It is the layout. They had a nice bypass set up, but the first day the train derailed and it has just recently re-opened.
Sharing track with freight is a PITA: the freight trains don't care about going fast (so no really straight tracks) and they often have priority especially if the cascade is running off schedule, causing even more delays.
Not sure where they are going to build new straight-enough HSR track unless they employ lots of viaducts like china does.
Sharing the tracks is a huge problem that’s just becoming worse. Railroad’s have taken the strategy of running trains so long that they no longer sit in sidings. That means that it is now impossible for many freight trains to pull into a siding allowing other trains to pass. While Amtrak is supposed to have the right of way it’s often impossible for a freight train to do so. Additionally, railroads have shown no interest in lengthening siding or really any capital investment at all.
If you’d like to learn more about this and other issues with the way the US does railroads I’d recommend this podcast. It’s probably the least efficient way you could intake the information but I enjoyed it.
> While Amtrak is supposed to have the right of way it’s often impossible for a freight train to [pull in to a siding]
Sounds like the system is working as designed for the shipping companies - they no longer have to pull aside, wait for Amtrak to pass them by, and resume. Much less downtime with a bonus of having the too-long trains carry more freight per employee!
Well There's Your Problem is somehow most gloriously inefficient way to gain engineering information and yet somehow also the exact opposite. Rarely a regretted minute, even when you're, say, 40 minutes into Cold War geopolitics as a prelude to a tunnel fire.
Legally, Amtrak is supposed to have priority, and freight trains are required to pull off. But freight trains usually get priority because that's what the railway wants, and Amtrak doesn't have the political muscle to do much. But it's illegal.
I highly doubt Amtrak will suddenly run on time if enough people write Congress like their video suggests. The delays are egregious. Can’t they just pay for priority?
Demanding that a passenger railway be self-funding while also trying to massively increase its scope is... not a path for success. Unless I'm wrong you know of any continent-scale railways that bootstrapped themselves into success recently...?
A possible strategy is to use money from ticket sales to pay for priority, boosting on-time performance which increases the competitiveness of their product.
And for a large portion of their routes are already overpriced and less convenient than almost any other means of travel (except for a handful of actually reasonably-priced routes.
A local route on Amtrak costs almost $100 for a one way ticket traveling <200mi
A bus ticket for the same route is $30. The bus takes an hour longer.
I want amtrak to thrive, but they need to attract customers, not drive more away with higher prices.
Amtrak doesn't need priority, they need to run their trains on time. That means not running old worn out,.under maintained trains. They nees to leave on time, every time.
That also means fining the freights when they have the track blocked so they cannot get access in their allocated time which was planed months ago.
Amtrak are freeloading on privately built and maintained railways.
If they want better track alignments, or prioritisation over other users, they should come to a commercial agreement with the infrastructure owners like anyone else. Alternatively, they can build their own infrastructure.
Railroads in the US run through land donated by the government, on tracks given to the railroads by the government, supported with funds from the government. Despite all that aid, the government has had to step in with additional funding to ensure they don't go bankrupt many times, especially in the 1920s, 1930s, 1970s, 2000s, and during COVID.
Fulfilling their legal obligations to Amtrak is the least they could do. It's worth noting that the corridors where Amtrak did build dedicated track have the fewest delays and the best safety in the network.
I think you’ve misunderstood the arrangement. They were not granted the land where the rails were laid alone. They were granted vast amounts of additional real estate, and the value of that land could have maintained the railways in perpetuity. However, similarly vast fortunes were extracted from the railways instead, and the generational wealth created during these events in the 1800s has proved more durable than the commercial viability of the rails that the country had intended to support.
I gleened it from conservative economist Kevin Phillips' book Wealth & Democracy. I assume it's bog standard economic world building. Nothing I've read since has contradicted Phillips. (I'm noob, not some kind of economist. Though I did get to chat with Phillips one time and I felt like I understood his answers.)
What mental model do you prefer?
Or maybe you object to the implications ("logic") of this model. That notions like property, wealth, and government are social constructs. Just shared fictions which hopefully make the world a little bit more predictable (legible), without too much extra effort, so we can all muddle thru our daily lives.
I think the Homestead Act is a good example for explaining my objection.
First of all, I believe the government is the agent and servant of the people, not the other way around. Any government land is also owned by the people because the people own the government. The Homestead Act was a simple way of Distributing this land to to be held directly by the people instead of managing it on their behalf.
When considering the giving away of land, the government loses property. What the government gains is the hope or chance that people will do something productive with it. Even if those people only benefit themselves and retain the profits, they are increasing the economy and total wealth/value of the country. This is the repayment, and those individuals dont "owe" the government anything.
What I especially object to is the idea of retrospectively applied debt, often long after the fact.
You see this a lot in discussion of government grants for science and tech research.
The government creates and awards research grants to encourage development because the public would be better off if the medicine or whatever exists opposed to not exist, even if it is being sold for a profit.
However, when something does get invented and sold, some people then think the public is owed a debt. This isn't true. The government provided funding because it wanted the thing to exist. Once it exists, the government's objective and any obligation has already been met.
By analogy, imagine two neighbors. Neighbor A pays for the other (Neighbor B) to paint their house out of self interest, because it will make the neighborhood look better and raise their own property value. The neighbor B has fulfilled their obligation and any debt by painting the house. It is both logically and morally bankrupt for Neighbor A to come back at a later day and claim the other is in their debt, after they already got what they initially wanted and bargained for.
This comes back to the idea of the government as the "source" of all wealth, deserving repayment.
Like I said before, the government is important, and even essential for economic development.
Being essential is different than being the "source" or deserving repayment. A government built road is essential for me to get to work, however that doesn't mean the government is the source of all the work I did, or entitled to a share of my salary, provided I already paid my share for the road.
Not just the first day, but the very first run. They cheaped out and didn't build a bypass for a 30 MPH curve on an otherwise 80 MPH run. Which, while embarrassing enough, shouldn't have resulted in an accident even if the conductor missed the signage as they did, but wasn't because the railways successfully lobbied to delay rolling out Positive Train Control for a few more years. The entire event was just a perfect illustration of the disastrous state of passenger train transit in this country.
Sharing track with freight is a PITA: the freight trains don't care about going fast (so no really straight tracks) and they often have priority especially if the cascade is running off schedule, causing even more delays.
Not sure where they are going to build new straight-enough HSR track unless they employ lots of viaducts like china does.