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Firstly -- and not to come off as a pedantic prick -- the proper spelling is Amtrak. Actually, Amtrak's true name is National Railroad Passenger Corp. (NRPC) and Amtrak is its public-friendly doing-business-as moniker. Secondly, there's an embarrassing amount of uninformed Amtrak mythology lingering about due both to a peculiar kind of irrational, almost pavlovian hatred of mass transit (ala cries of incompetence and thus for privatization) and a fundamental misunderstanding of the railroad transportation environment in general -- particularly as it works in the US. Amtrak desperately needs better PR and marketing, preferably with the aggression of a drooling, unfed Rottweiler looking at the airlines and publicly-funded highways as the only things standing between it and starvation. Disclaimer: I actually do work for Amtrak...
Outside of the Northeast Corridor (virtually all of the tracks and everything else from D.C. up to Boston), Amtrak owns very little of its own infrastructure, which means we're held hostage to whomever owns the right-of-way when moving trains outside that region. In the US, that's almost always a freight carrier and although we lease rights, the freights often fail to provide the agreed to level of service. All tracks may look alike, but there are actually 9 classes of track as designated by the Federal Railroad Administration, each with its own Maximum Authorized Speed. Anywhere from Class 1 (maxes out at 10MPH) to Class 9 (maxes out at 200MPH). Class is determined by track geometry (basically how the rails, sleepers, ballast, and substructure all interact). The higher the class, the lower the magnitude of deviations from construction standard you're allowed. To my knowledge, there's no class 9 anywhere in the US. The highest class (class 8, I think) is up around northern CT and RI. Further complicating the issue is that different types of rail traffic (light commuter vs. passenger vs. light freight vs. heavy haul) will substantially affect how your track structure degrades over time. Just as a constant barrage of tractor-trailer traffic will chew up a highway faster than passenger cars, so will heavy freight downgrade your track class faster than passenger traffic. Temporarily lowering your track class causes cascading delays throughout the rail network, screwing up on-time-performance and pissing passengers off.
Freight trains can't and don't move particularly fast. They don't need to. The companies that run them don't care. For a carrier like CSX or BNSF, keeping their tracks operating at class 3 may provide the ideal cost/benefit ratio. Class 3 limits Amtrak to 60MPH. If you've ever taken the train to New Orleans from DC, you'll notice it starts crawling for long stretches south of VA. That's why. Hell, most territory outside of the Northeast isn't even electrified, leaving diesels as the only feasible locomotives. When you start getting into scheduling actual maintenance for the railroads, it gets even more depressing. Even within the Northeast Corridor, the FRA requires Amtrak allow freights to run at night, giving the maintenance crews maybe 2 or 3 hours in a 10 hour shift to do actual work. In MD and DC, a lot of the tracks run through what's basically swamp. Mudspots and other geological constraints cause constant headaches.
There's a lot more involved, but suffice it is to say that rail transit ops in the northeast gets very complicated very quickly. When comparing Amtrak to rail in other countries, you'd be surprised by some things. For instance, the FRA in this country has some of if not THE most stringent testing requirements in the world. Most of Amtrak's accidents happen at grade crossings (where roads cross tracks) because people who drive are too dumb to realize that sitting in the path of an oncoming train might ACTUALLY mean getting hit by it. Unless they happen to be fundie loons, in which case Jesus will reach down from the sky at the last moment to save them. These people deserve zero sympathy. It's like sticking your hand into a garbage disposal, switching it on, and then being surprised when the first set of finger joints go missing. In the US, of course, people would either call for a ban on garbage disposals or legislate an amount of safety so absurd as to render them useless.
Amtrak also has the distinction of its Acela being the world's fastest trainset to run in a mixed-traffic environment.
And, no, Amtrak's conductors, engineers, etc. are NOT constantly wasted. Most Amtrak personnel take a large amount of pride in working for the railroad. Railroad workers also do not pay into social security, but instead railroad retirement. Railroad retirement is flush with cash, has defined benefits, and thus far immune from all the accounting voodoo that afflicts social security. It's a model pension system.
It'll be interesting to see how things play out when/if Amtrak's unions go on strike next year. Bush has already appointed his emergency 30-day board. This thing's been dragging on for 8.5 years. When workers went on strike in the late 20's/early 30's, there was a law passed forbidding railroad workers to strike for 9 years. Apparently that first major strike was just TOO effective. We've had some interesting debates on unions internally...
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