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Why Can't America Have Great Trains?: A Washington mystery
National Journal ^ | 18 April 2015 | Simon Van Zuylen-Wood

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Government
KEYWORDS: amtrak; rail
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To: PGR88

Primarily the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and their draconian regulatory requirements. And of course, the creation of Amtrak pushed them out for the most part. Before Amtrak, there used to be high taxation on railroads’ properties as well, and also a 10 percent federal tax on passenger rail tickets.


61 posted on 05/13/2015 12:45:13 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: Publius

It costs about $90 to take Amtrak from Pittsburgh to New York City ($180 round trip), and the last time I was on one it was 1/3 full (daytime). If they were to try to match ticket price to demand like airlines do, they could actually fill them and make a profit, instead of losing money on over-priced seats. I would love to ride to NYC for $45 but will balk at $90. Try some creative pricing! I don’t need to get there in a hurry, so don’t do 100 ti make up time, either.


62 posted on 05/13/2015 12:45:46 PM PDT by wildandcrazyrussian
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To: Kenny Bunk

You get off the plane and rent a car and vice versa


63 posted on 05/13/2015 12:46:08 PM PDT by Vaquero ( Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)
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To: Publius
The title of this article is very misleading. America DOES have great trains. What it doesn't have is great PASSENGER trains. A big factor is that the things that make America an ideal place to run the best freight rail system in the world ... large metro areas with long distances between them ... make it less attractive for passenger service.

The only way I could see a robust passenger rail system possibly working here would be a public-private collaboration similar to what you have with other transport modes, with the government owning the infrastructure and private companies operating the service.

64 posted on 05/13/2015 12:47:27 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("It doesn't work for me. I gotta have more cowbell!")
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To: Paladin2

They could, but that would mean a few neighborhoods in Port Richmond get “relocated”. Does not excuse the engineer going double the speed limit, however. (Since the feds own this railroad, the costs will be at least five times what a private railroad would need to spend.)

Take note that this highlights a failure of the so-called Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES) too, which ought to have slowed the train down IINM.


65 posted on 05/13/2015 12:47:32 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: PGR88

Because they were all around to watch the passenger companies go bankrupt and no it’s not a profitable business.


66 posted on 05/13/2015 12:51:00 PM PDT by discostu (Bobby, I'm sorry you have a head like a potato.)
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To: PGR88

The business models and operating requirements for freight and passenger service are very different.


67 posted on 05/13/2015 12:51:13 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("It doesn't work for me. I gotta have more cowbell!")
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To: Publius
"The various rail brotherhoods represent train employees. The Teamsters aren’t players in this game."

The Teamsters drove the trucks that competed with the railroads. He means the teamsters wanted to shut down the competition from the railroads.

68 posted on 05/13/2015 12:51:41 PM PDT by Neanderthal
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To: Publius
Why Can't America Have Great Trains?:

PUBLIC UNIONS protected by the government that have and will destroy any train company.

69 posted on 05/13/2015 12:54:11 PM PDT by 2banana (My common ground with terrorists - they want to die for islam and we want to kill them)
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To: Publius
"If it Moves, Tax it.
If it Keeps Moving, Regulate it.
And if it Stops Moving, Subsidize it."

Largely, the railroads were taxed and regulated out of profitability, and now we have the Amtrak boondoggle.
Everything liberals get their tentacles into they corrupt and destroy.
Amtrak Prez JoJo "Crybaby" Boardman is part of the problem, as is Hillary's lesbian gal pal, Eleanor “Eldie” Acheson who is vice president and general counsel of Amtrak.

70 posted on 05/13/2015 12:54:39 PM PDT by Amagi (Lenin: "Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.")
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To: Neanderthal
It wasn't the Teamsters who were out to kill the freight railroads. It was Wall Street.

Even today, Wall Street gets nervous when the Class I railroads put a lot of money into expanding infrastructure. BNSF is the only railroad that doesn't have to pass muster with Wall Street because Warren Buffett owns it totally.

71 posted on 05/13/2015 12:54:55 PM PDT by Publius ("Who is John Galt?" by Billthedrill and Publius now available at Amazon.)
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To: Amagi

Thank you for reading the article. You may be the first.


72 posted on 05/13/2015 12:56:04 PM PDT by Publius ("Who is John Galt?" by Billthedrill and Publius now available at Amazon.)
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To: re_nortex

LOL, I didn’t realize that was the thread. I contributed to that thread (post 29). That was 5 years ago. Man time flies.


73 posted on 05/13/2015 12:58:25 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: Publius

A: Government.

Next?


74 posted on 05/13/2015 1:01:17 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie (we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that - Baltimore's Democrat Mayor)
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To: Publius

The railroads were both freight and passenger and both business sectors were going bankrupt or went bankrupts. The U.S. government owned and ran Conrail (freight only) for several decades. Some railroad, like Union Pacific, actually kept their passenger trains running for a few years after Amtrak was formed.


75 posted on 05/13/2015 1:06:36 PM PDT by outpostinmass2
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To: Publius

Passenger travel by rail is largely a relic to be enjoyed for the sake of history and sightseeing. It should not be subject to taxpayer underwriting. Heavy freight by rail is another matter, because there is no viable alternative in the near future for moving that amount of material that quickly, and it is often material from which the general public receives great benefit, transportation infrastructure notwithstanding.

Not that there is no room for improvement in rail freight. Would not be surprised if there are breakthroughs in the near future that allow for bigger loads with far less stress and friction on the rails. Transient micro-cogs for stops and starts, and a quantum magnetic function for coasting. The former may allow for locomotives that weigh half as much but have twice the pulling power. Both would alleviate wear and tear on rails and roadbed; in fact rails may soon become a thing of the past as well, but not major rights of way.

The future of transportation is in personalized, comfortable independent devices capable of safely navigating without human intervention other than programming some coordinates, with the ability to traverse land, sea, and air at speeds of up to Mach I, also capable of payloads of 10 passengers plus their baggage and beer.


76 posted on 05/13/2015 1:07:04 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew (Even the compassion of the wicked is cruel.)
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To: Kenny Bunk
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.

Europe has high-speed trains, public transit, the whole nine yards. Most American cities don't outside of the largest once. Case in point. I live about 40 miles from work in a rural count east of Kansas City. Jackson County, where KC is, has been trying to establish commuter lines which will run into Lafayette County, where I live. Nothing would make me happier than to trade the daily I-70 hell for a comfortable train ride into work. But my problem is what happens when I get there? Kansas City public transit is a joke, and the commuter terminal is seveal miles from where I work. So it could literally take as long to get from the north part of the downtown to where I work down near Union Station as it would to get from Odessa to KC itself. I work with people who drive in from Topeka or Warrensburg. There isn't any alternative.

I've taken Amtrack. I've ridden the train from KC to St. Louis. I did the City of New Orleans from Chicago to Louisiana. And I didn't enjoy either trip, what with the rough track, the slow travel, and the damned train horn going off every few minutes as we passed another crossing. That won't change without the investment of billions of dollars. If you build it they may come. But nobody is going to invest that much money on spec. The only source for that would be the federal government. And there is no way Congress will vote for that.

77 posted on 05/13/2015 1:07:30 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: Kenny Bunk
Our trains run far slower and to far fewer cities and towns now than they ran in the 1920s!

Our planes and automobiles run far faster and to far more cities and towns now than they ran in the 1920s!

78 posted on 05/13/2015 1:08:01 PM PDT by NorthMountain ("The time has come", the Walrus said, "to talk of many things")
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To: outpostinmass2

Another one was the Southern Railway. The Crescent stayed out of Amtrak until 1979—during the Carter administration.


79 posted on 05/13/2015 1:09:08 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: bert
the answer is because there aren’t enough Americans that want to ride trains and trains don’t go where Americans need to go.

Spoken like a Right-Wing Reactionary. You vill ride zee trains, and you vill LIKE IT, dammit!


80 posted on 05/13/2015 1:09:09 PM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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