This is disappointing. I used the Empire Builder to commute back and forth between Hood River and Portland before the pandemic. I've since stopped riding as my office has transitioned to full remote, and I can't justify the risk of spending almost 2 hours each way in a metal tube with strangers. In that sense, I guess I am part of the cause of its demise.
It was by far my favorite mode of travel for my commute. The scenery through the Gorge and relaxation it brought me relative to the drive were so valuable. I got to know the staff, and in the evenings, could kick back with a beer in the observation car while looking at Multnomah Falls.
I'd rather spend 2x the time on a train and have the full time be usable than driving, where I would always show up stressed out and feeling behind in my day before I even started.
I also took it eastbound one time to ski in Montana. That was wonderful. I boarded about 7pm, dinked around on my computer for a couple of hours, fell asleep, and woke up at a world-class ski area where I could walk to my motel, catch a bus to the slopes and back, and walk to a top notch concert downtown at night.
To European eyes, the delays on that journey (which the author dismisses with a shrug) are outrageous. Arriving an hour late at one stop, then 1h40m late to the next -- 93 miles away per google -- is ridiculous! You'd only get those sort of delays if there'd been a fatal accident on the line, or downed overhead power cables, or a similar major disruption, and the carrier would be issuing refunds and apologizing. Even here in the UK.
Also, a nominal hour to cover 93 miles by rail, and just three trains a week, is just laughable. That's a tourism charter service, not a transport network.
It's no wonder Americans don't think in terms of rail travel as mass transport. If you can't run trains like commuter planes, something's badly wrong.
> the Twin Cities-Chicago market is definitely a route that deserves better service
For reference, the distance between Minneapolis and Chicago is about 400 miles.
If the Amtrak schedule [0] is strictly adhered to, the travel time is ~7.75 hours. Current prices are ~$116 roundtrip.
Google Maps says the estimated time by car (assuming no traffic) is ~6.25 hours. At ~30 miles/gallon at $2/gallon, the cost of a roundtrip for just gas would be ~$53.
A roundtrip, non-stop flight lasting ~1.5 hours each way can be had for ~$80~$175 with the passenger's choice of at least 10 distinct flights/3 separate airlines.
I like rail. But it's clear that there's not a market fit for rail between Minneapolis and Chicago without massive subsidies. A car is faster and cheaper. A plane is much faster and about the same price. Both car and planes are strictly more convenient.
It's fun that nobody ever includes the cost of the Interstate Highway System into these throwaway calculations, as if the roads just magically appeared and are maintained by faeries. As if the roads, car companies, and the airlines aren't "massively subsidized" with energy (fuel and corn->ethanol) subsidies.
We spent half a trillion dollars building the IHS over five decades, and have historically thrown at least a few billion a year at US oil producers - is it really surprising to anyone that driving is cheap? We keep bailing out the airline industry repeatedly - we already gave them $25 billion in grants this year because of the coronavirus, and they're still asking for more.
But, dare we build an alternative to those systems, one that could be more ecologically and financially sound? Nope, too busy feeding our sunk cost industries. Keep blaming Amtrak for being terrible while refusing to give them their own run of rails so they don't constantly get stuck behind freighter traffic. Keep shuting down High Speed Rail projects around the country because the billionaires don't want it in their back yards.
Gas cost isn’t a great stand in for car trip prices, as there are a plenty of other costs to drivers.
The IRS per mileage reimbursement rate is 57.5 cents per mile, putting the “real” cost to an 800 mile roundtrip around $400.
A different stand in might be the per mile rate I can get from a rental company, which is often around 20 cents a mile. That would be $160 in other costs + the $53 in gas $213.
Now, people chronically underestimate the cost of driving (and many of them are fixed costs) so the “competitiveness” of rail doesn’t really change, but IMO we shouldn’t just look at gas costs for automobile transport.
Of course there's hardly any demand for a slow, expensive and often late service which only runs once a day. It's not useful.
A journey I do often in the UK is London to Edinburgh by train. The distance is almost the same (400 miles). London is a bit bigger than Chicago (12 million metro vs ~8 million metro) but then the Twin Cities are quite a lot larger than Edinburgh (1 million metro vs ~4 million metro).
However, the track has been improved, is at least doubled the whole way and has significant portions at 125 mph. As a result the journey takes just over 4 hours. If the trains are more than 1 hour late you get all your money back.
On an average weekday there's 41 trains travelling each way between those cities. And many of them are full. They're constantly doing improvements to try and increase the number of trains travelling.
I understand it's a different situation - the result of decades of political apathy towards railways. But I think it's important to understand that the Amtrak situation doesn't have to be the way it is. There's not an inherent lack of demand for fast, regular train services between major cities.
There are a ton of subsidies at play behind these numbers. Cars and planes get the massive subsidies of non-taxed externalities due to carbon emissions and air pollution, for instance.
There's a lack of long-term policy here: do we want to be in a society in 20-30 years that's still using personal cars to do that journey, when a high speed rail would be much more efficient and pleasant? If a true high speed rail were enabled, that 400 mile trip might take 3 hours instead of 6-8 for other modes of transit, and it would incur less negative externalities to boot.
I'm all for individuals making informed decisions in the short term, while government and society should be taking long-term steps to promote the health of the commons as well.
The core use cases that the long-haul Amtrak solves are not day trips between large cities. You are right, there are other solutions for those.
But Amtrak is the best fit for multi-day trips across the entire country for people who cannot fly. Amtrak also solves transportation for travelling directly from small rural towns to the large cities, and sometimes even from one rural town to another. It is the safest way to get across mountain ranges in the depth of winter (although not the fastest).
It doesn't solve every problem, and it does need subsidies, and it always runs late... nevertheless, it connects rural Americans to the large cities in ways that city folk don't even realize.
With a car, you can go point to point. With a train, you have to arrange transportation to the station on both ends. Also, you can leave when you want, you don't have to time your travel with the train or plane schedule or worry about delays and cancellations. To me, up to 6 hours, a car almost always makes sense. Above 6, usually a plane. Rarely does a train beat out both alternatives.
It doesn’t have to be this slow or expensive.
A sprinter train from Berlin to Munich, which is a similar distance, takes a bit less than 4h, non Sprinter is 1h more with Tickets starting at 17.50€
There are a lot of great counter arguments to what you said, but as someone who is from the Twin Cities and studied in Chicago, I'd recheck each trip and always go car or plane. Often I could car pool, and splitting with one person made zero interest with going train. Train should be easy and way more competitive than it is.
The cost of tolls, gas, depreciation per mile, depreciation time, monetary risk of accident, and etc could definitely make driving less economical than taking the train.
A lot of people are pointing out that you are only including gas costs, but they are also ignoring the fact that cars get you precisely where you want to go. Trains only get you into the city you are going.
Once I got above a threshold compensation package where my time became far more valuable than occupying it with attention-grabbing activities around driving and flying, I came to appreciate trains. I can see how this calculus can change yet again back to valuing money more than freed-up time when one has a family though, if one were strictly evaluating as homo economicus: non-working spouses and children can add significantly to travel costs. However, I've frequently seen families prefer train travel for the time spent together it engenders, with one challenge being coordinating travel logistics once at the destination while wrangling children (ride sharing has alleviated that, I'm sure).
On the super-long transcontinental trips, apparently the cell reception with the right gear on trains is much better than when I rode half the country westward many years ago. That makes the train travel mode even more valuable to me if I'm not on a tight schedule and the seating arrangement enables me to look forward to getting work done.
What prevents me from using trains more than I do is the demands of many clients upon my time. Not quite lucrative enough for me to justify a satellite data link, but if my financial picture improves by many orders of magnitude, a digital nomadic life with a private railcar set towing shipping container footprint custom structures as a "home base" that I operate vehicles from would be an enjoyable way to my mind to get deeply into locales, while staying in touch with the Net and maintaining full fabrication capabilities with me.
The Obama Administration tried to build high speed rail from Chicago to Madison, WI. It was supposed to be the first segment that would eventually extend to the twin cities. They have $700M dedicated to it. Then WI had an election for governor, and the incoming Republican (Scott Walker) managed to somehow conflate high speed inter-city rail with 'light rail' and scrapped it. He claimed it was too expensive, since the state would have to spend $7Million or so each year for their part of the maintenance (even though the feds were going to fully fund construction). After Scrapping it, the State then had to pay $90Million to upgrade the tracks between Chicago and Milwaukee (that was going to be paid for) and then had to pay $40M for the high speed Talgo Trains. Plus, Talgo moved their US headquarters from Milwaukee to Chicago.
Depending on whether you fly into O'Hare or Midway, you've got a significant or a somewhat significant journey into Chicago after you land. This doesn't negate your point, but needs to be taken into account for city-to-city service.
I don't know if the the schedules are better out east, but here in CA the Amtrak schedules are wildly optimistic. Like, double the listed travel time. And they run infrequently, at odd hours.
Surely this calculation is incomplete without considering depreciation. Also, it makes sense to consider a portion of the cost of the insurance, maintenance, etc. towards the vehicle cost.
People born in the last 50 years have no idea of the anger and resentment that Americans had towards railroad companies, immortalized by the use of the word "railroaded" in slang.
Back in the day the railroad would go right past your town, refuse to build a stop, buy the land along the tracks a few miles away, build a stop, and then start a new town there.
Cher had a monologue in the 1990 movie "Mermaids" where she talked about the feeling of freedom she had from getting in her car and that feeling can be best appreciated by understanding the way that pre-WWII Americans felt about taking the train. Today a car payment, insurance and all that feel like a millstone at your neck, but back then you could get in a new car and smell the freedom. That generation knew what it was like for somebody who could care less what you think to decide when and where you go.
That resentment has less to do with anything inherent to rail than it does to a ruthlessly-run monopoly. In which light there are numerous analogous examples present in other examples.
Some decades back I spent some time listening to a denizen of flyover country speak with still-simmering anger of how the Interstate, already a couple of decades old, had bypassed his town, drying up local highway traffic and decimating local business.
Today, airlines are recalibrating expense-revenue models and determining what routes remain profitable. Telecoms monopolies try to provide the minimum viablequantum of service --- theoretical and net bandwidth, latency, and reliability --- for a given subscriber rate. Disruptions in live-work patterns tend to bugger this.
Any connections or network-based sector is subject to this, especially in private hands; transport, communications, trade (bulk cargo, wholesale, retail), energy distribution, utility services, information, broadcast, etc.
Imagine a zero emissions electrical vehicle with no batteries at all, much more easily automatable than cars, infinitely safer and can be used for medium and long distances. Looks like a Tesla pipe dream, right? Now imagine a complete transportation grid using these and add public individual vehicles for last mile transportation.
Trains are the rational future, they were before, but irrational market forces are against them.
Comment section will bring out the foamers, but consider:
There's demand for service from mpls to Chicago, but it would have to be much faster- at 3 hours it would be competitive. That would require massive rail investment, and would basically create a new railroad next to the existing one, as fast passenger and slow freight don't mix. This is probably not cost effective. A nice bus gets you better service with lower capital expenditures.
West of mpls, the train drags 200k lb sleeping cars along with lounge and diner cars for only a handful of passengers. Swedish and Russian railways pack 6 to a compartment; Amtrak struggles with 2. No way this is cost effective or a good use of capital.
Deregulate the fra rules, allow electric buses on the rails (and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards), and you might get real innovation and a competitive product...
The Empire Builder is one of those vacation trains. That it actually does something useful between Minnesota and Chicago is basically accidental. Because it's government-run it has to run these completely unprofitable trains.
Aww. I liked it, even though it was clear before the pandemic that it was on the downswing.
Rail travel is just much more relaxing and interesting than air travel. People in an airport act like zombies, but people on a train act like people.
One time, I was on a Empire Builder that got stuck in a freight yard around midnight. The freight company had donated an engine to replace one that had broken on the Amtrak train, but apparently the crew didn't have a key to unlock it.
So we sat in a freight yard for about an hour, with snow gently falling around us. It had been several hours since our last stop, and the passengers started to get restless. 4 hours without a smoke break is considered a mortal sin in Montana.
Eventually, the crew relented and let people out in the freezing snow to smoke on the train tracks, under a litany of disclaimers about trespassing and liability and whatnot.
It was hilarious and surreal. Amtrak felt like a system run by human beings, so it was chronically late and haphazard, but I'll still miss it compared the the sterile almost-competence of modern airports.
I don’t think that’s true that all of empire builder was on a downswing. Before Covid, (and maybe still), empire builder was going to get a second train in each direction daily on the stretch from St Paul to Chicago.
Right now 90% of the route from St. Paul is forbidden from traveling to Chicago.
And dining service was being removed from many routes before Covid, I’m sure that has been accelerated.
Amtrak wants to remove the entire central portion of the Southwest Chief, turning the entire route between Kansas City and Albuquerque into bus service only. This was even before COVID19 happened. God knows what they will plan on doing post-COVID.
When I was a teen I was part of a group that did a Washington D.C. to Miami (and back) Amtrak trip. We knew it was going to take longer, but it was about $100 cheaper than flying -- and thought it might be fun to take a long haul train.
It's maybe a 16-20 hour car trip. Less than a 3 hour flight. Amtrak turns it into a 23-24 hour train ride without delays.
We were more than 8 hours delayed getting there, which caused all kinds of havoc with our local transport and accommodations.
This is not in a sparsely populated part of the U.S. It's not the North-East corridor, but it's still pretty heavily populated for most of the run. I swore off trains ever again until many years later my wife thought it would be better to start taking trains around Europe and I finally understood how good they can be. More recently we were in Japan and took the Shinkansen (and a bunch of local trains) all over the country and experienced truly the dream that trains can be. As much of an improvement as the average Eurorail is over Amtrak, Japanese trains are the much of an improvement over Europe. Absolutely incredible.
Too bad, I really enjoy those long distance Amtrak trips, and I can't wait to take the California Zephyr or the Southwest Chief again, but not sure I wanna ride multiple days on Amtrak in the current situation.
I hope service is resumed after the pandemic, I haven't had the chance to take this route yet!
I just completed a cross-country Amtrak sleeper-car journey from New York City to Spokane and flew back from there. (I would have continued to Seattle or Portland but everything seemed to be kind of on fire).
I got off in Chicago for few days, then rented a can in Montana and drove around for a few days before getting back on.
The Lake Sore Limited line had much better sleepers with windows on the top bunk. The Empire Builder has that amazing viewing car though with panoramic views.
Until I got to Glacier National Park the first leg between NYC and Buffalo was much more beautiful. Glacier is not worth trying to describe, just go see it.
It's frustrating to me that this train only goes 79 miles an hour. It seems really hard for it to be a competitive option with driving when the maximum speed is approximately the same as the maximum speed in a car.
The problem isn't so much the speed, it's that it has to slow down frequently, gets blocked by freight trains too often, and stops in far too many towns. There should be an express option.
Biden rode Amtrak to work for 36 years [1], from Delaware to DC. As someone who appreciates the benefits of available rail transportation more than perhaps any other recent national politician, I'm hoping he'll take a shot at either doing some regional high-speed rail, or at least making substantial improvements to Amtrak.
In the 1990s my immediate family would travel from MA to MI via Amtrak to visit grandparents. Travel time in each direction was measured in days. Later on we "upgraded" to planes which reduced travel time to hours within one day.
I miss the trains.
Nostalgia aside, diner car and all, I crave the rumble-tumble and the scenery and the idea of "cross country".
Tunnels.
Every day I commute into and out of work, I witness a random toddler jumping up and down or waving or waddle-running along the train because train.
I have an anniversary coming up in a few months. I and my partner are interested in celebrating by train.
Sad to hear this. I rode the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle in 2013 with all my things after college — it was a big moment for me and that line will always be special to me.
> Along the Mississippi River we wait in a siding for an approaching freight train
Good grief. With all of that big country and having had more than a century to make rail routes 'broad way' with four tracks, it beggars belief that so many U.S. rail routes are this third-world, poverty spec. single track arrangement.
Plus the options for delays are comical. You could understand a train being hours late if it was on its first outing as a prototype but really? Hot air balloons have a more predictable and reliable service.
Plus the heritage of U.S. railroads and the fantastic loading gauge mean that U.S. trains should be the best and the most stylish in the world. Those double deck carriages with observation domes and the potential for cool end carriages and comfy sleeping arrangements are just not so easy in other countries. Plus the scenery is spectacular in much of the U.S. Why the reality is people driving for hours with attention focused on the road the whole way - is this not a waste of human potential? You could be reading or doing your knitting on the train rather than holding that wheel.
I think that the rail network in the U.S. is not to be given up on. There could even be a whole new approach to it. I often wonder if you could build vastly lighter trains that used active suspension and other gizmos that you might find in a deluxe German road car to put some magic back into rails. Plus speed is a problem on U.S. rail. Even in the UK there are trains that slightly terrify you with a genuine perception of 120+ mph speed. In the U.S. you can be crawling along at 12 mph and that is if you are not stuck in a siding waiting for a mile long freight train to crawl past at 12 mph.
Recently I learned the PRR T1 trains in the days of steam would be doing an estimated 140 mph if behind schedule. Those streamliner trains from almost a century ago were just so cool. For the 21st century America needs trains that suit post Covid, post-boomer lifestyles that hark back to the majesty of times past.
This. America is huge. We could be doing so much cooler things with trains, and the experience can be SO nice. It's a beautiful country to watch going by from the window of a train.
Even if we didn't end up with trains that went way FASTER than other methods of transport, we could be doing so much better. I saw someone advocating for a line along the Northeast corridor departing every hour in both directions.
Where I live we've got the Vermonter, stopping at a (admittedly charming) antique station in my town. It comes through once a day, in each direction. That requires that any trip has to include an overnight stay. If that train ran like a metro train and came through hourly, I'd be constantly travelling to places like NYC and Philly or even Baltimore, to do stuff, because I would be able to come home again once I was done, even if it was late.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_T1 says "there was a drawback of the metallurgy used; the poppet valve could not withstand the stress of sustained high-speed operation (meaning over 100 mph (160 km/h) on production T1s)."
>You could be reading or doing your knitting on the train rather than holding that wheel.
You can also brush shoulders with a diverse cross section of America and see and meet all sorts of interesting people. You can get pretty lucky in the dining car if you're traveling alone being sat with cool people with interesting stories to tell, or passing a covert bottle of whiskey back and forth with a stranger. There's a camaraderie you get on the train you never get in a car or on a plane, something more and more important the more fractured and divisive we get. People of all classes and backgrounds, mixed in a comfy tube with nothing better to do than to talk to each other.
US rail network doesn't need 4-track mains. We run gigantic freights (3+km) on huge loading gauges, so we have many fewer trains. There's also nearly no passenger traffic because it takes 2 full days to go from Chicago to Seattle.
Adding 3 more tracks would be a gigantic capital investment in never-used capacity.
Some context: Amtrak was created as part of a federal bail-out that re-organized the railroads. (Other parts were: Allowing railroads to merge operations; abandon unneeded trackage; and an ongoing dose of de-regulation.) For Amtrak to get federal political support it needs to operate in many states, even though it makes no financial sense to do so. Hence trains that seem run in the middle of nowhere, and are often slower to get anywhere.
[+] [-] tspike|5 years ago|reply
It was by far my favorite mode of travel for my commute. The scenery through the Gorge and relaxation it brought me relative to the drive were so valuable. I got to know the staff, and in the evenings, could kick back with a beer in the observation car while looking at Multnomah Falls.
I'd rather spend 2x the time on a train and have the full time be usable than driving, where I would always show up stressed out and feeling behind in my day before I even started.
I also took it eastbound one time to ski in Montana. That was wonderful. I boarded about 7pm, dinked around on my computer for a couple of hours, fell asleep, and woke up at a world-class ski area where I could walk to my motel, catch a bus to the slopes and back, and walk to a top notch concert downtown at night.
[+] [-] cstross|5 years ago|reply
Also, a nominal hour to cover 93 miles by rail, and just three trains a week, is just laughable. That's a tourism charter service, not a transport network.
It's no wonder Americans don't think in terms of rail travel as mass transport. If you can't run trains like commuter planes, something's badly wrong.
[+] [-] kevindong|5 years ago|reply
For reference, the distance between Minneapolis and Chicago is about 400 miles.
If the Amtrak schedule [0] is strictly adhered to, the travel time is ~7.75 hours. Current prices are ~$116 roundtrip.
Google Maps says the estimated time by car (assuming no traffic) is ~6.25 hours. At ~30 miles/gallon at $2/gallon, the cost of a roundtrip for just gas would be ~$53.
A roundtrip, non-stop flight lasting ~1.5 hours each way can be had for ~$80~$175 with the passenger's choice of at least 10 distinct flights/3 separate airlines.
I like rail. But it's clear that there's not a market fit for rail between Minneapolis and Chicago without massive subsidies. A car is faster and cheaper. A plane is much faster and about the same price. Both car and planes are strictly more convenient.
[0]: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
[+] [-] awalton|5 years ago|reply
We spent half a trillion dollars building the IHS over five decades, and have historically thrown at least a few billion a year at US oil producers - is it really surprising to anyone that driving is cheap? We keep bailing out the airline industry repeatedly - we already gave them $25 billion in grants this year because of the coronavirus, and they're still asking for more.
But, dare we build an alternative to those systems, one that could be more ecologically and financially sound? Nope, too busy feeding our sunk cost industries. Keep blaming Amtrak for being terrible while refusing to give them their own run of rails so they don't constantly get stuck behind freighter traffic. Keep shuting down High Speed Rail projects around the country because the billionaires don't want it in their back yards.
[+] [-] topkai22|5 years ago|reply
The IRS per mileage reimbursement rate is 57.5 cents per mile, putting the “real” cost to an 800 mile roundtrip around $400.
A different stand in might be the per mile rate I can get from a rental company, which is often around 20 cents a mile. That would be $160 in other costs + the $53 in gas $213.
Now, people chronically underestimate the cost of driving (and many of them are fixed costs) so the “competitiveness” of rail doesn’t really change, but IMO we shouldn’t just look at gas costs for automobile transport.
[+] [-] leoedin|5 years ago|reply
Of course there's hardly any demand for a slow, expensive and often late service which only runs once a day. It's not useful.
A journey I do often in the UK is London to Edinburgh by train. The distance is almost the same (400 miles). London is a bit bigger than Chicago (12 million metro vs ~8 million metro) but then the Twin Cities are quite a lot larger than Edinburgh (1 million metro vs ~4 million metro).
However, the track has been improved, is at least doubled the whole way and has significant portions at 125 mph. As a result the journey takes just over 4 hours. If the trains are more than 1 hour late you get all your money back.
On an average weekday there's 41 trains travelling each way between those cities. And many of them are full. They're constantly doing improvements to try and increase the number of trains travelling.
I understand it's a different situation - the result of decades of political apathy towards railways. But I think it's important to understand that the Amtrak situation doesn't have to be the way it is. There's not an inherent lack of demand for fast, regular train services between major cities.
[+] [-] BrianHenryIE|5 years ago|reply
I don't own a car and never learned to drive. What's my upfront cost before the $53 incremental cost?
Car ownership begets car ownership.
AAA says car ownership costs $8,558 per year. I'd have a hard time spending that much on public transport.
https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/what-does-it-cost-to...
[+] [-] qiqitori|5 years ago|reply
Just some food for thought -- of course, if you have passengers it'll quickly be worth it even if you decide to factor in this kind of calculation.
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|5 years ago|reply
There's a lack of long-term policy here: do we want to be in a society in 20-30 years that's still using personal cars to do that journey, when a high speed rail would be much more efficient and pleasant? If a true high speed rail were enabled, that 400 mile trip might take 3 hours instead of 6-8 for other modes of transit, and it would incur less negative externalities to boot.
I'm all for individuals making informed decisions in the short term, while government and society should be taking long-term steps to promote the health of the commons as well.
[+] [-] codingdave|5 years ago|reply
But Amtrak is the best fit for multi-day trips across the entire country for people who cannot fly. Amtrak also solves transportation for travelling directly from small rural towns to the large cities, and sometimes even from one rural town to another. It is the safest way to get across mountain ranges in the depth of winter (although not the fastest).
It doesn't solve every problem, and it does need subsidies, and it always runs late... nevertheless, it connects rural Americans to the large cities in ways that city folk don't even realize.
[+] [-] paul_f|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pantalaimon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Phobophobia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smabie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
One of the reasons I always take a train to Manhattan is that I not only don't need a car but I hate driving into the city and parking is expensive.
[+] [-] hvs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yourapostasy|5 years ago|reply
On the super-long transcontinental trips, apparently the cell reception with the right gear on trains is much better than when I rode half the country westward many years ago. That makes the train travel mode even more valuable to me if I'm not on a tight schedule and the seating arrangement enables me to look forward to getting work done.
What prevents me from using trains more than I do is the demands of many clients upon my time. Not quite lucrative enough for me to justify a satellite data link, but if my financial picture improves by many orders of magnitude, a digital nomadic life with a private railcar set towing shipping container footprint custom structures as a "home base" that I operate vehicles from would be an enjoyable way to my mind to get deeply into locales, while staying in touch with the Net and maintaining full fabrication capabilities with me.
[+] [-] briffle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beisner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stickfigure|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CalRobert|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] halfmatthalfcat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|5 years ago|reply
Back in the day the railroad would go right past your town, refuse to build a stop, buy the land along the tracks a few miles away, build a stop, and then start a new town there.
Cher had a monologue in the 1990 movie "Mermaids" where she talked about the feeling of freedom she had from getting in her car and that feeling can be best appreciated by understanding the way that pre-WWII Americans felt about taking the train. Today a car payment, insurance and all that feel like a millstone at your neck, but back then you could get in a new car and smell the freedom. That generation knew what it was like for somebody who could care less what you think to decide when and where you go.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|5 years ago|reply
Some decades back I spent some time listening to a denizen of flyover country speak with still-simmering anger of how the Interstate, already a couple of decades old, had bypassed his town, drying up local highway traffic and decimating local business.
Today, airlines are recalibrating expense-revenue models and determining what routes remain profitable. Telecoms monopolies try to provide the minimum viablequantum of service --- theoretical and net bandwidth, latency, and reliability --- for a given subscriber rate. Disruptions in live-work patterns tend to bugger this.
Any connections or network-based sector is subject to this, especially in private hands; transport, communications, trade (bulk cargo, wholesale, retail), energy distribution, utility services, information, broadcast, etc.
[+] [-] lucideer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nahuel0x|5 years ago|reply
Trains are the rational future, they were before, but irrational market forces are against them.
[+] [-] gbronner|5 years ago|reply
West of mpls, the train drags 200k lb sleeping cars along with lounge and diner cars for only a handful of passengers. Swedish and Russian railways pack 6 to a compartment; Amtrak struggles with 2. No way this is cost effective or a good use of capital.
Deregulate the fra rules, allow electric buses on the rails (and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards), and you might get real innovation and a competitive product...
[+] [-] yuliyp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trainsawayy|5 years ago|reply
Rail travel is just much more relaxing and interesting than air travel. People in an airport act like zombies, but people on a train act like people.
One time, I was on a Empire Builder that got stuck in a freight yard around midnight. The freight company had donated an engine to replace one that had broken on the Amtrak train, but apparently the crew didn't have a key to unlock it.
So we sat in a freight yard for about an hour, with snow gently falling around us. It had been several hours since our last stop, and the passengers started to get restless. 4 hours without a smoke break is considered a mortal sin in Montana.
Eventually, the crew relented and let people out in the freezing snow to smoke on the train tracks, under a litany of disclaimers about trespassing and liability and whatnot.
It was hilarious and surreal. Amtrak felt like a system run by human beings, so it was chronically late and haphazard, but I'll still miss it compared the the sterile almost-competence of modern airports.
[+] [-] uxp100|5 years ago|reply
Right now 90% of the route from St. Paul is forbidden from traveling to Chicago.
And dining service was being removed from many routes before Covid, I’m sure that has been accelerated.
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|5 years ago|reply
Sunset Limited is worse, though. No activities. Fewer showers. And you can't even get your meals brought to your room.
[+] [-] bane|5 years ago|reply
It's maybe a 16-20 hour car trip. Less than a 3 hour flight. Amtrak turns it into a 23-24 hour train ride without delays.
We were more than 8 hours delayed getting there, which caused all kinds of havoc with our local transport and accommodations.
This is not in a sparsely populated part of the U.S. It's not the North-East corridor, but it's still pretty heavily populated for most of the run. I swore off trains ever again until many years later my wife thought it would be better to start taking trains around Europe and I finally understood how good they can be. More recently we were in Japan and took the Shinkansen (and a bunch of local trains) all over the country and experienced truly the dream that trains can be. As much of an improvement as the average Eurorail is over Amtrak, Japanese trains are the much of an improvement over Europe. Absolutely incredible.
[+] [-] kalessin|5 years ago|reply
I hope service is resumed after the pandemic, I haven't had the chance to take this route yet!
[+] [-] thisisauserid|5 years ago|reply
I got off in Chicago for few days, then rented a can in Montana and drove around for a few days before getting back on.
The Lake Sore Limited line had much better sleepers with windows on the top bunk. The Empire Builder has that amazing viewing car though with panoramic views.
Until I got to Glacier National Park the first leg between NYC and Buffalo was much more beautiful. Glacier is not worth trying to describe, just go see it.
[+] [-] lacker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a32363173/joe-biden-amt...
[+] [-] reaperducer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drdeadringer|5 years ago|reply
In the 1990s my immediate family would travel from MA to MI via Amtrak to visit grandparents. Travel time in each direction was measured in days. Later on we "upgraded" to planes which reduced travel time to hours within one day.
I miss the trains.
Nostalgia aside, diner car and all, I crave the rumble-tumble and the scenery and the idea of "cross country".
Tunnels.
Every day I commute into and out of work, I witness a random toddler jumping up and down or waving or waddle-running along the train because train.
I have an anniversary coming up in a few months. I and my partner are interested in celebrating by train.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] news_to_me|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|5 years ago|reply
Good grief. With all of that big country and having had more than a century to make rail routes 'broad way' with four tracks, it beggars belief that so many U.S. rail routes are this third-world, poverty spec. single track arrangement.
Plus the options for delays are comical. You could understand a train being hours late if it was on its first outing as a prototype but really? Hot air balloons have a more predictable and reliable service.
Plus the heritage of U.S. railroads and the fantastic loading gauge mean that U.S. trains should be the best and the most stylish in the world. Those double deck carriages with observation domes and the potential for cool end carriages and comfy sleeping arrangements are just not so easy in other countries. Plus the scenery is spectacular in much of the U.S. Why the reality is people driving for hours with attention focused on the road the whole way - is this not a waste of human potential? You could be reading or doing your knitting on the train rather than holding that wheel.
I think that the rail network in the U.S. is not to be given up on. There could even be a whole new approach to it. I often wonder if you could build vastly lighter trains that used active suspension and other gizmos that you might find in a deluxe German road car to put some magic back into rails. Plus speed is a problem on U.S. rail. Even in the UK there are trains that slightly terrify you with a genuine perception of 120+ mph speed. In the U.S. you can be crawling along at 12 mph and that is if you are not stuck in a siding waiting for a mile long freight train to crawl past at 12 mph.
Recently I learned the PRR T1 trains in the days of steam would be doing an estimated 140 mph if behind schedule. Those streamliner trains from almost a century ago were just so cool. For the 21st century America needs trains that suit post Covid, post-boomer lifestyles that hark back to the majesty of times past.
[+] [-] Applejinx|5 years ago|reply
Even if we didn't end up with trains that went way FASTER than other methods of transport, we could be doing so much better. I saw someone advocating for a line along the Northeast corridor departing every hour in both directions.
Where I live we've got the Vermonter, stopping at a (admittedly charming) antique station in my town. It comes through once a day, in each direction. That requires that any trip has to include an overnight stay. If that train ran like a metro train and came through hourly, I'd be constantly travelling to places like NYC and Philly or even Baltimore, to do stuff, because I would be able to come home again once I was done, even if it was late.
[+] [-] eesmith|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_T1 says "there was a drawback of the metallurgy used; the poppet valve could not withstand the stress of sustained high-speed operation (meaning over 100 mph (160 km/h) on production T1s)."
[+] [-] wpm|5 years ago|reply
You can also brush shoulders with a diverse cross section of America and see and meet all sorts of interesting people. You can get pretty lucky in the dining car if you're traveling alone being sat with cool people with interesting stories to tell, or passing a covert bottle of whiskey back and forth with a stranger. There's a camaraderie you get on the train you never get in a car or on a plane, something more and more important the more fractured and divisive we get. People of all classes and backgrounds, mixed in a comfy tube with nothing better to do than to talk to each other.
[+] [-] gbronner|5 years ago|reply
Adding 3 more tracks would be a gigantic capital investment in never-used capacity.
[+] [-] jt2190|5 years ago|reply