6 ms·

It's shame. In the West (Denver) where I live service is terrible. There are always huge delays due to freight priority, as you mention, and other issues. My w

It's shame. In the West (Denver) where I live service is terrible. There are always huge delays due to freight priority, as you mention, and other issues. My wife and I are considering visiting her family with our infant son in the Bay Area for Christmas. We don't want to drive and don't really want to fly either. From Denver to Martinez is $526 for coach and $787 for a sleeper, which is a totally reasonable price. But it's 32+ hours, which is insane. And that's before factoring in the massive delays. It they could get this down to under 20 hours I would purchase this in a heartbeat. 1200 miles + 80 mph (no idea how fast the train goes but this seems reasonable for 2014) + 3 hours of stops (seems realistic) = 18 hours. Before the lines are opened to competition I think Amtrak should be given a chance to operate with dedicated passenger lines. If it cannot succeed at that, then open it up to competitors, or break them up and sell the routes to new companies.

robin_reala 12y ago
Standard high speed trains in the UK run at 125mph, but that’s pretty slow compared to countries with shinkansen type trains (e.g. Japan, Germany’s ICE, France’s TGV etc) that regularly hit 200+mph.
SystemOut 12y ago
We did the Martinez to Denver route about 10 years ago. I really really want to love the train and for it to be successful but we were 22 hours late arriving. Some of it was weather but we had a train car lose it's suspension near Truckee, then due to that delay the crew went "dead" due to their hours and we literally had to stop for a couple of hours in the middle of Nevada while the next crew came to us. After that we got moving and made some decent time but then a freight train had issues ahead of us so we sat somewhere in Colorado for a few hours waiting. To top it all off, the woman in the sleeper next to us ran out of extra oxygen because she wasn't expecting to be at higher elevation that long and without access to more oxygen supplies and so we had to wait for an ambulance to come. We flew back. Some of this was Amtrak's fault, some of this was not. If the food were better and the trains a little more modern we wouldn't have minded as much but even then spending 22 hours extra on that route is just not going to work for much of anyone. But with all the moving parts it takes to get right for a train to come in on some semblance of a schedule I just don't see how it will ever be anything but a niche product for long haul routes.
- sampo 12y ago
  > But with all the moving parts it takes to get right for a train to come in on some semblance of a schedule I just don't see how it will ever be anything but a niche product for long haul routes. I think this is mostly an American problem. In some other countries, trains run in schedule just fine.
  - SystemOut 12y ago
    I was only talking about Amtrak and the US in my comment. I'm not sure why you felt I thought it applied to anywhere else.
ams6110 12y ago
From what I remember talking to the METRA conductors in the Chicago area, max speed on standard tracks in the USA is 78 mph under the best of conditions. This is often lower due to traffic, or condition of the track or road bed.

robin_reala 12y ago

Standard high speed trains in the UK run at 125mph, but that’s pretty slow compared to countries with shinkansen type trains (e.g. Japan, Germany’s ICE, France’s TGV etc) that regularly hit 200+mph.

SystemOut 12y ago

We did the Martinez to Denver route about 10 years ago. I really really want to love the train and for it to be successful but we were 22 hours late arriving. Some of it was weather but we had a train car lose it's suspension near Truckee, then due to that delay the crew went "dead" due to their hours and we literally had to stop for a couple of hours in the middle of Nevada while the next crew came to us. After that we got moving and made some decent time but then a freight train had issues ahead of us so we sat somewhere in Colorado for a few hours waiting. To top it all off, the woman in the sleeper next to us ran out of extra oxygen because she wasn't expecting to be at higher elevation that long and without access to more oxygen supplies and so we had to wait for an ambulance to come. We flew back. Some of this was Amtrak's fault, some of this was not. If the food were better and the trains a little more modern we wouldn't have minded as much but even then spending 22 hours extra on that route is just not going to work for much of anyone. But with all the moving parts it takes to get right for a train to come in on some semblance of a schedule I just don't see how it will ever be anything but a niche product for long haul routes.

sampo 12y ago
> But with all the moving parts it takes to get right for a train to come in on some semblance of a schedule I just don't see how it will ever be anything but a niche product for long haul routes. I think this is mostly an American problem. In some other countries, trains run in schedule just fine.
- SystemOut 12y ago
  I was only talking about Amtrak and the US in my comment. I'm not sure why you felt I thought it applied to anywhere else.

ams6110 12y ago

From what I remember talking to the METRA conductors in the Chicago area, max speed on standard tracks in the USA is 78 mph under the best of conditions. This is often lower due to traffic, or condition of the track or road bed.