upgrade of some amenities would be in order. To me, the JOURNEY is more important than the DESTINATION, so rushing to get somewhere is a shame. Obviously, I am fortunate that my present activity does not require high-speed. With delight do I have the pleasure of a Bedroom, and its associated services, the Coast Starlight Parlour Car, and the Metropolitan Lounges. With reading material, occasionally fascinating fellow travelers (one having been Marcus J. Ruef, BofLE VP, coincidentally in my Sleeping Car once), and interesting and occasionally beautiful American scenery, I am always a “happy camper.” Are there any of you who share this rather unconventional traveling philosophy?
Certainly an unusual point of view in times, when our lives are required to move faster and faster. The speed we have to move in forces us to act/react, before we have the time to think, and quite often the results are not what we intended to achieve.
I´d say, the reason of travel decides on the speed. If you travel on business, you have to economize on the time you spend on the traveling itself. If you travel for leisure, the time spend on board a train is part of the fun.
Btw, there is a trade-off between travel time and comfort. In the 1930´s, Deutsche Reichsbahn introduced a fast ( for that time) service between Hamburg and Berlin, using luxury trains consisting of diesel-electric cars, with a superb on board service. Traveling time was 185 minutes between those two cities. Today´s ICE trains do that jump in just 100 minutes, but those 100 minutes seem to be endless, as the ICE trains are no match in comfort.
Just a reading suggestion:
Sten Nadolny, The Discovery of Slowness
[(-D]
YOur thinking parallel’s mine. Investment in long distance trains should be to increase reliability, further improve comfort and amenities, insure the best possible food service, and make operation more economical. Where they operate over lines upgraded as corridors, they can benefit by the increased speed (and smoothness of ride) for the length of the corridor, as in NY-Washington for the Crescent and the Florida trains, and the Empire Service corridor for the Lake Shore.
I still don’t understand why the Palmetto doesn’t turn at Jacksonville instead of Savanna. Only two trains a day to Florida?
I love travelling on the long distance trains - in a sleeper - and eating in the diner. It’s a really great experience. I used to do it as much as possible for business - when I could get away with it - and for pleasure back when my Amtrak pass got me 50% off the fare.
So, I’d really like for there to be a way to keep some of them around. But, finding a way has to include more than just having Amtrak beg for their subsidy every year. I really doubt the status quo is sustainable, so Amtrak ought to get busy figuring ways to cut costs and improve service. A declining, reduces subsidy per passenger mile would make their subsidized operation more palatable and reduce the incidence of Amtrak being used as a poster child for what is wrong with government.
I think they are trying, but sometimes freight railroads won’t let them do all they can, like the UP and the Sunset. Still, my hope is that the UP will realize it can have a real PR victory in a daily Sunset, and reduced costs to Amtrak , once its capacity improvements are finally complete.
Even if HSR were economically/practically feasible on longer distance runs, it still would not be competitive with airlines on any runs over 4-5 hours in length. So CHI-DEN, fast overnight train (somewhat faster than the old DZ) and day trains making the run in 5 hours could serve many folks, but that is about the limit and at a very high cost. HSR is very competitive up to ~400 miles; even higher speed (125 mph) is fairly competitive. I do not believe the concept of running LD trains for the JOURNEY is a proper use of public funds; I say that because that is essentially a land cruise.
Although Dave Klepper makes some nice points, his idea that since many people use the NEC multiple times per month versus a few others 1-2 times per year on LD trains does not appear to be a winning point.
schlimm, I agree with you re: HSR cost-effectivity at varying distances, and I at least understand the rue that you have with the leisure use of LD trains that are publicly supported. But … May I respectfully opine that your descriptor “land cruise”, unless referring to hiking, would require the use of public highways, that are built oft by court land condemnation or costly purchase, then also with public funds for construction, maintenance, security, et al. On the other hand, a “land cruise” on foot is surely the best way for us all to move about leisurely. A human body is meant to move. I myself have many, many thousands of miles of LD professional sailing yacht delivery, major triathlons, marathons, backpacking, rock climbing, amd high-altitude mountaineering, but even in most of those venues there were public funds used to ensure a safe, available, and accessible “cruise.”
To some extent, the economics depends on the distance travelled. When I lived in the Midwest and had to travel frequently to the East Coast, I often chose Amtrak over flying. I could get from Chicago to Boston, New York or D.C. in less than a day, while sleeping, eating and working on the train. I arrived refreshed, it was much less of a hassle than flying and the total cost vs. a plane ticket, meals and a hotel room was about the same.
John Timm
That’s part of the problem with Amtrak…
I think they have become largely inbred. All the folks there at the start are long gone and there hasn’t been anyone with enough familiarity with the host roads to successfully navigate a change like Amtrak wanted to do with the Sunset. The did all their “in-house” work, then sprung it on the world, blindsiding UP, and ultimately winding up being smacked-down by UP. After their near-meltdowns, the UP is uber-sensitive to capacity issues, particularly on THAT route. Amtrak should have known and done some inside schmoozing and gotten a deal done in private before making any public announcement.
Amtrak really needs a #1 or #2 guy who knows and understands the leaders on the host roads. There are good working relationships between Amtrak and the host roads at the “underling” levels, but not at the top where these deals ultimately get done.
Amtrak needs to find a “true believer” out there in the Class 1 world who is recently retired or blocked from the top by younger talent to come in and run things. A Reistrup/Claytor/Gunn kind of guy - perhaps more progressive than Claytor and with smoother edges than Gunn.
I disagree, 90mph would be much better. I have rode the CZ between Illinois and Denver many times, 16 hours of that in coach is a lot to take, most of it is in the dark, and even if it weren’t 1k miles of cornfields is not my idea of a vacation. Contrary to what several self-proclaimed “experts” on this board argue Amtrak is an essential mode of transportation, not a vacation cruise liner. One can take it for fun, just as someone can pay to ride in an airplane for fun, but that isn’t the social purpose that it serves nor the reason why it is necessary, as a public good, for the government to support it. And in the budget that just passed Amtrak receives around $1 Billion per year while highways get $39 Billion, I don’t care how clever the “inbred” (the insult of an anti-rail passenger type here for Amtrak’s employees, not mine) executives running the place while getting by with scraps are it isn’t possible to provide an adequate national rail service on $1Billion.
I used the term “land cruise” as analogous to what almost all passenger ship traffic is and has been for years, a voyage where the ship’s myriad of activities is the primary draw, not just transport to the destination(s). There are few travel activities that do not rely in part on publicly funded facilities, even if some folks argue they are paid for by user fees. That said, it seems to me that LD trains are: 1. not primarily used as a means of transportation, and 2., are far more heavily subsidized by most metrics than corridor trains. Therefore I just don’t see how their continuance, particularly the sleepers, can be justified.
A Reistrup is probably just what is needed. Someone who is aggressive, progressive and knows the railroads, their CEO’s (and where all the skeletons are buried!!).
Have you ever traveled on a long distance passenger train, and if so, interacted with those traveling? They ride them primarily because they are cheaper than flying ($150 round trip from Denver to Chicago rather than upwards of $400, plus the cost of getting to and from the airport or paying for parking there), more comfortable and faster than a bus (you can get up and walk around, and eat when you feel like it not just the few times the bus stops), and not prone to unreliability like one’s old car can be. When I rode it it often was FULL of lower income (often African-American) people traveling from Oakland to Chicago to meet relatives, once a year or so. The kids sometimes struck up conversations with me, many of whom have never seen barges etc. I often talked to them about how hard it was to be on a train for two days, in coach, and they would simply say that more than $5000 for say, a family of four to fly was out of the question but that they could manage $2000 or so on the train. People from my part of Illinois ride it because it is cheaper than driving alone (it makes sense to drive to Denver ONLY if you have a reliable car and more than one person in the car) and all the rigamarole with driving to Chicago (two hours) paying for parking, renting a car in Denver
Perhaps so, and more true in the summer and other vacation times. However, your fares are rather off. Looking at a number of days up to a month out, the CZ is more than what you mentioned - between $311-432 RT coach. I can find flights for as little as $419 RT or even $328 RT on Southwest. And one can get to O’Hare or Midway airport about as cheaply as to Union Station by public transport. if you had to drive, there is nothing affordable near Union Station, while one can park at O’Hare for as little as $6.75-9.00/day.
Yes, IF you live in Chicago or its suburbs, not everyone does. The CZ stops in Princeton, 25 miles from my hometown, we can get friends to take us there but not the two and a half hours to O’Hare (on a good day) 130 miles away. As far as the fares, the last time I rode the CZ was when I lived in Denver seven years ago and my grandpa in Illinois died, it was $75 one way, I found out about the funeral at around 4PM and a neighbor had me on the train within half an hour, before the 6PM departure, no way I could have done that to DIA, minimum $500 on United with no reservation, not many flights that time of day, my dad would have needed to spend half a day getting me in Chicago, we would have arrived home after midnight, as it was it only took an hour to get me in Princeton. The fares are up since I last rode, part of it is due to political pressure not to discount last minute tickets to fill the train up, as well as a car shortage.
Phoeebe vet has beat this problem to death. It is not slow trains it is slow zones. They may be either permanent slow orders, temporary slow orders, track geometry, track grades, city runningn streets ; nno crossing signals, ect; slow track switches, stick rail, on and on. Take any AMTRAK TIMETABLE AND FIGURE THE average speed It usually is below 50 mph and the cardinao / hoosier is below 30.
get rid of the slow zones and you will speed up trains.
The issue on this thread is not how to speed up the trains but rather does it matter if they are slow or fast, since some here think long distance trains are like a Carnival cruise, not real transportation, “the point isn’t the destination but the journey” etc… But I agree about the slow orders, the Q picked a poor location for their line across Iowa (the CZ route) with drainage problems that slow the trains down, as well as no CTC so no way to pass a coal train, BNSF and Amtrak received TIGER money for CTC islands but were turned down for the sub ballast rebuilding.
Gentlemen, gentlemen: We are off-(my) topic. Of course, I don’t “own” this thread, just originally asked if there are others that like to enjoy and appreciate traveling at a humane pace. I myself don’t wanna go fast (though I do hammer on my triathlon bicycle!). I don’t care about slow zones. I don’t want to speed up trains. I want to enjoy the journey, as I proceed with my on-board business and activity. Nonetheless, “well said,” DwightBranch. How valuable we are when we teach and mentor the young, which is never done well in haste.
Sorry if I don’t happen to agree with your view. If those of us who see a useful role for passenger train service did not have to fight over the scraps, I’d agree there is a place for LD trains, which serve so few people. But funds are very limited and it is quite “rational” to use those funds where they can make the biggest positive impact, i.e., new and existing short distance corridors.
Make the most impact for whom? Those that only travel short distances?