Where on earth do people get the idea of "a profit" when it comes to any transportation system, let alone Amtrak!
Um, the thread title. Did you happen to notice it on the way in? ;-)
Personally, I don't expect Amtrak to turn a profit anymore than I expect I-10 to turn a profit. But, this
is America and the prevailing "wisdom" among her citizens is that trains need to either be profitable or abandoned. Don't get me wrong, I've communicated my support to my senators and my congressman, but from what I can tell most Americans don't use Amtrak and don't see any reason to keep it alive. And, honestly, I don't think Amtrak cares to improve much beyond what it already has either. When I heard Obama was big into "high-speed trains" I thought we were going to see a huge upgrade to our ancient system, but instead we got some shoe polish and a stack of cute logos to stick on our current trains.
Tired old waiting rooms.... How about the 4 Club Acela's and the Metropolitan lounge in CHI? Are you complaining about these? If you are refering to the Magnolia Room in NOL, it is in poor shape, but still nice to get into a quiet space...Also, why should Amtrak cater to rail fans? It would be nice, but how is it in their intrest to cater to such a small group. We don't provide nearly enough revenue to justify special treatment. I don't see it as anti-railfanning, just pro-doing-what-makes-sense for everyone.
At my recent visit to Union Station last week in Chicago there was no access to the trains unless and until you were given the boarding call for your specific train. In the mean time you could sit in an overcrowded generic waiting room that would be at home in a doctor's office. Just waiting among a mass of passengers bored out of their minds with no access to or visibility of any of the action occurring all around us. So I avoided the areas that were clearly marked with the no trespassing signs and went through some auto-opening doors to take a look at other tracks. No good, I still got the same old ***** welcome of "What are you doing here?!" and "You'd better delete whatever pictures you took!" before the inevitable brain fart of "Nine-Eleven! Nine-Eleven! Nine-Eleven!" I've seen similar setups at other large stations as well. Amtrak needs to realize that railfans may not mean much on our own but we're the folks who remind the non-fans that passenger rail travel even exists. In June I've been responsible for seven
Amtruck trips that never would have occurred without my continued enthusiasm for passenger rail. There may be more to come if Amtrak can get their act together. They can choose to push the fans away but then they're just left with their own non-existent media campaign, which I've never once seen outside of a station or depot in all my life. But hey, maybe what they already have is all they care to handle.
What you prescribe, opening up the platforms anytime, is IMHO dangerous for certain stations with narrow platforms / heavy congestion and can create security concerns. I am frankly surprised that the LAX platforms are always open.
So are you truly surprised that the LAX platforms are open or are you simply surprised that people aren't constantly getting run over or blowing up the station? If Amtrak is going to give us a tired old 1970's train ride the least they can do is give us an unfettered 1970's train spotting experience to go along with it. Instead they take ancient transportation technology and new hyper-inflated security and combine them to make the worst railroading experience possible. True, there are some pockets of advancement in a handful of blue states thousands of miles away from me, but the simple truth is that most of the Amtrak system is a tired old joke. I want it to succeed and become something we can all be proud of, but nothing I've seen here or elsewhere gives me much hope of that ever happening. Meanwhile I watch as more forward thinking countries like China (say what?!) pledge
and fund updates for their trains to use the latest and greatest technology and performance while we just sit and mumble about what might have been.