Amtrak

[Pointedstick]

Today I learned that there is no passenger rail service between New Orleans and Jacksonville. Apparently the infrastructure was damaged by Hurricane Katrina (nearly a decade ago!), and while the necessary repairs long since have been made and freight service has been restored on that line, Amtrak has never re-established the passenger rail service.

A few web searches revealed that various levels of government have passed bills urging Amtrak to restore service, or allocating a few million dollars for them to investigate the possibility of forming an exploratory committee to examine the notion (or some other such nonsense) but nothing has actually been done.

This is just bizarre to me. Does anyone know more about what the hold-up is? It's like, what is this, Soviet Russia or something!?

[Ad Orientem]

This is just bizarre to me. Does anyone know more about what the hold-up is? It's like, what is this, Soviet Russia or something!?

I don't think so. The Soviets for all their shortcomings had a functional passenger rail system.

[Libertarian666]

The only reason Amtrak exists at all is as a sop to various special interest groups.
Not that I'm against rail travel in general; it works very well in Europe, with their much higher population density.

[dualstow]

That's a good question, PS. I ride the Northeastern Corridor all the time. As I abhor driving, I find it very useful. However, I don't take Amtrak to other parts of the U.S.
I was a bit discouraged to learn about governors in Florida and other states rejecting Obama's train money, but I get it. They think it's wasteful.

And, I agree with Ad Orientem. I've ridden Moscow's subway which I believe was built by the Soviet regime and the stations are amazing. Some of them are like palaces. Plus, the trains run on time. I've ridden the train from Moscow to St Petersburg/Leningrad as well. Not pretty, from what I remember, and they charged foreigners more than locals, but functional. (I've also been to some of their shitty airports. Poor Snowden  )

[WiseOne]

There is absolutely a role for train transportation along certain well-travelled routes.  Every train I've ever taken on the Northeast Corridor line has been packed.  Other lines that would be useful: west coast (Seattle to San Diego), NY to Chicago, and there must be more.

It's just that Amtrak isn't the organization to provide said transportation.  They take the prize for worst utility/corporation in the First World.  Comparing Amtrak service to that of the three commuter rail systems in the NY area (Long Island RR, Metro North, NJ Transit) plus the NYC subway makes the deficiencies very clear.  I can't say I'm surprised by PointedStick's story.

[MediumTex]

Why not just take a Greyhound bus?

Think of all the fun you will have waiting for your bus to arrive in one of those flashy Greyhound stations.

***

The one and only time I rode an Amtrak train was from Dallas to St. Louis, and it was a lot of fun.  A buddy and I got a sleeper and did our best to have a quality experience.  Along the way, we discovered that Amtrak employees are rough around the edges (and some of them are very rough), and that a lot of Amtrak equipment is pretty old.

One of the really interesting experiences was a visit to the smoking car, which looked like a large psychiatric hospital holding cell, except that rather than padding, the walls were covered with some kind of graffiti-proof composite material.

The smoking car was full of people representing a cross section of society, with what appeared to be an over-representation of people living at or near the poverty line with criminal convictions. 

As we entered the car, we saw that there was some kind of sing-along in progress that was being led by a blind guy playing a guitar with his dog sitting next to him.  In between each song, there was a book that was being passed around which contained various ethical dilemmas and the game was to pick one and describe what you would do.  Each time someone read one and described how they would respond, the rest of the car would give one of those collective murmurs of approval or disapproval like you see from MPs when watching House of Commons sessions on C-Span. 

The overall mood was more of confession than performance.  It's what I would imagine an AA meeting would be like in a facility that allowed indoor smoking, except that every attendee had a different kind of addiction and a different kind of pain.

The ethical dilemmas were being used by some as opportunities to provide a little background about themselves, and each story seemed like a different take on a common theme of just how hard life is for many underclass people in the U.S.  However, when the next song started everyone would seem happy again for a few minutes. 

At some point, I also noticed that a joint was being passed around the car, which was actually not that surprising given what I had already observed.

At one point, the book was passed to an old black man, and he announced to the group that he had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and he was going to see his grandson one last time.  The group heartily approved of this, and I think the blind guy might have even chimed in with something like "You know what, that's the kind of shit I'm talking about right there.  That's just so beautiful.  It really is."  I saw that some of the women were crying, and then I saw that some of the men crying, and when I looked back over at the black guy, his expression seemed to say "The pain of this life don't mean that much to me anymore.  I just want to see my grandson one more time."

The entire experience was completely uncontrived and genuine in a way that is hard to imagine among a group of strangers whose original purpose was simply to smoke a cigarette.

As my buddy and I moved on to another part of the train, I thought to myself "You don't get that kind of thing on an airplane."