The Antiplanner » Tag » Amtrak

Tag Archives: Amtrak

Amtrak’s Revolving Door

By | | Transportation
2 Comments

Amtrak announced last week that its current chief executive officer, William Flynn, will retire in January and be replaced by Stephen Gardner. Gardner thus will become the company’s fifth CEO in six years.

Amtrak’s new CEO will oversee the spending of $30 billion to improve the Northeast Corridor and another $30 billion or more to increase service in other parts of the country. Photo by Simon Brugel.

Six years ago, Joseph Boardman had been one of Amtrak’s longest-serving CEOs, having been hired in 2008. But there were reports that he suffered temper tantrums and profanity-laced tirades to subordinates. Many people were happy to see him go when the board of directors replaced him with Charles “Wick” Moorman in late 2016. Continue reading →

Amtrak to Cut Service

By | | Transportation
14 Comments

Amtrak Joe, meet Vaccination Joe. President Biden’s requirement that all federal workers must be vaccinated by January 4 has led Amtrak to announce that it will have to cut service on some of its routes in anticipation of employees quitting because they don’t want to be vaccinated.

Might not be a lot of vaccinated people eager to work for Amtrak out here.

That is the reason the overnight levitra is invented by the name of impotence. Numerous benefits at reasonable prices You can enjoy numerous benefits of VigrX levitra online pills at reasonable prices. The product helps in complete removal of the issues that are not very popularly discussed publicly. viagra online prescription levitra consultation How obesity causes ED? Obesity drags down a man’s sexual life by affecting the structure and function of blood vessels. Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner told Congress yesterday that 94 percent of Amtrak employees have been vaccinated. However, vaccination rates are much lower in some western outposts served by Amtrak long-distance trains, and if Amtrak loses unvaccinated employees, it won’t have time to train new ones by January 4. As a result, some of those trains may be cut to three days a week or less. Continue reading →

September Transit 53.6% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
1 Comment

Nationwide transit ridership in September was 53.6 percent of September 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is the first time since the pandemic began that ridership exceeded half of pre-pandemic numbers.

Airline passenger numbers are from the Transportation Security Administration; Amtrak numbers are from its September performance report.

This compares with 76.3 percent for air travel and 67.1 percent for Amtrak. The number of miles of driving in September will not be related for another week or so. Transit’s low ridership numbers are in spite of transit agencies providing more than 86 percent as much service (measured in vehicle-revenue miles) as in September 2019. Continue reading →

An Open Letter to AmeriStarRail

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

AmeriStarRail is a private company that wants to operate passenger trains in Amtrak’s Boston-to-Washington corridor as well as on nearby routes. It proposes to privately pay for construction of 76 new train sets consisting of 152 locomotives and 760 passenger cars, which it would use to replace all non-Acela trains in the corridor as well as extend service beyond the corridor.

Amtrak’s new Acela train, which is scheduled to go into service next year. AmeriStarRail proposes to use trains of the same make and design, but with 12 cars instead of 9 and locomotives with Diesel engines to provide power when operating on rails with no overhead wires. Photo by Simon Brugel.

AmeriStarRail also says it will spend $5 billion improving tracks in the Northeast Corridor in order to reduce the fastest trip times between New York to Washington from more than 2-1/2 hours to under 2 hours, with similar gains in the Boston-New York portion. The company says it has investors interested in paying for all of this but won’t reveal who they are. Continue reading →

Build It and They Won’t Come

By | | Transportation
7 Comments

It’s too soon to know what caused the Saturday derailment of Amtrak’s Empire Builder that took the lives of three people. What we do know is that a train that had room for at least 350 paying passengers was carrying fewer than 150 (reports vary between 141 and 147).

Amtrak’s Empire Builder in Montana.

This raises the question of how well individual Amtrak routes are doing now that highway travel has pretty much recovered to pre-pandemic levels and air travel in July was nearly 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels. I’ve reported that Amtrak was at 68 percent of pre-pandemic levels in July, but that could vary tremendously from route to route. Continue reading →

June Transit 50% of Pre-Pandemic Ridership

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
7 Comments

Transit ridership reached 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels in June, according to data released late last week by the Federal Transit Administration. This leaves transit well behind Amtrak, which carried 63 percent as many passenger miles; the airlines, which carried 74 percent as many passengers; and highways. Highway data for June are not yet available but in May they carried 96 percent of pre-pandemic miles of driving.

Amtrak numbers are from the company’s June Monthly Performance Report; airline data from the Transportation Security Administration; and highway data are from the Federal Highway Administration. Final June highway numbers should be available next week.

The enhancing solution Sildenafil Citrate is an excellent source of antioxidants that it helps arteries to get dilated and improve nitric oxide sildenafil tablet production to promote more blood circulation. It is always better to be cautious before than repenting later. secretworldchronicle.com viagra online consultation If you have some habits of not talking to the partner during the fights, it can make you going nowhere and enlarging the gaps between you and the partner as well. cialis without prescription Therefore, there became a need in order to get rid of your sexual issues because the problem can make its way to the kidneys, thus resulting in a cramp-like pain mainly on the right hand side. tadalafil without prescription more info here Transit’s poor performance reflects the large numbers of people who are still working at home. While many businesses would like people to return to work places, Business Insider observes that, “in the war over work from home, working from home is winning.” Continue reading →

Amtrak Infrastructure Boondoggle

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

If Congress passes the infrastructure compromise reached by the White House and 17 Republican senators, Amtrak will get $66 billion. Amtrak won’t have complete freedom to spend this money however it likes: instead, according to Senator Charles Schumer, $30 billion is for Northeast Corridor backlog and modernization; $16 billion is for other backlog needs; and $12 billion is for new services outside of the Northeast Corridor, “including high speed rail,” as if $12 billion could buy any significant amount of high-speed rail.

Last month, Amtrak revealed that it needs $117 billion to bring the Northeast Corridor up to a state of good repair, so the $30 billion in the infrastructure bill is little more than a down payment. Thus, Congress is continuing its usual pattern of short-funding needed maintenance so that it can fund new projects. After all, if all of the money in the bill went to the Northeast Corridor, senators and representatives in the rest of the country would have little reason to support it.

One of the Northeast Corridor projects funded in the bill is new tunnels under the Hudson River, which are expected to cost $3 billion a mile, more than just about any other tunnels in history. When Slate writer Henry Grabar asked Amtrak CEO William Flynn how he could justify such a high cost, Flynn responded that he didn’t think it was that expensive. Grabar concluded that Amtrak didn’t care about the cost. Continue reading →

$117 Billion to Save “Almost an Hour”: Who Cares?

By | | Transportation
4 Comments

Before the pandemic, two people commuted from Podunk, Michigan to Detroit, a drive of about one hour. If someone built them a high-speed rail line, they could save nearly half an hour, assuming they don’t decide to work at home. Of course, the fares they pay would never come close to covering the $6 billion cost of building the rail line, but who cares about the cost per rider?

“Who cares?” seems to be the attitude of the Northeast Corridor Commission, which consists of Amtrak and the commuter rail agencies that run trains on part of the Boston-to-Washington rail system. Where its 2010 master plan called for spending $52 billion in the corridor, the 2021 plan demands $117 billion to keep running trains in the corridor. But who cares about the increased cost? Continue reading →

Transit’s Post-COVID Recovery Is Slowest

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
1 Comment

Amtrak’s May ridership surged to 45.2 percent of pre-COVID levels (as compared with May 2019), surpassing public transit, which reached only 42.3 percent of 2019 levels. Transit’s recovery was partly hurt by the fact that May 2021 had two fewer business days than May 2019, but the slow growth makes transit the least-recovered of the various modes of travel.

Shown are transit trips from the National Transit Database, and airline trips from Transportation Safety Administration, and Amtrak passenger miles from the May performance report. Driving is in vehicle miles from the Federal Highway Administration’s Traffic Volume Trends; May highway data won’t be out for another week or so.

As usual, rail transit is doing worse than bus transit when compared with 2019, but rail has also recovered more since 2020. Most of rail’s recovery is in heavy rail and commuter rail; light rail’s recovery is only slightly faster than transit buses and hybrid rail (meaning Diesel-powered light rail) isn’t even recovering as fast as buses. Continue reading →

Transit & Amtrak Lag Behind Driving & Flying

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
2 Comments

Transit carried 40.5 percent as many riders in April, 2021 as in April, 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration last Friday. This is a slight step backwards from March, in which transit carried 40.8 percent as many people as in March 2019.

As indicated by the dotted line, driving data are not yet available, but a future Antiplanner post will update this chart when they are published.

Amtrak was even worse, carrying 37.2 percent of its 2019 passenger-miles, according to the company’s monthly performance report. This, however, was a bigger improvement over March, when it carried 32.7 percent of 2019 passenger-miles. Continue reading →