Save Amtrak

[TWA904]

Remember, with people getting on and off at stops along the way, and not staying on the entire

length of the trip, somewhere around 65% is considered full. So if most trains have a load factor in the 50% range, it is doing very good.

 

[the_traveler]

Remember, with people getting on and off at stops along the way, and not staying on the entire

length of the trip, somewhere around 65% is considered full. So if most trains have a load factor in the 50% range, it is doing very good.

An excellent point!

Take the Surfliner (which is unreserved) during the Del Mar racing season. It could be SRO from LAX to Del Mar, with only a few people continuing on to SAN. Even though it was 130% full out of LAX, it will only show it being filled (end point to end point) as 20% full!

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Although I try to use America's passenger rail options and recommend them to others whenever it makes sense I have no allusions to "saving" Amtrak in this manner. If every single one of us exhausted our credit lines and liquidated our savings and quit our jobs in order to ride Amtrak every single day for the rest of the year it would at most put a few million dollars in Amtrak's pocket. Unfortunately that's not nearly enough to save something as large as a continental transportation system. However, if we all spent the equivalent of a single long distance rail trip on a few key pro-rail political wins we could potentially provide Amtrak with tens of billions of dollars worth of long-term funding as a result. I'm not saying it's a probable outcome. I'm simply trying to point out that without a major course correction in our country's political arena there is nothing we can do that will have sufficient clout to save Amtrak over the long term. If you can think of another way I'm all ears, but so far I don't see one.