33 stops.
Turns out I couldn't find any destination where trains beat driving or flying in the metrics of time or cost even.
I do get that trains work in some regions in the US ~ but we should define those regions or what makes a region good for rail and focus there. Amtrak to me is one of the largest scams the government does - it's a constant money losing operation. It takes in so much money - and loses money on every thing it sells from the tickets to the drinks and food.
On the balance, I find most of these rules to be acceptable most of the time, but it should always be considered that it can be taken too far.
Do you have a ballpark for the financial and human cost of making our basic infrastructure not-accessible?
Only place trains win are very specific regions and for cargo
However, successive directors of Amtrak have always opposed the discontinuation of long-distance routes. Congress could likely force the issue, but it's interesting that Amtrak leadership always leans in favor of them.
There are some routes in the northeast that Amtrak turns a profit on [1][2][3], and some others are subsidized by states enough to still make them worthwhile to operate (CA, IL, NC). But if the long-distance routes were defunded, they'd likely never come back under the Amtrak banner, and significant layoffs would ensue.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15968720#15976146 [2] http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/12/amtrak-routes-by-2012... [3] http://www.riarp.org/blog/2014/11/25/september-amtrak-report
Yet every day, there it goes. Bypassing a city like Denton, TX where a lot of people live and commute to Dallas or Fort Worth. The opportunity for commuter rail is there... it's just not happening, and I wish that it would.