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I highly doubt Amtrak will suddenly run on time if enough people write Congress like their video suggests. The delays are egregious. Can’t they just pay for pri

I highly doubt Amtrak will suddenly run on time if enough people write Congress like their video suggests. The delays are egregious. Can’t they just pay for priority?

afavour 3y ago
> Can’t they just pay for priority? With what money? Oh, the extra money they could be allocated by… Congress?
- junofan 3y ago
  Amtrak sells tickets.
  - kdmccormick 3y ago
    Demanding that a passenger railway be self-funding while also trying to massively increase its scope is... not a path for success. Unless I'm wrong you know of any continent-scale railways that bootstrapped themselves into success recently...?
    - junofan 3y ago
      A possible strategy is to use money from ticket sales to pay for priority, boosting on-time performance which increases the competitiveness of their product.
      - afavour 3y ago
        Do you really think no one has thought of this?
  - Hnaomyiph 3y ago
    And for a large portion of their routes are already overpriced and less convenient than almost any other means of travel (except for a handful of actually reasonably-priced routes. A local route on Amtrak costs almost $100 for a one way ticket traveling <200mi A bus ticket for the same route is $30. The bus takes an hour longer. I want amtrak to thrive, but they need to attract customers, not drive more away with higher prices.
    - junofan 3y ago
      System-wide load factor in Feb 22 was 38%. This is not competitive. Perhaps decreasing delays would boost ridership, making tickets cheaper.