Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Amtrak is hoping live entertainment, exhibits and a national TV personality will lure people who don't normally take the train into its stations — and then inspire them to return to ride the rails another day.
It would be nice if amtrak focused on being on time! my son rides home from st. louis, he gets off in joliet (we have to drive 45 mins. to pick up) the train is NEVER on time. once, the train was supposed to arrive at 1:15 p.m. It did ot arrive until 5:15 p.m. they didn't even give them vouchers for a free ticket!
It would be nice if amtrak focused on being on time! my son rides home from st. louis, he gets off in joliet (we have to drive 45 mins. to pick up) the train is NEVER on time. once, the train was supposed to arrive at 1:15 p.m. It did ot arrive until 5:15 p.m. they didn't even give them vouchers for a free ticket!
Amtrak doesn't actually own the tracks they run on, so they end up waiting on mainline freights and such. As far as the railroad companies are concerned, Amtrak is a third-class train with the lowest of priorities.
With rising fuel prices, as well as expensive airline fares, I believe Amtrak ridership will probably go up - then they can start focusing on system wide improvements. Until there is significant ridership, I don't see the current passenger trains climbing up the 'priority totem pole'.
Amtrak doesn't actually own the tracks they run on, so they end up waiting on mainline freights and such. As far as the railroad companies are concerned, Amtrak is a third-class train with the lowest of priorities.
Yup, lack of track ownership and signifigant finacial penalties to freight companies for causing Amtrak delays are major problems for a "national" railroad.
Until such time as the freight railroads are forced to give consideration to Amtrak schedules, the delays will continue and Amtrak user growth will suffer.
Amtrak doesn't actually own the tracks they run on, so they end up waiting on mainline freights and such. As far as the railroad companies are concerned, Amtrak is a third-class train with the lowest of priorities.
With rising fuel prices, as well as expensive airline fares, I believe Amtrak ridership will probably go up - then they can start focusing on system wide improvements. Until there is significant ridership, I don't see the current passenger trains climbing up the 'priority totem pole'.
I like to make the comparison that can we imagine if the trucking companies owned the highways? They'd set up rules to give big-rigs priority over passenger cars, no questions asked. Anytime you saw a rig in your mirror, you'd have to move over and let it pass. You'd be fined if you held up a rig for any reason. BTW, no consideration given to you if you got stuck behind one going 30 MPH up a hill. Passing lanes to let cars go by? In your dreams! Oh, yeah, they'd be toll roads, naturally, fees negotiated to the benefit of the trucking companies. THIS is what Amtrak contends with. We can only dream of how nice U.S. passenger railroads would be if they got the same amount of public funding as roads and cars. Maybe sky-rocketing oil prices will change some priorities on a policy level. One can always hope.
I'm a very big transit advocate, but I do want to note that freight rail shipments have been growing solidly over the last few years. Even in the currently difficult economic climate, freight rail shipments have only declined slightly, much less than truck and air shipments. The Class I railroads (CSX, Norfolk Southern, BNSF, Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific) are going to expand their operations and may need to build some additional capacity on some of their key mainlines. In many rail corridors around the country, especially the longer corridors, freight shipments are much, much more important (and valuable) than passenger shipments.
The problem Amtrak has is politically it needs to be organized as a national system, but practically it should be organized as a system of shorter distance corridors (500 miles or less) connecting large population centers where there is significant population density along much of the corridor. There are relatively few areas of the country where intercity passenger rail really makes sense (and it makes a lot of sense in some of those corridors, many of which are currently served with a decent number of trains per day by Amtrak). The Chicago-St. Louis corridor, to which the state of Illinois has contributed significant funding to increase train frequencies (along with Chicago-Carbondale and Chicago-Galesburg-Quincy), is one of those corridors.
What we really should have are dedicated passenger tracks along these viable corridors, or at the very least have Amtrak operate on lightly-used freight rail tracks in those viable corridors. However, it will take A LOT of money to acquire the ROW for those tracks and build those tracks, and I don't think there is the political will to do that right now. I'm just thankful that when the federal government created Conrail in 1976 from the assets of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad, they gave ownership of most of the Northeast Corridor, including the previously PRR-owned New York-Washington segment, to Amtrak.
Amtrak takes 11 hours between Los Angeles and San Francisco and usually costs over $80 each way. I don't know how anyone uses it, and I never have heard of anyone using it. You can make the drive in six hours or fly in one hour.
Amtrak also has to take a back seat to Metrolink here in So Cal. The Amtrak trains have to pull over so that the Metrolink trains connecting the So Cal cities can breeze by.
I'm a very big transit advocate, but I do want to note that freight rail shipments have been growing solidly over the last few years. Even in the currently difficult economic climate, freight rail shipments have only declined slightly, much less than truck and air shipments. The Class I railroads (CSX, Norfolk Southern, BNSF, Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific) are going to expand their operations and may need to build some additional capacity on some of their key mainlines. In many rail corridors around the country, especially the longer corridors, freight shipments are much, much more important (and valuable) than passenger shipments.
You're absolutely correct. For the first time in decades, the railroads are starting to post profit again. It took two decades of bankruptcy (60's and 70's), one decade of consolidation (80's), and another two decades of increasing traffic (90's, 2000's).
Quote:
Originally Posted by CHIP72
The problem Amtrak has is politically it needs to be organized as a national system, but practically it should be organized as a system of shorter distance corridors (500 miles or less) connecting large population centers where there is significant population density along much of the corridor.
I agree here as well, the Northeast Corridor is of this design. However, I believe that it is the only region of the US dense enough to constitute practicality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CHIP72
What we really should have are dedicated passenger tracks along these viable corridors, or at the very least have Amtrak operate on lightly-used freight rail tracks in those viable corridors. However, it will take A LOT of money to acquire the ROW for those tracks and build those tracks, and I don't think there is the political will to do that right now. I'm just thankful that when the federal government created Conrail in 1976 from the assets of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad, they gave ownership of most of the Northeast Corridor, including the previously PRR-owned New York-Washington segment, to Amtrak.
There wouldn't really be a need to buy new RoW except to maybe build stations. They could always add special Amtrak-only lines next to existing freight railroads. Doing so would probably cut travel time in half (two thirds?).
Railroads are of course, expensive. The only companies that have the financial resources for such things is the Class I's themselves. It costs a million dollars a mile to build straight track on flat land, even more for installation of signaling or super elevation on curves; Those kind of numbers add up fast - 3-5 million a mile would probably be more accurate in modern terms.
On the Northeast Corridor, I'd say for intercity public transportation (including airlines) Amtrak is the preferred way to travel for those who aren't on a tight budget and need to travel between the downtowns of both cities (the big advantage rail transportation/Amtrak has over airline travel). To use an example, I'm pretty sure for the New York-Washington city pair that Amtrak captures over 50% of the market share among all non-private automobile travel (and something like 15% of the market share if you include private automobile trips). The problem on the Northeast Corridor is Amtrak is relatively expensive, especially compared to just about all other Amtrak services. Nonetheless, if you look at Amtrak's ridership statistics, the top 3 stations in terms of ridership (New York Penn Station, Washington Union Station, and Philadelphia 30th Street Station) are considerably ahead of all other stations and 5 of Amtrak's top 7 ridership stations (with Boston South Station and Baltimore Penn Station joining the 3 stations mentioned above) are on the Northeast Corridor.
Actually, the numbers for all 5 of those stations are understated in a way; with New York and Philadelphia (and the stations between them) a lot of people use connecting commuter rail services (NJ Transit and SEPTA) to travel between them, with Washington and Baltimore most people use MARC (another commuter rail service) to travel between them, and with Boston its ridership is split among 3 stations, all 3 of which have solid numbers. Many people also use Greyhound (which is considerably cheaper) to travel between the cities as well; New York and Philadelphia are the 2 busiest Greyhound stations in the U.S., and Washington, Baltimore, and Richmond, VA (Richmond is just over 100 miles south of DC and less than 350 miles south of NYC) all rank in the top 10.
Amtrak's on-time stats for the DC - NYC route is pretty good. It shows that they aren't bad at all when they have the tracks. When I took it up to NYC, the price was comparable to flying and by the time you add in all the wait time at the airport, not much difference in time spent and much more comfortable even on the regular train.
I ride the MARC on the CSX tracks every day and I believe it must be the worst run corporation in these United States. I think there is a deliberate attempt to make passengers uncomfortable but they have no end of nonsense. They put in the continuous rails only to have severe heat restrictions supposedly because the rails expand too much - never had that problem with the old rails. New all weather switches also are forever breaking down. All their operations are controlled in a centralized and probably understaffed unit in Jacksonville, FL. This introduces very lengthy problems in getting hold of the dispatchers.
It makes me think the designers of those rails must be utterly incompetent. Somehow, the Europeans manage to run railroads on time and at high speeds in all kinds of crappy weather.
I would be highly in favor of running 3rd tracks for Amtrak in a lot of places. With increasing fuel prices, it is time to bring back a great transportation option that worked really well when it was built to meet actual needs.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
