Amtrak proposal to create new rail passenger connections for major cities

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Camelback

A roundtrip ticket on Amtrak from Pittsburgh to New York will cost $360 coach and will take 9-12 hours each way.
.

And that’s only because there is no high-speed option, and commercial freight has the right of way, causing the ridiculous travel times.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

So a train line should be built to accommodate you? Do you realize just how minuscule of a minority people like you are amongst Americans?

Plenty of people can't or don't want to drive. People who LIKE driving are probably a minority.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Plenty of people can't or don't want to drive. People who LIKE driving are probably a minority.

Facts matter little, I guess.

[Randomguy34]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

So a train line should be built to accommodate you? Do you realize just how minuscule of a minority people like you are amongst Americans?

You're assuming travel habits are fixed and can't change. If there is a faster/more convenient service that travelers are aware of, they will likely opt to switch modes. If a train line to Cincinnati was faster than driving or more convenient than flying, it's not unreasonable that there would be ridership growth.

[Camelback]

Originally Posted by pj3000

And that’s only because there is no high-speed option, and commercial freight has the right of way, causing the ridiculous travel times.

That's the issue. We could build high-speed everywhere if there are enough passengers out there to justify the use of tax dollars to build and maintain it. There are regions that absolutely have the interest, numbers, demand that should be explored and built. There are other areas that do not and should probably be eliminated.

I don't have faith in Amtrak, they don't have a great track record.

[pj3000]

I know sooooo many people who are always bragging about how much time they spend behind the wheel commuting. And ALL my friends and family just cannot shut the hell up about not being able to wait to drive 6 hours for a work trip!!

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

So a train line should be built to accommodate you? Do you realize just how minuscule of a minority people like you are amongst Americans?

Good transit, including intercity rail, is one of those things that attracts customers and people like if and ONLY if it works. Most US transit services are unreliable, the routes are inadequate and the whole scheme is inconvenient so of course people disdain it all.

But it doesn't have to be the way it is. Are people in places like Europe and the more advanced countries of Asia really that different? In Europe, trains are often the most convenient way to get from one major city to another and they are heavily used. That was true even before high speed service became as common as it is now. It used to be true because the routes were complete and the trains, however slow, kept to the published schedules pretty rigorously, something AMTRAK has never done.

This is a chicken/egg thing. Should we require heavy usage before bothering to create good service? If we keep trying that it'll never work. It's time to improve the service and watch the users come as I believe they will.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Exactly.

Flying from Pittsburgh to Philly, DC, or NYC for instance complexly sucks. It’s ridiculously expensive and considering the amount of time it takes to get to the airport and go thru all the crap that goes with getting on a plane, plus roughly 1 hour airtime, plus going through all the crap of getting off the plane and leaving the airport for your destination, it takes the same amount of time to drive the 4 hours to DC, 5 to Philly, or 6 to NYC.

Yeah. And planes headed to NYC area airports aren't even allowed to take off without being allocated a landing slot. So you're almost certainly going to spend at least 30 minutes on the tarmac at the departing airport while the pilots get approved to land in New York. When the weather in New York is less than perfect you'll easily wait for hours.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Camelback

That's the issue. We could build high-speed everywhere if there are enough passengers out there to justify the use of tax dollars to build and maintain it. There are regions that absolutely have the interest, numbers, demand that should be explored and built. There are other areas that do not and should probably be eliminated.

I don't have faith in Amtrak, they don't have a great track record.

Yeah, I’m not advocating for a system that lets me take a HSR trip from Pittsburgh to Miami, much less Pittsburgh to Seattle or LA. That is what air travel is for.

But there is a ton of demand for service that would eliminate short, expensive flights and long, wasteful drives.

But guess who lobbies against this... hmmm?

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Facts matter little, I guess.

20% of adults don't have a driver's license. 1/8 of households in the Chicago MSA don't have a vehicle (similar to Philly, Boston, SF; in the NYC MSA, this is 3/10).

Even if you have a driver's license and a car available, it doesn't mean you like driving long distances instead of reading, working or napping. On the other hand, buses are usually ok too, but we don't have enough of those either. If I'm going somewhere to give a talk, I sure as hell don't want to drive for 3-5 hours right before and be exhausted before I even get there.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Yeah, I’m not advocating for a system that lets me take a HSR trip from Pittsburgh to Miami, much less Pittsburgh to Seattle or LA. That is what air travel is for.

But there is a ton of demand for service that would eliminate short, expensive flights and long, wasteful drives.

But guess who lobbies against this... hmmm?

I suspect you have never experienced night trains.

The AMTRAK "Silver Service" still existed before COVID and there used to be a similar night train between LA and San Francisco. The idea was, basically, climb aboard in NYC or LA in late afternoon, have a nice meal (real china/silverware, cooked aboard food), go to bed (perhaps after a few drinks and movie in the club car), wake up in Miami or San Francisco at 7 or 8 AM after a good night's sleep (I sleep like a baby on trains), ready for action.

[BnaBreaker]

I've always hoped for Nashville to finally be added to the national rail system, so I appreciate their proposal to do so here. But as others have mentioned, it only really makes sense to do that if they're also planning on doing a Nashville-Louisville-Cincinnati route as well, which would then connect Nashville to the Midwest and East Coast, and the southeast US as a whole to the midwest. It's kind of crazy to me that there is no direct link between Chicago/Great Lakes and Atlanta/Florida.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

None of this refutes the fact that it’s a complete waste of resources.

Being able to take a trip by Amtrak to Chicago is not going to recruit a single person to Miami University of Ohio. This is utter nonsense. Too many people in this forum live in an echo chamber bubble.

The idea of being able to take the train home whenever is certainly a good recruiting tool. Most undergrads at traditional campuses don't have cars (no idea personally about Miami U, but at Stanford, a "rich kid's school" in a suburban area, probably less than a fifth of undergrads had cars).

[Buckeye Native 001]

Oxford is kind of isolated, despite being within Cincinnati's orbit. Gorgeous little college town, but lots of money to be made by local law enforcement in speeding tickets along 27 heading in/out of Oxford. Or, at least that used to be the case with a couple of sudden speed limit changes and notorious speed traps.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

So a train line should be built to accommodate you? Do you realize just how minuscule of a minority people like you are amongst Americans?

Out of curiosity, I looked up the numbers.

83% of Americans drive "most days", 64% daily, but only 34% "enjoy" driving.

[Camelback]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I suspect you have never experienced night trains.

The AMTRAK "Silver Service" still existed before COVID and there used to be a similar night train between LA and San Francisco. The idea was, basically, climb aboard in NYC or LA in late afternoon, have a nice meal (real china/silverware, cooked aboard food), go to bed (perhaps after a few drinks and movie in the club car), wake up in Miami or San Francisco at 7 or 8 AM after a good night's sleep (I sleep like a baby on trains), ready for action.

I've never heard of the Silver Service. That sounds delightful! I would do it for 1 night because it sounds fun. Treat it not as a ticket, but as a hotel expense. You could get almost anywhere overnight east of the Mississippi. How much did that ticket cost?

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

None of this refutes the fact that it’s a complete waste of resources.

Being able to take a trip by Amtrak to Chicago is not going to recruit a single person to Miami University of Ohio. This is utter nonsense. Too many people in this forum live in an echo chamber bubble.

There are quite a number of top public colleges out there in the middle of nowhere without good airport or interstate highway access. Miami - one of the "public ivies" often ranked along Virginia, NC Chapel Hill, Michigan, etc., is one of those. Good rail service to Chicago makes recruiting from the Chicago area + west coast flights to Chicago airports a lot easier.

Otherwise you're looking at a 90-minute drive after flying into Cincinnati, Indianapolis, or - gasp - Dayton, including a bunch of hill-hopping country roads.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by BnaBreaker

I've always hoped for Nashville to finally be added to the national rail system, so I appreciate their proposal to do so here. But as others have mentioned, it only really makes sense to do that if they're also planning on doing a Nashville-Louisville-Cincinnati route as well, which would then connect Nashville to the Midwest and East Coast, and the southeast US as a whole to the midwest. It's kind of crazy to me that there is no direct link between Chicago/Great Lakes and Atlanta/Florida.

If you are familiar with past electrification plans you'd see that the table is set for these gaps to be filled with a revival of the 1970s energy crisis plan to electrify the major freight railroads. I would bet that a second federal bill is drafted to fund large-scale electrification and then new passenger service will be able to piggy-pack on this improvement.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I suspect you have never experienced night trains.

The AMTRAK "Silver Service" still existed before COVID and there used to be a similar night train between LA and San Francisco. The idea was, basically, climb aboard in NYC or LA in late afternoon, have a nice meal (real china/silverware, cooked aboard food), go to bed (perhaps after a few drinks and movie in the club car), wake up in Miami or San Francisco at 7 or 8 AM after a good night's sleep (I sleep like a baby on trains), ready for action.

I have not! But wish I could do so.

However, rather than the go to bed part, I would more than likely raise hot hell on rails in the bar car all nite long until we pulled into the depot.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by pj3000

However, rather than the go to bed part, I would more than likely raise hot hell on rails in the bar car all nite long until we pulled into the depot.

Back in my 20s, I took a solo trip on the empire builder from chicago out to the PNW for shits and giggles.

On the first night of the journey, me a group of fellow train degenerates literally drank the bar car out of alcohol.

There was no booze left on the train until they were able to resupply the bar car in fargo the following morning.