What the fuck is wrong with these mongoloid slackers? They completely underschedule longhaul trains everywhere outside the NEC so almost no one can use them for shorter trips and then wonder why ridership is in the shitter. Each route should be minimum 3x a day per direction.
NEC here, I don't know that feel
>>1992027I see both sides of it in Seattle. The Sounder regional trains are great up to Vancouver and down to Eugene. Then there's the Empire Bungler.>want to go to Spokane>check train schedules>one (1) train each way per day>depart 4:55pm>arrive 12:37am>after all the hotel checkin desks are closed>fuck you unless you've got family nearbyIt's not like there's no demand, they run BUSES from Seattle to Spokane and back, but they can't manage more trains per day because ______?
>>1992029>but they can't manage more trains per day because ______?they don't have the moneythe answer to pretty much every question about amtrak is "they are chronically underfunded"
>>1992023Yesterday I called amtrak customer service to change my ticket because the website kept crashing. The hold music was RnB and a sassy black lady picked up. Truly an american institution.
>>1992160The Civil Rights Act / EEOC creates an effect I call the Shaneequa Event Horizon, where because sassy black women are impossible to "out diversity" (because they vote 96% for Democrats) any federal agency will eventually fill up with them until the agency fails at its core responsibilities and they get outsourced. If this happened to Amtrak and passenger rail got deregulated we'd see a 10x in available trains.
>>1992161If passenger rail got deregulated it would become a shitshow like every other deregulated industry that immediately cuts corners for profit see also Boeing and their ```airplanes'''.
>>1992023is commuting via the hiawatha service at all reasonable or worth it? I want to avoid living in Chicago and Milwaukee seems comfy
>>1992161I don't think there's another board where people are this committed to blaming anything and everything on minorities. Pinch flat? The jews did this. Train delay? Pajeets. Plane crash? It was trannies. Shipwreck? The blacks. Crosstheaded the pedals on your dumpster dive OTS? The blacks again.Granted I only go on /g/, /ck/, /lgbt/, and /n/. Maybe that's not a full cross section.
>>1993792That's not what deregulations mean.
>>1993794Spending 3 hours a day commuting would probably suck, but it’s doable, the schedules line up with commute times; you get into Chicago at 7:24 AM and leave at either 5 or 8 PM. It would drain your wallet a bit tho, it’s about $50 a day, so a hybrid position where you only go in a couple days or once a week would be ideal.
>>1993794That's still a 90 minute to hour long commute from Milwaukee to Chicago, assuming the train hits exactly when you need it to.
>>1992023>>1992029>>1992151there is zero demand. amtrak doesn't make money because no one wants to take 6 times as long to get somewhere as it would take to drive
>>1993927every time frequency on an amtrak service is improved ridership goes up>>1993796/n/ is normally level-headed but there's been an influx of /pol/faggots latelyultra-election tourist ones, too
>>1993946enough to offset the costs? amtrak is perpetually in debt
>>1993903$50 a day sounds brutal, does Amtrak not offer a commuter pass?>>1993912yeah but I don't mind 90 minutes on a train, the real issue is reliability. I'd hate to get stuck in Chicago without a car.
>>1994042What a cute femboy, giwtwm
>>1994024why does everyone expect amtrak to run a profit when they don't own the property around their stations? Do we expect tolls to be profitable too?HK's MTR and Japan's JR are both only profitable because they own the valuable real estate around the stations. if Amtrak could leverage the same they'd be making billions
>>1994046because what is the point of a train that takes 12 times longer to get somewhere than driving does if it is also going to be a money sink on the tax payers?
>>1994046>JRBuilt by the government then privatized>if Amtrak could leverage the sameDoubt they're legally permitted to and even if they could, the chance to buy cheap land remotely close to city centers disappeared decades ago
How is Amtrak going to get the line reservations when they're competing with coal and bulk commodities for rail time?
>>1992023Long-haul routes are kind of a special thing, like preserving a traditional way of travel without too much practical use.But they could just run a bunch of regional lines between major cities more frequently, maybe buy some smaller DMUs for that. I'm talking journeys that are maybe up to 4-5 hours, start with two or three trains a day. That wouldn't be very expensive and it might get people to use trains more regularly. They could also work as feeders for the longer lines.
>>1992023Americans like their cars.
>>1995958Americans like trains, too.
>>1995958Americans turned to cars because trains went to shit
Fucking Amtrak gave my bike away to someone else from the luggage car. If I was able to lock it myself, or stay with it in the disabled wheelchair area, I'd still have it. But, nope, it's against their policies. But at least the train was on time. Fucktards.
>>1999706I think you have the causality reversed there.
>>1993946good
>>1993927the train from vancouver (canada) to seattle is only twice as long as driving. new york to DC is one hour longer. if these trains had proper speed of something even close to the slowest HSR in europe then the time would be about the same, far less if they were actually HSR. the demand isn't there because the infrastructure is shit, it shows that ridership is so good on brightline FL because it goes at a reasonable speed and provides a good service.
>>1992027It's nice living near the only function stretch of American rail infrastructure and mostly only needing to take trips near it.
>>1992023they're underscheduled because congress won't pay for them, live in a communist state like I do and you get more than 1 train per hourIllinois > Kentucky and it's not even close
>>1994046The real estate around stations is completely worthless if you don't have an extensive suburban and/or regional train service and if people will drive to your station and expect huge parking lots. In this case you won't have people passing through and going to the shops in your stations because a) very few people use the station and b) it just has a huge parking lot around it making the area not walkable.tl;dr making money from real estate only works if your urbanism favors train use in the first place.
>>2002976if you replace the parking lots with mixed use development then the people will be there because that's where they live.
Amtrak can't buy line time because bulk freight owns the lines, and amtrak rents time. Not unexpectedly bulkfreight gives themselves the best windows, and amtrak buys poor quality line time around bulkfreight.
>>1999720If trains were better than cars then why would people ever switch?
>>2003963because they gradually became worse. people still rode trains a lot until the 50s when cars had been around for a while. and by the time america had nearly entirely abandoned them in the 60s, japan already had trains going 220km/h
>>2002982Wrong. You need to have mixed use all around the station area, and then dense commercial use at the station itself. That's how Japan does it.So unless you're about to rebuild all the hollowed-out american cities it's just not going to work out, sorry.
>>2003972I literally said replace the parking lots with mixed use, which is apartments and retail, maybe even a mall nearby which has been done in many places and is a successful way to get people to take transit there.