Tag Archives: intercity passenger trains

Just before the pandemic, Amtrak proudly announced that it lost only $29.5 million operating passenger trains in 2019 and expected to make an operating profit in 2020. Of course, that didn’t happen thanks to the pandemic, and what’s more, it was lying about losing only $29.5 million; its actual losses were closer to $1.4 billion, a mere 46 times more than it claimed.

Amtrak spent $2.5 billion on new trainsets for its high-speed Acela. These were supposed to go into service in 2021 but are now expected to begin service no sooner than 2023. Photo by Fan Railer.

Now that Congress has flooded Amtrak with money in the infrastructure bill, however, the agency no longer even cares about whether its passenger trains come close to covering their costs. Like any good soviet agency, it recently released its five-year plan, and it projects it will lose more than a billion dollars a year for almost every year in the future. Continue reading →

Brightline, the privately operated passenger train in Florida, had five accidents that killed three people last week.

• On February 13, a man was killed when he drove his car around the lowered crossing gates and was hit by a train in Lake Worth Beach.
• On February 15, a pedestrian was killed when he was struck by a Brightline train in Hallandale Beach.

Brightline posted this video taken from the train that struck a car last week to prove that the accident wasn’t its fault. What it shows is that a freight train had gone through the crossing and an impatient motorist drove around the gates unable to see that a passenger train was coming because his view was blocked by the freight. The accident would have been prevented if Brightline had installed full-width crossing gates instead of gates that covered only half the width of the street.

• Also on February 15, a woman and her baby narrowly avoided injury when a Brightline train struck her car in Delray Beach.
• On February 16, a man suffered “incapacitating injuries” when a Brightline train struck his car, also in Lake Worth Beach.
• On February 19, a man walking on the tracks was killed when he was hit by a Brightline train in Delray Beach.

Continue reading →

This week, a mere twelve years after getting $1.4 billion in high-speed rail funds from the federal government, to which was added $500 million of Illinois taxpayer dollars, Amtrak and Illinois have finally increased the speeds on trains between Chicago and St. Louis. Where previously trains were limited to 79 miles per hour, now they can go 90 miles per hour in some places.

Illinois hopes to eventually operated Chicago-St. Louis trains with cars and locomotives like the ones shown here, but after a mere twelve years not enough have been delivered to make that possible.

This will “make rail travel competitive with driving,” claims one journalist. Actually, it still won’t even come close to being competitive with driving. Continue reading →

The pandemic has made people reluctant to climb aboard any form of mass transportation. But it hasn’t stopped the state of Colorado from planning an idiotic Front Range passenger train that is proposed to connect Fort Collins and Pueblo, with Denver in between. In June, Governor Jared Polis signed a bill creating a taxing district to pay for the train’s inevitable losses. Last week, the Colorado Transportation Commission agreed to spend $1.9 million on a viability study (whose total cost will be twice that).

Although the endpoints are known, the exact route of the proposed rail line through Denver has yet to be determined. Click image for a larger view.

The Denver Post, which was a major cheerleader for Denver’s $4.9 billion FasTracks plan until it became the $7.9 billion FasTracks plan, by which time it was too late, is now a major cheerleader for the Front Range passenger train plan. It claims that an Amtrak train between Chicago and Milwaukee “shows what it could be.” Yes, because Fort Collins (population: 170,000) and Pueblo (population: 112,000) are just like Milwaukee (population: 577,000), and Denver (population: 715,000) is just like Chicago (population: 2.75 million). Continue reading →

Ten days ago, I published an open letter to AmeriStarRail, a company that proposes to take over Amtrak service in the Northeast Corridor. Below, without further comment, is AmeriStarRail’s response (with my questions in italics).

Dear Antiplanner,

Thanks for your detailed questions about AmeriStarRail’s proposal to improve Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service and our bid protest. I saw your Open Letter to ASR on your blog and I wanted to provide these clarifications:

• the 76 trainsets with at least 12 cars each would be a total of 912 cars
• ASR did not propose to spend $5 billion improving NEC tracks. We will pay user fees for the tracks and stations. The $5 billion is for trainsets only.
• AmeriStarRail submitted a proposal to an Amtrak RFP with a bid price of $1 for 76 trainsets and $1 for a Northeast Corridor Trainset Maintenance Center

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Here are our answers to your questions: Continue reading →