Quote:
Originally Posted by TowerDude
Everything you post here is a distraction from the actual purpose of this forum thread.
Stop it.
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I'm not going to stop preaching some truths as I see them. You can just stop reading them if you don't like what your eyes see.
As for the actual purpose of this thread, overhauling Amtrak, is that what you really want? More of the same is not overhauling Amtrak. Adding a new service to Mobile or Scranton in the same way as Amtrak provides services everywhere else is not overhauling Amtrak.
If we are truly interested in overhauling Amtrak and making it better we need to do some major changes to the way Amtrak operates. The first change I would make is to increase all the train's average speeds significantly. That is going to require, at a minimum, dedicated passenger tracks in shared railroad corridors, or preferably dedicated passenger railroad corridors entirely. As long as Amtrak is running passenger trains on freight owned railroad tracks they will continue to run unacceptably slow. Yet, that is what Amtrak keeps pushing down our throats.
Examples of Amtrak improved train services that have basically failed.
Case A, Talgo trainsets running on BNSF and UP owned tracks for the Cascades trains. They're wanting to retired these trainsets and buy new national standard rolling stock that will not run faster than rolling stock running over the same tracks 60 years ago. Faster trainsets did not solve the problem running faster trains.
Case B, Rebuilding the railroad corridor from scratch over UP owned tracks in Illinois. Over $2 Billion has been spent rebuilding the corridor between Alton and Joliet, Amtrak is just now increasing the maximum speeds of the trains to 90 mph, cutting around 30 minutes off the train schedule. Would be nice to see 125 mph or even 200 mph trains running on a brand new laid railroad tracks, but as long as freight trains keep sharing it, forget it. New rebuilt railroad corridor did not solve the problem of running much faster trains.
Case C
UTA and the FRA together bought half the UP railroad corridor Ogden to Provo Utah to establish UTA's Frontrunner commuter train services. Passenger trains dedicated tracks were newly laid 25 feet away or so parallel to the existing UP freight mainline tracks. 80 mph max speeds for a commuter train is surprisingly fast for most of America. Yet even with faster dedicated passenger tracks available for Amtrak to use, Amtrak's most popular California Zephyr passenger train still runs on the slower UP freight railroad tracks 25 feet or so away.
Three potential solutions for achieving higher speed Amtrak passenger trains services have all failed to do so after considerable Federal and State funding improvements. Why did all three of these solutions failed to get the results we the American passenger train customers hoped for so much on? Could the main reason for these failures being there was no overhauling of how Amtrak actually runs itself?
The only really fast trains worthy of being called overhauling of Amtrak being proposed to being built have really nothing to do with Amtrak. CHSR, Brightline, Texas Central, or Hyperloop. All Amtrak proposes is more of the same slow trains...............
So, what example exists in America where we the taxpayers overhauled an existing transportation mode that actually worked? Ike's National Defense Highway System is the perfect example. Improvements to the existing highway was not the solution; no new paving, no straightening of sharp curves, no adding lanes. The solution Ike came up with was a brand new highway built to a brand new design that allowed much faster speeds and at the same time increased safety. He actually overhauled how the new highways were built - from scratch.