(02-12-2020 01:47 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-12-2020 12:53 PM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  

(02-12-2020 11:48 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/transport...k-funding/

Just don't understand why people continue to support wasteful, nonsensical train subsidies. Doubtful these cuts hold. But they need to.

"...Trump’s proposed 2021 budget delivered to Congress on Monday includes reductions in funding to the United States’ busiest rail corridor, the Northeast, to $325 million from $700 million. Funding for Amtrak’s long-distance trains would decrease to $611 million from $1.3 billion under the plan, which intends to phase out aid for long-distance service...."

It would make sense to you if the currently subsidized carbon and congestion costs of cars were taxed appropriately.

Well maybe its still subsidized because of moronic thinking like this.

You can be for rail, but not for stupid rail. Chicago to Portland is stupid rail.
Washington to Boston works. Houston to Dallas is probably going to work where a private company is funding it.

If you spend money on Chicago to Portland, you don't have money to improve Chicago to St. Louis which might actually make sense.

Beyond 200-500 miles rail makes no sense. Planes are faster and cheaper. And 30 mph rail doesn't make sense anywhere except as local mass transit. Greyhound, Trailways and Megabus do it better than most Amtrak routes.

And there were some Amtrak routes which required a bus ride for part of the trek.

(02-12-2020 12:25 PM)bobdizole Wrote:  [quote='UofMstateU' pid='16672014' dateline='1581526693']
1. Long distance Amtrak should be abolished. If anyone has ever looked up ticket prices and the time it takes to get somewhere, you could fly for less, not be subjected to toilet smells for days, and what takes 4 hours to fly takes 28 hours by train. There are no decent routes east to west out of the mid-south. Its absurd. They literally make themselves as least competitive on comfort, travel time, and prices as they can. Which I guess they believe is perfectly fine if you are completely subsidized and dont need to worry about actually making money or, at least, breaking even.

2. The northeast corridor should be able to support itself without the feds subsidizing it nearly as much. That is a heavily used part of the system, and if it is well-run financially, could and should support itself.

Quote:All of #1 is true. That being said I took the route from Chicago to Portland and it was worth the experience to see some of this beautiful country that you can't experience flying over.

Ok, so make it a novelty carrier. Gussy the digs up, install some bars and haute cuisine and charge 2 grand for a weeks trip with stops at sights and etc.
Why 160 million people are kicking in so you can go sightseeing, uhhh what?

Rent a car or RV, go see it yourself.

Amtrak should just be used as a tourist conveyance. Let it run only on those places where you want to see the sights, like that Cogwheel train in Colorado's Pikes Peak or that train that takes you from New Mexico to Colorado. Those trains have a waiting list. Otherwise, keep Amtrak out of the long distance routes. Not too many people have the time to get from point A to point B for traveling.

(02-12-2020 02:20 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  Amtrak should just be used as a tourist conveyance. Let it run only on those places where you want to see the sights, like that Cogwheel train in Colorado's Pikes Peak or that train that takes you from New Mexico to Colorado. Those trains have a waiting list. Otherwise, keep Amtrak out of the long distance routes. Not too many people have the time to get from point A to point B for traveling.

No true.. Didn't Christine Blasey Ford take a train cause she was afraid to fly?

Greyhound on rails.

(02-12-2020 02:23 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Greyhound on rails.

Not in the NE.

(02-12-2020 02:23 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Greyhound on rails.

That’s not nice. Greyhound is private and though meager, company. The antithesis of Amtrak.

(02-12-2020 12:53 PM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  

(02-12-2020 11:48 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/transport...k-funding/

Just don't understand why people continue to support wasteful, nonsensical train subsidies. Doubtful these cuts hold. But they need to.

"...Trump’s proposed 2021 budget delivered to Congress on Monday includes reductions in funding to the United States’ busiest rail corridor, the Northeast, to $325 million from $700 million. Funding for Amtrak’s long-distance trains would decrease to $611 million from $1.3 billion under the plan, which intends to phase out aid for long-distance service...."

It would make sense to you if the currently subsidized carbon and congestion costs of cars were taxed appropriately.

Nordic model?

(02-12-2020 12:53 PM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  

(02-12-2020 11:48 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/transport...k-funding/

Just don't understand why people continue to support wasteful, nonsensical train subsidies. Doubtful these cuts hold. But they need to.

"...Trump’s proposed 2021 budget delivered to Congress on Monday includes reductions in funding to the United States’ busiest rail corridor, the Northeast, to $325 million from $700 million. Funding for Amtrak’s long-distance trains would decrease to $611 million from $1.3 billion under the plan, which intends to phase out aid for long-distance service...."

It would make sense to you if the currently subsidized carbon and congestion costs of cars were taxed appropriately.

Not all congestion is by people in cars.. It's caused by buses and semis too. You tax them to death, who do you think that cost is passed on to?

One of the reasons passanger rail in the US was, and is, so screwed up is because of reliance on being subsidized by something else. There were trains whose sole purpose for the route was to haul US Postal mail. The routes were fitable because the US government paid for them.

Railroads identified an additional revenue from those mail trains by including passenger cars, and some of those were quite elaborate for the time. (And could be pricey as far as tickets were concerned) But they got away with that because the operational overhead costs of running the route was paid for by the US government for mail. The cost of fuel, engine maintenance, crews (mainly steam crews at the time) etc were born out by the mail service, so the passenger service costs were limited to the passenger cars and crews. It made them very profitable to run passenger service with the mail service. It also meant the railroads didnt work very hard to build up passenger only service. They didnt need to. They could run passeneger service on the mail routes and have much of the operating costs taken care of, which was too easy.

Until the US post office quit using rail service for mail. (Probabably sometime in the 50's if I remember correctly.)

Now, you had passenger routes without the US mail revenue, and they began to flail and flounder.

Which is kind of how we ended up with Amtrak. All because a private company never built up a passenger service without it being subsidized by something else. Long haul passenger service in the US was, and is, always looking for something to prop it up. Not that it has to be that way. Just because thats the way its always been.

(02-12-2020 01:39 PM)VA49er Wrote:  

(02-12-2020 01:33 PM)gdunn Wrote:  

(02-12-2020 12:53 PM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  

(02-12-2020 11:48 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/transport...k-funding/

Just don't understand why people continue to support wasteful, nonsensical train subsidies. Doubtful these cuts hold. But they need to.

"...Trump’s proposed 2021 budget delivered to Congress on Monday includes reductions in funding to the United States’ busiest rail corridor, the Northeast, to $325 million from $700 million. Funding for Amtrak’s long-distance trains would decrease to $611 million from $1.3 billion under the plan, which intends to phase out aid for long-distance service...."

It would make sense to you if the currently subsidized carbon and congestion costs of cars were taxed appropriately.

Explain yourself. Be serious.

Because honestly, I don't think you know what you're saying.

Talking point. Expect a reply after various sources are googled.......

You don't need me to google congestion pricing and carbon pricing for you. Most anyone in this forum can grasp the concepts but they'd rather avoid reality.

High speed rail only makes sense in densely populated corridors. Basically, you need a ribbon or clustering of big fat globs of light here:




It definitely works and is proven and profitable from DC to Boston along I-95. Amtrak makes money in this area but the amount they make doesn't offset the huge amounts they bleed in long distance rail even with it being heavily subsidized. It could in theory work from Raleigh to Atlanta along I-85, the Texas Triangle, Miami to Savannah along I-95, Vancouver to Portland along I-5, and LA to San Diego along I-5. It would then be plausible to interlink those I-95/I-85 sections to have a decent hub high speed rail network on the eastern seaboard.

However doing this would cost billions. Billions that could be better spent elsewhere. By the time a high speed rail network of even this minimal scope would come online autonomous cars may completely defeat passenger rail outright. I think there's a market for an enterprising person to create a more high end inter-city bus system. Think of it as the overnight sleeper train car meets the bus. Drop the number of people on the bus to just 12-15 but give them all nice facilities so they can spread out with desk space and do meaningful work in transit.

Regarding cutting long distance service just keep in mind several tiny towns only exist because they've forever been train stops so the old steam powered locomotives could refill on water. Without Amtrak these tiny places dotted all across the landscape in flyover country will no longer have an economic basis to exist. And so this means politically it will be difficult to kill in Congress because it touches a lot of states and a lot of Congressional districts. Just like NASA. They ended up making the new replacement for the Space Shuttle entirely out of old space shuttle parts so that all the old facilities and all the old contractors entrenched in all the various states and districts could be kept going. So just because it's proposed doesn't mean it's going to happen. I expect Congress to fight back on a surprisingly bipartisan basis to keep feeding the Amtrak money black hole.

(02-13-2020 10:42 AM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  You don't need me to google congestion pricing and carbon pricing for you. Most anyone in this forum can grasp the concepts but they'd rather avoid reality.

"Carbon pricing" -> A tax on everything given that life on this planet is carbon based.

"Congestion pricing" -> A tax on people who dare to work in the city and not live walking distance from their place of employment. Because we all know how easy it is to get just the right place to live in a big city for a reasonable price. I'm sure the barista working the first floor Starbucks in Times Square has no problem finding lodging right there. Probably Penthouse even. And if somehow she can't make that work, we'll just tax the ever loving **** out of her for commuting in -- and that's after we toll her $40 one way for crossing the bridge into the Island.