I recently acquired the book with the title of this thread - Amtrak America's Railroad by Geoffrey Doughty, Jeffrey Darbee, and Eugene Harmon. Subtitled "Transportation's orphan and its struggle for survival".
It is an good read for those interested in how and why Amtrak got started including the flawed way it was created for which we still struggle today. The first chapter goes back into the 19th Century to explain how passenger railroads became a transportation monopoly and unfortunately were still treated as one even long after subsidized competition had totally changed the landscape.
The second part goes into the precipitous decline of passenger railroading after World War II. As seems to be typical with transportation policy in the US nothing happened until there was a crisis (the Penn Central bankruptcy). Initial ideas to subsidize passenger train losses were rejected due to fears of creeping nationalization. The formation of Amtrak was sold on the idea that it would eventually pay for itself, thus making the only form of passenger transport whose subsidies are treated that way, and which has plagued it throughout its existence.
I haven't gotten to part 3 (where do we go from here) and part 4 (the road to the future) yet but looking forward to it.
The book is published by Indiana University Press and is available from them or from Amazon. List price is $40 but Amazon is currently selling it for $32.49 with free shipping.
Link to Amazon
One thing this book has brought out for me is how we lack any real transportation planning in this country but just seem to lurch from crisis to crisis dealing with each one in a short term manner. A recent example is the Gateway tunnels. We have known for years that they need replacing but it wasn't until Sandy caused it to become a crisis that we finally started moving on it.
It is an good read for those interested in how and why Amtrak got started including the flawed way it was created for which we still struggle today. The first chapter goes back into the 19th Century to explain how passenger railroads became a transportation monopoly and unfortunately were still treated as one even long after subsidized competition had totally changed the landscape.
The second part goes into the precipitous decline of passenger railroading after World War II. As seems to be typical with transportation policy in the US nothing happened until there was a crisis (the Penn Central bankruptcy). Initial ideas to subsidize passenger train losses were rejected due to fears of creeping nationalization. The formation of Amtrak was sold on the idea that it would eventually pay for itself, thus making the only form of passenger transport whose subsidies are treated that way, and which has plagued it throughout its existence.
I haven't gotten to part 3 (where do we go from here) and part 4 (the road to the future) yet but looking forward to it.
The book is published by Indiana University Press and is available from them or from Amazon. List price is $40 but Amazon is currently selling it for $32.49 with free shipping.
Link to Amazon
One thing this book has brought out for me is how we lack any real transportation planning in this country but just seem to lurch from crisis to crisis dealing with each one in a short term manner. A recent example is the Gateway tunnels. We have known for years that they need replacing but it wasn't until Sandy caused it to become a crisis that we finally started moving on it.
