Justification for LD trains

[dlagrua]

Yes, that is the very reason why we stopped traveling by air completely over 12 years ago.

It is wrong for a government to subject innocent people to dehumanizing and degrading treatment just to board an aircraft. We have done nothing illegal, have led exemplary lives, and refuse to be searched as a prisoner and treated like an animal. Apparently the flying public disagrees. They just submit like docile sheep buying into the propaganda that big brother will make you safe. How many terrorists has the TCA intercepted since the program was put in place. Answer ZERO.

 

[Grayewolf]

Yes, that is the very reason why we stopped traveling by air completely over 12 years ago.

It is wrong for a government to subject innocent people to dehumanizing and degrading treatment just to board an aircraft. We have done nothing illegal, have led exemplary lives, and refuse to be searched as a prisoner and treated like an animal. Apparently the flying public disagrees. They just submit like docile sheep buying into the propaganda that big brother will make you safe. How many terrorists has the TCA intercepted since the program was put in place. Answer ZERO.

And these same sheep like to spout the quip, "Well if you aren't doing anything wrong, what's the problem?"

 

[Paulus]

That's just a wee bit overblown there imho. Only thing more intrusive at the airport than at the courthouse reporting for jury duty is having to take off my shoes and TSA has always gone out of their way to help me in my experience.

 

[jis]

Frequent air travelers with half a brain typically don't have to go through anything more than a magnetometer and typically do not have to take off their shoes or belts and typically do not get patted down either. It would help a lot if people would get above their own dogma and actually post real facts instead.

If one does not like to travel by air that is fine, and there can be a hundred reasons for that. But the way things are set up today, for a frequent traveler, the ones that in aggregate really keep the transportation system running, TSA would not be a primary reason for avoiding air travel, either in terms of wasted time or net inconvenience, unless it is a matter of dogma. Typically when ad hominems like "sheep" have to be used to make a case, it often indicates that the argument in and of itself is probably not strong or persuasive enough even for the one making it.

Yes, for infrequent travelers the experience can be somewhat less pleasant to travel by air, than it is for frequent travelers. No denying that. But based on that to call everyone who travels by air "sheep" is stupid IMHO. And of course at the end of the day, all those that voluntary do not travel by air just makes life a little easier for their est of us who do, sheep or not. So just stay put at whatever rocks whoever's boat!

The inability or lack of desire to travel by air in and of itself does not constitute a justification for LD trains either. And heck I do like LD trains myself. But for me it is more of a matter of something nice to have, but not something that is indispensable. LD trains provide one of the alternatives among several. They do provide a viable alternative provided there is willingness to pay, for access to those few points that are on existing railroad routes that are far removed from the existing road network. But in general, to serve an arbitrary little hamlet, rail is not ideal at all. A route that touches many population centers that already exists would be ideal for running an LD train on. But building a completely new route where none exists, to serve little hamlets on the way would be an inappropriate use of resources IMHO.

 

[Grayewolf]

But based on that to call everyone who travels by air "sheep" is stupid IMHO.

I use that term because I dislike that people are complacent enough to allow what is nothing less than invasion of privacy in order to make themselves feels a tiny bit safer. I am completely against the erosion of our rights just like I am against having topee in a cup for drug tests. I don't use drugs so why do I have to pee in a cup? That's guilty until proven innocent.

Not to mention I have valid medical reasons for not taking a plane or a bus. I don't have a car so tell me what my other options are.

 

[Paulus]

But based on that to call everyone who travels by air "sheep" is stupid IMHO.

I use that term because I dislike that people are complacent enough to allow what is nothing less than invasion of privacy in order to make themselves feels a tiny bit safer. I am completely against the erosion of our rights just like I am against having topee in a cup for drug tests. I don't use drugs so why do I have to pee in a cup? That's guilty until proven innocent.

No, that's a diagnostic test to determine whether you do use drugs (and has nothing at all to do with airports, so not seeing the relevance).

 

[jis]

I use that term because I dislike that people are complacent enough to allow what is nothing less than invasion of privacy in order to make themselves feels a tiny bit safer.

In all walks of life people make choices regarding such matters. I don't think it has anything to do with complacence. it is a carefully considered decision. I guess my choices are different from yours and therefore I shall simply ignore your characterization since you really don't have any reason more substantial than that you disagree with my choice.

 

[Grayewolf]

No, that's a diagnostic test to determine whether you do use drugs (and has nothing at all to do with airports, so not seeing the relevance).

And if I don't use drugs why should I be forced to pee on command? That does indeed treat you guilty until proven innocent.

 

[Paulus]

No, that's a diagnostic test to determine whether you do use drugs (and has nothing at all to do with airports, so not seeing the relevance).

And if I don't use drugs why should I be forced to pee on command? That does indeed treat you guilty until proven innocent.

Again, why are you making a fuss about urinalysis when it isn't involved with air travel? That said, when law enforcement is involved, it's pursuant to a court order and it is simply collecting evidence (you may not have cheated on your taxes, but a warrant to search your records isn't treating you as guilty until proven innocent, it's simply collecting evidence). When it is part of employment or such, then it is you proving that you are meeting the employment standards. I had chicken pox, but requiring me to provide a varicella titer wasn't my educational program treating me as "guilty until proven innocent;" it was them requiring me to show proof of meeting standards (same as how when they required transcripts proving I had taken particular courses).

 

[dlagrua]

Give it a little more time. At the rate that our constitutional and civil rights are eroding, you will soon be required to get completely naked to board an airplane. Only ONE guy had explosive materials in his shoes several years back and now everyone is punished for his behavior by having to take them off. Even in Israel with the tightest security in that part of the world travelers are respected and this is not required.

Getting back to the thread topic. Our justification for using rail as our exclusive means of transportation is that we like it, we support it, it is fuel efficient, it serves 500 locations, helps us bypass heavy city traffic, serves the public interest and we enjoy it.

 

[neroden]

Tangential response, but I make it every time I see this sort of discussion.

The title of your thread is "Justification for LD trains".

However, he was telling me that there really is no justification for routes like the Zephyr

There are a bunch of "LD trains" which are nothing like the Zephyr. Examples: the Silver Star, the Silver Meteor, the Palmetto, the Crescent, the Lake Shore Limited, the Capitol Limited, the City of New Orleans, even the Cardinal.

I can easily justify all of these services. As a group, they cost about $27 million a year in direct, avoidable-costs subsidy (before loading up the accounting with unavoidable overhead). They routinely have over 80% loads on long trains at high prices year-round. They connect massive cities at fairly short distances from each other, usually at speeds comparable to driving. The sleeper service is competitive with driving in nearly every market, and actually competitive with flying in a few of the city-pair markets. The sleepers sell out months in advance. These routes all provide an additional frequency on a popular corridor with multiple trains at at least one end, and extend the reach of that service further. They provide substantial connectivity, linking (for instance) Cleveland OH to the entire NEC and Chicago passenger rail systems.

I'll be upfront about the following biases I have:

1. I'm a western boy, and I mostly follow what's going on with trains west of the Mississippi

Yeah, so your question is not about the justification for LD trains, but about the justification for western transcontinental trains.

However, there's been an epidemic of sloppy thinking regarding so-called "long distance" trains. The thinking goes as follows: look, the western trains are expensive to run and require large subsidies (true). The thinking goes (and here's the error), "long distance" trains have large subsidies (nope). Therefore (here's the nasty result) the Broadway Limited gets cut, the Cardinal gets reduced from daily to three-a-week, etc... this happened.

There will be attacks on "long distance" trains based on the expense and relatively low ridership per mile of the western transcontinental trains. One can argue those points, but I'm not interested in doing so. As far as I'm concerned, I want to make sure that these attacks do not cause any further collateral damage to the *eastern* long-distance trains, which are a different kettle of fish; much more successful and with much greater potential for expansion.

So I'd ask you & the moderators to please change the title of this thread. And be careful how you talk about train service.

----

The inability or lack of desire to travel by air in and of itself does not constitute a justification for LD trains either.

It actually does, to some extent -- more accurately, it is (in and of itself) a justification for *ground transportation*.
I found it hard to find hard numbers, but it seems like the percentage of the population who refuse to fly due solely to "fear of flying" is around 6.5%, which is actually a substantial chunk. This is not accounting for people who have physical reasons to not fly, which is likely to be a much larger percentage (the incidence of arthritis alone is quite high). Then you add in the people who won't fly for environmental reasons. And the people who don't want to deal with the TSA abuses. And so on.

When you add all the causes up, it seems that non-flyers are a LARGE percentage of the population, probably 20-25% (which matches with some survey numbers). That's enough that the government absolutely should cater to their (our) needs.

Obviously cars and buses are also alternatives to flying, and they're extremely popular ones. It is driving which trains generally compete directly with, not flying. And yes, lots of people do drive long distances -- from LA to Denver, from New Orleans to New York, from New York to Chicago, even from New York to LA.

Where cars and buses are not suitable, then trains become clearly the best option. For any route which touches a city with high traffic congestion (LA, NY, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Denver, Dallas, Atlanta, Tampa...), they are not really suitable (due to congestion-induced delays), though many will drive anyway. Cars, taxis, and buses are also not really suitable on any route with fairly high volumes, which requires enormous numbers of buses or absurd numbers of cars, but can be accomodated easily on trains. These are usually the same routes as the ones running into traffic congestion -- for obvious reasons.

A route that touches many population centers that already exists would be ideal for running an LD train on.

Yes! Every existing route east of the Mississippi, the Floridian, the Broadway Limited, and several dozen other routes...
There's lots of routes here east of the Mississippi which are worth running so-called "long-distance" trains on, and most are good enough they actually are worth building new tracks for.

Distance is pretty much an irrelevance, which is why the "long-distance" distinction is arbitrary and capricious. What matters includes:

1 - Population concentrations along the route

2 - network connectivity

3 - being faster than driving

Whether a route is faster than driving is easy to check (though there's some wiggle room depending on different driving styles); but if the route is slower than driving, this is often a justification for *improving* the route so that it's faster than driving.

It's also pretty easy to see whether a route has good population concentrations along the route. Unfortunately it's not nearly so easy to improve a route to go to different, larger cities (though Amtrak is wasting a golden opportunity to do so with the Southwest Chief). You can see for yourself which routes have more potential, and which have less potential, just from looking at the metro area populations along the routes.

It's easy to evaluate network connectivity, too. Some cities have urban rail, others don't; some have commuter rail, others don't; some have "corridor routes" spreading out from them, others don't. Any route connecting to Chicago connects to a huge network, and the same is true of SF, LA, Boston, NYC, Phildelphia, and DC. Even San Diego connects you to a small network. By contrast, connecting to Jackson MS gets you very, very little in the way of connectivity. It is documented that better local public transportation means more riders on intercity rail, and this isn't surprising at all.

 

[neroden]

That's just a wee bit overblown there imho. Only thing more intrusive at the airport than at the courthouse reporting for jury duty is having to take off my shoes and TSA has always gone out of their way to help me in my experience.

The backscatter (nudie) scanners are actually dangerous to people's health. Thankfully I hear they're being eliminated (they were only installed due to a corrupt sweetheart contract and don't really work anyway).

The TSA has pulled all manner of illegal crap, which does *not* happen at jury duty. The TSA supposed to allow you to walk out of the airport if you refuse one of their requested searches, but they've actually been known to detain people without arresting them (which is *extremely* illegal -- the official term is "kidnapping", but the TSA kidnappers are never prosecuted).

But honestly, it isn't that crap which caused me to be so disgusted with the TSA -- it was the bonkers "liquid container" rules. I have a bunch of annoying allergies and sensitivities. My preferred toothpaste, doctor-advised lotions, etc, do not come in the special TSA-approved sizes of containers. I will not tolerate the TSA bullcrap -- they were making up new, arbitrary, capricious, stupid rules every few weeks last time I was flying. It's not worth tolerating. If I absolutely have to fly abroad, I'll fly out of Canada.

Frequent air travelers with half a brain typically don't have to go through anything more than a magnetometer and typically do not have to take off their shoes or belts and typically do not get patted down either.

...which proves that the TSA serves no security purpose whatsoever. Any serious group actually planning an attack would simply get their key attacker qualified as a frequent traveller.
If you're actually doing security, you have to check absolutely everyone, no exceptions, even your boss. It's a truism of security that most attacks are insider attacks.

The TSA operations are harassment, but they aren't security. It's really obscene that this bullcrap is allowed to operate in the US; just a sign of the decline of the country. But I suppose it's no worse than McCarthyism.

But based on that to call everyone who travels by air "sheep" is stupid IMHO.

Yep, it's unnecessarily insulting to sheep. ;-)

 

[Paulus]

That's just a wee bit overblown there imho. Only thing more intrusive at the airport than at the courthouse reporting for jury duty is having to take off my shoes and TSA has always gone out of their way to help me in my experience.

The backscatter (nudie) scanners are actually dangerous to people's health. Thankfully I hear they're being eliminated (they were only installed due to a corrupt sweetheart contract and don't really work anyway).

They're not dangerous. You literally get orders of magnitude more radiation just from the flight itself being at a higher altitude. TSA figures show it at about two minutes of flight time. For goodness sake, if you think a backscatter x-ray is dangerous to one's health, what in the world do you think of a typical CT scan?

 

[neroden]

First of all, if you're blindly believing TSA figures regarding the products bought under a sweetheart contract with a company closely associated with a TSA official... uh, to be polite, I'll just say you aren't going to have a clue what's going on. Cui bono. Have you read the Tobacco Institute figures regarding the safety of smoking? Do you believe those? How about the Chesapeake Energy figures regarding the safety of hydrofracturing? Maybe you believe those too?

The indepdendent studies show the backscatter scanners as having significantly worse radiation exposure than the TSA figures. There are different sorts of radiation, and some are worse for human health than others... the radiation from being in the upper atmosphere is not the same as the radiation from a backscatter scanner, so it's easy to make completely bogus comparisons.

CT scans are not healthy either, and frankly neither are X-rays. You should not get either unless you *need* them for medical reasons. (Don't get one "just to check".) They've actually cut the radiation dosage on both of them down from what they used to be, but they've also changed policy -- doctors used to prescribe *way* too many radiation tests.

One backscatter scanner exposure isn't too bad, but if you're a frequent flyer or you're already getting a lot of X-rays, you really don't want to be going through those regularly.

 

[user 1215]

Looking at all the replies here, I can't find a true justification for rail service other than emotional or preferential reasons.

Can someone show me, outside the NEC, where Amtrak is actually faster than driving? There may be, but where?

I am sick of being told that if you vote one way over an other that I hate rail. I LOVE rail, but you would never know by my political preference. There are so many other issues that are so much more important to me. Quite frankly, despite the 30 million rider number, probably only half a percent of Americans care about Amtrak at all, after consolidating all the NEC commuters (which is a fiduciary necessity). I don't think that the roughly 51% of the population who voted blue two years ago or the same number that voted red last week went in to the polls voting with a love or hate for Amtrak.

Many many many long distance passenger trains have been eliminated in the past 70 years. For the most part, life has continued on anyway asking these routes. Some haven't fared well, but that's between the exception rather than the rule.

I do continue to encourage my representatives, locally and nationally, about the benefits of passenger rail and to seek spending cuts elsewhere. But every recipient of congressional cash is just as passionate in keeping their hand in the cookie jar.

I remember riding a passenger train in Mexico the last year before they were shut down. Compared to a Mexican bus, it was pure luxury. I miss it, would love to ride again, but my life isn't destroyed by its loss. Sure, there were employees who were affected, but layoffs are not exclusive to the railroads.

As for drug tests, there are no rights being violated here. It's either a condition of employment - you option to choose whether you want that job or not - or evidence collected when suspected of pouncing on someone else's rights with bad behavior. The only situation we are protected against is being randomly tested by the government with no cause. If you want to use drugs and never pee in a cup, start your own business. But please not in anything that deals with people's lives.

 

[TVRM610]

Looking at all the replies here, I can't find a true justification for rail service other than emotional or preferential reasons.

Can someone show me, outside the NEC, where Amtrak is actually faster than driving? There may be, but where?

What do you call true justification? What are you personal requirements? (serious question... is it a number of riders?). you say that life goes on in mexico without passenger rail, well yes life would go on in america without amtrak as a whole. But why? Why shut down a public service that people are using. That's like saying let's shut down the interstates that don't directly link "x" population centers to save on upkeep and maintenance.. I mean life would go on right? Right.. but why?

For speed... I don't think there are any long distance trains that are faster than driving. Of course that is assuming that the person driving is capable of driving long distances without stops. I actually like road trips as a passenger... but it's a very different mode of transportation.

 

[Ryan]

Faster isn't the only justification, it's significantly safer than driving.

But, the train absolutely can be faster. I live near DC. We've got friends that live in Tampa. That can be done on the train in 21.5 hours.

Sure, I can drive it in 15 hours, but I can't drive 15 hours straight through. So I'll have to break it into a 2 day trip, and pay for a hotel somewhere in the middle. Call that a 10 hour stop, and you're already longer than the train trip. I'm not going to drive for 7 or 8 hours straight through on the two driving days either, so add in an extra hour of stopped time each day (call it a 30 minute lunch break and 2 other 15 minute stops), and we're now at 27 hours.

Then, actually apply this to a calendar. If I drive, I'm going to get up on Saturday morning and start driving, and arrive in Tampa sometime Sunday afternoon.

Or, I can take the train and leave DC on Friday afternoon. I arrive in Tampa around noon on Saturday.

I'm there a day earlier, more rested and relaxed than if I had driven myself. It's a no-brainer.

 

[jis]

First of all, if you're blindly believing TSA figures regarding the products bought under a sweetheart contract with a company closely associated with a TSA official... uh, to be polite, I'll just say you aren't going to have a clue what's going on. Cui bono. Have you read the Tobacco Institute figures regarding the safety of smoking? Do you believe those? How about the Chesapeake Energy figures regarding the safety of hydrofracturing? Maybe you believe those too?

The indepdendent studies show the backscatter scanners as having significantly worse radiation exposure than the TSA figures. There are different sorts of radiation, and some are worse for human health than others... the radiation from being in the upper atmosphere is not the same as the radiation from a backscatter scanner, so it's easy to make completely bogus comparisons.

CT scans are not healthy either, and frankly neither are X-rays. You should not get either unless you *need* them for medical reasons. (Don't get one "just to check".) They've actually cut the radiation dosage on both of them down from what they used to be, but they've also changed policy -- doctors used to prescribe *way* too many radiation tests.

One backscatter scanner exposure isn't too bad, but if you're a frequent flyer or you're already getting a lot of X-rays, you really don't want to be going through those regularly.

All of that is fine but somewhat irrelevant for frequent flyers.
First of all backscatter scanners have been decommissioned and the few remaining are on their way out.

Second, most frequent flyers are on TSA Pre, where one doesn't go through any scanner at all. One just goes through an old magnetometer, and don't have to disrobe or take ones shoes off or take anything out of ones bag.

If anyone bothers to look back through various threads on this subject one will find that I was one of the people who very vocally said that the TSA checks to quite an extent are more for the show value than for anything substantive. The substantive value is to provide some level of hindrance to people off their rockers trying to cause harm to a large number of people. The quintessential case of such originally were people trying to commit suicide and collect insurance. Then there are always the self motivated heroes for a cause. Admittedly not all can be stopped. but a certain level of hindrance at least prevents the spur of the moment crazies from doing something bad. This is why I believe that security checks are useful but the over the top nonsense that started after 9/11 has got to be dialed back, and that is happening slowly.

Of course, if that is cause for some to not fly, that is fine. That is their right and more power to them. There is an argument that is easy to make to maintain ground transport options specially connecting from long distance travel hubs to final destinations, and to provide some long distance ground transport even on LD hub to hub segments for those that cannot fly. However, to try to use that as an argument in favor of LD trains where currently no viable rail route is available, is somewhat specious unless there is a huge exodus from flying. And trust me if that were happening the TSA thing would get adjusted faster than you can say boo, to make sure that enough people continue to fly to make the air transport business worthwhile. We the few here are not the only bright people in the world. Of course on existing rail routes with available capacity, it would make sense to meet existing significant hub to hub ground transport demands with LD trains, as long as there is collective willingness to pay for them.

OTOH, there is an argument to be made in the long term to move to more energy efficient transport wherever feasible, and that is the argument that favors creation of HSR corridors and eventually when enough of them are around to possibly link them together to form an LD network. But that would be a very very different LD network than the one that we have now. I think I do agree with Nathaniel that there are some significant parts of the LD network in its present form that is sustainable with some modest investment, and there are other parts that are difficult to sustain in their present form even with huge investments. Won;t go into details here since Nathaniel has called them out quite accurately elsewhere.

One thing that I find fascinating is how much time and energy is spent by those that like to ride exclusively on trains to try to justify to themselves and the rest of the world that they are not crazy. Frankly I do love to ride trains, and I have never found the need or urge to have to justify my taste on that matter. I don't quite understand why it is so important for others.

 

[Paulus]

First of all, if you're blindly believing TSA figures regarding the products bought under a sweetheart contract with a company closely associated with a TSA official... uh, to be polite, I'll just say you aren't going to have a clue what's going on. Cui bono. Have you read the Tobacco Institute figures regarding the safety of smoking? Do you believe those? How about the Chesapeake Energy figures regarding the safety of hydrofracturing? Maybe you believe those too?

The indepdendent studies show the backscatter scanners as having significantly worse radiation exposure than the TSA figures. There are different sorts of radiation, and some are worse for human health than others... the radiation from being in the upper atmosphere is not the same as the radiation from a backscatter scanner, so it's easy to make completely bogus comparisons.

CT scans are not healthy either, and frankly neither are X-rays. You should not get either unless you *need* them for medical reasons. (Don't get one "just to check".) They've actually cut the radiation dosage on both of them down from what they used to be, but they've also changed policy -- doctors used to prescribe *way* too many radiation tests.

I'm not blindly believing the TSA figures, simply using them because they were the only ones I've come across that actually give a figure; for that matter, most of the sites going "woo, it's dangerous" are anti-vaccine nut jobs (also, "cui bono" is a fairly useless approach to take and one generally belonging best to conspiracy theorist crazies). If you like, the Health Physics Society has a document on it, the FDA has a response to some concern mongering, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has an explanation of the relevant standard (a maximum of three banana equivalent doses) and how the TSA machines were tested for compliance and found to be in accord with it. So do please provide an actual source with numbers (sieverts or rems) to back up your claims. Also, just as an aside, rems and sieverts are, by design, measurements of health risk from radiation and as such, the source of the radiation is interchangeable.

As for x-rays and CTs not being healthy, while of course you shouldn't get one "just to check," the increased cancer risk is still quite low and that's with a dose literally tens of thousands of times higher.

 

[Tokkyu40]

What justifies the long distance trains is the same justification as any other transportation infrastructure. Do the economic benefits exceed the cost?
It's difficult to know what the cost of running long distance trains is, since Amtrak doesn't actually keep track of trivia like that. They mostly bundle the expenses and overhead together and divide it up by route mile. The long distance trains get more share of the home office than the corridors.
If the trains just ran between little hamlets it might be hard to justify them, but they actually connect major urban centers and connect to the small towns along the way. And in the west, the cities are big. Small cities can be the size of major eastern centers. This is a driver of equally major economic activity that buses can't equal.

 

[dlagrua]

The most basic answer for the justification for long distance trains it that they serve the publics transportation needs. Ask the thirty one million people that take the train annually why they choose rail transport. Admittedly the LD segment is lower but there is still a need. Not only tourists and vacationers ride the LD trains. Last summer on the EB we met several passengers who use the line to get from Northern. ID to the Bakken region of ND. They were oil workers who use the line to commute for a three week work program and then get one week off to go home. Every month these guys ride the train. For them its the only way to get to work.

 

[afigg]

For speed... I don't think there are any long distance trains that are faster than driving. Of course that is assuming that the person driving is capable of driving long distances without stops. I actually like road trips as a passenger... but it's a very different mode of transportation.

Over some segments, there are indeed LD trains that are faster than driving and other segments that match driving time. The Southwest Chief takes 7 hours and 11 minutes over the 437 miles from Chicago to Kansas City. Google Maps gives the fastest driving time as 7 hours and 49 minutes over 511 miles from Chicago Union Station to Kansas City Union Station. That is without pit stops which few will do over a 511 mile trip. The CHI-KCY is one of the fastest long segment on the LD train routes outside of the NEC with a 60 mph average speed. Helps to be on a high quality transcon.
Pulling up another example, one reason the Lynchburg Regional is successful is that the DC to Lynchburg driving time is 3 hours and 36 minutes according to Google Maps. The Crescent has a WAS-LYH trip time of 3 hours and 30 minutes while the Regional (with additional stops) is 3 hours and 47 minutes. Virginia is providing funds to double track one of the NS single track segments and for speed improvements from Alexandria to Lynchburg, so in a few years the trains should cleanly edge out driving time.

Comes down to investment. If we can build more 90 to 110 mph conventional corridor service routes in the East, Midwest, and on the West coast, the LD trains will benefit as well over those shared corridor segments.

 

[Capital Limited Fan]

The question seems to be whether the Long Distance trains are worth U.S. taxpayer investment, and, if so, why.

Personal dislike (of TSA or air travel in general) probably can't be a justification for federal (taxpayer) expenditure.

In my option, the LD trains are justified because:

1. For modest investment the trains provide U.S. transport diversification and redundancy. This is a strategic asset whose value was proved, for example, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks when the nation's air traffic was grounded, or whenever storms or other phenomenon disrupt air and road travel. Trains, for a modest investment, allow population mobility when the airlines and roads break down, and allow surge capacity on peak travel times, such as national holidays. There are numerous future scenarios where airlines could again be grounded -- cyber attack, electromagnetic disruption.

2. Public safety - Trains can traverse 500 to 1,000-mile routes that are, simply put, dangerous to drive. It is not safe to drive 12 to 18 hours nonstop without sharing drivers, so Amtak allows those distances to be traversed faster for single travelers than driving. Also, whether you use a sleeping car or sleep in your coach seat, the overnight trains eliminate traveler fatigue, one of the most dangerous causes of road accidents.

3. Cost-competition to airlines - Last-minute walk-up coach train fares are in most instances significantly less expensive than last-minute air fare, especially with the airlines at or near capacity.

4. Economic stability - Trains connecting city centers require infrastructure investment but, once the infrastructure is in place, it is a long-term asset that that creates economic stability and continuity. By this I mean, long distance bus routes can change on a whim; this provides a level of flexibility but also makes smaller communities less likely to invest in facilities and infrastructure to lure bus riders. Trains are not as easy to reroute, and in communities where the Amtrak station is a major transport link, the passenger traffic is a significant economic asset.

 

[jis]

I agree with those points.

Perhaps point 3 suggests that Amtrak has room for improving cost recovery? Of course one has to take into consideration price elasticity and possibly Amtrak does take such into account in the yield maximization algorithms. Possibly the market won;t bear a higher price and hence the price is what it is. OTOH, if the price is what it is because the train is not full enough to trigger higher bucket fares, that may be a problem in the long run.

 

[user 1215]

I still don't think Amtrak is very effective at producing alternate revenue streams - ie: rent to vendors at Amtrak owned stations, advertising (which has recently improved in the time tables), etc.