Within the last year, I posted about some flawed experiences with Amtrak. I began reading a book on traveling around America by train. The author did this within the last decade. Here's a sample from the preface:
By the mid-1970s, American passenger rail, in near total disarray, fell under the baleful sway of Conrail and Amtrak, both apparently created on a Soviet management model, with an extra overlay of Murphy's Law to ensure maximum entropy of service. In 1974 I took the San Francisco Zephyr from New York to Oakland California. It was, of course, uncomfortable, filthy, and cold, worn-out rolling stock, iffy linens, and onboard food consisting of mystery-meat sandwiches prepared solely in a radar range.
Since then, train travel in the United States has become a pretty bare-bones affair. Amtrak has become the laughingstock of the world. Most Americans now living have never been passengers on train -- for them it's as outmoded as a stagecoach.
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Back to me:
California recently ventured into the train business once again, voting to spend billions, as the state fires teachers, on a high speed train that will begin it's route from Fresno to Bakersrfield. Projections justifying the spending include the "estimate" that more people will board the train in Fresno to travel to Bakersfield than currently board trains in NY's Grand Central Station. Voters of California already voted to spend money on exploring such a project. What was most of the money spent on? Not engineering. Not planning. A market company that lobbied state politicians to approve the plan. The current plan was eventual passed by a single vote in the state legislature.
And I like trains -- a lot. I ride them and read about them and plan to ride them more. There's one I would have liked to been on, a steam loco that ran from LA to Phoenix and back. That was in May. Coming up in about month, a private passenger train will run from LA to Utah passing through Las Vegas. Not many chances any more to take a train from LA to Vegas.
By the mid-1970s, American passenger rail, in near total disarray, fell under the baleful sway of Conrail and Amtrak, both apparently created on a Soviet management model, with an extra overlay of Murphy's Law to ensure maximum entropy of service. In 1974 I took the San Francisco Zephyr from New York to Oakland California. It was, of course, uncomfortable, filthy, and cold, worn-out rolling stock, iffy linens, and onboard food consisting of mystery-meat sandwiches prepared solely in a radar range.
Since then, train travel in the United States has become a pretty bare-bones affair. Amtrak has become the laughingstock of the world. Most Americans now living have never been passengers on train -- for them it's as outmoded as a stagecoach.
----------------
Back to me:
California recently ventured into the train business once again, voting to spend billions, as the state fires teachers, on a high speed train that will begin it's route from Fresno to Bakersrfield. Projections justifying the spending include the "estimate" that more people will board the train in Fresno to travel to Bakersfield than currently board trains in NY's Grand Central Station. Voters of California already voted to spend money on exploring such a project. What was most of the money spent on? Not engineering. Not planning. A market company that lobbied state politicians to approve the plan. The current plan was eventual passed by a single vote in the state legislature.
And I like trains -- a lot. I ride them and read about them and plan to ride them more. There's one I would have liked to been on, a steam loco that ran from LA to Phoenix and back. That was in May. Coming up in about month, a private passenger train will run from LA to Utah passing through Las Vegas. Not many chances any more to take a train from LA to Vegas.
