More aboard! Amtrak weighs long route improvements

Associated Press ^ | April 14, 2010 | MATT LEINGANG

[Willie Green]

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In many states, travelers who take Amtrak's long-distance trains for vacations or out-of-state business trips board in the middle of the night and return home from such cities as Chicago or New York City at times that are just as inconvenient.

But some improvements are on the way. Amtrak, the country's only major passenger train system, is re-examining timetables and finding other ways to improve its 15 national routes to bring in more riders and revenue. Among those under review are two routes that dip into Ohio and are practically hidden at night, their trains passing through when most people are sleeping.

Businessman Dave Shreiner, 63, typically boards around 1:30 a.m. at a tiny Amtrak stop in Alliance, Ohio. He travels exclusively by rail half of the year, visiting clients around the U.S.

"It makes planning a trip a challenge," Shreiner said.

The push for upgrades comes as Amtrak is on pace for record ridership this year, carrying a best-ever 13.6 million passengers in the first half of fiscal year 2010. That's a 4.3-percent increase over the same period last year, and 100,000 more than 13.5 million posted in the first half of 2008, Amtrak's previous highest ridership of 28.7 million passengers.

Amtrak cites an improving economy and high fuel prices as factors in ridership growth.

President Barack Obama is also giving $8 billion in stimulus money to 13 high-speed rail projects and 31 states, though Amtrak's role in those projects is murky, since states will control the funds. Some of the projects are years away from completion.

In the meantime, Amtrak is putting all of its long-distance routes under review through 2012, including five this year.

[KevinDavis]

Also what I’m seeing is that more companies are moving away from the cities and into the suburbs... Also telecommuting is on the rise..

[Willie Green]

Would you support a two dollar per gallon tax on gasoline if the revenue supported your precious trains?

Don't be silly, Grizzled Twit.
As a true conservative, I expect the price of gasoline to become prohibitive all on its own as global demand exceeds Peak Oil supply. Of course you've already planted your head firmly up your butt and are either gullible enough to think that our planet has an infinite supply of Oil or simply stupid enough to not comprehend the market economics of supply and demand.

My advocacy of passenger rail systems is merely an effort to build the necessary infrastructure BEFORE Peak Oil cripples our economy.

I really don't expect an answer. You've ran out of intelligible arguments to support your ideas and, as usual, turned to Alinsky insults and misdirection. Pitch a fit like you always do when called out as the liberal you are. It won't make a difference. Everyone can see you are a socialist. ...

(((yawn)))
Typical partisan pot/kettle/black idiocy.
You're obviously the type of mental midget who lowers the intellectual level of this forum. If FR provided a "bozo filter", you'd be on it.

[Willie Green]

My advocacy of passenger rail systems is merely an effort to build the necessary infrastructure BEFORE Peak Oil cripples our economy.

Buttom line: I advocate investment in modern, efficient transportation infrastructure that will make our economy more productive and competitive in the 21st Century. While you take the lazy lardass maintain the status quo do nothing approach.

You are a nonproductive and noncompetitive LOSER and luddite.

[Grizzled Bear]

Don't be silly, Grizzled Twit.

Of course you've already planted your head firmly up your butt and are either gullible enough to think that our planet has an infinite supply of Oil or simply stupid enough to not comprehend the market economics of supply and demand.

Typical partisan pot/kettle/black idiocy.

You're obviously the type of mental midget who lowers the intellectual level of this forum. If FR provided a "bozo filter", you'd be on it.

Your penchant for insults demonstrates your lack of any concrete foundation for your argument and reveals a diminished capacity for any rational exchange of ideas. Your slavish devotion to Alinsky stratagem is already old.

Saul Alinsky's Power Tactic #5

"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

You should have read on to Tactic #7

"A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."

Willie, your insults and misdirections are a drag. Read the replies from the many posters on your threads. You can't help but notice most of them recognize you for what you are; a one trick pony with a crippled leg.

Please provide a link to any comment in which I've claimed (in your words), "our planet has an infinite supply of Oil" You can't produce one because you are a liar and a fraud. You're attempting to discredit me by framing my argument into a position I do not hold. That's another Alinsky practice.

Willie, you understand market economics perfectly well. That's why you want to steal other people's money; it's the only way you'll bankroll your bizarre train fetish. The free market does not want passenger trains subsidized by Uncle Sugars teat. If the market wanted it, the free market would finance a large scale, cross country, high speed passenger rail system. You want the government to seize the land and treasure of others. That's the only way you will have your socialist AMTRAK subsidy, "other people's money." You're no different from Obama, Pelosi and Reid as they try to force the government takeover of our health care.

If you want to force people into rail cars, you're about 80 years too late. You'd fit right in with those train enthusiasts.

[Grizzled Bear]

...While you take the lazy lardass maintain the status quo do nothing approach.

You are a nonproductive and noncompetitive LOSER and luddite.

Have you ever been able to debate without resorting to trollish insults and personal attacks?

You've only managed to demonstrate how your ideas and arguments are empty, hollow and without merit.

Move to Cuba, Zimbabwe or Venezuela and enjoy your socialist paradise.

[Grizzled Bear]

While you take the lazy lardass maintain the status quo do nothing approach.

You are a nonproductive and noncompetitive LOSER and luddite.

Willie,

I'm guessing you have a strong interest in "change," vs "maintaining the status quo"; in fact, you seem very "hope"ful about it.

"Hope" and "Change." Where have I heard that before? You also seem obsessed with the productivity of others. Tell me, what do you and your socialist brethren intend to do to those they deem "non-productive?" Don't your fellows refer to them as "useless eaters?"

[Willie Green]

"Hope" and "Change." Where have I heard that before?

Ronald Reagan.

Tell me, what do you and your socialist brethren intend to do to those they deem "non-productive?" Don't your fellows refer to them as "useless eaters?"

No, that terminology must be part of YOUR pot/kettle/black lexicon, Grizzled Twit.
As a bona-fide politically incorrect knuckle-dragging paleocon, my pitchfork is much more blunt. I simply call a spade-a-spade and use a more traditional term like I called you: "lazy lardass".

And while I believe in providing Christian Charity to those who truly need it, I have little patience with lazy lardasses who do nothing but squat and obstruct the productive efforts of others. I don't care what happens to those parasites as long as they get the hell out of the way.

[Mr. Lucky]

An immature railfan with a potty mouth is a force to behold.

[Willie Green]

An immature railfan with a potty mouth is a force to behold.

Another dumbass libtard troll shows up to push my hot bottons.
Go crawl back under your rock, bonehead. I'm quite capable of expressing my conservative discontent with the GOP without your disruptive "help".

[Mr. Lucky]

Apparently you're not capable of much other than ignorant blabbering on a subject you know very little about.

The suggestion, on a free market web site, that the federal government should seize privately owned infrastructure so that its use could be allocated to the whimsy of rail fans rather than to the transportation of freight would be frightening if it weren't so laughable.

That you have no experience whatever in the railroad industry is obvious; that you're unable to engage in civil discourse is even more so.

[Fresh Wind]

Already the airlines are infuriating the customers with surcharges for "fat" passengers...

Why shouldn't a person who takes up two seats pay for two seats?

[Willie Green]

The suggestion, on a free market web site...

FreeRepublic is a conservative website, libtard. Not libertarian.

Go take your globo-marxist spin and double-talk somewhere else.

"But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade."

~ Karl Marx, 9 January 1848

[Willie Green]

Why shouldn't a person who takes up two seats pay for two seats?

Hey, if the airlines want to provide seating that's only suitable for aneroxic dwarves and midgets, and charge everybody else extra because they're "too big", it's fine by me....

As far as I'm concerned, it's just another good reason to travel more comfortably and inexpensively on a train.