Recent content by cirdan

Interesting to read the claim that "Union Station in Tampa remains Florida’s second busiest passenger train station." I guess this claim means second busiest Amtrak station? Or would that claim genuinely also relate to any Brightline or commuter station?

The wording is a bit contradictory here. The article says the tunnel is being built through a working-class black neighborhood, which sounds at first like a massive swathe of urban destruction, until you think about it being a tunnel. That surely means it is being built under the neighborhood...

The alternative would be to design the cars to have a private office where the crew can retreat to do their paperwork or have their coffee break behind a closed door. If that happened we would probably be here now moaning over crew who disappear and cannot be found when needed and are...

My criticism is that Amtrak has no magic gold dust up its sleeve, but is weighed down by the drawbacks of being a government entity. Amtrak may have deep pockets in principle, but needs to spread that money thinly over all its various activities, and so will not somehow be able to magically...

Do the former ATSF bi-levels have any useful life left in them? I guess they were eliminated by Amtrak for a reason, and the many years of subsequent languishing in the open will not have improved them either. OTOH modifying commuter equipment would entail a near total rebuild, at least for the...

The current version of the plans feature one intermediate stop at Brazos Valley. I understand that stop will be served by a highway connection with parking facilities and that the proposal includes operating a shuttle bus to the nearby college. I do not think the rail line will come near many...

Texas HSR is planning to build everything from scratch. I do not think they will be crossing through any built up areas (except at the two ends). Thus conflicts with urban fabric will be at a minimum. Most of the alignment will be built on what is presently farmland. I do not think there will be...

I don't know how Texas HSR went about approaching landowners, but I understand that in France and Spain they did a lot of land-swapping deals. So they listened to farmers for example to understand why cutting up this field was going to damage the economic prospects of the entire farm, and then...

I understand local manufacturing is defined not by how or where stuff is assembled, but by the percentage of the total value that is created locally. This can mean that some of the sub-suppliers need to be local as well. Preferably the high value ones. Assembly is only a small part of the total...

The cynic in me says Amtrak may be good at the operating side of running a railroad, but doesn't have much of a track record when it comes to delivering major projects from scratch or pushing for service expansion. Such projects tend to take forever, and Amtrak, being directly answerable to...

Often this is a chicken and egg question. Car-centric cities tend to be spread out as they have no incentive to place things close together. Transit-centric cities often build around the transit stations with real estate closer to a station being more desirable and this reinforces the virtuous...

other factors might include status of airline competition, as well as speed, quality and reliability of the train service. Also of importance are the passengers generated by intermediate stations, connections to commuter lines and indeed local bus lines that could funnel in passengers. Not to...

from that point of view, yes. I thought you were implying that market share should necessarily be higher for places with lower population.

I would have thought it is inherently more rational to use infrastructure counter-cyclically. So if maintenance shops for example are working night shifts to turn around day trains for the next day, having a night train serviced during daytime hours is merely creaming off otherwise unused capacity.

shouldn't that be the other way round?