Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
Okay, I have to throw my two cents worth in on this one. Amtrak as an entity is not at fault here. The people who run it and the people who oversee it are. Amtrak was handed a mandate to take over the the shoddy remnants of passenger trains service in this country and to do it with basically junk. It has been hamstrung since day one and battered by a constant stream of "Oh wait, you need to do it this way or else" micro-management. Over time, management has lost focus on the real mission, running a railroad, and instead has had to concentrate on fending off the wolves who would shut Amtrak down. So now the ARC wants to privatize it. What good will that do? The private sector wanted to get rid of it in the first place, that's how Amtrak got started in the first place. The Brits tried turning their national rail system over to private companys and I can tell you from first hand experience it isn't working. <br /> <br />Many things need to happen. Amtrak management needs to be sacked and replaced with a board of directors made up of real railroaders, people with experience. Congress needs to get off it's dead butt and fund it enough to make it competitive in both price and service (I live in Charleston, SC, and it would take me 12 hours to get to Atlanta by Amtrak. Big strike right there). And finally, a dynamic national transportation strategy for the next 50 years that includes roads, ships, planes and trains needs to be drafted and implemented. <br /> <br />I have traveled to many places around the world and used foriegn mass transit every place I went. America is pathetic when it comes to this service for many reasons. As has been stated in previous posts, those countries with viable mass transit systems are ones who have barriers to the use of private conveyance and whose governments provide the lions share of funding. But due to America's size, both in population and in land mass, we have to appoach the issue of rail transit from a bigger picture (aka the transportation strategy). Simply putting a bullet in Amtrak and letting free enterprise handle it won't do it. It's going to take a lot more than that to get passenger rail service out of the quagmire Uncle Sugar has gotten it into.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag