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Title: Don’t Railroad Amtrak Americans love trains. So should conservatives.
Source:
The American Conservative
URL Source: http://www.theamericanconservative. ... articles/dont-railroad-amtrak/
Published: Sep 13, 2015
Author: William S. Lind & Glen D. BottomsS
Post Date: 2015-10-13 16:38:59 by nativist nationalist
Keywords: None
Views: 2083
Comments: 20
At root, conservatism is about preserving good things from the past and, where they have been lost, restoring them. Conservatives know that life in the past was in many ways better than life at present; morals and manners both come to mind. So, as some of us are old enough to remember, was travel. The word “travel” itself suggests a better time and better experiences getting from one place to another than those we now suffer. Travel, where the journey itself is part of the pleasure, has been displaced by “transportation.” Like so many bandboxes or birdcages, people too are now packages and shipped. Whether crammed into an airline seat designed for garden gnomes, your baggage thoroughly (or not) searched in case you are a terrorist, or stuck in heavy traffic behind the wheel of a car, enjoying the journey is not in the script. Your highest hope is to get through it quickly and safely and forget about it as soon as possible. Yet strange to say, some Americans do still travel, and enjoy it. Who are these privileged souls? Not the 1 percent, but anyone who is traveling by train. Last year, they numbered just over 30 million, counting only passengers on Amtrak, not commuter trains. Passenger trains offer comfortable travel the middle class can afford. On long-distance trains, most of which use Amtrak’s double-decker Superliner cars, a reasonable coach fare gets you a better seat than domestic flights offer in first class. You have a big window and interesting things to see from it. You can look out, read, work, or nap, all with plenty of room. You can get up and walk around, including to a lounge car with wraparound glass and, for now, to the dining car for a meal with real food. The train can be social if you want it to be; it is easy to meet people. If your trip is overnight, for a somewhat steeper fare, though usually less than first class by air, you can get a private room with a bed at night and a comfortable chair or sofa during the day. These trains represent one of the good things from the past conservatives should work to conserve and expand: at present, passenger rail service in most of the country is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago. All of which makes it passing strange that congressional Republicans are doing their utmost to kill Amtrak. Each year, they cut its budget further. They starve it of capital funds it needs to buy new cars so it can carry more people. Last year, House Republicans forced through a measure that drove a knife in Amtrak’s back. They put a legal requirement on Amtrak to end all losses on food and beverage services. Even in the glory days of rail travel, dining cars lost money. Railroads provided diners anyway, and took pride in the excellence of the food served on their trains, because when people are traveling for a day or more they need real meals. The only way Amtrak can meet the new mandate is to eliminate dining cars. Passengers would have to go on journeys of a thousand miles or more with nothing but a snack bar. Coach passengers may do that, but a great many sleeping car passengers will not. Amtrak makes a lot more money from sleeping cars than from coaches: by its own calculations, sleeping car passengers account for just 15 percent of long-distance passengers but contribute 36 percent of total revenue. Amtrak’s average yield per mile for coach passengers is 14.2 cents; for sleeping car passengers, 27.2 cents. As Jim Loomison wrote in a Consumer Traveler story last year: “Here’s the unvarnished truth, put in the simplest possible terms by a respected authority on passenger rail: ‘If the dining cars go, the sleepers go. If the sleepers go, the big revenue goes. If the big revenue goes, Amtrak goes’.” Congressional Republicans explain their hostility to Amtrak with two arguments. First, Amtrak is subsidized, and second, it runs trains no one rides. thisarticleappears copy Yes, Amtrak is subsidized. So are all competing forms of transportation. Highways cover only 51 percent of their costs from all user fees, including the gas tax. The rest is paid by subsidies of one form or another, especially from local property taxes. Airlines receive massive subsidies in the form of airports and the air traffic control system. The day after 9/11, the airlines ran to Capitol Hill and were immediately given billions of dollars in additional taxpayer money, no questions asked. Amtrak currently covers 75 percent of its costs from passenger fares, not counting payments from states and commuter authorities. Including both ticket revenue and ancillary payments, Amtrak covered 93 percent of its expenses in 2014. And again, sleeping car patrons on long distance trains, a particular target of House Republicans, contribute over a third of Amtrak’s total long-distance revenue. Arguments that we should keep the Northeast Corridor—which serves cities like Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston—but eliminate the rest of Amtrak’s network fail both financially and politically. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains do make an operating profit. But because Amtrak owns most of the corridor, it bears an enormous expense for its maintenance and operation. Amtrak’s long-distance trains by contrast run on private railroads’ tracks, with little direct cost to Amtrak. Politically, if you kill everyone else’s trains, why should senators and congressmen from outside the Northeast Corridor vote money for Amtrak? If the Republicans kill Amtrak, they kill all of Amtrak, including the Northeast Corridor. As to Amtrak’s trains running empty, the opposite is the case. Amtrak could carry more passengers than it does if it had the equipment, which Congress refuses it the money to buy. On many long-distance trains, sleeping-car space is sold out months in advance. Since Amtrak’s founding in 1971, its ridership has grown from 6 million to 30.9 million in 2014. All across the country, more and more Americans are finding the train is a better way to travel, and they want more trains to ride. Passenger rail is a growing business. Usually, Republicans want to encourage business growth. In this case, they are going to kill it. If congressional Republicans would replace their irrational loathing for passenger trains with an approach based on facts and reason, they could help both the taxpayer and the people who want to ride trains. Amtrak, like most businesses that have monopolies, could use some competition. The railroads will fight bitterly against letting other passenger-train operators besides Amtrak run over their tracks because they fear that would lead to “open access” for competing freight-train operators as well. But a few years ago, when an old colleague of ours, the late Paul Weyrich, served on a high-level commission examining the future of transportation, several railroad presidents told him privately that if they could bid for part of Amtrak’s subsidy, they would consider again running their own passenger trains. Were Congress to pass legislation opening the door to this possibility, we might get, on at least some long-distance routes, trains that were run well and on time for less cost. In fact, in Florida a railroad, the Florida East Coast (FEC), is planning to introduce its own passenger trains between Miami, Palm Beach, and Orlando, trains it expects will make money. FEC has pioneered new practices in railroading for many decades, usually with success. If this one works, the return of passenger trains operated by private railroads would receive a major boost. Another private company that owns a number of short-line railroads, Iowa Pacific Holdings, is bringing back one of the glories of the railway age, the Pullman Company. Once a week, restored Pullman cars run between Chicago and New Orleans, attached to Amtrak’s “City of New Orleans” route. Trains magazine reports: It could almost be an evening in 1956. Streamlined passenger cars, handsomely attired in the chocolate and orange livery of the Illinois Central Railroad, their windows glowing invitingly, stand beside a platform at a great Chicago terminal. White-jacketed men wait at lowered vestibule steps, ready to direct passengers to their assigned space and to lift their luggage aboard. Sound a bit different from what you go through trying to get on an airplane? Again we come face-to-face with what conservatism is all about: conserving and restoring good things from our shared past. As Trains notes, “At its 1920s peak, Pullman carried 39 million people per year to every corner of the country. Its hallmark was quality comfort for the traveling public, delivered consistently, at reasonable prices. It was not about opulent luxury for a wealthy, junketing few.” What is the Republican Party in Congress about? Whom do the Republicans represent and serve? The middle class, who enjoy traveling by train and can afford to do so—or just the 1 percent, people who travel by private jet and write large checks as campaign contributions? Ultimately, the Republican Party’s efforts in Congress to deny Americans the choice of travel by rail come down to two different visions of America. The first is a vision of the America we once had and conservatives still want, an overwhelmingly middle-class country with lots of nice things available at prices the middle class can afford. The other is an America where the 1 percent lounge in Neronian splendor while the middle class sinks into poverty, where everything they can afford is unpleasant. With its efforts to destroy Amtrak, the Republican Congress casts a vote for the latter. Poster Comment: I'll bet your "shocked" to discover this wasn't posted by Willie!
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#1. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
Until im allowed to carry my CHL weapon without fear of being prosecuted and if im forced to use deadly force I can do so without fear of being prosecuted by a progressive asshat because they want to set an example of people who stand up for themselves instead of being constant victim.
Do they love them as much as China has enjoyed buying the unused rail steel?
Trains for the land, boats for the water. There is no form of transportation cheaper than water. Rail is cheap, but water is even cheaper. I support railways: rebuilt, seriously fast railways, like they have in Western Europe. But I especially support an integrated water transport network. All of the original East Coast cities are on the ocean or on navigable waterways that go to the ocean. Everything the touches the Great Lakes is on navigable waters. The Mississippi/Missouri is navigable. And everything of importance on the West Coast except Sacramento is on the sea. High speed hovercraft, high speed sea craft, that docks at rail hubs - once built out, it would be efficient, it would be a lot less expensive to maintain: roads have to be constantly worked on. But the sea just IS. Speed at sea is achievable. Of course it would have to be subsidized. All transportation and infrastructure is subsidized. It doesn't seem likely. Still, I support it.
Actually Sacramento does have a port that can handle ocean going ships, same for Stockton. Non auro, sed ferro, recuperando est patria
Yes, I am very shocked, LOL. I still remember traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio by train when I was a kid. It was quite enjoyable. Those were the days. Si vis pacem, para bellum Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
He only posts about spending a gazillion dollars on high speed rail not figuring out ways to make better what is existing... Vegetarians eat vegetables. Beware of humanitarians!
I am,anyhow. I am a conservative,and I also love trains. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
Boys need model trains.
I like Amtrak, but they serve crap food at ridiculously inflated prices. maybe in the "glory days," they served good at good prices. That ain't Amtrak. Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
The way it used to work was that the railroad that delivered freight also ran the passenger trains, so the dining car patron was apt to also be someone who shipped freight over the same line. So the dining car was the way to make an impression on their customers, and they wrote off the loss as the expense of advertising their service. That was back in the days when we were a manufacturing super power, and had good service. As opposed to the service economy of today, where we have crappy service. Did you aver end up playing tag with a phone mail system that drives you into repeating loops? It makes me want to see Darth Vader storm in and grab someone by the throat and say; "If this is a service economy, then where is the service?" Non auro, sed ferro, recuperando est patria
The Republicans "hate" rail for 2 reasons - 1) They are bribed by the truck manufacturers to subsidize highway trucking and to hinder RR competition and 2) They can use that opposition to rail ways to show they are against big govt as a camouflage. We should build fast bullet trains to connect major cities to the outer suburbs. big city workers sometimes travel 2 to 3 hours each way to get to work because they live in cheaper towns way outside the city. Some drive, some take a bus. Some take old fashioned trains. If a 2 to 3 hour ride was reduced to 30 minutes to an hour each way that would mean more people work in the city and live in cheaper rural areas or suburbs. Those areas see a rise in real estate costs and booms in the economy while the city sees real estate lower and crowding easing but also gets more daily visitors on day trips. It's a win - win.
It IS a win-win. And in places like New York, where the whole city is built on Islands, and the major residential suburbs are also on the water, there should be high-speed boats: no snow on the rails, no power outages, no traffic jams. Get as much transport onto the water as you can, then onto rails, and reduce the use and jam on the roads.
Just about every call I make to a company. It's like you have to figure out the special code to get through to a human, and then hope they speak reasonable English. Back to Amtrak, if they can't make money selling a far over priced product (the food while on board) to captive customers and no competition, there is something wrong with their business model. oh well, as long as they don't close down the bars... Obama has played at being a president while enjoying the perks … golf, insanely expensive vacations at tax-payer expense. He has ignored the responsibilities of the job; no plans, no budgets, no alternatives … just finger pointing; making him a complete failure as a president
Nope. Some of them did server really good food,but none of them had the prices jacked sky-high. They had a captive audience. Where else were you going to go? Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
You don't really know the first thing about America,do you,comrade? Why not come here to visit a Teamsters headquarters and scream at them about their Republicanism? Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
Teamsters like building roads it is true. But Democrats support rail more than Republicans.
www.railserve.com/Railroad_Labor_Unions/ No wonder willie loves railroads... Vegetarians eat vegetables. Beware of humanitarians!
The unions have OWNED transportation in this country ever since the 30's. Dedicated union members/idiots didn't even blink when it became obvious the unions were themselves owned by organized crime,and all the Teamster pension funds "mysteriously" disappeared and the fools that supported the Teamsters Union with their dues and their political votes had to end up going on SS for a minimum retirement when they retired because all the money had been stolen. Union members might are people with the same mindset as the Government pets that live in Section 8 housing. They want someone else to make all the decisions and do all they work,while they sleep late and get paid for doing nothing. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
Says the the guy who lives on govt money.....
No,says the guy that lives on money he EARNED. I know that the concept of welfare and earned income being different is a foreign concept to you comrade,but it is true none the less. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
#2. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
(Edited)
Americans loves trains.
#3. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
#4. To: Vicomte13 (#3)
And everything of importance on the West Coast except Sacramento is on the sea.
#5. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
" I'll bet your "shocked" to discover this wasn't posted by Willie! "
#6. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
I'll bet your "shocked" to discover this wasn't posted by Willie!(2 images)
#7. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
I'll bet your "shocked" to discover this wasn't posted by Willie!(
#8. To: sneakypete, nativist nationalist (#7)
Certain girls too!
#9. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
Even in the glory days of rail travel, dining cars lost money.
#10. To: no gnu taxes (#9)
I like Amtrak, but they serve crap food at ridiculously inflated prices. maybe in the "glory days," they served good at good prices. That ain't Amtrak.
#11. To: Vicomte13 (#3)
(Edited)
#12. To: Pericles (#11)
#13. To: nativist nationalist (#10)
Did you aver end up playing tag with a phone mail system that drives you into repeating loops?
#14. To: no gnu taxes (#9)
maybe in the "glory days," they served good at good prices.
#15. To: Pericles (#11)
The Republicans "hate" rail for 2 reasons - 1) They are bribed by the truck manufacturers to subsidize highway trucking and to hinder RR competition and 2) They can use that opposition to rail ways to show they are against big govt as a camouflage.
#16. To: sneakypete (#15)
#17. To: sneakypete, Pericles (#15)
(Edited)
Why not come here to visit a Teamsters headquarters and scream at them about their Republicanism?
#18. To: CZ82 (#17)
No wonder willie loves railroads...
#19. To: sneakypete, CZ82 (#18)
Union members might are people with the same mindset as the Government pets that live in Section 8 housing.
#20. To: Pericles (#19)
Says the the guy who lives on govt money.....
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