As commuters continue to look for alternatives to high gas prices, increasing numbers are choo-choo-choosing Amtrak. A record 28 million passengers are expected to ride the train this fiscal year compared to 25.8 million last year. The House and Senate have passed bills that could boost Amtrak's funding by 33 percent, which has Amtrak prez Alex Kummant saying he's "optimistic" about the rail service's future. But he warns that aging trains, dilapidated tracks, and overcrowding are concerns. Nearly $5 billion would be needed just to get infrastructure up to snuff along the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor.
source: The Wall Street Journal
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:46 am
11 Aug 2008
Amtrak is very expensive -- as is all rail travel commuter and inter city. People who live in the Metro area of New York spend hundreds of dollars per month on rail -- even with subsidies!
It's a much better architecture to continue sprawl and to move jobs to where people want to live rather than snake high cost, high maintenance rail around the county.
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Caroline Posted 10:18 am
12 Aug 2008
Just how would you go about persuading big business (especially resource and raw-materials based Big Bisiness)to move into places where people want to live? It's my experience of that where people live is irrelevant to big business most of the time- they have other concerns such as the cost of extracting and shipping raw materials, finished goods, etc.
Rail has always suffered in comparison to other modes of transport. If you look at moving people, a road network is far more flexible for short trips. For long trips, air is faster. North America has relatively slow-moving trains, which doesn't help Amtrak. High-speed trains in areas like Europe and Asia fare far better as people-movers becasue distances are shorter and travel times much reduced. For moving anything other than people, however, rail is relatively cheap. It's also a heck of a lot "greener" than air. It's only real competitor is water transport. Seen any canal barges lately? The horse-drawn kind, I mean.
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