BusTalk

[Dieseljim]

One way to fix Amtrak's operations and provide the railroad with room to grow, it seems to me, is more new equipment, locomotives, cars, and lots of them in addition to rebuilding wrecked cars and putting them back in service. And it needs to be more CONVENTIONAL equipment rather than more fancy equipment like Acela as it is the conventional trains where the equpment needs are the greatest. Amtrak should have held onto a fleet of their EMD F40PH diesels in addition to the slugs of GE "Genesis" units that they have purchased in the last several years. As for whatever Heritage Fleet cars are still in service. They should be taken and remanufactured from the wheels on up, giving Amtrak some like new cars at a fraction of the cost. There is 38 years of neglect and deferred investment that should have been made right along but wasn't since every president, regardless of party, has been trying to squeeze or destroy this vital carrier almost from the beginning. The new Administration has the right idea in increasing the investment in rail passenger service, but he has more than 38 years of neglect to make up for. Granted he won't be able to do it all in his first term, but given time, the rail passenger network that Mr. Obama gives us will be a damned sight better than what we have now. There also needs to be enough spare equpment on hand to add more trains, sections to existing trains, if necessary. What would go great with the trains would be complementary bus services that would make Amtrak, essentially an intermodal GO Transit type of operation, where trains and buses complement each other rather than compete against each other. Both Go Transit and NJ Transit are excellent models for intermodal public transit systems, by extending that concept to both Greyhound and Amtrak as well as other bus lines, we could have INTERMODALISM at its very best, where one ticket will do the trick in going from A to B or B to C and so on.

[RailBus63]

I would agree that Amtrak has been underfunded over the years, but is the current Amtrak fleet really suffering from deferred maintenance? It seems to me that the shop forces have actually done a decent job over the years to keep the fleet rolling - the Amfleet I cars are over 30 years old now and are still doing fine as the backbone of the short and medium-distance corridor services.

Also, re: the retirement of the F40PH locomotives - those units would have had to have been rebuilt with new engines to meet current EPA pollution guidelines, so I can't blame Amtrak for deciding to buy newer locomotives that are both environmentally cleaner and also more fuel efficient.

[timecruncher]

There are a few little problems with the intermodal notion here: First of all, the bus industry sees Amtrak as a competitor. Greyhound does provide some Thruway Bus connectivity, but it is with great reluctance that they do.

Back when the Kentucky Cardinal was still running into Union Station here in Louisville, the Thruway Bus to Nashville didn't even show up half of the time. At least on a dozen occasions, I loaded rail passengers in the Planning Department Jeep Cherokee (an old supervisor cruiser, probably the most uncomfortable piece of crap I have ever driven), with boxes of bus schedules and luggage everywhere, and took them over to the Greyhound terminal myself when the bus failed to show.

Don't forget that GO Transit up in Ontario is fully-funded by the Province and is not a private company. Their rail and bus operations are designed to complement each other and provide interurban transportation throughout the greater Toronto region.

Amtrak is a necessary public service only in the high-density corridors where they own their own tracks and call the shots. Outside of the Northeast Corridor (Boston - Richmond), the New York - Albany portion of the Empire Corridor, and some corridor operations out in California and possibly Washington, Amtrak is just another option for the traveler, and is subject to uncooperative host railroads and (to quote a recent Dilbert comic) "thundering incompetence!"

timecruncher

[HwyHaulier]

[HwyHaulier]