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Greetings! And welcome to the new blog U.S. Railroad & Passenger Rail. As you may know, I have been writing the blog Passenger Rail now for almost 10 years. In that time, a lot about railroads has changed. Unfortunately, we can't say that about Amtrak, which is still mired in the political horse manure of underfunding, overexpectations, equipment obsolescence, and general bad information about what passenger rail is and should be. However, new plans for High Speed Rail (HSR) have advanced greatly, many commuter rail lines have started or extended beyond what was imaginable a decade ago, and there is even one company willing to bet it can make passenger rail profitable without a government subsidy. However, in many states, the only way to keep passenger rail, whether local or Amtrak, is for the state to subsidize the routing.
On the freight railroad side, we are consolidated into five major systems and many, many shortlines that feed into those systems. Freight is up, particularly oil (something called Crude By Rail or CBR), even in the wake of some disastrous accidents. The railroads are investing more in capacity than ever before.
Last, but not least, the U.S. is still without a comprehensive transportation policy. This would be a policy that would address needs on a national level and allocate public money in a consistent way on which both freight and passenger rail managements could depend - much different than the willy nilly whim of political fashion that funds both Amtrak and public freight rail projects today.
So I no longer wish to focus on Passenger Rail. If you are reading this, you have probably been directed here from the railroadpassengers.blogspot.com site. I will no longer be maintaining and adding to that site, but I will gradually bring the archives over to availability here.
In the mean time, if you need anything in the way of source material from my older blogs, please use the CONTACT tab or let me know at mistertrains@gmail.com.
Thank you for being a loyal follower of this blog.
©2014 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com
