For the past few years, as readership of these posts has slowly grown, I have been getting proposals from people and companies wanting to run advertising here. I’ve turned them down, all of them, without a second thought. For one thing, I was uncomfortable with what I felt would be taken as an implied endorsement…
One section of the comprehensive Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act—hereinafter and into perpetuity referred to as the FAST Act—created the National Advisory Committee on Travel and Transportation Infrastructure (to be called NACTTI, and be careful how you say it). This committee is to serve as a conduit for recommendations to the administration from experts in…
A prototype of the new Viewliner dining car has been around for some time, giving Amtrak crews chance to test them and make recommendations for changes and improvements. Of course, since there was only one car, the odds have been slim that passengers would find it on their train. But, lucky me! I did…
I once suggested to Hawaii’s revered U.S. Senator Dan Inouye that every newly-elected member of Congress should be required to take a cross country train en route to first assuming his or her new responsibilities in Washington. My point was simply that it’s impossible to take any one of Amtrak’s long-distance trains and not confront…