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The Value of Long Distance Passenger Trains

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[quote user="oltmannd"] [quote user="Sam1"]What's the authority for claiming that Amtrak is not a planning organization?  I have never read anything in its official publications to suggest that it shuns planning.[/quote] They run trains.  That's pretty much it.  Sure, the do planning.  Sometimes, they even do some strategic planning (recently for equipment fleet) or capital planning (for the NEC), but but they really don't do transportation planning, the part where you figure out where people want to go from and to - or even where you can induce them to travel from and to - and then figure out how to best accommodate it. Amtrak just runs trains on their routes.  [/quote] Their role is to plan train and connecting bus service.  The development of the Thruway bus system, with the latest flowering being in North Carolina, suggests Amtrak has some notion of planning beyond the rails.   To be fair Amtrak is constrained by politics.  Amongst other things it cannot get in the face of its 535 independent contractors, each of whom believes that he or she has been anointed by a high power and is not be challenged in their individual as well as collective wisdom. We don't know all that goes on behind the scenes with respect to planning and what Amtrak might do if it were not so dependent on government funding. I may be reading between the lines, but I have the impression that Boardman recognizes the drag the long distance trains impose on Amtrak and would spin them off if he could. Look at me.  Defending Amtrak when given my druthers I would privatize it in a heartbeat.
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