I know it doesn’t seem like it, but little by little, we are making progress. One of these fine mornings, we could all wake up and find that several Amtrak routes have been expanded, that the Sunset Limited and the Cardinal are running every day, that service between New Orleans and Orlando has been restored,…
For several years now, Amtrak has been in a cost-cutting mode. Any of us who ride regularly, especially in a sleeper on long-distance trains, are well aware of the lengths to which Amtrak has gone in order to save money. A classic example—one of many, I regret to say—is the complimentary hot coffee for…
The Japanese high-speed trains are legendary, as well they should be. They’re very fast, of course, and they also run on time. But they are also spotlessly clean. And why shouldn’t they be with cleaning crews that zoom through the cars of an arriving train, removing every tiny bit of trash, running a portable vacuum…
One of the frustrations of being an advocate for passenger rail is that most people think the motivation is mostly selfish … that we want more and better trains simply because we love riding on trains. There’s some truth to that, of course. But the basic pro-rail argument—and I’m including commuter and transit as…