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There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

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Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#411

Post by Kadin »

333c wrote: post #340
godot wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the Coast Starlight (connects SF and LA) a couple of times in the past 10 years, and I have had a pleasant experience each time. Food was good and while the train wasn't sparkling clean, at least in the areas I cared about (my seat and car) it was fine. Just the bathrooms weren't great. Admittedly this is a shorter trip than yours; this one is only an 8~10 hours ride.

I've taken the Coast Starlight about 4-6 times between SF (well, Emeryville) and Portland/Seattle. Most were pretty much on time, except for one time when the train hit a person/car on its trip up from LA. It arrived around 5 hours late at the station and ended up being something like 10 hours late by the time we disembarked. It can be frustrating to experience long delays if you have a tight schedule, but otherwise…

> It can be frustrating to experience long delays if you have a tight schedule

Very true. Although I've had some awful delays on airlines as well, and given the choice between being stuck on a passenger train and in a plane, I'd take the train every time. (Though admittedly the airlines have gotten slightly better about not leaving passengers on planes to stew in their own juices on the tarmac for hours and hours. But it took some people really slapping them around in court I think.)

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#412

Post by Kadin »

rayiner wrote: post #386
landryraccoon wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government should model its train service after Europe, since Europe clearly knows what it’s doing and the US clearly doesn’t. Also, would you then be consistent and argue that the government shouldn’t be spending so much on highways for cars, since it’ll just waste that money too?

Or Japan. Privatize Amtrak completely.

There's no reason to think that what makes train service in Japan better than in America is related to it being privatized.

I have total faith that we could privatize Amtrak and have it be just as execrable in comparison. And then it would be sold off for parts, some assholes would get tremendously wealthy, and we wouldn't have any passenger rail network at all.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#413

Post by Kadin »

rayiner wrote: post #287
abalone wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other governments do it just fine.

Who? In most of Asia trains are privatized. In Europe, the passenger rail companies are in various stages of privatization. Rail in the UK is more or less privatised. Deutche Bahn, SNCF, Trenitalia, DSB, etc., are private companies. The government is involved in the sense they are the largest or sole shareholder, but they are run as for-profit corporations. For example, they compete in other countries. Many, such as…

Nearly all the privatized rail systems share the characteristic that the government (in some fashion) still owns the underlying trackage/right-of-way.

This is not a bad model: the public retains the land and tracks, and provides them for private enterprises to run trains on, subject to some sort of coordination so you don't have wrecks.

That's similar to how many airports work, how the Interstate Highway System works, etc.

However, for historical reasons it's not how the US system operates, and it would be very difficult for the government -- absent a lot of spending that I doubt the public has the appetite for -- to acquire the land and rights-of-way.

On routes where Amtrak actually controls the underlying trackage, it operates quite well. Where everything goes to shit is when Amtrak operates on others' track.

If we really wanted a good passenger-rail system, what we would need to do is build dedicated passenger rail lines, totally separate from freight rail. The two types of trains are so different today that it doesn't make sense to run them together. High speed passenger trains do best on banked track, and not having freight trains around for them to run into allows you to use lighter rolling stock. Acela trains have been described as "rolling bank vaults" because of the collision protection they have to have -- simply because they're liable to collide head-on with a fully loaded freight train. There's no good way around it, except to stop mixing the two up.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#414

Post by Kadin »

rayiner wrote: post #349
kuschku wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deutsche Bahn is a "private company", but with 100% of stocks owned by the state. That’s in all relevant metrics state-run.

The German government is the shareholder and appoints the board, but Deutsche Bahn is otherwise operated as a private company. For example, it operates at a profit, its CEO is compensated comparably to other corporate executives, and it competes with other rail operators both inside Germany (it has subsidiaries that compete to operate regional train service), and internationally. Amtrak is operated, for all intents a…

Germany also has many fewer freight trains than the US. Their rail network is optimized for passenger use, and it works well.

The US rail network is optimized for freight hauling (and it's largely owned by freight railroads and maintained at private expense, and those railroads turn a consistent profit). It also works well -- for its intended purpose.

If you want to move 3000 miles at 45 MPH remarkably cheaply, and you happen to be (or live in) a cargo container, the US rail network is built just for you!

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#415

Post by dmckeon »

segmondy wrote: post #379
kyleblarson wrote: post #238

My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago. We purchased a private cabin. We were 8 hours late leaving Seattle and couldn't get into our cabin until we got to Spokane because of some sort of merge of trains coming from Portland and Seattle. Got to Spokane, got our cabin, another 6 hour delay. By the time we reached the upper Midwest, they were rationing food, literally cutt…

I just priced from my Midwest to West Coast and it's almost $5,000 for 2. As if that didn't giving me pause, your comment really put the nail on the lid.

For Chicago to Los Angeles, in June, I’m seeing pricing for two people at USD 286, 358, 688, or 723, depending on seating or roomette, for direct or via Texas, and 1109 max via Sacramento & the coast. Granted, I may be misreading the Amtrak site, whose UI/UX is sub-optimal.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#416

Post by seppin »

landryraccoon wrote: post #360
Aloha wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no good economic rationale for long distance trains. The only part of Amtrak that is actually profitable is the NEC, the rest of it generally loses money.

The federal highway system must be even worse then. It brings in zero revenue and costs way, way more than the trains.

Exactly, how much does the EPA cost enforcing clean air and water standards?

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#417

Post by stcredzero »

Zimahl wrote: post #264
kyleblarson wrote: post #238

My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago. We purchased a private cabin. We were 8 hours late leaving Seattle and couldn't get into our cabin until we got to Spokane because of some sort of merge of trains coming from Portland and Seattle. Got to Spokane, got our cabin, another 6 hour delay. By the time we reached the upper Midwest, they were rationing food, literally cutt…

For those that don't know, the Empire Builder from Seattle stops in Spokane to hook up with a train that is coming from Portland. The combined train then goes all the way to Chicago. If either are delayed it can result in waiting for the other and long delays are apparently the norm and not the exception. My wife and her grandfather took the train from Portland to Minnesota in the fall of last year. There were a numb…

>> We were 8 hours late leaving Seattle and couldn't get into our cabin until we got to Spokane because of some sort of merge of trains coming from Portland and Seattle. Got to Spokane, got our cabin, another 6 hour delay. By the time we reached the upper Midwest, they were rationing food, literally cutting every meal (that we had already paid for) in half. We eventually arrived in Chicago about 22 hours late.

>> The train was disgustingly dirty and the employees were surly and unhelpful.

> On my wife's trip the refrigeration went out at some point so cold food was no longer available, nor was food that required refrigeration before it was cooked. Fortunately they disembarked soon after that happened. The rest of the train was still a day or so from Chicago and those passengers were stuck with god knows what to eat.

Stuff like this makes it feel like the USA is falling apart from being a 1st world nation, crumbling in bits and pieces into a 3rd world one.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#419

Post by riffic »

kyleblarson wrote: post #238

My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago. We purchased a private cabin. We were 8 hours late leaving Seattle and couldn't get into our cabin until we got to Spokane because of some sort of merge of trains coming from Portland and Seattle. Got to Spokane, got our cabin, another 6 hour delay. By the time we reached the upper Midwest, they were rationing food, literally cutt…

That just sums up the American experience for just about anything. The country is disintegrating internally and I would blame it squarely on its military-industrial complex.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#420

Post by brownindian »

Aloha wrote: post #328
Zimahl wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that don't know, the Empire Builder from Seattle stops in Spokane to hook up with a train that is coming from Portland. The combined train then goes all the way to Chicago. If either are delayed it can result in waiting for the other and long delays are apparently the norm and not the exception. My wife and her grandfather took the train from Portland to Minnesota in the fall of last year. There were a numb…

Passenger trains do get priority in the US, your mileage may vary by railroad to how forgiving they are for schedule delays. Basically Amtrak has to keep to a specific schedule, if ut misses it's window it loses the priority it had.

Wendover did a video on this a couple years ago. Basically saying why trains suck in America. And the reason is the same: freight gets priority because Amtrak does not own the track, freight companies do. https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ
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