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- From: wbrill@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Warren Brill)
- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 16:04:34 GMT
- Subject: Re: The US Passenger Railroad Gap
- Message-ID: <122200182@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM>
- Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
- Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!hpscit.sc.hp.com!scd.hp.com!hpscdm!hplextra!hpfcso!wbrill
- Newsgroups: rec.railroad
- References: <1992Nov14.085532.4207@s1.gov>
- Lines: 50
-
- In rec.railroad, lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
-
- >
- > This may be old hat to some of you people, but here in the
- > United States, we suffer from a severe passenger railroad gap compared
- > to some of our economic competitors. I tried to estimate some numbers,
- > and I came up with, for the number of intercity trains dispatched a
- > day, of:
- >
- > Amtrak: 250 to 300
- >
- > [approximate count from most recent schedule]
- >
- > Europe: ~20,000
- >
- > [Thomas Cook schedule: crude estimate]
- >
- > There are no commuter trains in Amtrak's count, though some
- > _may_ be counted in the Thomas Cook schedule.
- >
- > Even the two schedule books show the rather glaring size
- > differential (about a factor of 100).
- >
- > I think that this would be a great thing for some pol to make
- > a fuss about:
- >
- > How we Americans are suffering from a dangerous Railroad Gap,
- > and how we must catch up, no matter what the cost, lest we fall
- > hopelessly far behind and lose rather badly.
- >
- > [in the spirit of other gaps that have plagued Americans, like
- > the bomber and the missile gaps]
- >
- This is interesting, from an employment point of view. Look at how many jobs
- the "missle gap" engendered, as well as ultimately, its effect on the space
- program. Next, look what's happenning now with the attempts at change from a
- "peace military" to a "peace...really" economy. Does the word "opportunity"
- seem appropriate? If even 10% of companies which ate from the trough called
- "military pork" switched to EFFICIENT TRANSPORTATION [read: rail] R&D and
- manufacturing, could we catch up to the [insert favorite non-US country which
- has "aced" a US industry lately] *************s? Now, what about SHARING
- some technology? sacre bleu!
-
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