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.