Gothamist: Trains Running, But No Word on What Caused the Amtrak Power Outage

Chung-chieh Shan

Fri, 26 May 2006 17:59:59 -0500

Like highway travel, air travel is subsidized too, although in a perhaps less obvious way than Amtrak is: not in the form of a line item in a budget but in the form of (1) cheap loans to airlines; (2) inefficient assignment of takeoff and landing slots that disadvantages popular flights and prevents the airport from recovering its full economic value.(Not to mention wars for oil...)

Brightliner

Fri, 26 May 2006 13:44:50 -0500

Toby, To be fair, Trenton's less than half the distance from NYC that Albany is. A Metro-North ticket to Poughkeepsie (peak times) will get you about halfway to Albany and cost about half of the Amtrak fare, so it's not much of a savings. Amazingly, I did see one fare for Amtrak that matched a competing Greyhound schedule for the same destination, but others were about 33% higher and even did badly against JetBlue fares. Agreed that they could stand to run a few more trains, though. Amtrak doesn't seem to even run many redeyes anymore, which is a bother if you don't want to waste an otherwise useful day on the train.

edEx

Fri, 26 May 2006 13:16:13 -0500

follow the yellow brick road.

Toby

Fri, 26 May 2006 11:29:50 -0500

A new tunnel would do nothing if Amtrak still provided the power. What the states of New York and New Jersey need to do is purchace the Amtrak infrastructure in their respective states and actually maintain in. The MTA and CDOT do a very good job of maintaining their part of the Northeast Corridor in Westchester and Connecticut, where Amtrak is a tennant on Metro-North's rails. Amtrak's fares in the Northeast have gotten very expensive, and part of that is because some of the cost goes to offeset some service that hardly anyone takes in the middle of nowhere. The whole Northeast Corridor could be profitable, if well run and managed, preferably not by Amtrak. It is the middle of nowhere trains that drag things down. Something is wrong when you can get to Trenton from New York via train (on NJ Transit) cheaper and more frequently than you can between New York and Albany (where Amtrak is the only rail option). I am sure if Metro-North went to Albany the service would most likely be better, more frequent, and cheaper than Amtrak.

Chris

Fri, 26 May 2006 10:42:46 -0500

James, Where was the Amtrak outtage described as worse than September 11th?? "I was in the World Trade Center. I was in the blackout. This is nothing." That pretty clearly says that the Amtrak outtage is just a stupid annoyance as compared to September 11th. No one would be dumb enough the say the opposite of that.

mike

Fri, 26 May 2006 09:36:38 -0500

Actually, gas taxes do not pay fully for highways.

I'msorrybutyou'rewrong

Fri, 26 May 2006 09:21:08 -0500

Except that highways are paid for by the users in the form of gas taxes.

mike

Fri, 26 May 2006 09:04:41 -0500

Remember, ALL highways are money-losing too, except we call funding them "investments", while funding Amtrak is called a "subsidy". It's time to fully fund Amtrak.

James

Fri, 26 May 2006 08:53:11 -0500

To say yesterdays Amtrak outtage was worse than the events of Sept. 11th makes you seem like the stupidest person in the world. No one died yesterday and no useless war was begun because of this (yet). Grow up and think before you ever compare something to Sept. 11th.