The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Oh noes! .005 percent was used on something other than what you hoped for?

JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

mattharvest: JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

Ummm...

OMG! The easier-to-finish stuff was finished first!

Dammit Subby, real life isn't "Railroad Tycoon". You can't just start throwing down tracks willy-nilly and expect to be hauling passengers over long distances immediately.

mattharvest: This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

Refurbishing a rail car is a bit different than digging a ditch.

mattharvest: Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

You have not demonstrated anywhere that the workers hired were not required for the duties needed. You make the assumption that having a high percentage of the cost go to salaries is somehow abnormal, when that's the case in most businesses.

"Nonsense" indeed, and WHARGRBL at that.

mattharvest: This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches.

they hired people to break the train cars, then paid others to fix them?

doublesecretprobation: mattharvest: This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches.

they hired people to break the train cars, then paid others to fix them?

Exactly what they probably did. And why did they have to refurbish them instead of getting them up to snuff ?

mattharvest: You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

hmmmm, ftfa:

"A new car would cost about $3 million, whereas to refurbish a car costs about $1 million..."

I read in another article somewhere else inside the internet that told me that half the money went towards the development of dining car menus written in Muslim.

mattharvest: This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

The entire point of stimulus money is to use it in ways that will circulate money into the system. In this case, even digging ditches and refilling them has purpose as a form of economic stimulus, strange as it sounds.

And of course, in this case we are hiring people and doing something useful, which is better.

It is not about the rail car, it is about the workers, the workers, the workers.

One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

heh, there has to be a joke here about making the trains run on time.....

How much stimulus money would we need to shut down Amtrak entirely?

mattharvest: You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

Why not hire them to refurbish a train rather than throwing it out? You know, to save money?

Father Jack Hacket: Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

heh, there has to be a joke here about making the trains run on time.....

If I had made the reference to German trains, then yea.

mattharvest: This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches

I'd rather people be paid to do something of marginal value than to just sit on their can all day.

Hoping $1.3 billion in stimulus money to Amtrak will get you bullet trains or something?

No. I think that's a separate plan.

I thought it was the whistles that made that noise.

Amtrak sucks!
We need more rail transit!
Amtrak sucks!
We need more rail transit!
Amtrak sucks!
We need more rail transit!

Delawhere?fark Delaware and everyone who has ever been there.

mattharvest: J
This is nonsense.

um, re-read the article - the unemployed are put back to work and Amtrak gets more cars to increase the level of service. have you ridden the NEC during rush hour? Amtrak needs more cars - the trains are packed for the regional service.

$1.3 billion would be a small fraction of cost to build a bullet train in the U.S.

Father Jack Hacket: Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

heh, there has to be a joke here about making the trains run on time.....

I thought it was a joke about waiting for a train in an airport but the OP was in on it too.

If mattharvest was trolling he did a great job.
If he wasn't he might end up with a meme named after him

/pet peeve.

swaxhog: Father Jack Hacket: Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

heh, there has to be a joke here about making the trains run on time.....

I thought it was a joke about waiting for a train in an airport but the OP was in on it too.

Milwaukee airport has an Amtrak stop. A lot of times they ship people from Chicago to catch connecting flights.

Father Jack Hacket:
heh, there has to be a joke here about making the trains run on time.....

look at Amtrak's on-time record and then call the owner of those rails and ask them why they dick over Amtrak. Amtrak owns justa few corridors - the on-time record for the NEC is currently above 90%.

theorellior: I thought it was the whistles that made that noise.



/approves

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: Father Jack Hacket: Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

heh, there has to be a joke here about making the trains run on time.....

If I had made the reference to German trains, then yea.

German trains? Huh?

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

i'm spending the summer in switzerland so i'm getting a kick out of your post.

the efficiency of the train system here is crazy. it's more expensive than we're used to in N. America but they cover the whole (admittedly small) country, interface seamlessly across regional and intercity trains, and work well with trains to other countries.

if the US could ever do the same in the N.East it would be amazing.

Honestly, this sounds like a North Korean propaganda headline

"Shiny refurbished traincar put back into service, courtesy of your government. Recovery and future success is on the way!"

/Ya, a bit too much hyperbole.
//But still, we should be excited over one Amtrak traincar paid for with stimulus money? Really?

JusticeandIndependence: Refurbishing a rail car is a bit different than digging a ditch.

Ssshhh.

Anything you do with your hands is for peons and failures who are probably Obama worshipers and can't afford a suit and tie like a good, successful American.

*snrk*

mattharvest: JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

Hur, you're dur

I'm sure Biden will be happy riding in a train car that doesn't smell like feet. Yet.

"B..B..But that's only the first $700,000. You need to give it 3 more years for the rest of the money to start working."

LessO2: $1.3 billion would be a small fraction of cost to build a bullet train in the U.S.

it doesn't even pay for the environmental study and would barely cover the political bribes.

mattharvest: JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

I'm guessing you are thinking they are just gonna put these old cars up for display or something? They are not.


They are fixing older cars up and going too put them back in use instead of building new cars. This serves a dual function of getting them back to work and training them before building new cars.

Mordant: doublesecretprobation: mattharvest: This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches.

they hired people to break the train cars, then paid others to fix them?

Exactly what they probably did. And why did they have to refurbish them instead of getting them up to snuff ?

And barring that, they could at least have been used to make sure the cars cut the mustard.

Man, i love amtrack.

orlando to NYC in a private room with a huge picture window, my own toilet, and a bed. Sit and drink and watch the world go by. And the whole trip only takes 24 hours, 8 of which i am peacefully snoozing away.

BlorfMaster: Man, i love amtrack.

orlando to NYC in a private room with a huge picture window, my own toilet, and a bed. Sit and drink and watch the world go by. And the whole trip only takes 24 hours, 8 of which i am peacefully snoozing away.

How much is the private room for that trip. I was looking at taking the empire builder to WA

And now that car can be put to good use losing money for Amtrack (i.e. taxpayers). It's lose lose! Two negatives make a positive, right?

Speaking of stimulus funds, I drove over some very nice asphalt yesterday that was paid for by my taxpayer dollars. I have to say I was pleased that no Iraqi insurgent would try to blow up this investment of my money.

Mattharvest:

You do realize that Amtrak only owns a small section of track for themselves up in the Northeast. This is one of the best taken care of sections of track in the country as it is maintained for high speed service (sorta). As for the rest of the country, well Amtrak runs on freight railroad's tracks which do not prioritize Amtrak at all. So all the delays, track problems, etc are on the shoulders of the parent freight railroad. Locomotive difficulties are another issue all together.

It is a shame that Amtrak was designed to fail from the get go; we used to have a wonderful rail system here in America before we were convinced that we needed to drive/fly everywhere. The railroads gave up so much of their business willingly to those forms of transport didn't help either.

/loves it when people who don't know shiat about Amtrak complain about it.

december:
if the US could ever do the same in the N.East it would be amazing.

it used to exist, but then the American populace fell in love with their cars. the Northeast was a zigzag maze of railroads with service from anywhere to damn near anywhere else.

the blame is squarely to be found in the mirror.

You'll see. eventually the money will trickle down from the government, then we will all be happy!

Bullet train? You seriously think that would work in this country? Every year we have hundreds killed when they go past the flashing lights and around the gate or run over when they are walking on the tracks. Run that train through the sticks and every dumbass yokel will be out with black powder seeing if they can blow it up real good.

LessO2: $1.3 billion would be a small fraction of cost to build a bullet train in the U.S.

It's not a train from coast to coast. The two projects that (I believe) are still competing for the funds are a San Francisco - Los Angeles line and a Midwest hub and spoke system centered in Chicago.

The $1.3 billion won't fully build either, but it'll be a hell of a start.

asciibaron: the Northeast was a zigzag maze of railroads with service from anywhere to damn near anywhere else.

And now a lot of those rails have been pulled out for hike and bike trails. Oh, well!

JonnyBGoode: theorellior: I thought it was the whistles that made that noise.



/approves

Ahhh BubbRubb -- is there anything he can't do/comment on? :-)

filth: How much stimulus money would we need to shut down Amtrak entirely?

Way too much, airport and roadway expansion is quite expensive.

Are the people hired from the car companies getting (or expecting) similar pay, benefits, and conditions as they had at their former employers?

The article mentions a $37,000 expenditure composed of 950 man hours. That's nearly $40 an hour. I wonder if that's typical and if it's the total cost or just the labor cost for that project.

For their sake, I hope the union mentality of entitlement doesn't take over.

gustakooka: Oh noes! .005 percent was used on something other than what you hoped for?

Came for this!

I know that they have been promised a couple hundred million here to develop a train that will connect Columbus to Cleveland.

The train ride will take 6 hours one way and cost 20 dollars a person... Actual drive time is 2.5 hours. Sounds like a winner!!!

Go Obama stimulus plan!

Pro Zack: You'll see. eventually the money will trickle down from the government, then we will all be happy!

Direct government payments to workers in the field is a little less "trickle-down" than hoping rich people hire another gardener with their larger tax refund.

theorellior: Speaking of stimulus funds, I drove over some very nice asphalt yesterday that was paid for by my taxpayer dollars. I have to say I was pleased that no Iraqi insurgent would try to blow up this investment of my money.

Everybody loves fresh pavement.

Commies, neo-cons, insurgents, terr'ists, blowhards, entitlement whores, revenue farming cops...

Congratulations, Amtrak. You just polished a turd.

Bocanegra: "B..B..But that's only the first $700,000. You need to give it 3 more years for the rest of the money to start working."

Its already working, what are you talking about?

I just tried to call the phone number for the Recovery.gove website and got a busy signal.


/V.2.0 soon
//will be nice to track where the money is wasted

tweekster: swaxhog: Father Jack Hacket: Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

heh, there has to be a joke here about making the trains run on time.....

I thought it was a joke about waiting for a train in an airport but the OP was in on it too.

Milwaukee airport has an Amtrak stop. A lot of times they ship people from Chicago to catch connecting flights.

1. Amtrak doesn't run from MKE to ORD. In fact, it doesn't even run to MDW. You have to take the amtrak to something and then take the orange line to get to MDW. (i think its the orange line?)
2. I've taken the CoachUSA bus from MKE to ORD before.

\\thought the joke was about trains running on time as well.

BlorfMaster: Man, i love amtrack.

orlando to NYC in a private room with a huge picture window, my own toilet, and a bed. Sit and drink and watch the world go by. And the whole trip only takes 24 hours, 8 of which i am peacefully snoozing away.

the rest of it drinkin' & barfin'

Perducci: The article mentions a $37,000 expenditure composed of 950 man hours. That's nearly $40 an hour. I wonder if that's typical and if it's the total cost or just the labor cost for that project.

It sounds high, but if you have to do electrical work then the going rates around here for electricians is $70/hr. I'd say for skilled labor $40/hr might be about right. You really wouldn't want minimum wage workers refurbishing your rail cars.

mattharvest: Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer).

Epic 10/10

tedbundee: Its already working, what are you talking about?

LOL.

tweekster: BlorfMaster: Man, i love amtrack.

orlando to NYC in a private room with a huge picture window, my own toilet, and a bed. Sit and drink and watch the world go by. And the whole trip only takes 24 hours, 8 of which i am peacefully snoozing away.

How much is the private room for that trip. I was looking at taking the empire builder to WA

its pricier in the summer, but come later in august the private viewliner room is around $300. that includes a decent dinner in the dining cart.

jbc: OMG! The easier-to-finish stuff was finished first!

Dammit Subby, real life isn't "Railroad Tycoon". You can't just start throwing down tracks willy-nilly and expect to be hauling passengers over long distances immediately.

Yeah! You have to wait 2 game months and have the train stop at the stations on a line at least once to get demand going.

joegekko: Mordant: doublesecretprobation: mattharvest: This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches.

they hired people to break the train cars, then paid others to fix them?

Exactly what they probably did. And why did they have to refurbish them instead of getting them up to snuff ?

And barring that, they could at least have been used to make sure the cars cut the mustard.

But if they can't chew snuff, how can they do their jobs?

xtragrind: I know that they have been promised a couple hundred million here to develop a train that will connect Columbus to Cleveland.

The train ride will take 6 hours one way and cost 20 dollars a person... Actual drive time is 2.5 hours. Sounds like a winner!!!


the point is not to connect those two cities, it's for the people along the route to got to either of those places.

BlorfMaster: Man, i love amtrack.

orlando to NYC in a private room with a huge picture window, my own toilet, and a bed. Sit and drink and watch the world go by. And the whole trip only takes 24 hours, 8 of which i am peacefully snoozing away.

You know you could fly there in less than 3 hours right?

Jubeebee: It's not a train from coast to coast. The two projects that (I believe) are still competing for the funds are a San Francisco - Los Angeles line and a Midwest hub and spoke system centered in Chicago.

The $1.3 billion won't fully build either, but it'll be a hell of a start.

$8 bil is for high speed rail, and the Portland-Seattle corridor is competing for funds as well as Florida. I think the NY State corridor from Buffalo to NYC is also potentially in the running. Washington's DOT already has extensive plans to get the trip time reduced by about 1 hr between Portland and Seattle already, including a lot of EIS', they just don't have funding for a number of projects to make it happen yet. I'm not as familiar with the other projects, but I've seen them mentioned as contenders for some of it.

The $1.3 bil is for traditional system upgrades as I understood it, not for converting/building a high speed system.

helix400: Honestly, this sounds like a North Korean propaganda headline

"Shiny refurbished traincar put back into service, courtesy of your government. Recovery and future success is on the way!"

/Ya, a bit too much hyperbole.
//But still, we should be excited over one Amtrak traincar paid for with stimulus money? Really?

You really hate when the government does anything right, dontcha? Stimulus advertised as a way to rebuild the infrastructure and get people working...the story is an example of just such a dynamic in action.

If this were akin to a NK propoganda headline, the one refurb'd car would be shiney and polished on one side, rusted through everywhere out of view and completely gutted inside. There would be no rail line for it to run on and 3 million people would be dying from starvation.

So I have to go with 'No, no it doesn't' on that one.

BlorfMaster: its pricier in the summer, but come later in august the private viewliner room is around $300. that includes a decent dinner in the dining cart.

Is that in addition to the ticket? I think thats how the empire builder works but I didn't look that far into it.

sigdiamond2000: I read in another article somewhere else inside the internet that told me that half the money went towards the development of dining car menus written in MuslimIslamic.

Pet peeve.

mattharvest: (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer)

That's the thing. Aside from local commuter rail (which Amtrak doesn't handle) and the Acela between NYC and DC, these trains are nowhere close to being full. Intercity passenger rail has not turned a profit since air travel became available.

joegekko: And barring that, they could at least have been used to make sure the cars cut the mustard.

I hope it's not Gray Poupon you're thinking of!

dualplains: sigdiamond2000: I read in another article somewhere else inside the internet that told me that half the money went towards the development of dining car menus written in MuslimIslamicAn actual language.

Pet peeve.

Wait, I think the stimulus is near worthless, but why is subby implying that $700k to refurbish a car is bad when it costs so much more to buy a new one? Seems like a rare decent use of funding for once.

Walker: You know you could fly there in less than 3 hours right?

Yeah, and you can fast-forward through a movie in 15 minutes. Some people actually like the journey.

/not to mention Journey

mattharvest: You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.


You know, most tracks Amtrak runs on aren't owned by them and they have no actual rights/permission to maintain or upgrade them.

tweekster: BlorfMaster: its pricier in the summer, but come later in august the private viewliner room is around $300. that includes a decent dinner in the dining cart.

Is that in addition to the ticket? I think thats how the empire builder works but I didn't look that far into it.

the ticket is like $117, and then you upgrade to the room for another $200

For those that actually do use the trains in the States, what's the best way to go as far as a good balance of comfort an affordability for a long trip? (Maybe not coast to coast, but at least across a few states.) Do you have to book early like a plane? Certain times of year? Middle-of-the-weeks? I'm getting pretty good working the airlines for deals, but the trains still stump me.

I like the idea of the leisurely, comfortable trips, but whenever I do need to travel I can rarely find prices that aren't business-class in a jet type expensive. If I'm gonna' pay that much I might as well just fly. And cattle class may suck, and I have to have my luggage UPS'd, but I only have to put up with it for a few hours and I'm there for half or less. =/

theorellior: Direct government payments to workers in the field is a little less "trickle-down" than hoping rich people hire another gardener with their larger tax refund.

I'll believe it when it works.

BlorfMaster: tweekster: BlorfMaster: its pricier in the summer, but come later in august the private viewliner room is around $300. that includes a decent dinner in the dining cart.

Is that in addition to the ticket? I think thats how the empire builder works but I didn't look that far into it.

the ticket is like $117, and then you upgrade to the room for another $200

That's a pretty good deal. Also I like train travel so the sleeper car would be really fun for a longer trip. I use the Milwaukee to Chicago line about once a month.

skinink: Unfortunately a lot of routes were cancelled, but if the Vegas route was there I'd do it again.

One of the reasons routes were cancelled is that a number of years ago, Amtrak adopted a policy where broken cars simply were just taken out of service - not replaced, not repaired. They would then pull a car from another train to replace it, if the broken car was on a high-traffic train.

Eventually, routes started seeing decreased ridership - which makes sense when you have less seats to fill - and Amtrak decided to pull the plug on them. What they did to the Sunset Limited after Hurricane Katrina was epic level stupidity and probably illegal.

BunkoSquad: /not to mention Journey

Don't stop believing.

What are the chances of getting some more Mountain/mid-west lines? I'd love to get from Denver to Houston without having to go through Chicago or Los Angeles.

from Chicago to Portland on the Empire Builder with a roomette is $688.00

Pro Zack: I'll believe it when it works.

WWII good enough for you?

MasterThief: That's the thing. Aside from local commuter rail (which Amtrak doesn't handle) and the Acela between NYC and DC, these trains are nowhere close to being full. Intercity passenger rail has not turned a profit since air travel became available.

The Amtrak Cascades seemed pretty full last time I took it. They only had one train all day that had a seat available on it, and that was business class only.

Of course, you'd have to be a moron to fly from Portland to Seattle, since the train ride's only about 3h20m, and a flight requires check in and all, and still takes about an hour of travel time. If you're trying to go downtown to downtown add another 60-70 minutes travel time to get to/from the airports as well.

Flying may save half an hour if you drive to the airport, pay for parking, and rent a car at the other end, but by then you may as well have just driven instead.

For distances of about 50-250 miles a train (especially if sidings and passing areas are readily available) can easily compete with air travel.

gustakooka: dualplains: sigdiamond2000: I read in another article somewhere else inside the internet that told me that half the money went towards the development of dining car menus written in MuslimIslamicAn actual languageTerroristic.

Pet peeve.

filth: How much stimulus money would we need to shut down Amtrak entirely?

Dis

What can you say... some rides need to be pimped...



/hotlinked

davidphogan: Jubeebee: It's not a train from coast to coast. The two projects that (I believe) are still competing for the funds are a San Francisco - Los Angeles line and a Midwest hub and spoke system centered in Chicago.

The $1.3 billion won't fully build either, but it'll be a hell of a start.

$8 bil is for high speed rail, and the Portland-Seattle corridor is competing for funds as well as Florida. I think the NY State corridor from Buffalo to NYC is also potentially in the running. Washington's DOT already has extensive plans to get the trip time reduced by about 1 hr between Portland and Seattle already, including a lot of EIS', they just don't have funding for a number of projects to make it happen yet. I'm not as familiar with the other projects, but I've seen them mentioned as contenders for some of it.

The $1.3 bil is for traditional system upgrades as I understood it, not for converting/building a high speed system.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up.

I'm really hoping the Midwest line wins; I'd love to be able to ride up to Minneapolis for the weekend, drink myself stupid at their brewpubs, and not have to worry about driving all the way back on Sunday.

/the alcohol and cheap hotel industries need stimulus too

Jubeebee: LessO2: $1.3 billion would be a small fraction of cost to build a bullet train in the U.S.

It's not a train from coast to coast. The two projects that (I believe) are still competing for the funds are a San Francisco - Los Angeles line and a Midwest hub and spoke system centered in Chicago.

The $1.3 billion won't fully build either, but it'll be a hell of a start.

Coast to coast bullet train wouldn't really suit the US I don't think - because flying makes a lot more sense over that distance. Competing with car routes between major cities on the heavily populated coastal areas makes a whole lot more sense. The core train service really needs to be going 150mph+ (and limited amount of stops) to make up for the hassle of getting to and from each station in most cases for passenger routes to be worthwhile. Ideally then you want local commuter networks, tram, bus and taxi that all centre on the high speed train network (and connect to airports as well for more flexibility).

MasterThief: Intercity passenger rail has not turned a profit since air travel became available.

you mean since air travel has been heavily subsidized by the government, right?

_thisis an outrage!

JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Came here to say this.

asmodeus224: You really hate when the government does anything right, dontcha? Stimulus advertised as a way to rebuild the infrastructure and get people working...the story is an example of just such a dynamic in action.

Yes...this is right.

We're rebuilding the infrastructure with a few refurbished traincars. For eternally failing Amtrak. And we're going into debt for this. And we're pumping money into failing government programs instead of getting the private sector moving again.

Yes...I hate it when the government does things right.

mattharvest: JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

Don't worry you guys, noted business expert mattharvest is here to tell us which jobs are worthwhile and to give the railroad industry heads some pointers on the proper way to spend money.

PsyLord: What can you say... some rides need to be pimped...

Yo dawg, we knew you liked ridin' in trains so we put a locomotive in your car so you could ride while you're ridin'.

theorellior: BunkoSquad: /not to mention Journey

Don't stop believing.

I lol'd
Took the midnight train going anywhere

How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?
Train kept a rolling
Train in Vain
Wire Train -
Train

Amtrak has a severe need for more cars. They have a large backload of cars that need to be refurbished, but havn't been because there was no monaey. Amtrak's existing repair shops are in Delaware and in Indiana.

So they are using there existing shops to repair there existing cars for far less than a new one. Isin't that besomewhat efficent for once?

/The NEC into Manhattan is the only way to go.

Here is a nice map of the US rail system, though i dont know how up to date it is because im pretty sure that route in the lower US from florida to california is no longer operating.

mattharvest:
Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.


I would argue that fixing up a train gets you a fixed-up train, not nothing. The technology isn't obsolete or anything, scheduled trains are still cheaper than cars if run near capacity and cars can't haul freight or mail as well.

Something being old doesn't mean it's worthless, note how NASA is going over the old Atlas series rockets and intending to recycle much of the design.

//Would be nice if they worked on the track and getting it everywhere instead, though.

Jubeebee: I'm really hoping the Midwest line wins; I'd love to be able to ride up to Minneapolis for the weekend, drink myself stupid at their brewpubs, and not have to worry about driving all the way back on Sunday.

It's not about winning, it'll be divided up based on ready to go projects. I know Washington and Oregon are requesting money to grade separate busy crossings, finish renovations that ran out of funding at stations, add sidings and passing tracks, etc. Projects like that are more likely to get funding since they're more likely to already have impact statements completed.

dammit

http://mapmashapp.appspot.com/amtrak.html

MasterThief: mattharvest: (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer)

That's the thing. Aside from local commuter rail (which Amtrak doesn't handle) and the Acela between NYC and DC, these trains are nowhere close to being full. Intercity passenger rail has not turned a profit since air travel became available.

I take the NYC to DC (and back) regular Amtrack train a few times (admittedly only a few) a year and it's generally very crowded (most seats full). Might just be the time of day though.


You do realize that Amtrak only owns a small section of track for themselves up in the Northeast. This is one of the best taken care of sections of track in the country as it is maintained for high speed service (sorta). As for the rest of the country, well Amtrak runs on freight railroad's tracks which do not prioritize Amtrak at all. So all the delays, track problems, etc are on the shoulders of the parent freight railroad. Locomotive difficulties are another issue all together.

This. The train slows to a few miles an hour in parts of CT because of a couple of really old bridges that no one is allowed to expand. Also, in NJ, freight lines dominate the tracks so it's actually the most time consuming part of a trip from NYC to DC. Just plain silly.

/Still prefer the train to flight as long as the trip is 6 hours or less.

asmodeus224: mattharvest: JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

Hur, you're dur

The work has value. It is cheaper to rebuild the rail car than get a new one.

Ya know, I can actually get behind this.

I have taken a train in the US exactly once. It was a great experience and I would totally do it again. I just don't travel between cities that are optimal train-distance from one another very often. My only complaint about the trip was that the first class car was pretty damn old and dingy. It could certainly have used some pimpin'.

And no wifi. WTF? I was shocked to discover that the train did not have wifi. It's not the 1800s any more, Amtrak!

theorellior: WWII good enough for you?

no. too many variables.

Seeing the results of the current budget tsunami will be enough to show whether it works or not. (so far, not)

gustakooka: Oh noes! .005 percent was used on something other than what you hoped for?

Floods start with one drop of rain.

TheRedMonkey: Floods start with one drop of rain.

I completely agree. We need to stop rain! I propose that we fire nukular missles at the clouds. Who's with me!

"Still donning their hard hats and safety goggles, the workers crowded in the main shop"

They gathered in the shop while they were still putting on their safety equipment? Why weren't the already wearing it?

I think you meant "Still wearing their hard hats..."

Don is a verb.

//pickety-pick-pick
//maybe the meeting happened at start-of-shift...

mrmustard11: You do realize that Amtrak only owns a small section of track for themselves up in the Northeast. This is one of the best taken care of sections of track in the country as it is maintained for high speed service (sorta). As for the rest of the country, well Amtrak runs on freight railroad's tracks which do not prioritize Amtrak at all. So all the delays, track problems, etc are on the shoulders of the parent freight railroad. Locomotive difficulties are another issue all together.


Some of the worst delays occur with the Pacific Starliner (which actually runs pretty full trains) where it runs over Union Pacific track. UP refuses signals & track status leave a lot to be desired and the controllers don't give a rats ass how long an Amtrak train waits. UP has consistently refused to upgrade that section (in & around Northern California IIRC) in order to alleviate the bottleneck.

theorellior:

How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?
Train kept a rolling
Train in Vain
Wire Train -
Train

Crazy Train
Got run over by a damned old train
The Gambler (on a train bound for nowhere)

BlorfMaster: http://mapmashapp.appspot.com/amtrak.html

http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/national.pdf

MasterThief: That's the thing. Aside from local commuter rail (which Amtrak doesn't handle) and the Acela between NYC and DC, these trains are nowhere close to being full. Intercity passenger rail has not turned a profit since air travel became available.


That's not the impression I got standing on the concourse at Union Station here in Chicago.

Amtrak after peak oil.

Pants_Optional:

This. The train slows to a few miles an hour in parts of CT because of a couple of really old bridges that no one is allowed to expand. Also, in NJ, freight lines dominate the tracks so it's actually the most time consuming part of a trip from NYC to DC. Just plain silly.

/Still prefer the train to flight as long as the trip is 6 hours or less.

Amtrak owns the entire NEC. Most of old bridges are being slowly replaced south of New Haven.

I want to take the amtrak to NC where they have a BBQ festival where the train just stops and they make an impromptu station for people.

Dafatone: Amtrak sucks!
We need more rail transit!
Amtrak sucks!
We need more rail transit!
Amtrak sucks!
We need more rail transit!

Or simple competition. If we had it not only would the cost of using it go down but jobs in that sector would go through the roof a few gaps in routes might get filled too!

I miss living in Europe being able to hop a train and get anywhere I want to.

I live in San Diego, have 5 kids and would love to take a train to the Granparents in Colorado Springs but there is no way to get there directly. I can get to NM then it's a bus to COS.

OR...if I can get myself to Sacramento or Emeryville I can take the direct route to Denver. Either way the added bus, air or car crap sucks.

I can't even take a train from San Diego to San Francisco or Sacramento it all involves bus rides one way or another. Unless they give me a Brazillian Leito bus...I do not do overland busses.

mattharvest: Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

FTA: "A new car would cost about $3 million, whereas to refurbish a car costs about $1 million"

So, they are keeping people employed, and saving money on purchasing of new rolling stock?

How is that nonsense?

*sigh*

Who is John Galt?

I take Amtrak because they don't look through your luggage too well. It's not like you can hijack a train and drive it into the Pentagon.

Kinda glad my father left Amtrak & went back to CSX before he retired. He was two people away from having to be the one to tell Congress why Amtrak was important and needed another pile of money to keep going.

/do miss the free train rides though

Woo Woo!!!

Pants_Optional:
in NJ, freight lines dominate the tracks so it's actually the most time consuming part of a trip from NYC to DC. Just plain silly.


the issue isn't freight trains - the are the tenant on the line - Amtrak owns it. the problem is congestion. there are dozens of commuter trains all traveling the line and using the same stations. there is only so much capacity. i bet you really notice the problem around Linden, right?

Phosphorus: Who is John Galt?

Some strawman character in a goofy-ass book, why do you ask?

Davey Croquette: I take Amtrak because they don't look through your luggage too well. It's not like you can hijack a train and drive it into the Pentagon.

That and they're okay with you bringing alcohol with you on the train. Not so much with drinking it straight from the bottle, but at least you can bring a half-empty bottle and a tube of toothpaste without worrying about it. Or you can mix drinks in the bathroom.

dj_swim: gustakooka: Oh noes! .005 percent was used on something other than what you hoped for?

Came for this!

and that is just the FIRST .005% but wait there's more. It's a Government stimulus package meant to be abused and used like that.

davidphogan: Davey Croquette: I take Amtrak because they don't look through your luggage too well. It's not like you can hijack a train and drive it into the Pentagon.

That and they're okay with you bringing alcohol with you on the train. Not so much with drinking it straight from the bottle, but at least you can bring a half-empty bottle and a tube of toothpaste without worrying about it. Or you can mix drinks in the bathroom.

Or in your seat as I have done on quite a few occasions. I dont know if there is a rule against that but the employees dont seem to care.

davidphogan: filth: How much stimulus money would we need to shut down Amtrak entirely?

Way too much, airport and roadway expansion is quite expensive.

It is in the few areas in which Amtrak is popular. Personally, I love the NE. I could spend almost any amount of time in NYC. I'm less fond of subsidizing the locals' morning commutes.

davidphogan:
That and they're okay with you bringing alcohol with you on the train. Not so much with drinking it straight from the bottle, but at least you can bring a half-empty bottle and a tube of toothpaste without worrying about it. Or you can mix drinks in the bathroom.

you know you can take it to the club car and drink it there, right? i went threw two six packs on my way back to DC from Pittsburgh and not a single person said word one.

amylou: theorellior:

How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?
Train kept a rolling
Train in Vain
Wire Train -
Train

Crazy Train
Got run over by a damned old train
The Gambler (on a train bound for nowhere)

Southern Pacific (Neil Young)
Night Train (Bruce Cockburn)
City Of New Orleans
About 1/4th of Bluegrass songs, etc...

Devin172:
The Starliner used to be called the Coast Starlight (Starlate), that train has always been delayed thanks to UP. The California Zephyr has a better track record of being on time.

One of my favorite experiences on a train was riding the Zephyr from Salt Lake City back to Sacramento, Ca. About 75 miles east of Sparks, NV a locomotive broke down and we had to creep into a siding to wait for UP to send a locomotive to assist. This was in the late summer and the locomotive that was down supplied the HEP (Head End Power) so the train itself lost power. Sitting in the heat of the day, in the middle of nowhere there were few complaints and we musicians got together to play guitar for the other travelers in our car. Despite sitting there for a few hours, we all managed to have a great time and received a free meal from it all.

The greatest thing about a train is that unlike an airplane you're encouraged to walk around, socialize, eat, drink and just relax. Back when you used to have smoking sections you could walk down there late at night while others slept and join the late night crowd passing a bottle, sharing stories and enjoying the night.

asciibaron: the issue isn't freight trains - the are the tenant on the line - Amtrak owns it. the problem is congestion. there are dozens of commuter trains all traveling the line and using the same stations. there is only so much capacity. i bet you really notice the problem around Linden, right?

I have taken the train from dc to boston (not the express) and frankly I loved it. Its not the fastest way to get from point a to b, but the train has plenty of room and I don't have to deal with airport BS or traffic bs. If only they could extend the line further north, because I really dont enjoy taking the bus...

GT_bike: and that is just the FIRST .005% but wait there's more. It's a Government stimulus package meant to be abused and used like that.

Wait... so refurbishing old train cars, at a cost significantly lower than buying new ones, counts as "abusing" the stimulus package?

Is there anything the stimulus plan can't do?

Davey Croquette: I take Amtrak because they don't look through your luggage too well. It's not like you can hijack a train and drive it into the Pentagon.

YES they do...they friggin stole my whole bag on the Surfliner from LA to San Diego I'd forgotten that one, they gave me a small fraction of the money I lost in my stolen stuff!

mrmustard11: Back when you used to have smoking sections you could walk down there late at night while others slept and join the late night crowd passing a bottle, sharing stories and enjoying the night.

you mean interact with the other passengers. ewww.

sigdiamond2000: I read in another article somewhere else inside the internet that told me that half the money went towards the development of dining car menus written in Muslim.

You made my side hurt...

asmodeus224:
This is nonsense.

Hur, you're dur

Keyboard.
you owe me one

tweekster:
That's a pretty good deal. Also I like train travel so the sleeper car would be really fun for a longer trip. I use the Milwaukee to Chicago line about once a month.

You'll enjoy it. I took the Builder from Mpls to Whitefish Bay Montana. Sleeping car the whole way. The food was surprisingly good (I was expecting airline-style food, but we really enjoyed our meals). All meals are included in the ticket price, so all we had to do was tip the waiter and the porter. The staff is friendly and likes to just stop what they're doing and chat from time to time, which helps pass the miles on the boring stretches. And once you get into the mountains, the observation car has incredible views that you'll never see driving a car.


Oh, and to echo the majority, subtard is an idiot. He's biatching that amtrak is saving 2 million per car. I guess they should have spent that $120 million on shiny new cars that would do the exact same thing as the shiny old car.

I choo choo CHOOSE you

may have been said (didn't read all replies), but a highspeed line in the Dallas/Houston/Austin triangle, with a spur to San Antonio would be awsome.

/though I'm leaving Texas in December

That and they're okay with you bringing alcohol with you on the train.

Seriously?

I dont know if there is a rule against that but the employees dont seem to care.

What? An indifferent federal government employee? Impossible.

How about this- AMTRAK introduces "Booze Train to Nowhere" brought to you by AMTRAK, MADD, and Capt. Morgan.

joethebastard: Wait... so refurbishing old train cars, at a cost significantly lower than buying new ones, counts as "abusing" the stimulus package?

He prefers airlifting shrinkwrapped palettes of cash into Iraq for his governmental fiscal abuse.

asciibaron: you know you can take it to the club car and drink it there, right? i went threw two six packs on my way back to DC from Pittsburgh and not a single person said word one.

I think they just didn't want me mixing drinks in the club car. An employee suggested mixing it in the bathroom, and even gave me a cup with ice. I think it was just too obvious, given that it was a fifth of rum.

I wouldn't mind taking the train if it were a bit faster. I looked into an Amtrak trip from Charleston, WV to Philly once. Twelve hours! I could drive it in eight. And I'd have to stop for red lights. I don't get it.

Three million per car? Seriously? What the hell are they made out of?

I have a hard time believing other rail-heavy countries like Japan dish out three million per train car.

Then again, our trains are slow-moving, enormous lumbering behemoths of awesome American power. Maybe that's why our trains keep losing money.

This gets a big FAIL for subby.

jaerik: Then again, our trains are slow-moving, enormous lumbering behemoths of awesome American power. Maybe that's why our trains keep losing money.

Yeah, if only trains could be like roads and airlines, which are money-making ventures existing without government support.

Davey Croquette: That and they're okay with you bringing alcohol with you on the train.

Seriously?

I dont know if there is a rule against that but the employees dont seem to care.

What? An indifferent federal government employee? Impossible.

How about this- AMTRAK introduces "Booze Train to Nowhere" brought to you by AMTRAK, MADD, and Capt. Morgan.

Most of the employees I have met are very friendly and if they have time will chat.

A couple years ago I caught the last train to chicago on Halloween. Basically we had a party in one of the cars and a LOT of people were mixing drinks. The employees didn't care because everyone was having fun.

The reason we don't have high speed trains is because we don't have the track for it.

I took Amtrak between NYC and DC regularly for year while long distance dating, it was awesome. The workers were nice, there was plenty of room even in the non-Acela cars, you can make calls, get work done, charge your laptop. And no insane lines or security.

gustakooka: Oh noes! .005 percent was used on something other than what you hoped for?

I'd consider making the existing ones safer and less prone to fatal accidents, especially .005, a worthwhile investment.

/not arguing you, just saying

joethebastard: GT_bike: and that is just the FIRST .005% but wait there's more. It's a Government stimulus package meant to be abused and used like that.

Wait... so refurbishing old train cars, at a cost significantly lower than buying new ones, counts as "abusing" the stimulus package?

wait... cut off what I was responding to to imply that I said anything about the refurbishing vs. new cars comparison. Amtrak in general is a money sucking black hole of graft and payola. When have they turned a profit?

Phosphorus: *sigh*

Who is John Galt?

Awww Phosphorus is a cute little free market tool commenting on railroad travel, obviously unaware that no railroad system has turned a "profit" without government help in the history of..

wait for this...

EVER

Excepting the days when riding a train was more of a novelty than a form of transportation, rail travel (like most travel) is not highly profitable and was nearly always a public service. When the car began to dominate the landscape the railroads scaled back the service in an effort to get people to stop riding. This is also the reason trucking became a huge industry, shipping LCL (Less than carload) freight was not highly profitable either. When you strip out the public service aspect of a company you get left with the railroad system we have now; long distance runs hauling large quantities of raw materials or the same sort of freight.

Sadly all forms of transportation have some manner of government subsidy, airports are constructed with tax dollars, bailouts for airlines, roads and highways, etc etc.. We all pay for that, yet Amtrak gets the most recognition as a supposed waste despite receiving the lowest amount of funding of any of the other transportation costs. If Amtrak received a quarter of the public money that is spent on airports we'd have a far nicer system than we do now. Amtrak was designed to only survive a few years, the hope was that it would be unpopular and quiet the American people that asked for rail travel to be saved. Yes, we the people asked for it after the freight railroads decided passenger traffic wasn't worth the time or effort.

Pointing a finger and saying "ZOMG WASTE!! JOHN GALT!" without knowing the history of how or why we are at the point right now doesn't help your case.

Nice troll though. ;)

Came for the Bubb Rubb references, leaving mostly disappointed.

Dafatone: Amtrak sucks!
We need more rail transit!

These two statements are not mutually exclusive.
=Smidge=

mattharvest: JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

You want to hire those people? Great. Hire them to get the existing trains up to snuff (instead of having engines that fail when the train is full in the summer). Hire them to rebuild tracks to be more reliable. Hire them to set up a bullet train.

This is nonsense.

That's what they're doing, refurbishing the stuff Amtrak already has at a 2/3 savings over buying new. RTFA

GT_bike: joethebastard: GT_bike: and that is just the FIRST .005% but wait there's more. It's a Government stimulus package meant to be abused and used like that.

Wait... so refurbishing old train cars, at a cost significantly lower than buying new ones, counts as "abusing" the stimulus package?

wait... cut off what I was responding to to imply that I said anything about the refurbishing vs. new cars comparison.

The refurbishing was the "FIRST .005%" that you were talking about.

Amtrak in general is a money sucking black hole of graft and payola. When have they turned a profit?

Never. Why in the world would we expect them to? The government subsidizes every other way we travel.

ColSanders: I wouldn't mind taking the train if it were a bit faster. I looked into an Amtrak trip from Charleston, WV to Philly once. Twelve hours! I could drive it in eight. And I'd have to stop for red lights. I don't get it.

Yeah, but you'd have to drive. In a train you just sit around and get hammered on your smuggled booze.

I made the mistake of driving from Chicago to Cincinnati a few years ago to watch a weekend's worth of Cubs games. On paper, driving was cheaper and faster. But figure in parking for 3 days plus the stress of traffic, and it would have been about the same cost with less hassle to take the train.

That's what they're doing, refurbishing the stuff Amtrak already has at a 2/3 savings over buying new. RTFA

It's not what the stimulus bill was meant to go towards. RTF ARRA.

Man, after re-reading the thread, I still can't decide whether mattharvest is just a simpleton who regurgitated anti-government WHARRGARBL without actually reading what he wrote and comparing it to the actual article... or whether he wins this thread's Most Successful Troll medal.

It's like reading a WSJ op-ed that's directly contradicted by a news article three pages earlier in the very same paper.

If it is a troll, I have to say it's very subtly executed. Excellent simulacrum of a mindless free-market Randroid, and yet contradicted almost in its own text, or at least in the quoted text - resulting in a post that any pro-gov (or at least pro-Amtrak) debater just can't resist the urge to curb-stomp.

Or to put it more simply: 10/10.

mrmustard11: amylou: theorellior:

How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?
Train kept a rolling
Train in Vain
Wire Train -
Train

Crazy Train
Got run over by a damned old train
The Gambler (on a train bound for nowhere)

Southern Pacific (Neil Young)
Night Train (Bruce Cockburn)
City Of New Orleans
About 1/4th of Bluegrass songs, etc...

The Grateful Dead song that goes "riding that train, high on cocaine"

Ideally, I'd like to see a rail system closer to that of Japan's JR Group. But in the mean time, Amtrak could get a real boost by having dedicated passenger lines instead of the current rail sharing with freight lines arrangement that makes Amtrak a piece of shiat. Improving average speeds on lines to above 100 mph would be a good start as well, but is almost unrealistic since the freight lines have priority over passenger rail.

Where is my bullet train from Disney land to the Brothels in Nevada like the Republicans promised!!!!

ColSanders: I wouldn't mind taking the train if it were a bit faster. I looked into an Amtrak trip from Charleston, WV to Philly once. Twelve hours! I could drive it in eight. And I'd have to stop for red lights. I don't get it.

you don't make several stops along the route to pickup and de-board passengers, nor do you have to make a connection in DC. the Cardinal ends in DC and then you have to get on a new train in DC - i'm sure there is a bit of waiting for the connection to Philly in DC.

i'd take the train to Dayton every year if i could... that's 8 hours i hate to drive.

How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?

Midnite Train to Georgia.

Woo-HOO!

jaerik: Three million per car? Seriously? What the hell are they made out of?

I have a hard time believing other rail-heavy countries like Japan dish out three million per train car.

they spend more actually.

This is great news. A rejuvenated Amtrak should be able to lose money at least twice as fast while being half as efficient.

How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?:

I was drunk
The day My Mom
Got out of prison

And I went
to pick her up
In the rain

But before I
Could get to the station
In ma pick up truck
She got runned over by a danged 'ol train!!!!

jaerik:
Then again, our trains are slow-moving, enormous lumbering behemoths of awesome American power. Maybe that's why our trains keep losing money.
GT_bike: joethebastard: GT_bike: and that is just the FIRST .005% but wait there's more. It's a Government stimulus package meant to be abused and used like that.

Wait... so refurbishing old train cars, at a cost significantly lower than buying new ones, counts as "abusing" the stimulus package?

wait... cut off what I was responding to to imply that I said anything about the refurbishing vs. new cars comparison. Amtrak in general is a money sucking black hole of graft and payola. When have they turned a profit?

they aren't allowed to make a profit... they aren't a private business.

Germ78:

That is "Casey Jones", they also did "Freight Train" both are folk standards.
"Freight Train" is one of my favorites, among others are;

"Canadian Railroad Trilogy" by Gordon Lightfoot

"City Of New Orleans" was written almost as the epitaph for railroad travel in the U.S.

"Streamline Cannonball" by Doc Watson as well as "Wreck Of The Old Number 9" and "Greeville Trestle"

xtragrind: I know that they have been promised a couple hundred million here to develop a train that will connect Columbus to Cleveland.

The train ride will take 6 hours one way and cost 20 dollars a person... Actual drive time is 2.5 hours. Sounds like a winner!!!

Go Obama stimulus plan!

How much would it cost to drive that distance?
Assuming 60mph,$3 per gallon and a 30mpg car the cost is $36.

mrmustard11: obviously unaware that no railroad system has turned a "profit" without government help in the history of..

wait for this...

EVER


that's not true at all. please refine your statement.

jjorsett: This is great news. A rejuvenated Amtrak should be able to lose money at least twice as fast while being half as efficient.

yeah not like the road system that makes the government money.


Oh wait it doesn't.

Phosphorus: Who is John Galt?

The millionaire capitalist who doesn't know what to do when his toilet clogs because the "perfect" society only contains those who are wealthy and only poor people unclog toilets but since they aren't rich they aren't allowed into the "perfect" society.

Mostly off topic, but... I've seen Amtraks problems in the Midwest ( for example ) come from the catch 22 of the declining heyday of rail: Amtrak doesn't have dedicated tracks, so service can be hugely compromised if conflicts occur from freight and industrial carriers who share the line.

For instance, I've traveled the Indianapolis to Chicago "Hoosier" line several times, and it was really excellent ( $19 each way... a damn good deal even if it's shorter to drive ) except that often you can be stalled on the tracks for a hour or more waiting for some other idiot to get underway down the line.

A limited stop ( not even bullet train, just higher speed zones ) dedicated rail line for many cities in the midwest could be really well done. I don't know how profitable that would be though...

Smidge204: Dafatone: Amtrak sucks!
We need more rail transit!

These two statements are not mutually exclusive.
=Smidge=

In theory, no.

In practice, the only way to make them both true is if we need more rail transit that sucks.

There are private rail companies that run freight all over the country. Any of them is free to start a passenger service any time they want. Yet they do not. Why? Not profitable enough.

But the government can operate something poorly and lose money for as long as they want.

So how can we get more rail traffic? Well the only way seems to be by expanding the Amtrack service which sucks.

How can we get Amtrack to stop sucking? Well there is no way. Just look at the possibilities.

1) Does Amtrak suck because it loses money? Well the only part of Amtrak that does not lose money is the Boston-NY-Philly-DC section. So we could shut down everything but that. But then there would be no Amtrak anywhere else, and people would say that sucks.

2) Does Amtrak suck because of poor service? Well, we could improve service, at a cost. Then Amrtak would lose more money and people would say that sucks.

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude:

One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around JFK is to watch all the Swiss tourists wondering where the trains are.

Davey Croquette: How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?:

I was drunk
The day My Mom
Got out of prison

And I went
to pick her up
In the rain

But before I
Could get to the station
In ma pick up truck
She got runned over by a danged 'ol train!!!!

Best. David Allen Coe song. Evar.

/was the bar anthem for the Cellar in Normal, IL before it closed like 8 years ago
//RIP Stadium Club/The Cellar
///ISU repperzent

How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?

Train, Train
Take me on out of this town...

That is "Casey Jones", they also did "Freight Train" both are folk standards.
"Freight Train" is one of my favorites, among others are;

"I know you Rider" is technically also a train/Dead/folk standard song.

Best. David Allen Coe song. Evar.

You probably haven't heard him and Willie do "Homo Truck Drivin' Man"

Lamune_Baby: For those that actually do use the trains in the States, what's the best way to go as far as a good balance of comfort an affordability for a long trip? (Maybe not coast to coast, but at least across a few states.) Do you have to book early like a plane? Certain times of year? Middle-of-the-weeks? I'm getting pretty good working the airlines for deals, but the trains still stump me.

Booking 14+ days early for travel between the northeastern cities (Boston, DC, NYC, Philly) is usually cheaper than the day of. Fridays and Sundays are the most expensive days usually.

I haven't really found the Acela to be worth it as it only saves around a half hourand the addition of the quiet (no cellphone or talking) car on the regular train has been phenominal.

theorellior:

And now a lot of those rails have been pulled out for hike and bike trails. Oh, well!

I know you're probably new to all this, but part of the plan in MA and NH is to build the trails in such a way that they could be converted to carry rolling stock again on "short" notice. The vast majority of these old railbeds were completely overgrown until Deval Patrick and the other NE governors started coming up with rail trail plans.

It's great for the rail owners like Boston & Maine because it's public financing to do what they were unwilling to pay for in the first place, namely maintaining their own railbeds.

Not to mention the one that goes right past my apartment is getting a brand new bridge over an existing road that could, in future, carry rail cars. That's how it was specced, and that's what is being built right now.

Davey Croquette: Best. David Allen Coe song. Evar.

You probably haven't heard him and Willie do "Homo Truck Drivin' Man"

Well, it's only marginally better than "I'd like to fark the shiat out of you", "Don't bite the dick", and "Cum stains on the pillow". But really, the song takes me to a happy time and place, which is why I rate it so highly.

Davey Croquette: That and they're okay with you bringing alcohol with you on the train.

Seriously?

I dont know if there is a rule against that but the employees dont seem to care.

What? An indifferent federal government employee? Impossible.

How about this- AMTRAK introduces "Booze Train to Nowhere" brought to you by AMTRAK, MADD, and Capt. Morgan.

They sell beer and wine in the cafe car. I can't imagine they'd care (or even know) if you brought your own.

Doesn't seem so bad considering the Social Security Administration recently dropped $700k on a "motivational management conference" at an Arizona resort.

Davey Croquette: Best. David Allen Coe song. Evar.

You probably haven't heard him and Willie do "Homo Truck Drivin' Man"

And to clarify, I haven't heard "Homo Truck Drivin' Man", but was comparing the dirty DAC songs to YNECMBMN.

roboczar: I know you're probably new to all this, but part of the plan in MA and NH is to build the trails in such a way that they could be converted to carry rolling stock again on "short" notice. The vast majority of these old railbeds were completely overgrown until Deval Patrick and the other NE governors started coming up with rail trail plans.

That's interesting. I didn't know that someone actually thought ahead. I just saw all the rail trails and thought it was shortsighted.

Lou Cypher: Doesn't seem so bad considering the Social Security Administration recently dropped $700k on a "motivational management conference" at an Arizona resort.

How the F U * K do you blow 3/4 of a million dollars sitting around a pool with your thumb up your ass for four days?

/*sigh*

Well, it's only marginally better than "I'd like to fark the shiat out of you", "Don't bite the dick", and "Cum stains on the pillow". But really, the song takes me to a happy time and place, which is why I rate it so highly.

It was a standard in my regular hang-out jukebox also. That and Y-M-C-A. I still get a little misty every time I see an Indian, Construction Worker, Leather queen, Motorcycle cop and cowboy having gay sex.

I am afraid of the trains. It means more city slicker assholes can get further out into the country each year.

One of the benefits of oil-dependency is that people who haven't packed like sardines into an urban environment get to continue on living with a slight increase is manual labor, and our poor old draft horses will be at it again.

I'd take it though if large city populations and the destruction of the environment they cause were to disappear.

I love when people complain about Amtrak. Do you complain about your city bus service? It doesn't make your city any money! Do you think a subway system turns a profit?

GT_bike: Davey Croquette: I take Amtrak because they don't look through your luggage too well. It's not like you can hijack a train and drive it into the Pentagon.

YES they do...they friggin stole my whole bag on the Surfliner from LA to San Diego I'd forgotten that one, they gave me a small fraction of the money I lost in my stolen stuff!

Amtrak stole your bag? Or did you leave it on the train and biatched to them that you were and idiot? It's not there problem to give you money for your stolen property if it wasn't there fault.

theorellior:
That's interesting. I didn't know that someone actually thought ahead. I just saw all the rail trails and thought it was shortsighted.

It's part of the standard lease language that the MBTA presented to MA cities that wanted rail trail funding. The municipality is required to secure any additional funding, and must comply with MBTA requests to add signs, postings and other improvements that they require. There is also a clause that gives the MBTA the right to revoke the lease and any of its provisions if it deems it necessary.

Basically we get a pedestrian path as long as the MBTA decides they don't need to expand service, but if they do, they have a nice well-maintained and refurbished road bed to work with, not to mention new bridges and other expensive infrastructure improvements.

Do you complain about your city bus service? It doesn't make your city any money! Do you think a subway system turns a profit?

The difference b/w a Amtrak and your local bus/subway is that subsidizing a local bus or subway lets local gov'ts avoid building more automobile facilities. So they're spending a dime to avoid spending a dollar.

Not so much with Amtrak. There is no such corollary. Amtrak could never carry enough people for it to be a valid strategy.

mattharvest: JusticeandIndependence: The work on the first completed car began on April 17 and required the hiring of 52 new workers, many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport, which will close later this month. Others had been laid off from their unions because of lack of work. About half the cost of each car's $1 million refurbishing goes toward workers' salaries, officials said.


Boy that sounds terrible.

Wait, let me make sure I understand your point: are you saying that it's more important that people are employed, as opposed to whether the work they're doing is of any value whatsoever?

This is akin to hiring people to dig and re-fill ditches. It's not going to help anyone longterm, and it's doing simultaneous damage to Amtrak's reputation while wasting stimulus money.

Well, if they used that money to pay these lazy farkers to dig a couple of canals from Calornia to Georgia, we could save on shipping.

bunner: Lou Cypher: Doesn't seem so bad considering the Social Security Administration recently dropped $700k on a "motivational management conference" at an Arizona resort.

How the F U * K do you blow 3/4 of a million dollars sitting around a pool with your thumb up your ass for four days?

/*sigh*

Damn good caviar and shrimp cocktail for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

/and lots and lots of coke

Davey Croquette: lets local gov'ts avoid building more automobile facilities. So they're spending a dime to avoid spending a dollar.

what in the world is an "automobile facility"?

A new car would cost about $3 million, whereas to refurbish a car costs about $1 million, officials said.

"[President] Obama invested in Amtrak and we delivered," John McCloski, labor administrator of the Bear facility, told the crowd. "Thank you for believing in us."

By rehabilitating the run-down cars, Amtrak is becoming "safer, greener and healthier," McCloski said.

So the SAVED MONEY by repairing old cars instead of buying new ones. Subby-fail.

what in the world is an "automobile facility"?

A road, a stormwater pond for the road, an overpass on a road, right of way (land) for widening a road, a turn lane or divided median in a road.

You know, projects designed to add capacity to a roadway.

bunner:
How the F U * K do you blow 3/4 of a million dollars sitting around a pool with your thumb up your ass for four days?

/*sigh*

Through a competitive bidding process and selecting the one with the lowest rate that can accomodate your 675 managers? $700k for 675 people for a 4 day training seems like a good deal to me. I couldn't get away with that per-person price at 90% of the resorts I could "technically" afford.

$260 a day per person is bargain basement. Sometimes it pays to fact-check when you read NewsMax or NRO.

Davey Croquette: A road, a stormwater pond for the road, an overpass on a road, right of way (land) for widening a road, a turn lane or divided median in a road.

You know, projects designed to add capacity to a roadway.

Ok, I see what you mean now. Don't quite see how adding train service couldn't prevent the same thing. The only time you have capacity problems is if you're trying to link second-tier and third-tier Metropolitan Statistical Areas, but that's always a density problem and better served by lower capacity transit. Still, light or elevated rail can provide cost and efficiency benefits to low-density areas where intra-city commuter rail would be uneconomical.

However, if you're linking places like say Miami and Jacksonville to Atlanta by rail, you aren't going to have any problem filling seats.

mrmaster: tweekster: swaxhog: Father Jack Hacket: Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: One of my favorite things to do when I'm waiting around in Zurich airport for the train is to watch all the American tourists who saunter down to the platform for their 8:03 train at 8:07 and wonder where their train is.

heh, there has to be a joke here about making the trains run on time.....

I thought it was a joke about waiting for a train in an airport but the OP was in on it too.

Milwaukee airport has an Amtrak stop. A lot of times they ship people from Chicago to catch connecting flights.

1. Amtrak doesn't run from MKE to ORD. In fact, it doesn't even run to MDW. You have to take the amtrak to something and then take the orange line to get to MDW. (i think its the orange line?)
2. I've taken the CoachUSA bus from MKE to ORD before.

\\thought the joke was about trains running on time as well.

You'd take the Amtrak to Union Station and start walking through the city to the El (Blue to ORD, Orange to MDW). It's not a connection for the faint of heart/non-locals. It would also take a couple of hours to "connect"... I don't know many who would do it. You'd only do it if you were planning a trip to visit both Milwaukee and Chicago since flying from one to the other is nonsense...

Would love to see more rail service. Living in Kansas City, it would be great to take a sleeper car to Denver in the winter. Don't have to drive the god awful drive across Kansas, can sit in a train car and get smashed with friends, wake up in the morning, rent a car and head to the slopes!

Stop that train I'm leaving-JGB

panda: You'd take the Amtrak to Union Station and start walking through the city to the El (Blue to ORD, Orange to MDW). It's not a connection for the faint of heart/non-locals. It would also take a couple of hours to "connect"... I don't know many who would do it. You'd only do it if you were planning a trip to visit both Milwaukee and Chicago since flying from one to the other is nonsense...

Last time I came back from chicago they basically canceled a flight and told them to take amtrak to get to milwaukee.

Train travel is old and busted.

Privately Owned Market Priced Toll Roads FTW!

/You know, like how the French do it.
//Passenger Rail will never make money again, you lost, get over it

nlscb: //Passenger Rail will never make money again, you lost, get over it

Since you are subsidizing my continued use of passenger trains I wouldn't say I lost.

Trains in the US are terrible for travelers.

Why do they even bother?

I faced 3 hour delays last time I was on Amtrak, a few years back.

Haoie: Trains in the US are terrible for travelers.

Why do they even bother?

I faced 3 hour delays last time I was on Amtrak, a few years back.

How is that any different than air travel?
Except they usually don't just flat out cancel a train schedule.

Davey Croquette: Not so much with Amtrak. There is no such corollary. Amtrak could never carry enough people for it to be a valid strategy.

Airport expansion paid for by the FAA is free now? I hadn't heard, that's a heluva trick though!

o hai i thought id stop by to say 700k / 1.3 billion iz 0.05 pct not 0.005 pct

ck1938: I'm sure Biden will be happy riding in a train car that doesn't smell like feet. Yet.

I'm riding in a train car that smells like feet, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies. Hey, another thing DILLHOLES - when you get on a train and you get to the food service car and all the seats are taken, DONT biatch ABOUT IT. YOURE TOO SLOW. STFU and put your arse back in the damn seat you paid for. THE ONLY SEAT YOU PAID FOR.

asciibaron: you mean since air travel has been heavily subsidized by the government, right?

This. I am amazed at how few people know/care about this.

doublesecretprobation: they hired people to break the train cars, then paid others to fix them?

Technically, yes. Amtrak is subsidized by the government, so technically we ARE paying them to break the cars... as well as fix them.

FTFA: workers... many of whom had lost their jobs at the former Chrysler plant in Newark and the General Motors plant near Newport... tediously do their own parts to repair, rehabilitate and return to service 60 Amfleet passenger cars... when people start traveling on the new cars, they are going to find that the doors open when they are supposed to, the air works, and the bathrooms aren't overflowing.

So what's not to like?

Other than that the work is being done by overpaid union workers whose last jobs involved building the utter crap Chrysler and GM sold?

Other than that fixing up 60 cars is going to do nothing, except increase by 3600 (60 passengers per car) the number of people who, at any given time, can be creeping along on Amtrak while people in civilized countries go twice the speed?

And OMG, doors that work? Bathrooms that aren't overflowing? Air conditioning? All glory to the hypno-bama.

Sure, fixing up cars is cheaper than building new ones... but it sticks you with a decades-old design and pretty much guarantees there'll be no real systemic improvement.

Arnold T Pants: And now that car can be put to good use losing money for Amtrack (i.e. taxpayers). It's lose lose! Two negatives make a positive, right?

Yes, Amtrak loses money.

Just like a freeway loses money.

germ78: Davey Croquette: How many Train reference songs and Bands are there?:

I was drunk
The day My Mom
Got out of prison

And I went
to pick her up
In the rain

But before I
Could get to the station
In ma pick up truck
She got runned over by a danged 'ol train!!!!

Best. David Allen Coe song. Evar.

/was the bar anthem for the Cellar in Normal, IL before it closed like 8 years ago
//RIP Stadium Club/The Cellar
///ISU repperzent

The Cellar shut down? Memory is foggy, but I seem to recall $1.50 22oz beer specials. Followed by a drunken stagger to Grog's...

JonnyBGoode: theorellior: I thought it was the whistles that made that noise.



/approves

Came for it. Got it. Feels good. Favorite added.

asciibaron: mrmustard11: obviously unaware that no railroad system has turned a "profit" without government help in the history of..

wait for this...

EVER


that's not true at all. please refine your statement.

Ahem..
No rail(road/way) has made a profit hauling solely passengers in the history of, ever. When freight railroads hauled passengers in their heyday it was still at a loss and was still a "subsidy" of the freight profits.

This does not apply to subways or mass transit systems.

If we take a look at the Railroad Commission of California Report for 1896 the Southern Pacific Railroad, arguably the largest railroad in the Western US at that time the numbers are as follows:

Passenger Revenue: 11,991,292,36
Freight Revenue: 19,674,692.51

Operating Expenses: 20,956,812.64
Op Expenses without Salaries: 11,670,227.61

1896 is referred to as the Golden Age of railroad travel in the US. During this time the Southern Pacific is a mighty monopoly (which would later serve as the basis of Frank Norris' 1901 "The Octopus: A California Story") and these are the years where the SP is making its maximum profit from passengers. Passenger service during this time included long distance service, local service and commuter service in the San Francisco Bay Area. If we were cut out the freight revenue and expenses, the profit margin is very slim.

This of course ignores the fact that the Southern Pacific, built on the shoulders of the older Central Pacific was paying heavy bond rates to pay back the loans it received from the US Govt during construction. It took until the 1940s for the Central Pacific to finally pay off the government subsidies, by this time the Central Pacific existed only on paper for legal reasons to pay off those debts!

So even at the peak of travel, what profit was made from hauling passengers was a fraction of the whole picture and if it did make a profit, it was certainly not enough to include infrastructure upgrades and the like.

I could write more, but I wont. ;)

/Railroad Historian Mode Off.

Burn98: In practice, the only way to make them both true is if we need more rail transit that sucks.

No, it's quite possible (and currently a fact) that:

1) There is inadequate light rail transport in many areas
2) What little there is, is of very poor quality



Burn98: There are private rail companies that run freight all over the country. Any of them is free to start a passenger service any time they want. Yet they do not. Why? Not profitable enough.

Or... or maybe, I dunno, the rails are not public property, and in order to put your own trains on them you need permission from the owning company, who is also a competitor. Or it's nearly impossible to lay your own tracks in many areas due to developments and conflicting right-of-ways.


Burn98: So how can we get more rail traffic? Well the only way seems to be by expanding the Amtrack service which sucks.

Or.. or maybe, I dunno, making Amtrack to open up the rail lines to competition? This is difficult due to the aforementioned lack of rails. I'll grant you it's a chicken-egg problem but it's not unsolvable.


Burn98: How can we get Amtrack to stop sucking? Well there is no way.

That's the spirit! Can't win, don't try!


Burn98: 1) Does Amtrak suck because it loses money?

Only if you're an investor, potentially. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a business losing money - only if it continues too long.


Burn98: 2) Does Amtrak suck because of poor service? Well, we could improve service, at a cost. Then Amrtak would lose more money and people would say that sucks.

Losing money is a consequence, not a cause, of the sucking. Improve service, it sucks less, people use it more (especially with airport security woes growing) and then you start making money.


Or... or maybe, I dunno, you're just a pinhead.
=Smidge=

dbirchall: Sure, fixing up cars is cheaper than building new ones... but it sticks you with a decades-old design and pretty much guarantees there'll be no real systemic improvement.

This is one part of the stimulus money. In fact, refurbing 60 cars @ .05% of the amount is only 3% of the entire amount dedicated to Amtrak.

Get more cars into service, so that the lines that are in demand can serve more of that demand. Some of that money will also go to track and yard improvements (to make them more likely to be on time), station upgrades (to make it a more pleasant experience), as well as buying new cars where needed.

roboczar: bunner:
How the F U * K do you blow 3/4 of a million dollars sitting around a pool with your thumb up your ass for four days?

/*sigh*

Through a competitive bidding process and selecting the one with the lowest rate that can accomodate your 675 managers? $700k for 675 people for a 4 day training seems like a good deal to me. I couldn't get away with that per-person price at 90% of the resorts I could "technically" afford.

Yeah, whenever I want to learn something new, I go someplace with 674 other motehrfu*kers and piss through 780.00 worth of food and booze in an overpriced flophouse and stare at powerpoint presentations while hungover.

That has to be the epitome of useful instructional constructs.

Off the top of my head...

Train, Train - Blackfoot

Midnight train to Georgia - Gladys Knight & the Pips

This train - Peter, Paul & Mary

Glendale train - New Riders of the Purple Sage

Ghost train - New Riders of the Purple Sage

Hellbound train - Savoy Brown

Crazy Train - Ozzy

Half of everything by Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger

soundguy: Off the top of my head...

Train Song- Tom Waits

I didn't read all the comments, but the real question I didn't see asked is why on earth does it cost 3 million dollars to build a rail car? I mean seriously, it's a glorified box with wheels and seats. Are we gold plating the chassis or something?

phydeaux45: I didn't read all the comments, but the real question I didn't see asked is why on earth does it cost 3 million dollars to build a rail car? I mean seriously, it's a glorified box with wheels and seats. Are we gold plating the chassis or something?

The railway standards if a train shares tracks with freight requires a lot more weight, significantly reducing the number of options we have to purchase a foreign design that's already in use. It's a large cost in most commuter rail systems, as one blatant example.

The Portland OR area's WES line had to order DMU's from Colorado Railcar due to them being one of the only Buy American program participants that made a train heavy enough for mixed use on tracks freight trains can potentially be on. The FRA has tons of crazy regulations like this that, while they protect the rider's safety, barely seem worth the extra costs.

Three million bucks would buy me a very, very nice yacht. And lots of fuel for it.

This yacht would have radar, sonar, a couple jetskis, diving equipment, satellite phone, and an automatic blowjob machine.

Seems a little steep for a railway car to me, but then again, i'm not in government, so what do I know.

Samwise Gamgee: Three million bucks would buy me a very, very nice yacht. And lots of fuel for it.

This yacht would have radar, sonar, a couple jetskis, diving equipment, satellite phone, and an automatic blowjob machine.

Seems a little steep for a railway car to me, but then again, i'm not in government, so what do I know.

I said: The railway standards if a train shares tracks with freight requires a lot more weight, significantly reducing the number of options we have to purchase a foreign design that's already in use. It's a large cost in most commuter rail systems, as one blatant example.

This applies to all freight/passenger rail vehicles. If you mix and match passengers and freight on the same tracks, it's federal regulations.

mrmustard11:

Ahem..
No rail(road/way) has made a profit hauling solely passengers in the history of, ever.

much better.

Hoping $1.3 billion in stimulus money to Amtrak will get you bullet trains or something? The first $700K has been spent to refurbish a 27-year-old Amtrak car. Woo woo

They spent seven hundred grand on whistle tips? (new window)

I don't hate my government.

I dislike when my government gives money to people who use it for purposes that seem idiotic and extravagant.