What does Bush and parts of the US not understand about Amtrak and the national passenger rail?

[edblysard]

We dont do a thing about it...

They do.

All we should do is buy the product that best fits our needs and wants...its up to the guys who makes the cars to find a way to supply the buyer with what they want.

And its up to the airline to find a way to supply seat at a price the consumer is willing to pay, to a place the consumer is will to go...and make a profit.

If that means buying and flying only one type of aircraft, and offering a no frills service, well, if that’s what it takes to make your company profitable, then that’s what your stock holders expect you to do!

It’s not up to you, me or the government to bail them out, it’s up to the company to adapt and change to fit the times.

Ed

[Sterling1]

I'm wondering US residents are too well glued or is it welded to their vehicles?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

We dont do a thing about it...

They do.

All we should do is buy the product that best fits our needs and wants...its up to the guys who makes the cars to find a way to supply the buyer with what they want.

And its up to the airline to find a way to supply seat at a price the consumer is willing to pay, to a place the consumer is will to go...and make a profit.

If that means buying and flying only one type of aircraft, and offering a no frills service, well, if that’s what it takes to make your company profitable, then that’s what your stock holders expect you to do!

It’s not up to you, me or the government to bail them out, it’s up to the company to adapt and change to fit the times.

Ed

Well stated, Ed. After all that's what they said early on about Amtrak, and passenger trains.

Mitch

[jeaton]

I think there is ample evidence that the American public will leave the car behind if other forms of transport will provide a competitive level of service. However, with our desire to move toward the larger open spaces, aka urban sprawl, we have put ourselves in a situation that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to build the competitive service at anything close to a reasonable cost.

Of course, that does not reconcile the question of why the size of the car owned often far exceeds the size of the car that is needed. I suspect that if the bill for the car payment, the gas credit card, the auto insurance and the registration fee all arrived on the same day, there would be a lot of down-sizing.

Jay

[dthede]

Chris, Denver CO, recently said:

"And even though I've cruised at 125 and more, I don't think I'd care to do it on a Freeway with other drivers, no matter how good the roads are. Traveling at that speed is deadly. Doing it with the number of American drivers that would try it if we had it? Suicide."

Ironically, Amtrak would be hard pressed to send a passenger train cross-country at near that speed. SF to D.C. is approx. 2510 miles. At 125 mph, one is talking, say, 21 hours, plus acceleration & slowdown, layover, crew change, etc. Say a day. What is Amtrak's current cross-country schedule show? About 71-1/2 hours, or about 3 times longer. Looked at in terms of mph, we're back to 41 mph, or slower than the speed limit on the Northern State Parkway into NYC in 1952.

A fact is (not "the fact is...") that the petroleum, construction, and auto manufacturing political interests far outweighed the RR political interests. Part of the legacy of the "RR barons" is a deep-seated association between monopoly and rip-off from railroads, steel, associated unions, and politicians in bed with some or all of these. After WWII, "Detroit" promised us a way to "go where we wanted to go, do what we wanted to do" via automobiles -- and of course the infrastructure which had to be funded thereafter: highways.

Perhaps the bottom line is that our society simply said: yes, we want to fund roads, not "railroads," as it is now saying, "no, we do not want to fund education; it is not a priority." In both cases, the question will be how the U.S. can weather the long-term effects of these short-sighted exercises in wastefulness, before it collectively comes to its senses and realizes it has become a "third world" nation" in the new sense: "had everything, wasted much of it, failed to learn from the mistakes of others." (These are all marks of hubris: the behavior that we're better than the rest of the world, that it can't happen here; that, like France, there is a life-exception for us.)

While it has often been stated the other way round, Europe is, in some ways, a laboratory from which the U.S. might learn some things. Unfortunately, blinded by its own exceptional, short-term historical perspective, the U.S. is not receptive to learning from others. Like the post-teen, young adult, it is too intent on teaching others, to have time or vision to acknowledge its own ignorance.
--Didrik

[dthede]

Paul Milenkovic recently said, among other things in his posting titled "Slightly off topic":

"To say that GM builds 10 cars and needs to sell 6 of them to pay their pension costs might be a tad misleading. That kinda suggests that 60 percent of the cost of a car goes to pensions, and I find that hard to believe. I think what it means that if GM builds 10 cars, the profits on 6 of them go into the pension fund and the profits on the remaining 4 go to the shareholders. Pensions may be large compared to profits, ..."

You should not worry about what you find hard to believe. That is a criterion for nothing, just as my finding something hard to believe is not a standard of anything useful. Many of these issues have progressed beyond the grasp of common sense. You should simply become more informed by following the various corporate Annual Reports to stockholders, the Union negotiations news, and so on. Go to primary sources where you can -- i.e., not this or that news reporting company, but rather to the information published by the various parties themselves. Follow the money trail.

Generally it is true that the Automotive industry as well as the Airline industry have been paying out huge sums in pensions, have been looking for any and every way to unburden themselves of these costs -- ethical or otherwise -- and have extended the ploy of getting the Unions to "give back" in order to help the company survive, to being taken over or bought out, or even merged, whereby the penions can be reduced substantially, into the latest tactic: simply defaul on the pensions.

The economic and financial analysis done by corporations appears to be astonishingly poor or remarkably astute, -- given their forked tongue support of self-sufficiency virtues on the one hand, and their willingness to solicit (perhaps demand) government bailouts on the other.

What Bush and parts of the US _do_ understand about Amtrak and the national passenger railroad, is that it has no connection between family values, right-to-life, international swagger-ability, statistically significant vote blocks, and the next election. The President of NARP and the President of Amtrak do appear to understand the bind that they are in: chronically short funding to preclude substantial capital investment in infrastructure, but funding which is just sufficient to keep Amtrak's head on the radar -- namely enough to keep it operating and thereby _to_have_ the usual periodic messes occur (derailments, disc brake spoke failure, the list goes on and on...). The stable owners needed some broken-down cars along the highway, to make their alternative look more appealing, analogous to Baltimore's light rail advertising on billboards along the I-83 commuter road: "You'd be there by now..."

A likely fact is that if Congress just let Amtrak collapse and go broke on its own, private enterprise would _not_ pick up the pieces and make a go of it, without substantial Federal guarantees, inducements, and a capital reinvestment "package" over the next 20 years that would equal what has been paid into the national highway system over the last 20 years, and a firesale "auction" price to boot. Would Bombardier own and operate it? TGV? Virgin?

There simply has been no national committment to passenger or freight railroad transport on anything like the scale directed toward the national highway system. With the cost of gasoline at $2.51/gal between Cleveland & Baltimore, it is now a different calculation to decide to drive it, vs. bus or train it, than it used to be.
--Didrik

[mnwestern]

From reading this, I don't see a lot of Bush supporters. So how did this clown get re-elected in the first place? Don't people consider his actions, or do this just listen to the dribble?

[Anonymous]

I the last quarter, Southwest was the only airline that turned a profit.... If it wasn't for the mulit-year fuel deal which has lessened its costs for fuel, a very wise move for Southwest , Southwest would have been another airline with its tin cup out.....

In the last quarter the spiral of fuel costs finally did in AirTrans and JetBlue.... Except for Southwest, all of the airlines lost money...... The day is reckoning when Southwests fuel deal ends.......

In this age when just about every airline is losing money, somehow, remarkably, Amtrak is supposed to turn a profit...............

[Anonymous]

I belive that Amtrak has Higher Labor costs then the airlines. Commuter Airline pilots only make 40,000 a year. Amtraks works there people 12 hours to carry 200 passengers,The airlines can carry three times that many people in the same time frame using the same amount of labor

[Anonymous]

Everything

[Anonymous]

I have to differ.... Airlines have to man every airport with a number of personnel, from the ticket agents to the baggage handlers to the maintenance workers on top of its flight crews, whereas Amtrak mans in comparison only a few stations and depots with a single ticket agent even though Amtrak has more personnel on its trains.

Its not the number of passengers, its the number of passenger miles that count. Outside the NEC Amtrak trains run around a thousand miles a day.... However, in the NEC Amtrak trains do a number of 300 miles runs in both directions. From my naval engineering days, diesels consume less energy than jet turbines.... A Lot Less! IF TURBINES WERE CHEAPER, WHY AREN'T ALL OF THE EIGHTEEN WHEELERS POWERED BY JET TURBINES?

Therefore its not so easy to compare labor costs. Quite the contrary labor costs for Amtrak per passenger is less than the labor costs for airline passenger, on top of lesser fuel costs per passenger..... Airlines have pilots and which earn up to $300,000 a year, many over $100,000 per year, not to mention the high salaries of co-pilots. Don't just slip in that brand new upstart commuter airline pilots earn less..... Over a career of 30 years, I can guarantee you that they'll be earning twice that small amount.....

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

The difference in energy usage isn't solely based on the difference between diesels and gas turbines. A Super Constellation with four Turbo Compound radial piston engines also consumed a lot of energy. Flight in itself requires more energy to be expended than rolling a train or truck over the ground.

[daveklepper]

I read I don't see a lot of Bush supporters. I happen to have been one. I believe Bush is, hopefully WAS, mistaken about Amtrak, about some other things as well. But I think he is a far more honest person than Kerry. Kerry for good public transportation? Look at the record. He had his chance with the Big Dig. The North Station South Station connector is deperately needed for both commuter travel and Amtrak. What he did after being discharged from the Navy and his suppression of what he did indicates to me that Bush is a more honest person. That is why I voted for Bush and I am not shy about the matter in the least.

I have written Bush emphasizing the points made earlier: standby in emergencies, accessability for most of the country for most of the handicapped and elderly, congestion relief in corridors, tourism. You who agree should also write him. I think his mind can be changed on the issue, particularly with Amtrak's own plan for reform on the table.

[Sterling1]

There's generally one thing about politicians we can all relate to . . .

They're made of flour . . . and dust . . .

I'm sure Bush has his use in his last term in office . . .