All Aboard!

A sobering look at our national train system and why it's where it is. (In the pits) From Good Magazine:

Train in Vain
Europe and Asia have figured it out, so why is the American rail system still so unspeakably awful? GOOD hops aboard a transcontinental train to find out.

Ask around onboard almost any Amtrak train, and you�ll get a pretty short list of reasons why people ride the rails. In the caf� car, chugging along one of the country�s oldest routes, I counted four types of passengers. There are thrifty ones looking to save a few bucks on plane tickets. There are those who are scared of flying, a group that has no doubt grown in recent years. There are the zealots�without exception, older men�who describe themselves with charming lack of inhibition as �rail junkies,� �railroad nuts,� �train buffs,� or, my personal favorite, �railfans.� The rest�indeed the majority�say they�re here for �the experience.� Good thing for Amtrak, that romantic notion of the rails is alive and well. Naturally, it�s something the beleaguered rail company promotes to death. The experience is an important sell; nobody ever mentions reliability or practicality.

A bit more:

The American passenger rail�once a model around the globe�is now something of an oddball novelty, a political boondoggle to some, a colossal transit failure to others. The author James Howard Kunstler likes to say that American trains �would be the laughing stock of Bulgaria.� The numbers show just how far this once-great system has fallen. In 1960, U.S. rail travelers logged 17.1 billion passenger miles (the movement of one passenger one mile), the standard measure of a system�s reach; by 2000, that number had fallen to 5.5 billion, just one percent of the total travel between U.S. cities that year. (Of course, over this same period, airlines� passenger miles increased 16 times; even intercity buses� service nearly doubled.) Most of this decrease was seen in the 1960s, as highways and air travel took precedent both in travel plans and in government subsidies. Since its ill-fated formation as a quasi-public, for-profit corporation in 1971, Amtrak has seen only meager growth and loses billions of dollars annually.

Goes to show what government control results in. The trains, when privately owned, were on time and the accommodations were wonderful. Good rooms and the food was quite nice. I rode a lot while growing up as my Mom and Dad went to a lot of meetings and I got to come along many times. Pittsburgh to Chicago was a nice run, same thing for Pittsburgh to Washington D.C. Everytime I think it might be fun to do a trans-continental run, I read stories like this and put it back on the back burner...