DOT gets $4 million to advance 110mph Raleigh-to-Richmond train

High speed rail would be nice. Now have to figure out on how to get from Morehead City to Raleigh to catch the high speed or slow speed.

If there where a market for this, the private sector would provide the solution.

Who runs these lines? Amtrak. What does the inventor on Amtrak think about his idea - Amtrak?

"Amtrak Celebrates 40 Years of Failure"

Last week, Amtrak began a week-long celebration marking its 40th anniversary. Unfortunately, given the company’s track record and inability to turn a profit throughout its tenure, even Amtrak’s founder notes that there is not much to celebrate.

Officially known as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, the company was created during the Nixon administration. As observed by The Blaze, Amtrak is “government owned and controlled, union-operated, employing more than 20,000 workers, led by a CEO appointed by the president of the United States, and maintains an annual budget that is allocated by Congress.”

While it seems fairly predictable that such a company would fail, Anthony Haswell, founder of the National Association of Railroad Passengers and the man widely recognized as the inspiration for Amtrak, had high hopes for the project. Forty-years later, however, the embarrassment and inefficiencies of the endeavor have been impossible to ignore, prompting Haswell to write the following piece on Amtrak:

Amtrak is a massive failure because it’s wedded to a failed paradigm. It runs trains that serve political purposes as opposed to being responsive to the marketplace. America needs passenger trains in selected areas, but it doesn‘t need Amtrak’s antiquated route system, poor service and unreasonable operating deficits.

The preliminary program review for the High-Speed Train project in California started in 2002. Once they chose the specific corridor, they had to do the EPA's project review, which started in 2007. The final review is scheduled to be completed in October 2012. Exactly how long do you think this project in North Carolina will last on Congress's budget sheets? And, yes, I have traveled to Baltimore, by train on this route, multiple times over the past 30 years. It comes to a complete halt, for hours, in D.C., where you have to switch from diesel to electric. That bottleneck is not solved under this plan. It just allows trains that pass from Raleigh to Richmond to avoid sharing the tracks with the Fayetteville to Richmond trains. When they join back in there, you will have a new bottleneck. North Carolina spent billions on the Global Transpark because they got sold that it was the wave of the future. It failed to live up to all the hype. This will too! 

The Jim Hunt Honorary Rail Detour Through Wilson is the most maddening part of what is otherwise a phenomenally pleasant way to get to DC.  (Beats the pants off of 95 or RDU.)  The train crawls along on old track throughout this stretch, after skipping lightly through Virginia, then proceeds to spend 10-15 minutes at each stop.  Between the stations, the Amtrak frequently has to pull off and stop on sidings for 10-20 minutes stretches to wait for a freight train to roll past.  Simply not stopping three times should be sufficient to knock 30-40 minutes off the trip, and not having to yield in the busy freight corridor should do wonders. 

I have a lot of friends and family in DC, so I make this trip frequently.  If this project gets finished, I'm not sure I'll ever drive 95 to get there again, unless I'm hauling something heavy.