Posted on 05/13/2015 12:22:18 PM PDT by Publius
Thirty-nine minutes into his southbound ride from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, DC, Joseph H. Boardman, president and CEO of Amtrak, begins to cry. We're in the dining car of a train called the Silver Star, surrounded by people eating hamburgers. The Silver Star runs from New York City to Miami in 31 hours, or five more hours than the route took in 1958, which is when our dining car was built. Boardman and I have been discussing the unfortunate fact that 45 years since its inception, the company he oversees remains a poorly funded, largely neglected ward of the state, unable to fully control its own finances or make its own decisions. I ask him, "Is this a frustrating job?"
"I guess it could be, and there are times it is," he says. "No question about that. But—" His voice begins to catch. "Sixty-six years old, I've spent my life doing this. I talked to my 80-year-old aunt this weekend, who said, 'Joe, just keep working.' Because I think about retirement." Boardman is a Republican who formerly ran the Federal Railroad Administration and was New York state's transportation commissioner; he has a bushy white mustache and an aw-shucks smile. "We've done good things," he continues. "We haven't done everything right, and I don't make all of the right decisions, and, yes, I get frustrated. But you have to stay up." A tear crawls down his left cheek.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
It’s called the “hub concept.” If you want to travel on Delta, you usually have to go via their Atlanta hub. Chicago Union Station is Amtrak’s hub.
As usual, the Leftist media will blame the Republicans’ for failure to fund Amtrack adequately, causing the Phycrash. But no amount of money would have prevented it, if it was going 100 mph in a 50 mph curve. It’s another failure of government to run things properly.
It’s not mysterious. Of the major ways to travel significant distances trains are the worst (buses are less pleasant, but way cheaper) for the consumer, and very high in overhead. Which makes it undesirable and unprofitable and without Nixon creating a federal one would have evaporated long ago.
There hasn’t been a single modern airport (post-WWII) that has been built and operated purely by the private sector FWICS. At least the railroads, versus airports and roads, own their own infrastructure, except in the case of Amtrak (who owns about 500 miles of the rails they run on) and many state-owned commuter railroad systems.
Defund Amtrak! If it can’t be self-supporting, kill it!
Nixon could have deregulated the railroads instead. But he didn’t.
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
We call it 'Riding the Gravy Train'
Can anyone tell me - why don’t rail companies in the USA, who own the tracks and rights-of-way (especially the majors) operate passenger service?
One would think they could make mint, especially for East-Coast cities or densely populated areas.
Biggest reason is Amtrack takes a back seat to all other rail traffic. The other rail companies own the lines not the government as the case for highway routes.
There seems to be a profound truth in that statement.....
I love flying. But I won’t put up with the hassle that is the barefoot grope fest that air travel check in has become( unless I absolutely positively have to get there overnight).
Not crazy about trains either. For the reasons you gave.
So I drive.
Alliance, Neb., Laurel, Mont. and North Platte always seem to have a surplus of cars sitting around.
I see made up trains sitting around frequently waiting for help over the pass or for track rights or for crews (Logan through Livingston, MT). There seems to be plenty of opportunity for time efficiency improvements, but there are 200 years of work slow-down rules and practices.
In France and England ... even Italy ... one can commute comfortably to a job one hundred miles away ... on a train. And for 5-600 mile trips, try the TGV ... city center to city center at 200+ mph .... better than overall elapsed time and bother of flying.
Of course, Euro trains are heavily subsidized, etc. etc/
I’m pretty sure the kitties took poor willie away a few years back ...probably for posting mass transit articles everyday.
Are you a Marxist, a socialist, or just born stupid?
Like all communists, lil' Willie thought that his seniority (since 1998) would protect him. That's true in union circles where tenure trumps competency, but it's not the case here on Free Republic where logic and true Conservatism always wins.
That sure looks an awful lot like a people pipeline... Can’t have that! It will leak all over the place! Prolly contributes to globule warming too!
Nixon regulated the railroads because they were all going bankrupt. He didn’t want to be the president who saw American passenger rail functionally cease (Eastern corridor, which is still the only profitable part of AmTrak would have survived) so he made AmTrak. And every president since then has kept the mistake. Slick Willy actually is the only one that came close to doing the right thing, he gave them a big subsidy increase that were supposed to use to either become self sufficient or close down with all subsidies ending in 5 years. But 5 years later was W and he didn’t have the guts to go through with it. Only thing Clinton did I ever thought was a good idea and it came to naught.
They need to straighten out the track in the 'hood where the off-track excursion happened.
Once flying became cheaper, the passenger trains only made money from the Post Office contract. Once that went to the airlines in 1967, no passenger train was capable of making a profit. It was the desire of the freight railroads to get rid of a money loser that prompted Nixon to create Amtrak.
Amtrak was intended to be a holding facility for passenger rail until the government could kill it off. In return for the government running passenger trains, the freight railroads would give them priority dispatching on their systems. That never really developed, and Amtrak has never had the gumption to go to court and demand the freight railroads respect the deal they got in 1971 from the government. Amtrak survives today because people want to use it, and Congress doesn't want to fight over such a small item.
I've been working on privatization paradigms for Amtrak since 2006, but every time I think I've found the way to do it, political reality sets in.
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