4 ms·

Ahh, the classic, "We've defunded and gutted this government program. Look! Government doesn't work!" that the American right traffics in. The private sector i

Ahh, the classic, "We've defunded and gutted this government program. Look! Government doesn't work!" that the American right traffics in. The private sector is the reason for these delays. http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/02/message-amtrak-regarding-time-performance/ http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/02/message-amtrak-regarding-time...

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Except that Amtrack is consistently late on the NEC and other regional lines that they have priority on. Really annoying when you are on a train waiting to pull out of a station and can't go because a late Amtrack has priority.
- michaelleslie 8y ago
  That's a good point. I know Penn is a major bottleneck (we have Christie to thank for that after killing ARC), and there's the added problem of delays conflicting with Metro North/NJT schedules. We need infrastructure investment in dense corridors if we're to get anywhere remotely near European or Asian standards.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    It's not clear to me we even have "dense corridors" like in Europe. I was in Munich, and driving in from the airport what struck me is that the city just ends. The city is 1.5 million people. Then there is another million or so people in the metro area, and 30 minutes outside of downtown its farms. Contrast Philadelphia, which is at the center of the U.S. "northeast megalopolis." It's also 1.5 million people, but there are another 4.5 million people in the surrounding sprawl. You can go an hour outside Philly in almost any direction and still be in suburban sprawl. That totally changes the transit equation. You build high-speed rail to Munich, and you're serving more than half the population of the metro area. You build high-speed rail to Philly, and you serve just a quarter of the population (while the other three quarters is stuck paying for something they have to drive to get to anyway). This is true at multiple levels of scale. Compare Ulm, Germany to Richmond, VA. Both are about 100-200k people. Aside from a few appendages, you hit farms 2-3 miles outside Ulm in most directions. Richmond, by contrast, is surrounded for 8-10 miles in all directions by suburbs, which have another million people. When it comes to voting for things like transit or train service, the people in the city that might benefit from it are totally outnumbered by all the people in the suburbs who can't.
    - kimdotcom 8y ago
      US cuts through our city-centers with interstate. Other countries do not do this.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      I think this is a good observation. The USA is just too spread out for rail travel to really work well. Most European countries are no bigger than a medium sized US state, and the cities are denser and smaller than American cities. It's easier to run a rail route between two European cities and realistically serve most of the people in those cities. And the cities aren't so far apart that flying becomes a really time-saving option.
      - mkempe 8y ago
        You are deeply wrong and need to look at proper maps. Europe is 33% larger than the USA (contiguous 48). [added] Note sure why this fact would be down-voted. We don't include Greenland or e.g. French Polynesian dependencies in the European total. Sweden is slightly larger than California, with 1/4 the population. Et caetera. Really, you should look at maps, population facts, as well as the extent and quality of railroads. And quit pretending that there is no rail connection across Europe. [1] America is failing when it comes to 21st century pubic transportation. Angrily lagging behind European, Japanese [2], or Chinese [3] railroads is not a healthy path. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
        rayiner 8y ago
        Define "Europe." "Europe" doesn't have high speed rail. Germany, France, etc., do, and those countries are a lot denser than the U.S. and most U.S. states. Moreover, U.S. cities are shaped very differently from Western European ones. Take the ratio of (city population) / (metro area population) and compare the U.S. state capitals to European capitals. In Europe, it's common for the majority of a metro area to live within city limits, even in small cities. In the U.S., the only major city that gets close to that benchmark is New York.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > We need infrastructure investment I don’t see why we need to subsidise passenger rail. Autonomous helis and passenger planes seem like a better bet.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      Capacity. Rail is pretty much unbeatable in terms of pure people per hour. The Tokaido Shinkansen carried 143M people in 2012; the busiest air route in the world, Seoul-Jeju, carried 11 million people in 2015. From the (admittedly not great) source of CAHSR: > Providing the equivalent new capacity on the state’s highways and airports would cost more than double the investment required to develop a high-speed rail system between San Francisco and Los Angeles. If it was even possible, that would mean building 4,300 new highway lane miles, 115 additional airport gates, and four new airport runways at an estimated cost of $158 billion. [...] Caltrans estimates operations and maintenance costs on those new highway lanes at $132.8 billion for over 50 years.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Planes are terribly polluting, and unlike trains, there's no expectation that can be changed anytime soon. If you properly accounted for that externality, trains might be profitable after all.
- gok 8y ago
  They not only have priority, they often own the tracks.
rayiner 8y ago
Amtrak continues to require government support to cover its operating expenses, while Deutsche Bahn,[1] manages to turn an operating profit. So how is Amtrak "defunded?" [1] Deutsche Bahn is owned by the German government, but unlike Amtrak is operated as a private company.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

Except that Amtrack is consistently late on the NEC and other regional lines that they have priority on. Really annoying when you are on a train waiting to pull out of a station and can't go because a late Amtrack has priority.

michaelleslie 8y ago
That's a good point. I know Penn is a major bottleneck (we have Christie to thank for that after killing ARC), and there's the added problem of delays conflicting with Metro North/NJT schedules. We need infrastructure investment in dense corridors if we're to get anywhere remotely near European or Asian standards.
- rayiner 8y ago
  It's not clear to me we even have "dense corridors" like in Europe. I was in Munich, and driving in from the airport what struck me is that the city just ends. The city is 1.5 million people. Then there is another million or so people in the metro area, and 30 minutes outside of downtown its farms. Contrast Philadelphia, which is at the center of the U.S. "northeast megalopolis." It's also 1.5 million people, but there are another 4.5 million people in the surrounding sprawl. You can go an hour outside Philly in almost any direction and still be in suburban sprawl. That totally changes the transit equation. You build high-speed rail to Munich, and you're serving more than half the population of the metro area. You build high-speed rail to Philly, and you serve just a quarter of the population (while the other three quarters is stuck paying for something they have to drive to get to anyway). This is true at multiple levels of scale. Compare Ulm, Germany to Richmond, VA. Both are about 100-200k people. Aside from a few appendages, you hit farms 2-3 miles outside Ulm in most directions. Richmond, by contrast, is surrounded for 8-10 miles in all directions by suburbs, which have another million people. When it comes to voting for things like transit or train service, the people in the city that might benefit from it are totally outnumbered by all the people in the suburbs who can't.
  - kimdotcom 8y ago
    US cuts through our city-centers with interstate. Other countries do not do this.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    I think this is a good observation. The USA is just too spread out for rail travel to really work well. Most European countries are no bigger than a medium sized US state, and the cities are denser and smaller than American cities. It's easier to run a rail route between two European cities and realistically serve most of the people in those cities. And the cities aren't so far apart that flying becomes a really time-saving option.
    - mkempe 8y ago
      You are deeply wrong and need to look at proper maps. Europe is 33% larger than the USA (contiguous 48). [added] Note sure why this fact would be down-voted. We don't include Greenland or e.g. French Polynesian dependencies in the European total. Sweden is slightly larger than California, with 1/4 the population. Et caetera. Really, you should look at maps, population facts, as well as the extent and quality of railroads. And quit pretending that there is no rail connection across Europe. [1] America is failing when it comes to 21st century pubic transportation. Angrily lagging behind European, Japanese [2], or Chinese [3] railroads is not a healthy path. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
      - rayiner 8y ago
        Define "Europe." "Europe" doesn't have high speed rail. Germany, France, etc., do, and those countries are a lot denser than the U.S. and most U.S. states. Moreover, U.S. cities are shaped very differently from Western European ones. Take the ratio of (city population) / (metro area population) and compare the U.S. state capitals to European capitals. In Europe, it's common for the majority of a metro area to live within city limits, even in small cities. In the U.S., the only major city that gets close to that benchmark is New York.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > We need infrastructure investment I don’t see why we need to subsidise passenger rail. Autonomous helis and passenger planes seem like a better bet.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    Capacity. Rail is pretty much unbeatable in terms of pure people per hour. The Tokaido Shinkansen carried 143M people in 2012; the busiest air route in the world, Seoul-Jeju, carried 11 million people in 2015. From the (admittedly not great) source of CAHSR: > Providing the equivalent new capacity on the state’s highways and airports would cost more than double the investment required to develop a high-speed rail system between San Francisco and Los Angeles. If it was even possible, that would mean building 4,300 new highway lane miles, 115 additional airport gates, and four new airport runways at an estimated cost of $158 billion. [...] Caltrans estimates operations and maintenance costs on those new highway lanes at $132.8 billion for over 50 years.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Planes are terribly polluting, and unlike trains, there's no expectation that can be changed anytime soon. If you properly accounted for that externality, trains might be profitable after all.
gok 8y ago
They not only have priority, they often own the tracks.

rayiner 8y ago

Amtrak continues to require government support to cover its operating expenses, while Deutsche Bahn,[1] manages to turn an operating profit. So how is Amtrak "defunded?" [1] Deutsche Bahn is owned by the German government, but unlike Amtrak is operated as a private company.