Thank you happy to be here!
Most of the stations on the Michigan Line are big enough to support multiple doors opening so the usual procedure when I’ve seen it is to have the departing passengers use a different door than the arriving passengers.
Welcome on board, snowdog.
David
I don’t recall any gates to the platforms in France. They do have ticket turnstiles but once past them you can go to any platform and train with doors still open. Was there any particular station where a gate is used in France (other than Eurostar) which requires customs clearance?
Sounds like the Trump school of business!
trump wouldn’t pay the agreed amount.
Rumor is Trump is predicatably trying to claw back the IRA funds allocated to Amtrak. They should not have dilly dallied on the equipment refresh orders. Any money not committed is probably going to be clawed back in my view. We shall see though. Classic Amtrak mismanagement. They had decent future funding under IRA and they sat on most of it.
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The U.S. national debt is now over $36 trillion. The national debt to GDP ratio is now 122%. In 2000, it was 59%. Last year, interest payments on the debt passed Defense as the biggest discretionary cost.
Everything, including Amtrak, should be on the cutting block.
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Common mistake is to try and manage a country this size like a household. Apples and Oranges though and well beyond the forum topic. Also, rather a large presumption the clawback is going to pay down the debt or fix the budget deficits vs being spent in another area altogether that is probably even more of a waste.
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Although deficit spending needs to
be reduced, the Amtrak budget woes outside the NEC is a drop in the bucket compared to defense spending or massive tax breaks for the few.
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That’s why I said “everything” needs to be cut. Everyone in the country seems to say it’s OK to cut the other things, but hands off my cause.
That may be, but just because it is a drop in the bucket doesn’t mean it can avoid the chopping block.
I disagree and as I said you can’t run a government like a household. Honestly do not care about Amtrak long term and so it is not a pet project as you imply. The facts are willy nilly across the board cuts with no thought applied is going to impact you very directly and pretty soon. I’ll give you an example. The return to the workplace mandate by the Feds just pushed is not being pushed for anything other then to get people to quit or retire. On the surface does not sound bad. However, one of the largest remote workforces is the IRS in the area of revenue collection. So the across the board and blanket Exec Order covers them as well. So given the precarious financial condition this country finds itself in. Might not be a good idea to reduce tax collection or in anyway impact it negatively. Just one example why the across the board and blanket approach might not be a good thing. The folks that retire have vast institutional knowledge that is probably not documented anywhere. Imagine what their sudden withdrawl will do to government operations vs a phased withdrawl. Going back to Amtrak, imagine what it will do just to Amtrak to have a sudden funding withdrawl. It’s going to impact State supported services as well as Federally subsidized services. The proper approach would be to isolate State from Federal but it looks like that might not happen. Time will tell of course.
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We can hope (not easy) that cuts are carefully done. But I what Musk did Day 1 at Twitter, aka X is an example, it’s done on a wholesale basis.
One unforeseen possible consequence of remote work is that those jobs being done from home dens in Austin or Denver can just as easily be done in Delhi or Chengdu.
As Amtrak’s independent auditors have stated in every one of its annual Financial Statements, “Amtrak is dependent upon substantial Federal Government subsidies to sustain its operations and maintain its underlying infrastructure.”
Federal government debt is different from state, local, and private debt. The federal government can use the central bank to monetize the debt, i.e. destroy its value and burden through inflation. Monetizing the debt has serious upstream and downstream consequences.
For the four years ended FY24, Amtrak spent $24.6 billion for the purchase and/or refurbishment of property, plant, and equipment. This was an increase of 34% over FY23 and 77.6% over FY21. Moreover, it had Construction Work in Progress at the end of the fiscal year of $6.2 billion, an increase of 33.1% over FY23 and 129% over FY21.
Over the same period the company received approximately $13.2 billion of federal paid in capital. It realized approximately $88 million from the sale of short-term investments, $977 million from federal and state capital assistance, and $575 million from the sale of debt.
At the end of FY24 the company had approximately $2.6 billion in securities available for sale and $83 million in short term investments. These accounts have been reduced by 26% and 78.7% over the four years.
It appears the company has been using these funds, which were largely an infusion of federal dollars, for operations and/or enhancements to property, plant and equipment. A complete reconciliation of funds received and used would require access to the company’s books.
The current administration thinks it has been given a mandate to destroy the USA as it existed on Jan. 19, 2025.
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They can’t do that without Congressional Approval. Possible the Republicans would do that but not likely. On the government side there are two type of clearences, Security based (Top Secret, Secret and Confidential) and there are clearences that are Privacy Act based (various grades of Public Trust Clearences). Any government job that deals with personal info of another (so called PII) required a Public Trust Clearence. So they would have to negate that whole system, amend the Privacy Act, etc. Not saying they can’t but either they take those steps or the government is opened to some serious lawsuits.
LOL, It seems that way but in fact Trump did appoint people to Cabinet positions that might not be as loyal to him as he thinks…which really surprised me as I thought in version 2.0 he was going to be more careful.
Note that Musk and Open AI are already arguing over the Stargate Project and Palantir as well as Andrull want a piece as well…just hilarious to read those tweets. It’s government Armageddon!!!. It has been entertaining just in the last two days. Then you have the CEO of Andrull bragging on his new Barracuda Cruise Missile and how it will overwhelm the air defenses of Russia or China…stupid to be public about it but also funny to listen to. I actually think we are far more at risk of a conflict with this White House then ever before because they have almost zero discipline with OPSEC.
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Sorry if I was not clear. I was not referring to Amtrak or any federal positions but rather to jobs in the private sector.
Most of Trump’s cabinet selections are much more loyal than at the beginning of first term.