Should the United States have a national passenger rail system?

Serving every city of at least 1,000,000 people?

Regarding Amtrak, should it be required by law to operate a national route system? It currently isn't.

If the US was served by an advanced mass transit system like in France, Germany, and Japan, we would never have to deal with the kind of urban sprawl and gridlock and pollution associated with city planning that accommodates cars instead of people. Where I live, the city is so spread out, there aren't even any sidewalks except in the oldest part of town. You need a car to get anywhere.

I understand this is how things are set up all over Europe.

I'm assuming, of course, your city even has a bus fleet along side light rail. Of course, this is America we're talking about. The likeliest scenario is that your city--nevermind mine--has neither those two or a system that's woefully neglected/underdeveloped to serve the population size. If you live in a city that has excellent systems such as that, you're in the minority.

I rode city buses to middle school and high school. As a kid, I remember riding the trolley car downtown with my mom to go shopping, and stopping in the cafeteria for a sandwich and ice cream sundae. The buses and trolleys were always full of passengers.

Then, in the fifties and early sixties, cities were talked into "privatizing" public transportation. These private companies quickly tore up trolley tracks and burned trolleys and buses. You can read about it in Edwin Black's book "Internal Combustion". It seems that these transportation companies were essentially dummy corporations established and financed by companies like General Motors to eliminate public transportation in order to "encourage" people to buy cars.

great way to travel.

$450 euros for 4 adults and two kids. Could have driven the autobahn for a tank of gas both ways. German rail is good but not cheap!

much better than driving I thought. I was the courier for my unit and I drove all the time anyway, so getting on the rail was always a pleasure for me. I would pack my own food, do some reading and gaze out the window. I really miss that and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Sheer need for economical travel at reasonably high speeds will demand it be put in place. I expect we'll see something very much like the Japanese system.

are also a hell of a lot smaller.

It used to be good.

Did they allow private health insurers to replace the previous system?

Changes that didn't benefit the common man.

Our health care system is pretty complicated and hard to explain. Basically, the government decides what insurance companies legally have to cover. People are obligated to be insured. They have to pay for basic coverage themselves to the insurance companies. Depending on your income, you get money back from the government to compensate. People can decide for themselves if they want to cover for additional practices, like dental care. Then they have to pay more. My parents pay €340 a month for the four of us and it means we're covered. If anything happens to us, if we need an operation that would cost €800, the insurance company would cover it all. Doctors don't have to ask permission to insurance companies to treat people. People who aren't covered get treated nevertheless.

I hope this sounds logical. It's more complicated than this, but I don't know all the details myself.

I don't generally sit well with having a law that forces people to give money to private corporations in terms of health care costs. This is what Massachusetts has essentially done under Gov. Mitt Romney.

In France, they operate a single-payer system. There are no private health insurance companies in the sense of the American system. One entity operated by the government negotiates the price of medical procedures and medicine with health care providers and pharmaceutical companies for the sake of all people in France. Sécurité Sociale covers roughly 75 percent of all medical costs. Individuals are free to purchase supplemental insurance to cover the remaining 25 percent, but nobody buys private health insurance to replace public insurance, and nobody is obligated to purchase private health insurance.

Trains are slow and expensive. They work in Europe partly because there's so much less empty space and partly because you can get around most places with no car once you arrive. I don't fly much, but I wouldn't take the train any farther than I currently drive because I can't afford the time off that would be required and most places I'd need a car on arrival anyhow.

Passenger rail makes sense in densely populated commuter corridors (up and down the two coasts, mostly) but for the long expanses of nothing in the middle or for vacation travelers who aren't train nuts it's really not a very good alternative.

I agree with you on the long expanses. I didn't think we'd EVER get through Kansas on one of our trips. Miles and miles and miles of NOTHING! But a train system on each coast would be fabulous.

Of course, we could have bullet trains to get people across the wide expanses, which would probably piss off the people living in the middle of the country. No one is going to be entirely happy with anything that is done - but we need something anyway.

We have one here. It needs improvements, mainly a change in the rules to prevent passenger trains from being delayed by freight, but it's not bad and is affordable.

I do think high speed rail on the coasts would be a great idea (California passed a ballot to finance one but it should really go up to Oregon and Washington and into Las Vegas too) but I don't think mandating coverage of cities of size X makes any sense when they're not all situated in a way that would make rail travel attractive. Maybe a line in the upper midwest too, connecting to the east coast line. But it doesn't make sense to hamstring the routes that would work by mandating lines in places where cities are far apart, airfare is cheap enough nobody'd really use them.

Yeah, that's the system. I haven't been on it in years. It was awful back when I used it, I cannot imagine that it has gotten any better. And it's certainly not affordable.

Anything that would give people options on travel at this point should be tried. I've lived in Los Angeles, and dealt with the traffic there. And now Atlanta is having the same if not worse problems than I remember from LA. We desperately need some form of rail service from Atlanta to areas north, because so many people have moved out of the city. Rail service here is non-existant.

Airfare is cheap, but for how long?

http://www.amtrakcascades.com/

They also happen to run the only bus lines from many cities (say the Oregon Coast to Portland, Oregon).

Nice coaches, too.

Re-investing in rail and connector services seems to me one of the smartest, forward looking things that we can do

In its entire 37 years of existence, it has received no more than $1 billion per year.

That sounds like a lot, but the airlines received $35 billion at once after 9/11, so at that point, in 2001, they received a lump sum greater than the entire cumulative federal subsidy of Amtrak over its (then) 31-year history.

While giving BILLIONS in subsidies to the airlines...

highway construction to subsidize the auto industry. Meanwhile this skewing of our transportation system due to this corporate welfare system is promoted as "necessary", while the best competitor to airlines and cars (AMTRAK) is criticized for "not paying its own way."

There is more to get riled over. A recent magazine article explained how the airlines, to cut costs and increase profits, are now outsourcing airliner maintenance to places like Ecuador where there is NO FAA oversight on quality of maintenance. Just think, the guy who fixes the plane you might fly on may have been repairing motorcycles last week.

Still more to get riled over. The airlines are now replacing their 300 to 400 passenger planes with super planes that will carry over 600 passengers at a time. What is the significance? They will burn more gas, and because of their size and weight and runway lengths needed, and because of the number of passengers they handle at one time, only the largest airports will be able to accommodate them. That means cutting routes.

But that means the airlines can operate more "efficiently." Cut the number of flights, lay off pilots, attendants, ground crews. Fewer planes to operate and maintain: more profits.

I am an airplane enthusiast, and while i don't follow the industry all that closely, this is the first i have ever heard of a North American carrier is "outsourcing airliner maintenance to places like Ecuador". I would be very interested in reading such an article. Can you point me toward the source?

Also, the following statement has a few inaccuracies;



The 600 passenger aircraft you are referring to must be the Airbus A-380. This plane has a very specific market niche (Long haul, transcontinental/trans-ocean) and will NEVER replace smaller aircraft like the Boeing 737 or the smaller Airbus types.
Because the Airbus A-380 can carry so many people, the actual fuel economy per passenger/mile is much higher than smaller aircraft.
Since the aircraft is being sold primarily to long haul carriers, the airports they use are already accommodating the 747-400 which has a wingspan just 13 meters narrower than the 380. The 380 is NOT going to be flying into Omaha any time soon. Routes won't be cut because of the introduction of this aircraft.

Boeing's newest plane, the 787 has a max seating configuration of 330.
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/787family/787-3prod.html

Boeing's orders for the 787 have far outpaced orders for the 380 with the nearest delivery date for one ordered today is 2015.

The max of the 747-400 is a little over 500 but most carry no more than about 420 and they have been in service for years and years.
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/pf/pf_seating_charts.html

The article that I originally referred to I read in a paper magazine at the library. However, I found some articles online about outsourcing airline maintenance at
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/airline_maintenance02.html
and a second at
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/airline_maintenance.html.

(snip)
JetBlue, Southwest, America West, Northwest and United are among the carriers who outsource major maintenance of their aircraft to contractors in other countries, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

(snip)
It wasn't long ago that major airlines employed their own highly-skilled mechanics, each with his or her own Federal Aviation Administration license. The mechanics, who often studied for two years before taking the test, could make $60 or more per hour.

Mechanics working for outsourcers don't have to be licensed. Only supervisors are required to hold FAA licenses and are responsible for oversight of the mechanics, who in countries like El Salvador may make $10 to $20 per hour.

(snip)
In 1999, ValuJet flight 592 crashed into the Florida Everglades after taking off from Miami International Airport, killing all 110 on board. The crash was attributed to oxygen canisters improperly stowed in the aircraft's hold by maintenance employees working for an outside contractor.

(snip)
The Inspector General's office studied six U.S. airlines, which are not named in the report. It found that none were providing an adequate level of training. One airline provided 11 hours of classroom and video training while another simply provided a one-hour video. One airline simply mailed a workbook to each shop and required mechanics to sign a form saying they had read it.


I copied a few choice paragraphs from the two articles to provide a flavor of what is involved here. Notice that outsourcing has evidently been going on for a few years. Notice, also, whereas previously, airplane mechanics who serviced airliners had to be trained and certified competent by the FAA, now it is left to the supervisor to "sign off" on the work done. In an environment where cost is the only criteria used in judging competency, can you imagine a supervisor admitting that some work his subordinates did was inadequate and needed to be redone?

A more recent article can be found at
http://www.btnmag.com/businesstravelnews/headlines/frontpage_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003612932

This article discusses a DOT report on airline maintenance and safety presented to Congress which is debating FAA reauthorization legislation. A few choice tidbits include:

(snip)
"We have emphasized that the issue is not where maintenance is performed, but that maintenance requires effective oversight," DOT Inspector General Calvin Scovel III said in the report.

(snip)
While Federal Aviation Administration-certified repair stations require annual FAA inspections, reports on failures and malfunction, designated supervisors and inspectors, as well as training programs, noncertified facilities have no such requirements. However, they still perform critical repairs and maintenance on U.S.-based carriers' aircraft, according to the report.

"Despite the differences in quality controls and oversight that exist between certificated and non-certificated maintenance facilities, there are no limitations on the scope of work that non-certificated repair facilities can perform," the DOT Inspector General report said.

(snip)
The Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, set to be enacted beginning in 2008, first must be approved by the full House and ultimately be reconciled with legislation approved in May by the Senate Transportation Committee (BTN, July 9).

(snip)
Business Travel Coalition chairman Kevin Mitchell suggested that "heavy maintenance on U.S. airlines' aircraft shall be performed in the U.S.," until bilateral agreements allow FAA to inspect foreign repair facilities unannounced, while also increasing the depth and frequency of inspections. Meanwhile, Mitchell said airlines should "contractually require repair facilities to perform background checks in accordance with standards established by TSA," noting reports that "terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, operate freely in many of these countries." McCaskill said in one case, "a member of al Qaeda was found working at a repair station in Singapore."

Here is another link to an article in BusinessWeek titled "Danger in the Repair Shop"
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_31/b4044056.htm

overseas for this sort of thing. I was aware that many airlines had been using outside repair facilities to do repairs but did not know planes were being sent to Ecuador.

Thanks for the info.

BTW. regarding the ValuJet crash in FL - The one article infers it was a maintenance issue that somehow had something to do with the oxygen generators being in the cargo hold. While it is probably true they were loaded by people other than ValuJet employees, IIRC it was basically a failure to load properly/failure to label properly/failure to ensure safe transport type issue as opposed to a maintenance issue (ie, a bolt not properly tightened causing an engine to fall off) that caused the oxygen generators to heat up and ignite. Improperly loading hazardous cargo can't really fall into the realm of "Maintenance". A minor point, i admit in light of the deaths of passengers and crew and the utter destruction of the plane. Seems to me i read where it hit the swamp, at a straight down dive, going so fast that they excavated something like 20 feet down into the muck before they stopped finding pieces of that plane.

Taking Amtrak (years ago mind you) from South Carolina to NY. Things may have changed but back then the employees were completely rude and the facilities were dirty, etc.

Underfunding may have had a hand in the dirt factor - but the rudeness was a choice (I would think) on the part of the employees. :shrug:

competent people would apply.

Rude employees are hardly unique to Amtrak. I've seen some pretty nasty flight attendants in my years of traveling by air.

But having to endure a 15 hour train ride with filthy bathrooms and surly attendants, I wasn't about to use Amtrak again soon. :shrug:

Much nicer. :-)

north Georgia to Atlanta. People who work in Atlanta live all over north Georgia and have to drive to work. But they just keep widening I-75. . . And they did away with auto emissions inspections in the early Seventies, which was also insane.

Amtrak is great, as good as any european rail system (and yes, I have been on them all) From DC to Boston, Amtrak works well (and makes money)

very slow ones that stop at every town. But if you take the Rapido, you can go places fast. . . Japan has incredibly fast trains, maybe faster than I'd want to ride. Seeing the country is part of the appeal of trains.

We could have fast and relatively cheap trains but Eisenhower decided to build the interstate highway system instead of developing the railroads or other mass transit. People in Europe use mass transit more than Americans because they've been paying a lot for gasoline for a long time. They drive tiny cars that get good gas mileage.

I recently took a train trip of about 350 miles to visit relatives. We usually drive with the family, however I was travelling alone and my wife didn't want me to drive by myself. The cost for one person was little more than I would have paid for gas, and I found it a quite pleasant experience. The scenery was interesting (I was able to take some interesting photos), and the passengers were pleasant and the train employees friendly. The train was about an hour late going, but was right on time on the return trip.

The car trip would have been exhausting and frustrating with all the bozos on the road. Flying would have cost more and I would have had to put up with the hassle at the airport. I agree that a cross-country trip by train would not be my first choice, but if it is a trip that you can complete in under ten to twelve hours, it is a pleasant way to travel.

this form of ground transport, primarily due to the fact that 1 in 6 US jobs has something to do with cars or oil. Very shortsighted to the point of absurdity.

Obviously we need all the ground transportation we can get.

We should make THEM foot the bill for putting it back. And yes, I am talking about an impossibility. :eyes:

it was a systematic effort.

AMTRAK Myths and Facts:

http://www.narprail.org/cms/index.php/resources/more/myths

AFFORDABLE.

FREE.

Like that'll ever happen in this country. :(

The almighty $$ uber allis

;-)

There were all sorts of railroads with nice passenger service and nice cars , commutor trains ran through out the suburbs in ILL .

Even most freight was handled by rail .

It seems union pacific has bought everything out .

Here in L.A. some fool had the insane idea of building this underground rail system to went on for years and caused all sorts of problems .

I had the idea at the time to use one lane from every freeway , there then is already a solid base to set rails down and this would have done away with all this insane traffic where people sit and idle burning most of their fuel .

Now this country has been built around drive through this and that , get the hell out and walk a few blocks , sit back and sleep or talk of read while riding the rails .

People just love their damn cars thinking this is the only way and they feel they have freedom , freedom to do what , sit in smog and heat and spend a fortune on a car and repairs and insurance .

Just imagine what it would be like without all the traffic and gas stations and cars parked on every inch of the curbs . Just nice sidewalks with trees and a walk for the work out . The actual freedom of not having to deal with all that comes with a car .

I am all for it , always have been but instead things like this vanish instead of flurish .

Metro and Metrolink carry 500000 passengers each weekday now, and the subway opens to transit-dependent East LA in a couple of years. Riverside County (of all places) hopes to build lines from Riverside Main to Perris Valley and Palm Springs. The acqua line from Union Station to Sta Monica starts construction this year. The 'subway to the sea' (an extension of the purple line from Wilshire/Western to Sta Monica) will really make LA a rail town again.

called the Independent Greens for whom this is their major issue. One of their stars, Gail (for rail) Parker was a former General who ran for Senate last year. She sort of backed off when the race became close and put support behind Jim Webb. She was a vendor at our Impeachment group's Town Hall Meeting last month.

They would not save gas. Trains these days run on Diesel.

For the states, they're not economical nor practical. They may work in Japan and Europe, but things there are densely packed together.

The 550 billion we have dumped in Iraq would have more than paid for a magnetic levitation train...running on magnetic resistance, not gas or diesel. Come on, this is the 21st century.

And what's wrong with bringing steam back?

they are the MOST economical and fuel-saving means of transportation for distances of 600 miles or less.

Sounds like an interesting study to take a look at.

It was years ago.

and no I'm NOT kidding.

With a train, you get far more passenger-miles per gallon.

The problem with trains is that they currently are not fast enough to make it worthwhile. I can drive from here to Chicago in about 8 hours or so, and IIRC the train takes even longer. And the costs are comparable to gasoline, with the added bonus of having my car there in Chicago as needed.

Some people can't stand long car rides, but I love them! A book on tape and some cruise control, and I can go for hours.

compared to the amount of oil used by the number of automobiles needed to carry the same number of passengers the same distance.

As a hypothetical example, compare the fuel used by a train carrying 500 passengers 400 miles. This would be easily handled by one engine pulling ten passenger cars. If those same 500 people rode in 250 cars, two to a car, with each car averaging a not unrealistic mileage of 20 miles per gallon, then the cars would use 20 gallons of gas times 250 cars for a total consumption of 5000 gallons of gas. I don't know the gas consumption of a train diesel, but even if it burned two gallons per mile, it would still burn only 800 gallons of fuel to convey 500 people 400 miles, compared to the cars' 5000 gallons of gasoline. An airliner would burn much more than the train for the same distance, although possibly less than the cars.

The same kind of reasoning holds for comparing the fuel consumption of a freight train versus the number of diesel semi trucks hauling the same amount of freight. The trucks would use far more fuel.

Universal health care for one.

So here's my question: Given the sprawl of our cities, exactly what are you supposed to do when you get off the train since we don't have any additional supporting public transportation to get you closer than 25 miles from where you want to be?

In London, the train stops in Victoria, you get on the tube, go to Chelsea, get on a bus and you're home. In the US, the train stops and so does your trip. Sure, trains are great, but we have a long way to go to have efficient and effective public transportation.

and subways. But just like we have parking lots where people leave their cars when they take the subway, we could have parking lots where people would leave their cars when they took the train. Trains wouldn't eliminate the need for cars, at least not immediately, but they would decrease it substantially.

We subsidize the airlines by paying for airports. There is ZERO reason for the Rethuglicans to complain about Amtrack.

That said, I've spent years riding Amtrak pretty regularly. The trains arrive on schedule less than half the time, and are periodically overbooked. I even rode free once, as I was a walk on and no one ever asked for a ticket. If we did this, it would take a MAJOR restructuring.

Or something like that?

:rofl:

Dismantled the whole idea. That baby was killed in it's cradle.

I personally love hanging out on a train. If we had one that went to every major city in all continental states, we'd take it everywhere.
Duckie

Americans HATE each other and loathe being in each other's presence. Haven't you noticed?
What do you think all the guns are for? You can't overcome this barrier with any amount of technology--magnelev, cold fusion, recombinant DNA, you name it.

January 14, 1983
President Ronald Reagan signs into law legislation authorizing transfer of the Alaska Railroad to the State of Alaska.

http://www.akrr.com/arrc119.html

These same socialists have a Permanent Fund generating assets for all state residents at the expense of oil companies. The HORROR !

and imagine what transportation will be, say, 100 years from now.

it is pretty much a given that it WON'T be millions of single-person automobiles, regardless of fuel, jamming freeways and going nowhere. And there is only so much airspace available; air traffic is already saturated in major markets.

So yes, of course, sometime between now and then we need to start planning for then. Now would be a good time, IMO.

the arguments against existing rail service - slow, expensive, unreliable - are all operational issues. They have nothing to do with the simple fact that it is an outrageously more efficient (and safer) way to move people than is the automobile. Speeds can be MUCH higher than we have in this country today. Any trip of 300 miles or less can be faster by train than by plane. If the train can do 150 mph (that is readily achievable - just need to fix the roadbeds Japanes bullet trains exceed 300km/h: 186 mph) then it can get you city-to-city in say 2.5 hrs (allowing slow at terminals). The same trip by air calls for checking in an hr in advance, and, despite the fact that the plane may get up to 4-500 mph, it has to taxi, take off land, taxi... Chicago-St. Louis is 297 miles. 1 hr 10 min by air; 4 hr 49 min by car (mapquest).

So IF getting ones bones to Chicago Union Station is as easy as getting to O'Hare (certainly is for everyone living on the Metra lines that go into Union Station) then a roomy seat on Amtrak gets you downtown St. Louis in the same time as flying to Lambert (then 45 min to get downtown)

OK, there aren't trains every hour, and they get delayed. Planes get delayed more often, and they get cancelled.

Bottom line is if the commitment were made to provide good service, this would (and eventually will) be the only reasonable way to make trips like this.

My dad used Amtrak to visit my sister in the DC area - its an overnight from Chicago - he had a bedroom; I walked in, got him situated, porter looked out for him (I spent a few bucks to encourage that) - NO WAY would I have sent him by air alone in his later years. He went to bed; got up and had breakfast, they met him soon after. If I had a business meeting in DC I would certainly entertain Amtrak rather than either flying out night before and checking into hotel, or getting up at 4 am to catch an early flight.

Bottom line - it IS a viable alternative, and the oil companies and auto companies continue to fight it. If we only had the will to change and fight the special interests... gee, sound familiar?

corn whipping through the air, outracing through a tornado about to touch down, all the passengers knocked unconscious so that they can survive the unreal mph speeds without going into shock...

for that visual alone i'd be willing to pour, as carl sagan would say, billions and billions and billions into a passenger train service.

And I'll pay more taxes if needed.

http://trainweb.org/mdamtrak199/trainsounds/p5laold.mp3

Train trips rocked.
Unless it's a short range commuter train there's plenty of room for everyone and their stuff.
There have been special lines where people actually brought their cars along.
The last airliner I was on crammed us in like marines in an assault shuttle.
Trains laugh at all but the most extreme weather.
The energy expenditure per passenger is quite low.
If there's a problem you don't hit the ground at mach 0.8.
they're slower than aircraft to be sure.
But a vital piece of transportation none the less.

From Berlin, we traveled to Glasshuite, Dreden, and Prague very inexpensively and virtually stress-free.

Travel within the cities was relatively easy as well.

I'd love to see major improvements here and I'd gladly pay more taxes (which would be offset by my personal transportation costs) to get them.

Or should they drive a Ford Excursion to Florida for the winter?

.

I ride metronorth for 400 bucks per month and that is approximately 300 bucks a month more than it should cost.

At least I'd have a chance of getting to my destination on time.

That's pretty restrictive.

I think there are only about 5 or 6 cities in the US that have 1,000,000 or more people.

I think you may want to say that Amtrak should serve every Metropolitan Area of 1,000,000 or more people.

Phoenix is notably bereft of passenger rail. And by both estimates, it has over a million.

You are correct, though. I meant to say "Metropolitan Area".

and don't get me wrong, I love Amtrak, but frankly, given current technologies, it is not really feasible for most of the United States, given the distances involved. it makes sense in the northeast corridor, for instance, not so much in the west or midwest, the distances are just too great. it is, for instance, a 17 hour trip from Seattle to LA on a train, not a lot of people are going to do that for travel when you can fly in 2.5 hours for a third of the cost. it's just not logical given the vast spaces.

They'd make any journey across the Plains states seem like nothing.

The shinkansen are fabulous, but they cost about a half billion dollars for ten miles to build on flatland, it's a hundred miles rougly from chicago to milwaukee, that's five billion right there. And that is optimistic on costs, it's more likely to end up double that.

:shrug:

Would agree on the necessity of a national rail system.

DU pleasently surprises me sometimes. :hi: