Pizza joints and "broad service" restaurants are very different species. You're living in a past, a time 50+ years ago. Nostalgia is nice, but not an essential service.
Overemod: When I frequently rode LDTs, 1954 - 1996, trains were generally welcoming to Foreign Visitors. And I was able to meet many. Good food, reasonable on-time performance, courtesy, clean interiors. Even in most cases during the "Rainbow" era.
Now?
Even for a year after 1 May 1971, the Super Chief retained its standard of service and its name. So did the El Capitan. And the Broadway seemed to get better! And we still had the Southen Crescent and the Rio Grande Zephyr.
Are Jets and Highways really better today?
Answering some questions:
You are right, I did not express my "Word View." But did not two posters or one in two postings claim that my use of the words "Combat Zone" expressed my WV? It doesn't, and I admit use of those two words was a mistake. I thought this matter was settled.
2. I believe my station scheme would work and that I have shown how the objections can be overcome:
A 24/7/365 broad-service quality restaurant with take-out, home delivery, and sit-down can be a great success in any American city as shown by the proliferation of 24/7/365 Pizzarias in most cities.
The mechanics of integrating the broad take-out and home-delivery services with on-board Amtrak service are achievable and have been discussed in detail earlier without any specific objections to the details.
No Amtrak passenger traveling more than two hours should be deprived of the opportunity to purchase food of quality that he or she enjoys while not traveling.
The offical FBI statistics as reported by the Washington Post newspaper for the 2019 Federal year showed 1,004 individuls were killed by police officers. By sex there were 961 males and 43 females. By race classification their were 371 whites, 236 blacks, 158 hispanics, 39 other, and 200 unknown. There were only 41 cases where the deceased was not armed with a weapon. Of that 41, 22 were white, 10 black, 8 hispanc, and 1 other. Of the 10 blacks, 4 cases were found to be justified due to evidence the deceased was trying to hit police with a vehicle, 2 were ruled justified due to extreme threatening actions by the deceased, 2 resulted in police officers being charged, and 2 were still being investigated with no charges against police officers filed at that time. [I forgot to note how many of the non-black deceased making up the 41 were trying to run over police with their vehicle when they were shot & killed but it was the main cause mentioned.]
If you google the Washington Post you can actually find a matrix they have of all 1,004 cases showing more details for each one and also the breakout for each state.
There are either approximately 700,000 or 800,000 law enforcement of one type or another in the USA according to what I've read in various sources. Not sure why the difference but I suspect the larger count might include game wardens, border patrol, volunteer police including fire police, DA investigators, maybe military police, and so on.
Most sources seem to indicate that there are around 12M crimes committed annually in the US. Again, I can't find how that number is arrived at. Because the number of those present in the US undocumented/illegally is estimated to be between 10M and 20M [different sources are all over the place on their estimates], its safe to presume their being in the US is not included in the 12M.
Electroliner1935: I for one am glad you posted that. It needs to be said even though some on here won't like it and might go wailing to the moderators.
How many times can you beat your dog before he turns on you?
A nd I have seen some people provoke others so that they have the justification to administer more pain. At some point, some will see no recourse but to fight back. There are many cases of wives being beat and/or abused and eventualy reacting by killing their husbands. Because they believe the system has failed them. Of course in the days of slavery, any sign of rebellion was cause for significant retribution to the enslaved. And this begat the idea that the privilaged had to "keep" them in their place or they might rebell. How many black people have been killed by police in the last couple of years. I don't condone some of the bad things happening with the protests (looting and burning) but the peaceful protests are, in my opinion, justified. Keeping your knee on a persons neck for >8 minutes is murder. Shooting a man with a knife multiple times as he's walking (LaQuan) is murder. Just to name two. I don't have the answer but sending in Federal Officers in unmarked vehicles and with no identity (shades of Hitlers Storm Troopers) is (again in my opinion) not legal and I believe unconstittional. Cheeto (my daughters name for Donald) is acting like a central america dictator (again in my opinion) because he thinks his base will reward him come November.
I hope this doesn't get me banned from here but to bring it back to the original theme, Greyhound, I think, still stops busses at some fast food places for meal breaks. A long number of years ago, I remember the bus pulling into a McDonalds along I 65, in Indiana for food and restrooms (even tho it had a loo on the bus). And most major Greyhound stations had coffee shops.
FYI: There is a strong correlation between poverty and rough neighborhoods or combat zones. Dismissing that because one doesn't like it or it doesn't fit with their worldview ignores reality.
David K: Both Overmod and JPS1 have posts showing the fallacy of your station restaurant idea. Your only response was to insist you are correct.
Frankly, the idea is rather obsolete. Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe started doing it in1876.
Overmoda 'combat' metaphor is used instead of a euphemism for 'folks not as good as we think we are'.
TA DA !!!
In my opinion it wasn't inappropriate for Mr. Klepper to introduce one of the potential conditions that would make his 'station restaurant' idea founder. We might pick up the discussion more rationally by asking what other 'local conditions' might damage the practicality of restaurants in the 'key' Amtrak station locations being able to attract and sustain the local traffic necessary to keep them profitable. I frankly don't have much enthusiasm for that sort of thing.
To an extent that discussion will indeed involve ideas that will count as 'elitist', which can only partially be justified by their being 'expedient' to make the station-restaurant paradigm workable. One of these would be tacit or explicit gentrification/real-estate development that creates a 'friendly' place for enough trendy gourmands to find attractive ... incidentally removing inconveniently-homeless or "lower-income" former residents or denizens. Another would be more active policing, rousting, etc. before the restaurant neighborhood hours, and presumably into the wee entertainment hours for the presumably affluent patrons to make their way back to their affluent digs. I don't much care for that kind of development or the 'peace' that usually is created to accompany snd facilitate it.
It would not be impossible to integrate neighborhood support for the less-well-off into a station restaurant scheme -- meals-on-wheels for those unable to prepare meals is one approach, providing soup-kitchen support another; there are more and I think we might benefit from brainstorming them a bit. One would like to see an inclusive neighborhood 'culture' at all hours that was sustainable as a community initiative -- the approach has worked in some greater-New York areas.
Is there any chance we can move this discussion back to trains? Going back and forth over what to call whom got old a while back. Everyone with a iron in that fire has said what he thinks of the other. Further back and forth adds nothing. Stop.
243129Are there any "combat zones" in affluent neighborhoods?
In the 1970s, my neighborhood in Englewood began to be affected by increasing levels of after-dark drive-by muggings, crime, and what would now be called home invasions. This was facilitated by very rapid access from our East Hill neighborhood to the George Washington Bridge and thence to Manhattan. In few cases could the police respond timely to one of these; you were essentially on your own in figuring out how to dissuade the 'criminal element' from choosing you or your house as a target of opportunity. But the polce were certainly eager to stop anyone they could profile on made-up suspicion. At that time I was driving a 1962 Thunderbird, and my best high-school friend had a 1962 Cadillac. It was surprising how many times he was pulled over and stopped by the Englewood police... who, by the way, all knew my father and I very well... on the most ridiculous pretexts, any of which could randomly become arrests or worse. These were the years in which you'd read in news stories that drug suspects were arrested for 'speeding' 65mph on the New Jersey Turnpike, a road on which the 83rd percentile speed at the time was well over 70mph.
The objective danger to prospective Amtrak passengers seeking a meal, or of businesses interested in providing catering or outsourcing to Amtrak trains (presumably largely supplemented by direct visits or nondelivery take-out business), is from objective violence, or the perceived threat of the same. There is, in fact, a difference between that and beng bothered by noisy panhandlers or other 'street people', or in fact other denizens of the inconvenient poor ... which is precisely why a 'combat' metaphor is used instead of a euphemism for 'folks not as good as we think we are'.
In the context that "Mr. Klepper" used it it smacks of elitism.
Overmod Any correlation with 'poverty' or 'being on the wrong turf' is strictly circumstantial.
Are there any "combat zones" in affluent neighborhoods?
243129Nice try at damage control but any way you look at it it is an elitist term for a poor neighborhood.
There may be people who whine about elitism being the problem, instead of tolerance of criminal behavior in a given neighborhood. I leave such pathetic opinions to those who choose to entertain them. Same to anyone who drags ethnic or religious preference into what constitutes such a neighborhood, which I don't think Mr. Klepper was intending but which certain critics seemed very eager to establish for reasons I find uncomfortably reminiscent of another form of insufferable prejudice.
At least he seems to have emended the phrase that caused the knees to jerk, so we can get back to the subject of making the Amtrak food 'experience' better at workable cost and with workable systems.
daveklepperAnd if you think my view of how to correct the problems of such neighborhoods is aligned with possibly that of the current President, indicated by some of his divisive statements, then possibly you are mistaken about my World View.
Where did you express your "view"? Where did I say anything about the "current President" that would prove me mistaken about your "World View"[sic] ?
Yours truly,
"Mr. Numbers"
daveklepper Were not your Australian friends traveling to the USA on business. and not as tourists?
I worked closely with 12 to 15 Australians. I got to know them reasonably well. Of those traveling to the U.S. for a holiday, which is Australian speak for vacation, not a one of them intended to ride any of Amtrak's trains. Also, I socialized with numerous Australians and Kiwis. I don’t recall any of them coming to the U.S. for a train ride.
I am a social person; I talk to anyone that cares to listen. The flight from Melbourne to LAX takes about 14 hours, which affords a lot of opportunity to chat with people. I never met anyone that said they had booked an Amtrak trip.
I don’t mean to imply that my experiences represent a statistical sample of the intentions of Australians traveling to the U.S. Some of them probably did come to take an Amtrak train. I just never had any colleagues or friends do so.
In 2017, according to the U.S. State Department, 79.6 million tourists visited the U.S. These are the latest statistics. I am hard pressed to believe that the number of visitors would have been significantly different if Amtrak had killed the long-distance trains in 2016.
About three years ago, I posted on this Forum or Classic Trains the incident of the New Haven Dispatcher stopping the Owl for an unscheduled stop at Stamford, so I could use my GCT - Boston roomette ticket after a meeting at Christ Episcopal Church, Greenwich, CT, lasted two hours longer than expected. Year, 1959. Well, something similar happened in Jerusalem a few days ago.
I normally use the 255 or 275 from the bus stop, about 50 yards from the back door, to Damascus Gate, then the light rail to Amunition Hill, and then the Egged 52 or 34 to a stop right behind my apartment building. That evening I was carrying computer equipment in my backpack to my apartment, heavy, and my right foot hurt. And halfway to the bus stop I realized I had not put on my face-mask and had left it at my desk. I returned, got a mask, and then decided to spring for a cab, and tried ordering one with my cellphone while also trying to hail one at the back door. No luck either way. 50 yards from the bus stop. Lo and behold the very last bus to Damascus Gate, a 255 small hood-in-front, approached, I hailed it, and miracles-of-miracles, it stopped for me. I said my usual good evening, Misa'al akher, and added Shukhran Kabir, thank you very much, as I handed the driver the exact two-and-one-half Sheckles and sat at the rear. Leaving, I said Shukhran, ala lika, thanks, see you again, and he responded with Shalom, l'hitraote, Peace, see you again.
I suspect that bus driver may know my World View better than Mr. Numbers knows.
But back to the basic question asked on this thread's first posting:
Sure the specific train is worth riding if it meets your requirements independent of the food question. If the food served onboard doesn't appeal, bring your own.
Then the sleeper service is a separate issue and should be looked at on a case-by-case basis, available where markets can support it where it can be priced to reduce and not increase subsidy or increase and not reduce profitability. This make the National system more valuable to more people.
And even without 1st Class or sleeper service, a coach passenger should not be forced to accept meals inferior to what he or she regularly enjoys when he or she is not traveling. The restaurant scheme should solve that problem.
Sure, but (1) I was not the first to introduce it to this website, simply repeating a term that others introduced before me. (2) It is not really a synonym for a poor neighborhood, but for an unsafe neighborhood.
But you are correct. I should simply use the words unsafe neighborhood. So now I will, using the Edit Button.
And if you think my view of how to correct the problems of such neighborhoods is aligned with possibly that of the current President, indicated by some of his divisive statements, then possibly you are mistaken about my World View.
But you taught me a lesson. Avoid falling into the trap of using popular expressions unless they truly express one's own thinking.
For that, I must thank you!
daveklepperAnd some assumptions about my World View just might be in error.
Your "World View" is perfectly clear.
daveklepperI've seen the term used a number of times on this Forum
Nice try at damage control but any way you look at it it is an elitist term for a poor neighborhood.
daveklepperOvermod: Were not your Australian friends traveling to the USA on business. and not as tourists?
Overmod: Were not your Australian friends traveling to the USA on business. and not as tourists?
Of course, the question is: Could current Amtrak levels of food and service be recommended for foreign tourists?
When I was a frequent user of the LDTs, 1954 - 1996, I often did meet foreign tourists. Even on the hard-to-book but most worthwhile Rio Grande Zephyr.
And some assumptions about my World View just might be in error.
I've seen the term used a number of times on this Forum for:
An unsafe neighborhood, one where visitors do not feel safe after dark and/or where avoidance of exposed use of expensive camera equipment is suggested by the person posting.
I don't think NYCity Penn Station, Washington Union, LA Union, Boston South Station. and most other important Amtrak stations fall into this catagory. I've seen the term posted more often regarding photo sites and interlocking towers.
243129 daveklepper 2. The recent huge proliferation of the number of all-night Pizzarias in most USA cities (and in Jerusalem!) indicates one 7/24 full-service restaurant should be a success, and an Amtrak station location, if not in a "combat zone." would encourage train travel. What is a "combat zone"?
daveklepper 2. The recent huge proliferation of the number of all-night Pizzarias in most USA cities (and in Jerusalem!) indicates one 7/24 full-service restaurant should be a success, and an Amtrak station location, if not in a "combat zone." would encourage train travel.
What is a "combat zone"?
Yoo hoo Dave ???
243129 CSSHEGEWISCH 243129 What is a "combat zone"? It's a derogatory euphemism used to refer to a rough neighborhood. Thanks but I was looking for Dave's explanation. He made the statement.
CSSHEGEWISCH 243129 What is a "combat zone"? It's a derogatory euphemism used to refer to a rough neighborhood.
243129 What is a "combat zone"?
Thanks but I was looking for Dave's explanation. He made the statement.
And it fits in with Dave's world views in many ways.
Amtrak Throughway Buses? Here in Lansing, MI I have to catch the Capitol in Toledo Ohio. I can take the Amtrak bus from th Lansing depot, and depending upon the weekday it is a 4 to 5 hour trip. I can drive to the Toledo Union Station in about an hour and 20 minutes. The bus is not an attractive option. Not only that, parking is free in TOledo, but the lot at the Lansing station charges.
daveklepper2. The recent huge proliferation of the number of all-night Pizzarias in most USA cities (and in Jerusalem!) indicates one 7/24 full-service restaurant should be a success, and an Amtrak station location, if not in a "combat zone." would encourage train travel.
1 I agree that the extra cost of sleeper service should be reflected in ticket prices, and the occopancy rate of many of the sleeper services idicates that should be possible.
2. The recent huge proliferation of the number of all-night Pizzarias in most USA cities (and in Jerusalem!) indicates one 7/24 full-service restaurant should be a success, and an Amtrak station location, if not in an unsafe neighborhood, would encourage train travel.
3. Amtrak's Trhuway bus connections do bring LDT to most of the cities listed without Amtrak service.
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