by JoeG
Tad, I have many times (figuratively) bit my tongue and sat on my fingers to stop myself from commenting on the attributes of Mr Trump and his defenders. Please do your part by also so refraining.
Railroad Forums
Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, mtuandrew, Tadman
Matt Johnson wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 5:36 pm I never understood how a Fort Worth - Oklahoma City train could gain enough political support to become reality while Dallas - Houston remains a major corridor lacking passenger rail connections. I've spent some time in the DFW area over the years due to having a lot of family out there, and it's exploding and in desperate need of better transportation infrastructure. Same goes for Houston - I was there on business in March and had the displeasure of driving on that city's insane highway system. I'll be interested to see if the private Texas Central high speed venture manages to reach the construction phase, but certainly that region seems like a place where Amtrak might have some corridor expansion potential. To the north, Oklahoma City - Wichita - Kansas City looks to make sense on a map, but I don't know what kind of ridership potential exists there.Simple answer... Southwest Airlines made itself by flying the Dallas to Houston route.
As an aside, when I attended my cousin's wedding in Dallas in 2015, I burned some Amtrak rewards points and traveled by Amtrak (Capitol Limited & Texas Eagle on the way out, Texas Eagle and Cardinal on the way back). So, there's an example of using the long distance network for a real transportation need as much as for the experience. (Let's be honest, I'd have taken the California Zephyr through the Rockies if I wanted a pure "experiential" land cruise. Sometimes it's nice when Amtrak actually takes you where you want to go!)
JoeG wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 6:58 pm Tad, I have many times (figuratively) bit my tongue and sat on my fingers to stop myself from commenting on the attributes of Mr Trump and his defenders. Please do your part by also so refraining.Politics is too toxic these days to spill into these conversations. I happen to yearn for the days of compromise and politicians of different parties getting along. Liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans, Trump supporters, Trump not supporters, all people of different backgrounds bring valuable input to any debate and discussion about how to get things done because we all have different perspectives and experiences and they are all valuble, and usually the best lasting solutions are compromises where everyone brings their argument to the table and you try to do something that everyone can live with, not "screw you" party line stuff where you stick it to the other side (and then have it repealed when the other side gets in power.) That just leads to an endless back and forth. Unfortunately in this hyper polarized atmosphere where many people look at the other side as the enemy makes it harder to get anything done. I don't really blame one side or the other - everyone is at fault. The mass media (all of which is biased one way or the other) deserves a lot of the blame. The 24 hour news cycle and the internet have largely led to hyper polarization. Thankfully there still seems to be room on the hill for compromise and discussion on less controversial areas like Amtrak.
Matt Johnson wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 5:36 pm I never understood how a Fort Worth - Oklahoma City train could gain enough political support to become reality while Dallas - Houston remains a major corridor lacking passenger rail connections.These days, Fort Worth and OKC have a lot more in common culturally and economically than Houston and Dallas do...
JoeG wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 6:58 pm Tad, I have many times (figuratively) bit my tongue and sat on my fingers to stop myself from commenting on the attributes of Mr Trump and his defenders. Please do your part by also so refraining.I can abide by that, and the intention was not to debate the merits of Mr. Trump.
ryanch wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:59 pm What do people make of the idea in the Downeaster thread that Amtrak recently advanced the idea of a Richmond-Maine train?Some good points here.
...
but fear that people fight much harder not to lose what they have than to get something new. That constrains the political benefit of proposing new corridor trains in return for axing an LD. ...
More important, it's not clear to me that disconnected corridors build that rapidly into winners. Look at the Rail Runner in NM. Sleek, fast, reliable, and not that successful. A new San Antonio-Houston corridor strikes me as something like an attempt at social engineering. ...
Real network effects are achieved at the point Amtrak becomes a "bookmark". Even in Chicago this is a challenge. Is there any conceivable way the metropolises of Texas would think that way anytime in the next 20 years? But how do you make a stand-alone service work, if most of the people who might head in that direction never even think to consider it?
Tadman wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:36 am Yes, any corridor/regional development should focus on a mini-network. Metcalf's law states the value of a network is the square of it's nodes.That's a good rule of thumb that I hadn't heard. But I want to stress a different aspect than the geographic network -- the advertising/awareness aspect that I called "bookmarking". Consider for a moment that Facebook is a "social network" but that the term "social networking" describes a way of marketing using social networks. There should be a corollary to Metcalf's law -- that in a sense all marketing or branding is social networking, and the value of social networking becomes the cube of its nodes when it reaches saturation awareness. There is an explosion at saturation point.
Tadman wrote:Sorry. It seemed like a good sound bite when I wrote it. It was overstated.
While that may sound like social engineering, there is a real cost to the ubers /freeways that are overtaxed, and there is capacity on the subway.
ryanch wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 11:41 amI would counter that with the Wolverine. Plenty of my friends who go to school in Chicago who live in MI will take the Wolverine home.
Despite a significant rail network around Chicago, that's not true here at all. Aside from friends from Springfield where I grew up, and a few people who head there for politics, I can't think of ever hearing of anyone who went anywhere on Amtrak among my friends, relatives and colleagues. There is absolutely no destination from Chicago where, if you said you were headed there, a normal person would ask "oh, are you taking the train?" And if you asked someone that, it would be so out of the blue as to make you seem unusual, with the possible exception of asking someone who worked in state government if they were taking the train to Springfield.
mcgrath618 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:33 pmCHI-MKE is another corridor where Amtrak might not be the first transportation mode on your tongue, but it wouldn’t be a complete unknown to people along the lakeshore.ryanch wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 11:41 amI would counter that with the Wolverine. Plenty of my friends who go to school in Chicago who live in MI will take the Wolverine home.
Despite a significant rail network around Chicago, that's not true here at all. Aside from friends from Springfield where I grew up, and a few people who head there for politics, I can't think of ever hearing of anyone who went anywhere on Amtrak among my friends, relatives and colleagues. There is absolutely no destination from Chicago where, if you said you were headed there, a normal person would ask "oh, are you taking the train?" And if you asked someone that, it would be so out of the blue as to make you seem unusual, with the possible exception of asking someone who worked in state government if they were taking the train to Springfield.