Mr. Rohr, I appreciate your comments regarding experiential travel and me. In flight, I'm hardly buried in a movie. When flying overseas, my monitor is set to the route map; how else would have I known that a Westward flight I was on was vectored over Greenland (and where an Attendant "jumped me" for looking out at it).
May I be allowed to reference another site?
https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtop ... &t=1463675
Now, to the rails and my apparent "anti-LD" bias; I admit it is there, as they were to have been gone 45 years ago; RPSA70 notwithstanding (unwritten but the "Basic System" was to provide a five year "ease the pain" transition). I was in railroad management on A-Day - "lower than whale s*it on the bottom of the ocean" as I was taught when a Frat Pledge - but there. The washroom walls heard "they'll be gone in five years" and when the Superliner order was announced "we're going to be stuck with those trains for the next thirty years" (never mind thirty is now fifty). All told, the industry made a "Faustian pact with the Devil" with regards to signing up. I'm sure there isn't a present day railroad manager who wished his predecessors had not simply said "thanks but no thanks".
Had the industry said "shove it" and ran the trains for another five years as RPSA70 called for, some roads would have gotten theirs off during that period. Whatever were left would have been gone, save those on "ward of the State" PC, upon enactment and implementation of Staggers during 80.
Who knows to what extent the Corridor would have received funding and the Local intercity services been established.
The discontinuances would not have been orderly, i.e. whacking NY-Chicago before Chicago-LA, but rather "every man for himself".
But now at A-Day+50, Amtrak is looking at having to reequip the LD's if they are to continue much longer. I think continued funding of Amtrak for "what counts", namely the Corridor as well as a national footprint to support localities that choose to fund passenger trains, is less dependent upon continuation of the LD's than it was in the days of Staggers, Mansfield, and Lott. So, before any equipment such as bi-level cars is ordered, it is time to consider an orderly discontinuance of the system replacing such with an "ease the pain" for the rural "can't drive won't fly" segment with a system of substitute busses.
Really, it's time.