19 ms·

Amtrak’s Empire Builder: The Train That Deserves Better

178 points by gok 6y ago

kalessin 6y ago
Too bad, I really enjoy those long distance Amtrak trips, and I can't wait to take the California Zephyr or the Southwest Chief again, but not sure I wanna ride multiple days on Amtrak in the current situation. I hope service is resumed after the pandemic, I haven't had the chance to take this route yet!
tspike 6y ago
This is disappointing. I used the Empire Builder to commute back and forth between Hood River and Portland before the pandemic. I've since stopped riding as my office has transitioned to full remote, and I can't justify the risk of spending almost 2 hours each way in a metal tube with strangers. In that sense, I guess I am part of the cause of its demise. It was by far my favorite mode of travel for my commute. The scenery through the Gorge and relaxation it brought me relative to the drive were so valuable. I got to know the staff, and in the evenings, could kick back with a beer in the observation car while looking at Multnomah Falls. I'd rather spend 2x the time on a train and have the full time be usable than driving, where I would always show up stressed out and feeling behind in my day before I even started. I also took it eastbound one time to ski in Montana. That was wonderful. I boarded about 7pm, dinked around on my computer for a couple of hours, fell asleep, and woke up at a world-class ski area where I could walk to my motel, catch a bus to the slopes and back, and walk to a top notch concert downtown at night.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  On a road trip my family and I stopped at Wishram once. What a strange little community in the Columbia with its own train stop. It was a Sunday, so it was pretty deserted (maybe everyone was at church?), but you could see signs of human habitation everywhere.
- jdxcode 6y ago
  What a beautiful place to commute from. I proposed to my wife at Multnomah Falls.
- pottertheotter 6y ago
  Reading this made me feel relaxed.
- RealityVoid 6y ago
  That is a 4h commute each day! While I echo your feeling about trains and commuting, a 4h commute would absolutely crush me. Let's say you sleep 8h, you work 8h and you commute 4h, that does not leave a whole lot of time in the day.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    I'd happily take a four hour commute during which I can read, watch movies, browse Reddit, etc. over a two hour commute which requires me to be behind the wheel of a car. (I'll take remote work over either one, of course.)
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Not me. What I hated most going from driving my car to taking the bus is I could drive in 12 minutes, the bus took 25. I miss that extra 26 minutes per day with my family. Working from home is better, but I suppose it must end (when there is a vaccine)
      - monkeynotes 6y ago
        I think there will be a sizable number of people who will still work from home post-covid. Businesses can save a boatload of money by closing down office spaces. If their business is still productive with remote work why would they sign a new lease?
        bluGill 6y ago
        There are real downsides to not working together. There is a reason my boss told me I can schedule a trip to India anytime I felt like it - seeing the people I work with there face to face was often important.
    - monkeynotes 6y ago
      When I used to commute (also close to 2hrs each way) I just never got enough sleep. I'd have to get up around 6am to be on the train by 7am. I'd get to my desk worn out and dreading another slog back home for 7/8pm. It sucked so much I decided lifestyle is more important than work and moved to Canada where I have been able to walk to work or had an otherwise easy commute. In my opinion anyone travelling 4 hrs between work is living in a poverty of sorts. Perhaps not financial poverty, but in my opinion a lack of freedom to enjoy your life outside of work is a considerable deficit in your short time here.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  > In that sense, I guess I am part of the cause of its demise. In a more ideal situation we'd be backstopping all forms of public transport right now at the federal level so that they don't suffer any diminution of service after covid is over. It's understandable - and necessary - that people don't want to travel in various types of metal tubes right now, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option again post-pandemic. Instead there are actual attempts in DC to bail out cruise lines. Also love the train station in downtown Portland - it was restored to it's 1913 glory some years back. It's so much more pleasant catching a train than a plane as you show up 15 minutes prior to departure and not miss your train. Also so much more legroom. Going by train just feels so much more civilized.
neom 6y ago
Dylan's Travel Reports youtube channel does awesome reviews of long haul train journeys, here is the Empire Builder review if anyone is curious: https://youtu.be/wa_D27yvl5U https://youtu.be/wa_D27yvl5U
adventured 6y ago
Biden rode Amtrak to work for 36 years [1], from Delaware to DC. As someone who appreciates the benefits of available rail transportation more than perhaps any other recent national politician, I'm hoping he'll take a shot at either doing some regional high-speed rail, or at least making substantial improvements to Amtrak. [1] https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a32363173/joe-biden-amtrak-joe-meaning/ https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a32363173/joe-biden-amt...
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Regional high speed rail is already in the works. Here's an overview of the Midwest plan, with a map: https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2010/01/16/midwest-high-speed-rail-part-1-overview/ https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2010/01/16/midwest-high-...
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Regional high speed rail is already in the works. Here's an overview of the Midwest plan, with a map: https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2010/01/16/midwest-high-speed-rail-part-1-overview/ https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2010/01/16/midwest-high-... Those blog posts are from 10 years ago Is that plan still current? What have they actually built in that time?
    - adventured 6y ago
      The only high-speed rail effort I'm aware of that has any reasonable shot at becoming actual and is currently being pursued, is the Dallas-Houston line. From September 21: "High-speed train between Dallas and Houston gets federal approval" "Texas Central expects to start construction in the first half of 2021." https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/21/dallas-houston-high-speed-train/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/21/dallas-houston-high-...
      - goodcanadian 6y ago
        Well, California high speed rail is being built.[1] And there is Brightline which doesn't really qualify as high speed, but it is newly operating, and it fills a useful niche.[2] Ideally, I would like to see many more such projects. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline
jrs235 6y ago
I took the Empire Builder from La Crosse, WI to Everett, WA and back with my wife and two young children many years ago. It was an experience and we generally enjoyed it. I also took it from La Crosse, WI to downtown Chicago and back for a business trip. Sure beat driving!
pradeepnr 6y ago
Trains should carry vehicles as well similar to ferry.
- urda 6y ago
  Some Amtrak lines do via their "Auto Train": https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train-experience https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train-experience
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Not really "some Amtrak Lines". One, and only one line, between the lower-mid-Atlantic and southern Florida.
    - vonmoltke 6y ago
      Also, it's a point-to-point express. Lorton, VA to Sanford, FL (and nothing in between).
      - Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
        That's a common feature of car-carrying trains because of the infrastructure required, not to mention that loading and unloading cars takes so long that you really don't want to do it at an intermediate stop. For instance, the Austrian Federal Railway operates a pair of overnight trains from Innsbruck and Vienna to Dusseldorf and Hamburg, which also transport cars. The only possible routes you can take your car on are Innsbruck-Dusseldorf and Vienna-Hamburg. Meanwhile, as a foot passenger you can also get on or off at an intermediate stop like Cologne or Munich. Foot passengers can also travel Innsbruck-Hamburg or Vienna-Dusseldorf (as sleeping cars are switched between the two trains in Nuremberg, but car carrying wagons aren't).
    - urda 6y ago
      TIL thanks for the info. I could have sworn it was on at least more than one ha.
lacker 6y ago
It's frustrating to me that this train only goes 79 miles an hour. It seems really hard for it to be a competitive option with driving when the maximum speed is approximately the same as the maximum speed in a car.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  The problem isn't so much the speed, it's that it has to slow down frequently, gets blocked by freight trains too often, and stops in far too many towns. There should be an express option.
  - yourapostasy 6y ago
    > There should be an express option. We have the technology now to sling the last car (could be a sub-standard-size car) to a shunt track at a station to offload passengers at the station, which redirects much of the kinetic energy braking it to speed up an already-moving outgoing car off the shunt track to connect to the train to onboard passengers from the station, without the train slowing down at all. Some folks were working on it in France and separate group was working on it in China if I recall correctly from a handful of years ago, but it never got traction. I figure the amount of space the shunt track requires (more length the faster the train travels through the station) and the costs killed it, but it would be skookum tech. The sheer scale of physically moving around humanity might be a problem uniquely facing our civilization that previous civilizations didn't have to contend with. Maybe on an available watts/person measure we have more than previous civilizations, but it is a fascinating megascale engineering problem to me to wonder about the efficiency optimization possibilities. Not just moving people around the planet, but how to get people off the planet.
news_to_me 6y ago
Sad to hear this. I rode the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle in 2013 with all my things after college — it was a big moment for me and that line will always be special to me.
reaperducer 6y ago
Empire Builder isn't what it should be. I don't know how many times I've taken it between Chicago and Seattle. Sunset Limited is worse, though. No activities. Fewer showers. And you can't even get your meals brought to your room.
yuliyp 6y ago
The Empire Builder is one of those vacation trains. That it actually does something useful between Minnesota and Chicago is basically accidental. Because it's government-run it has to run these completely unprofitable trains.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  there are very few trains anywhere in the world that are profitable if "profit" is determined by the balance of cost vs income. most countries with extensive, speedy and reliable train service measure the "profit" of their systems by considering other measures in addition to these two very simplistic measurements.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    Many train systems (eg japan) make profit on renting station space, they are actually profitable overall without subsidy, but this is very much like the land grant system used to fund America’s first railroads. Perhaps something like that would work in the USA again
  - presentation 6y ago
    Here in Japan, JR and the other train operators are extremely profitable, since they also act as developers in the land over their stations, so obviously they build and profit from shopping, apartment and office towers on every station. Which makes sense - you didn’t ride the train just to ride a train, you rode it to go somewhere.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    That's true of intercity trains; metro train systems are sometimes reasonably profitable.
- MH15 6y ago
  There is a thing called a "positive externality". The capitalist class in the United States would do good to remember this when debating the "cost" of public goods.
kevindong 6y ago
> the Twin Cities-Chicago market is definitely a route that deserves better service For reference, the distance between Minneapolis and Chicago is about 400 miles. If the Amtrak schedule [0] is strictly adhered to, the travel time is ~7.75 hours. Current prices are ~$116 roundtrip. Google Maps says the estimated time by car (assuming no traffic) is ~6.25 hours. At ~30 miles/gallon at $2/gallon, the cost of a roundtrip for just gas would be ~$53. A roundtrip, non-stop flight lasting ~1.5 hours each way can be had for ~$80~$175 with the passenger's choice of at least 10 distinct flights/3 separate airlines. I like rail. But it's clear that there's not a market fit for rail between Minneapolis and Chicago without massive subsidies. A car is faster and cheaper. A plane is much faster and about the same price. Both car and planes are strictly more convenient. [0]: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/temporary-timetables/Empire-Builder-Schedule-031620.pdf https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Depending on whether you fly into O'Hare or Midway, you've got a significant or a somewhat significant journey into Chicago after you land. This doesn't negate your point, but needs to be taken into account for city-to-city service.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Depends on where you go. The arrival is written by someone who lives near the airport in Minneapolis and had to drive (or?) a considerable distance to the train station.
- beisner 6y ago
  FWIW when driving, tolls along that route are roughly $10 each way... and that's low for the midwest.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    so that's worth about $10 more for a grand total of ~$63 for the trip
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Amtrak wants to remove the entire central portion of the Southwest Chief, turning the entire route between Kansas City and Albuquerque into bus service only. This was even before COVID19 happened. God knows what they will plan on doing post-COVID.
gbronner 6y ago
Comment section will bring out the foamers, but consider: There's demand for service from mpls to Chicago, but it would have to be much faster- at 3 hours it would be competitive. That would require massive rail investment, and would basically create a new railroad next to the existing one, as fast passenger and slow freight don't mix. This is probably not cost effective. A nice bus gets you better service with lower capital expenditures. West of mpls, the train drags 200k lb sleeping cars along with lounge and diner cars for only a handful of passengers. Swedish and Russian railways pack 6 to a compartment; Amtrak struggles with 2. No way this is cost effective or a good use of capital. Deregulate the fra rules, allow electric buses on the rails (and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards), and you might get real innovation and a competitive product...
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > and would basically create a new railroad next to the existing one, as fast passenger and slow freight don't mix Why not make freight fast, too? > A nice bus gets you better service with lower capital expenditures A bus can accomodate 80 people per driver, a train (German ICE) 750 seats+750 people standing. Sure, a bus is cheaper in upfront investment, but has higher operation expenses, is way slower and is worse for the environment. Additionally, buses get caught in traffic jams while railways are generally separate. > allow electric buses on the rails What? Why? And how should this be secured?! > and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >Why not make freight fast, too? Money. Most goods need to be on schedule, not fast. More speed costs more money. >These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents. The standards were also written for a world who's conditions were very different from those of today. I know that you can score easy virtue points by pretending like any rollback of regulation that is intended to protect something is a bad thing but let's be real here. With modern signaling infrastructure there's no reason that dedicated passenger rail can't be equally safe or safer than legacy passenger rail that has to be interoperable with legacy signaling systems and freight rail.
trainsawayy 6y ago
Aww. I liked it, even though it was clear before the pandemic that it was on the downswing. Rail travel is just much more relaxing and interesting than air travel. People in an airport act like zombies, but people on a train act like people. One time, I was on a Empire Builder that got stuck in a freight yard around midnight. The freight company had donated an engine to replace one that had broken on the Amtrak train, but apparently the crew didn't have a key to unlock it. So we sat in a freight yard for about an hour, with snow gently falling around us. It had been several hours since our last stop, and the passengers started to get restless. 4 hours without a smoke break is considered a mortal sin in Montana. Eventually, the crew relented and let people out in the freezing snow to smoke on the train tracks, under a litany of disclaimers about trespassing and liability and whatnot. It was hilarious and surreal. Amtrak felt like a system run by human beings, so it was chronically late and haphazard, but I'll still miss it compared the the sterile almost-competence of modern airports.
- uxp100 6y ago
  I don’t think that’s true that all of empire builder was on a downswing. Before Covid, (and maybe still), empire builder was going to get a second train in each direction daily on the stretch from St Paul to Chicago. Right now 90% of the route from St. Paul is forbidden from traveling to Chicago. And dining service was being removed from many routes before Covid, I’m sure that has been accelerated.
Theodores 6y ago
> Along the Mississippi River we wait in a siding for an approaching freight train Good grief. With all of that big country and having had more than a century to make rail routes 'broad way' with four tracks, it beggars belief that so many U.S. rail routes are this third-world, poverty spec. single track arrangement. Plus the options for delays are comical. You could understand a train being hours late if it was on its first outing as a prototype but really? Hot air balloons have a more predictable and reliable service. Plus the heritage of U.S. railroads and the fantastic loading gauge mean that U.S. trains should be the best and the most stylish in the world. Those double deck carriages with observation domes and the potential for cool end carriages and comfy sleeping arrangements are just not so easy in other countries. Plus the scenery is spectacular in much of the U.S. Why the reality is people driving for hours with attention focused on the road the whole way - is this not a waste of human potential? You could be reading or doing your knitting on the train rather than holding that wheel. I think that the rail network in the U.S. is not to be given up on. There could even be a whole new approach to it. I often wonder if you could build vastly lighter trains that used active suspension and other gizmos that you might find in a deluxe German road car to put some magic back into rails. Plus speed is a problem on U.S. rail. Even in the UK there are trains that slightly terrify you with a genuine perception of 120+ mph speed. In the U.S. you can be crawling along at 12 mph and that is if you are not stuck in a siding waiting for a mile long freight train to crawl past at 12 mph. Recently I learned the PRR T1 trains in the days of steam would be doing an estimated 140 mph if behind schedule. Those streamliner trains from almost a century ago were just so cool. For the 21st century America needs trains that suit post Covid, post-boomer lifestyles that hark back to the majesty of times past.
- eesmith 6y ago
  "an estimated 140 mph if behind schedule" - the Mallard set the steam speed record of 126 mph. Perhaps you're thinking of kph? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_T1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_T1 says "there was a drawback of the metallurgy used; the poppet valve could not withstand the stress of sustained high-speed operation (meaning over 100 mph (160 km/h) on production T1s)."
bluGill 6y ago
Amtrak needs to kill all operation outside of New England until they can get that system working. DC to Boston should leave a evey half hour or better 24x7, with average speeds of 150 mph. Note average includes all stops (new York city obviously is a stop, we can debate others). This is perfectly possible and would make money. Until they get that working they shouldn't try anything with harder to make work routes.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Why would killing all of those routes help Amtrak? The sentiment of "we should prevent you from expanding until you fix all of your problems" tends to lead into death spirals instead of solutions.
  - treis 6y ago
    Shedding marginal products and focusing on profitable ones is a classic turn around strategy. Rail in the US could definitely use a model system to prove out it's viability. The biggest ongoing project is California's and that's shaping up to be a disaster.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Because money is limited and those routes lose money. Taking whatever is lost running those routes adds some more pocket change to fixing the routes that Amtrak should improve the most. Sorry to the handful of people who live in the middle of nowhere, but for every one of you Amtrak serves there are 10,000 people on the east coast that would use improved service. The death spiral can sometimes be real, but lack of focus also is a death spiral. Amtrak has been around since the 1970s and most of the improvements to the east coast have been obviously needed and yet haven't happened. While we can (many do) debate what route to run new rails, what is the most important step to take first, and many other details, the big picture is the same to all observers. Of course the reality is Amtrak exists for political reasons. Probably more realistic is to split Amtrak into two parts (with completely different leadership), one with the goal of making the east cost work well, and one with the goal of political appeasing people on in the middle of nowhere. The way you run the two systems needs to be very different and so there is no reason to keep them together as the concerns of each is a distraction from the other.
PaulHoule 6y ago
People born in the last 50 years have no idea of the anger and resentment that Americans had towards railroad companies, immortalized by the use of the word "railroaded" in slang. Back in the day the railroad would go right past your town, refuse to build a stop, buy the land along the tracks a few miles away, build a stop, and then start a new town there. Cher had a monologue in the 1990 movie "Mermaids" where she talked about the feeling of freedom she had from getting in her car and that feeling can be best appreciated by understanding the way that pre-WWII Americans felt about taking the train. Today a car payment, insurance and all that feel like a millstone at your neck, but back then you could get in a new car and smell the freedom. That generation knew what it was like for somebody who could care less what you think to decide when and where you go.
- lucideer 6y ago
  Is it possible the forces that are causing the demise of trains today are the same forces that caused the derision toward trains 50 years ago?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  That resentment has less to do with anything inherent to rail than it does to a ruthlessly-run monopoly. In which light there are numerous analogous examples present in other examples. Some decades back I spent some time listening to a denizen of flyover country speak with still-simmering anger of how the Interstate, already a couple of decades old, had bypassed his town, drying up local highway traffic and decimating local business. Today, airlines are recalibrating expense-revenue models and determining what routes remain profitable. Telecoms monopolies try to provide the minimum viablequantum of service --- theoretical and net bandwidth, latency, and reliability --- for a given subscriber rate. Disruptions in live-work patterns tend to bugger this. Any connections or network-based sector is subject to this, especially in private hands; transport, communications, trade (bulk cargo, wholesale, retail), energy distribution, utility services, information, broadcast, etc.
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    You are so right about private networks. What's interesting about highways is that they produce a politically durable coalition around a combination of public ownership of the roads and private ownership of the cars. Psychologically there is a double dose of the "feeling of ownership" because "we all" perceive the roads belong to us (e.g. a socialist feeling of camaraderie) but we also have a sunk cost in a vehicle we own that is tied to feelings of "I've somebody special because I drive a special car and such". In contrast, investments in public transit are seeing as benefiting "special interests" in most places, except in California where normally skinflint taxpayers are notorious for ballot initiatives to fund public transit that they don't actually use.
nahuel0x 6y ago
Imagine a zero emissions electrical vehicle with no batteries at all, much more easily automatable than cars, infinitely safer and can be used for medium and long distances. Looks like a Tesla pipe dream, right? Now imagine a complete transportation grid using these and add public individual vehicles for last mile transportation. Trains are the rational future, they were before, but irrational market forces are against them.
- pc86 6y ago
  Unless you care at all about how long it takes you to get somewhere. I've taken the train from central Pennsylvania to NYC several times. It's great, but it's also a hike and not something you want to do for anything shorter than a long weekend (4 days is perfect, especially if you can do Fri-Mon as the Sunday train is usually very full). I did it once for a Sat/Sun trip and you just spend too much time on the train watching a movie or staring out the window.
  - calaphos 6y ago
    But that's not inherent to the mode of transportation. In germany (and generally in Europe) taking the train is often a bit faster (~20%) than by car - assuming no traffic. Of course this doesn't apply to rural regions, but between most cities trains run every 1h. And the train network in germany isn't even very good.
    - pc86 6y ago
      It's inherent to the current state of US rail, though.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      > And the train network in germany isn't even very good. It's all relative :) Coming from Ireland (where intercity is still diesel with max speeds around 160km/h, and average speeds far worse), ICE kind of seems like magic.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
cstross 6y ago
To European eyes, the delays on that journey (which the author dismisses with a shrug) are outrageous. Arriving an hour late at one stop, then 1h40m late to the next -- 93 miles away per google -- is ridiculous! You'd only get those sort of delays if there'd been a fatal accident on the line, or downed overhead power cables, or a similar major disruption, and the carrier would be issuing refunds and apologizing. Even here in the UK. Also, a nominal hour to cover 93 miles by rail, and just three trains a week, is just laughable. That's a tourism charter service, not a transport network. It's no wonder Americans don't think in terms of rail travel as mass transport. If you can't run trains like commuter planes, something's badly wrong.
- fredoralive 6y ago
  AIUI it’s partly due to priority rules. In most countries, passenger trains have priority over freight. Amtrak doesn’t own much rail itself, and mostly runs on 3rd party tracks. On these Amtrak only has priority if it’s running on time. So as soon as a train gets one delay, the various railway operators stop giving the train priority, and it just gets more delayed.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    The penalties on cargo timing are pretty severe. If that cargo train is supposed to be somewhere to load / unload, it really is a problem if it doesn't arrive on time and costs the railroads money they do not want to pay. Cargo, as many SV startups have discovered, is much more profitable than passenger.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    This boondoggle brought to you by the oil, gas, and auto lobbies; who paid our politicians to kneecap Amtrak and more generally, our rail industry. Bonus: libs are placated by nice bike trails on the bones of dead infrastructure, happy to "do their part" to reduce oil use and blissfully ignorant of the difference that electric trains would make in displacing diesel trucks.
    - montjoy 6y ago
thisisauserid 6y ago
I just completed a cross-country Amtrak sleeper-car journey from New York City to Spokane and flew back from there. (I would have continued to Seattle or Portland but everything seemed to be kind of on fire). I got off in Chicago for few days, then rented a can in Montana and drove around for a few days before getting back on. The Lake Sore Limited line had much better sleepers with windows on the top bunk. The Empire Builder has that amazing viewing car though with panoramic views. Until I got to Glacier National Park the first leg between NYC and Buffalo was much more beautiful. Glacier is not worth trying to describe, just go see it.
deleted 6y ago
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hackbinary 6y ago
I read somewhere previously that the USA (and Canada) largely prioritise (bulk) freight over passenger travel when considering rail transport. Freight trains are given priority over passenger trains, when passenger trains having to wait for, yield to, and let freight ahead of then. Further the tracks in NA are designed to carry weight rather than for speed. The design considerations are quite different.
drdeadringer 6y ago
I'm turning 39 this year. In the 1990s my immediate family would travel from MA to MI via Amtrak to visit grandparents. Travel time in each direction was measured in days. Later on we "upgraded" to planes which reduced travel time to hours within one day. I miss the trains. Nostalgia aside, diner car and all, I crave the rumble-tumble and the scenery and the idea of "cross country". Tunnels. Every day I commute into and out of work, I witness a random toddler jumping up and down or waving or waddle-running along the train because train. I have an anniversary coming up in a few months. I and my partner are interested in celebrating by train.
jt2190 6y ago
Some context: Amtrak was created as part of a federal bail-out that re-organized the railroads. (Other parts were: Allowing railroads to merge operations; abandon unneeded trackage; and an ongoing dose of de-regulation.) For Amtrak to get federal political support it needs to operate in many states, even though it makes no financial sense to do so. Hence trains that seem run in the middle of nowhere, and are often slower to get anywhere.
bane 6y ago
When I was a teen I was part of a group that did a Washington D.C. to Miami (and back) Amtrak trip. We knew it was going to take longer, but it was about $100 cheaper than flying -- and thought it might be fun to take a long haul train. It's maybe a 16-20 hour car trip. Less than a 3 hour flight. Amtrak turns it into a 23-24 hour train ride without delays. We were more than 8 hours delayed getting there, which caused all kinds of havoc with our local transport and accommodations. This is not in a sparsely populated part of the U.S. It's not the North-East corridor, but it's still pretty heavily populated for most of the run. I swore off trains ever again until many years later my wife thought it would be better to start taking trains around Europe and I finally understood how good they can be. More recently we were in Japan and took the Shinkansen (and a bunch of local trains) all over the country and experienced truly the dream that trains can be. As much of an improvement as the average Eurorail is over Amtrak, Japanese trains are the much of an improvement over Europe. Absolutely incredible.

178 points by gok 6y ago

Too bad, I really enjoy those long distance Amtrak trips, and I can't wait to take the California Zephyr or the Southwest Chief again, but not sure I wanna ride multiple days on Amtrak in the current situation. I hope service is resumed after the pandemic, I haven't had the chance to take this route yet!

tspike 6y ago

This is disappointing. I used the Empire Builder to commute back and forth between Hood River and Portland before the pandemic. I've since stopped riding as my office has transitioned to full remote, and I can't justify the risk of spending almost 2 hours each way in a metal tube with strangers. In that sense, I guess I am part of the cause of its demise. It was by far my favorite mode of travel for my commute. The scenery through the Gorge and relaxation it brought me relative to the drive were so valuable. I got to know the staff, and in the evenings, could kick back with a beer in the observation car while looking at Multnomah Falls. I'd rather spend 2x the time on a train and have the full time be usable than driving, where I would always show up stressed out and feeling behind in my day before I even started. I also took it eastbound one time to ski in Montana. That was wonderful. I boarded about 7pm, dinked around on my computer for a couple of hours, fell asleep, and woke up at a world-class ski area where I could walk to my motel, catch a bus to the slopes and back, and walk to a top notch concert downtown at night.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago
On a road trip my family and I stopped at Wishram once. What a strange little community in the Columbia with its own train stop. It was a Sunday, so it was pretty deserted (maybe everyone was at church?), but you could see signs of human habitation everywhere.
jdxcode 6y ago
What a beautiful place to commute from. I proposed to my wife at Multnomah Falls.
pottertheotter 6y ago
Reading this made me feel relaxed.
RealityVoid 6y ago
That is a 4h commute each day! While I echo your feeling about trains and commuting, a 4h commute would absolutely crush me. Let's say you sleep 8h, you work 8h and you commute 4h, that does not leave a whole lot of time in the day.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  I'd happily take a four hour commute during which I can read, watch movies, browse Reddit, etc. over a two hour commute which requires me to be behind the wheel of a car. (I'll take remote work over either one, of course.)
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Not me. What I hated most going from driving my car to taking the bus is I could drive in 12 minutes, the bus took 25. I miss that extra 26 minutes per day with my family. Working from home is better, but I suppose it must end (when there is a vaccine)
    - monkeynotes 6y ago
      I think there will be a sizable number of people who will still work from home post-covid. Businesses can save a boatload of money by closing down office spaces. If their business is still productive with remote work why would they sign a new lease?
      - bluGill 6y ago
        There are real downsides to not working together. There is a reason my boss told me I can schedule a trip to India anytime I felt like it - seeing the people I work with there face to face was often important.
  - monkeynotes 6y ago
    When I used to commute (also close to 2hrs each way) I just never got enough sleep. I'd have to get up around 6am to be on the train by 7am. I'd get to my desk worn out and dreading another slog back home for 7/8pm. It sucked so much I decided lifestyle is more important than work and moved to Canada where I have been able to walk to work or had an otherwise easy commute. In my opinion anyone travelling 4 hrs between work is living in a poverty of sorts. Perhaps not financial poverty, but in my opinion a lack of freedom to enjoy your life outside of work is a considerable deficit in your short time here.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
> In that sense, I guess I am part of the cause of its demise. In a more ideal situation we'd be backstopping all forms of public transport right now at the federal level so that they don't suffer any diminution of service after covid is over. It's understandable - and necessary - that people don't want to travel in various types of metal tubes right now, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option again post-pandemic. Instead there are actual attempts in DC to bail out cruise lines. Also love the train station in downtown Portland - it was restored to it's 1913 glory some years back. It's so much more pleasant catching a train than a plane as you show up 15 minutes prior to departure and not miss your train. Also so much more legroom. Going by train just feels so much more civilized.

neom 6y ago

Dylan's Travel Reports youtube channel does awesome reviews of long haul train journeys, here is the Empire Builder review if anyone is curious: https://youtu.be/wa_D27yvl5U https://youtu.be/wa_D27yvl5U

adventured 6y ago

Biden rode Amtrak to work for 36 years [1], from Delaware to DC. As someone who appreciates the benefits of available rail transportation more than perhaps any other recent national politician, I'm hoping he'll take a shot at either doing some regional high-speed rail, or at least making substantial improvements to Amtrak. [1] https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a32363173/joe-biden-amtrak-joe-meaning/ https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a32363173/joe-biden-amt...

reaperducer 6y ago
Regional high speed rail is already in the works. Here's an overview of the Midwest plan, with a map: https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2010/01/16/midwest-high-speed-rail-part-1-overview/ https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2010/01/16/midwest-high-...
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Regional high speed rail is already in the works. Here's an overview of the Midwest plan, with a map: https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2010/01/16/midwest-high-speed-rail-part-1-overview/ https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2010/01/16/midwest-high-... Those blog posts are from 10 years ago Is that plan still current? What have they actually built in that time?
  - adventured 6y ago
    The only high-speed rail effort I'm aware of that has any reasonable shot at becoming actual and is currently being pursued, is the Dallas-Houston line. From September 21: "High-speed train between Dallas and Houston gets federal approval" "Texas Central expects to start construction in the first half of 2021." https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/21/dallas-houston-high-speed-train/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/21/dallas-houston-high-...
    - goodcanadian 6y ago
      Well, California high speed rail is being built.[1] And there is Brightline which doesn't really qualify as high speed, but it is newly operating, and it fills a useful niche.[2] Ideally, I would like to see many more such projects. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline

jrs235 6y ago

I took the Empire Builder from La Crosse, WI to Everett, WA and back with my wife and two young children many years ago. It was an experience and we generally enjoyed it. I also took it from La Crosse, WI to downtown Chicago and back for a business trip. Sure beat driving!

pradeepnr 6y ago

Trains should carry vehicles as well similar to ferry.

urda 6y ago
Some Amtrak lines do via their "Auto Train": https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train-experience https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train-experience
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Not really "some Amtrak Lines". One, and only one line, between the lower-mid-Atlantic and southern Florida.
  - vonmoltke 6y ago
    Also, it's a point-to-point express. Lorton, VA to Sanford, FL (and nothing in between).
    - Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
      That's a common feature of car-carrying trains because of the infrastructure required, not to mention that loading and unloading cars takes so long that you really don't want to do it at an intermediate stop. For instance, the Austrian Federal Railway operates a pair of overnight trains from Innsbruck and Vienna to Dusseldorf and Hamburg, which also transport cars. The only possible routes you can take your car on are Innsbruck-Dusseldorf and Vienna-Hamburg. Meanwhile, as a foot passenger you can also get on or off at an intermediate stop like Cologne or Munich. Foot passengers can also travel Innsbruck-Hamburg or Vienna-Dusseldorf (as sleeping cars are switched between the two trains in Nuremberg, but car carrying wagons aren't).
  - urda 6y ago
    TIL thanks for the info. I could have sworn it was on at least more than one ha.

lacker 6y ago

It's frustrating to me that this train only goes 79 miles an hour. It seems really hard for it to be a competitive option with driving when the maximum speed is approximately the same as the maximum speed in a car.

reaperducer 6y ago
The problem isn't so much the speed, it's that it has to slow down frequently, gets blocked by freight trains too often, and stops in far too many towns. There should be an express option.
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  > There should be an express option. We have the technology now to sling the last car (could be a sub-standard-size car) to a shunt track at a station to offload passengers at the station, which redirects much of the kinetic energy braking it to speed up an already-moving outgoing car off the shunt track to connect to the train to onboard passengers from the station, without the train slowing down at all. Some folks were working on it in France and separate group was working on it in China if I recall correctly from a handful of years ago, but it never got traction. I figure the amount of space the shunt track requires (more length the faster the train travels through the station) and the costs killed it, but it would be skookum tech. The sheer scale of physically moving around humanity might be a problem uniquely facing our civilization that previous civilizations didn't have to contend with. Maybe on an available watts/person measure we have more than previous civilizations, but it is a fascinating megascale engineering problem to me to wonder about the efficiency optimization possibilities. Not just moving people around the planet, but how to get people off the planet.

news_to_me 6y ago

Sad to hear this. I rode the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle in 2013 with all my things after college — it was a big moment for me and that line will always be special to me.

reaperducer 6y ago

Empire Builder isn't what it should be. I don't know how many times I've taken it between Chicago and Seattle. Sunset Limited is worse, though. No activities. Fewer showers. And you can't even get your meals brought to your room.

yuliyp 6y ago

The Empire Builder is one of those vacation trains. That it actually does something useful between Minnesota and Chicago is basically accidental. Because it's government-run it has to run these completely unprofitable trains.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
there are very few trains anywhere in the world that are profitable if "profit" is determined by the balance of cost vs income. most countries with extensive, speedy and reliable train service measure the "profit" of their systems by considering other measures in addition to these two very simplistic measurements.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  Many train systems (eg japan) make profit on renting station space, they are actually profitable overall without subsidy, but this is very much like the land grant system used to fund America’s first railroads. Perhaps something like that would work in the USA again
- presentation 6y ago
  Here in Japan, JR and the other train operators are extremely profitable, since they also act as developers in the land over their stations, so obviously they build and profit from shopping, apartment and office towers on every station. Which makes sense - you didn’t ride the train just to ride a train, you rode it to go somewhere.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  That's true of intercity trains; metro train systems are sometimes reasonably profitable.
MH15 6y ago
There is a thing called a "positive externality". The capitalist class in the United States would do good to remember this when debating the "cost" of public goods.

kevindong 6y ago

> the Twin Cities-Chicago market is definitely a route that deserves better service For reference, the distance between Minneapolis and Chicago is about 400 miles. If the Amtrak schedule [0] is strictly adhered to, the travel time is ~7.75 hours. Current prices are ~$116 roundtrip. Google Maps says the estimated time by car (assuming no traffic) is ~6.25 hours. At ~30 miles/gallon at $2/gallon, the cost of a roundtrip for just gas would be ~$53. A roundtrip, non-stop flight lasting ~1.5 hours each way can be had for ~$80~$175 with the passenger's choice of at least 10 distinct flights/3 separate airlines. I like rail. But it's clear that there's not a market fit for rail between Minneapolis and Chicago without massive subsidies. A car is faster and cheaper. A plane is much faster and about the same price. Both car and planes are strictly more convenient. [0]: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/temporary-timetables/Empire-Builder-Schedule-031620.pdf https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Depending on whether you fly into O'Hare or Midway, you've got a significant or a somewhat significant journey into Chicago after you land. This doesn't negate your point, but needs to be taken into account for city-to-city service.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Depends on where you go. The arrival is written by someone who lives near the airport in Minneapolis and had to drive (or?) a considerable distance to the train station.
beisner 6y ago
FWIW when driving, tolls along that route are roughly $10 each way... and that's low for the midwest.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  so that's worth about $10 more for a grand total of ~$63 for the trip

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

Amtrak wants to remove the entire central portion of the Southwest Chief, turning the entire route between Kansas City and Albuquerque into bus service only. This was even before COVID19 happened. God knows what they will plan on doing post-COVID.

gbronner 6y ago

Comment section will bring out the foamers, but consider: There's demand for service from mpls to Chicago, but it would have to be much faster- at 3 hours it would be competitive. That would require massive rail investment, and would basically create a new railroad next to the existing one, as fast passenger and slow freight don't mix. This is probably not cost effective. A nice bus gets you better service with lower capital expenditures. West of mpls, the train drags 200k lb sleeping cars along with lounge and diner cars for only a handful of passengers. Swedish and Russian railways pack 6 to a compartment; Amtrak struggles with 2. No way this is cost effective or a good use of capital. Deregulate the fra rules, allow electric buses on the rails (and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards), and you might get real innovation and a competitive product...

mschuster91 6y ago
> and would basically create a new railroad next to the existing one, as fast passenger and slow freight don't mix Why not make freight fast, too? > A nice bus gets you better service with lower capital expenditures A bus can accomodate 80 people per driver, a train (German ICE) 750 seats+750 people standing. Sure, a bus is cheaper in upfront investment, but has higher operation expenses, is way slower and is worse for the environment. Additionally, buses get caught in traffic jams while railways are generally separate. > allow electric buses on the rails What? Why? And how should this be secured?! > and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Why not make freight fast, too? Money. Most goods need to be on schedule, not fast. More speed costs more money. >These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents. The standards were also written for a world who's conditions were very different from those of today. I know that you can score easy virtue points by pretending like any rollback of regulation that is intended to protect something is a bad thing but let's be real here. With modern signaling infrastructure there's no reason that dedicated passenger rail can't be equally safe or safer than legacy passenger rail that has to be interoperable with legacy signaling systems and freight rail.

trainsawayy 6y ago

Aww. I liked it, even though it was clear before the pandemic that it was on the downswing. Rail travel is just much more relaxing and interesting than air travel. People in an airport act like zombies, but people on a train act like people. One time, I was on a Empire Builder that got stuck in a freight yard around midnight. The freight company had donated an engine to replace one that had broken on the Amtrak train, but apparently the crew didn't have a key to unlock it. So we sat in a freight yard for about an hour, with snow gently falling around us. It had been several hours since our last stop, and the passengers started to get restless. 4 hours without a smoke break is considered a mortal sin in Montana. Eventually, the crew relented and let people out in the freezing snow to smoke on the train tracks, under a litany of disclaimers about trespassing and liability and whatnot. It was hilarious and surreal. Amtrak felt like a system run by human beings, so it was chronically late and haphazard, but I'll still miss it compared the the sterile almost-competence of modern airports.

uxp100 6y ago
I don’t think that’s true that all of empire builder was on a downswing. Before Covid, (and maybe still), empire builder was going to get a second train in each direction daily on the stretch from St Paul to Chicago. Right now 90% of the route from St. Paul is forbidden from traveling to Chicago. And dining service was being removed from many routes before Covid, I’m sure that has been accelerated.

Theodores 6y ago

> Along the Mississippi River we wait in a siding for an approaching freight train Good grief. With all of that big country and having had more than a century to make rail routes 'broad way' with four tracks, it beggars belief that so many U.S. rail routes are this third-world, poverty spec. single track arrangement. Plus the options for delays are comical. You could understand a train being hours late if it was on its first outing as a prototype but really? Hot air balloons have a more predictable and reliable service. Plus the heritage of U.S. railroads and the fantastic loading gauge mean that U.S. trains should be the best and the most stylish in the world. Those double deck carriages with observation domes and the potential for cool end carriages and comfy sleeping arrangements are just not so easy in other countries. Plus the scenery is spectacular in much of the U.S. Why the reality is people driving for hours with attention focused on the road the whole way - is this not a waste of human potential? You could be reading or doing your knitting on the train rather than holding that wheel. I think that the rail network in the U.S. is not to be given up on. There could even be a whole new approach to it. I often wonder if you could build vastly lighter trains that used active suspension and other gizmos that you might find in a deluxe German road car to put some magic back into rails. Plus speed is a problem on U.S. rail. Even in the UK there are trains that slightly terrify you with a genuine perception of 120+ mph speed. In the U.S. you can be crawling along at 12 mph and that is if you are not stuck in a siding waiting for a mile long freight train to crawl past at 12 mph. Recently I learned the PRR T1 trains in the days of steam would be doing an estimated 140 mph if behind schedule. Those streamliner trains from almost a century ago were just so cool. For the 21st century America needs trains that suit post Covid, post-boomer lifestyles that hark back to the majesty of times past.

eesmith 6y ago
"an estimated 140 mph if behind schedule" - the Mallard set the steam speed record of 126 mph. Perhaps you're thinking of kph? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_T1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_T1 says "there was a drawback of the metallurgy used; the poppet valve could not withstand the stress of sustained high-speed operation (meaning over 100 mph (160 km/h) on production T1s)."

bluGill 6y ago

Amtrak needs to kill all operation outside of New England until they can get that system working. DC to Boston should leave a evey half hour or better 24x7, with average speeds of 150 mph. Note average includes all stops (new York city obviously is a stop, we can debate others). This is perfectly possible and would make money. Until they get that working they shouldn't try anything with harder to make work routes.

jcranmer 6y ago
Why would killing all of those routes help Amtrak? The sentiment of "we should prevent you from expanding until you fix all of your problems" tends to lead into death spirals instead of solutions.
- treis 6y ago
  Shedding marginal products and focusing on profitable ones is a classic turn around strategy. Rail in the US could definitely use a model system to prove out it's viability. The biggest ongoing project is California's and that's shaping up to be a disaster.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Because money is limited and those routes lose money. Taking whatever is lost running those routes adds some more pocket change to fixing the routes that Amtrak should improve the most. Sorry to the handful of people who live in the middle of nowhere, but for every one of you Amtrak serves there are 10,000 people on the east coast that would use improved service. The death spiral can sometimes be real, but lack of focus also is a death spiral. Amtrak has been around since the 1970s and most of the improvements to the east coast have been obviously needed and yet haven't happened. While we can (many do) debate what route to run new rails, what is the most important step to take first, and many other details, the big picture is the same to all observers. Of course the reality is Amtrak exists for political reasons. Probably more realistic is to split Amtrak into two parts (with completely different leadership), one with the goal of making the east cost work well, and one with the goal of political appeasing people on in the middle of nowhere. The way you run the two systems needs to be very different and so there is no reason to keep them together as the concerns of each is a distraction from the other.

PaulHoule 6y ago

People born in the last 50 years have no idea of the anger and resentment that Americans had towards railroad companies, immortalized by the use of the word "railroaded" in slang. Back in the day the railroad would go right past your town, refuse to build a stop, buy the land along the tracks a few miles away, build a stop, and then start a new town there. Cher had a monologue in the 1990 movie "Mermaids" where she talked about the feeling of freedom she had from getting in her car and that feeling can be best appreciated by understanding the way that pre-WWII Americans felt about taking the train. Today a car payment, insurance and all that feel like a millstone at your neck, but back then you could get in a new car and smell the freedom. That generation knew what it was like for somebody who could care less what you think to decide when and where you go.

lucideer 6y ago
Is it possible the forces that are causing the demise of trains today are the same forces that caused the derision toward trains 50 years ago?
dredmorbius 6y ago
That resentment has less to do with anything inherent to rail than it does to a ruthlessly-run monopoly. In which light there are numerous analogous examples present in other examples. Some decades back I spent some time listening to a denizen of flyover country speak with still-simmering anger of how the Interstate, already a couple of decades old, had bypassed his town, drying up local highway traffic and decimating local business. Today, airlines are recalibrating expense-revenue models and determining what routes remain profitable. Telecoms monopolies try to provide the minimum viablequantum of service --- theoretical and net bandwidth, latency, and reliability --- for a given subscriber rate. Disruptions in live-work patterns tend to bugger this. Any connections or network-based sector is subject to this, especially in private hands; transport, communications, trade (bulk cargo, wholesale, retail), energy distribution, utility services, information, broadcast, etc.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  You are so right about private networks. What's interesting about highways is that they produce a politically durable coalition around a combination of public ownership of the roads and private ownership of the cars. Psychologically there is a double dose of the "feeling of ownership" because "we all" perceive the roads belong to us (e.g. a socialist feeling of camaraderie) but we also have a sunk cost in a vehicle we own that is tied to feelings of "I've somebody special because I drive a special car and such". In contrast, investments in public transit are seeing as benefiting "special interests" in most places, except in California where normally skinflint taxpayers are notorious for ballot initiatives to fund public transit that they don't actually use.

nahuel0x 6y ago

Imagine a zero emissions electrical vehicle with no batteries at all, much more easily automatable than cars, infinitely safer and can be used for medium and long distances. Looks like a Tesla pipe dream, right? Now imagine a complete transportation grid using these and add public individual vehicles for last mile transportation. Trains are the rational future, they were before, but irrational market forces are against them.

pc86 6y ago
Unless you care at all about how long it takes you to get somewhere. I've taken the train from central Pennsylvania to NYC several times. It's great, but it's also a hike and not something you want to do for anything shorter than a long weekend (4 days is perfect, especially if you can do Fri-Mon as the Sunday train is usually very full). I did it once for a Sat/Sun trip and you just spend too much time on the train watching a movie or staring out the window.
- calaphos 6y ago
  But that's not inherent to the mode of transportation. In germany (and generally in Europe) taking the train is often a bit faster (~20%) than by car - assuming no traffic. Of course this doesn't apply to rural regions, but between most cities trains run every 1h. And the train network in germany isn't even very good.
  - pc86 6y ago
    It's inherent to the current state of US rail, though.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    > And the train network in germany isn't even very good. It's all relative :) Coming from Ireland (where intercity is still diesel with max speeds around 160km/h, and average speeds far worse), ICE kind of seems like magic.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

cstross 6y ago

To European eyes, the delays on that journey (which the author dismisses with a shrug) are outrageous. Arriving an hour late at one stop, then 1h40m late to the next -- 93 miles away per google -- is ridiculous! You'd only get those sort of delays if there'd been a fatal accident on the line, or downed overhead power cables, or a similar major disruption, and the carrier would be issuing refunds and apologizing. Even here in the UK. Also, a nominal hour to cover 93 miles by rail, and just three trains a week, is just laughable. That's a tourism charter service, not a transport network. It's no wonder Americans don't think in terms of rail travel as mass transport. If you can't run trains like commuter planes, something's badly wrong.

fredoralive 6y ago
AIUI it’s partly due to priority rules. In most countries, passenger trains have priority over freight. Amtrak doesn’t own much rail itself, and mostly runs on 3rd party tracks. On these Amtrak only has priority if it’s running on time. So as soon as a train gets one delay, the various railway operators stop giving the train priority, and it just gets more delayed.
- protomyth 6y ago
  The penalties on cargo timing are pretty severe. If that cargo train is supposed to be somewhere to load / unload, it really is a problem if it doesn't arrive on time and costs the railroads money they do not want to pay. Cargo, as many SV startups have discovered, is much more profitable than passenger.
- klyrs 6y ago
  This boondoggle brought to you by the oil, gas, and auto lobbies; who paid our politicians to kneecap Amtrak and more generally, our rail industry. Bonus: libs are placated by nice bike trails on the bones of dead infrastructure, happy to "do their part" to reduce oil use and blissfully ignorant of the difference that electric trains would make in displacing diesel trucks.
  - montjoy 6y ago

thisisauserid 6y ago

I just completed a cross-country Amtrak sleeper-car journey from New York City to Spokane and flew back from there. (I would have continued to Seattle or Portland but everything seemed to be kind of on fire). I got off in Chicago for few days, then rented a can in Montana and drove around for a few days before getting back on. The Lake Sore Limited line had much better sleepers with windows on the top bunk. The Empire Builder has that amazing viewing car though with panoramic views. Until I got to Glacier National Park the first leg between NYC and Buffalo was much more beautiful. Glacier is not worth trying to describe, just go see it.

deleted 6y ago

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hackbinary 6y ago

I read somewhere previously that the USA (and Canada) largely prioritise (bulk) freight over passenger travel when considering rail transport. Freight trains are given priority over passenger trains, when passenger trains having to wait for, yield to, and let freight ahead of then. Further the tracks in NA are designed to carry weight rather than for speed. The design considerations are quite different.

drdeadringer 6y ago

I'm turning 39 this year. In the 1990s my immediate family would travel from MA to MI via Amtrak to visit grandparents. Travel time in each direction was measured in days. Later on we "upgraded" to planes which reduced travel time to hours within one day. I miss the trains. Nostalgia aside, diner car and all, I crave the rumble-tumble and the scenery and the idea of "cross country". Tunnels. Every day I commute into and out of work, I witness a random toddler jumping up and down or waving or waddle-running along the train because train. I have an anniversary coming up in a few months. I and my partner are interested in celebrating by train.

jt2190 6y ago

Some context: Amtrak was created as part of a federal bail-out that re-organized the railroads. (Other parts were: Allowing railroads to merge operations; abandon unneeded trackage; and an ongoing dose of de-regulation.) For Amtrak to get federal political support it needs to operate in many states, even though it makes no financial sense to do so. Hence trains that seem run in the middle of nowhere, and are often slower to get anywhere.

bane 6y ago

When I was a teen I was part of a group that did a Washington D.C. to Miami (and back) Amtrak trip. We knew it was going to take longer, but it was about $100 cheaper than flying -- and thought it might be fun to take a long haul train. It's maybe a 16-20 hour car trip. Less than a 3 hour flight. Amtrak turns it into a 23-24 hour train ride without delays. We were more than 8 hours delayed getting there, which caused all kinds of havoc with our local transport and accommodations. This is not in a sparsely populated part of the U.S. It's not the North-East corridor, but it's still pretty heavily populated for most of the run. I swore off trains ever again until many years later my wife thought it would be better to start taking trains around Europe and I finally understood how good they can be. More recently we were in Japan and took the Shinkansen (and a bunch of local trains) all over the country and experienced truly the dream that trains can be. As much of an improvement as the average Eurorail is over Amtrak, Japanese trains are the much of an improvement over Europe. Absolutely incredible.