For what it's worth:
My wife and I have tickets to ride Numbers 4 and 3 from Lamy, NM, to Fullerton, round trip, in October. I received an email and a recorded phone call from Amtrak, advising us of a change in schedule times, but neither said anything about use of a bus.
"Amtrak is the sole user of the BNSF track between Jansen, Colo., near Trinidad, and the junction with the Rail Runner Express commuter train’s track south of Santa Fe and is entirely responsible for capital and maintenance costs for that stretch of track."
I hear, or read frequently about Amtrak's lamenting having to share trackage with freight trains,and having to wait for freight trains. They don't own most of the track they use, and freight traffic often gets priority status, thus creating delay's with passenger service. I guess a proposal for Amtrak to purchase this stretch of right-of-way, making it theirs to own and use how they see fit, is unrealistic?
AMTRAK would rather complain & blame others rather than fix things. Let them die.
Jim, when you are gone, Amtrak will still be here.
eddie g posted:Jim, when you are gone, Amtrak will still be here.
Maybe on the Northeast Corridor.
The real problem (and thus it is unlikely to be solved) is someone intelligently looking at transportation in the US and figuring out what works and what doesn't, part of it is people prefer knee jerk answers "passenger railroads are a thing of the past", "the automobile is freedom" (just ask those people who say the auto is freedom about commuting in many suburban areas, or worse, places like Atlanta and Phoenix that are literally choked by the traffic in them), then we have the very real political power of certain industries (the airlines, the trucking industry) and their political supporters to maintain privilege (for example, trucks being heavily subsidized, despite claims to the contrary the road use taxes they pay and the diesel fuel tax don't pay the cost of damage trucks have on highways, or the ICC rules that for years crippled freight railroads).
And yes, I agree comparing China to the US or Europe to the US is difficult, very different countries, with very different needs. China went with high speed rail because they recognized the need for people to get relatively long distances quickly but decided that they preferred railroads to the airplane (I don't know entirely why). My son was in China a number of years ago and rode high speed rail between Wuhan and Beijing and he said it was a much nicer experience then flying and was roughly the same time if I recall correctly (haven't looked at timetables, so could be off on that).
That said the big problem in the US is we have this aversion to planning IMO, and it hurts us, we do far too many things ad hoc to 'fix things' rather than being proactive. For example, we have a number of metropolitan areas that have grown and continue to grow, yet there has been little planning to handle it, then you get into emergency mode. My company's HQ is in Atlanta and because of the lack of mass transit, it is a nightmare driving there, where I live in the burbs of NJ the highways are horrible during rush hours.
The problem with Amtrak is it was thrown together nearly 50 years ago when railroads abandoned passenger rail, and since that time in many ways it has been a cobbled together mess of strong corridor trains (northeast corridor for example), and the ghosts of the old long distance routes and service that covers along the way a lot of small towns that have service...and no one has rationalized the service, and not surprisingly. The 'free market' types tell you that if train travel was worth doing, the 'private sector' would handle it (leaving out the various subsidies that make 'private sector' transportation like airlines viable, or that public transit's benefits are not seen on a ROI schedule for the rail service but rather economically), many of those who clamor for Amtrak to be cut back and 'pay their own way' are responsible for Amtrak running deficits because, of course, the service in 'their' region is 'critical'....Maybe it is time to retire things like the Southwest Chief, maybe the cost of running it and the economic gain are too out of balance..a 43 hour trip sounds more like a nostalgia trip than a practical way to travel...if there is a case for it for bringing people to tourist destinations, then maybe the state(s) involved should be kicking in to the cost of the service, as a subsidy to build the tourist industry.
I suspect as others do that putting in a bus route in the middle is likely more about making the service so inconvenient that it kills it off then a practical alternative *shrug*. Without come sort of coordinated planning, though, I think Amtrak and rail service is in for some rough times. When something like the gateway tunnels into NYC, that you can quantify the reasons to do it (the northeast corridor is one of the most heavily travelled and revenue generating services in Amtrak, and economically those tunnels generate a lot of GDP and tax revenue that ends up supporting a lot of things outside the region as well as within) is being nixed or ignored, I don't see how the rest of the rail system is going to get anything but the shaft, personally. Yeah, we aren't supposed to talk about politics, but given that Amtrak is run by the government, kind of hard not to talk about politics when discussing it......
The interstate highway legislation was inspired by Adolph Hitler's "autobahn" and signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower; the airlines were already subsidized and there was much more to come. Therefore, wasn't it ironic that Ike was carried "home to the vict'ry" in a C&O baggage car. We should have sent him home in the baggage compartment of a Greyhound bus.
Sadly, AMTK long distance service is just a very expensive ghostly image of what was, back when I wore a younger man's clothes. No corporation can or will make the immense investment necessary to replicate the service of those glorious days of yesteryear in order to hemorrhage cash.
Private industry can't compete against government which has very deep pockets... yours.
This proposed "bus bridge" for the Southwest Chief is yet another contest between those who would like to see long distance rail travel maintained and improved and those who would like to kill it. This battle seems never ending.
But I am optimistic about passenger rail in the end. Mainly because people are becoming more and more fed up with air travel. Can they possibly make coach seats any smaller? And highway travel is not what it used to be either as it continues to get more congested, stressful, and expensive (gas, tolls, etc). People will increasingly look for more options when weighing and balancing their individual travel needs for comfort, speed, independence, and cost. And with more people opting for the comfort of rail we will see new technological rail innovations, better speeds, improved economy of scale, and more routes.
Many believe passenger rail should pay its own way. This argument makes no sense. The highway and air modes don't and never have. If the airlines had to pay for all of the airport and air infrastructure costs there would be no private air carriers and we would likely have a state airline. Amflite? Taxpayers also subsidize airlines to provide direct service into many smaller cities throughout the country. The subsidy program is called the "Essential Air Service". As an example, in my state of Colorado passenger subsidies amount to $484 per ticketed passenger to Pueblo and $986 per ticketed passenger to Cortez. I don't advocate that rail should get one third of transportation funding but rail should get a fair share without all of the complaining that routes must fully pay their own way.
Where would passenger rail be today if it had been operating on a more level field with highway and air modes without the 70 year competitive disadvantage since WWII? For one, we would probably have much more of our rail system double tracked enabling better efficiency and speed for both passenger and freight and benefitting our overall economy and even national defense.
With a growing population, killing one of our three forms of long distance transportation is extremely shortsighted.
Either Amtrak makes a profit or drop the route. Can't make a profit anywhere, go out of business.
How many of us use trains, I don't, never did and I live on the east coast. It's much more cost and time effective never to use a train. Most companies I know forbid their employees from using trains on business travel.
We have to get used to it that the day of passenger train travel is over and has been for years. Let it go!
Dave
A lot of us use trains.
Retired airline pilot here. I have free unlimited travel on American for the rest of my life. I loved flying, but detest air travel. Amtrak is my preferred way to go long distance.
I paid our government $85 to become a "known traveler" and the scrutiny I got after that was almost as bad as it was when I had four stripes on my sleeve. If I never go in another airline terminal it will be too soon.
Driving is becoming a giant pain. Trucks own the left lane, and traffic jams can happen in the middle of nowhere.
We really don't need high speed rail - just trains that roll at a consistent 80 mph on smooth track - with dining cars.
eddie g posted:A lot of us use trains.
And, although a lot of us used to, Eddie.....65 years ago or so!...a lot of 'us' don't anymore...for long distance travel.
And probably never will, when considering other alternatives available today.
There is a group of 'rail fans' in town here in Michigan. Once a year they pile onto an Amtrak train going to Chicago. Their advance-purchase numbers are sufficient sometimes to warrant a special dedicated car...if available.....whoopee. If the train arrives in Chicago on time, they'll race into the windy city to grab a bite to eat at some deli or greasy spoon, race back to the station, jump on the returning Amtrak train, and get back home in Meeeshigan......sometime. It's their annual outing.
Hey, I've done the same thing!...Go to Cedar Point Amusement Park in northern Ohio, ride the rides, eat a bite, come home....all in a day.
That's what 'supporting travel by AMTRAK' is for some of us not in the eastern megalopolis; a Sunday ride to the past....something FUN to do....for the day.
So, in a sense I also use trains.
But I don't depend on them.
If they're gone, I'll find another way to get where I'm going. Or some other form of amusement.
After all, most of us don't live within buggy ride or dusty walk from an AMTRAK station stop nowadays.
Oh, and FWIW... I frankly don't give a D___ about what the rest of the world is doing. I'm a USofA citizen. If their fancy rail travel is so indicative of success , well-directed priorities, and a paradigm to aspire to, then why is this country still the place-of-choice for the those wanting a better life? This country is still exceptional for more reasons than it has faults.
"If we build it, they will come!' is a good concept for Gollywood to build a movie around. As a battle cry for rail passenger service in this country?......not so much.
Just MHO, of course...
BTW... Hope your trip is enjoyable, Eddie.
KD
dkdkrd posted:eddie g posted:A lot of us use trains.
And, although a lot of us used to, Eddie.....65 years ago or so!...a lot of 'us' don't anymore...for long distance travel.
And probably never will, when considering other alternatives available today.
Those "other alternatives" are becoming less attractive by the day. I wonder how long before the value of those alternatives descends to a point where more people will rediscover and want the option of rail travel.
dkdkrd posted:eddie g posted:A lot of us use trains.
And, although a lot of us used to, Eddie.....65 years ago or so!...a lot of 'us' don't anymore...for long distance travel.
And probably never will, when considering other alternatives available today.
There is a group of 'rail fans' in town here in Michigan. Once a year they pile onto an Amtrak train going to Chicago. Their advance-purchase numbers are sufficient sometimes to warrant a special dedicated car...if available.....whoopee. If the train arrives in Chicago on time, they'll race into the windy city to grab a bite to eat at some deli or greasy spoon, race back to the station, jump on the returning Amtrak train, and get back home in Meeeshigan......sometime. It's their annual outing.
Hey, I've done the same thing!...Go to Cedar Point Amusement Park in northern Ohio, ride the rides, eat a bite, come home....all in a day.
That's what 'supporting travel by AMTRAK' is for some of us not in the eastern megalopolis; a Sunday ride to the past....something FUN to do....for the day.
So, in a sense I also use trains.
But I don't depend on them.
If they're gone, I'll find another way to get where I'm going. Or some other form of amusement.
After all, most of us don't live within buggy ride or dusty walk from an AMTRAK station stop nowadays.
Oh, and FWIW... I frankly don't give a D___ about what the rest of the world is doing. I'm a USofA citizen. If their fancy rail travel is so indicative of success , well-directed priorities, and a paradigm to aspire to, then why is this country still the place-of-choice for the those wanting a better life? This country is still exceptional for more reasons than it has faults.
"If we build it, they will come!' is a good concept for Gollywood to build a movie around. As a battle cry for rail passenger service in this country?......not so much.
Just MHO, of course...
BTW... Hope your trip is enjoyable, Eddie.
KD
Part of the problem with rail travel is it has stayed pretty stagnant compared to other forms of travel. In the last 65 years or so we have invested literally trillions in things like the highway systems, airports, modern automobile technology, things like gps, whereas passenger rail for the most part hasnt advanced much since the early 1950's. Sure might have more efficient engines, air conditioning, but the actual operating parameters, if anything, have gotten worse, passenger trains back then probably were operating on better right of way and had higher status.
The government put a lot of effort into making conrail modern and efficient and were able to sell it for a decent price because of that, whereas Amtrak has always been barely funded and make do with relatively little compared to the massuve subsidies other forms of transport have gotten.
The truly sad part is we haven't even tried to come up with a comprehensive plan to figure out where rail makes sense and what we need, it gets lost in the political infighting, the small town 'it isnt fair to cut our rail service' while their politicians argue Amtrak wastes 'their' money,etc. In large part this is deliberate, some are afraid if they had such a plan their backwater would lose service, others fear it will further make metro corridors more attractive and further cause the decline of other areas, lot easier to fight ideological battles with myth than fact. It would be great for once to nake decisions based on fact and national need rather than 'i don't use it so why should I care?'...especially since many of the people who say things like that are demanding things they feel they need and deserve whether they make sense (things like erhanol in gasoline or propping up the coal industry cone to mind).
dkdkrd posted:Oh, and FWIW... I frankly don't give a D___ about what the rest of the world is doing. I'm a USofA citizen.
KD
Perhaps you should. You and all the rest of us citizens should be paying attention to the progress the rest of industialized world is making, or we're going fall to the rear. You think American corporations, or the Department of Defence, or any other entity tied into the world economy or military-industial complex don't give a D____ what the rest of the world is doing? You bet your _____ they do! And when every member of the G7, other than Canada, plus China and South Korea - virtually all the industrialized nations in the world except the United States - has moved to high speed rail, we need to sit up and take notice. It should be a wakeup call to all but those living in caves (physical or mental).
Are you people in favor of expanded rail travel in the US paid for by the government ready for the following then? Euro/Asia rail all have one thing in common, mostly dedicated passenger tracks. These in the US would have to be built, and what routes are appropriate, what are sustainable?
1. Major Tax increases
2. Eminent Domain land seizures
3. Alternate routing when issues arise, flood, storms, earthquakes, etc
4. Track routing going right next to your house
5. Politics dictating when and where stations are built which may not suit your needs
6. The massive environmental studies, costs, and delays for executing these projects
Trains may be appropriate or feasible for some long distance routes, but for most, air and vehicle travel will be more flexible.
While you can look at what others are doing, solutions which fit them may not fit us. While some say roads are subsidized, the usage as a percentage of the population is 100%, we all get benefit directly either by our personal vehicles or goods and services moved over those roads. For Freight trains it's the same, however that cannot be said for passenger rail. Then to airlines, the subsidies are their, but so are the taxes paid by the direct users and again air travel serves a much larger percentage of the public than rail ever could. Air travel is infinitely more flexible as routes are not set.
TexasSP posted:Are you people in favor of expanded rail travel in the US paid for by the government ready for the following then? Euro/Asia rail all have one thing in common, mostly dedicated passenger tracks. These in the US would have to be built, and what routes are appropriate, what are sustainable?
1. Major Tax increases
2. Eminent Domain land seizures
3. Alternate routing when issues arise, flood, storms, earthquakes, etc
4. Track routing going right next to your house
5. Politics dictating when and where stations are built which may not suit your needs
6. The massive environmental studies, costs, and delays for executing these projects
Trains may be appropriate or feasible for some long distance routes, but for most, air and vehicle travel will be more flexible.
While you can look at what others are doing, solutions which fit them may not fit us. While some say roads are subsidized, the usage as a percentage of the population is 100%, we all get benefit directly either by our personal vehicles or goods and services moved over those roads. For Freight trains it's the same, however that cannot be said for passenger rail. Then to airlines, the subsidies are their, but so are the taxes paid by the direct users and again air travel serves a much larger percentage of the public than rail ever could. Air travel is infinitely more flexible as routes are not set.
That is all part of the discussion about what rail system we need (or don't need) and there is always a cost to things, why would passenger rail be any different than anything else? When Eisenhower proposed the interstate highway system, a lot of people said the same thing about it that some are saying about trains, that those highways "are the domain of the states", "Will benefit a small group of people", "are a government boondoggle" and the like...to get that through Congress, Eisenhower said it was needed for civil defense, for evacuating cities in case of attack, allow the military to move missiles and manpower, etc (which, by the way, was a total fraud, Eisenhower was no dummy, he knew that in the event of something like a nuclear war the interstate highways would likely become jammed and useless)....and obviously that system paid off, people in areas who complained "it wasn't for them' discovered it brought benefits to a lot of people in their area and elsewhere, rural people found it allowed them to ship and get shipped to, people could visit more populated places easier, etc.
And yes, issues like right of way (though in theory abandoned right of way could be used in many places, in others there may be other ways to place new train tracks without being disruptive), can be a political football. But guess what, so is new road construction, people whose houses are on the highway complain any time they (inevitably) widen them, complain about 24/7 road noise (so they spent billions putting up noise barriers).
Political fighting? Goes on today with Amtrak, all these low volume rural stations still being serviced by Amtrak, that are money drains, so that wouldn't be anything new (and the congressmen protecting these areas often are the loudest voices complaining about Amtrak spending).
Roads are not as flexible as you think, nor are they particularly scalable. The problem with roads is that while they may have long stretches of road that are relatively lightly travelled, for long distance travel they run into bottlenecks through more developed areas. With roads, one of the things that was discovered a long time ago (and ignored) is that when you widen existing roads, it tends to create new traffic jams because people who otherwise wouldn't use them figure it is gonna be great...and inevitably, when they widen highways near me, within a year or two people are complaining the highways are packed again (talk to anyone in sunbelt cities about traffic and expansion programs, my son lives in Houston, enough said). The thing is that roads are fixed routes and to make them 'flexible' we end up pouring a lot of money into them....and they are subsidized because often regions expanding their highway system relay heavily on funds created elsewhere, there is no free lunch despite what it seems to some, so the same thing applies with roads that applies with cars.
Plane travel? Not as flexible as you claim, I don't know how you can claim that routes aren't set, of course they are. They don't let commercial airlines fly anywhere they want, there are air corridors analagous to roads, and approach paths to airports are very rigidly set (partially due to wind conditions, they can change, but they are established). You don't just suddenly decide to fly a 757 to some regional airport, airlines have to apply for those routes because a)the gate access at airports is limited, and quite coveted b)airports can only land/takeoff a certain number of planes c)air traffic control (which is quite expensive I might add) has to approve because their capacity is limited. Many flight corridors are already quite saturated, so the idea that planes are flexible is basically not true. Not to mention that airlines in many cases no longer are point to point, they use hub and spokes, so if you want to get from A to D you need to pass through B and C as well.
Expand airports? Good luck, you have to go through the same environmental battles, the same NIMBY people around airports have, the cost of expanding the aiports (that are all government run in the US, they are run either by state/local governments or regional authorities like a port authority) , so taxes can be involved, or bonding to pay for capital improvements that in turn comes down to taxes paid on tickets sold or often things like excise taxes that are hidden.
Subsidies? One of the reasons the personal car and airlines (and yes, railroads to a more than large extent) work is the cost of the fuel they use. The reason it is cheap in the US is because in part it is subsidized, through a variety of measures (and yes, this would apply to passenger railroads as well, given they use diesel oil or power generated from mostly fossil fuels).
My point isn't that cars are bad, air travel is bad, buses are bad and trains are good, my point is that if we are going to argue about whether trains make sense we need to figure out a) where they make sense (mostly on highly travelled corridors, though other economic benefits come to mind) b) quantify the cost of implementing it , comparing that cost to alternatives (cars, airplanes) if we had to expand to allow them, then looking at the benefits (for example, take a high speed train on a heavily travelled air corridor, reduce load on the air traffic control center/more people moved, for travellers going city to city saving traffic on roads to/from the airport, load on tsa, etc). The problem with talking about anything is quantifying things in the same terms, and that is part of the problem of these discussions, people don't. They talk about the 'freedom of the airplane', 'the freedom of the car', how that is 'determined by the market, not the government', they talk about the cost of trains without quantifying the cost of other forms of transportation, the negative and positive impact (for example, with mass transit, clogged roads for commuters mean lost time for businesses, and also a big cost to them in terms of job satisfaction and quality of life, with mass transit that experience is likely to be better even for people who continue to drive). As far as poor political decisions, I can name a ton of them with roads and airplane travel, too, airports expanded that end up ghost towns, roads built (it seems) strictly to bring jobs to an area (there was a feeder in Pennsylvania that was a lulu, had to blast through a mountain full of a toxic, corrosive substance), so that argument applies to everything involving government/semi government activities, it isn't unique to trains.
The biggest obstacle is the myth that 'the market decides', with transportation it doesn't, the winners and losers are often decided by policies and subsidies and political decisions few if any know about (wanna know why they don't have high speed train service between NYC and the airports in the region? During the post war boom in air travel, when the airports were being expanded, service increased, Robert Moses and the concrete heads were basically in charge of most projects, and hated mass transit).
If AMTRAK was a whole lot better at running the slow 80MPH trains then maybe they should be allowed to run the high speed. Sort of, letting your kid work his way up the auto ladder.
I like trains, and am taking Amtrak from NYC to the Bay Area next month—and back.
Wish I could take a train to Ireland, but no such luck. Really hate flying!
clem k posted:eddie g posted:The Amtrak long distance trains have the viewing cars with big windows.
Hi eddie g...........You are gotta try the VIA Rail Canadian Vancouver to Toronto its a priceless jewel from the past.
If you don't mind VIA cross country trains running 12-20 hours late.
Joe Hohmann posted:clem k posted:eddie g posted:The Amtrak long distance trains have the viewing cars with big windows.
Hi eddie g...........You are gotta try the VIA Rail Canadian Vancouver to Toronto its a priceless jewel from the past.
If you don't mind VIA cross country trains running 12-20 hours late.
I heard they where having that problem now, be a real shame to loose those trains. The most I was late was six hours.
Two cents, as someone who traveled for work in excess of 100k air miles in a year and nearly as many on the highways of Southeast and Midwest, the whole idea that trains are late all the time yet planes and cars are not it totally laughable. I have been delayed, cancelled, and stuck in traffic thousands of times, often for hours and hours.
As others have said no system is perfect, yet we’re entirely unwilling to have any sort of real national discussion on how we can and will be moving ourselves, and goods in the next 10, 20, or 30 years.
The latest I was ever delayed on the train was about 12 hours—and this was on British Rail, a trip from Birmingham to Edinburgh, just a few hundred miles. I learned to never expect to get anywhere on time on a Sunday.
I was delayed about 5 hours on the Empire Builder coming in from Spokane to Chicago, through no fault of our own: the freight train in front of us dropped an axle in Glacier Natl Park, delayed us a really long time. But they held the east-bound Lake Shore Ltd. for us at Chicago's Union Station!
On the other hand, I had a flight from NY to Boston delayed hours (on a half-hour flight) because of fog, and one trip, from NYC to Toronto, the plane landed in Buffalo and a bunch of us rented a car and drove the rest of the way.
Posted: July 12, 2018 at 11:10 PM
To watch video: Click here • Play time about two minutes.
I have been on an Amtrak Bus several times and if Amtrak adopts these procedures, I would not purchase a ticket. 400 miles on a bus, is not what I would care to do.
Gary: Rail-Fan
bob2 posted:Retired airline pilot here. I have free unlimited travel on American for the rest of my life. I loved flying, but detest air travel. Amtrak is my preferred way to go long distance.
I paid our government $85 to become a "known traveler" and the scrutiny I got after that was almost as bad as it was when I had four stripes on my sleeve. If I never go in another airline terminal it will be too soon.
Driving is becoming a giant pain. Trucks own the left lane, and traffic jams can happen in the middle of nowhere.
We really don't need high speed rail - just trains that roll at a consistent 80 mph on smooth track - with dining cars.
Right on BOB2
wow if i wanted to ride a bus id buy a bus ticket
Joe Hohmann posted:If you don't mind VIA cross country trains running 12-20 hours late.
Ever been 10 hours on a five hour flight. At least on a train you can get up and walk around without threat of restraint and arrest. 
I thought one of the reasons for the electrification of the NEC to Boston was to reduce the load on the air infrastructure NYC-BOS.
Dominic Mazoch posted:I thought one of the reasons for the electrification of the NEC to Boston was to reduce the load on the air infrastructure NYC-BOS.
Multiple reasons, one is to offer an alternative to air travel (having flown to Boston a number of times, what is roughly a 45 minute flight becomes a lot longer when you count in time to get throughTSA, plus getting to the airport), the other is hopefully to pull cars off the road as well, the NYC/Boston corridor on highways isn't that pleasant an experience either. If we had true high speed rail on the NEC, something in the order of 3 hours point to point, it would be attractive as an alternate since that is city center to city center.
The northeast is one of the heaviest travelled air corridors and the airports and the routes are running pretty much at capacity in terms of the airports themselves and the ATC covering them (air traffic control).
Has Mr. Anderson done anything more lately to screw up the long distance trains?
eddie g posted:Has Mr. Anderson done anything more lately to screw up the long distance trains?
Here are the details........
The Utah Rail Passengers Association (URPA) is warning local mayors that Amtrak rail service through Carbon County may come to an end.
The association says a similar movement is already afoot for the Southwest Chief, an Amtrak line that runs from Chicago to Los Angeles. The Zephyr line stretches some 2,438 miles from Chicago to San Francisco.
Amtrak’s chief executive, former Delta Airlines CEO Richard Anderson, is supposedly considering turning a portion of the Southwest Chief train line into a bus route from Dodge City, Kan. to Albuqueque, N.M.
Mike Christensen, executive director of the URPA, says if that plan is successful, Utah should expect a similar bus-bridge plan between Grand Junction or Green River and Salt Lake.
Locally, such a plan would impact Helper the most. It has a functioning depot with passenger service twice a day.
“(Anderson) has basically been on a mission to gut Amtrak from the inside,” Christensen said. “Amtrak hasn’t officially said anything about the California Zephyr and some of the other routes that are on the chopping block, but they have released details on a plan for the Southwest Chief.”
Christensen said not only has bus service been proposed along portions of that route but Amtrak plans to also eliminate first class services as well.
“The reason behind doing this, what they are claiming is it has to do with a federal safety rule called Positive Train Control, or PTC. It’s kind of a long story but they are basically supplying that rule as a justification for stopping train service on part of the route. The same conditions in place along that route exist on the California Zephyr route,” he said.
In a letter to local mayors, Christensen urges the officials to contact their congressional representatives as well as sign a petition urging Amtrak to reverse course.
“It is important that Congress take measures to stop Richard Andersonfrom downsizing Amtrak service. It is important that the proposed changes to the Southwest Chief are not made, since the same logic that Anderson is using to threaten it would also apply to the California Zephyr and seven other Amtrak routes,” the letter reads.
Christensen said Amtrak’s CEO is citing the need to reduce costs on the federally-subsidized national train network as another reason for mulling the changes. However, he added, that it doesn’t make much sense since Amtrak recently won more federal funds from the last federal budget than it had in decades.
In August the U.S. Senate voted to pass a $2.5 billion funding bill for passenger rail service that ensured the Southwest Chief would continue along its established route beyond Jan. 1, 2019, which is when the bus-bridge plan was to take effect.
This month, in testimony before Congress, Amtrak officials reinforced that the changes to the Southwest Chief route would not take effect at the beginning of the year.
The Washington, D.C.-based Rail Passengers Association warned that this should not be taken as the end of Amtrak’s plans.
“This does NOT mean that Amtrak has pulled back from its proposal for a Southwest Chief bus-bridge,” the association reported Sept. 14.
Source: Sun Advocate. 845 E Main St., Price, Utah / September 21, 2018
Gary: Rail-fan
I know one big money thing that would stop the busitution. A full bloe EIS paid for by Amtrak.
Dominic Mazoch posted:I know one big money thing that would stop the busitution. A full bloe EIS paid for by Amtrak.
I and others have NO idea what the hell you just said.
Please stated the definition of an acronym in parentheses after the acronym when first used in a sentence. Thank you from us readers.
I think he means "full blown Environmental impact study (EIS.)
david1 posted:Either Amtrak makes a profit or drop the route. Can't make a profit anywhere, go out of business.
How many of us use trains, I don't, never did and I live on the east coast. It's much more cost and time effective never to use a train. Most companies I know forbid their employees from using trains on business travel.
We have to get used to it that the day of passenger train travel is over and has been for years. Let it go!
Dave
During my work career, I’ve worked for 5 companies. Not one forbid me to travel by train. Cost was usually the deciding factor. The last company I worked for was in a large metro area. I took public transportation everyday (not rail) and the company encouraged it. Can you list a couple of the companies you refer to? Thanks.
Steve
I have never worked for a company that forbid employees from travelling by rail, the reason people fly is because for most places it is cheaper and faster, when you are talking lost distance travel. For travelling in the NYC region, my company encourages using public transit or commuter rail because it is a lot cheaper than even Uber or a black car, and when travelling to Philadelphia or Boston or DC, people routinely use Amtrak, it is faster portal to portal and in the end is cheaper.
As far as making a profit or dropping it, that isn't the way to look at this, there are certain things that you can't account for like that. As many have pointed out on here, with all the subsidies, hidden or visible, that goes into airplane travel, it is hard to say if the airline business would be profitable, or as profitable, or as convenient, if it wasn't subsidized. The cost of the air traffic control system, the cost of operating airports, is often paid for by government or semi government entities, and airlines don't pay the full cost of those. Likewise, to maintain regional flights to places that otherwise might not be profitable, there are subsidies with that as well from what I understand..and the reason is that air travel is seen as a necessary service. In metro areas, commuter rail and public transit requires subsidies to operate, but if you look at the economic advantage it gives those areas, in the end it does pay for itself (put it this way, I have seen cost estimates for what bad traffic costs in cities like Atlanta and Phoenix and the like that depend on car travel, between the cost of maintaining/expanding roads, lost productivity due to commuting times, and also attracting talent to live there, and it is not small). The real question is what is the benefits of the service, what does it bring to those it serves, and then working from there. Put it this way, a lot of businesses that are otherwise profitable rely on a lot of direct and indirect subsidies to be profitable, everything from government paid for research that drives the next generation of products, to things like subsidies in fossil fuels that benefit the airline industry and trucking industry and the car industry.
As a country the US has invested in interstate highways and airports as the preferred method of mass and individual transportation and Americans have responded by investing in cars and flying, everywhere and often. Other countries do not have near that investment or commitment to cars and jets. Orlando and Tampa invested in airport upgrades that costed over $1 billion each. Amtrak is a vestige of another time when train travel was more popular in the absence of air travel. To blame the current administration for the demise of Amtrak is silly and childish - it is simply the culmination of decades of a shift in priorities. Actually, the idea of bus travel to connect routes may be doing train travel a favor.
Brightline has developed modern higher speed train travel in SE Florida, has plans to expand to Orlando and Tampa, and has purchased rights to a rail system between LA and Las Vegas. Development of higher speed conventional train travel will be far less expensive than maglev or any bullet train system, making it easier to fund and build. The concept of building routes between points that are too far to drive and too close to fly might make it feasible. Once enough smaller sections are developed, it would pave the way to effectively connecting them with longer distance high speed systems and the ridership that would make them successful. I believe this is a peek into the future of rail travel in the US. BTW, I thought this forum was supposed to stay away from politics.
Rail travel, either local or long distance is very inflexible compared to roads and buses. If you put in a rail line for millions (detroit just put one in a few miles long for $125 million) and you misjudge the route, or the demographics change and not many want to use the route, it is going to cost 100s millions to change it to something that works. With a bus and exisiting roads, you give the driver a week to learn a new route and it costs you running an empty bus and paying a driver- lets be generours and say 100 grand rather than a 100 million to change a route.
Rail travel was much much more efficient than horses and wagons and or walking when it supplanted them as the major way to travel any distance. But flexibility provided by modern systems is needed to support an large varied an industrial county like ours.
Kind of hard to talk about Amtrak and not getting into politics, given it is run by the government, and even if it was private, like other forms of transport it likely would be subject to politics, too, like decisions for example over subsidizing certain businesses not others. For example, in the prior post the argument was made that using a bus to replace part of the train route might make sense, because using a bus is more flexible. That works, unless you consider that flexibility is based in roads that need to be maintained, expanded and built, and also that a bus in winter might not operate all that great compared to a train.....and if you are talking a congested area, buses aren't so flexible, because of traffic congestion they will be a lot less flexible or fast than a train would be.
"But flexibility provided by modern systems is needed to support an large varied an industrial county like ours. ". True, but what these leave out is we often are using 'modern' systems (as compared to obsolete trains) in ways that they aren't so efficient and flexible. The car is really a post WWII phenomenon, as such is "modern", but places that have overtly relied on it have found it isn't necessarily so flexible, that congestion, the cost of maintaining and building roads, bad weather, have caused problems. I'll give you an example of where rail provides flexibility, when weather is bad a lot of people who have necessary travel switch to rail, when planes are slammed. That doesn't mean long distance rail is necessarily a valuable thing, but in more than a few places it could be part of the flexibility needed. I remember back in the 1970's it was argued that the rail network for freight was an 'anachronism' (this was when the northeast railroads collapsed and conrail was formed), that trucks were the modern way to go, they were flexible, could deliver point to point, cost efficient.....in the 40+ years since then modern railroad technology, better rail, better equipment, automated routing of shipping, proved that assumption wrong, rail by almost any measure for long distance shipping is more efficient than trucking in a lot of cases these days.
Again, I don't know what the justification is or isn't for cross country rail travel, who uses it, what benefits it has, but a modern and efficient system does that analysis and has the right pieces in the right context. With rail, one of the problems is we are comparing a system that isn't all that much better than what we had 60 or 70 years ago, which would be like if cars ran on the road system that existed pre WWII, instead of the modern interstate system, we could argue cars weren't worth much....or trucks for that matter.
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall announced yesterday Amtrak's Southwest Chief will stay on the rails (for the entire trip) for 2019.
The Appropriations Bill passed in Aug. contained an amendment supplying $50 million to continue the Southwest Chief.
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