NE corridor carved out from Amtrak

[Bereta_Eder]

she probably thought you're albanian.

darn alabaanians stealing the sits of old ladies and all that

[Bereta_Eder]

not that she wouldnt have complained if you were 100% pure hellenic race but she probably wouldnt have yelled at you

[VetLegion]

If she was about 60 years younger maybe I'd have told her to sit on me . I like girls with an attitude.

The thing was, in the summer the traffic is big and you have to have reservations for seats. But I had only a ticket. So I gave up eventually and gave her the seat and went to sit in the space between wagons. Then two girls came looking for me and told me that there is an empty seat now that I can take

[Az]

pure hellenic race

oxymoron, If I ever saw one.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by VetLegion
If she was about 60 years younger maybe I'd have told her to sit on me . I like girls with an attitude.

The thing was, in the summer the traffic is big and you have to have reservations for seats. But I had only a ticket. So I gave up eventually and gave her the seat

eh?

anyway i can imagine vetty entering the dark dominion of paiktis looking frithenfully through the windows out on the big dark menacing plains

you probably took the thessaloniki - athens line. i had a free ticket for this one but didnt do the trip. i never have done it actually. but it says it's rather fast now.

[KrazyHorse]

I dated a Greek girl once.

She was completely ****ing insane, just like you, Paiktis.

[Bereta_Eder]

[DanS]

Total length of track has fallen drastically in developed countries since WW I, but what remains is used. Freight is healthy everywhere.

Not such a drastic change in the US. From 250,000 miles of track in 1916 to 140,000 miles of track nowadays. Only a 44% reduction.

And, as stated by Adam Smith, freight rail is hardly used in Europe, so I don't think we could call it healthy.

[VetLegion]

It's profitable. I agree it's underused though. There would be ecological benefits and also much would be saved in road maintenance if we switched from trucks to rail transport. I've heard that a single truck is damaging the road the same way 10000 (ten thousand ) personal cars do. It'se easy to see that the damn things should be replaced with trains. I've heard that Austrians do it to much transit traffic - they load the trucks on trains on one border and dump them on the other.

[DanS]

First, this is a very, very, very good idea for a reason that was not mentioned anywhere in the article. For a long time Amtrak has been screwing the states in order to stay afloat. A friend who is a consultant tells me that Amtrak typically charges states 10 times what it charges itself to do the same repair work. States therefore have little desire to work with or fund Amtrak. However, states can now fund transportation projects as a way of meeting their air quality targets under the Clean Air Act, if they can show that the projects reduce pollution and congestion. States are therefore able to internalize some of the pollution and congestion externalities that automobile users do not pay. The Alameda Corridor project in Los Angeles has already been completed using this type of funding. The Alameda II project in Los Angeles and the CREATE project in Chicago are currently being built. By getting Amtrak out of the picture, states would finally have both the ability and the incentive to fund similar projects in the Northeast Corridor.

If this is true, I wonder why Lautenberg or whoever in NJ is against this. I would expect the Wyoming senators or whoever to be against it because they can trade off pork projects as it stands now.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
Sandman, you stated:

If you're going to meddle with the railways, it's not a good idea to have a state-owned network and privately operated rolling stock. That's what Britain has.

I have always thought that was a good sounding idea, but never did any research. What problems have the Brits had - and Spiffor, could you post some specifics too, especially on the Sweden bit? I am interested in this, but have never done any research.

Admittedly, a good portion of Britain's problems stem from the fact that for several years the track was owned and 'maintained' by a private monopoly "Railtrack" that was more interested in profit than investing in the railways. The easiest way for them to make money was to simply slash maintainence - which they did. This resulted in various accidents, and a huge backlog of repairs which essentially bankrupted the company, which was wound up and replaced with a government-owned company, Network Rail.

More generally, most of the train companies recieve substantial subsidies from the government, making the case for keeping them private weak. A lot of them are offshoots of bus companies with no idea how to run trains - you can't just expect a class of rail-savvy capitalists to appear overnight. All you get are Bermuda-based bean-counters.

It really comes down to the nature of rail travel itself. Monopoly, not competition, is the default setting of any rail network.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
I have always thought that was a good sounding idea, but never did any research. What problems have the Brits had - and Spiffor, could you post some specifics too, especially on the Sweden bit? I am interested in this, but have never done any research.

My knowledge on the Swedish system is limited. I took the trains there a couple of times, and I've seen that ti was open to competition. What I witnessed is:
- It works. All trains I have taken were clean and on time.
- The connection between companies seems to work. I took a bit of time to adapt my French monopolistic mind to ordering Swedish tickets online, but once I got around it, I could plan my travels cross-country (and cross-company) without hassle. The system is so good that it takes regional buses into account IIRC.
- For young adults, train is as cheap as it is in France, despite Sweden's prices being generally very inflated compared to France's.

Now, not my experience, but something I heard: transportation is open to competition. The (formerly?) public company SJ still overwhelmingly dominates the market.

I guess that the network is public. At least, the fashion of separating public network and private operators is all the rage in Europe, and even Britain nationalized its network again. I would also imagine that there is a coordination of all operators for schedules - either by self discipline of the market, or by institutional order.

In France, the very limited private rail operators (it's still experimental) work closely with the national company's travel-planning system, which is extremely efficient (for example, the national rail company is actually the first retailer of plane tickets in France, despite operating not one single plane ). When I ordered my tickets in Sweden, the system looked similar, except that it showed which company operated my trains and buses.

[Zkribbler]

I think it's time to carve out the NE corridor and let the rest of Amtrak's lines die out. Amtrak was supposed to be profitable within 3 years of its creating. It's been what, three decades now, and it's still losing millions.

Highs-speed trains are the way to go. I know we passed a bond issue for a maglev here in LA. IIRC, it's supposed to head up the Central Valley to Oakland.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
I know we passed a bond issue for a maglev

That's way cool

[Az]

That's way cool

No it isn't.

Maglev POS technology for now.