How exciting. I need to take a train somewhere just for the heck of it. I've not been on a train since the Amtrak Accela from Boston to New York trip in 2000. Has much changed since then?
Where's the baggage car? In a line of 200 other junk cars? yep!
Oh yes, the BUSH that followed CLINTON/GORE years at Amtrak. Let's look at 16 years of decay.
How much has changed?
Car Fleet has shrunk due to non-available maintenance funding, minor accidents (like switch yard scrapes and bumps = the railroad equivalent to parking lots), have greatly reduced the number of train cars, resulting in shorter trains and premature sell-out of seat stock.
Schedules have been cut to bone, in attempts to save money, the system has gone from connectivity to abandoned routes, stations and time slots. Leaving many communities and many route options dead.
Under Clinton/Gore the "Roads and Bridges" nonsense only hastened the Republicans attack on rail. Nationwide a creative system of "out of the box" thinking called AMTRAK EXPRESS was killed. Hundreds of road-railers, baggage cars, express high speed box cars, platforms, forklift stations, rail-truck agreements, new refrigerator express companies, food service and electronic firms were left at the platform. A major source of revenue for the passenger train was killed with a spin called "We are a passenger carrier, we shouldn't be in the freight business..." Got news for y'all, pull the US MAIL or express out from under your local US AIR, SOUTHWEST or DELTA flights and see how long they last.... Bottom line, the DEATH of Amtrak Express.
A national bi-partisan bill went sailing past that put Amtrak on a ruler of profit and loss per route, by the first years of Bush, the PALMETTO, Tampa-Jax-NYC; The Silver Star (split) Jax-Waldo (Gainesville)- Ocala- Tampa were both abandoned. Ocala, where the state spent MILLIONS rebuilding the old Union Station into a "Transportation Center" suddenly had a fancy bus station. CSX claimed it needed this, because all of the freight would now go down the center of the State... BULL ****. Meanwhile the facilities to maintain the PALMETTO or turn it in Jacksonville, the dining car commissary, food freezers, express loading docks, lifts, crew base etc... sit in decay. The train now runs NYC to Savannah!
Salt Lake City - Vegas - Los Angeles
Salt Lake City - Boise - Portland
New Orleans - Jacksonville - Orlando (it should have NEVER gone to Orlando, rather used our connections in JAX)
Jacksonville - Tampa (via central Florida)
ALL ABANDONED to improve Roads and Bridges.
Schedules continued to go to hell in a hand-basket. Try riding that train out of Austin, Texas. Amtrak is at the mercy of UNION PACIFIC, an openly hostile host. So U.P. (AKA: "Uncle Pete") has gotten used to being horrible and getting away with it. Run it late, run it sloppy, cause it to crawl, and the passengers (and thus the support) will just go away. Suddenly we hear talk that Amtrak LAW might get enforced! MIGHT!??? Enforced? Wow, that would make a change. Funny when Uncle Pete has PV on the train, it can run up to the second...
The new Amtrak funding is the first and ONLY time that the system has EVER gotten close to what is needed. Miles of "bad order" passenger cars in long dead lines wait at the shops. This is going to be very interesting. We MUST be pro-active to get our service back and make Jacksonville the hub it has always been.
OCKLAWAHA
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