Home
»
Trains Magazine
»
Forums
»
Passenger
»
Joe Boardman at the Midwest HSR Association

Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="John WR"] [quote user="Sam1"]If an objective of the long distance trains is to "pay justice for those who are being abandoned in rural areas", then Amtrak or another government agency should provide passenger train service to every community in the United States above a set population, i.e. 25,000, especially those that serve agricultural areas.  And the Congress should come up with the money fund it.  [/quote] Sam,   If we accept the "justice to those who are being abandoned" argument you are absolutely correct.  In an ideal world that would happen.  However, Amtrak must operate within the budget Congress decides and that budget is not sufficient to provide rail passenger service for "every [small] community in the United States.  So the issue than becomes should Amtrak provide service to those communities it can reach or should all service be denied becaue Amtrak cannot achieve perfect service.   John [/quote] My argument that Amtrak should provide service to every rural community with a population above a set trigger point is absurd.  I intended it to be so. It was designed to point out the weakness of Boardman's assertion that dropping the long distance trains would leave rural America high and dry.  By his logic most of rural America is high and dry since it lost passenger train service decades ago.  For a very good reason.  People did not ride them in sufficient numbers to cover their costs. If the communities served by the long distance trains lost them, intercity bus companies could take up the slack, albeit without lounge, dinning, and sleeping cars, which are used by a tiny minority of Amtrak's customers. This is what has happened in Texas. In Texas Amtrak serves the largest cities with once a day train service that is used by very small percentage of the population. It also serves some smaller communities, i.e. Marshall, Longview, Mineola, etc.  But it does not serve Abilene, Brownsville, Lubbock, Midland, etc. The cities get Amtrak service in Texas or don't is a function of politics and has little if anything to do with supporting rural communities. Boardman's argument is not logically consistent. Posters to these forums who are knowledgeable about the origins of Amtrak have argued that it is unclear whether Amtrak had or has a mandate to run long distance trains. Oltmand, for example, if I remember correctly, has stated that at least some of the enablers envisioned Amtrak dropping its unprofitable routes after a reasonable time if they could not cover their costs. Clearly, Amtrak has some wiggle room in  its Congressional directive regarding the long distance trains, i.e. it has dropped the National Limited, Pioneer, etc.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag