Amtrack IS a religion…join us JOIN US!!!
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Drink the kool-aid, DRINK THE KOOL-AID!!!
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I am staying out of this one, have fun guys. Verbal flamethrowers and Linguistic Battering Rams are on sale at the front counter[banghead] [:-^]
Has anyone noticed when the hostility increases…the ability to spell decreases…dramatically???[D)][D)][D)][D)][D)]
underworld
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Believe there is budget money until the end of this fiscal year for Amtrak, and if no more is forth coming I hope the first stretch Pres. Gunn shuts down is the NEC. Then we’ll listen to the politicans howl.
If Gunn wants get his point across, thats exactly what he should do, close down the Coastliners out here also. Close down the entire service as soon as the remaining operational money strikes 0, hit the service at its most critical points and cause widespread disruption for millions of people and then we’ll see how long Congress takes to restore funding.[;)]
I could be wrong, but I don’t think Gunn is pro or anti reform. He’s just running Amtrak according to it’s current mandate. If they change the mandate, Amtrak will change with it.
I do believe that he is a “true believer” in passenger rail, but he doesn’t view his role as “change agent” other than to tidy up Amtrak internally. He’s also been trying to get Congress to face up to their desires for Amtrak vis a vis Amtrak’s needs.
It’s sort of “tell me what you want Amtrak to be or I’ll just assume you want it to be what it’s been all along - a politically routed, highly subsidized national rail network of traditional passenger trains - and I’ll tell you what that will costs. If come up with less funds without changing the madate, I’ll run the whole network until the money runs out. then shut it down.”
But, this doesn’t mean that if they change the mandate, he’ll mutiny.
For example, if Congress “reforms” Amtrak and it elimintes many of the LD trains in favor of investment in new corridors, and the funding matches the mandate, then my best guess is that you’d see Gunn make it happen - not a mutiny.
Well said. my point was that by stopping all service would be the best demostration of how vital Amtrack is to many parts of the nation. We will have to wait out and see what deveolps from this latest twist.
…I’ve seen him say that this is the amount of money it takes to safely run this system plus fund the responsbilities built into the system…{personnel funding of retirements, and other items I don’t remember what all}, and any money less than what he was asking for was a number that would produce a shutdown of the system…That is what I believe he will commit to…“Give me less money than I said it takes to run this system” and that will be automatic shutdown…and I hope he keeps his word…shut it ALL down.
If he does, he’ll regress his development to 2 year old temper tantrum status. The ramifications of that would pretty much be political and business suicide.
However, should he show a more expected level of maturity, and use the cuts, and the freedoms (and to be sure, there would be some newfound freedoms for the execs at Amtrak) to start developing American Passenger Rail into what it could be capable of, he can all but expect support to start pouring his way.
Will it be pretty? No. Is the possibility there that some sentimental favorite train trips may be lost due to economic necessity? Definately. Could Amtrak do a Phoenix impersonation, and rise up out of its own ashes? That remains to be seen, but I think under the correct direction it’s possible.
Just my [2c] of course.
Chris
Denver, CO
…I believe he has commitments and if the money is not there he can’t fill them. At that time he will set in motion what must be done to stop operations turn over the responsibility to whom ever and declare bankrupcy. It might be called suicide but it must also be called necessity. Let the politicans that do not want to fund the operation deal with the mess it will create.
Well I tell you this much,The Airlines surely are going away any time soon.
BNSFrailfan.
As Kay Bailey Hutchinson has said, “either have a nationwide Amtrak or none at all.” That is the politics of the Amtrak, the Northeast Corridor, and the long distance routes.
There is no support in Congress for the Northeast Corridor or in California lines in the rest of the nation unless there is some form of rail passenger routes elsewhere.
No where in the world does any form of passenger transporation earn a profit, all have government subsidies. The day Amtrak dies will be the day there will be a huge bottleneck of traffic in the northeast. As one senator has noted, to replace the NEC the government will have to spend $87 billion to upgrade and expand I-95…
As it turns out, Amtrak is cheap and we would be fooli***o eliminate its funding… If you want to balance the budget, look at the four biggest government programs to find the cuts: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense, in that order…
donclark:
On the highway congestion relief from the NEC, you have some data on the required expansion of highways to replace the NEC? These guys (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-266.html) claim that Amtrak replaces a car in each lane every 80 seconds (peak) on Amtrak’s heaviest NY-Philly segment. Maybe they are not also including the commuter train traffic, which may be part of the Amtrak equation. Do you have some numbers on rail traffic and how many extra highway lanes are required to handle it?
Knowing and having worked with Dave Gunn many years ago, I would like to offer just a little insight. Dave Gunn not only knows how to run a railroad passenger operation better than most anyone around, he is also very skilled in corporate financial matters. That is something one gets from the Harvard School of Business, and when honed over 40 years of experience, let me tell you. When Dave Gunn says there are no funds to continue operations, he is not kidding. As president of the railroad, he has an absolute responsibility to safe guard the assets. That means that when cash drops to a certain point, and there is no check in the mail, all operations will stop.
Why ALL operations? Well, a there is the matter of severance pay. Amtrak was previously ordered by Congress to allow severence agreements to run three years. Such agreements are in place by union contract and I think the only thing that could stop or hold up such payments would be bankruptcy. So a partial shutdown, say dropping the 16 long distance routes, DOES NOT STOP THE NEGATIVE CASH FLOW.
Complete shut down, with the concurrent filing of bankruptcy, also does not immediately end expenses. Beside rounding up all the rolling stock for movement to locations that could be secured and the expense of a security force, there would also be the little matter of keeping power on the NE corridor overhead. Turn out the lights and watch all that nice copper disappear.
By the way, Dave Gunn actually had to be persuaded to take the Amtrak job. I can assure it was not the pay, which is chicken feed compared to most other three billion a year operations. It also was not an ego trip. If you were having a friendly conversation with a stranger who turned out to be Dave Gunn, you might learn that he is with Amtrak, but you might also be left with the impression that he works on the trains or in the shops or holds a desk job in some remote corner of the railroad.
Dave Gunn took the job with the view that with
Amtrak needs alot of New Things like 30 Billion for the Northeast Corridor to get it in A- Shape Again, 500 Fresh Superliners Brand New from the Factory, The Superliners 1 are 26 Years Old and the 2 are going on 10 plus Years Old, 350 New Coaches for the Northeast Corridor Service, 60 New Diners and Crew Dorms for the Single level Trains, and 50 more Viewliners Sleeping Cars. [:)][:D]
Paul
I doubt that there is anyone in the Kato Institute that has a clue as to just what the impact on traffic movement those few added cars would have on traffic flow. The information you cite was drawn from traffic data for 1995. My, how time flies.
Incidently, the last I heard, Wendell Cox makes his living providing consulting services to business involved in highway transport.
By the way, one of the geniuses at the Kato Institute wrote a report suggesting that the federal government should get completely out of the highway business and leave it all to the individual states. To see how well that works, please refer to a highway map of the the southeast corner of the State of Wisconsin and locate the route of a free limited-access highway running from Elkhorn to Genoa City, WI. Then carefully note what happens at the Illinois State Line.
It is the single goal of the Kato Institute to to reduce federal expenditures and they won’t stop their pursuit until federal taxes can be completely eliminated.
Jay
QUOTE: Originally posted by Modelcar
Believe there is budget money until the end of this fiscal year for Amtrak, and if no more is forth coming I hope the first stretch Pres. Gunn shuts down is the NEC. Then we’ll listen to the politicans howl."
Quote CopCarSS
If he does, he’ll regress his development to 2 year old temper tantrum status. The ramifications of that would pretty much be political and business suicide."
Just to add a little more to my previous, Dave Gunn is not going to target any specific part of the system as a strong arm tactic to try to generate more support. He is much too smart to think that such a tactic would work. Beside that, at age 68 or so, and after running the largest transit operations in the country, I don’t think he gives a rats concern about a business or political future.
Jay
Amtrak is a political animal as alot of this thread confirms this fact. Politicians are skilled at playing both sides against the middle as in divide and conquer while practicing double speak. If you ever wondered why we live in a transit third world country replete with bankrupt airlines while stalled in moving parking lots in expressways burning gas we can’t afford…take a look at where your hard won money goes. As Woody Guthrie once said some people rob you with a fountain pen. Link posted below. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
What’s wrong with rebuilding the old equipment?
What new technology has become available in the last 20 years that renders the existing equipment obsolete?
What is wrong with those 60 year old diners? I ate in one last year. The ride was good, the climate control was good. The food was good.
Amtrak cetainly needed to replace steel cars with stainless steel and they certainly needed a greater degree of standardization, but what would drive the need for new equipment now?
Paul-
My back of the envelope calculations for the NEC yielded that Amtrak was worth about 1/2 lane of interstate highway, maybe a whole lane at peak morning and evening times. A highway lane can carry a vehicle every two seconds, or 30 a minute. Figure 1 -1.5 passengers per vehicle.
There’s nothing wrong with the equipment that minor upgrades won’t fix, why spend $50 million on a new car when you can spend $1 million to keep it opperational for another 15 years. This has been the guiding rule since the turn of the century for all rolling stock, if it’s not damaged beyond 40-60%, just repair it, don’t waste money on a new one to replace it.