Railroads are for hoboes and untermenschen."
Basically true, except where its not. Here in the Northeast we've seen a resurgence in both rail usage as well as rail quality, as old roads simply can't be expanded through many towns to accomodate the increased traffic loads.
Not only are the express trains reliable and quite fast, some of the stations along the route have been rennovated and mall-ated, and are doing quite well. The DC station is quite nice (verging on spectacular)and offers lots of good food and shops. (Local trains, for the 'plebes', are a completely different story.)
Of course, the population densities along this route are very high, but the DC station gives one and example of what is occasionally possible with central planning. Basically, if the "commons" are allowed to deteriorate (or of no real use) people will of course find alternatives (if the alternatives are allowed, that is). This doesn't always mean those alternatives are inherently the best, however.
Next year the new/old Penn station is set to open on its original location, and that should make traveling through Penn much less of the claustrophobic chaos it is now.
-TD
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 21:44:32 -0800On Thursday, January 30, 2003, at 07:39 PM, Neil Johnson wrote:Besides the late schedules--which is made worse by the "once per day" schedule--and the time it takes, there's another issue.On Thursday 30 January 2003 10:12 am, Declan McCullagh wrote:Out here in the Midwest, we have people creating "committees" all the time toOn Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 07:32:10AM -0800, Marshall Clow wrote:3) Train - about 17 hours - $130 round trip.
encourage Amtrak to add/change routes.
As my dad says, "There's a lot of people who want to take a train ride, but no
one who wants to ride a train".
Amtrak does go through my town on it's way to/from Chicago/California. Other
than the fact our departure was delayed SIX hours because the train was that
late, my wife and I had a nice trip to Chicago for our one year anniversary.
I used to occasionally take the "Coast Starlight" from San Jose down to San Luis Obispo to visit a girlfriend going to Cal Poly at the time. The all day trip was OK, as I didn't trust my car at the time to make it the entire distance. It was fun for the few times I took it, though missing my arrival time by a few hours was not cool...I eventually just got to the point of calling her when I arrived instead of her planning to meet me. Various times the train was cancelled completely, for various reasons, though I escaped these bad situations on the days I travelled.
What was really bad was that the train stations in all of the cities I could have parked my car in were in really crummy parts of town. Leaving a car for several days in that scummy part of Santa Clara, or the even scummier part of San Jose, or the much more Mexican and much more crime-ridden part of Salinas, well, this was a major gamble. Amtrak had no security on the parking lot ("not our job") and ragged signs warned that cars were subject to vandalism and break-in.
There is simply no way today I would leave my Mercedes in one of these inner city mutant free fire zones. And taking a taxi from Santa Cruz to either San Jose or Salinas is not acceptable, for cost reasons. (Nor is the "shuttle," which requires me to travel by bus with my luggage to Santa Cruz, then another hour to the train station.)
A world of difference between these downtown parking lots and the protected, fenced, patrolled parking lots at all major airports I have seen.
Part of this is historical, part is logistical. Railroads typically go through the seedier parts of large cities, while airports are typically built on sprawling sites far from city centers. Downtown railroad stations are like downtown Greyhound and Trailways bus stations: filled with winos, addicts, drooling retards, beggars, whores, and welfare denizens.
One more reasons passenger rail lines are failing and are demanding massive subsidies. Real people won't wait for hours for late trains, or miss a day completely when the track is being repaired, or park their Lexuses and BMWs where bums and winos will key their paint jobs.
Railroads are for hoboes and untermenschen.
--Tim May
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