QUOTE: Originally posted by Randy Stahl I just spent some time at the Ivy City terminal and was impressed by the condition of the infrastructure. The Amtrak employees that I spoke with had very little complaint about the way things were being run on the RR. The trains I rode performed well and I saw no real areas for concern. Using the Madrid bombings as an example is irresponsible . No matter what kind of infrastructure you have it is not immune from a terrorist attack. I see two real choices: get rid of Amtrak , or accept that it is not going to make money. If passenger trains made money the class 1s would still have them. Randy BTW.. I'm getting really sick of all these armchair expert railroaders putting their worthless 2 cents in just to sensationalize a foolish issue.
QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken QUOTE: Originally posted by Randy Stahl I just spent some time at the Ivy City terminal and was impressed by the condition of the infrastructure. The Amtrak employees that I spoke with had very little complaint about the way things were being run on the RR. The trains I rode performed well and I saw no real areas for concern. Using the Madrid bombings as an example is irresponsible . No matter what kind of infrastructure you have it is not immune from a terrorist attack. I see two real choices: get rid of Amtrak , or accept that it is not going to make money. If passenger trains made money the class 1s would still have them. Randy BTW.. I'm getting really sick of all these armchair expert railroaders putting their worthless 2 cents in just to sensationalize a foolish issue. Agree with Randy 100% - Wonder if Ian Murray would agree to stop funding the airline, trucking and barge systems as well (or give them the same amount as they give Amtrak) [banghead][banghead][banghead]
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
QUOTE: Originally posted by Dick_Lewis National Review Online December 08, 2004, 8:08 a.m. It’s the Infrastructure, Stupid Amtrak, derailed. By Iain Murray The news that the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General is deeply concerned about the dangerous state of Amtrak’s railroad infrastructure should come as a surprise to no one. Amtrak has been chronically mismanaged and has never shown any signs of being fiscally responsible. Yet somehow the blame for Amtrak’s recklessness is laid at the door of Congress, for failing to give Amtrak every penny it wants.
QUOTE: The problem is not one of underfunding,
QUOTE: Amtrak’s infrastructure is crumbling. As the inspector general, Kenneth Mead, says, there are “interlockings, bridges and tunnels that are well beyond their economic life.” Amtrak has been deferring capital expenditure on these assets for years.
QUOTE: This state of affairs is familiar to me, as I was part of the team that privatized the British rail-infrastructure body, then called Railtrack, in 1996. We were aware that there had been a huge backlog in capital expenditure on the railway throughout the 40+ years of public ownership of the British railroad system. That, indeed, was one of the reasons Railtrack had to be privatized, in order to bring in new flows of investment capital that would not be dependent on the political vagaries of the British appropriations process, where rail was pitted against schools and hospitals in the battle for taxpayers’ money. The trouble was that no one realized just how degraded the infrastructure was. It transpired that many of the rails along which the (mostly passenger) trains were running were in serious disrepair, something that helped contribute to a fatal accident at Hatfield in October 2000. The accident brought Railtrack to its knees, as it found itself unable to rectify the investment-backlog problem and continue to provide a decent service to its customers, the train operators.
QUOTE: If anything, Amtrak’s infrastructure is in worse disrepair than the British system’s was. Former Amtrak official and passenger-rail advocate Joseph Vranich talks in his new book, End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trains, about the serious risk posed by Amtrak’s ownership of New York rail tunnels. A 2002 DOT review of these tunnels determined that $900 million was needed to bring them up to modern safety standards. Those of us who have had experience of rail accidents in tunnels know just how dangerous this state of affairs is. A 2001 freight accident in a tunnel in Baltimore saw a street collapse and part of the city closed as emergency teams took five days to extingui***he fire. As Vranich points out, the New York tunnels pose a massive risk not just to railroad passengers but to the city itself.
QUOTE: Yet, despite the sure knowledge that terrorists are only too ready to attack major transportation systems, as the attacks in Madrid demonstrated, Amtrak has repeatedly failed to allocate funds responsibly. As Mead says, “Programming millions of scarce capital dollars for fixing long-distance sleeper cars when bridges that Amtrak owns are beyond their functional and economic lives and must be refurbished or replaced is unacceptable.”
QUOTE: Ample evidence that Amtrak is more interested in trains than in infrastructure is provided by Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black, who told GovExec.com in reaction to the inspector general’s report that, “Asking Amtrak to maintain railroad tracks is like asking Greyhound Lines to maintain the interstate highways.”
QUOTE: The inspector general did indeed suggest that one remedy to the underfunding problem would be for Congress to increase funding to Amtrak. Yet the problem of Amtrak’s failure to prioritize responsibly would remain. Again, I am unsurprised. When I was working with it, the nationalized provider of London’s famous tube service would regularly fail to make investments in certain lines, in the knowledge that political pressure would cause its funding to be increased. We cannot allow Amtrak to use the New York tunnels like a sword of Damocles, forever hanging above the nation’s head. All experience suggests that Amtrak has perverse incentives not to invest properly while it is assured of remaining in public ownership. Instead, we should consider two other options Mead advanced as stopgap measures to prepare the railroad for privatization: “(1) a requirement to focus development on corridors where passenger rail service can make economic sense, (2) decreased funding and elimination of certain operations.” Congress can attach these provisions to any funding it grants to Amtrak. The problem is that this will require political courage from individual congressmen. For some reason, congressmen seem to think that Amtrak should continue to serve their own district even when they recognize that other routes are a financial burden on the country. Yet it is time Congress cut Amtrak down to size. It should force it to cut routes no one travels on, spend money now where it is most desperately needed, and get the infrastructure back into the condition that passenger safety demands. If that is done, a safe railroad system can then be put back into the hands of people who can provide better service to the customer than to the bureaucrat: the private sector.
Pump
Quentin
QUOTE: Originally posted by UPTRAIN I wi***he airlines had to suffer like Amtrak. Too bad planes don't derail and block the ROW and they don't have to hit cars, and they don't have to stop and pick up cars, and they don't go into emergency or have dragging equipment, they don't know how good they have it, and they still complain, you always leave them asking for more!
Jock Ellis Cumming, GA US of A Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers
QUOTE: Originally posted by ValleyX I'm sure you meant Graham Claytor.
QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper I think President Bush has to get some smarts and give David Gunn the money he needs. Without either of the Claytor Brothers around, there isn't much chance of a better manager. But of course I am all for a National Public Transportation System. Based and Amtrack and supplemented by a much more comprehensive bus network than now exists. That is a reality emergency energy independence program, not a pie in the sky research for energy independence 20 years from now.
QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe From everything I have read about land grant railroads, I have a hard time believing railroads have received no assitance from the government in getting their start. I think it is fair to assert that many railroads received a bigger helping hand than did the air lines. Gabe
QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton Mike (2-8-2) made a very interesting point and it underscores the ignorance of Mr. Murray. Amtrak's original request for FY 2005 was a total of $1.798 billion. That was to include $349 million for capital investment in fleet, plus some portion of the $570 million operating budget that would go to fleet maintenance. So, if all fleet investment was canceled, and the only other expenditure on the fleet was for cleaning and mandatory inspections, i.e. bad orders go to the dead line, there might be something on the order of $500 million more that could go to infrastructure. That assumes that by a miracle, no cars or locomotives would break down and there would never be a loss of revenue due to equipment shortages. Even with that idiotic assumption, there would still not be enough money to fix the Hudson tunnel and the three sorry bridges on the NY to Boston line. Anybody actually interested in the facts could look at the extensive financial reporting done on Amtrak's web site. For example: FY05 Grant and Legislative Request, Table 3, Page 6, February 10, 2004 Grant Request ($ millions) Capital Infrastructure 352 Fleet 349 Other 90 (Environment, Info Tech,realestate, safety, etc.) Subtotal Capital 791 Operating 570 Debt Service 262 Other Dot Loan Repayment 100 To working Capital 75 Total Federal Grant Request 1,798 Amtrak made some cuts and amended the request to $1.5 billion. Last week Congress passed the law that includes the FY '05 grant to Amtrak at $1.2 billion. Oh yes, anybody that thinks elimination of the 16 long distance train routes is going to generate additional cash for Amtrak can't count, can't read or both. There will be at a cash flow out for at least three years for labor protection and other obligations that will exceed the government cash used for that service. Jay
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