If 1 new Amtrak route was to be added, what should it be?

ne plus ultra wrote:

the biggest success stories are the Downeaster and the Heartland Flyer, two short-distance trains whose routes were not on the Amtrak map a decade ago

I haven't followed the Flyer that closely, but I think it's fair to characterize the Downeasters as more of a Boston-based exurban service which successfully overcame the obstacle of a couple of state lines as well.

If New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania could only get their acts together in a similar fashion, I'd love to see service to Harrisburg via Reading/Lehigh valley, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, and Binghamton. That is going to require some major changes of opinion here in the land of beer and pretzels,

"It could happen." (Judy Tenuta)

2nd trick op wrote:ne plus ultra wrote:

the biggest success stories are the Downeaster and the Heartland Flyer, two short-distance trains whose routes were not on the Amtrak map a decade ago

I haven't followed the Flyer that closely, but I think it's fair to characterize the Downeasters as more of a Boston-based exurban service which successfully overcame the obstacle of a couple of state lines as well.

I guess you mean because it has a fair number of commuters and only travels 110 miles. That's a big part of its success.

Still, the fact that Maine is pursuing extension suggests that it's perceived somewhat differently, and a big part of its success is as an intercity travel option. I don't know too many people who would travel that length to work each day, though the intermediate stops certainly have a lot of commuters.

MudLake wrote:I suspect Mr. lpetrick was inquiring about evidence that Sierra Club members took Amtrak to Portland. Besides, any organization can encourage people to take the train but whether they do so themselves is another matter.

That is indeed what I was asking about.

Of big cities, only Seattle has convenient Amtrak service to Portland.

The Bay Area is a bit borderline, and is mainly convenient if you are willing to sleep in a coach seat, as I have done.

Los Angeles? You'll have to spend at least a day each way. Chicago? 2 days. New York City? 3 days. Amtrak's long-distance trains have the double whammy of low frequency and poor punctuality, making it difficult to make long-distance multi-train trips without the risk of losing a day to a missed train.


That aside, I think that Amtrak's future is as a holding company for high-volume short- and medium-distance intercity lines. I don't see much point in starting new long-distance lines, unless they can act like a concatenation of well-populated short- and medium-distance ones.

And I don't think I'd want to fight the freight RR's very much. Recently, UP turned down some money to help restore the double-tracking of parts of the Donner Pass line between Sacramento and Reno in exchange for more passenger trains there. UP has also resisted the return of Los Angeles - Las Vegas passenger service, which is why the DesertXPress company is hoping to build new tracks. UP has been a bit more cooperative on populous short-distance routes like the Capitol Corridor, however.

So in the Amtrak bill that just passed Congress it mentioned that the Pioneer and the North Coast Hiawatha (as well as the Sunset Ltd between New Orleans and Orlando) are to be studied for reactivation of service. Whats the likelihood of service actually coming back to these particularly the Pioneer and N.C.H.? I know typically these things go nowhere but theres a lot going in Amtrak's favor lately.

What do the rules say about reinstituting service on freight lines where Amtrak service was eliminated years ago?

ne plus ultra wrote:As a Sierra Club member, I demand this post be censored.

Sir, if you wish to censor posts simply because you disagree with the POV, then I reserve the same right to demand posts be removed.

Unfortunately for you, I can delete posts and you cannot. Watch what you ask for, because your wish may very well come true.

Simply because some environmentalists, as you have stated, use the train, does not mean that every environmentalist does. Surely you can explain the Sierra Club members who work out of the Bend, Oregon office, right? (The nearest Amtrak rail service is just shy of 100 miles to the west in Albany; however a Thruway bus does serve Bend.)

Asante Riverwind
Eastern Oregon Forest Organizer, Oregon Chapter Sierra Club P.O. Box 5534
Bend, Oregon 97708
(541) 322-4065 office
(541) 306-7737 field
Email: [email protected]

I do not find it unreasonable that one who truly is concerned about their carbon footprint will inconvenience themselves for a serious effort to reduce their carbon footprint. Certainly riding mass transit in most cities is much slower than getting in the car and driving - I can personally attest to this, as if I drove to work it'd take me 15 minutes but my trip on the bus often takes 30 minutes or more. In Portland you find more Prius drivers who are outspoken about the environment than you find transit riders yet that Prius has significant environmental costs - namely a Prius still requires roadways - that with the bus or train are at least spread out among more people, so the per-person impact is far less. Amtrak/air travel is simply an extension of the same; so one who proclaims that everyone should embrace transit should likewise embrace Amtrak as opposed to air travel for longer distances, even if there is a significant expense of time involved.

As for the "proof" of my POV that you find personally offensive, see here.

http://www.clusters2007.com/attendance.htm
http://www.clusters2007.com/travel.html

I don't see anything about Amtrak there.

http://www.willamette.edu/events/sustainability/
http://www.willamette.edu/events/sustai ... modations/

Again, nothing about Amtrak (surprising, since the Amtrak station is across the street from Willamette University!!!!)

http://www.bizandsustainability.org/

Nothing about Amtrak - but Boeing is a sponsor? We might as well declare Hummers "environmentally friendly".

http://www.travelportland.com/meeting_p ... _meetings/

Jan Kourmadas, Meeting Planner, Computer Sciences Corporation, US EPA Brownfields Conference wrote:Portland is a friendly, beautiful, and environmentally conscious city with a great light rail system, MAX which provided quick and economical transportation for conference participants

No mention of Amtrak anywhere.

http://www.travelportland.com/meeting_p ... _here.html (linked from the "green meetings" page.)

You have to scroll ALL THE WAY to the bottom to find "Find other transportation options, including traveling by train, bus, and light rail." which finally gives you Amtrak information.

http://www.livablecities.org/47ConfPortland.htm

Arriving in Portland

If you fly to Portland you can catch the MAX light rail directly from the baggage claim area at the airport (fare $1.95). MAX will take you to within one block of the Governor Hotel.

No mention of Amtrak.

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When I can pull up a half dozen websites of sustainability events in Portland and find only one token reference to Amtrak, your personal feelings are hardly sufficient to sway my view. I offer no apology towards my earlier post. I would imagine that your Sierra Club membership is based upon identifying an issue and taking positive steps towards changing public perception and actions in an effort to improve the environment.

Being offended does not help you nor your organization. A call of censorship only serves to show that you offer no meaningful discussion or input towards a resolution and further solidifies my view which can be summed up in the phrase "do as I say, not as I do". I hope that you take this to your local Sierra Club chapter meeting and maybe consider a resolution that air travel, especially on official business or towards environmental/sustainability events, should be a very rare exception used only by those members who have an absolute need for air travel.

wigwagfan wrote:

ne plus ultra wrote:As a Sierra Club member, I demand this post be censored.

Sir, if you wish to censor posts simply because you disagree with the POV, then I reserve the same right to demand posts be removed.

Unfortunately for you, I can delete posts and you cannot. Watch what you ask for, because your wish may very well come true.

.

Another abuse of the role of moderator .

My favorites for add in rank order are based on defunct Amtrak routes - the top 5 are listed in order, but I added some add'l long distance trains discontinued by Amtrak for info. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amtrak_routes

#1) The Desert Wind (LAX-LAS-SLC)
#2) The Pioneer (SEA/PDX-SLC)
#3) The Spirit of California (Sacramento-SFO-LAX) Overnight Sleeper Train on Route of Coast Starlight with possible extension to Reno.
#4) Floridian (Chicago-Louisville-Florida) Portions of this route have been subsequently abandoned by Class I RR's.
#5) Broadway Limited/Three Rivers CHI-NYC via Pittsburg
#6) The Mountaineer/Hilltopper CHI-Norfolk via Roanoke VA
#7) National Limited (CHI-Kansas City) via Indianapolis/St Louis
#8) Extend Texas Eagle from San Antonio to Laredo TX (see Amtrak's Inter-American)
#9) Kentucky Cardinal (CHI-Louisville)
#10) Heartland Flyer changed to Lone Star/Texas Chief to run from Houston-DFW-OKC-Kansas City-CHI
#11) North Coast Hiawatha (Route of Former Northern Pacific SEA-CHI)
#12) Daily Sunset Limited and extended again to Florida from NOL.

Others
Atlantic City Express (WAS-ACY)
Cape Codder (NYC-Hyannis)
Gulf Breeze (Part of Crescent route with extension from Birmingham, AL-Montgomery-Mobile, AL
Gulf Coast Limited (NOL-Mobile)
Arrowhead/North Star (MSP-Duluth)

wigwagfan wrote:

ne plus ultra wrote:As a Sierra Club member, I demand this post be censored.

Sir, if you wish to censor posts simply because you disagree with the POV, then I reserve the same right to demand posts be removed.

Unfortunately for you, I can delete posts and you cannot. Watch what you ask for, because your wish may very well come true.

Thanks for making my point so succinctly. That is precisely it. You censored my previous post on the topic, and left yours up, because you didn't like my POV. I can't believe you could capture the hypocrisy so perfectly in three sentences, but there it is.

Simply because some environmentalists, as you have stated, use the train, does not mean that every environmentalist does. Surely you can explain the Sierra Club members who work out of the Bend, Oregon office, right? (The nearest Amtrak rail service is just shy of 100 miles to the west in Albany; however a Thruway bus does serve Bend.)

Asante Riverwind
Eastern Oregon Forest Organizer, Oregon Chapter Sierra Club P.O. Box 5534
Bend, Oregon 97708
(541) 322-4065 office
(541) 306-7737 field
Email: [email protected]

This line of argument is utterly incoherent. Does anyone else in the forum believe that to live in Bend, Oregon makes one intrinsically hypocritical for being an environmentalist, because one can't take Amtrak? There is no office in Bend. That's clear from the information you've posted, despite the fact that you refer to one. There's a P.O. Box. Someone who lives there serves as a part-time organizer. No one was sent to Bend to take advantage of its lack of Amtrak, as you seem to imply.

As for the "proof" of my POV that you find personally offensive, see here.

http://www.clusters2007.com/attendance.htm
http://www.clusters2007.com/travel.html

(he cites a "competitiveness" organization's conference as evidence of what environmentalists think and do.)

http://www.willamette.edu/events/sustainability/
http://www.willamette.edu/events/sustai ... modations/

Again, nothing about Amtrak (surprising, since the Amtrak station is across the street from Willamette University!!!!)

Nice! Two links must prove a point even better than one! He doesn't mention that they don't offer ANY info on how to get there. Why? It's a locally-oriented conference. Even the presenters are all from Oregon, and mostly from Willamette U. Nevermind the attendees. I'm sure they assume people are aware of options for how to get there.

http://www.bizandsustainability.org/

Nothing about Amtrak - but Boeing is a sponsor? We might as well declare Hummers "environmentally friendly".

Again, "nothing about Amtrak" is really "nothing about how to get there." Schools like Portland State and Willamette Univ. do not have nationally oriented conferences on these topics. WWF made a giant leap from "not telling me how to get there" to "conferees didn't use Amtrak to get there", and now he'd like to fuzzy that up by making it seem like these are big conferences.

http://www.travelportland.com/meeting_p ... _meetings/

Jan Kourmadas, Meeting Planner, Computer Sciences Corporation, US EPA Brownfields Conference wrote:Portland is a friendly, beautiful, and environmentally conscious city with a great light rail system, MAX which provided quick and economical transportation for conference participants

No mention of Amtrak anywhere.

http://www.travelportland.com/meeting_p ... _here.html (linked from the "green meetings" page.)

You have to scroll ALL THE WAY to the bottom to find "Find other transportation options, including traveling by train, bus, and light rail." which finally gives you Amtrak information.

This site has nothing to do with environmentalists at all. It's put together by the tourism office. The fact that the tourism office decided to quote an EPA staffer about light rail doesn't prove anything at all about what environmentalists may think about Amtrak. For all we know, Kourmadas may have urged people to take Amtrak. The tourism office decided what went on the web. And as WWF points out, they did mention the option of taking the train.

This might be a good opportunity to point out that rather than searching for local conferences that heinously and hypocritically didn't mention Amtrak (or any other transport option) or else weren't pulled together by environmentalists, there was a more honest way to look into the question. Since the tourism website mentions some environmental organizations that have held conferences there. You can google the names of these organizations and 'amtrak' and find that

- the National Wildlife Federation has a promotion with Amtrak.
- the LGC Smart Growth conference mentions Amtrak in its website

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Being offended does not help you nor your organization. A call of censorship only serves to show that you offer no meaningful discussion or input towards a resolution and further solidifies my view which can be summed up in the phrase "do as I say, not as I do". I hope that you take this to your local Sierra Club chapter meeting and maybe consider a resolution that air travel, especially on official business or towards environmental/sustainability events, should be a very rare exception used only by those members who have an absolute need for air travel.

Using a patronizing tone does nothing for your cause. The urge to censor those who use the same tone with one that one customarily uses with others ... ahhh, that brings us back to the hypocrisy issue. Readers of the forum are watching. Can you rise to the challenge? Or will my post be censored because I took exactly the tone you did?

By the way, I told you that my organization DOES encourage use of Amtrak, so your patronizing suggestion isn't even on pont.

Chicago to Peoria, call it the Peoria Rocket after the ROCK ISLAND PEORIA ROCKET.

David Benton wrote:It amuses me that citizens of one of the richest countries in the world think that having one passenger train a day to thier biggest cities is a luxury they cannt afford . of course you can , and if enough people demand it , it will happen . The railroads will play ball , they either do it cooperatively and earn the incentives , or they have to tow the line in the interest of the majority , not thier shareholders .

Lando Calrissian: "...but that's not our deal..."
Darth Vadar: "...pray I don't change the terms again..."

The tyranny of the majority is why we are a republic, not a democracy. Nothing less chilling can happen to a free market than government mandates. (Starts humming "God Bless America").

FYI, we're rich because we are (were) free market, and we don't subsidize (much) massive, inefficient business operations (well, at least until the last few weeks ). So we spend $1 Trillion dollars to bring about a massive transportation network vis-a-vis Europe for a fairly sparsely-developed country (save the coasts and Great Lakes). Yeah, let's add on some more debt to the massive growth of government entitlements and bureacracy not just in the last 8 years, but the next 8 while we nationalize health care, pay for baby bonds, redistribute wealth to non-taxpayers, etc. I'm sure my 3 and 5 year olds will be very grateful for that network when their tax rate is 98%.

FLAME ON! (Skulks away to freezer for that bottle of emergency Jaegermeister).

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