Railroad Forums 

  • Anderson possible changes: Dismantling LD, Corridor, Etc.

  • Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.
Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.

Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, mtuandrew, Tadman

 #1470577  by ExCon90
 
benboston wrote:
bdawe wrote:Amtrak isn't a terribly efficient way to get from San Diego to Los Angeles though. That it has high numbers for Amtrak is more a function of the vastness of the population surrounding the corridor and erratic reliability of it's roadways than any advantage conferred by the service itself, with it's 50% time penalty over driving.
It's pretty good as long as you have a car in Los Angeles, in San Diego a car isn't a necessity.
The problem with driving is the unpredictability -- you never know how long it's going to take on a given day. And since I-5 runs through Camp Pendleton there aren't any back roads to enable you to avoid the straitjacket from San Clemente to Oceanside. Also, the through operation to Santa Barbara provides a one-seat ride from the Simi and San Fernando Valleys to Santa Ana and beyond, completely avoiding the drive through LA.
 #1470588  by mtuandrew
 
AgentSkelly wrote:The P42 is 45 years old?
Poor differentiation on the part of the reporter, likely, unless Anderson is thinking of the P30CH :P

Medium-distance corridors like the Palmetto and Pennsylvanian do have a lot of expansion possibility, and I'd love to see additional corridors. (My personal favorites are the historic Twin Cities Hiawatha and Peninsula 400 CHI-MKE-GBY-Escanaba routes.)
 #1470628  by ryanov
 
As I recall from my SimCity days, you can’t just put in a train station and suddenly say you have train service and call it a day. Chopping up routes and saying “no one lost train service” just isn’t honest.
Last edited by ryanov on Sat Apr 28, 2018 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 #1470678  by Tadman
 
ebtmikado wrote:Let's face it! Anderson has to go. NOW! Before he destroys the whole thing.
Destroys what whole thing? A skeleton national network, some operating less than once/day, holding less than 1% of the travel market? This thing of ours was toast the day President Eisenhower signed the Interstate highway act.

Anything left after that was ruined by the 707.

Anything left after that was ruined by A-day.

Anything left after that was ruined by the Carter cuts.

Anything left after that was ruined by the Clinton cuts.

Anything left after that was ruined by Southwest.

Anything left after that was ruined by Megabus.

Just what are we fighting for? A diner for the crew to ride around in and count fares? Perhaps it's time to think about a new model, one that might bring more trains per day to medium-corridor routes. We always lament how far in front of us Japan, Germany, and France are. Now we have an opportunity to move the game pieces and all we do is groan about the diners.
 #1470696  by chrsjrcj
 
And dismantling what is left of the LD system puts us closer to those countries?

The changes would be okay if it was "Yeah we're getting rid of the Crescent, but we're replacing it with 110/125 mph service between DC and Atlanta."
 #1470699  by ryanov
 
Seems to be a certain subset of the crowd here that is arguing that we should move from the US model of trains to the European or Japanese model of trains, And that again, no one much is operating overnight trains with dining services or other such land-cruise type trains. “Time to go in a new direction.” Do you see Amtrak somehow enabled to build coast to coast high speed routes because they eliminated diner service? That’s not something that will sneak up on us, and has got to be 10 years off or more — if ever. I don’t see how ending the possibility to get all sorts of places, even slowly, gets us closer to that. What other country first ended traditional train service and later built a high speed network?
 #1470706  by eubnesby
 
Large parts of this country are either not geographically suited to being served by rail transport, or not culturally suited to being served by rail transport. There's no reason to hold onto the broken infrastructure of the past. It is not fit for purpose. If we want real public transport in this country, we will have to build it from the ground up. That starts with a focus on the main intercity corridors, where rail service makes sense. The Northeast Corridor should not be left as a crumbling outdated mess, so that we can support completely impractical and largely useless long distance trains, that are in truth nothing more than what Britons call 'parliamentary' service. Enough is enough. In the present day, railways work as transport for the masses...they do not work well over extremely long distances connecting various sparsely-populated rural towns. This reality must be recognised. Meanwhile, whilst we SHOULD remove these useless long distance trains, we should also not rip up the rails they run over. Instead, we should INCREASE capacity on these lines for freight, so that more of that strain is carried by rail. Passengers, on the other hand, can be adequately served by other modes.
 #1470772  by jp1822
 
But what does one do first......

Amtrak has the money to operate LD trains on the status quo - if it wanted to - from FY 2017. It would seem that you DO that first and keep things intact, while planning, perhaps, for the Crescent's replacement (or insert any LD train here) into a series of corridors.

In other words Amtrak has a business plan to operate LD trains on existing routes. Anderson has talked about creating corridors out of LD routes/trains. But before discontinuing or reducing service amenities/frequency, how about a full blown business plan of what is needed to get to the corridor service? Would it be feasible with host railroads; what are the costs to build-out and operate; equipment purchases needed; logistics of building and operating????

Would hate to see current train service reduced in anyway - only because it is such a skeletal system as it is - and then with a hope and prayer, everyone waits for corridor service to replace the LD trains.

Getting the funding for equipment and even build-out and sustainability of corridors is the first mountain to lay out in a business plan. And this business plan can not have the flaws that the M&E plan had of the 1990s. Many things were wishful dreaming in that business plan and it required funds and working with host railroads that was never going to be. The transcontinental luxury express train, to the Crescent Star.

So let's not lose what is currently in place with long distance trains, drive passengers away by cutting amenities/frequency, and up in in an interim period of "no service" while awaiting the development of corridor service.

Moreover, Texas corridor service, which Anderson talked about, has been on the table before. It was ONLY brought to fruition as an extension of a long distance train - Texas Eagle. Even with corridors and faster speeds they would hopefully put forward, there would still need to be some sort of long distance train to "bridge" the service.

But don't play around with dismantling till the replacement SERVICE is in place. His talk on corridors already exist in some form - or did as connectors to the long distance trains - but were cut.

Let's see the replacement business plan before dismantling - and if it makes sense, a see less cutover. If funded presently, operate it successfully. The Empire Builder is NOT running empty by any stretch. IF there is a better way to operate it, propose and get the pieces together fully and don't cut over till it can be replaced. Corridors are a different operation to fund, maintain, implement, and sustain. Removal of service without so,etching to go in its place, prepare for Sunset Limited East.
 #1470779  by dlagrua
 
Long Distance passenger trains are a vital part of our nations transportation system. The Chicago West and South LD routes serve hundreds of small towns along the way most of which have no air service or are located 100's of miles away from full service airports or the interstate highway system. Should we abandon and walk away from these areas? These LD lines connect the big cities to rural America. We have gone coast to coast on Amtrak trains and passengers are regularly getting on and off all along the way. You could not dismantle the LD lines and replace them with corridor service as Amtrak's contract with the host railroads would not allow it. The freight railroads are already complaining that one LD Amtrak train on a given line is detrimental to the scheduling. They would certainly not agree to a few "corridor" trains to replace them. Unlike the rest of the world we already have a minimal LD train service. That service is badly needed.
 #1470809  by electricron
 
In most of the rest of the world the railroad corridors are owned by the government, not by a private firm whose primary profits come from moving freight. Amtrak States it runs over 21,300 miles of track but owns just 700 miles itself. At my suggested average price of $50 million per mile to purchase, Amtrak would need $1,030 Billion (over $1 trillion) to purchase the corridors.
Math; 21,300 - 700 = 20,600. 20,600 x 50,000,000 = 1,030,000,000,000.

That’s more than the yearly defense budget. Where is Amtrak going to find one trillion dollars?
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