/n/ — Amtrak hate thread

File: maxresdefault.jpg (126 KB, 1280x720)

NEC here, I don't know that feel

>>1992027
I see both sides of it in Seattle. The Sounder regional trains are great up to Vancouver and down to Eugene. Then there's the Empire Bungler.
>want to go to Spokane
>check train schedules
>one (1) train each way per day
>depart 4:55pm
>arrive 12:37am
>after all the hotel checkin desks are closed
>fuck you unless you've got family nearby
It's not like there's no demand, they run BUSES from Seattle to Spokane and back, but they can't manage more trains per day because ______?

>>1992029
>but they can't manage more trains per day because ______?
they don't have the money
the answer to pretty much every question about amtrak is "they are chronically underfunded"

>>1992023 (OP)
Yesterday I called amtrak customer service to change my ticket because the website kept crashing. The hold music was RnB and a sassy black lady picked up. Truly an american institution.

File: frieren georgia mugshot.jpg (117 KB, 850x668)

>>1992160
The Civil Rights Act / EEOC creates an effect I call the Shaneequa Event Horizon, where because sassy black women are impossible to "out diversity" (because they vote 96% for Democrats) any federal agency will eventually fill up with them until the agency fails at its core responsibilities and they get outsourced. If this happened to Amtrak and passenger rail got deregulated we'd see a 10x in available trains.

File: AP24006740095410[1].jpg (37 KB, 529x350)

>>1992161
If passenger rail got deregulated it would become a shitshow like every other deregulated industry that immediately cuts corners for profit see also Boeing and their ```airplanes'''.

File: 1707258957154456.jpg (104 KB, 624x581)

>>1992023 (OP)
is commuting via the hiawatha service at all reasonable or worth it? I want to avoid living in Chicago and Milwaukee seems comfy

>>1992161
I don't think there's another board where people are this committed to blaming anything and everything on minorities. Pinch flat? The jews did this. Train delay? Pajeets. Plane crash? It was trannies. Shipwreck? The blacks. Crosstheaded the pedals on your dumpster dive OTS? The blacks again.

Granted I only go on /g/, /ck/, /lgbt/, and /n/. Maybe that's not a full cross section.

>>1993792
That's not what deregulations mean.

>>1993794
Spending 3 hours a day commuting would probably suck, but it’s doable, the schedules line up with commute times; you get into Chicago at 7:24 AM and leave at either 5 or 8 PM. It would drain your wallet a bit tho, it’s about $50 a day, so a hybrid position where you only go in a couple days or once a week would be ideal.

>>1993794
That's still a 90 minute to hour long commute from Milwaukee to Chicago, assuming the train hits exactly when you need it to.

>>1992023 (OP)
>>1992029
>>1992151
there is zero demand. amtrak doesn't make money because no one wants to take 6 times as long to get somewhere as it would take to drive

>>1993927
every time frequency on an amtrak service is improved ridership goes up
>>1993796
/n/ is normally level-headed but there's been an influx of /pol/faggots lately
ultra-election tourist ones, too

>>1993946
enough to offset the costs? amtrak is perpetually in debt

File: tokyo sniper.jpg (266 KB, 1500x1500)

>>1993903
$50 a day sounds brutal, does Amtrak not offer a commuter pass?

>>1993912
yeah but I don't mind 90 minutes on a train, the real issue is reliability. I'd hate to get stuck in Chicago without a car.

>>1994042
What a cute femboy, giwtwm

>>1994024
why does everyone expect amtrak to run a profit when they don't own the property around their stations? Do we expect tolls to be profitable too?

HK's MTR and Japan's JR are both only profitable because they own the valuable real estate around the stations. if Amtrak could leverage the same they'd be making billions

>>1994046
because what is the point of a train that takes 12 times longer to get somewhere than driving does if it is also going to be a money sink on the tax payers?

>>1994046
>JR
Built by the government then privatized

>if Amtrak could leverage the same
Doubt they're legally permitted to and even if they could, the chance to buy cheap land remotely close to city centers disappeared decades ago

How is Amtrak going to get the line reservations when they're competing with coal and bulk commodities for rail time?

>>1992023 (OP)
Long-haul routes are kind of a special thing, like preserving a traditional way of travel without too much practical use.
But they could just run a bunch of regional lines between major cities more frequently, maybe buy some smaller DMUs for that. I'm talking journeys that are maybe up to 4-5 hours, start with two or three trains a day. That wouldn't be very expensive and it might get people to use trains more regularly. They could also work as feeders for the longer lines.

>>1992023 (OP)
Americans like their cars.

>>1995958
Americans like trains, too.

File: FACT Pepe.jpg (39 KB, 214x215)

>>1995958

Americans turned to cars because trains went to shit

Fucking Amtrak gave my bike away to someone else from the luggage car. If I was able to lock it myself, or stay with it in the disabled wheelchair area, I'd still have it. But, nope, it's against their policies. But at least the train was on time. Fucktards.

>>1999706
I think you have the causality reversed there.

>>1993946

good

>>1993927
the train from vancouver (canada) to seattle is only twice as long as driving. new york to DC is one hour longer. if these trains had proper speed of something even close to the slowest HSR in europe then the time would be about the same, far less if they were actually HSR. the demand isn't there because the infrastructure is shit, it shows that ridership is so good on brightline FL because it goes at a reasonable speed and provides a good service.

>>1992027
It's nice living near the only function stretch of American rail infrastructure and mostly only needing to take trips near it.

>>1992023 (OP)

they're underscheduled because congress won't pay for them, live in a communist state like I do and you get more than 1 train per hour

Illinois > Kentucky and it's not even close

>>1994046
The real estate around stations is completely worthless if you don't have an extensive suburban and/or regional train service and if people will drive to your station and expect huge parking lots. In this case you won't have people passing through and going to the shops in your stations because a) very few people use the station and b) it just has a huge parking lot around it making the area not walkable.

tl;dr making money from real estate only works if your urbanism favors train use in the first place.

>>2002976
if you replace the parking lots with mixed use development then the people will be there because that's where they live.

Amtrak can't buy line time because bulk freight owns the lines, and amtrak rents time. Not unexpectedly bulkfreight gives themselves the best windows, and amtrak buys poor quality line time around bulkfreight.

>>1999720
If trains were better than cars then why would people ever switch?

>>2003963
because they gradually became worse. people still rode trains a lot until the 50s when cars had been around for a while. and by the time america had nearly entirely abandoned them in the 60s, japan already had trains going 220km/h

>>2002982
Wrong. You need to have mixed use all around the station area, and then dense commercial use at the station itself. That's how Japan does it.
So unless you're about to rebuild all the hollowed-out american cities it's just not going to work out, sorry.

>>2003972
I literally said replace the parking lots with mixed use, which is apartments and retail, maybe even a mall nearby which has been done in many places and is a successful way to get people to take transit there.

>>1999706

this

its not amtrak's fault its the government that owns them

File: CTR-SP-4452-Santa-Barbara.jpg (93 KB, 1000x667)

>>1992023 (OP)
>Each route should be minimum 3x a day per direction.

I've always wanted this with the Coast Starlight. Two trains daily, one departs in the morning and the other at night. Would solve a lot of the issues with a twelve hour ride between Los Angeles and San Francisco if you could just sleep on the train.

>>1992027
NEC is still wildly underserviced compared to here

I looked up providence (urban area ~1.3million)
>2-3 trains per hour total

Nearest city to me of comparable size (urban ~1million) has around 40 trains per hour

Even my hometown of 10k people has 8 per hour, and they are still pretty busy all day

Like I get that the USA has issues with regular public transport, but I didnt think the north east was that bad

>>1993927
yeah, it only becomes a good option when it is decently fast so it is as fast as or faster than driving, and also when the destination and origin both have decent intra city transit.

No point in getting a super fast train to somewhere like spokane where you probably need a car to get where you are going anyway, so it is easier just to bring your car

File: Conrail passenger train.jpg (654 KB, 1489x936)

>>1994046
>why does everyone expect amtrak to run a profit

Should've been built on Conrail's model.

>>1994042
Such is life for supercommuters. Same thing in Seattle with Sounder vs. Amtrak.

>>1993927
the travel time on the Empire builder from Spokane to Tri-cities and Tri-cities to Portland is actually reasonable compared to driving, and there aren't a lot of flights available at the Tri-cities airport. The problem is the departure/arrival times are really awkward, especially to and from Spokane

>>2015707
The empire builder actually ended up saving a few dozen people this summer from a busted air travel system. The crowdstrike and Azure double crash happened as people were trying to fly home from the RNC in Milwaukee to Washington and Oregon, so people whose flights got canceled bought train tickets instead of hotel rooms.

>>2003971
IIRC it was the one-two punch of airlines eating the railroads' lunch on prestige long-distance routes, and the freight trains on the lines running trains so long they couldnt fit onto sidings and grant passenger trains the right of way, making routes extremely slow or fraught with delays. Not to mention serial disinvestment, such that potentially high speed railsets were running with/on tracks, signals, and overhead lines dating back to the turn of the century, which didnt help either.

>>2015727
Air travel and highways improved so quickly that mid 20th century stopover points were completely bypassed by the 2000s. Railroads that needed capex and possibly new land rights for each foot of improved track couldn't compete. Now we've hit the point where building more highway lanes doesn't improve urban congestion and airports are reaching runway capacity so modernized rail has a shot.

>>2015732
>and airports are reaching runway capacity
Too bad we just don't have the tech to build new runways and terminals

>>2015734
In many cases we don't have the space. Spreading flights between airports in a region means they need connecting trains.

>>2015739
>In many cases we don't have the space.
No way, eminent domain is real and has been used to expand airports many times

>Spreading flights between airports in a region means they need connecting trains.
It's always going to be less expensive and faster to simply expand airport capacity than build rail lines for hypothetical uses

>>2015732
I dont think it was a question of cost as much as one of political will; those highways werent cheap, nor were they built without the big 'eminent domain/gubment expropriation' stick.

>>1994046
>why does everyone expect amtrak to run a profit
The federal government is almost 40 trillion dollars in debt. Short of letting the welfare state collapse there's only a narrow path back to solvency. It might be faster to revive private passenger rail than to keep kicking the Amtrak whale down the beach.

>>1993800
less regulator influence and company/private base self-"regulation" is what is commonly understood when speaking of "deregulation"
inb4
>real capitalism has never been tried
miss me with that gay shit
the "free market" is merely a concept, not a sound policy
things need to be regulated, not least to ensure the very idea of the so-called "free market" can continue existing across time read adam smith or soemthing lmao

>>2017919
>there's only a narrow path back to solvency
print money, tax on loans?

>>2018144
Printing money causes more debt because it's all loans from the Federal Reserve. The only escape hatch would be something like minting a stack of trillion dollar coins, depositing them at the treasury, and immediately melting them down, but this would be a giant stick in the eye of anyone trying to use the dollar as a store of value in a world of US manufacturing decline, so shouldn't be done until our productive economy starts growing again.

File: Collage_OrlandoAmtrak-95.jpg (158 KB, 1024x683)

Amtrak stations are pretty sorry places, but they're at the point where they're interesting sorry places. Orlando Station had clear water damage, but it had some really nice looking wood bench seating and the remnants of payphone booths. The buildings are old, maybe falling apart, but they're clean and loved.

>The real estate around stations is completely worthless if you don't have an extensive suburban and/or regional train service
That's irrelevant. Stations along the sunbelt have prime downtown locations in growing cities that would get hefty checks from developers.

>>2018242
>Amtrak stations are pretty sorry places,
depends entirely on the station

New York Penn
Washington Union
Chicago Union
etc

>>2018259
There are a couple of real stinkers but anything that's a rural platform, street running, or an old building is generally good. NYC Penn Station was a piss stained underground airport terminal last time I was there, for both Amtrak and LIRR.