Amtrak

I wish Democrats would advocate for it more.

I love traveling Amtrak!

Additionally, I think more major cities should think about installing light rail systems. OKC for example. I think if all metropolitan areas had these it could have a positive effect on the energy crisis.

The problem is that public transit is perceived as being "inconvienent".

public transit is perceived as being "lower class." The media in St Louis often releases studies that state those who use the light rail system are of a higher income than those who use the bus. I guess they think it's more chic and urban to use the light rail system.

nt

Light rails are convenient: sit down, read the paper or listen to music. we just need enough so people can get to where they are going.

Where good public transportation exists, people use it in large numbers: NY/NJ, SF Bay Area, Washington DC...

Light rails are convenient: sit down, read the paper or listen to music.

I take it you're not speaking from personal experience. On a well-used urban transit system in rush hour, you're not going to find enough room to sit down, let alone to spread a newspaper. Public transit is a lot of things, but comfortable and relaxing are not two of them.

Personal Rapid Transit would be an excellent alternative but unfortunately it costs far too much.

I get a seat on my daily commute at least 85% of the time.

"Public transit is a lot of things, but comfortable and relaxing are not two of them."

Compared to driving a car in rush hour traffic? Public transit is more comfortable and relaxing by a mile.

and it was WONDERFUL. Great, plush seats, comfortable enough to sleep in, plenty of room, and we carried on a cooler of beer. Heaven. Got to see rural parts of the state you would NEVER see when driving a car, partied like a fool, didn't have to drive, and wound up a few blocks from the Quarter. Beat that!

I loved it.

...from the west coast to the east coast, and then back again. The Empire Builder going through Glacier National Park in the winter is the memory of a lifetime. Great people on board, comfy lounge car with movies at night and observation by day, a nice dressing room for women to wash up and change clothes. I didn't get a sleeper, but I was still quite comfortable. Although if every seat were full, that would have been more difficult. I can step onto the train ten minutes away from my home with no lines, no security checks, and go all the way across a continent.

Whoo hoo! Perhaps we were on the same train... I took it multiple times, from Boston to Sacramento, and back via Portland. Very variable. The most fun part about having the sleepers is the kind of sleeper club feeling that develops during the meals. Met lots of interesting people (some wackos too :).
One time the trip was almost perfect, no delays. My recent trip was a major disaster, though. Fun to think about it now, but at the time I was really furious. Thrain broke down multiple times, had to spent some nights in hotels. Huge delays... I got my money back, eventually, but it was really bad. Most of it due to the underfunding of Amtrak! The employees were generally nice... But the resources were not there (no spare parts, no spare cars if they break down in the middle of the country)...
-C

And they take the bike for $10.00 extra, roll on.

Amtrak is terribly expensive in the North-East. By Amtrak, what do you mean exactly? (for all of us not terribly educated on the subject)

I love trains, we could get great high speed rail through many markets, but lots of repug naysayers and dems who don't give a flying fuck.

It would cut down on pollution by tons and who wouldn't like to be able to take a train instead of a plane if it only takes an extra two hours to get from KC to Chicago? Great scenery you miss from 30,000 feet and much more convienent. Going straight into the heart of a city instead of an airport half a state away.

Why does Congress feel it is necessary to bail out the airlines each time a slight bump in the road occurs, but wants Amtrack to twist in the wind!? IMO, fuck the airlines, they've had their chance to get their act together. But they are so used to getting a gov bail out, they count on them each time. Airtran, Southwest, and Jetblue are the only ones that should survive, then we'd get good air transport.

While we're at it, lets have Europe' RyanAir and EasyJet fly Trans-atlantic so there aren't outragous fares across the pond.

Getting a bit off topic, but that's life

I HATE to fly!

By Don Phillips
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 3, 2003; Page A04


The Bush administration's plan to restructure Amtrak ran into nearly universal bipartisan opposition yesterday from a Senate committee, and Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he fears Congress will continue to subsidize the passenger railroad's losses while demanding no basic changes in how it operates.

-snip-

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over Amtrak, led the chorus of senators dismissing the administration plan.

"I fear this approach will be the end of Amtrak as a national system," she said.

Sens. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) said the administration plan would probably kill the Chicago-Seattle Empire Builder, which provides the only public transportation to vast stretches of rural North Dakota and Montana.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37019-2003Oct2.html

Getting rid of Amtrak will hurt people in very small towns in red states, where no airline would ever fly.

I LOVE traveling by train and the experiences I have had with Amtrak have all been good.

Amtrak service is shamefully underdeveloped. Amtrak "operates over 22,000 route miles" across the US (http://www.amtrak.com/press/amtrakfacts.html). French National Rail--operating over a territory only 2/3 the size of Texas--has 19,500 miles of route.

There was once talk of adopting a French high-speed rail system between Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston. I think there was a similar plan in the works for Florida. What happened with that?

I love the French high-speed train, but this is another of my favorite French trains. Used for shorter, rural connections. It's like riding an Airstream with bay windows and not having to worry about the driving. Fab.

of building it and someone noticed that Southwest lets you fly for 25 bucks or so.

The high speed rail plan was specifically defeated by Southwest--it's not that "someone noticed that Southwest lets you fly for 25 bucks or so". (Last time I checked it was more than that--plus long-term parking at your home airport & car rental once you get to your destination.) Some details here:

http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/tgv/texastgv.html

Many of us in Texas would love to catch a train downtown in one city then debark downtown in another after a quick ride. Distances between Texas cities can be big & most airports are out in the boonies.

Actually, just repairing the existing tracks (so decent, "conventional" speed is possible) & scheduling some passenger trains to use them would be useful. During the War (that's WWII, the Big One) my mother used to catch the train in Houston after work on Friday & arrive in Dallas in time to go dancing.

The rail lines could help commuters, too. Currently, a giant expansion of the Katy Freeway (I10) is ready to begin; neighborhoods, businesses & parklands will be damaged to construct the monstrosity. What about the existing rail line/right-of-way that could bring folks in from the far suburbs--as Northeastern commuters ride the train to work? Forget about it. Maybe, eventually, Metro's pathetic light rail plans MIGHT extend out that far. Meanwhile, bring on the bulldozers.

There was a ballot intiative three years ago that passed. Unforutnately opponents are trying to repeal it by an inititaive this year.

They bought up all the bus and rail lines used by commuters and closed them down so that people had to buy cars and commute.

Don't know how true it is, but it was on PBS.

...them and built buildings so that the city could never have public transportation again.

Indianapolis had street cars until the mid-50's. Then they had GM busses, and people HAD to start driving, because the bus didn't go everywwhere the streetcar did.

My daughter LOVES Amtrak!
She comes to visit, and the old man listens for the train to "clear Chalmers" then I drive to the depot and pick her up. I live 100 yards from the ROW.

Last time she came to visit, she got a round-trip fair for $25. They were having a promotion of some kind. Even at full price, she can come on the train for about the same cost as driving.

And there's just something about looking out the window at night, and seeing a fully-lit passenger train speed past...

nt

public transportation everywhere. I lived my first seven years in the DC area without a car, and this was before the metro opened.

I would love to take trains more often, but Congress consistently underfunds Amtrack, saying it has to pay it's own way. Most people are completely unaware of the extent to which highways are subsidized, by which I mean that the actual users do not pay the direct costs of building and maintaining them. They're paid for from general revenue taxation.

Summer 2002 I took the train from Kansas City to St. Louis to attend a conference there. A five hour train ride (and I can drive it faster) took ten hours because it had rained the day before and apparently some track sections were unusable. We -- the passenger train -- kept on being stopped so that freight trains could go by. It was an agonizingly long trip. I'm tempted to say "never again". What I did learn was that I'd be very cautious about trying to take a longer trip from Kansas City by train. I couldn't have any confidence whatsoever that I'd make my connection in St. Louis.

. And it's fun to sit in the cafe car and have a beer or cocktail and watch the scenery go by. With Cell phones and Computers you are never cut off from the world and can get work done.

...which they acquired all over the US for way below value, and they sell those tracks in such small units and to people who are pulling up the tracks so that it will be impossible to ever put them back together again without having governments having to pay huge sums to the new owners.

So, lets look at where the money has gone. More than a century ago Republican bought up lots of land from cronies for more than it was worth and built tracks all over the country. Those tracks were built for, like 10 cents a day, which will NEVER happen again. The government is now selling all that land back to private people in pieces and terring up those tracks.

If we ever want a national rail system, we're going to have to pay billions buying back this land and putting tracks up.

CSX is run by a bunch of Bush cronies who are making millions selling off public assets.

The automobile and oil industries love this.

And you know who made his first big career move by tearing up railroad tracks? Howard Dean. Nowonder Jeb and Tucker like him.

Is former Chairman of CSX...

But over long distances it is incredibly expensive.

In Europe and Japan, trains make a lot of sense because everything is very close. Here the distances are much greater and the costs go up.

rail system that was going to run in a big triangle -- can't remember which cities, but Orlando, all the cities on the east coast, Miame, Tallahassee, were all going to be connected, and the train was going to be fast too.

Many tourists who have to rent a car, would have been able to just take the train, and working and middle class commuters would have benefitted hugely.

I believe the plans were just about ready to go forward and Jeb was elected and nixed them.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was THE reason Jeb got elected.

But there is another one circulating to defeat it.

about Jeb killing something that was farther along than just an initiative. I might be misremembering the extent of the plans at the time Jeb cut it off. (Maybe there was an office for developing the plans, and he cut off funding.)

A quick search of the NYTimes archives might be in order (unless they pulled an NPR and deleted the record).

1. A public works project to create high-speed intercity rail that can compete effectively with airlines. Build new high speed tracks right next to the existing Amtrack lines.

2. We need a lot more light rails and street cars connecting small suburbs, these are cheap and highly efficient and actually good for property values. If we can only make the damn things go faster!

3. More of those car-share services, and some way to make the car rentals cheaper. If we don't get away from the one-American, one-car rule, it's going to be an environmental disaster.

We can catch the train, take it to Chicago and are already partying by the time we could drive up and still be looking for a parking garage. Amtrack also has some fantastic train/hotel deals. :thumbsup:

I would absolutely love to take a long train ride with the family, see the sites, sleep on the train, dine in the diner... We are going to do it because it is a one-of-a-kind adventure. Why doesn't Amtrak seem to sell itself that way? It's no competition as plain transportation (buses and planes beat it hands down). Amtrak travel should be thought of more like we think of ocean cruises.

Now about the pool...

In some places there may be a residual antipathy towards the old railroad barons - some of the earliest anti-corporate sentiment in the US, but mostly it's been the corporate media, heavily supported by auto industry advertizing money, that has given railroads a "PR problem".

Put it this way, everywhere in the country that has a good public transit system, it's used heavily.

that there is only one Amtrak line in the entire system that turns a profit. Therefore, I think that you have to couch Amtrak advocacy in terms of a public good, much like the interstate highway system.

I rode cross-country on the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago, and I had a fantastic time. Except sleeping, but I have a hard time sleeping in anything less than a bed. >.<

But yes. <3 t3h 4mtr4k.

I can't sleep on planes or trains.

I just looked up a hypothetical trip from my home in Atlanta to Los Angeles. I am about to have Fall Break from school and would be able to travel on 10/10 and would have to be back on 10/15. Here's what I get with Amtrak.

ATL->LAX

Leave Atlanta at 8:06 p.m. on Friday 10/10
ATL -> Washington, DC
Washington, DC -> Chicago
Chicago -> Los Angeles

Date of Arrival: October 14 @ 8:40 a.m. giving me 24 hours before I have to leave again. Then, on top of that, I would get back on October 18, three full days after I was supposed to be home. The total cost: $365.00 with a student discount.

Now what about taking Delta or Airtran out of Atlanta? $200, 5 hours. There is no comparison. Rail travel is unworkable and outmoded in the US. The country is TOO LARGE. I am unwilling to spend 8 days in the train cars and $165 too much just to support the jobs of some hard-working Americans. I'll support airline workers instead. After all, I used to be one.

What about those people, though, in really small towns out west where there is no airport for miles?

The USPS has had to begin offering only periodic delivery for those people living in remote locations. Some offer drop boxes in central towns that may require users to travel up to 50 or more miles to pick up their mail.

If I choose to live at the top of a high mountain, do I still have the right to have my mail delivered to my doorstep? Similarly, if I choose to live in the middle of nowhere in Montana or South Dakota, do I have the right to convenient travel? I vote no. One of the reasons that AMTRAK is not successful is because big city passengers subsidize the cost of introducing a rail line into smaller places. An NYC to Boston line would be able to pay for itself if it did not also have to cover the cost of a dozen other lines that bleed money.

but the Congressmen who represent those towns would strongly object to that. And by the way Amtrak doesn't serve SD.

for AMTRAK. I don't really care what Congressman X from District Y in State Z wants for his constituents. It is an unworkable system that has leeched approx. $25 billion from the government since 1980. My congressman would have things to say about anything that hurts Delta, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Georgia Pacific, or Philips, but I don't expect anyone else to care, really. The sooner America writes off rail travel except in high traffic areas, the better off we'll all be.

And yes, I have ridden Amtrak from BWI to Washington, DC and the experience was a nice one overall. It wasn't even overpriced. I would never take it on a vacation or to any destination that was more than 10 hours away.

....but I sure treasure the time I have used it.

And who can sleep, anyway, when the train is slowing through little towns in the middle of the night and you look out at quaint main streets and thousands of back yards, and then a little family comes in from the cold to settle in the seats on a great adventure? One of my best experiences was when an Amish family nearly missed their stop in the middle of the night -- they were all sound asleep. The conductor roused them at the last moment and everything went nuts. Other passengers were helping them scramble for shoes, grab up babies, handle bags and get off as the train began to roll again. Strangers all, in a common adventure.

The downside of living in remote areas.

but you can't deny that Amtrak serves many small towns that most other transportation operators don't.

Of course you wouldn't have because the airline industry was shutdown.

I think we are also up to the task. In some towns here in Montana, Amtrak is the only available public transit. Without Amtrak, if you don't have a car and don't want to hitchhike, you ain't leaving town.

But I would not wish that on anyone. I took Greyhound once--NEVER again!

Amtrak needs a lot of attention and work. Right now I think we shouldn't advocate for it as it's inefficient and not that profitable.

What Amtrak needs is a complete overhaul to more convinient, faster, cleaner, and more modern way of transportation. There is no reason that Europe and Japan should enjoy modern railways and we push money into our woefully obsolete lines.

is an important issue. About 25 years ago Allegheny Airlines (it's now USAir and has since taken over at least two other airlines) laid its route map over Europe. At the time, it flew as far west as Minneapolis in the north, Memphis in the South, and Boston in the Northeast. Lay that over Europe and you have approximately Moscow to Madrid. Europe, particularly western Europe, is smaller than the norhteast quarter of the United States. Which is the part of the country that sustains the current rail system.

I've been saying for years now that good rail service should be subsidized in this country, the way we subsidize the interstate highway system.

Conservatives love to bitch and moan about the annual $1 billion subsidy that Amtrak requires, but they bailed out the airlines after 9/11, no questions asked. In addition, the subsidy has not risen significantly in the thirty years of Amtrak's existence.

Yes, a billion dollars is a lot of money, but that's less than the highway budget of the typical state. AAA likes to say that drivers pay for the roads they drive on with gasoline taxes, but actually, that's not true. A lot of general fund money, both state and federal, goes into highways.

When I lived in Portland, I occasionally took the train to Seattle, and it was fantastic: scenic and relaxing. I've taken trains all over Japan, and their overall system has to be the best in the world.

Trains don't get no respect because the oil companies would rather have drivers buy gallon after gallon of fuel and the airlines buy ton after ton of fuel.

As it stands, a business day trip from say, Chicago to Cleveland, requires going to the airport, stuffing yourself into a plane full of other grumpy people, and getting away from the airport at your destination. A comparable train trip lets you sit back in a comfortable seat, watch the landscape roll by, maybe get up and walk around, and go get your choice of food or beverage.

The main problem with Amtrak as it currently exists is that it has been starved for thirty years. It's been treated like an inmate of the Gulag--fed just enough to keep it alive but not enough to keep it healthy.

For example, I wanted to take the train from Portland to Los Angeles for a convention, but there's only one train a day, and its schedule was exactly wrong. It would have cost about the same as flying if I had been willing to sit up for more than 24 hours, but at my age, I'm not, and getting a sleeping berth would have cost approximately 500 dollars more. Even though this included meals, that's an awful lot of money, more than a luxury hotel would charge. It seems as if they're trying to soak the more affluent travelers, and given their stingey Federal subsidy, who can blame them?

But just think--the $87 billion being requested for the occupation of Iraq could maintain Amtrak at current levels for decades--or build it into a world-class system.

Right now, we're behind China, Taiwan, and South Korea when it comes to railroad planning and innovation.

I think Amtrak could work if it received adequate funding. The problem is that people expect everyting to be profitable. And that if it isn't it's somehow "not worth the investment". There are some things that are not profitable that are "worth it".

But the real issue is small towns where Amtrak is the only transportation, besdies Greyhound, that comes through their localities. How are people going to get around when the nearest airport is tens or hundreds of miles away?

I used to ride the Hiawatha from Milwaukee to Chicago and vice versa every weekend. Sure beat driving on I94.

I think the problem with Amtrak is that people expect it to be profitable, and I don't think it can be.

(Would the airlines be profitable if we didn't keep bailing them out every few years? So we bail out the airlines after 9/11 and then they orde planes from Europe? That's crap, but I digress...)

I subscribe to Trains Magazine and Don Phillips writes a monthly column and speaks quite often about Amtrak and shows a thorough undertanding of the issues involved.

I think it's funny that Republicans always wax nostaglic for the good old days of America but forget things like Passenger Trains as being part and parcel of daily life before the interstates.

Amtrak just doesn't have enough money. And that is the crux of the problem.