Posted on 04/01/2021 9:50:23 AM PDT by rktman
In Pittsburgh on Wednesday, the president unveiled his new $2.5 trillion "infrastructure" plan which, as Katie explained, has little to do with physical infrastructure at all. Most of the money is reportedly saved to fight climate change and social justice projects.
And Amtrak wants in. Amtrak, President Biden's famously favorite mode of transportation, is now seeking to take advantage of the president's new infrastructure spending. They are asking for Congress to pave the way to help them carry 52 million passengers a year by 2035. They also released their proposed map, which includes new routes to their schedules. Some rather long routes.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Oh yeah. If it needs a ticket, you’ll need proof of shot.
🚄
When I lived in Philly, I loved the train service. It was perfect to go from Philly to DC, Philly to New York City. But it only works in scenarios like that. Anywhere outside the Acela corridor, it’s useless — too many stops, too many changes. While a trip to New York would be a little over an hour, the rest of the trip if you wanted to head to Boston would be an all-day affair.
Unless Amtrak can provide non-stop point-to-point service, they will never truly compete against the airlines.
Which railroad companies?
LOL.
5.56mm
Now they’ll help board them. 😱
The real idea is for private railroads to do that.
There is a lot less rail service between New York and Philadelphia than there used to be. There used to be the Reading’s “Crusader” for example, which was a limited-stop train running at top speeds of 90 mph (sometimes faster) and did not run on what is now the “Acela corridor” as you term it (former Pennsylvania Railroad). Sadly, under government control, the “Crusader” ended as a two-car noisy and rather smelly RDC train from Newark Penn Station to Reading Terminal operated by Conrail.
Forgot to mention that Amtrak’s new passenger cars are being built by CAF in Spain, too.
If I lived in South Dakota, I’d be p****d.
Outside the Northeast Corridor, trains are simply not competitive on speed or convenience. Or price. They ARE a comfortable way to travel and appeal to people with time to burn and who are interested in watching the scenery. I’ve taken a very few long train trips (never across the country) and enjoyed them. I’d take more except that trains are so danged expensive. So would a lot of older folks who are not pressed for time. I wonder if the geniuses who misgovern us are attacking the wrong end of the problem. Could train travel be made a lot cheaper if trains didn’t try to compete on speed, which is a battle they can never win? How about going back to the future?
Attach a passenger car or two or three to freight trains. I suppose one would need at least one attendant in case someone had a heart attack or some key equipment malfunctioned and a troubleshooter needed to be summoned, but one could dispense with dining and sleeper cars. Have plush recliner seats well appointed with high speed internet connections and the kind of entertainment options that are routine on business and first class trans-Pacific flights. Automate the food services; it can still be reasonably high quality and, given current train and airline fare, the bar is pretty low. Really nice recliner seats would eliminate the need for sleepers. Do a double decker car with a lounge or game room on top, so people can stretch their legs. Figure out some spartan bathing/showering arrangement. People could get off at stations along the way, spend a day or two, and hop the next train. Turn it into a retiree oriented, travel tourism oriented service. The main thing is that you couldn’t leave a passenger car stranded on a siding for a week, but that should be manageable. It might take a week to cross the country, but that might be ok for a lot of people, especially if they broke the trip a couple of times.
If it caught on, support services would spring up rapidly. It wouldn’t matter if you pulled into some obscure station at 3:00 a.m.; you would have reserved a ride online and your car will be there to meet you. Long layover? The local vendors will be ready with options. There will be local restaurants at the stations ready to vary your dining options, if you have a reasonable time window. The old-fashioned railway hotels might even make a comeback. Might be worth a try. It would require a mental shift to get freight railroads back into the passenger service mindset for what would be an incidental sideline business, but I’ll bet they could hire someone from Marriott who could get them rolling. You could even have an online concierge to keep people from falling through the cracks.
What a beautiful world it will be.
Cannot make steel with wind & solar power.
This is going to grind to a halt quickly.
They will still do that
Except now they want you to take a few migrants home with you
Assuming Biden doesn’t blow it all to smithereens, I hope one day to do the Trans-Siberian Railroad trip.
I loved drinking coffee while riding in the observation car
Still waiting to tour the solar/wind powered steel plants that must be popping up all over the place. Can hardly wait to see Vegas totally running on that too. 😕🐎💩
True, the world is full of people like James Taggart and Wesley Mouch and Dr. Floyd Ferris starring Anthony Fauci
Outside the Amtrak-owned Northeast Corridor, the private railroads are economically restricted by regulation; most of them have a top speed of 79 mph for passenger trains due to regulations relating to signaling, track classes and suchlike. Certainly a long way away from what’s possible with actual high-speed rail, which does not have to be electrified—back in 1972, France’s SNCF ran the gas-turbine-electric TGV 001 faster than 190 mph several times, hitting a top speed of 198 mph in December of that year.
Most high-speed trains run at an average speed of 145 mph, presuming a number of intermediate stops. That could get a train from New York to Chicago in 5½ hours if a high-speed railroad were built along the shortest distance between the two cities; if non-stop, the average speed would be yet faster. That should have been a matter for the private sector, with federal and state governments firmly out of the sphere with respect to funding, building and operation.
Amtrak has no obs cars anymore. They do allow private owners to put their obs car on the back of their trains, for a certain fee of course.
Today’s descendant of that is Deutsche Bahn, which was called Deutsche Bundesbahn before reunification. And yes, they’ve been going into different countries to contract as the operator of rail services.
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