Most people look to the airlines for their long distance travel needs. If you talk to many air passengers, few seem to know anything about train travel, especially LD train travel.
US Airlines carry something like 800,000,000 people per year. I believe that last year Amrak served just short of 30 million pasengers, but only a small amount rode the LD routes. I cannot find the figure but we may assume that its only 10-12% of the pasengers.
Then we may ask, why don't more travelers use Amtrak? Up until 6 years ago, I was one of those travelers that used airlines almost exclusively for LD travel. The other percent was handled by car. This all changed when I suggested to my wife that we take the AutoTrain to Florida. NOw all of our LD travel is by train but we confine that travel to trips with one overnight and those not more than about 27 hrs, at least so far.
IMO the reason that more travelers do not use the train is because they know little to nothing about it. I talk to my friends, neighbors and relatives about it and they cannot imagine what train travel is like. Most of them say "I can get there is a few hours by plane so why should I take an overnight trip"? When they ask why do you take the train, we simply say "because we like it".
The point is that the most of the traveling public is ignorant about rail travel. Amtrak is poorly marketed and still remains a very low priority in government circles. Government will heavily subsidize airline travel with trillions but is very stingy when it comes to Amtrak. Amtrak recieves less than 1% of the total transportation budget and it still creates a controversy amoung the politicos. This was the philosophy when the Nixon administration formed Amtrak (yes folks Amtrak was formed under a Republican administration) and it still continues today. Under a succession of both Democratic and Republican administrations things haven't changed very much but at least the downsizing has slowed in recent years.
US Airlines carry something like 800,000,000 people per year. I believe that last year Amrak served just short of 30 million pasengers, but only a small amount rode the LD routes. I cannot find the figure but we may assume that its only 10-12% of the pasengers.
Then we may ask, why don't more travelers use Amtrak? Up until 6 years ago, I was one of those travelers that used airlines almost exclusively for LD travel. The other percent was handled by car. This all changed when I suggested to my wife that we take the AutoTrain to Florida. NOw all of our LD travel is by train but we confine that travel to trips with one overnight and those not more than about 27 hrs, at least so far.
IMO the reason that more travelers do not use the train is because they know little to nothing about it. I talk to my friends, neighbors and relatives about it and they cannot imagine what train travel is like. Most of them say "I can get there is a few hours by plane so why should I take an overnight trip"? When they ask why do you take the train, we simply say "because we like it".
The point is that the most of the traveling public is ignorant about rail travel. Amtrak is poorly marketed and still remains a very low priority in government circles. Government will heavily subsidize airline travel with trillions but is very stingy when it comes to Amtrak. Amtrak recieves less than 1% of the total transportation budget and it still creates a controversy amoung the politicos. This was the philosophy when the Nixon administration formed Amtrak (yes folks Amtrak was formed under a Republican administration) and it still continues today. Under a succession of both Democratic and Republican administrations things haven't changed very much but at least the downsizing has slowed in recent years.
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