Amtrak serves most of US very poorly.

[feuervogel]

This isn't news. I've discussed this before.

But now someone with GIS mapping tools created a visualization of population density, Amtrak routes, and Amtrak ridership. Unsurprisingly, ridership is highest where service is most extensive, ie the Northeast Corridor.

Did you know you can't take a train directly between Houston and Dallas? Don't you think that's pretty ridiculous? Did you know that there's only one train a day between San Francisco and LA? And that it usually takes longer than driving between the two cities?

While there are reasonable discussions to be had over the merits of train service to the sparsely inhabited middle regions of the country, there are few good arguments against having increased train service between population centers. The NE Corridor has multiple trains per day--once an hour or so from DC to Boston--and the ridership to match. The Carolinian/Piedmont routes, from NC to DC, are used far less--because there's only one in either direction every day, and it's invariably several hours delayed. Amtrak expanded Raleigh to Charlotte service to three times a day and increased ridership on that route.

Expanding service on the I-85/95 corridor, Atlanta to Charlotte to Raleigh to Richmond to DC would reduce traffic on I-95, save fuel, decrease CO2 emissions, and make travel much easier. Think of how much you could get done in 5-6 hours of riding a train rather than driving! (I get motion sick, so I can't do anything in a bus beyond stare out the window. And anyway, busses get stuck in traffic.) Riding a train is much less stressful than driving, unless you're stuck waiting 45 minutes outside a station because there's a freight train stopped there, and since you're outside the NorthEast Corridor, the freight companies own the tracks, so you get to yield. Then it gets stressful because you're meeting someone when you get in.

But no, we can't do that because communism and central planning and we can't make taxpayers fund trains (but we can subsidize the shit out of oil companies and roads!).

This country has its collective head up its ass on the issue of transportation. There's not much we can do to fix it, either, because the fetish for Rugged Individualism is disgustingly deep seated.

Comments

[twistedchick]

It's a bit worse than that. Before Amtrak, there were a lot of smaller train systems, and they served smaller cities, made stops across the central states, and did a lot more service to people who had less money. But that went away somewhere between the 60s and the 70s or so.

[tsubaki_ny]

This. The infrastructure was actively destroyed.

[feuervogel]

Yep.

[twistedchick]

This is why there are still railroad tracks and railyards in places that are far from Amtrak.

During WWII we had a strong and thriving railway system. People rode it across the country; it was considered vital to the country's health. We also had streetcars and subways in most American cities. And then, after the war was over, there was a push to build highways for all the cars, and the other ways of transportation were slowly abandoned, allowed to fall apart, or actively destroyed through legal means.

[tsubaki_ny]

Legal means and coporate-ocracy. (Is that a word? It needs to be.)

[a-nightengale.livejournal.com]

Don't confuse people with pesky facts.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this?

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2013/02/07/yummy-look-at-what-hs-could-be/

It would be beautiful.

I have thoughts about Amtrak, but they are not positive thoughts. And I live in the Northeast! If you want to go from NY to DC, you're good. Anywhere else is just stupid. (It should not take six and a half hours to get from DC to Hartford. NY to Charleston doesn't really need to take all night. And so on...)

[feuervogel]

That's amazing and wonderful.

It shouldn't take 6.5 hours to get from Durham to DC, either. According to the Economist (an article I linked in one of the earlier posts), DC to Durham is as far as London to Paris, which you can do in 2 hours. And that map looks like they have it at about 2 hours.

If only we could have rational transportation policy in this country :(

I've looked into Amtrak from here to Atlanta, and unless I want to catch a train at midnight in Greensboro and arrive in ATL at 8 am, with a reverse journey at a similarly stupid time point, I'm out of luck. I can *drive* to Atlanta in under 7 hours (unless traffic really sucks).

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, TVG from Paris to Lyon (about 250 miles) is about 2 hours, as opposed to six frakking hours and 22 minutes (Hartford to DC = 300 to 350 miles depending on route).

Surely this could happen. We can't continue to be ridiculous forever?

[feuervogel]

If people keep saying stupid shit like "We can't subsidize Amtrak because that's communism" without seeing the sheer irony of that, we're going to be ridiculous until always.

(Seriously, I got into an argument with a conservative at a neighbor's house when she said we "don't have a right" to public transportation. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I said, "Do you think roads are free?" Because do you seriously not realize that oil companies are subsidized heavily, that road building is subsidized heavily, and that the taxes we pay on fuel etc don't come close to covering the cost of building roads? No matter how conservatives like to say that roads are self-funding?)

[feuervogel]

To wit:

And before you jump up and down and yell about Amtrak subsidies, you had better have your ducks in a row and be prepared to talk about the subsidies to road building, GM (hello?), the petroleum industry ($50 Billion/year) and ethanol (which is a rant unto itself). I leave you with this:

Much is made of the $30 billion spent on Amtrak over the last 30 years, but in that same period the federal government spent $1.89 TRILLION on air and highway modes, according to the New York Times and Washington Post.