Those early morning / early evening trips are packed with other business people doing the same thing you're doing. Full train of people quietly working/reading, maybe talking to a colleague. Very civilized.
The few times I had to travel mid-day on the same routes? Shit shows of confused tourists, kids who don't want to sit still for 3 hours (don't blame 'em), and all manner of "what can go wrong will" (delays, issues with the heat/ac, issues with passengers, etc).
Its like there's two parallel dimensions of Amtrak out there.
I'd choose Amtrak 100% of the time for business travel if its an option, 0% of the time for pleasure.
Same reason people in rural or suburban communities subsidize city buses?
What about police services and ambulance services for a poor versus rich person visiting that neighborhood?
This already happens in some places, but I don’t think it’s practical or fair.
Why should anyone in the society give a fuck about anyone else in society? Maybe the answer is because people think it's better for the society, as a whole, when various things are supported by all.
I’m not advocating “everyone for themselves.” But I don’t see why the national government needs to subsidize a service that overwhelmingly benefits just a single region. It’s not like Medicare or social security that can be used by anyone. Trains only go to a well defined set of places. We could have an interstate compact approach instead, like we do for things like WMATA.
I also don't have kids so let's get rid of all the schools.
Rayiner clarified and meant there should be geographical considerations to some subsidies:
> "It’s not like Medicare or social security that can be used by anyone"
Schools and federal court would fall under that categories of medicare and social security.
I think my basic point stands up pretty well though.
The entire class of arguments along the lines of “why should we do X when only some of the people need/want X” just has no value at all.
There’s no coast guard in Iowa either. Or avalanche prevention.
Why is geography the privileged metric here? It only matters if things are segregated by location, but not if they are segregated by age? Medicare is a subset of Americans too. So are people of school age.
You can argue the programs on the merits of course, and say that it’s too niche, or panders to special interests in a way that’s harmful.
But to just make the facile point that a government program contains an element of some people subsidizing something that benefits other people adds literally zero to any discussion. That’s a characteristic of literally all government actions.
Because there are 50 different sovereign states cooperating within a federation. Also, because we shouldn’t let the NYC-DC corridor become Trantor.
We’re talking about interstate transportation here. If you envision even the absolutely shortest list of things for a federal government to be involved in that’s going to be on it.
Almost everybody agrees in funding the court system because it's an essential function of government that's required for society to function, even if you're not using it now, you want it to be there for you if you're assaulted, defrauded, your kid gets kidnapped, your spouse gets murdered, etc.
The same cannot be said about having a good train system. That's surely nice to have but society can get along fine without it (as it does today). Thus it's not obvious that the government and its monopoly on violence need to get involved at all. Opinions other than yours are perfectly legitimate on this issue.
The question we ask should be something like “should we subsidize these trains” or similar. You’re making merits based arguments in your reply. I strongly disagree with you, as interstate transportation is a core government function in my opinion, but those are differing opinions.
The commenter I’m replying to says the question we should ask is “why should people in Iowa pay for this”
I think that question is meaningless, because literally all government functions involve all people paying for something that only benefits some of the people.
As such, pointing out that fact adds nothing to the conversation, because it fails to distinguish between valid and invalid ideas for government programs.
Less than half of college students say they want kids, and yet something like 80% of Americans end up reproducing at some point in their lives.
Personally I try to assume that I'm not magic and different because of my generation. It's lazy thinking. Yes, Millennials might be unicorns. But it's also possible that humans just find kids more attractive as they get older.
Since the latter seems to have been the case in American society up until now, I think the policy of making people fund schools even when they claim they're not interested in kids is reasonable.
Thanks for the downvote and the one liner though, I didn't feel like I was getting enough Twitter in my diet today.
It’s not like we are federally funding a rail between Nowhere and Whocares. It’s the business and academic districts of Boston, NYC, Philly, DC.
And those gains are ultimately, you know ... taxed.
Considering net tax spending heavily goes from the eastern corridor to places like Iowa, though, they’re welcome to cut off their contributions as soon as they cut off their acceptances as well.
Amtrak has always been a company with two halves, and Congress really should just split it to stop this Jekyll and Hyde tug of war about what exactly the company is supposed to do.
edit: My mistake, Milwaukee.
https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
A nice statistic would be some kind of report about travel times, densities and total populations. Looking at the map, there's some people that live at lower density that have a nearby station and then most people that live in metros have a nearby station.
If that's true, it seems like those communities would be better served by subsidized long distance bus travel instead.
I understand that doesn't make a whit of difference to congress, though.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-RCED-95-138/h...
People in America are diverse, with diverse preferences and needs.
I love taking Amtrak, and happen to live on one of the cross-country routes. I prefer it to airline travel in all ways. Clearly, the routes are sparse, so it does not always work out for me. But as a remote software engineer, I can work from the train, I can relax and read a book, and watch the scenery go by. The extra time it takes is not a problem. It is a great change of pace to sitting in my home office.
There certainly are people who disagree, but generalizing that the whole country refuses to use the service is simply incorrect.
Personally for Boston to NYC, I prefer the bus. It’s $15, faster than the train, more reliable and plenty comfortable for a few hours. Boston to DC I’d probably fly.
Trains by contrast are actually a pleasure to be on; I'd rather be on a train than my own couch at home. Compared to buses, Amtrak trains have less shaking, less unexpected accelerations, more space to walk around, better scenery, and fresher air. In my opinion the only form of transit better than train is a ferry.
For my commute, there is a bus, an regional rail and Amtrak. (And driving.)
The bus is potentially the fastest, about 2 hours door to door, but for about half the trip I'm unable to do anything but stare straight ahead and focus on keeping my stomach settled, and about 1 in 10 trips there is a traffic delay that makes it take 3+ hours.
The regional train varies between 2.5 and 3 hours, depending on how many stops that particular train makes, but it leaves me on the wrong side of town and the last fast train is at 7am.
Amtrak is best for me, more coincidentally, because it happens to stop near my workplace, and because it makes few stops it's as fast as the fastest regional trains, for an average door to door of 2.2 hours.
Both the regional and Amtrak trains tend to have delays about 1 in 50 rides or so, usually about 30-60 minutes.
(Driving is about 2.5 hours door to door, parking under my workplace, and costs as much as a bus or train just in tolls and parking.)
Can you not get a ticket for $5 anymore? In the post-FungWa vacuum it seemed like everybody and their brother was running a bus line that charged $5 for a 1-way to NYC.
I went to visit my friend in Virginia. I took the AmTrak from Minneapolis out to the East Coast. It was basically hell until we got into Philly. Then it was just commuter rides and few switch overs until I was in DC. Then my friend picked me up and promptly got lost and dropped us into one of the worst neighborhoods in DC, but that's a story for another day.
Basically the long haul was horrendous. Bumpy and loud and people constantly bothering me for one thing or another. I didn't get a wink of sleep until we hit Philly. The commuter trains I took were like a library. Quiet, smooth and nobody bothered me at all. I figured if I lived on the East Coast, I would probably use the train to commute, but those long rides across the country were painful - I'll never do that again.