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NARP release on Bush attack on Amtrak
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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by O.S.</i> <br /><br />The first post of mine you respond to, FM, and in your first three words you manage to presume to know what I've learned and what I've forgotten. I got to hand it to you. <br /> <br />Is it feasible to suggest that Amtrak's incremental-cost trackage-rights is grandfathered? Sure. Suggestion is free. Will it matter? Not a hill of beans. The Amtrak legislation won't hold the freight railroads' feet to the fire on how expeditiously Amtrak is handled. The law never did, it was never meant to, and it never will. Everyone involved in this back in 1970 knew that this problem lurked in the future. But there was nothing anyone could do about it in 1970, either, not without declaring a dictatorship. Congress and the Nixon Administration were not going to pay a full-allocation trackage rights deal for Amtrak, the ICC couldn't break the law to allow train-offs where there really was a public need, and the freight railroads had to get out of the passenger business or cease business. It was this deal, or no deal, and no deal was worse by far. <br /> <br />2. Just what alternative lines are you imagining that Amtrak will use? What alternative do you propose to the Sunset between El Paso and Los Angeles? Or the Santa Fe between Dalies and Los Angeles? Or the CB&Q between Chicago and Lincoln? Or the IC between Chicago and New Orleans? And where were you planning to get the money for the additional trainsets, at $20-30 million a pop for long-distance trains, to make up the slower cycle times and still have the same number of departures? <br /> <br />OS <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />The trainsets would be purchased or leased by those entities willing to provide the service, be it private or public (e.g. regional or local authority). Granted, not all current Amtrak routes would be retained by a private or public operation, due no doubt to capacity concerns. An example of a passenger rail reroute would be taking the Empire Builder or its subsequent replacement off the BNSF High Line and reroute it onto the MRL/ex-NP corridor. Then the only stretches where the operation would need to access a highly used line would be between Spokane and Sandpoint ID. The reroute would be taken off the BNSF line between Spokane and Pasco and put on the UP line between the two cities, since the UP line still has excess capacity. Then the train would be rerouted onto the ex-NP Stampede Pass line for the same reasons. <br /> <br />It would be logical for such operations to take over routes that are still accessable via excess capacity, and have the entity take out an insurance policy to be paid to the ROW owner should capacity suddenly become constrained.
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