Railway Age editor William C. Vantuono wondered recently what exactly Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson is trying to accomplish by truncating long-distance routes, replacing fresh dining-car meals with MREs*, and replacing station agents with nobody.
Why doesn’t the United States have a big, fast, modern passenger rail system? Many passenger rail advocates claim it’s because passenger rail has enemies: The highway lobby. The auto industry. Big oil. The airlines. They don’t want trains because a successful passenger train system would damage their businesses.
The federal-state partnership to build 130 modern bi-level passenger rail coaches for higher-speed rail (HrSR) corridors in the states of California, Illinois, Michigan and Missouri under the 2008 PRIIA legislation “was doomed from the start,” according to James E. Coston, Chairman of Corridor Capital LLC.
