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Comment by kyleblarson | Hacker News Reader

My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago. We purchased a private cabin. We were 8 hours late leaving Seattle and couldn't get into our cabin until we got to Spokane because of some sort of merge of trains coming from Portland and Seattle. Got to Spokane, got our cabin, another 6 hour delay. By the time we reached the upper Midwest, they were rationing food, literally cutting every meal (that we had already paid for) in half. We eventually arrived in Chicago about 22 hours late.

The train was disgustingly dirty and the employees were surly and unhelpful.

Having taken dozens of train trips in Japan since 2001 I was incredibly excited for the American train experience. It was shit and I will never take an Amtrak again.

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For those that don't know, the Empire Builder from Seattle stops in Spokane to hook up with a train that is coming from Portland. The combined train then goes all the way to Chicago. If either are delayed it can result in waiting for the other and long delays are apparently the norm and not the exception.

My wife and her grandfather took the train from Portland to Minnesota in the fall of last year. There were a number of issues with the service on the train that make it bad enough, but the speed of the train is a major problem of why these trains are somewhat worthless for travel. Freight trains get priority on the rail lines so many times the train was stopped for possibly hours waiting for freight trains to pass.

On my wife's trip the refrigeration went out at some point so cold food was no longer available, nor was food that required refrigeration before it was cooked. Fortunately they disembarked soon after that happened. The rest of the train was still a day or so from Chicago and those passengers were stuck with god knows what to eat.

Passenger trains do get priority in the US, your mileage may vary by railroad to how forgiving they are for schedule delays.

Basically Amtrak has to keep to a specific schedule, if ut misses it's window it loses the priority it had.

I took a train from Chicago to LA almost 20 years ago. There were 6 passenger cars attached to 60+ freight cars. There was a 20+ hours delay. All the stops were in dilapidated industrial areas. A ridiculous experience. Never again.

For a transcontinental trip: drive a car or a van.

Amtrak has never run Mixed freight trains, so this must not have been on amtrak.

That is not true, Amtrak used to run a service called Mail & Express. One of the trains was indeed mixed passenger and freight.

That said, Amtrak engines are also often leased to other freight companies so you can frequently see freight trains being hauled by Amtrak branded engines.

In case anyone is interested in Mail and Express:

http://utahrails.net/pass/amtrak-mail-express.htm

It stopped in 2004, presumably due to declines in mail volume. (Which I wonder if it would make sense again now, due to more mail-order package shipping.)

Anyway, it's not really "freight" in the sense that most people think of a freight train. It's all Amtrak rolling stock.

They still do offer Express shipping services between some stations. It's a very cheap way to send something between NYC and Washington for same-day arrival, especially if it's a big box. You have to have someone go to the train station on either end to get your stuff, though. They move them around on the passenger trains that have baggage cars (the 'named' trains, typically at least on the East Coast).

Alas, the pictures I took were on film, and it's been lost in various relocations. Very likely it was Amtrak, with the "sightseeing car" and all.

If you’re on CSX track, you sit. I’ve been on trains that left precisely on schedule that were impacted this way.

Train service between Utica and Buffalo is routinely affected by this.

Wendover did a video on this a couple years ago. Basically saying why trains suck in America. And the reason is the same: freight gets priority because Amtrak does not own the track, freight companies do. https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ

It’s the law that passenger trains should get priority, but actual enforcement of this law is nonexistent, and Amtrak does not have as much money to spend on counsel.

>> We were 8 hours late leaving Seattle and couldn't get into our cabin until we got to Spokane because of some sort of merge of trains coming from Portland and Seattle. Got to Spokane, got our cabin, another 6 hour delay. By the time we reached the upper Midwest, they were rationing food, literally cutting every meal (that we had already paid for) in half. We eventually arrived in Chicago about 22 hours late.

>> The train was disgustingly dirty and the employees were surly and unhelpful.

> On my wife's trip the refrigeration went out at some point so cold food was no longer available, nor was food that required refrigeration before it was cooked. Fortunately they disembarked soon after that happened. The rest of the train was still a day or so from Chicago and those passengers were stuck with god knows what to eat.

Stuff like this makes it feel like the USA is falling apart from being a 1st world nation, crumbling in bits and pieces into a 3rd world one.

As much as I like trains, the that the passenger ones in the US are crumbling sounds like resources are being efficiently allocated?

US quality of life for many is already pretty close to what you'd see in (granted, middle-class-level) China. The system is able to handle it because a lot of people don't even get to experience how so many other developed nations have a stronger foundation for everyone. They just assume that life sucks and that there isn't a better way.

And even rich people in the US are satisfied with pretty terrible experiences because US culture is so disconnected from everything else that they don't get that things are a lot nicer elsewhere! Nothing like visiting someone's multi-million dollar home with worse plumbing than cheap 1-room studios elsewhere in the world.

Stuff like this makes it feel like the USA is falling apart from being a 1st world nation, crumbling in bits and pieces into a 3rd world one.

That's exactly the wrong take-away!

Amtrak is totally irrelevant for trans-continental travel. There is a "daily" departure from Seattle to Chicago. I.e. one train per day. Probably a few hundred passengers on a good day.

I just did a quick check and there are 7 non-stop flights tomorrow from Seattle to Chicago. Average air travel time is about 4 hours. Cheapest fare for tomorrow is $262.

So this train exists for a few tourists and for a few people who can't or don't want to fly. Everyone else takes a non-stop plane and gets there in hours not in days.

It's an indication of the USA's wealth and bounty that we are willing to waste billions of dollars a year on useless vanity projects like this. Long distance Amtrak runs at a loss, the US congress provides $1.3 billion a year to make up the difference. In addition there is a $650 million subsidy for passenger trains between Washington DC and Boston. That's arguably something useful, since the route is heavily traveled. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/21/amtrak-gets-n...

It's an indication of the USA's wealth and bounty that we are willing to waste billions of dollars a year on useless vanity projects like this.

It's kind of a "nature preserve" of socialism in the US.

No one is taking trains in the US. You can take a MegaBus from Atlanta to New York for like $35. It takes less than the amount of time it takes Amtrak to get from Atlanta to DC. Spirit has a flight for $112 from Atlanta to New York which is the same or less expensive than a train that takes over 20 hours!

In the US, Canada, and Mexico trains are for freight. Even if you’re in the Northeast Corridor a bus is usually a better option if you aren’t driving or flying. Europe uses trucks for freight.

> Freight trains get priority on the rail lines so many times the train was stopped for possibly hours waiting for freight trains to pass.

This mentality weirds me out. As in: Why are we explicitly valuing the time of companies over the time of actual people? Companies can probably adjust to getting their shit 8 or 12 or 24 hours late (or, if they can't, they can charter a plane). It's a lot harder to deal with for people who need to be somewhere.

You would probably have a better experience renting and entire rail car and shipping it as cargo across the US.

My wife and I were (up here in Canada) looking for a nice mellow train ride with scenery, out of Vancouver you can catch a train to Jasper and on northward to Prince George but... the cost of both of us to ride and have a cabin for two is 5k, so alternative to taking a 4 day train ride is flying out to london three separate times for the weekend. Alternatively we could book a fancy hotel room in down-town for two weeks and have a ritzy stay-cation.

I don't know why continental american train service is so stupidly over priced and inconvenient, but I really hope at some point they realize they are currently uncompetitive and could actually make more money offering a better service for a more reasonable fee.

Canada Post is doing the same thing. Probably all others too.

Their continuous response to lower revenues is to raise prices.

This just feeds ever-more innovation in the message and package delivery markets, sabotaging themselves.

Canada Post is doing that to their letter service which I think is just a write off at this point. Their package service is amazing and far exceeds the US though. The existence of flex delivery boxes has made it less terrible to receive packages if you live in a Condo/Apartment and is beloved by my fellow non-detached-home-owning co-workers (which, given this is Vancouver, is everyone)

The package service comes at a price though.

Canadian shippers could only dream of US rates for first class mail packages and flat rate boxes with insurance and tracking.

Canada Post did a good job of privatizing outlets, and as you said, leveraging that network for the last mile.

What Vancouver is missing is staffed front-desks like Toronto ;)

Coming from the US the last thing I want is a US style post office, I love my 7/11 post pick up spot (though my current one is now a shoppers I assume US folks won't recognize that)...

Dedicated post offices are incredibly silly, embed them into stores, and offering to reimburse clerks for the time they spend actually dealing with mail is wonderful. It means that instead of having one location in little old New Westminster we've got 6, downtown vancouver (just the penisula up to chinatown-ish) has 14 post offices in 2.3 sq. miles... that's way better than some gigantic greek revival building in the middle of town that absolutely everyone has to spend 30 minutes on a bus to get to.

At least in the US, I think it's the combination of cheap airfares + the tracks being owned by freight companies, so there's not a ton of profit incentive to make it better and attract more riders.

I assume Canada has a similar history/present.

Amtrak is a government subsidized entity with monopolies on certain passenger rail, it really doesn't have a strong profit incentive.

Because countries' railroad networks tend to optimize either for freight or for passenger service. They compete with each other. America has one of the best freight networks in the world. https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2011/06/29/freight-as-pa...

My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago

I've done the Empire Builder back-and-forth between Seattle and Chicago, or Saint Paul about six times in the last six years, and never had anything like that happen. I can only assume that things have improved since your trip.

The worst thing I experienced was a four-hour delay in Milwaukee because of a broken down freight train blocking the line. But we were free to get out and walk around and stretch our legs.

I took the Coast Starlight (connects SF and LA) a couple of times in the past 10 years, and I have had a pleasant experience each time. Food was good and while the train wasn't sparkling clean, at least in the areas I cared about (my seat and car) it was fine. Just the bathrooms weren't great. Admittedly this is a shorter trip than yours; this one is only an 8~10 hours ride.

I like that train because it's perfect for getting work done.

I tried taking the train from Santa Barbara to San Jose - I have heard a lot about the picturesque route - but the train was delayed at arrival by a few hr, and since I had a prior engagement, I'd to rent a car and drive to SJ.

I've taken the Coast Starlight about 4-6 times between SF (well, Emeryville) and Portland/Seattle. Most were pretty much on time, except for one time when the train hit a person/car on its trip up from LA. It arrived around 5 hours late at the station and ended up being something like 10 hours late by the time we disembarked.

It can be frustrating to experience long delays if you have a tight schedule, but otherwise I think it makes the most sense to just relax and enjoy the view.

I'll be taking the California Zephyr (Chicago to Emeryville; said to be one of the most picturesque routes) this May, which I'm quite looking forward to. It will be my first time riding that line, and my first time in a sleeper.

I took the California Zephyr ... uh ... 25 years ago? It was a lot of fun! And a beautiful ride! I hope you enjoy it!

> It can be frustrating to experience long delays if you have a tight schedule

Very true. Although I've had some awful delays on airlines as well, and given the choice between being stuck on a passenger train and in a plane, I'd take the train every time. (Though admittedly the airlines have gotten slightly better about not leaving passengers on planes to stew in their own juices on the tarmac for hours and hours. But it took some people really slapping them around in court I think.)

I believe the reason is because freight gets higher priority on the rails than travelers in the U.S.

Yes, and no.

To the railroads it gets higher priority. But if a freight train bocks a passenger train the railroad gets fined by the hour (quarter hour?).

However, the freight railroads often just eat the fine as a cost of doing business. Like delivery companies do with parking tickets.

Fined by who? Aren't all the railways privately owned and just licensed by Amtrak?

Amtrak doesn't even license it - Amtrak is actually owned mostly by the freight railroads.

The National Passenger Rail Corporation is a federally chartered corporation whose controlling interest is owned by the US federal government.

Yup. It's the rails underneath it that are mostly owned by freight or other rail companies.

The law that created Amtrak provided for it to operate on tracks owned by freight companies, with usage fees, under the condition that passenger trains get higher priority than freight trains. Part of that condition is fines, payable from the freight company to Amtrak, for Amtrak train delays caused by the freight company.

Unfortunately, for various political reasons that part of the law has almost no teeth so freight companies openly flout it or treat the meager fines as the cost of doing business. It's a big part of the reason that passenger rail sucks in the US.

Apparently this was contested a couple years ago in the courts:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/29/...

Amtrak has a Twitter account that tweets out delays, including the reasons for them. It's almost always due to freight traffic: https://twitter.com/amtrakalerts

Apparently the freight haulers have tried to get them to stop publicly blaming them like this.

You were heading east. Notice that all these reporters start in the east and head west. Buy a ticket and start your journey as close to DC/NY as possible. It is very different. I dont know why. I suspect power politics, or the interaction with freight trends, but i have heard this from many travellers.

On the plus side, there's a saying that suggests a good way to know if your couple can weather the test of time is to sit on top of each other for a long enough period of time -- such as a weeks-long camping trip, or a long, harrowing bus or train ride.

That makes you quite lucky, and you eventually got married. Most couples don't know if their future marriage is seaworthy until they hit their first major storm.

That's too bad. I've taken the train from Denver to Iowa and from Chicago to Iowa several times. Very relaxing and very enjoyable. It's my favorite form of travel. You of course have to accept it takes much, much longer than flying and even driving.

Good to be aware longer train rides might not be as nice.

Denver to Chicago would be perfect for high speed rail. An express high speed train could beat air travel door to door.

No it wouldn't. The ridership cliff for HSR is around the 3-4 hour mark, or about 500-600 miles--Denver-Chicago is 1,000 miles, well outside that range.

What would work quite well, though, would be something like the Auto Train: you can get an overnight ride that ferries your car and you don't have to drive the thoroughly boring drive of the Great Plains.

That would be great. The drive across Kansas is torture.

By the time you got to the airport and through security theater and on the plane, then cleared for take off, HSR would be stopping in Omaha.

Huh. Anecdotally I’ve heard from friends who took a scenic train from San Francisco to Denver and San Francisco to Seattle and found it a pleasant experience.

I think this was specifically a train for fun and scenery. The destination is part of the point too but this wasn’t marketed or intended as transportation as a means of getting from point a to b.

In short I’m sure your experience is a reliable indicator of at least some of the state of train travel in the us. But it can be better than this, as a niche industry.

I just priced from my Midwest to West Coast and it's almost $5,000 for 2. As if that didn't giving me pause, your comment really put the nail on the lid.

For Chicago to Los Angeles, in June, I’m seeing pricing for two people at USD 286, 358, 688, or 723, depending on seating or roomette, for direct or via Texas, and 1109 max via Sacramento & the coast. Granted, I may be misreading the Amtrak site, whose UI/UX is sub-optimal.

I've done some longer distance trips with Amtrak and generally had a pretty good experience outside of Union Station in Chicago which was awful.

>It was shit and I will never take an Amtrak again.

All Amtrak lines are operated a little differently, AFAIK. As far as the West Coast is concerned, I find both the Pacific Surfliner and the Coastal Starlight to be pleasant and enjoyable (although not very affordable). The Northeast Regional on the East Coast is pretty affordable, runs often, and makes traveling between cities in the Northeast megalopolis without a car pretty trivial, which is nice.

All that's to say that I wouldn't judge Amtrak by its least-used routes.

>Amtrak

Found the problem.

That just sums up the American experience for just about anything. The country is disintegrating internally and I would blame it squarely on its military-industrial complex.

Yay government-run train service.

Other governments do it just fine.

Who? In most of Asia trains are privatized. In Europe, the passenger rail companies are in various stages of privatization. Rail in the UK is more or less privatised. Deutche Bahn, SNCF, Trenitalia, DSB, etc., are private companies. The government is involved in the sense they are the largest or sole shareholder, but they are run as for-profit corporations. For example, they compete in other countries. Many, such as SNCF, are on the path to further privatization: https://www.railway-technology.com/features/french-rail-refo.... Amtrak, though legally an independent corporation, is in practice operated like a government agency.

Amtrak isn't a government agency though. It's a public-private partnership AFAIK

Amtrak is a corporation owned by the U.S. government. That structure is typical for rail operators. What's different is that Amtrak is operated like part of the government, while European rail operators are actually operated like private companies. For example, the CEO of Deutsche Bahn is paid like a private CEO, while the CEO of Amtrak is paid like a senior government officer (and right now, actually, not being paid at all).

Quasi-public to be accurate.

That said, Amtrak came into existence because most of the private rail companies had failed or were failing. Had the federal government not stepped in, we'd arguably have no long distance passenger rail service outside the Northeast Corridor (where Amtrak basically makes the money that it then loses on pretty much every other route in the country).

UK network is run by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail and the train operators are on government franchise. More importantly though it's pretty much universally recognised in London that TfL (the tube and overground) is much better and more reliable than the rail companies, and TfL is a government body directly.

In the UK, a government entity owns the rails. But the actual operation of train service is contracted to fully private companies.

Deutsche Bahn is a "private company", but with 100% of stocks owned by the state. That’s in all relevant metrics state-run.

The German government is the shareholder and appoints the board, but Deutsche Bahn is otherwise operated as a private company. For example, it operates at a profit, its CEO is compensated comparably to other corporate executives, and it competes with other rail operators both inside Germany (it has subsidiaries that compete to operate regional train service), and internationally. Amtrak is operated, for all intents and purposes, like a government agency. It operates at a loss, its CEO is compensated like a government officer (no incentive to cut costs to boost bonuses), Congress exerts significant political input into operational decisions, it does not compete with anyone inside or outside the U.S.

Competition is a bit of a red herring - it's not as if anybody is stopping anybody from starting their own train service in America tomorrow. The reason Amtrak is run like a government agency is because if they didn't offer routes at a loss, nobody would run those routes at all.

Germany also has many fewer freight trains than the US. Their rail network is optimized for passenger use, and it works well.

The US rail network is optimized for freight hauling (and it's largely owned by freight railroads and maintained at private expense, and those railroads turn a consistent profit). It also works well -- for its intended purpose.

If you want to move 3000 miles at 45 MPH remarkably cheaply, and you happen to be (or live in) a cargo container, the US rail network is built just for you!

DSB is NOT a for profit company in the normal sense. They rely on huge public subsidies to survive.

Nearly all the privatized rail systems share the characteristic that the government (in some fashion) still owns the underlying trackage/right-of-way.

This is not a bad model: the public retains the land and tracks, and provides them for private enterprises to run trains on, subject to some sort of coordination so you don't have wrecks.

That's similar to how many airports work, how the Interstate Highway System works, etc.

However, for historical reasons it's not how the US system operates, and it would be very difficult for the government -- absent a lot of spending that I doubt the public has the appetite for -- to acquire the land and rights-of-way.

On routes where Amtrak actually controls the underlying trackage, it operates quite well. Where everything goes to shit is when Amtrak operates on others' track.

If we really wanted a good passenger-rail system, what we would need to do is build dedicated passenger rail lines, totally separate from freight rail. The two types of trains are so different today that it doesn't make sense to run them together. High speed passenger trains do best on banked track, and not having freight trains around for them to run into allows you to use lighter rolling stock. Acela trains have been described as "rolling bank vaults" because of the collision protection they have to have -- simply because they're liable to collide head-on with a fully loaded freight train. There's no good way around it, except to stop mixing the two up.

> On routes where Amtrak actually controls the underlying trackage, it operates quite well. Where everything goes to shit is when Amtrak operates on others' track.

No it doesn’t. Amtrak owns the lines between Baltimore and DC. I used to commute it every day for two years and it was awful. Amtrak struggles to adequately maintain the northeast corridor, because as a result of government-imposed mandates, its operating profits from there go to subsidizing service on lines nobody uses. Similarly, Amtrak is just shitty at logistics and operations—planning around track work, giving updates about delays, keeping trains in working order, etc. Again, they have no mandate to turn a profit (unlike government owned rail lines in Europe) so they run like the DMV, rather than a rail carrier.

which is the government-run train service?

Could be wrong, but I think India and China rail is government run.

Maybe but the parent post is a bit confusing.

You know, I have a suspicion that the reason the US has poor government services compared to other countries is in large part because too manypeople in the US believe government services are poor.

If the wrong people get in charge (and very likely if the ideology is widespread) they make little effort to improve things other than to cut costs.

Competition usually improves things, it's true, but natural monopolies are still problematic.

Government services in the U.S. are both bad and expensive. The NYC MTA spends seven times as much money to build subway per mile than London or Paris. It spends about twice as much per passenger mile for subway service as London's Tube. We spend more per student than almost anyone else on schools. Why would someone in the U.S., confronted with the evidence, believe that government services aren't poor?

The US government should model its train service after Europe, since Europe clearly knows what it’s doing and the US clearly doesn’t.

Also, would you then be consistent and argue that the government shouldn’t be spending so much on highways for cars, since it’ll just waste that money too?

Or Japan. Privatize Amtrak completely.

The UK is case in point evidence that private railroad operations will not make it cheaper. Rail travel in the UK is insanely expensive and delayed.

There's no reason to think that what makes train service in Japan better than in America is related to it being privatized.

I have total faith that we could privatize Amtrak and have it be just as execrable in comparison. And then it would be sold off for parts, some assholes would get tremendously wealthy, and we wouldn't have any passenger rail network at all.

Japan’s rail lines were almost entirely developed by the government, and transferred to private companies later.

Private enterprise is great when taxpayers pay for the expensive part.

And, while Japanese rail service in general is pretty much as good as anyplace in the world, the Shinkansen is not inexpensive. It's nonetheless popular because HSR is a good match for the distances between a number of populous cities.

A key reason for American trains being bad is that demand is different. (Which to some degree is caused by offer)

The USA has large areas of sparsley populted land where flying for long distance, and car for the the closer area are hard to beat. This is way different from more densly populated Europe and even more densly populated Japan (especially when excluding Japan's motain regions)

If there were drive more more trains this would first require massive investment in infrastructure, to build both: the medium distance lines through populated area (for example along the east and west coast) as well as a network of connecting services fading out in the suburbs of the hub. Hardly anybody wants to go from hub to hub. If they need an car for "the last mile" anyways it's likely they won't take the detour to the train station and then having no way to continue on the other end ... If instead they can drive the complete distance.

Successful railways need a network connecting complete regions providing enough potential for a frequent service.

Building that requires huge support by politics/society.

>>Government services in the U.S. are both bad and expensive. The NYC MTA spends seven times as much money to build subway per mile than London or Paris.

This has basically nothing to do with the fact that it is government-run.

I don't know if you noticed, but building massive infrastructure cost a shitload of money for private enterprise as well.

London and Paris both involve massive infrastructure, too.

There is no good economic rationale for long distance trains. The only part of Amtrak that is actually profitable is the NEC, the rest of it generally loses money.

In other words, it doesn't enjoy the level of government subsidies that other forms of travel currently do?

Yes, exactly.

The question I'd ask is, other than preserving the way of operating that amtrak has, is it worth the subsidy - I'd say yes, preserving the knowledge of how to operate LD trains is important, so is offering the rural communities it serves transportation, I'd like to expand rail service even.

The federal highway system must be even worse then. It brings in zero revenue and costs way, way more than the trains.

Don't forget the usage tax we all pay for the highways via the Federal fuel tax. But I suppose that is not directly considered revenue.

Unfortunately that usage tax doesn't even begin to pay for maintenance and is subsidized from the general budget. Transportation funding is pretty bad in the US.

Exactly, how much does the EPA cost enforcing clean air and water standards?

I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast recently, and I'm currently in the post-french-revolution series of European revolutions. Kinda funny - France tried setting up some guaranteed-work promises and implemented them through a series of National Workshops, where you could theoretically show up, do some labor for the country, and go home after a full day with subsistence wages.

Of course, the people proposing/pushing for the idea and the people implementing the idea did not share a lot of membership, so the implementers put a person deeply opposed to the project in charge. Of course, no projects of use got approved, most of the projects that did get approved were obviously pointless and tedious, and they were constantly thousands of jobs short or what was needed to employ everyone who wanted work anyway.

So yeah, that's why we have the "digging and filling holes" analogy for useless make-work. Ideas are fine and all, but it doesn't matter for shit if you have an antagonist implementing them.

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