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Re: Trump budget to cut rail services to hundreds of rural communities
Author: Erik H.
Date: 04-11-2017 - 20:48
Gunn Wrote:
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> Say goodbye to thousands of Amtrak jobs and jobs at suppliers of services to Amtrak...
> and small business that prosper from Amtrak like restaurants at stations or hotels in small
> towns... resorts etc. the list goes on and on.
So a handful of Amtrak employees who work the long distance trains will see their jobs eliminated; they will likely be able to find work on other railroads, the remaining corridor services, commuter railroads... The dining/sleeping car staff can easily work at hotels and restaurants.
I doubt there is ANY business, ANYWHERE in America, that would suffer much with a loss of Amtrak. I just took a cursory glance at Amtrak's passenger on/offs by station, and many of Amtrak's LD stations see a small number of passenger use - in some cases averaging 10 or less a day (now divide that up between two trains, and count both entraining and detraining passengers. You get an average of 2.5 passengers per train boarding, 2.5 passengers deboarding.) Some of the larger stations are not isolated to just Amtrak and will do just fine - if you really think Whitefish is going to suffer because of the loss of Amtrak, look at how much Glacier Park International Airport has expanded. When I lived there, it was three airlines, each with one sole destination - Horizon to Seattle, Delta to Salt Lake City, Northwest to Minneapolis. (And Big Sky Air, which is long gone.) Today, Delta and NWA are the same but still offer flights to both cities, and seasonal mainline service to Atlanta; United has started service year-round to Denver and seasonal to Chicago, and Allegiant Air now flies from Las Vegas. I'm pretty sure Whitefish and the Flathead Valley will do fine without Amtrak.
Look at the stations between Eugene, Oregon and Sacramento, California - all served in the wee hours of the night; few if any restaurants are open at train time. Klamath Falls lost its air service and seems to have not turned into a ghost town; many folks prefer to take the bus to Medford and catch Greyhound buses or flights from Medford. The loss of two trains isn't going to kill off K Falls... Spokane is another city that has such miserable Amtrak times, that nobody will notice. Same with Salt Lake City - trains in the middle of the night don't really attract riders or business.
Combine with the fact the Superliner fleet is aging and will need replacement...sometimes we have to just let go, and Amtrak's long distance network is something that makes little sense. It serves fewer than one in 100 Americans (just over 3 million trips per year, and ridership has largely been flat over the last many years), and very, very few countries in the world continue to run trains that are like Amtrak's network.
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> Say goodbye to thousands of Amtrak jobs and jobs at suppliers of services to Amtrak...
> and small business that prosper from Amtrak like restaurants at stations or hotels in small
> towns... resorts etc. the list goes on and on.
So a handful of Amtrak employees who work the long distance trains will see their jobs eliminated; they will likely be able to find work on other railroads, the remaining corridor services, commuter railroads... The dining/sleeping car staff can easily work at hotels and restaurants.
I doubt there is ANY business, ANYWHERE in America, that would suffer much with a loss of Amtrak. I just took a cursory glance at Amtrak's passenger on/offs by station, and many of Amtrak's LD stations see a small number of passenger use - in some cases averaging 10 or less a day (now divide that up between two trains, and count both entraining and detraining passengers. You get an average of 2.5 passengers per train boarding, 2.5 passengers deboarding.) Some of the larger stations are not isolated to just Amtrak and will do just fine - if you really think Whitefish is going to suffer because of the loss of Amtrak, look at how much Glacier Park International Airport has expanded. When I lived there, it was three airlines, each with one sole destination - Horizon to Seattle, Delta to Salt Lake City, Northwest to Minneapolis. (And Big Sky Air, which is long gone.) Today, Delta and NWA are the same but still offer flights to both cities, and seasonal mainline service to Atlanta; United has started service year-round to Denver and seasonal to Chicago, and Allegiant Air now flies from Las Vegas. I'm pretty sure Whitefish and the Flathead Valley will do fine without Amtrak.
Look at the stations between Eugene, Oregon and Sacramento, California - all served in the wee hours of the night; few if any restaurants are open at train time. Klamath Falls lost its air service and seems to have not turned into a ghost town; many folks prefer to take the bus to Medford and catch Greyhound buses or flights from Medford. The loss of two trains isn't going to kill off K Falls... Spokane is another city that has such miserable Amtrak times, that nobody will notice. Same with Salt Lake City - trains in the middle of the night don't really attract riders or business.
Combine with the fact the Superliner fleet is aging and will need replacement...sometimes we have to just let go, and Amtrak's long distance network is something that makes little sense. It serves fewer than one in 100 Americans (just over 3 million trips per year, and ridership has largely been flat over the last many years), and very, very few countries in the world continue to run trains that are like Amtrak's network.
