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| Re: Amtrak cancelations for Sunday 7th (896577) | |||
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Re: Amtrak cancelations for Sunday 7th |
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Posted by WillD on Mon Feb 8 00:15:04 2010, in response to Re: Amtrak cancelations for Sunday 7th, posted by Olog-hai on Sun Feb 7 16:19:30 2010. Deutsche Bahn has expanded outside Germany looking for new revenue. JR almost collapsed under its own weight.All that points to is the their inability to turn a profit on passenger transportation. That's something every developed nation shares. The Japanese Railroads are only profitable by creative budgeting which removes almost all capital costs from their operational budgets. The same is true of the UK's railroads. There's no way a private railroad would compete for passengers without government subsidies of some sort given the subsidies to other transport modes. None of those state-run railroads can run freight properly either. Freight railroads here in the US only compete because their cargo is not as time critical and the distance is so great that the lower cost per mile creates greater savings relative to trucks. Europe, especially within the western European nations themselves, are markets in which it is difficult to take full advantage of intermodal transit. Transloading times in intermodal yards make up a greater percentage of the trip time, and the cost differential is smaller because the distances involved are in general smaller. The private railroads were already looking to replace them with Silverliners and Arrows. But these evil state run railroads *did* replace the MP54s, and they did so for the most part within 10 years of the government takeover. Those Silverliners may have been delivered to the PRR, but they were paid for by the State of PA. Our systems are certainly more accessible, has younger rolling stock, and are in general cleaner than the companies they took over for in the 1970s and 80s. Fine, they haven't done a great job of expanding service, but at least we've reached the point where they've staunched the bleeding we saw in the middle of the last century. I had high hopes for NJT finally turning the corner toward expansion, but that's on hold for at least 4 years. |
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