Amtrak

[sgrizzle]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

I think I saw that same episode on the History Channel.  I remember hearing somewhere that the highways were designed as emergency runways in case of damage to existing structures on military bases, but I found this link from the DOT and I can't see where it discusses the topic.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/history.htm

It is an urban legend that they were designed that way but as Paul pointed out, they have been converted for aircraft use many times in history and likely the feds have documented plans for doing this if needed in the future.

In case of war, rail is good for moving a lot of stuff at once. However by truck you can be covert and fast.

[sportyart]

So, again, how to get people on board with this project?

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by waterboy

Was using the highway system for landing planes a military strategy? Never heard that. The telephone poles, narrow width, rails etc. wouldd make that a sketchy proposition. And using tanks on roads that have weak substructures would also be temporary. These roads can't even handle car traffic. Maybe in Colorado Springs because of NORAD but the rest of the country, no. Not like the Roman roads in Europe.

More likely, in the case of the domestic defense, we would use a large quantity of light armored, quick, manueverable troop carriers and helicopters. BTW, how do we move our tanks currently for deployment to staging areas? BY RAIL!
So we got a gift from GM et.al. for killing the corrupt railroad robber barons? How so? We replaced one set of corrupt businessman political alliances with another. Cynical view. Generally I like cynicism but you abuse it. Unless you owned stock in the emerging robber baron industries, it was a net negative for the country.

(EDIT)

Why was I edited? Especially since Artist said virtually the same thing only several paragraphs longer. What I said needed to be said to Pimp boy in plain language. There was no cursing or name calling. Quite arbitrary.

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by Editor

Please stay on topic. Personal attacks are not tolerated, especially when multiple people pick on one target.

Lacking an adequate response as to how responding to a man who calls entire communities redneck meth fiends and individuals crack heads one has to wonder what you do tolerate. Explain yourself or lose even more posters.

[iplaw]

I now employ the Ingore funtion for pimpthistownvotepaultay and H.Noodleman, his alter-ego.  Keeps you from having your head explode.

[azbadpuppy]

Amtrak is dying a slow death. It is obsolete in its present state andn should either be shut down completely or completely overhauled and privatized which would cost billions. Amtrak is subsidized by the government over 1 billion a year to make up for its losses. It is poorly run, and continues to cut back on services which only compounds their problems. To effectively compete with air travel, they need to offer the same or better frequency of service (like in Europe) and Amtrak is far from doing that.

The reasons are political. The government sets aside just 521 million yearly for Amtrak, compared to 28 billion in highway funding. Amtrak continually pleads with congress for money to upgrade tracks and trains and never gets it. They are looked at as the poor bastard stepchild of the transportation family.

So in other words, don't hold your breath on Amtrak expanding service to Tulsa (or anywhere) in the forseeable future.

[okiebybirth]

quote:Originally posted by azbadpuppy

Amtrak is dying a slow death. It is obsolete in its present state andn should either be shut down completely or completely overhauled and privatized which would cost billions. Amtrak is subsidized by the government over 1 billion a year to make up for its losses. It is poorly run, and continues to cut back on services which only compounds their problems. To effectively compete with air travel, they need to offer the same or better frequency of service (like in Europe) and Amtrak is far from doing that.

The reasons are political. The government sets aside just 521 million yearly for Amtrak, compared to 28 billion in highway funding. Amtrak continually pleads with congress for money to upgrade tracks and trains and never gets it. They are looked at as the poor bastard stepchild of the transportation family.

So in other words, don't hold your breath on Amtrak expanding service to Tulsa (or anywhere) in the forseeable future.

Question:  Do you think that gas prices increasing is going to affect our mode of travel anytime soon?  I keep hearing everyone talk about the price of gas not going back down, so the paradigm has shifted.

"NAPLES, Florida (Reuters) - Atlanta        Federal Reserve Bank President Jack Guynn on Monday urged U.S. elected officials to face up to long-term fiscal problems and said the world will have to get used to higher oil prices.
"I think one of the things we've realized is that whether it's demand or whether it's sabotage and natural disasters like the hurricanes that put pressure on the supply of oil, it looks like we all need to be thinking about long-term oil prices that are very different to what we assumed as recently as three or four years ago," Guynn said.

"And it's clearly become a major point of discussion as we think about the economy and so forth, and yet I think it's amazing that our economy -- at least in the past several years -- even at the current price of oil has fared as well as it has," he added.

In his speech, which largely mirrored one he gave on June 7, Guynn said U.S. core inflation, excluding volatile food and energy costs, has moved up to, or beyond, the upper end of the range he considers acceptable "over time."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/economy_fed_guynn_dc

Nastalgia has nothing to do with this discussion, though it keeps being thrown out there like saying it enough makes it a fact.
I, like others here, are too young to remember trolleys in Tulsa to be nastalgic about anything.  I think we are just more pragmatic about the future.

Airlines will be adjusting their prices to reflect gas prices as well.  So it seems more and more like other modes of transportation are going to have to be seriously considered in the near term and not twenty years down the road.
Europe has rail service because gas is priced so high there and not artificially low like we keep it here in the United States.

Now, as a city, do we try to get ahead of the curve and provide our citizens with other avenues of service, seeing that as much as people hate the busses we still saw a 28% jump in people riding them or do we sit back with our hands under our rearends and do nothing because we believe it's for naught?  Every city who has started a light rail recently has seen their passenger numbers increase.  

And to be linked by passenger rail to the Amtrak system would be a benefit because whether we want to believe it or not, high gas prices is going to bring about the death knell to car travel, just read the Tulsa World lately about people vacationing closer to home because of the high gas prices.

[Transport_Oklahoma]

Please keep in mind that as far as Oklahoma is concerned, and the proposed Missouri service, Amtrak is simply an operator.

Their monopoly status was revoked in 1997.  

But only Amtrak has the 1970 agreement with the railroads to operate at incremental cost and with priority.

You could have anyone run the trains, but for a practical matter it is going to be Amtrak.

[Transport_Oklahoma]

Contact me if you want to help put together a meeting about getting train service to Tulsa.

I know one city councilor in particular who wants supports rail.[]

[sgrizzle]

Unfortunately the gap between "wanting to support" and "supporting" is about as big as "wanting to win the lottery" and "winning."

I'm sure if you got something started, forumers would be on it like a volume-gifted young person on a ring-shaped fried cake.

[waterboy]

quote: To effectively compete with air travel, they need to offer the same or better frequency of service (like in Europe) and Amtrak is far from doing that.

I don't believe they can compete with air travel for long haul. My brother in law just checked on travel from Minneapolis to the West coast on Amtrak and was stunned. Over $1200 per person. But one is more of an experience, the other is just a trip.

They can be competitive in targetting regional travel as has been proposed. The railroads have always had problems with identifying their market.

[Transport_Oklahoma]

To clear up any misconceptions about rail fares the roudtrip fare Oklahoma City to Fort Worth is around $48-60.  Less than the cost of fuel for your SUV and way less than the IRS/AAA fully allocated cost of driving.

Roundtrip Amtrak coach Minneapolis-Seattle is showing $268 so I am assuming the $1,200 he was quoted was a first class fare which includes four days of meals, a private shower, and a bed.

If the per mile fare for Tulsa-Saint Louis is the same 12 cents/mile as OKC-FTW, than a ticket to Saint Louis would be about $50 each way.

Matt

[AVERAGE JOE]

Agreed, waterboy. Identifying the right market is the key for them.

Passenger rail is highly unlikely to make even the tiniest dent in long-haul trips, regardless of the cost of plane tickets. Travelers would sooner stay home than ride a train halfway across the country. The potential exception is luxury travel, but that's a small, small market. No dice.

Regional travel seems the best bet... especially if high-speed train infrastructure was ever developed. Taking the train from Tulsa to Dallas would be palatable if it was a relatively fast trip and much less expensive than a flight. Passenger rail has to be positioned in that middle ground -- significantly faster than a car trip, significantly cheaper than a plane trip (which might be possible as fuel prices rise).

If a person could leave downtown Tulsa and be in downtown Dallas 240 miles away in about 2.5 hours (about 100mph) at a cost of around $40 each way... that would be a hard deal to beat. By the time a person rented a car at the airport and drove to downtown Dallas and then back to the airport, the total travel time wouldn't be that significantly different compared to a plane. Compared to driving, that train ride would shave 1.5 hours off the drive each way and probably not cost too much more than a couple tanks of gas.

Just as a frame of reference, I checked the Heartland Flyer from OKC to Ft. Worth. The roundtrip only cost $53 (it's $29 one way and $24 the other). The cheapest flight on Southwest is $79 each way, or $160 roundtrip. So I think my $80 roundtrip estimate isn't a bad price if it was a high-speed rail line.

Therein lies the problem. The Heartland Flyer trip takes 4 hours and 15 minutes to cover 200 miles. So the price is right, but the train ride takes longer than driving!

High-speed regional trips at medium prices would seem to me to be the idea.

[azbadpuppy]

quote:Originally posted by AVERAGE JOE

Agreed, waterboy. Identifying the right market is the key for them.

Passenger rail is highly unlikely to make even the tiniest dent in long-haul trips, regardless of the cost of plane tickets. Travelers would sooner stay home than ride a train halfway across the country. The potential exception is luxury travel, but that's a small, small market. No dice.

Regional travel seems the best bet... especially if high-speed train infrastructure was ever developed. Taking the train from Tulsa to Dallas would be palatable if it was a relatively fast trip and much less expensive than a flight. Passenger rail has to be positioned in that middle ground -- significantly faster than a car trip, significantly cheaper than a plane trip (which might be possible as fuel prices rise).

If a person could leave downtown Tulsa and be in downtown Dallas 240 miles away in about 2.5 hours (about 100mph) at a cost of around $40 each way... that would be a hard deal to beat. By the time a person rented a car at the airport and drove to downtown Dallas and then back to the airport, the total travel time wouldn't be that significantly different compared to a plane. Compared to driving, that train ride would shave 1.5 hours off the drive each way and probably not cost too much more than a couple tanks of gas.

Just as a frame of reference, I checked the Heartland Flyer from OKC to Ft. Worth. The roundtrip only cost $53 (it's $29 one way and $24 the other). The cheapest flight on Southwest is $79 each way, or $160 roundtrip. So I think my $80 roundtrip estimate isn't a bad price if it was a high-speed rail line.

Therein lies the problem. The Heartland Flyer trip takes 4 hours and 15 minutes to cover 200 miles. So the price is right, but the train ride takes longer than driving!

High-speed regional trips at medium prices would seem to me to be the idea.

Again, the problem is that Amtrak is losing money at an alarming rate, and cannot afford to upgrade its trains, rails or services offered. Who is going to pay for these new high speed trains and the rails to run them on? The government, as well as the vast majority of Americans have already made it clear they are unwilling to pay for it.

The more Amtrak tries to cut back to try and save themselves, the more they keep losing. Amtrak needs to stop relying on government subsidies and focus on profit making before any progress will happen.

Also, Amtrak needs to let go of their long distance routes and focus on multiplying the trains and improving service on their short distance routes in order to compete with bus and air. Any new development in Amtrak should be done very carefully and in high density/highly traveled corridors.

[azbadpuppy]

Also keep in mind that the majority of people that live in the area would have to use it in order for it to be successful and profitable.

For example, about one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in the New York Metro area. The rest of the country is simply addicted to their cars and has been for over the past half century. Thats a tough habit to break, even with the current gas prices. I haven't noticed a difference in driving habits. Traffic pretty much seems the same to me.

Take Britain as another example. They have in recent years invested 14.5 billion in improvements, and added another $30 billion as as a provision for "any horrible eventuality". A small country with a population of 60 million people can afford to invest $14.5 billion extra into its already good rail system. But the US - with an affluent population nearly five times larger - is currently unwilling to even loan $200 million to its failing system.