Passenger Trains

[Anonymous]

Okay, in all this Amtrak mess, there have been a few thing IMHO that have been left out. Any opinions on the following would be most welcome, and I respect dissenters so i won't flame you if you think I'm nuts!

1.) Everyone says passenger systems can't make money.

But how do they know? We haven't had an unfettered passneger system since, what, prior to ICC regulation? So before TR was president, the 19th century. How do we know it can't be done when it hasn't been tried in over a century?

2.) "Everyone else's system is subsidized...."

So what? Why do I care what Japan or France do with their systems? What do they know about making money anyway?

(Has anyone seen the Nikkei index lately? They can't even handle bank reform! And europe doesn't even have a mortgage system, much less a fair taxation policy.)

We are a different country; should we not find our own solutions?

3.) What's so wrong about the ARC?

is there something wrong with wanting accountability? Is there someone out there who's going to tell me with a straight face that Gil Carmicheal is anti-passenger rail?

4.) Regardless of the outcome, does anyone SERIOUSLY think that people will ever use passenger rail as their primary long distance method of travel?

Sure, it's a nice idea, but we have airports and interstates now.... that car and the airplane, no matter how annoying they can be, aren't going to ever go away. The first is too flexible and the second is too fast.

FINITO: that's all, just those three to keep you busy and make your face go red. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but I just think that some common sense has been missing from this dialog for a long time.

Oops! It started in Congress. No wonder!

Alexander in Oregon

[sooblue]

I think you answered your own questions.
however! If long distance passenger trains could only survive with some kind of subsidy, from the government or from the host railroads, I think they still should be running. The fare should be cheap enough so that average family would be able to travel. Every one should travel by rail even if just once. I traveled from Mpls. to LA. in 1967. I WANT TO GO AGAIN but I won't pay 2000.00. I can get tickets for my family from the airlines for 1000.00 and I could drive out for less than 500.00.
AMTRAK, STOP TRYING TO MAKE MONEY!!
We have to start over and do it right so that we can take OUR kids on a train through this wonderfull country we call home.

[Anonymous]

Mike:

Part of why it used to be cheaper was because of ICC regs.... in other words by price fixing the market, the railroads couldn't make money at it, so they asked for a bailout.

However, another reason fares used to be lower was volume and competition. If you wanted to take that trip today, all you'd get would be one train daily, (if that!) via Amtrak.

In 1967 you probably could've taken ATSF, UP, RI/SP, CBQ/WP/ATSF, etc etc and there were probably more than one train per company per day! (e.g. 2nd class trains as well as limiteds)

IF there was enough volume fares would go down. IF IF IF.....

[Anonymous]

It costs double to take the train?!?!?

[Anonymous]

I think for sleeper class, yeah. On a long distance. I wouldn't be surprised.... From Portland to Oakland fro two people it's $750.

[sooblue]

I wanted to take my family on the train from Mpls to fredrick Maryland two years ago and Amtrak quoated me a price of 2600.00 round trip!
than last year I thought it would be nice to auto train it from maryland to orlando fl. 2400.00 one way!
long distance passenger travel or even intermediate passenger travel will never make a come back with pricing like that. There is no value to it that justifies the price.

[Anonymous]

Mike:

Yes. And many Amtrak defenders I see out there say "but train travel is priceless" etc. etc. but they forget that our wallets aren't priceless.

I think, again, volume is the cause. A jet plane MUST cost more to operate than an equivelant passenger train (or am I wrong????? Any pilots out there???). But Airlines can and do make OPERATIONAL money... enough that they can justify issuing stocks and bonds....

Course, goin from Mpls to Maryland would entail, what? three trains with two transfers?

Up here in the NW, the short distance corridors are much better- about $35 for Portland-Seattle. Portland-Vancouver BC was $75 or so... but again volume cuts in: there's only ONE TRAIN between Seattle and Vancouver, so anyone commin from Portland can't make a connection; they have to stay overnight, raising the trip costs by about $100 or more.

This distance could be driven in a day, even in bad traffic!

[Anonymous]

Alexander,

I have been discussing this issue every time somebody puts it up and seldom do I get any answers.

In response to your first question; Can passenger rail make money in the US? My answer is 'Doesn't appear so.' If any serious investors thought so they would have built a passenger system to make the money. The absence of a private system tells me that no serious investors find any merit in the idea. And as others pointed out, the big railroads gave it up.

Your second question ... I agree. The economics of transportation in other countries is different from our own. That's why we should solve our problems with our own ingenuity. As an aside, it is partially because we have such cheap transportation that we enjoy a higher standard of living here.

I don't follow the ARC so I have no opinion on #3.

On #4, I suspect that if the government were to tax us enough then trains could become attractive again, but why would I want to be taxed so severly to make that happen. I am very sad that so many of my countrymen want others to give them a free ride.

Ed

[Anonymous]

Ed:

So we agree on most points but the first.

I would say, what business in their right mind would go into the passenger business in the 1970s, when not only passenger traisn looked antiquated, but rail itself seemed doomed as a free-enterprise feild? None, so Amtrak was formed to serve VERY political ends.

And later, even today, no third party company in their right mind would run trains for passengers as long as a government funded monopoly is around. Heck, how would they get trackage? Station service? FRA cooperation? Amtrak could just freeze them out of their assets and the big RRs would just laugh in their face w/o government backing.

There is only one other entity that could take on this project; the original railroads. This is something they haven't done basically because they have enough problems as it is getting back to where they used to be for freight.

If Amtrak goes away, things could radically alter... government contracted third parties, for example, could come in.....

As for subsidies? Yeah, I get you. I'd like a Jaguar XK8, doesn't mean that Congress ought to buy me one. And we don't fund aisling ships with government money either.

I DON'T have a problem with rail infrastructure getting tax dollars... it's just another road or terminal, different mode. But I don't like operational money going to these things. it is, however, a fact of life in all "alternate" forms of transport, from city buses to light rail to subways.

There is, of course, one more possiblity..... advertising, and the visibility that a passenger train brought to pre Amtrak railroads, is now on the minds of the Brass Hats at last..... maybe a certain four-letter carrier might take it under advisement that a few green and orange "streamliners" would make their companies a lot more visible...... and show off just how fast their service can be.....

[Anonymous]

I'd like to chime in here with an opinion from a taxpayer and a fan:

Amtrak is pretty well down the toilet right now, but it is still an essential piece to our transportation system. I even put it on a higher level than the airlines (when was the last time you saw a train grounded by a terrorist attack or weather?).

Since it has been proven that cross-country trains are not economically feasible, I say that Amtrak (or whoever does the rails in the future) should break the routes down into segments. For example, the Zephyr could go Chicago-Omaha, Omaha-Denver, and Denver-Emeryville. The Chief could go Chicago-KC, KC-Albuquerque, Albu-LA. I also think that the Trak needs to get more involved with high speed rails. I for one would love to have a train running from downtown Des Moines straight into Union Station, instead of having to drive an hour to the nearest station.

Since we've brought up the subject of bringing back the old passenger trains, I wouldn't mind seeing the old C&NW Executive F running again.

[Anonymous]

Steve:

Can those corridors support enough traffic to work, tho? In the PNW, the Cascades Corridor (mostly) works, but look at the populations of the stops of just the Portland-Seattle Trains:
Portland (metro) 1,000,000+
Vancouver, WA, 150,000+
Longview, WA, 60k
Olympia, WA, 100k
Tacoma, WA, 500k+
Seattle, WA, 1,500,000+
All this in less than 200 miles of track.

Can say Omaha-Chicago provide similar numbers?

[Anonymous]

Alexander,

I'm not sure we disagree on point one but maybe. I just believe that the lack of people who want to get into the railroad market is evidence that it is not likely to be possibly to make a profit. I agree completely that anyone who would go into competition with the Federal Govenrment is plain nuts.

I would be in favor of a passenger rail company getting tax dollars to build track if the taxes were collected from the users. There is the rub. Nobody wants to bear the cost of the track, either building or maintaining. Highway users pay gas taxes to build and maintain the highways. Rail users should bear the cost of the entire system; construction, maintanence and operations. My whole problem is that these jokers want me and everyone else to subsidize the train for their use.

As another aside, I read the article under the News forum on this site and a fellow said, "Passenger rail is priceless." Well, the next time he wants to travel on a passenger train they should ask him to pay $40,000 per mile for the trip. He should be grateful to pay this tiny sum to enjoy a 'priceless' experience. If Amtrak could only find these guys who think rail travel is priceless and charge them what they are willing to pay (can you say 'free market'?) they wouldn't need any tax dollars.

Later - Ed

[Anonymous]

In the first place, even though the transportation system that is more energy-efficient than steel wheels on steel rails has yet to be invented, transporting passengers by rail has rarely been a profitable enterprise, anywhere in the world, at any time in history. There are, of course, exceptions. Japan's passenger trains, I'm told, are exceptionally profitable, and those in some European countries are marginally so. But Japan has a far higher population density than most of the U.S., and for the most part, its rail corridors and its population centers coincide.

So if passenger trains lose money, why did the railroads not only provide it, but compete with each other to see who could provide the fastest, most luxurious trains for the lowest fares?

Two words. Freight revenue. The passenger trains were directly subsidized by express and mail that ran in them, and indirectly subsidized by the fact that they were the railroads' principal means of selling freight service.

What changed?

Scheduled airlines and interstate trucking.
Suddenly, the railroads weren't competing so much with each other as with other forms of long-distance transportation that didn't have to bear the full cost of owning, building and maintaining their own right-of-way.

In the second place, from what I've heard, the long-distance routes are better-off financially than the shorter ones, but it's the shorter ones that are the sacred cows with Congress. Moreover, breaking long-distance routes into shorter-distance ones is a fool's pastime: long-distance trains can stop wherever it's convenient to build a station (staffed or otherwise), and many do a certain amount of enroute switching. So in effect, every long-distance train already IS the series of short-distance trains it could be broken down into.

Could Amtrak ever achieve a financial break-even? Maybe. Someday. Given better management, a completely healthy infrastructure, and less subsidies for air and highway transporation. But a self-sufficient Amtrak was never the goal of the Amtrak Deform Council.

So how would I reform Amtrak?

I'd recognize just how much federal subsidy goes into airlines and interstate trucking, and base any definitions of "self sufficiency" on that.

I'd renegotiate agreements for use of railroad-owned trackage, to create strong financial incentives for the railroads to send Amtrak trains through without unnecessary delay.

And I'd take a long, hard look at short-distance routes that appear to exist purely for the gratification of certain members of Congress, and either extend them so they have connections at both ends, or get rid of them.

As to people using railroads as their principal means of long-distance travel, I do. As far as I'm concerned, "vacationing by automobile" is an oxymoron; I vacation FROM my automobile. And unless I simply don't have the time to take the train, AND there'd actually be a time savings from flying (which now requires a somewhat longer distance than it did before the atrocities of last September), I really don't care to fly: the seats are tiny; the windows are tinier, the security checkpoints are a pain in the fundament, and the food barely qualifies as food, let alone coming close to what even the worst dining cars serve.

--
James H. H. Lampert
Professional Dilettante

[Anonymous]

Ed:

Love your last paragraph. Free market indeed! It seems strange that this country can produce some of the finest stuff on earth with the free market system, but can't run a decent train.

I think recently that Trains ran a story about Intermodal not making as much money per car as carload, since it's time sensitive, but was the fastest growing segment. To make money, you had to be both fast and run as high a volume as you can.

The estimate was a revenue of $8000 per "car" (well doulbe stacked.)

Now take a coach full of, what, 100 seats on a Superliner? that's make a ticket $80 per seat. Not too bad, huh? And on sleepers, with about 30 passengers, what? $300 per? Heck these prices are TOO low, for the most part. And service costs go down the more coaches you run. Seems to me service at least comparable to Airline travel is available at break even.

We just need to get these defeatists out of the Amtrak managment.

[Anonymous]

James:

You might be right there. Passenger trains were often run as an example of what the road could do for freight routing, and as advertising, and also, as you say, for LCL/Mail/Express.

I don't know that it is necessery to REDUCE airline and road dollars to get Amtrak to parity.... unless you are just suggesting to keep overall USDOT spending the same, but re-allocate it.

Here is one of the benefits of privatization: Like airlines, you'd have a lobby group of insutrialists pushing against the truck.auto lobby and the air lobby, hopefully balancing out the distribution of funds. Whereas Amtrak has little or no pull, as the money they would theoretically throw around comes directly from those who it would be thrown at- Congress.

However i do not claim privatiziaton is the magic bullet. only that it might result in better rail lobbying.

Mm.. politcally oriented trains? Never! However, it is MY understanding that the Short corridors were more profitable.... speaking not of the NE corridor, but of Cascades and of CalTrans. (Course it's all realative... who really has the deinitive numbers, anyway? Probably not even Amtrak!)

While you may like a break from your car, you must admit that, because of it's unfixed route, it is more flexible, and therefore will remain the primary choice for most corridors, and for most vacationers on a budget.

Regards to the Professional Dilettante,
From an Amateur Troublemaker,

Alexander Craghead

[Mookie]

Gentlemen: Without getting too far into your discussion - I need to throw something very basic into your mix.

Amtrak lost another engine yesterday when the eastbound California Zephyr collided with a gravel truck (no serious injuries)just west of Omaha.

Another example of cars/trucks needing to get on the railroad track with the trains! Should this be a basic price of doing business?

[Anonymous]

Jenny:

Do you mean, grade seperationg/singalization? Or are you referring to actually transfering road traffic to rail?

If the first, then, yes, I totally agree. And, BTW, I see nothing wrong with using 100% tax dollars to do this.

What is real crazy is we have a situation locally where a commuter rail system may be going on atop an existing, rapidly growing shortline freight route. And the city I live in wants to plunk two additional grade crossings in...... Singalized or not I think they're nuts.

As for the second option? In short run corridors, maybe you can get some cars transfered over, but you'll never get more than a minority percentage. In long run corridors, you probably could get a significant dent in trucking... but that's another topic.

Amtrak has such a high profile very time it wrecks into something because it wrecks into things all the time. This is mostly the function of higher train speeds. That trucker was probably used to pulling in front of trains all the time.... 30 mph or less freights... and misjudged the faster Amtrak train.

Sadly, even if every crossing were signalized, hitting vehisles will always be a fact of life for RRs.

[Mookie]

Alexander: I have really no thoughts either way on how to solve the problem, but you are right - as long as trains and cars/trucks travel on the same ground - there will always be problems. I know in some high traffic areas, they practically put up walls to keep the cars back - but this was a rural area and it had only crossbucks - no signals. They said it was early morning, very clear and no obstructions to his line of sight. Just probably had his head elsewhere and never gave a thought to a real train being on train tracks. But how will we ever help Amtrak if the basic human error isn't first corrected. You don't hear of many freight accidents - and I live in the heart of coal train country - but Amtrak is constantly hunting up the # of their insurance agent. Am I being too simplistic - or completely off the subject?

[Anonymous]

If it's routed right, an Omaha-Chicago corridor could work. It won't be the magnitude of the NEC or I-5, but it would be healthy. What kills Amtrak right now on its Omaha-Chicago run is that it runs south of all the major cities in Iowa (Des Moines, Davenport, all 3 college towns) since it runs on the BNSF line. It is possible that they could run some service through the center of the state on the Iowa Interstate (former Rock Island) single main, or possibly even on the UP east-west double main through Ames and Cedar Rapids. In terms of driving distance, Ames is closer to the capital city than Osceola, and the depot is still there.

Even if it only ran every other day, that would be enough to take care of all the Chitown freaks (me included) who populate this great state of mine.

[Anonymous]

Alexander,

Thanks for the information about freight revenue. It is very helpful in analyzing this problem. It seems to me that there are many more RR employees involved in operating one car in an Amtrak than are needed to run the double stacks. I understand that the typical freight runs with only an engineer and a conductor. Two employees per what, fifty or seventy cars? I don't know much about Amtrak but I would guess they need one employee on the train for every two or three cars in addition to the engineer and conductor. Since labor is one of the greatest expenses for the RR industry, they are going to have to raise the revenue generated per car above the $8000. I also imagine the typical passenger car needs more maintanence beyond the typical stack car.

I hate to keep going back to this but it needs to be understood. This neglects the cost of the track, ballast, grading, etc. I don't know how much the airlines get from the government for the airports. If they get anything then it is too much. The cost of the airport should be part of the ticket, in my opinion. But it appears to me that one major area for savings in the airline industry is they don't have to build and maintain any roadbed. I know they use a bunch of fuel per passenger mile, but not having to pay for roadbed skews the problem a good deal.

You are the first one here willing to talk serious numbers to analyze the problem. Many of the other folks here think passenger rail is priceless. - Ed

[Anonymous]

How does your state Leg feel about this? If you really want such a thing, it'll have to come from the state level, cause you and I both know there won't be any Federal leadership on this issue in our lifetimes.

It wouldn't cost a great deal to put together a very BASIC service.... but it'd have to come from the State. I think your two fatal flaw possiblities are IAIS- are they receptive? and Chicago itself... how do you get in?

No doubt Iowa is part of the Midwest rail whohaw?

[Anonymous]

Jenny:

Maybe both, .

Seriously, there are freight accidents all the time, but they are usually not as spectacular. Just last Wednesday, a BNSF train smashed through a semi in AZ. Fortunately, no-one was killed.

Again, I think it is mostly a speed thing that really gets Amtrak. That, and consider that the cars they pull are much lighter in comparison to freight cars, so they jump the tracks easier when jostled or traveling too fast.

But yes there have been a few bad Amtrak incidents... and the longer that these go on, and the more frequent they are, the less liklihood that Amtrak (or any other passenger system) will be taken seriously, instead of being a staple of Leno late-night monolgues, along with Tanya Harding and a certain former president.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me might know the percentage of accidents on Amtrak that are human error, and that are cause by non-Amtrak problems, such as track structure?

PS Jenny: have you askef Op-Lifesaver or your state DOT about getting signals on that crossing? If they are reluctant, a local fundraising push might help convince them there's local support and (token) local monetary support....

[Anonymous]

Ed:

I LOVE passenger trains. I also love steam. Am I crazy enough to think that the latter will come back? No. Or the passenger train? well... I might be that crazy.

The answer for the staffing issue on Amtrak is to eliminate staff. How many stewardesses (or whatever they are called now) per 747? 6? And how many passengers? 400?

As for maintenance, you got me there. No doubt passenger cars DO cost more to maintain.... and probably to build, too, with upholstery and carpet and whatnot.

Track, ballast, etc.... well these are in the realm, mostly, of private railroads. If you include them in the cost of your rail ticket, well... then no one will ride.

But guess what? Almost every dime of airport construction, of flight control, are comming out of your pocket, and mine. Airlines pay for "slots" to get in and out of an airport, and these are supposed to pay back for construction. But you can bet they don' come near the costs. Instead, the costs come largely from Federal Income Tax funneled through congressional appropriations, and through Municiple Bonds, which are paid for with property taxes.

Heck, let's not even count the 15 billion they got as part of a bailout for September 11th!

If you had to pay for the airport in your ticket, well, no one would fly either. And driving? If you had to pay for your interstate when you started your car..... well, you get the drift.

I really don't like airlines getting their terminals built on our dime, cause invariably terminals which are too large and too grandiouse are built... pork, anyone?

But I have no problem, *in general*, with funding infrastructure improvments. Or even with garanteeing loans for cars & locos. But I don't think that we ought to finance the staff and food and fuel of a passenger train. Operations should be paid for by the users, just like drivers pay for their own cars, gas, and tires. And airlines pay for their own fuel, airplanes, pilots, etc....

Rail is fantastic... but it definitely is not priceless. Only life is.

Alexander

[Anonymous]

> While you may like a break from your car, you
> must admit that, because of it's unfixed route,
> it is more flexible, and therefore will remain
> the primary choice for most corridors, and for
> most vacationers on a budget.

I admit no such d***ed thing.

Just because we have a more-or-less constant barrage of automobile ads promoting sports cars and SUVs as adult toys (like the one where a husband and wife are driving up a long, winding road to look at a house, and the husband, after looking down at the long, winding road, declares "we'll take it," without even looking at the house itself) doesn't make it so, and just because the open road is promoted as "freedom" doesn't mean one is particularly free while stuck in an automobile for hours at a time.

Simply put, driving is work. It demands constant attention, and precludes more than a fleeting glance at the scenery.

A microcosm:
For many, many years, I made the drive from my Orange County, CA home to Hollywood Bowl, two or three times a week. Under ideal conditions, it's slightly less than an hour each way. I spent a small fortune on gas and parking, but since I lived in the middle of a huge, gaping hole in the Bowl's park-and-ride system, I had little choice. When on-site parking became prohibitively expensive, I started parking in a shuttle lot, even though it meant driving another few miles.

True, I had the freedom especially when I was still parking on-site, to make a side trip to Tower Classics in West Hollywood on my way home, but with a large selection of classical CDs available in the larger bookstores, and through Internet merchants (and with my tastes growing steadily more esoteric), even exclusively-classical record shops have lost much of their appeal, and besides, even without the side-trip, I was arriving home more than a little bit frazzled from the drive.

Then, last summer, the price of gas went through the proverbial roof. The curtain time for most of the concerts I attended had been changed to half an hour earlier, making it feasible, at least for those concerts, for me to try taking MetroRail. I investigated, and found there was a free shuttle service from the Red Line station to the Bowl, and that if I paid my fares in tokens, my transportation would cost a fraction of what it was costing me to drive there and park in the shuttle lots.

After nearly a full season of taking MetroRail to the Bowl, I can safely say that I love it, and look forward to using it exclusively this season. It's cut my summer gas bill in half, and allowed me to completely bypass the worst of the traffic. I can spend my travel time reading the week's program, and (at least on the way up) looking at the scenery.

I still have clear, unpleasant memories of the days when "family vacation" meant "car trip to North Dakota." I remember hour after hour with little change of scenery. It wasn't as long as a train ride would have been, but on a train, I would have been stuck in the same seat for hours on end, unable to even get up and walk around. I remember hunting around for a motel, because we were hours behind schedule, and wouldn't make it to the one where we had a reservation. I remember passing through the Mojave Desert, by day, without air conditioning.

As to air travel, we mustn't forget that a typical rail coach seat is about the size of a first class seat on an airplane. While I've had occasional pleasant flights, I've far more often found that air travel meant spending time strapped into incredibly cramped seats, with tiny windows and food a starving Rottweiler would turn his nose up at. And that was before the atrocities of last September. Now, with the additional hassle of heightened security, air travel is an even more time-consuming pain in the backside than ever.

This leaves vacationers with three choices: Put up with the monumental hassle of air travel, or drive, or take the train.

Somebody else (possibly on the "Libertarian Doofus" thread, possibly on this one) came out against the idea of increasing fuel taxes in order to make the highways more self-supporting, and to make trains more attractive to travelers and shippers alike.

Why?

Whatever portion of the cost of highway maintenance isn't covered by fuel taxes and vehicle license fees ends up being covered by income and sales taxes. Why shouldn't we shift the burden of paying for highways onto those who derive the most benefit from them, and who cause the most wear and tear on them? Our air would be cleaner, and our shrinking petroleum reserves would last longer.

--
James H. H. Lampert

[Anonymous]

James:

With the exception of your comments about the trips through the Dakotas, or maybe your not-entirely-off-the-wall comment about that car commercial, most of you commens are more about urban transit than about passenger trains.

Maybe I should've made the subject more specific and called it "Long Distance Passenger Trains".

Anyway.... try this on for size:

If I want to go to Yellowstone, or Ranier, or Yosemite? I will have to take a car. With the exception of Grand Canyon you cannot travel most of the western sights by rail. Heck, if I want to go just about anywhere, i'll have to use a car. What about Boise?

Ok ok, I know what you'll say: who want's to go to Boise? True. (Kidding folks!) But the point is, cars are more flexible than rail in most corridors. You cannot toodle around the countryside in a train. You can see some of it, but you can't exactly hop over to this winery here, and go visit that old fort there, and take a side trip up to the waterfalls.

Just like you can't take a car up a trail, or to the top of Mount Whitney or Mount Hood.

And gas prices, even when they were high, are still cheaper than an air ticket. Granted, an Amtrak COACH ticket might be cheaper....

But the fact is that for the 99% of the country that isn't in NYC, Chicago, or LA, (you know, the flyover states...) the car will be the primary choice, whether you or I think that's a bad one or not.

Oh. And auto gas taxes are paying for the transit you ride.... goodness knows your tickets aren't. But that's another thread entirely.

So I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

Alexander in Flyover Country

[BRAKIE]

Amtrak is dead.It died with the BIG LIE of 1971.That lie being Amtak could make money in passenger trains where the railroads failed.The day has come to put it to rest.May it R.I.P
Now,We need to look at passenger trains as a whole and ask these questions.What do we want the next passenger train to be? High speed? Intercity? commuter? Do we want it to serve a wider range of cities or just a select few?(many cities has not had passenger train service in years)Do we want more auto trains? (this maybe a plus in getting riders)finally,How is this to be paid for? The feds? The Feds and States? A special transportation tax ear mark only for passenger trains? (tax payers and Congressmen will LOVE that!) Put it in the hands of private industry? After all this,who will ride the train?Will freight railroads co-operate with this new rail passenger system?(Why should they?)

[sooblue]

This isn't nessesarily a reply just an observation.
I think Government for the people by the people
demands that we do the BEST for the people as we do it, for ourselves. We should have EVERY type of transportation available for the people to use.
Every option should be well developed and balanced with each other.
Planes, Trains, trucking, buses, Automobiles, even Bicycles all have there place.
they feed each other.
In Mpls. we could have the northstar rail system
into the down towns of both Mpls. and St Paul
but you than need to have a way to get the people around the cities, buses, electric autos, bicycles, TROLLY CARS( oh for the good old days when the TCs had one of the best systems around )
It makes sense to me to have each major city running commuter rail and each city connected with each other with long distance rail.
When you need to get there fast use air.
short haul with trucks at every opportunity.
long haul with rail at every opportunity.
Use the car to fill in the gaps.
Not every one would make use of such a system but at least the options are there and a good percentage would use a balanced system.
Finaly, we ALL should pay for a portion of it because even now we all use what we have for a system.
privatize and subsidize to have the BEST.
after all it's for us and our children.

[Anonymous]

Larry:

You like asking questions but giving no answers!

To put a slightly finer point on it, Amtrak was doomed because of the big lie- as you said- that it could make money *running passenger trains on routes selected for political purposes* where the private rrs couldn't.

Do you really think Amtrak is dead tho? Dontcha think that congress will keep it limping along just so they don't have to really do anything about it?

BTW I titled this forum PASSENGER TRAINS, not Amtrak, just for the reason you point out- that they are not one in the same topic.

IF Amtrak DID die, only THEN would we have the debate you talk of. Before then, we are just the crackpots and the status qou is holy.

Auto trains would be a great idea, which would make passenger service more attractive. That, and a comprehensive terminal established at all major points, where you could actually rent a car!

Leave commute trains out: these are local issues. Intercity is the most likely- high speed aint gonna happen for a long time, if ever, but one thing that ought to happen in that feild is the FRA and the AAR need to develop safety standards for it so that private investment is possible at last. After all, the Texas TGV and Fox both went under because they could get no financing without first getting safety ratings from the previous Administration.

I still believe that we (taxpayers) should not pay a dime for ops, only for capital improvements. So if we need to build a new interstate system for rail.... flying junctions, superelevated curvature, quadruple track, full grade seperation, Positive Train Control, Electrification, (doesn't this sound a lot like NYC or Pennsy of 1938?) Then fine.

But I don't want to pay for your ticket to ride it.

[Anonymous]

For the most part I agree with you Mike. Problem is most of those rail systems our cities build are in the wrong place and cost WAY too much to build and operate.

You see, most of them follow part of your suggestion- the subsidize side- but don't follow through on the other- privatize.

Oh, and Trolleys. That't the bitterest irony, cause it was usually the very cities trying to build them now that tore them out. "They get in the way of cars", "They clog the streets", "They're antiquated" etc...... And then proceeded to revoke franchises and chase out old tracks on trumped-up environmental charges that could easily have applied to their own sewage overflow problems.....

Oops! Not about passenger trains anymore! But if anyone reads this lives near the largest city in Oregon, you, too, know what I am talking about.

Thanks Mike! want to start a railroad with me?

Alexander

[Anonymous]

I totaly agree with you on issue #4. While I love to watch a train roll by I believe that traveling by train is totaly unrealistic. We have so little free time that we can't afford to waste it in tansit. After one gets off the train one must then rent a car, I know the same is true with jet travel, but at least you saved the time getting there. I would love to get to ride with the crew in an engine(a steam engine would be great also), but I can't imagine that droning along in a passeger car would be much fun. I believe that most Americans want the freedom to chose there own route and stop when they want to, or get where there going quickly. Let the railroads do what they do best; move frieght! What we as rail fans need is a locomotive ride-along program.