Trainer wrote:The airport analogy was a good one. A commercial airline would never allow damaged (especially crash-damaged) equipment to be displayed in public view because it is bad public relations. It would be like hospitals leaving dead patients out in the hallways. The airline industry understands that people have choices when it comes to travel and they're concerned about sending creepy messages that would deflect people from not choosing them.
A damaged plane and a damaged train are two very different things. A damaged plane implies that either 1) the plane is unsafe to fly in 2) the airline has poor safety standards 3) if something happened in-flight the plane would probably crash and who knows how many people would die.
A set of railcars with only their ends "totaled"/"dinged"/"crumpled" simply implies that there was an accident of some sort, but wasn't all that severe (that's not saying the derailment wasn't a big deal, just not in comparison to the accident at Chase MD, Big Bayou, Silver Spring MD, Chatsworth, etc.)
Trainer wrote:Apparently, commuter railroads either operate under the assumption that people do not have any choice but to travel on their system or they don't care if people choose to travel on them or not. MNCC has made several choices over the past few years (with a couple exceptions) that may be operationally sound but customer unfocused. Imnsho, it's because they believe that with a captive audience and a perpetual subsidy, short-term operational efficiencies are the only things that matter. It'll be interesting to see if that theory holds as the commuting public and their destinations evolve.
Those who ride MNR may indeed have other options, but they're not necessarily better ones. One example is the New Haven Line. When your options are 1) taking a train that *for the most part* arrives on time or 2) fighting your way through traffic on I-95 or Rte. 15 the choice is nothing short of transparent. Yes one could say they have a "captive audience", but that's really by choice to not have to deal with all of that traffic (the cost of gas also being a major factor).
If MNR found a better place to store the damaged M-8s they would have definitely found a spot by now. Where they have them now is sufficient enough and will keep them from being salvaged for parts, etc.