ACY
Kalmbach's written policy, if implemented to the letter, would preclude virtually any discussion of ATK, since as you correctly point out the entire subject is political.
You also see many obviously political comments on other threads. Once is in while the statist/government/we know better than thee crowd screams politics when someone puts forth the opposite view.
The good news is that the moderators tread very lightly on political speach here. It would be nice to see Kalbmach revise their policy to reflect reality but I see no hope of that happening.
Mac
Keep the unions, but tie Amtrak's subsidy to a per passenger mile value (that is less than the interstates cost after fuel taxes are applied). The value would be different depending upon ownership of infrastructure.
There is plenty of financial upside potential on the conventional network in running trains with at least a capacity of 400-500 passengers and in actually having a network, say out of Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Jacksonville, and Memphis with departures three times a day in multiple directions.
Then management and the unions have a joint interest in increasing efficiency as they will only get more compensation if they generate more revenue at less costs.
PNWRMNMYou also see many obviously political comments on other threads. Once is in while the statist/government/we know better than thee crowd screams politics when someone puts forth the opposite view.
Come off it!! I would point out that several frequent posters [you, greyhounds, to name just two] regularly interject their anti-regulation views, some on almost every post, without any complaints from those of us who do not agree.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
V.PayneThen management and the unions have a joint interest in increasing efficiency as they will only get more compensation if they generate more revenue at less costs.
The freight railroaders on here in positions in management high enough to know seem to indicate that there are fewer lines available now than 45 years ago, the routes are near-capacity and they really see passenger trains as a burden. I don't see how your reimbursement scheme would alter that picture, creative as it is, and certainly not with 6 or more faster passenger trains added to the mix.
schlimm PNWRMNMYou also see many obviously political comments on other threads. Once is in while the statist/government/we know better than thee crowd screams politics when someone puts forth the opposite view. Come off it!! I would point out that several frequent posters [you, greyhounds, to name just two] regularly interject their anti-regulation views, some on almost every post, without any complaints from those of us who do not agree.
If a person disagrees with an anti-regulation viewpoint, a person can disagree and list reasons why regulation is effective in the context of a particular discussion, that is, instead of making blanket remarks about "talk radio" in one instance" or "right-wing think tanks and anti-train people" in others. If a person objects to outsourcing functions of Amtrak, say that one disagrees on the basis of supporting unions -- in the context of Amtrak or whatever the discussion -- rather than accusing everyone who wants to consider, to even consider any other incentive structure than the status quo as engaged in "sly . . . union busting."
Yes, supporting Amtrak and by extension supporting passenger trains is expressing a certain political viewpoint, that viewpoint may be regarded as middle-of-the-road, mainstream, reasonable, obvious, and so on. But Amtrak cannot function without government subsidy, and many reason that passenger trains with their long list of arguable and sometimes unquantifiable benefits cannot function without government support.
Given that a pro-regulation pro-subsidy view is pretty much the default political orientation among persons supporting passenger trains, I once had the temerity to suggest, not to support, but to suggest that maybe participants who indeed have anti-regulation views to be given "some space" to say what they have to say without yelling "politics! politics!" For my troubles, I was branded a troublemaker and ordered to leave this place and express my views on "right-wing/Libertarian Web sites."
What happens is that, dunno, an industry insider who indeed supports passenger trains along with the regulations and subsidies needed to make them happen, such a person offers suggestions about how Amtrak could be more effective with certain changes, or perhaps offers comparisons between the staffing of Beech Grove and a major railroad central shop. The mere breath of such suggests brings cries of "anti-labor" and "union busting", which is blatantly political by any objective criterion, especially in the way those accusations are made. This in turn brings some of the more Libertarian-leaning Forum followers who usually just read the proceedings off the sidelines, and of course, we can't have any of such remarks because they are anti-government, anti-train, and anti-common sense.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
dakotafred Contractors would need too much money. Let taxpayers continue their modest subsidy of decent rail service as it is. The subsidy is a drop in the bucket compared to the public money spent on competing forms of passenger transportation, let alone on "entitlements."
Contractors would need too much money. Let taxpayers continue their modest subsidy of decent rail service as it is. The subsidy is a drop in the bucket compared to the public money spent on competing forms of passenger transportation, let alone on "entitlements."
OK, let's "deconstruct" politics. The contractors "would need too much money", that is, that we would end up spending more (public) money if we subcontracted Amtrak is an opinion, a person's "two cents", a point that we can at least reason and discuss.
"The subsidy is a drop in the bucket" is a widely held, mainstream opinion among participants, but it is blatently political. Drop in the bucket, says who and compared to what, and then we waltz off the political cliff. The discretionary Federal budget is made up of many small items, many drops in the bucket, each the most important drop in the eyes of the beneficiaries.
Then, the subsidy is deemed small in relation to "public money spent on competing forms of passenger transportation." We have been over this point before, that the subsidy to Amtrak is small, but the work product is also small, and hence the total expenditure on Amtrak is small but the expenditure per unit of work product (passenger mile) is rather visible and rather large, and then we get into arguments about not-visible subsidy to other modes along with difficult-to-put-a-dollar figure benefits of trains and "how dare you put a dollar figure" benefits of trains, and the discussion also slides off the political cliff.
Finally, the comparison is made to "entitlements" (in "scare quotes" -- don't know if the person is critical of the non-discretionary portion of the Federal budget or supports it and uses scare quotes because perhaps "entitlements" is a politically loaded word used by the Libertarian/right).
Entitlements are things like Social Security and Medicare. To suggest that maybe seniors are getting too much of their lifetime payroll tax payments (and yes, the pay-it-forward contribution from the current generation of wage earners) back in the form of medical expense reimbursement and a cash pension instead of in the form of passenger trains is as political as you can get.
Do I get to use exclamation points, and how many? I can understand that trains are so important and everything else the government spends much more money on is so wasteful that it is at least arguable (and had been fashionable, say, a few years ago) to compare expenditures on trains to the U.S. expenditures in treasure on foreign expeditionary wars.
But we are benchmarking the worthiness of trains against -- entitlement benefits to seniors? I once offered that comparison as a reductio-ad-absurdum to people who were beating on the comparison to Defense, but are we here taking such an argument seriously? That passenger trains are a higher priority than seniors? I guess people take such an argument seriously, people are so wedded to trains that no one around here regards such an argument as blatantly political let alone bats an eye?
Political is in the eye of the beholder, including that of our esteemed hosts at Kalmbach. I am old enough to remember Trains Editor David P Morgan who was quite thoroughly political in a way that would be unpopular here on this forum, not to mention his "Professional Iconoclast" Mr. Kneiling. The current Trains is quite political in a way different from Mr. Morgan's politics, but I guess that is free enterprise because Trains is not a non-profit think tank, it is a business that needs to make its expensesl plus a small return for its owners. The current Trains doesn't seem political because it is well aligned with its readership as opposed to David P Morgan who was vigorously swimming upstream.
The strength of this place is the strength of the David P Morgan Trains magazine. Morgan saw "trains going away that there will be none left for enthusiasts to enjoy", and his opinion soapbox was meant to nudge the industry in a direction so it would stay around. The Staggers Act pretty much saved a freight railroad industry whereas the NPRC Act kinda saved passenger service in the form of Amtrak but Amtrak is constantly and continually in peril. I want to see all points of view represented so there will remain a passenger network for us to be enthusiasts about.
Thank you, Paul.
And, it is possible to disagree without being discourteous. It is discourteous for a person who disagrees with someone else to call the one with whom he disagrees a demeaning name. In the short time (about seven years) that I have been enjoying participation in the forums I have appreciated the courtesy that is generally shown to other participators. May practice continue.
Johnny
I don't care who operates the trains; the focus or course has to be who owns the tracks.One of the failures of privatization in Britain was the creation of Railtrack, a private enterprise motivated solely by profit, that took over the maintenance of the right of way and signaling among others and immediately had the traveling public up in arms about the cost for the public to travel on the new private operators trains. The British Government re-nationalized the track and infrastructure from Railtrack and left the operation of the trains in the hands of private operators through franchising. What the British did won't work in America, or will it?
Outside the NEC,Amtrak trains operate on trackage owned by someone else. They own the tracks, the signals and do the dispatching. They serve their own best interests first and have done so since day one of Amtrak. What can induce the railroads to provide priority to passenger trains over their profitable freights. I really don't the answer and sometimes I feel nobody does either. The railroads are in business to make money; not let operators like Amtrak clog their rails with passenger trains unless they receive enough financial inducements to do so. Any operator, Amtrak, Commuter entities or anyone else is at the mercy of the one who owns the track.
aricat Outside the NEC,Amtrak trains operate on trackage owned by someone else. They own the tracks, the signals and do the dispatching. They serve their own best interests first and have done so since day one of Amtrak. What can induce the railroads to provide priority to passenger trains over their profitable freights. I really don't the answer and sometimes I feel nobody does either. The railroads are in business to make money; not let operators like Amtrak clog their rails with passenger trains unless they receive enough financial inducements to do so. Any operator, Amtrak, Commuter entities or anyone else is at the mercy of the one who owns the track.
When Amtrak makes their On Time operation profitable enough for the freight carriers to give more priority to Amtrak than the carriers own trains, Amtrak will get the priority. Priority does not come as cheaply as Amtrak is currently paying.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
ACYAmtrak can NEVER be as profitable as a UPS train that doesn't need to cook food, or to provide snacks or liquor, or to provide a dry place to sleep, or warmth in the winter, or A/C in the summer, or toilets, or the human contact that is unique to the passenger train experience. But should that mean rail passengers are always going to be at the very bottom of the pecking order?
Outside of a few corridors, the vast majority of Americans do not ride Amtrak. In order for improved rail passenger service to become a priority, that vast majority would have to show an interest which they clearly do not have at present. I do not see anything on the horizon that is going to change this fact. That being the case, it will get little attention from either party in Washington.
John Timm
ATK gets a basically free ride on the freight carriers due to the way the statute is written. If ATK made the same contribution per train mile as the typical freight trainm then ATK would be a valued customer to the carriers instead of a pain in the posterior.
Think of it this way, how much respect do you have for the armed robber who just stuck you up?
PNWRMNM ACYAmtrak can NEVER be as profitable as a UPS train that doesn't need to cook food, or to provide snacks or liquor, or to provide a dry place to sleep, or warmth in the winter, or A/C in the summer, or toilets, or the human contact that is unique to the passenger train experience. But should that mean rail passengers are always going to be at the very bottom of the pecking order? ACY ATK gets a basically free ride on the freight carriers due to the way the statute is written. If ATK made the same contribution per train mile as the typical freight trainm then ATK would be a valued customer to the carriers instead of a pain in the posterior. Think of it this way, how much respect do you have for the armed robber who just stuck you up? Mac
The profit I am refering to is not Amtrak's - it is the host carriers. If Amtrak makes it more profitable for the host carrier to operate Amtrak On Time than other host carrier traffic, then Amtrak get's priority.
When you pay bargin basement prices to host carriers, you get bargin basement priority.
The on board ammenties to passenger is Amtrak's work product - not the host carriers.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.