After a while, you begin to notice. It could be a state Department of Transportation in the Mid-west or a citizens’ group somewhere in the South. But people are starting to talk about passenger rail as the best, most practical, most cost-efficient solution to relentlessly growing traffic and infrastructure problems. Consider, as just one example…
A steward in a VIA Rail dining car once remarked to me that “you gotta be flexible to work for a railroad.” Case in point: On Wednesday morning, I boarded Amtrak’s Sunset Limited in New Orleans for the two-night journey along the southern border of the U.S. to Los Angeles. Just three or four minutes…
Amtrak’s OTP (on time performance) has improved quite a bit over the past year or so, but for far too long it had been abysmal. How abysmal? Well, three years ago, when I took the Coast Starlight from Seattle to Los Angeles, we were supposed to arrive in Los Angeles at 9:00 p.m. We were…