If Amtrak ridership keeps on going in the uphill direction...why does the Republican party want to cut spending for amtrak.
Obvious answer: Because Amtrak makes no money.
Granted, I am a Right winger myself, and Amtrak is still the joke in America, But it seems stupid to cut funding for something that's beginning to rise from the junk.
Appreciate your comments. If Amtrak had more trains, they would haul more people. It must crawl before it can walk. From where is the money going to come? Bring the troops home as Libertarians suggest..
Amtrak, as structured, capitalized, funded, organized, defined, and run by Congress as it is, will not succeed until major changes are made. It is greased with pork and operated by whim and too often lacks rhyme or reason. Next administration, it all changes; next election, it all changes; don't matter which side of the aisle, it will always be on the wrong track. I want rail passenger service to succeed. But it has to want to succeed. Big business doesn't want it to succeed especially if it has to run on Big Business's track. Despite successful marketing of certain routes, it is not enough to carry Amtrak to success over all. Amtrak, instead of being an operator, could become an overseer or agency for regional and interregional operators and agencies and be answerable to ones other than Congress for instance. Republicans represent big business Class 1 railroads who believe passenger trains interfere with the operations of their freight trains. The whole of Amtrak has to be rethought and reorganized. And so does the thinking of railroaders and Congress.
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I agree that Amtrak needs to be changed for the better. But the republican government wants to cut funding, if not that then kill funding, for Amtrak, which is crazy. There are thousands of people who work in Amtrak, and if it fails, then whats a guy to do in this damned economy.
There seems to be those in politics whose aim is to kill the economy.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Mr. Railman If Amtrak ridership keeps on going in the uphill direction...why does the Republican party want to cut spending for amtrak.
Because Amtrak is a convenient scapegoat for "what's wrong with government". Especially among politicians in places where the locals don't use Amtrak.
It's interesting that there's little opposition to Amtrak in states where people ride Amtrak. You don't hear much Amtrak bashing in Illinois.
Mr. Railman I agree that Amtrak needs to be changed for the better. But the republican government wants to cut funding, if not that then kill funding, for Amtrak, which is crazy. There are thousands of people who work in Amtrak, and if it fails, then whats a guy to do in this damned economy.
Hire out with the freight RRs. They are hiring 15,000 this year and 15,000 next year.
Amtrak needs more productive labor - an that's not a knock on their employees. The game's just not set up to encourage improvements in productivity. Good ideas are not generally sought out or rewarded because there is no tangible benefit...
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Muralist0221 Appreciate your comments. If Amtrak had more trains, they would haul more people. It must crawl before it can walk. From where is the money going to come? Bring the troops home as Libertarians suggest..
I have worked for the government. I guarantee that if you gave Amtrak more trains they would start serving more routes; one train a day. That way more voters would be served poorly.
What Amtrak needs to do is take a couple of high density routes and serve them right. Fast, frequent, and on time.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
The some Republicans and many Conservatives have some kind of cultural problem with trains that may even go beyond their party founding principles is something that I can attest to from personal experience.
Without going into the details of my personal political beliefs and political associations over the years, I had a couple minutes of "face time" with Senator John Tower of Texas just outside a hotel conference room in Chicago. This was in the mid to late 1970's when he was advocating for the Alaska Pipeline, and being an avid reader of Trains Magazine and its Professional Iconoclast John Kneiling, I suggested to the Senator that perhaps a trans-Canada rail line would provide an alternative and perhaps more environmentally benign way to ship the oil.
Let's just say that the Senator from Texas set me straight on that one. The experts had decided upon a pipeline, I was told, and a pipeline it was going to be, and any talk of a rail alternative was just talk and perhaps a political tactic to block the pipeline.
One anecdote does not set a pattern, so, how about two? In the aftermath of the Penn Central bankruptcy when it was apparent that there would be some government bailout/takeover of the Penn Central and other bankrupt or near-bankrupt Eastern railroad companies, your avid reader of Trains and disciple of the Professional Iconoclast suggested that the same political organization that had John Tower come and speak could endorse the following proposal. My resolution for a public position to be taken by said organization was something to the effect that if the Federal Government was going to be taking over or reorganizing the rail lines in the Northeast, that this effort would be on leveraging, say, the high speed passenger lines of the former Pennsy and NYC railroads to develop a high-speed intermodal rail network, a kind of Iron Highway to make a major effort to divert trucks from the Interstates, saving on energy, highway congestion, and so on.
Just because John Kneiling sounded kinda right wing in his constant knocks on unions didn't mean that he or his ideas were in anyway right wing. He was trying to save the railroads (the Staggers Act and Transportation Deregulation, which believe it or not, had major support from Ted Kennedy, was what finally turned the corner). My colleagues tried patiently to explain to me that the membership of said political organization was a lot of small business people whose sympathies were with trucking companies rather than a Government Scheme I was proposing to substitute for a good portion of their long-haul business.
So what I am saying is that the Republicans in Congress who are heavily influenced (scared of primary challenges if nothing else) by the very Conservative wing are not going to be supportive of Amtrak as it is not in their DNA. They are not evil, they are not stupid, they are not "misinformed", they just have different ideas about trains than we do.
As to the Republicans in Congress wanting to wreck the economy as commented above, I have my own opinions about what is good and what is bad about what they want, and perhaps I can be persuaded that if they have their way without challenge that they will wreck the economy.
But to suggest that wrecking Amtrak is wrecking the economy, however, is a big, big stretch. At about .1 percent of national passenger miles, Amtrak is simply not that important. Gutting Amtrak will be a mere pimple on the deficit, but Amtrak itself is a mere blip in the U.S. economy.
Now people tell me, it is not about current levels of service or even the current kinds of trains. It is about a future where we will need to rebuild train travel to meet the transportation challenges of the future, and if we lose Amtrak and the National Network now, we will boost the costs of such expansion in the future when we really need it.
Are the Republicans who are targeting Amtrak "stupid, evil, and mis-informed" (I have heard them called out as stupid and mis-informed in brick-and-morter advocacy circles -- evil is something I threw in for dramatic effect? I think it is fair to say they have a different vision of the necessity of trains and the utility of trains than the mainstream train advocacy community. Given the current track record (excuse the pun) of Amtrak, I don't think that the case for Amtrak is a "slam dunk case." Given that Republicans who oppose trains (and many others, some Republicans and many but not all Democrats who support trains) are part of the political landscape, we need to take it as a given that when the political pendulum swings one way, we get the 8 billion in ARRA money to move Amtrak a little farther along, and when the political pendulum swings the other way, Amtrak comes under scrutiny and even attack. That is why how Amtrak spends or spent the 8 billion is so critical, to show the public what that 8 billion can achieve to justify more when the pendulum swings our way again.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Phoebe Vet I have worked for the government. I guarantee that if you gave Amtrak more trains they would start serving more routes; one train a day. That way more voters would be served poorly. What Amtrak needs to do is take a couple of high density routes and serve them right. Fast, frequent, and on time.
Phoebee: 2-1/2 years ago I agreeded with 1st paragraph in the above statement. Now however I have my doubts. The main reason is Amtrak's PRIIA reports of various route implementations. With infrastructure costs of a new route costing from $600,000,000 and up the ability of implementing a once a day round trip on a new route is somewhat finacially suspect. Probably additional double tracking of present routes and no need to upgrade new stations to handicapped standards may be a much better ROI.
If voters can anticipate 3 - 4 round trips a day on a route maybe that will go over better?? I cite the Piedmont route and downeaster as 2 examples. The needed NS double tracking, elimination of grade crossings, & additional longer sidings Greesboro - Selma of the North Carolina route as one extreme and the ability to start 4 RTs a day ( now 5 and soon 6 after upgrades ) on the secondary freight line of the Downeaster as the other end of the spectrum?
A final financial prospect is the addition of more cars to present trains. It appears that an additional car on the Silver Meteor allowed Amtrak to reduce operating cost ( PRIIA report on upgrading Silver Meteor ). That was for the summer months and could not be sustained due to equipment shortages.
So I very much agree with second paragraph
Phoebe Vet, you hit the nail on the head. It seems to me that one sensible thing that can be done is to discontinue any less than daily service. ( It pains me to say that, since the Sunset Limited is kind of a sentimental favorite.) But, as Henry6 keeps preaching, provide a real service. The equipment freed up can be used to increase service where there is a real need. For instance, I think the NYC-Atlanta portion of the Crescent is fairly heavily used while the Atlanta-New Orleans part is not. The freed equipment could be used to provide an additional "Half Crescent" NYC-Atlanta at a different and more convenient time for those travelers. If train travel is available more than once a day, more people would consider using it rather than automatically rejecting it.
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