Most of the railroads that Amtrak owns are in the Northeast where the majority of its riders and routes are but the equipment and trains are outdated, said Pasi Lautala, director of the rail transportation program at Michigan Technological University. The funding for grant programs and corridor development is meaningful and nothing like this has been seen in several years, said Dominic Spaethling, chair of the passenger rail committee for the Transportation Research Board and vice-president of design firm HNTB Corp.
While the bipartisan infrastructure deal funds many projects and initiatives, it does not address every need, Flynn said. Deon J. Why would any governor want to work on something that people don't care? Yes, if it is as useless as it currently is, who will care. Let's drive! It's what we are comfortable with and probably stuck to. Stew Waller 2 years ago. There was a 25 minute delay today before they discovered the broken toilets with the extra hour delay.
Then, no apologies or offers of token drinks, food, vouchers, etc. True accountability for poor performance is the answer. Rod Maxon 2 years ago. The American flag at the Jackson Mi,depo us a disgrace torn and ripped up looks like it was in a war.
Ivo Skoric 2 years ago. This must be not news to you, because I wrote to you about this before, but since I do not see any positive changes since then, I have to do it again. This is concerning your unaccompanied minors policy which is simply too onerous to honor given the general shortcomings of your service. Let's just start with the fact that your service is insanely expensive compared to bus travel and air travel in this country. This should never be the case. The second fact is that your trains are simply moving too slow.
It takes 5. It looks like the train service in this country is relegated to the niche purpose, where traveling by train is not used to get from the place A to the place B, but rather as an experience in itself. Well, in that case that experience should at least be positively memorable.
Which it is not, given your recent cuts on sleepers and hot meals. I can only look with my mouth wide agape at how your are running your business into the ground with slow, expensive, and unfriendly service, all the while tax money is flowing to you. Well, I intend to write to my political representatives to stop that flow if my advices are not heard and acted upon.
Why would the State of Vermont give you 8 million dollars if we, the citizens of Vermont, cannot get a quality service from you? And that quality service for me means the ability for my son to travel from New York city to Vermont and back when he wants, without any drama attached to it, which he can't do now. My ex-wife lives in New York city, and I live in Vermont. Our son is 15 and goes to a high school in Brooklyn. He is also an avid snowboarder who competed nationally in his youth and would like to come to Vermont every weekend to snowboard.
He is well traveled by plane, train, bus, or car and he takes a subway in the city alone daily to get to school. In my opinion he would be perfectly capable of traveling alone by Amtrak as an adult.
My ex-wife hates to drive and does not want to travel every weekend. But he would be your paying customer if you made it a little easier for him to do so. However, you made your service a hell for him and for our family, and I hate you for that. In many countries nobody really cares about children traveling alone, or there are specific policies in place to make this as easy as possible look at French SNCF.
Here however while being allowed it is made so difficult that one just looses any desire to do it. That's an hour and a half drive. And I did it many times already. Every single employee at Saratoga station knows him. He, also, cannot take Ethan Allen from Saratoga on Sunday, because that would arrive to NYC after pm, the curfew for unaccompanied minors on Amtrak trains, he has to take an earlier Adirondack, cutting his time on the mountain.
This is still before the curfew, and yet he can't take it! Because your staff leaves the Saratoga station at pm on Friday. A simple thing - one parent sending their son to the other, so he can ski on weekends - you made a hell of with your policies.
So, if I want him to come on Friday, I need to drive to Albany to pick him up — 60 more miles back and forth. Or my ex-wife has to take him to Adirondack at am, losing time from work, and making him lose a day in school. I hope you see how impossibly difficult you made our lives. And I intend to share this story with media, social networks, politicians, everybody, until I see changes. I will not forget the stress my family is going through this whole winter because of you.
And there are changes you can and should make. First, I believe that all your stations should be staffed, at least at the times when trains arrive and depart. Second, I believe that terminal stations of so-called Express trains, like Rutland, VT, should always be staffed.
And I seriously intend to write to my state to cut off your funding if you do not staff Rutland station. Third, I believe that a law should be passed to require that stations, that are listed as staffed, like Saratoga Springs, are made sure to indeed be staffed at all times when a train there arrives and departs. What's the point of having a staffed station that is not staffed when actually needed?
Fourth, if for any reasons you cannot make sure all your stations are staffed when they needed to be staffed, then why would be a big problem asking the train conductors to handle the unaccompanied minors paperwork? The forms should be available on-line together with the tickets, and the parent can bring the child to the train with the form and show ID to the conductor; and conductor can deliver the child to the other parent at the destination station after checking her ID — this does not add more than a couple of minutes to the conductors job.
Fifth, you should be carrying my son free of charge form NYC to Albany to compensate me for the travel time and gas money incurred solely to accommodate your unaccompanied minors policy rules. Sixth, if you can't make the unaccompanied minors travel less restrictive and more hassle free, than you should just eliminate that policy. I would be perfectly fine with my son traveling as an adult.
And he would be, too. If it is too difficult for you to implement your unaccompanied minors policy being so short-staffed and unorganized, then maybe you should just give up on it. Let parents make that judgment call, whether they believe their child can or cannot travel alone on the train, as they did in the days when I was a child.
I just need a train that will bring my son from New York city to Vermont and back for the money I paid. I don't need the excuses why that can't be done. If you can't do that, then frankly you should not be in business, you should let somebody else, somebody more competent run the passenger rail in this country. Anonymous 2 years ago. The hob owns the stock and is the board but and gives over a billion dollars to a private entity who runs it and looses money annual and is stifling to survive.
Here is my take as a consumer. In the Midwest and west coast, I think it is faster and cheaper to fly. It has poor maintenance. How hard is it to take a Lysol spray bottle and clean the bathrooms and the stairwell following the exit of a car. The menu and prices have not changed in 10 years. The cafe neither. Some station have been remodeled by local funds. There is no mefical training for the staff and the medical kits are pathetic.
A person is constantly being thrown around when attempting to walk. There is no concern or care taken in the prevention of an accident or care in taking care of one. There are no wheel chairs if needed. Chairs and it's features are often broken.
How hard is it to have a maintenance man with a tool box to go through the train and fix things, wipe down the seats and spray with Lysol. It truly can be disgusting in some of the bathrooms. They have not improved the trash system. I cannot stand the big trash bags in the larger bathrooms. The new feature is that if you don't tip you don't get service. What exactly are these employs getting paid for.
They don't help, they drive up, they take a ticket. Nothing has changed or improved in the ten years I have traveled on amtrack. I have found that a company who receives a great deal of money, never improves and constantly complains it doesn't have money does not use the money for which it intended.
Bad gov is when it pays a private company to run a business under the guise of a gov agency. Either it is government or private one or the other or the gov holds the private company accountable for its performance.
It is insidious. Typically a government takes the tax payers money and uses this money to pay for health care, transportation etc. It is also an incentive to keep a society gainfully rmoyed. In the face of the changing economy and climate, Americans are increasingly eschewing cars and airplanes from more efficient and environmentally friendly modes of transportation.
In , Amtrak announced plans to build a new fleet of 28 Acelas by The top speed of Amtrak's Acela trains, the fastest trains in the western hemisphere. Many of the soon-to-be-replaced trains have over 25 years of service. There have been eight serious crashes or derailments in the past five years alone. The PTC is a communications network that combines GPS, radio signals, data centers and dispatchers to closely monitor the status of every Amtrak train, all the time.
Amtrak is working to extend its reach into some of the fastest-growing regions of the United States, i. Recently the rail provider added stations in Virginia and North Carolina. To improve its competitive edge over busses, air travel and private cars, Amtrak must keep its prices down. As it stands, Amtrak tickets are generally cheaper than flights, but still cost considerably more than buses.
Amtrak's high prices are attributable to a confluence of factors that make the rail business extremely costly in the United States. If Amtrak fails to secure this astronomical amount of funding, the NEC will begin to face increasingly serious operational constraints while its ridership increases. Of all the challenges Amtrak faces, this one may be its achilles heal.
Accessed June 12, Federal Reserve Bank of St. The Pullman History Site. Congressional Budget Office. Department of Transportation. Colorado Department of Transportation. Company Profiles. Tools for Fundamental Analysis. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia. Private railroads were required to provide passenger service as part of their regulatory duties but a lack of government support put rail at a disadvantage, said Todd Liebman, president of All Aboard Arizona, a passenger rail advocacy group.
Some of the private companies were close to filing bankruptcy and had discontinued routes after experiencing declines in ridership. The creation of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, known as Amtrak, offered the companies an opportunity to contract out passenger service and 13 railroads initially joined the new national railroad service, according to Amtrak. Amtrak service began May 1, , with trains a day serving 43 states.
That included two existing long-distance lines that ran through Arizona:. The main difference is that the Sunset Limited now runs through Maricopa instead of Phoenix.
During its first decade in operation, Amtrak upgraded rail and infrastructure, modernized cars and increased ridership.
Additional railroads turned over passenger service to Amtrak in the following years and Amtrak added new routes in response to demand for rail service. Today, the company operates more than trains that serve locations in 46 states, Washington D. It has more than 17, employees and saw 32 million riders in fiscal year , according to Amtrak. Thank you for subscribing. This premium content is made possible because of your continued support of local journalism.
Despite growth over the last 50 years, the company faced many of the same struggles as private railroads, Liebman said. Amtrak is operated as a private, for-profit company but the federal government is the majority stockholder and provides annual funding.
The company has a board of directors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
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