Amtrak’s Sunset Limited at San Marcos, Tex.
Credit: Lyndon Henry
Astoundingly, the primary push for this appears to come, not from anti-Amtrak forces in the Capitol or White House, but from Amtrak’s newly revamped management itself. Indeed, as former Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman recently warned in a May 10 Railway Age commentary, efforts are under way “by Amtrak’s current leadership to dismantle our interconnected, intercity rail passenger network …”
Boardman’s warning dovetails with what I’ve been hearing from an array of other sources, including some with intimate knowledge of Amtrak’s internal dynamics (and whose anonymity I intend to protect). It’s now no secret that the administration of newly minted Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson (former Executive Chairman of Delta Airlines) has a pretty dismal future in mind for nationwide passenger rail connectivity, described by venerable rail journalist Don Phillips (in his own May 15 commentary) as “Anderson’s apparent plan to start killing Amtrak’s long-distance trains.”
Perhaps it’d be useful at this point to review some major reasons why long-distance intercity […]
Divide and conquer.
The reason why I do not use train for travel is because there is NO SUCH THING as a User-Friendly train system. Also, I am waiting for someone wealthy to decide it is in his/her own interest as well as the public good to sponsor (at least a sectional start-up of) a train that is strictly commuter and which is hung above the line, hanging from a support, with raised platforms (similar to what Chicago tried but failed to do right) where passengers alight and debark. The train would have to be hung high enough so that it could easily rise above most ground-based structures it has to cross to allow for the best route without having to as property owners to give up their property for public domain. The train should be (and with today’s knowledge, there is no excuse for it not to be) as quite as possible so it does not disturb people and wildlife as it passes thru. Gosh, it should have been me who won that big Mega Millions about a week or so ago and maybe I could have started the ball rolling in North Carolina. If I had a train platform nearby I would definitely travel a LOT more, expecially now that I am retired. $$$ into the system if it is User-Friendly and slow enough to have lots of stops but more efficient time-wise than driving a car. Taxis or Uber would benefit from being the middle-link between home and the platforms. There could also be high structure garages build next to the platforms where people could pay to store their vehicle until they return. milkaTheAppreciator