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A window into the plight of America’s railways: Are Amtrak’s long-distance routes coming to an end?

Discussion in 'Current Events' started by signalmankenneth, Mar 31, 2017.

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  1. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    Zorro, Dec 30, 2017
    #76
  2. Llewellyn Moss

    Llewellyn Moss Well-Known Member

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    Llewellyn Moss, Dec 30, 2017
    #77
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  3. Antiduopolist

    Antiduopolist Well-Known Member

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    Knock yourself out! :)

    I almost mentioned horsies in my list! :blowkiss:

    And automobiles - even with all the bells/whistles, groovy compacting & hidden dirty energy powering them - have a MASSIVE destructive cost.

    This includes 25,000 to 30,000 deaths in just this country per YEAR.

    Cars are mega-regressive. :(

    If you can have horses in the heart of New York City, there must be smart/green ways to integrate them transportationally into more rural settings.

    Let's put the horse back in front of the cart! :cheerleader:

    Now is the time for creative thinking, not regressive, knee-jerk attacks on same. :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2017
    Antiduopolist, Dec 31, 2017
    #78
  4. Antiduopolist

    Antiduopolist Well-Known Member

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    Last edited: Dec 31, 2017
    Antiduopolist, Dec 31, 2017
    #79
  5. Antiduopolist

    Antiduopolist Well-Known Member

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    Shocking Blue! :banana:

    This thread just gets better & better. :clapping:
     
    Antiduopolist, Dec 31, 2017
    #80
  6. Professor Peabody

    Professor Peabody Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Just make sure your life insurance is paid up to date.
     
    Professor Peabody, Dec 31, 2017
    #81
  7. Professor Peabody

    Professor Peabody Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Since 2015.....

    2015 Metro-North crash, Valhalla, New York; 6 killed; 15 injured
    2015 CSX derailment, Mount Carbon, West Virginia; no fatalities; 1 injured
    2015 Metrolink derailment, Oxnard, California; 1 killed; 29 injured
    2015 Amtrak derailment, Halifax, North Carolina; no fatalities; 55 injured
    2015 Expo Line crash, Los Angeles, California; no fatalities; 12 injured
    2015 Amtrak derailment, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 8 killed; 200 injured
    2016 Amtrak collision, Chester, Pennsylvania; 2 killed; 41 injured
    2016 Amtrak derailment, Cimarron, Kansas; no fatalities; 28 injured
    2016 NJ Transit crash, Hoboken, New Jersey; 1 killed; 114 injured
    2017 Brooklyn train crash, Brooklyn, New York; no fatalities; 103 injured
    2017 Washington train derailment, Dupont, Washington, 3 killed; 100 injured

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_railroad_accidents#21st_century

    It's really a dangerous way to travel.
     
    Professor Peabody, Dec 31, 2017
    #82
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  8. Antiduopolist

    Antiduopolist Well-Known Member

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    False stats.

    Trains are VASTLY safer than cars.

    That's a fact.

    :)
     
    Antiduopolist, Dec 31, 2017
    #83
  9. Antiduopolist

    Antiduopolist Well-Known Member

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    TRAINS are INCREDIBLY safe, and MUCH safer than cars.

    Eleven train crashes in three years with twenty one fatalities cited above.

    Hundreds of thousands of car crashes in the same period with close to one hundred thousand deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries?

    Seriously, dude.

    :disbelief:
     
    Antiduopolist, Dec 31, 2017
    #84
  10. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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    Our infrastructure isn't designed for high speed rail. The northeast corridor is too crowded most track isn't able to handle high speeds and may be impossible to redesign to handle them. Every time I try to plan a trip using trains it's almost impossible to plan one that doesn't include long hold overs. The last time I checked, about 3 days from Harrisburg PA to Denver.
     
    Tim15856, Dec 31, 2017
    #85
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  11. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don't think you know what regressive means. Horses, trains, and other abandoned technologies were abandoned for a reason. Going back to them is exactly like sifting through human waste for leftover scraps.
     
    Fangbeer, Dec 31, 2017
    #86
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  12. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yeah. Stats! But wait? What are the stats in percentage of trips? What are the stats in terms of numbers of people moved?

    Have we counted injuries incurred on a train in the absence of a crash?

    And what about other factors? How many people were robbed while driving to work in a car? How many robbed on a train? How many people didn't get where they were going and what's the average time for them to get there?
     
    Fangbeer, Dec 31, 2017
    #87
  13. Fisherguy

    Fisherguy Well-Known Member

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    Trump's goal is to set this country back by 50 years. Back to the patriarchal "good old days"
    of Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best.
     
    Fisherguy, Dec 31, 2017
    #88
  14. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I took a quick peek at some stats. Metro North is one of the highest ridership rail systems in America. At record levels, they serve an average of about 300k people per day. This represents everyone moving in and out of grand central station trying to get in or out of the city. In contrast. The Tapan Zee bridge bears 138k cars per day. The number of people it bears is naturally some larger unknowable number, but that’s just one bridge into the city. Add in the GW’s 312k cars per day and you can see that there’s way more auto traffic flowing in and out of the city than metro north traffic. Now add in the traffic volume on any of the 30 other routes into the city and you’ll see that auto ridership dwarfs train ridership.

    To claim that one method is safer than another, you have to assess a rate of danger, but you’re not comparing an equal number of rides to determine that danger. The chances of harm from both methods of transportation could be one in a million, but you don’t know, because you don’t know how many car rides didn’t result in an accident, and you don’t know how many non crash train rides did result in injury.
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2017
    Fangbeer, Dec 31, 2017
    #89
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  15. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Every week 16 people are struck by a train and killed.
     
    Fangbeer, Dec 31, 2017
    #90
  16. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    It's unuseable. I tried going to Harrisburg from the West coast. Would have required sleeping in the Train Stations at Chicago and Pittsburgh.
     
    Zorro, Dec 31, 2017
    #91
  17. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    Libs love seeing us herded onto trains. It makes them so happy they will fly their private jets up just to watch.
     
    Zorro, Dec 31, 2017
    #92
  18. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Port Authority Bus Terminal serves about 225k people on an average weekday. It might be close to appropriate to compare bus fatalities that originate at the PABT vs train fatalities that originate at grand central. I bet you they will be very similar...
     
    Fangbeer, Dec 31, 2017
    #93
  19. Channe

    Channe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We need high speed rail like they have in Japan. Getting from Chicago to Mpls in two hours would be fantastic !
     
    Channe, Dec 31, 2017
    #94
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  20. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I took the auto train from virginia to Florida. I’ll never do it again. I’d rather drive straight through. It added a day of dedicated travel to the trip. I had to structure my drive from CT to VA around the train’s departure time. It was expensive. It wasn’t comfortable by any stretch of the imagination. The food sucked. My mother in law was out of her gourd mental because she couldn’t smoke. There was nothing redeemable about it.
     
    Fangbeer, Dec 31, 2017
    #95
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  21. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Last edited: Dec 31, 2017
    Fangbeer, Dec 31, 2017
    #96
  22. ChoppedLiver

    ChoppedLiver Well-Known Member

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    A long time ago, people rode horses and donkeys (and other various animals).

    Then they put some sort of cart or buggy on them and rode in the cart.

    Later, trains came along and transported people short and long distances.

    Then we had automobiles.

    Shortly after that, we started to fly to our destination(s) on planes of various types.

    And now, you, Gov. Moonbeam, and the rest of the lib/prog crowd wants to go back to trains?
     
    ChoppedLiver, Dec 31, 2017
    #97
  23. Professor Peabody

    Professor Peabody Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You're confused, go back and look at the stats, I never compared the passenger safety of trains to cars, I compared them to air travel. Air travel is faster and safer than trains.
     
    Professor Peabody, Dec 31, 2017
    #98
  24. Professor Peabody

    Professor Peabody Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Again I never compared the safety of train travel to cars. I compared the safety of train travel to air travel....

    it's twice as safe to fly than ride the rails, it's a fact.
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2017
    Professor Peabody, Dec 31, 2017
    #99
  25. Fisherguy

    Fisherguy Well-Known Member

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    This country is incapable of building decent rail transport; the game is rigged. Unlike most other countries.
    Last month we crossed Sicilly for 9 Euros, using the train system. Through some nice
    scenery, too. America has vastly more country to build high-speed rail than Europe or Japan,
    yet we do nothing with it. You should see the five modern train stations in
    Paris alone...
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2017
    Fisherguy, Dec 31, 2017
    #100
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