Manny, I seriously doubt you meant it as a compliment. Otherwise, why say it?
You don't know me, not a victim, and not offended, as I don't live in the city. 
Jim
Manny - It seems you would know it's not just the meaning of a word, but also the context in which it is used.
Let's not forget that Amtrak is a Quasi government entity. Mostly private with some federal rules. Without those rules they could get away with customer abuse. Let's not forget The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 is a United States federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices.[1]
Here is a lawsuit filed by Public Citizen (which is described by corporate media as "left leaning" to disparage it) that got little or no cable news coverage.
Beginning in 2019, Amtrak amended the terms and conditions for its passenger rail transportation services to include an arbitration provision that forces individuals into a private justice system that has no judge or jury, has limited right to appeal and is not bound by precedent. Amtrak’s arbitration provision states that it is “intended to be as broad as legally possible” – applying not only to individuals who buy tickets, but to “family members, minor passengers, colleagues and companies” for whom tickets are bought.
The provision specifies a litany of claims that cannot be heard in court, including negligence, gross negligence, disfigurement, wrongful death, medical and hospital expenses, discrimination and failure to accommodate an actual or perceived disability. The clause also prohibits class actions.............................................................................Amtrak, which began operating in 1971, is an institution of the federal government that must comply with the U.S. Constitution and acts only pursuant to authority delegated by Congress. Congress directed Amtrak to provide passenger rail services to America’s travelers; it did not authorize Amtrak to force travelers to waive their right to go to court if they are injured by Amtrak, the lawsuit says.
Yet complete privatization efforts have been going on for quite some time and continue to do so.
https://www.ble-t.org/pr/news/headline.asp?id=3873
The vehicle for this is corporate owned media who have reduced discussions to only three criterion:
1. WORDS - what someone said, slogans, grouping people into categories. Almost all American media is focused on Words. Take a look at the articles, take notes in front of the TV. See for yourself
2. TONE - How to read into what someone said if you want to put words in their mouthes.
3. OPTICS - statues, facial expressions, gestures, etc
What's missing? SUBSTANCE. In 1984 we had 50 independent news organizations. They have been consolidated into roughly six who have dumbed down the conversations into the three categories I just mentioned so that a politician in America today cannot even run for office without a slogan. If it isn't simplistic, it isn't newsworthy. People are now categorized and grouped by what they SAY and you can't tell the person grouping them otherwise. Even with the ability to do more research today than in the fifties, sixties, and seventies thanks to the internet people are somehow less informed and at each other's throats much more. Who benefits? Those who already have everything that own the media, the courts, and our politicians.
Rant over.
John
Total ground transportation: Amtrak and bus (Greyhound, Trailways, and other dependable companies) working together so people can travel the USA to many chosen destinations with no fuss or high blood pressure attacks.
Would not a USA rail/bus pass get the job done and not see any wars breaking out between them? A win/win situation or not? Let's hear your ideas please.
Jim,
Glad to hear you were not offended.
I've made an excellent living advising inner city elite folks, including some living in Manhattan. I doubt that they will ride trains much though.
I too have enjoyed riding the trains in Europe, but like most Americans, I am not ready to pay the very high income taxes they pay in order to get the service.
I have absolutely no doubt that Amtrak can establish long term passenger routes, from big cities to big cities. What I tend to doubt, though, is that they will make a profit based on passenger service for those routes. They will have to continue to get our tax money to survive, and will probably have to haul 50 cars of cargo behind the passenger cars to make ends meet.
Trinity, in the 1970s, Trailways offered the "Golden Eagle Line," than ran really nice new buses, on a non-stop basis, between major cities that were about 250 miles apart. The seats were really great, and they had a "Stewardess" on board, who wore a nice uniform and served box lunches and cold drinks. I use to ride it from Durham, NC, to D.C. about 4 times a year.
Rail and bus service will have to be fully integrated to make the system work.
Mannyrock
After I retired from my main gig I piloted a 19 seat airliner between Ely Nevada and Las Vegas. It was a government subsidized route. After airline deregulation many communities were left without airline service. We usually had 1 to 3 passengers each way. We were a private airline and not government employees.
Maybe it would be better if the existing railroads provided passenger service subsidized as we were. It would probably be cheaper than funding Amtrak.
(Based on pure guesswork with no facts to back up anything.) 
Mannyrock: Sounds like the Trailways Golden Eagle Line trips you took were more than just a way to get from point A to B for you but provided lot's of fun as well.
GV Dobler: In our globalized world today, I've often wondered why Austrialia's operator of long distant passenger trains hasn't considered running trains in America like they do with the Indian Pacific, The Ghan, Great Southern, and The Overland on the rails Down Under? As a subsidiary, it would provide the same type of excellent service in North America.
Check out Journey Beyond Rail Expeditions on YouTube. It's a great way to take the train over a good cup of java in the comfort of your home!
Item: The Indian Pacific includes auto racks so you can take the family vehicle with you much like AutoTrain does to/from Florida on the U.S. East Coast.
Joe US Army Transportation Corps 1964-67 49th Transportation Group (Germany)
I do get a kick out of folks who compare rail in Europe and Japan with the United States for two reasons:
1. At some point in the 1940's both Europe and Japan were encouraged to completely rebuild their rail infrastructure from scratch. Something happened to it.
2. Geography.
Jon 
To state that the war torn status of Japan and Europe was the sole reason for their modern rail lacks credibility. Further, Japan has extensive mountainous terrain. It isnt flat like the eastern seaboard (where the NE Corridor is just baaaaaaaad). Any extended rail trip in Japan will have you running along side mountain cliffs, at the edge of the ocean, _through_ mountains, across highly active seismic terrain, past locations prone to flooding and mudslides, you name it. Yet some how, even during the Great Tohoku Earthquake, _the rail never stopped running_. Moreover, Japan simply executed eminent domain anywhere they needed land, and did not muck about with NIMBYs. Fundamentally, the Japanese culture is about cooperation looking out for communal interests. There are a lot of negatives that come with such a heavy focus on the community over the individual, but mobilizing for the common good is definitely not one of those negatives.
Here is a good read on why their bullet trains never stopped, despite the enormous scale of the Great Tohoku Earthquake:
Terrifying.
Jon
The japantoday article is, and is not accurate. Would have to look to see why it was written the way it was.
Evicting people in Japan is a BIG nono. Again, comes back to community. But if you look at local and bullet train lines, you will see they rip right through neighborhoods and towns, splitting them in half, with weird, curvy roads to get through and under the line to the other side. Taking peoples rice fields is 100% free game. Kicking people out of houses, not so much. So generally, new lines and existing lines ran through areas where they could take the land, without impacting the community, and went to excessive lengths to ensure that neighborhoods/towns they bifurcated could still function as before. It is largely all done with these things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...sen_201408081002.jpg
that I cant remember the name of. It isnt a trustle... but like, a hm, i dunno. Someone knows the name of it probably. 
It demonstrates minimum land impact to ensure the route was executed on. Given that the MD maglev is also on piers like this, it is hard to see why it is such a huge deal here. The maglev project is in extensive collaboration with Japanese rail companies, but hey, we cant have nice things!
Re: US ED, look no farther than the mess the keystone? pipeline project was in before it was finally killed and burnt with fire.
The california rail project, land was seized, _but nobody is getting paid_. That isn't a very well organized project!
@Erik the Newbie posted:The japantoday article is, and is not accurate. Would have to look to see why it was written the way it was.
"Japan has very weak eminent domain powers, as evidenced by the high-profile opposition to the expansion of Narita International Airport, and the disproportionately large amounts of financial inducement given to residents on sites slated for redevelopment in return for their agreement to leave, one well-known recent case being that of Roppongi Hills."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
The Supreme Court in Japan by the way has 15 justices not 9. But they too are unelected.
John
Based on the threads title I just have visions, or is it nightmares, of enormous tidal waves of red ink. The scope of which would make the Cali Hi-Speed Boondoggle small in comparison and not to mention the adverse impact done to the valley farming areas.
@KOOLjock1 posted:I do get a kick out of folks who compare rail in Europe and Japan with the United States for two reasons:
1. At some point in the 1940's both Europe and Japan were encouraged to completely rebuild their rail infrastructure from scratch. Something happened to it.
2. Geography.
Jon
Jon,
I don't think that most of us are a naive as you might think. 
Will we ever have good passenger rail service though the entire U.S.? Absolutely not, and one of the main reasons is what you have stated, geography. After all, the U.S. is a really big place. Could we have better passenger rail service? Absolutely.
When I take trains in Europe, its usually trips of upwards of a couple of hundred miles. I can easily get from my hotel to a train station is city 1 (often without even a taxi) arrive at the station 30 minutes before the train leaves, arrive in city 2 and easily get to my hotel. If I fly, I usually have to take a long taxi ride from my hotel in city 1 to the airport, get there two hours before my flight, go through a long security line, fly to my destination, then have a long taxi ride to my new hotel in city 2. Train travel is a much, much, more relaxing (and often cheaper) alternative.
We also need to be careful when we talk about "Europe", as rail service is not the same through the whole continent.
I think we also kid ourselves when we talk about taxes and subsidization. Federal taxes help pay for air travel, roadways, and keeping waterways navigable. To be clear, I don't advocate spending unlimited money on upgrading passenger service in the U.S, but I think some degree of spending to improve this service really makes sense.
Jim
To put US spending on railroad subsidies in perspective:
1. US - $1.4 Billion
2. China - $128 Billion
3. India - $5.8 Billion
4. Russia - $1.5 Billion
5. Europe: Take the following chart and multiply Euros x $1.19 to get the figures
John
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Regarding the comparison of the trains systems in the U.S. vs Europe and Japan,
Do we need to consider that after WWII, the U.S. paid to substantially rebuild the infrastructure of most of those countries, through the Marshall Plan and similar programs? Their rail lines, being military targets for many years, had to have been substantially destroyed. Those countries may tout their great transportations systems, but the fact of the matter is that they would have been substantially third-world countries for 50 years after the war if we hadn't provided the financing to rebuild them. (Query: Did France ever repay its War debt to the U.S. after the War? I doubt it.)
One of my law partners, being 15 years older than me, grew up in Hamburg in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (His father was a Vice President of Ford Motor Europe.) He said that large areas of the city still lay in ruins and rubble at that time.
I don't remember hearing that the U.S. paid hundreds of millions (perhaps billions?) to upgrade our transportation system from the ground up after the War. (Perhaps the closest thing was the building of the Interstate Highway System in the early 1960s?) I can't remember when AMTRAK came into being. Wasn't it in the 1960s?
Mannyrock
Amtrak officially started operations on May 1st, 1971. President Nixon signed the legislation that brought Amtrak into existence. There has not ever been a significant investment in a national rail passenger network in this country compared to other forms of mass transportation.
https://www.cbo.gov/system/fil...-10/41955-Amtrak.pdf
This is an extremely long, painful read. If you asked why I bothered to read it, mostly because I was curious about the topic and wanted to further educated myself.
Two things were imminently noticeable:
Page 79 has an extensive list of Amtrak services that recover _less than 1/3rd of operating costs_. Not half, or 2/3rds. 1/3rd!!!
Page 46 demonstrates that TCO for rail per seat mile (in dollars) is .12, vrs buses at .04, and AIR!!! at .08. Thats right, TCO per seat mile is higher than even air! And this is back in 1980, before they jammed us all into planes like sardines. I am going on a vacay to Seattle from MD this late august, and I am not looking forward to being a sardine. :|
There are a lot of interesting figures in that document, that have held relatively stable over the years. Cbo.gov has other related Amtrak docs.
From CATO Institute: (https://www.cato.org/commentar...-no-way-run-railroad)
"Since 1972 Amtrak has received more than $13 billion of federal subsidies. Twenty‐five years later, Amtrak appears no closer to financial independence than the day taxpayer assistance began. "
So while I appreciate Mannyrock's fervor, the reality is that the feds (i.e. you and me and everyone else here paying taxes) have been pumping tons of money into Amtrak for an ever degrading service that has never taken a step forward into solvency. For 13 billion (and that isnt including what the dollars are translated to 2021 amounts after inflation), I would expect a ride where the food isnt horrible, the seats are somewhat comfortable, and the trips don't include a dozen of stops over a short 120ish mile hike on the NE Corridor.
For sure, I am tired of paying for Amtrak subsidies and not seeing any fruits for my loots.
Cest la vie.
Erik,
Thanks for that excellent factual information!
Mannyrock
