Passenger Rail is trending to:
Less of the Federal funding pie going to intracity transit. Rapid transit and light rail on dedicated right of way will continue to grow, however. Local governmental transit districts will to more of the funding.
Light rail growing as a rebirth of streetcars or the equivalent.
More full-size commuter rail on both owned and shared (with freight rail) right of way.
Commuter rail for cities that never had commuter rail before the freight railroads gave up on passengers.
Electrification.
Computerization. (Big surprise.)
The eventual dissolution or complete restructuring of Amtrak. Alex Kummant will not be able to do anything that drastically different. As we swing into a Democrat political cycle there will just be more of the same. There is no trend to tell us what post-Amtrak heavy passenger rail will look like. But . . .
Interest on behalf of private enterprise running passenger trains. Could we be looking at government owned infrastructure with trains owned and operated by private enterprise under franchise?
A higher density of service in any case. More people in more seats going more miles by Passenger Rail of one kind or another.
The trend is good.
© 2007 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com
3 comments:
Of course, since you've already got Virgin Galactic out there at Richardson's Spaceport... why not get these guys into our rail system too? http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/default.aspx
There is nothing inherently wrong with getting a rich entrepreneur into our Passenger Rail system. We would like it better if it were not somebody already invested in air travel. This is simply because the way airlines are running their businesses is not way to run a railroad. Virgin's luxury model already works for rail cruises, but can it work for work-a-day Passenger Rail?
Of course, maybe in retrospect after the accident of Friday with the Virgin Pendolino off the tracks in Glasgow, this could be a bad idea? FYI - I just rode the Finnish "VR" railsystem from Helsinki again to Kouvola and the service was excellent as usual. It is stunning how much technology they have built into the systems, it makes the Northwest Corridor look like a joke. This was now my fourth trip en excess of 2 hours on their Inter-city trains. It's an excellent system.
Side note: when I was there twice now in the last 4 weeks, it was between -34C and -20C. It is quite obvious that even their system suffers from the cold, in particullar the Pendolinos. They are notorius in Finland for having problems in the cold. I also have read a Wikipedia article about the computer software problems with some of the trains, and this was evident on all 4 rides this time, with none of the tele-prompters working in any of the trains now. Verbal announcements were of course working properly, but delays and changes were handled by the conductor.
Cheers,
Robin
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