You like trains? Are you interested in the future of passenger rail in the United States? Or are you just looking for a great read? OK … run, don’t walk, to get a copy of Waiting on a Train … subtitled The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service … by James McCommons. I’m only two-thirds…
Three years ago, when I took the Coast Starlight from Seattle to Los Angeles, we didn’t pull into LA’s Union Station until 4:00 in the morning … seven hours late. Amtrak’s long-distance trains operate on track owned and controlled by the freight railroads. They are supposed to be given priority, but dispatchers for the Union…
Several posts back, I wrote about various proposals floating around out there that would, in effect, restore passenger train service between New Orleans and Florida. That segment, as most of you probably know, was provided by Amtrak’s Sunset Limited until Hurricane Katrina tore up miles of track in Mississippi and through the Florida Panhandle. CSX…
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…