Recent content by volkris

Ha: selling tickets as a way to subsidize subsidies. What a world...

The problem is, operation logistics and politics are entirely intertwined. You want to plan your operational logistics so as to best serve customers, right? Well, government is effectively a huge customer of rail. The logistics have to spend their time weaving and adjusting to try to please the...

It goes back to the old question about whether trains are primarily transportation or recreation. Be careful about emphasizing the "journey is the destination" point of view; taxpayers aren't so keen to subsidize peoples' rolling vacations. Plus, I don't think most of the population is very...

No, it's not about whether money should be spent on rail. The decision to spend the money was made before Walker was governor, so he has no say in it. The only thing Walker can do now is work on ways to pay for the liability, and he's choosing to seek federal funds because that saves the state...

You guys are still missing the math here. This request means the state has to spend $12 million instead of $30 million, saving $18 million. Canceling the $810 million meant the state had to spend $0 instead of half a million a year, saving unknown millions of dollars going into the future...

The issue of turbine trains comes up in this forum about, what, twice a year? And it's a rehashing of the exact same script every time. Nobody learns anything from the other side. So I guess I'll go ahead and play the part of the pro-turbo side since it's been missing here so far: Modern...

For everyone wondering how the man can turn around like this, calling him a hypocrite and such, check out this link for a far less biased explanation than Huffington Post, which clearly cherry picked facts to hide the facts of the matter. The short version is that WI is already on the hook for...

We were between Williamsburg, VA and Richmond.

Well, this triggers an all-too-recent memory: Last year I was riding the Regional when the crew was pulled out of service for a similar rules violation. It was a horrible experience. From my memory, the train was stopped for about ten minutes before an announcement was made that we were...

Do you have a meta-analysis that disagrees with the one they presented or any reason to doubt that particular meta-analysis? This has nothing to do with gut feelings. It has to do with risk assessment. We see that smart, well meaning experts making projections very frequently come up with very...

This sort of analysis is actually not so uncommon in the real world. It's a meta-analysis, and it's a legitimate tool. After all, you point out that studies "done by people with actual knowledge and experience" said something. Well, how much trust should Florida put in their conclusions? Should...

Since a lot of people don't seem to have actually read the study they're so critical of, here's a link: http://reason.org/files/florida_high_speed_rail_analysis.pdf As you can see, the argument is not as you frame it. It goes through many reasons to suspect the ridership numbers as being too...

Rail is not a panacea for traffic. A whole lot of people wouldn't be helped in the slightest by that effect on the roadways.

That's right: the benefits and value of Amtrak cannot be translated into dollars and cents, so let's not embark upon the halfhearted attempts to do so. Let's not talk about giant profits of one route versus others, or about the cost per passenger mile being a reason to fund the system. Such...

Please don't fall into the trap of confusing honest ideological disagreements with gamesmanship by greedy politicians looking to screw over their constituents. People honestly disagree as to the value of rail and providing rail to citizens, and that's a rational, reasonable disagreement. After...