Government entities, and government-sponsored entities, have NO incentive to do it right.
Stick a fork in Amtrak... it's WAY overdone.
A pro-free-market article from the NY Times? Will wonders never cease ...
The whole Acela fiasco started under the Duke (Dukakis) AMTRAK administration. What he did for AMTRAK he could have done for the US.
Is it a train? An eagle?
In a letter, an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Delgadillo explained to Al Gore how much they rely on the government-owned Amtrak trains to visit their children and grandchildren in Chicago and on each coast. The couple reminded the vice president that President Clinton relied on train travel to reach the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "The train has been our main-stay," the couple states. "Yet your administration is killing our Texas Eagle. This makes us sick."
The Texas Eagle is the Amtrak train that for years has operated between Chicago, St. Louis, Little Rock, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio. But facing a $243 million shortfall in 1997, Amtrak President Thomas Downs recently targeted four Amtrak routes for elimination, including the Texas Eagle service between St. Louis and San Antonio. "What can you do to save our Eagle?" the couple pleaded to the vice president.
Gore responded with: "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Delgadillo, Thank you for your letter regarding the protection of the Texas eagle. I appreciate hearing from you. "I share your view that the urgent problem of species extinction and the conservation of biological diversity should be addressed. The first step in saving any plant or animal from extinction is to become aware of and respect the fragile ecosystems that make up our environment ... "Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I look forward to working with you for the future of our planet."
It's strange he should talk about the ecosystem and extinction since the Texas Eagle is a TRAIN!
(Sources: reported on Fox News Sunday on December 3, 1996, as well as quoted in the National Review and reported in the 12/6/96 Washington Times "Inside the Beltway" by John McCaslin)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Skamtrack should have been privitized a long time ago. Of course, the BoWash portion would probably be taken over by a merged version of the MTA, SEPTA, the BTA, and whatever the hell they call the transit authority in DC.
Shut it down!...save the rails for freight!
he has no idea how correct he is.
literally hundreds of scamtrak thousands of man hours are wasted in Los Angeles alone due to, among other things, the fact that ready crew workers only work part time hours while getting paid full time.
they sometimes work as little as 1 hour on, say, a saturday while getting paid for 9 hours.
Because of union craft rules, they cannot be "forced" to help any other craft when they finish their own part time work. so they just go "hide", and still collect the bucks.
Also, scamtrak has THEE WORST managers, and chiefs of on-board services you could imagine (especially out of Los Angeles) thanks in large part to quotas and preferences.
employee theft at scamtrak is also rampant.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1332199/posts
A previous FR article on saving Amtrak by Paul Weyrich, Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation (the Free Congress Foundation is a politically and culturally conservative Washington think tank whose main focus is on the Culture Wars). The earlier article calls for a private/public partnership to take over Amtrak, or those parts that would have a chance to survive under such an arrangement.
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Tierney should have done a little more research before he quoted Joe Vranich. While Amtrak is no way to run a railroad, most of the succesful railroads of the world are governement operated. The key difference is that they have professionals running the systems - not political appointees. Gunn is the first (probably too late, sadly) who was a straight-talking pro.
But the real problem is the Government agency running Amtrak, the Federal Railway Administration - still mired in the past as far as safety is concerned. They used an arachaic spec to mandate that the Acela be twice the weight of the European trains - all of which run at one time or another on each trip over shared tracks (with freight). Perhaps if Amtrak were on a private and specific budget, they would have fought the FRA - but FRA had the money (through DOT and Congress) and the regulatory force and a bureaucracy that hasn't recognized old-europe since they imported Brit rail technology in the 1830's (notice the guage? Guess where it came from).
So attach the FRA and figure how we can get some minimum guidance on safety (perhaps through insurance as in Fire standards) or through better technology in the signalling systems.
The tilt technology chosen for existing rights-of-way was a good choice - building a new line like the TGV was not feasible - even the French are using tilt technology on their remaining lines - discovering that 100-125 mph averages get the passengers out of cars and planes. Governments thinking like entrepreneurs?