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#1 Travelers Shift to Rail as Cost of Fuel Rises
- Join Date
- May 2005
- Location
- Hartford, CT USA
- Posts
- 2,091
06-21-2008, 09:12 AM
As someone who takes the Amtrak a lot between the megalopolis and the Commie Cesspool, I can attest to this. The Boston-NYC-Washington trains are recently much more crowded, making the wait time in the cafe car to obtain a scotch significantly longer.
Travelers Shift to Rail as Cost of Fuel Rises
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — Record prices for gasoline and jet fuel should be good news for Amtrak, as travelers look for alternatives to cut the cost of driving and flying.
And they are good news, up to a point.
Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month.
But the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand.
Many of the long-distance trains are already sold out for some days this summer. Want to take Amtrak’s daily Crescent train from New York to New Orleans? It is sold out on July 5, 6, 7 and 8. Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 5? The train is sold out, but Amtrak will sell you a bus ticket.
“We’re starting to bump up against our own capacity constraints,” said R. Clifford Black, a spokesman for Amtrak.
The problem is that rail has shriveled. The number of “passenger miles” traveled on intercity rail has dropped by about two-thirds since 1960, and the companies that build rail cars and locomotives have also shrunk, making it hard to expand.
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06-21-2008, 12:40 PM
Didn't some asshole say recently that Americans 'Don't Have To Fly'?
At Coretta Scott King's funeral in early 2006, Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy, leaned over to him and whispered, "The torch is being passed to you." "A chill went up my spine," Obama told an aide. (Newsweek)
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SonnabendGuest
06-21-2008, 12:41 PM
Didn't some asshole say recently that Americans 'Don't Have To Fly'?
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06-21-2008, 12:48 PM
Joe Public? Not. Spend your travel dollasr in the United States. Screw countries overseas that have built their dreams on the backs of American tourist dollars. Business travel will continue, to a point, to the EU and Asia as before, because the corporations will fold that cost into the cost of their product. Regular citizens don't have that option. Go see the Grand Canyon and let folks on the Barrier Reef get a real job.;)
At Coretta Scott King's funeral in early 2006, Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy, leaned over to him and whispered, "The torch is being passed to you." "A chill went up my spine," Obama told an aide. (Newsweek)
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06-21-2008, 12:54 PM
At Coretta Scott King's funeral in early 2006, Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy, leaned over to him and whispered, "The torch is being passed to you." "A chill went up my spine," Obama told an aide. (Newsweek)
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SonnabendGuest
06-21-2008, 12:56 PM
Thank you. BTW - I'm in the aerospace industry and even I can see we can't afford the cost of jet fuel any more
This is an economic war. A war fostered by the current president.
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VeprGuest
06-21-2008, 12:57 PM
The do it yourself approach
http://www.ehow.com/how_2087260_cros...paign=yssp_art
Adventure and someone else pays for your trip! :D
http://www.sofmag.com/news/index.html
Or don't bother with travel at all
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...g_success.html
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06-21-2008, 01:00 PM
At Coretta Scott King's funeral in early 2006, Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy, leaned over to him and whispered, "The torch is being passed to you." "A chill went up my spine," Obama told an aide. (Newsweek)
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SonnabendGuest
06-21-2008, 01:07 PM
No, I'm an FAA Repair Station owner. And you're in charge of bed-pans.
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