According to thisChgo Tribune article, the Bush Administration has offered a plan for bailing out Amtrak. What it seems to indicate is that the private portion of the proposed partnership (try saying that with mashed potatoes in your mouth) will be responsible for the tracks and the stations.
Wow. THERE'S a dramatic change. NOT!
The stations and tracks are already mostly owned by other companies such as BNSF.
The rails out here in the flyover zone are just fine and dandy for running big cargo loads, but they're rough -- and therefore slow -- when it comes to passenger runs. They're in no fit condition for the high-speed commuter trains like the Acela... which, I understand, are halted, out east, right now, anyway.
Plus, if you ride cross-country, because the cargo companies already own the rails, shipments of coal always get priority over carloads of people, so the trains rarely arrive in Denver or Chicago on time. They can sometimes sit outside a town for hours on end while the "money makers' shunt about ahead of them. My parents took a trip last year to Montana, in which the return train was supposed to arrive 7 hours ahead of their final homeward connection, and they ended up staying in south Chicago overnight, as their train left 45 minutes before they debarked the Montana train. That long a delay may not have been typical, but an hour or more sitting in wait is common enough that frequent riders always bring big, thick books or other activities to fill the void while they wait for their choo choo to boogie into Union Station.
No comments:
Post a Comment