Amtrak poised to be sidetracked

Indeed. I recall one woman who got on the train in Smalltown BFE and got off 20 miles away in Podunk BFE.

The tracks are owned by freight railroad companies, so they aren’t going away. (Which is the big problem with Amtrak anyway - the trains get delayed because freight trains have priority.)

The coaches may get scrapped. Hopefully private ventures will use them for rail tours. Luxury “cruise trains” are all the rage in Japan now.

I think in the long run, the only way to revive inter-city trains is to build dedicated high-speed tracks: gentle curves, no freight traffic (or only high-speed freight traffic), and no level crossings. That’s the only way trains can compete with airliners.

I’m a Crescent rider and use it roughly once a year to get from NYC to northeast GA and back. I don’t like flying. Trains are far nicer.

And that sums up the general problems with long distance rail travel; except in the relatively densely packed Eastern Seaboard, the amount of time it takes for conventional rail travel offsets the savings (if any) from flying, and there isn’t even the convenience factor of being able to leave from a city center depot within reach of local feeder lines. If the US had a dedicated high speed rail system that might be a little different, but even then, the distances between cities in the American Mid-West and general urban sprawl would make that prohibitively expensive compared to a couple of short flights or point-to-point automobile travel and the convenience of being able to carry as much stuff and have a vehicle at the end of the trip. Amtrak is an anachronism that has had to be heavily subsidized, and as noted has low clearance priority owing to the fact that private freight railroads own nearly all of the intercity rail lines.

That being said, I’ve grown to detest air travel to the point that I avoid it whenever possible; not only the security lines and scurrilous TSA agents poking through my bags but the ill-mannered passengers, stupid fees I have to justify on expense reports, and ever decreasing leg room and ever increasing girth of passengers who cannot fit in their own seats. I would welcome an effective high speed rail system, which could also be developed to use a fungible source of power (electricity) rather than petrofuels, but the capital cost and right-of-way issues make it unlikely to be developed without an overarching federal mandate and a nationally-controlled high speed rail system.

Stranger

SD Pedant Alert!

The Amtrak Superliner I and IIs are not converted SF Hi Levels. While they resemble each other, the Superliners are a totally independent design.

Amtrak ran Hi Levels in the beginning but switched to Superliner Is starting in 1975.

The Superliners are great cars. I love the double-decker design. The lounge car has a great view. The only complaint I’ve ever had is that they always have a persopn playing guitar and singing in the loung car in the evening, and they always feel they have to sing City of New Orleans.

It varies, but the top price for a round trip coach seat is maybe $150. For peak travel days. For slow days quite a bit less. For Thanksgiving when I go it’s always a lot less than airfare. In fact I just priced it for this year and airfare is about twice the train fare. But of course they jack up airfare for Thanksgiving tremendously, whereas the train fare only goes up a little.

It takes about 10 hours. That’s the one big drawback. But I take the train only when I have plenty of time, with no immediate commitment at my destination.

Heck, a couple of decades ago I actually took Greyhound clear across the country (well, from Cleveland to Bozeman, MT, at least). That’s about the same speed as a train, and much less comfortable (except that there isn’t any passenger rail service to Bozeman).

And unless we can figure out how to make a plane run on something other than petrochemicals, we’re going to have to transition to something else anyway, sooner or later. I see no better prospect on the horizon than high-speed rail.

It’s cool if you don’t mind the travel time. The price I just checked was $251 from SFO to LAX for Thanksgiving.

But like I said, enjoying a long trip is cool too if you have the time for it, and I do hate the current state of air travel sometimes. But I’ve solved that by only taking foreign carriers and vacationing outside of the US :slight_smile:

There are other options besides planes, Amtrak and crappy Greyhound buses. The Boston area has a variety of bus services that run daily to NYC and beyond that aren’t full of homeless people. Some are ultra-cheap like MegaBus but still much better than Greyhound but there are also luxury bus services like LimoLiner that match or beat the airlines on total time and price and destroy them on service and convenience. They are basically outfitted like a luxury train car with modern technology. A round-trip is only about $200.

I realize that the Boston-NYC route isn’t the one that we are talking about but implementing something like that on high usage routes is the only way to make it viable. The U.S. is simply too big for even high-speed rail to ever see mass adoption. The existing rail lines are too limiting and it costs too much to build new, high speed rails for a very limited number of riders. There is no way to get point-to-point except in direct lines and that would only cover a small percentage of cities. It sounds fine to have a route that goes from NYC to Chicago and then on into Denver but that doesn’t work if you actually need to go to Milwaukee or Colorado Springs even if you disregard the time and cost.

Buses have a bad reputation because of companies like Greyhound but they don’t have to be that way. There could be a whole network of nicer bus lines that run on natural gas or are even hybrids and have stations that normal people are actually willing to go to for connections.

I don’t really care about long-distance Amtrak service, but the president’s budget is not really a reliable indicator of what programs will see their funding change.

Yeah, train boosters always talk about how great it is that trains take you from city center to city center, but I think they might underestimate the number of people who are turned off by the idea of beginning their trip with the hassle of going all the way into town.

Looks like Amtrak is not alone. Mass transit around the country (mostly the rail kind) seems to be largely crumbling away.

Thanks for the correction! I was confused by the mention of both in the Wikipedia article.

Easiest way to stimulate passenger train travel - create a new TSA rule that air passengers must arrive at the airport 24 hours before their flight for, y’know… security reasons and fighting terrorism and shit.

In 2004, I think it was in Albuquerque, TSA-types came on the train and started checking baggage. I had a big suitcase in the rack, away from the seats, and apparently they thought my faded nametag was a sign that it was a terrorist bag or something. They were about ready to open it up (it was locked) when they found me. If I hadn’t have been there, who knows what mischief they would have done to my luggage.

So trains are not immune from security stupidity.

The Seattle -> Portland run takes a very similar time as SEA -> PDX flight when you take into account airport logistics, and also similar to driving the whole way (about 3 hours total). Half the cost of a flight, and most of that time is on a comfy if slightly-old train with wifi, not in miserable airport security. And it’s straight downtown-to-downtown with good transit connections. Only downside is not quite enough departure times to be super-flexible. I choose it almost every time.

The Seattle to Vancouver BC is similarly nice.

I’m not sure there’s much value in the long coastal stretch between Portland and S.F. though, beyond being a “vacation train with views”. V. long and often v. late.

For me, the airport is on the opposite side of the city from me and an equal distance out, so it’s double the hassle of getting downtown. So airports are uneven, great for some, lousy for others, depending on where you live. On the other hand, populations, public transport, and roads tend to radiate out from city centers, so that has the “least total pain” across residents.

There is no costal stretch between Portland and SF. The Coast Starlight goes through freakin K. Falls, for cripes sake. It does not get near the ocean until down about SLO (apart from the Puget Sound coast south of Tacoma, but that is above Portland).

Well, ok, “coastal” in reference to the rest of the U.S. :slight_smile: I took the full Seattle to L.A. ride only once, on vacation when I was 10, and my only memories are the sea views (specific memories were around Santa Barbara and Puget Sound). When my sister did it a couple years back, it came in 24 hours late (not as in “the trip took 24 hours”, but as in “it was a full 24 hours late”!)

You’d want a heritage railroad for that. This one in Georgia, for example.