The interview of Art Leahy, Metrolink CEO, by Dan Weikel was revealing. (LA Times, June 30th) The revelation is that there is no long term movement to make Metrolink a vibrant, relevant mobility option for large numbers of citizens. Nothing that Leahy said indicated a desire to do anything more than business as usual, except with…
In the United States, we have been running rail passenger service the wrong way for years. What we need is a rail passenger system. What we have instead is a fragmented series of services that that don’t connect with each or serve places when and where people want to travel. Often service providers look at…
If you asked Amtrak passengers if Amtrak management was competent after they spent a day on a train with a car that had a serious problem, what do you think their answer would be? Or passengers stranded for hours on a train first because of mechanical problems, but then because Amtrak didn’t have replacement crews…
Steel Wheels Conference 2016: A Year of Possibilities December 5, 2015 9:30 am – 3:00 pm Doors Open 9:00 am, with a break for lunch (not provided) Metro Boardroom, Los Angeles SUPPORT OUR LONG DISTANCE TRAINS! STEEL WHEELS 2015 Conference is your opportunity to show your support for the long distance trains. By attending this gathering…
There were a few news reports on June 27th of an Amtrak train from Chicago that was stranded overnight in Iowa because of a bridge wash out. This was the westbound California Zephyr leaving Chicago on Friday the 26th of June. What was not reported was that this train arrived at Emeryville 36 hours and…
The interview in the June 30th Los Angeles Times by reporter Dan Weikel with Art Leahy gave some hints of what the future plans for Metrolink are. What was missing in the interview was background information about what was discussed. Leahy in the interview makes it clear that his priorities are dealing with the problems…
The State of California’s official policy is to reduce its emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The Governor recently set a new goal to insure the 2050 goal is met by executive order for the State to cut its GHG emissions to 40 percent below those of 1990 by…
Almost every town that has railroad tracks with passenger rail service on them would love to have a train station. If a town has a train station, it would love to have every passenger train going past to stop at its station.The problem with that is if every train stopped at every station, you would…
What would travel on Amtrak’s long distance trains be like if there were no Dining cars?
The recent crash of Amtrak Train 118 in Philadelphia on May 12th set off a series of rhetorical contortions that tried to “blame” this crash on a lack of funding for the Northeast Corridor (NEC). As it turned out the crash was the result of human error. The errors were on the part of both…