Hyperloop technology could eliminate weather delays in the near future.

[Mushroom]

Since you obviously think I am joking...

The Capitol Corridor is a 168-mile (270 km) passenger train route operated by Amtrak between San Jose and Auburn, California. Most trains operate between San Jose and Sacramento, roughly parallel to Interstate 880 and Interstate 80. Some trips run from Oakland to San Jose, while a single daily round trip runs all the way from San Jose to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.

Auburn is actually a town about 40 miles farther East, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

During fiscal year 2017 the Capitol Corridor service carried 1,607,277 passengers, a 2.9% increase over FY2016. Revenue in FY2017 was $33,970,000, a 5.3% increase over FY2016, with a 57% farebox recovery ratio. It is the fourth busiest Amtrak route by ridership, surpassed only by the Northeast Regional, Acela Express, and Pacific Surfliner. In large part due to the route's success, as of 2017, Sacramento is the busiest station on the route, the seventh busiest in the Amtrak system and the second busiest in California.

The Capitol Corridor is used by commuters between the Sacramento area and the Bay Area as an alternative to driving on congested Interstate 80. Monthly passes and discounted trip tickets are available. Many politicians, lobbyists, and aides live in the Bay Area and commute to their jobs in Sacramento, including those connecting to the train via Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach from San Francisco, while workers in the Oakland, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley employment centers take the Capitol Corridor trains from their less expensive homes in Solano County and the Sacramento metropolitan area.

Starting on August 28, 2006 the Capitol Corridor had 16 weekday trains each way between Oakland and Sacramento, up from twelve in 2005 and three in 1992. (Seven of the sixteen ran to/from San Jose.) According to its management, ridership on the Capitol Corridor trains tripled between 1998 and 2005. On August 13, 2012, the Capitol Corridor dropped from 16 to 15 weekday round trips between Oakland and Sacramento; one round trip was discontinued due to high fuel costs, low ridership, and a new ability to store an extra train overnight in a Sacramento railyard.

Capitol Corridor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I worked at a "Dot Com" in SF, and they even offered to pay a percentage of your fare if you used mass transit. When I started I was the only one that took the ferry. But by the time I left, 3 others were taking it (but from Oakland and not Vallejo).

Amtrak is owned and operated by the government as Amtrak went bankrupt, passenger rail is almost dead while freight is doing well

Once again, government mismanagement. That to me was the single biggest case I can think of where it should have long ago been turned over to a company to run.

I actually used to take the train a lot. Several trips in the 1960's and 1970s from LA to San Francisco. In the 1980's it was my normal way to get from Camp Pendleton to where my dad lived in LA. I even took it when I returned from deployment to get from the Naval Air Station at San Diego to where my wife was in LA. But over the decades they have killed more and more lines, removed amenities, and raised prices. It simply makes no sense anymore to take the train for travel, they have destroyed it as a workable system.

I wrote an article about this decades ago for a now gone Internet Magazine, and laid out most of their problems. First was when they destroyed the "Rail Pass" system. Until the 1980's, it was a great system. Buy a pass for 7-30 days, hop on and off the train whenever you wanted. College kids loved it, as did families on a budget. But first they restricted the number of times you could get off, then added in things like fees to change trains and more insanity. They still have it, but why? It is now more expensive than just booking your trip as usual.

In the early 1980's, the train from San Diego to LA (and on to San Francisco and Seattle) and was almost always full. Now, the coast route only goes to San Louis Obispo, and it jumps inland for most of that route. $135 and 36 hours, I can fly nonstop for less than that in 2 hours. Even more insane, I have had to take multiple trips for the military. Sometimes 2 or 3 states away, sometimes across the country. Multiple times I even tried to arrange to take a train, but it was refused as it exceeded the allowable budget for the trip.

OK, now seriously, WTF? The government owns the system, and yet they will not let me take it because it costs to much? That is some serious Orwellian garbage there, they should be pushing their own employees to take the system, we could probably get better and more service from that alone, with all the government employees that fly all over regularly. That alone screams that they do not know what in the hell they are doing.

But the real problem started in the early 1990's when they killed smoking. Already by then, smoking was restricted to the last car in the train only. They could have kept that in place, and likely picked up a lot of travel from smokers. But nope, kill that also. My son used to take the train from LA to visit us in El Paso (and later from LA to Fairfield), and he said he hated that part. Could only have a smoke every 3-4 hours, having to rush off, get it down then back on the train in 15 minutes or less. Then they killed the club car, and finally the dining car. Now, if you want food it is only a snack bar with sandwiches, or things you can heat in a microwave.

And the fares! Good god, it is cheaper to fly across the country in most places than a few hundred miles by train.

Most countries can make their trains at least break even. And even if not, the huge ridership keeps them open. The US Government can do neither one, because they refuse to listen to experts who have been telling them for decades how to get people back on them. Cut the price, make it attractive for people to take the train again. But it is like they are doing everything in their power to kill what is left other than their commuter services.

 

[Dusty]

So you figured out

That you're a gas industry shill.
Now piss off before I have to have you banned from this thread.

Wow so you are totally incapable of dealing with the fact that bullet trains are impractical because it takes 50 miles to accelerate one to full speed and as long to decelerate making local travel impossible. LOL if you are so bright you can build one yourself and charge everyone who wants to ride a quarter. So where are the billion wind turbines coming from?

It does not take 50 miles, Even the older trains in Japan can reach their top speed of 170 MPH (270 km/h) in less than 3 minutes, a little over 5 miles. And most of that is at a lower speed, as it is still in the terminal area, and it can not really begin to speed up until it gets to its clear track area.

A lot of countries unlike the US are simply built better for such an infrastructure. The US has the highest rate of private auto ownership in the world, which means in the last 70+ years, "urban sprawl" has meant that you have cities that are now larger than many European countries, all fairly densely packed with no open areas between the cities to put in the rails needed. A visit to much of Europe and Japan, and it resembles Los Angeles before the Second World War. A series of small towns, some even dozens of miles apart with open spaces and farmland between them.

But today, if you start at the Santa Barbara Mountains to the North of LA, the only open space all the way to the Mexican Border is the Marine base at Camp Pendleton. It is now a huge megacity, that covers most of the Southern part of the state. Nowhere to put in such a system, even if they wanted it.

Where there is space there is no one to travel, remember that a hundred billion dollar train has to serve millions of people, you think that there exist such traffic between here and the border. Sheesh wake up

No, I do not miss it.

I am well aware that such a system will never work in the US anymore. Bullet trains missed their window in the US, other than in a few select locations. For most of the country, they would just never work. Ever.

I can see a few possibilities, but there are few. A line from Sacramento to San Francisco would still work, as would extending it to Stockton. But that is about it, purely for access between those cities. Not the state-wide mess they are trying to build now. Los Angeles and Vegas was a very super route, 40 years ago. I think a "high speed" solution between those cities would still work today, but not a "Bullet Train" anymore. Simply because the Indian Casinos in California have sucked up a lot of the business that would have taken it decades ago.

I could also see one in some other areas, like to and from say Seattle and Spokane (maybe extending to Boise then Salt Lake), Miami and Atlanta, maybe even at a stretch from Dallas to New Orleans. But nothing of a scale that most countries have, we simply have city density, geography, and topography that would work against it.

I will admit, I am a life long "rail fan", and love the idea of rail travel. But I am also a realist and a pragmatic person, and see the real issues involved. Is there a place for regional lines? Sure there is, but each decade means less and less as the right of ways are gobbled up by urban sprawl. 40 years ago, you could have built such a train from pretty much downtown LA to Vegas, but not anymore. The same with a plan to go to San Diego. What was 40 years ago still mostly farms and open land is now dense city, no way to run a bullet train through it anymore.

There are not enough travelers between any two American cities to make a near trillion dollar rail system profitable which is why no such system exist.

Who says it needs to be a "trillion dollars"?

The problem is, you are listening to the idiots running the California project. They are morons, creating a system that will fail spectacularly.

Are you even aware that they were once working on replacing the Capitol Corridor with such a line, and the cost was only around $125 million? They were making an offer to buy older trains from Japan, and simply upgrade the existing line between those two cities. Pretty much how the system in Japan evolved. The line was already popular, and until 2019 (COVID) saw an increase in ridership every year, with more trains needed to meet demands.

But Bonehead Moonbeam Brown nixed it, and instead went for the most insane and expensive idea possible. Likely from spending too much time doing headstands in yoga. The original "Northern California Concept" which he took over and crushed was actually a recreation of a line from 100 years ago. And yes, 100 years ago there was actually an electric train system that went from Chico to Sacramento, then all the way to San Francisco (with a spur to Stockton). They were going to make a newer Sac-SF line, which could have been profitable within a decade because they already had the right of ways and ground assets. All it needed was new rails and rolling stock.

Now, they have sunk over $100 billion in a train to and from nowhere, that even if scrapped will never make its money back.

Such a system never needs to cost "trillions of dollars", that is only because of the morons in California. All other cities and states that have looked into it all are considering using existing right of ways, existing lines and stations. And mostly with surplus trains from other countries. Only one was stupid enough to decide to build the entire thing from scratch, and not use assets they already owned.

Again you are lost in the fact that bullet trains are technically feasible. They are not financially profitable and every person who rides the trains would need to fork over 10,000 per ride. This is why the Concord failed, it just used too much fuel and there were not enough riders. You are a communist sympathizer masquerading as a socialist train builder. Your world is a failure and a farce and you will never ride a 300mph American train to no where. I wonder do you even own a car or you just want the government to transport you by rail

Are you aware that the ridership of the Capitol Corridor before COVID was just under 2 million per year? a 168 mile route, that takes just over 3 hours. I knew several people that took it every day to get to and from Sacramento and San Francisco for work. In 2018 they finally had to start their delayed rebuilding project, which is what they wanted to use as a test for a bullet train. They already had to replace all the trains and rails, so why not upgrade it to a bullet train at the same time?

Cost of the rail replacement was around $125 million, double that to $250 million to make it a bullet train, and the time would be cut to just over 1 hour. I have done the SF commute, the last station would have been about 15 minutes north of where I lived. I did either a 90 minute motorcycle ride, or a 30 minute drive to the ferry terminal and a 1 hour boat trip to get there. I would have been glad to drop either one for a 15 minute drive, and about 25 minutes on the train. And the ones that run that system knew it.

The problem is that you are thinking like the morons that are running the California project. You are looking at huge projects, and missing the fact that smaller ones do not have to be that expensive. They were once looking at similar routes in Southern California, but urban sprawl and topography have cancelled all of those plans. They were looking at a similar system from Boston to DC, but once again urban sprawl eventually killed it.

"Bullet Trains" do not have to go "300 miles per hour", they do not have to go 1,000 miles or more. We already have people that take trains hundreds of miles every day, that is nothing new. The CC was going to have a top speed of around 150-180 mph, that is the speed of most bullet train routes. Not "300 mph". And I can promise you that if it was possible, I could name 100 or more cities that could do that easily, if not for other factors.

Primarily urban sprawl and topography. Not because the people would not use it. You need a very wide right of way to run such a train, and not many places still have a rail right of way wide enough to run them safely at more than 60 miles per hour anymore. And cities like LA have the very topology working against them. That city is a collection of almost a dozen little valleys, impossible to run such a system through.

Now if they had built one 4 decades ago, I have no doubt it would still be in use today. But as I said, they missed the boat and now it is to late.

Dude your friends have no life, a 3 hour ride to work is 6 hours round trip not counting time to the train on each end so your friends traveled 7 hours per day and worked 8 hours for a 15 to 16 hour day, with 8 hours of sleep they had no life. You need to stop pretending and act your age, whatever that really is. Not that your post is real because a 3 hour ride or 168 miles is .93MPM or 55MPH. God you are stoopid, is this a government retard alert test. Some train, is Fred Flintstone pushing it with his feet? No one travels 7 hours per day, not anyone alive anyway

Welcome to living in California. Which is why I no longer live there. I left LA in 2003, moved to the Bay area in 2012, left there in 2015, and left the state for good in 2020. I will never live there again.

But no, I am not kidding. When you work in say San Francisco or Los Angeles, you have to decide to make a tradeoff. Do you spend most of your income on rent, maybe living in an apartment or in a not so great area of town in exchange for being close to work? Or do you do a long commute and live in a nicer area.

About half of those I worked with in SF were locals, and walked or biked to work. Where $3,000 a month gets you a loft apartment without a parking space. Me, I lived in Fairfield. Where for less than that I had a nice 4 bedroom house in the suburbs. When I lived in LA, most of my time I lived in Lancaster. Yet I worked near LAX, over 100 miles away. Once again, did I live close and rent a place in a crappy neighborhood, or live and commute where I could afford to own my own place in a nicer neighborhood?

And you can see this growth in LA over the decades. When I was a baby and my parents moved to the San Fernando Valley from the Long Beach area, that was the "suburbs". By the time we left in the mid-1970's, that was Simi Valley. When I returned in the early 1980's, it was the Santa Clarita Valley. By the 1990's, it was the Lancaster-Palmdale area in the Mojave Desert. In 1995 I lived on the most northern road in Lancaster, Avenue I. Today, my son and father in law live on Avenue E. Each letter is a mile apart, so even though I have never been there, I know that is 4 miles North of where the city used to end. And when they hit Avenue A, that is literally the Kern County Line, there it becomes Rosemond (and people already commute from there), just a few miles outside of Edwards Air Force Base (yes, where the Space Shuttle landed).

This is a where around LA, it is common for an 800 square foot 2 bedroom bungalow to cost around $1 million. And if you can do the 2-4 hour commute, you could own a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath 1,600 square foot house for around $650,000. Feel free to ask anybody else in here that has ever lived in LA, San Francisco, or other major metro area in the last 20 years. I knew people in Connecticut that did similar trips via train to New York, and that is also nothing new. The "New York Dream" of owning a house in Connecticut has been around for decades, even I Love Lucy featured that towards the end. Ricky made it big, they moved to Connecticut, and he commuted back to New York to work.

Hell, Allan Sherman even immortalized it in a song way back in 1963.

Now I have a big office at the end of the hall,
With very fancy carpeting from wall to wall
I keep my mouth open and I keep my ears shut,
And I've got a little palace in Connecticut

And yes, 3 hours each way. What, how fast do you think most trains run in the US? 55 is their speed limit in most places, the rails can't handle them going any faster. They do better in many ways because there is no traffic, and you can sleep or read on the trip. But really now, government conspiracy? I can tell you have just never had to make those choices because you never lived in a big city.

But tell you what, feel free to listen to the LA traffic someday, say on KFI. You can stream them for free, and have a map open in front of you. When I first moved back to LA in the 1990's, State Route 14 (north edge of LA city to Palmdale-Lancaster) was still a 2 lane freeway in each direction. Now it is 4-5 lanes in each direction, and traffic during rush hour is 20 mph on average. They are already planning yet another widening within the next decade, estimates are it will decrease to 10-15 mph by then. Where in the hell do you think all those people are going to and from?

It was the same decision I made when I took the boat to SF instead of my bike. The time was about the same (if I had been a car that would have been a 2+ hour commute), but I could relax on the boat. Even have a drink on the way home if I wanted, as they actually had a bar on it. No trying to find a parking spot that would have cost me $40 a day (it was only $10 as I used a motorcycle), living in a much nicer area than the hellhole that is San Francisco.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I already said, and it is a fact that the Capitol Corridor pre-COVID was about to pass 2 million riders a year. Who in the hell do you think was taking it? People like me, who liked the higher income of jobs in San Francisco, but were unwilling to live there. Want out of the mess of the Bay Area, better be prepared to commute 100 miles or more.

Well congrats on getting out of Mexifornia, unfortunately your time there might have done permanent damage. The problem with what you have said is that there are so many people in California doing what you have described that it almost seems logical, but it is not logical as the state is a pigsty with retards living under every bridge shitting everywhere except in a toilet. You would get a ticket for letting your dog shit on the street but 5 million people do just that and you walked thru it getting home, everyone does. California for all of it's billionaires has overall the highest poverty rate in the USA so it's full of fuckwads with no car that want the government to move them. That ticket still cost 10,000 per trip no matter if the retards in the government tax you for the ride and you think it's free or cheap

Are you completely unable to do any research at all, and just make up everything you say?

$10k? Try maybe $50. The current cost before they cancelled it due to COVID was $28, a monthly pass was under $500. And the system has a 57% farebox ratio, one of the highest returns in the world. There is a reason they wanted to make that line a bullet train, they would have increased fares, and also ridership. The only trains that do even close to that are on the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-DC lines. Which also enjoy a high return for expenses as they use existing lines that have been in use for over a century.

Once again, you are making the mistake of assuming that "Bullet Trains" have to be entirely new systems. The same mistake California made. And also BTW why the idiocy of Hyperloop will fail. It has already failed, it will never exist, because the idea is stupid. Hell, it is not even new, Robert Goddard (yes, the rocket guy) first wrote down this concept way back when he was a college student in 1904.

And this is just one of a slew of scams by Elron. The guy has a great gift of talking about how he will change the world, and in the end he gets a ton of money and delivers almost nothing. Remember that Vegas was to be his first "working prototype"? And what did we get? Well, for over $50 million, we got an underground taxi service, that operates at 35 MPH with tesla cars.

I see the cheerleader posting videos. Whoopie, 100 meter long one way trips, at a slow speed with lights. Well, the Vegas Loop has fancy flashing lights also, that still shows that the hyperloop is a failure and a fraud. Just a failure and fraud with pretty lights.

Like everything he claims. He "stunned the world" with announcing solar shingles a few years ago. They were going to be cheap, and if you give him a deposit you would have them within 2 years. Well, almost 10 years later, still no solar shingles. Although Dow Chemical has been making them for almost 2 decades.

The Tesla Truck, yet another scam. Took deposits almost 6 years ago, saying they would be available in 2 years. We are over 5 years out now, where are the trucks? The Boring Company was going to revolutionize tunnel creation, and claimed to have projects globally. What happened to those?

I am just amazed that people even still believe anything he says. The guy is a con artist, the king of Vaporware. I am surprised that he has not yet claimed he is about to make the next Duke Nukem game.

But do not confuse a bullet train with that nonsense. One is a real and mature technology, the other is the fantasy of a man that is probably laughing as people throw him money. I am now wondering how much longer until he invites all of his devoted believers down to Guyana for Kool-Aid.

Again the cost of the ride includes the track and train, and I am not even sure why you are talking about bullet trains and conventional trains doing 55 mph in the same thread as though you are speed clueless. Sick people like you just expect the government to build everything, the fact is that since only a small fraction of the public uses trains that no public money should be involved. Go back to California and live under a bridge, no one in America needs a bullet train, if they do they should pay 10 dollars per mile for the ride

 

[krichton]

Since you obviously think I am joking...

The Capitol Corridor is a 168-mile (270 km) passenger train route operated by Amtrak between San Jose and Auburn, California. Most trains operate between San Jose and Sacramento, roughly parallel to Interstate 880 and Interstate 80. Some trips run from Oakland to San Jose, while a single daily round trip runs all the way from San Jose to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.

Auburn is actually a town about 40 miles farther East, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

During fiscal year 2017 the Capitol Corridor service carried 1,607,277 passengers, a 2.9% increase over FY2016. Revenue in FY2017 was $33,970,000, a 5.3% increase over FY2016, with a 57% farebox recovery ratio. It is the fourth busiest Amtrak route by ridership, surpassed only by the Northeast Regional, Acela Express, and Pacific Surfliner. In large part due to the route's success, as of 2017, Sacramento is the busiest station on the route, the seventh busiest in the Amtrak system and the second busiest in California.

The Capitol Corridor is used by commuters between the Sacramento area and the Bay Area as an alternative to driving on congested Interstate 80. Monthly passes and discounted trip tickets are available. Many politicians, lobbyists, and aides live in the Bay Area and commute to their jobs in Sacramento, including those connecting to the train via Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach from San Francisco, while workers in the Oakland, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley employment centers take the Capitol Corridor trains from their less expensive homes in Solano County and the Sacramento metropolitan area.

Starting on August 28, 2006 the Capitol Corridor had 16 weekday trains each way between Oakland and Sacramento, up from twelve in 2005 and three in 1992. (Seven of the sixteen ran to/from San Jose.) According to its management, ridership on the Capitol Corridor trains tripled between 1998 and 2005. On August 13, 2012, the Capitol Corridor dropped from 16 to 15 weekday round trips between Oakland and Sacramento; one round trip was discontinued due to high fuel costs, low ridership, and a new ability to store an extra train overnight in a Sacramento railyard.

Capitol Corridor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I worked at a "Dot Com" in SF, and they even offered to pay a percentage of your fare if you used mass transit. When I started I was the only one that took the ferry. But by the time I left, 3 others were taking it (but from Oakland and not Vallejo).

Amtrak is owned and operated by the government as Amtrak went bankrupt, passenger rail is almost dead while freight is doing well

Once again, government mismanagement. That to me was the single biggest case I can think of where it should have long ago been turned over to a company to run.

I actually used to take the train a lot. Several trips in the 1960's and 1970s from LA to San Francisco. In the 1980's it was my normal way to get from Camp Pendleton to where my dad lived in LA. I even took it when I returned from deployment to get from the Naval Air Station at San Diego to where my wife was in LA. But over the decades they have killed more and more lines, removed amenities, and raised prices. It simply makes no sense anymore to take the train for travel, they have destroyed it as a workable system.

I wrote an article about this decades ago for a now gone Internet Magazine, and laid out most of their problems. First was when they destroyed the "Rail Pass" system. Until the 1980's, it was a great system. Buy a pass for 7-30 days, hop on and off the train whenever you wanted. College kids loved it, as did families on a budget. But first they restricted the number of times you could get off, then added in things like fees to change trains and more insanity. They still have it, but why? It is now more expensive than just booking your trip as usual.

In the early 1980's, the train from San Diego to LA (and on to San Francisco and Seattle) and was almost always full. Now, the coast route only goes to San Louis Obispo, and it jumps inland for most of that route. $135 and 36 hours, I can fly nonstop for less than that in 2 hours. Even more insane, I have had to take multiple trips for the military. Sometimes 2 or 3 states away, sometimes across the country. Multiple times I even tried to arrange to take a train, but it was refused as it exceeded the allowable budget for the trip.

OK, now seriously, WTF? The government owns the system, and yet they will not let me take it because it costs to much? That is some serious Orwellian garbage there, they should be pushing their own employees to take the system, we could probably get better and more service from that alone, with all the government employees that fly all over regularly. That alone screams that they do not know what in the hell they are doing.

But the real problem started in the early 1990's when they killed smoking. Already by then, smoking was restricted to the last car in the train only. They could have kept that in place, and likely picked up a lot of travel from smokers. But nope, kill that also. My son used to take the train from LA to visit us in El Paso (and later from LA to Fairfield), and he said he hated that part. Could only have a smoke every 3-4 hours, having to rush off, get it down then back on the train in 15 minutes or less. Then they killed the club car, and finally the dining car. Now, if you want food it is only a snack bar with sandwiches, or things you can heat in a microwave.

And the fares! Good god, it is cheaper to fly across the country in most places than a few hundred miles by train.

Most countries can make their trains at least break even. And even if not, the huge ridership keeps them open. The US Government can do neither one, because they refuse to listen to experts who have been telling them for decades how to get people back on them. Cut the price, make it attractive for people to take the train again. But it is like they are doing everything in their power to kill what is left other than their commuter services.

I'm following this conversation and i find it hilarious that you've spent this long reasoning with a complete idiot. LOL

 

[Mushroom]

Since you obviously think I am joking...

The Capitol Corridor is a 168-mile (270 km) passenger train route operated by Amtrak between San Jose and Auburn, California. Most trains operate between San Jose and Sacramento, roughly parallel to Interstate 880 and Interstate 80. Some trips run from Oakland to San Jose, while a single daily round trip runs all the way from San Jose to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.

Auburn is actually a town about 40 miles farther East, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

During fiscal year 2017 the Capitol Corridor service carried 1,607,277 passengers, a 2.9% increase over FY2016. Revenue in FY2017 was $33,970,000, a 5.3% increase over FY2016, with a 57% farebox recovery ratio. It is the fourth busiest Amtrak route by ridership, surpassed only by the Northeast Regional, Acela Express, and Pacific Surfliner. In large part due to the route's success, as of 2017, Sacramento is the busiest station on the route, the seventh busiest in the Amtrak system and the second busiest in California.

The Capitol Corridor is used by commuters between the Sacramento area and the Bay Area as an alternative to driving on congested Interstate 80. Monthly passes and discounted trip tickets are available. Many politicians, lobbyists, and aides live in the Bay Area and commute to their jobs in Sacramento, including those connecting to the train via Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach from San Francisco, while workers in the Oakland, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley employment centers take the Capitol Corridor trains from their less expensive homes in Solano County and the Sacramento metropolitan area.

Starting on August 28, 2006 the Capitol Corridor had 16 weekday trains each way between Oakland and Sacramento, up from twelve in 2005 and three in 1992. (Seven of the sixteen ran to/from San Jose.) According to its management, ridership on the Capitol Corridor trains tripled between 1998 and 2005. On August 13, 2012, the Capitol Corridor dropped from 16 to 15 weekday round trips between Oakland and Sacramento; one round trip was discontinued due to high fuel costs, low ridership, and a new ability to store an extra train overnight in a Sacramento railyard.

Capitol Corridor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I worked at a "Dot Com" in SF, and they even offered to pay a percentage of your fare if you used mass transit. When I started I was the only one that took the ferry. But by the time I left, 3 others were taking it (but from Oakland and not Vallejo).

Amtrak is owned and operated by the government as Amtrak went bankrupt, passenger rail is almost dead while freight is doing well

Once again, government mismanagement. That to me was the single biggest case I can think of where it should have long ago been turned over to a company to run.

I actually used to take the train a lot. Several trips in the 1960's and 1970s from LA to San Francisco. In the 1980's it was my normal way to get from Camp Pendleton to where my dad lived in LA. I even took it when I returned from deployment to get from the Naval Air Station at San Diego to where my wife was in LA. But over the decades they have killed more and more lines, removed amenities, and raised prices. It simply makes no sense anymore to take the train for travel, they have destroyed it as a workable system.

I wrote an article about this decades ago for a now gone Internet Magazine, and laid out most of their problems. First was when they destroyed the "Rail Pass" system. Until the 1980's, it was a great system. Buy a pass for 7-30 days, hop on and off the train whenever you wanted. College kids loved it, as did families on a budget. But first they restricted the number of times you could get off, then added in things like fees to change trains and more insanity. They still have it, but why? It is now more expensive than just booking your trip as usual.

In the early 1980's, the train from San Diego to LA (and on to San Francisco and Seattle) and was almost always full. Now, the coast route only goes to San Louis Obispo, and it jumps inland for most of that route. $135 and 36 hours, I can fly nonstop for less than that in 2 hours. Even more insane, I have had to take multiple trips for the military. Sometimes 2 or 3 states away, sometimes across the country. Multiple times I even tried to arrange to take a train, but it was refused as it exceeded the allowable budget for the trip.

OK, now seriously, WTF? The government owns the system, and yet they will not let me take it because it costs to much? That is some serious Orwellian garbage there, they should be pushing their own employees to take the system, we could probably get better and more service from that alone, with all the government employees that fly all over regularly. That alone screams that they do not know what in the hell they are doing.

But the real problem started in the early 1990's when they killed smoking. Already by then, smoking was restricted to the last car in the train only. They could have kept that in place, and likely picked up a lot of travel from smokers. But nope, kill that also. My son used to take the train from LA to visit us in El Paso (and later from LA to Fairfield), and he said he hated that part. Could only have a smoke every 3-4 hours, having to rush off, get it down then back on the train in 15 minutes or less. Then they killed the club car, and finally the dining car. Now, if you want food it is only a snack bar with sandwiches, or things you can heat in a microwave.

And the fares! Good god, it is cheaper to fly across the country in most places than a few hundred miles by train.

Most countries can make their trains at least break even. And even if not, the huge ridership keeps them open. The US Government can do neither one, because they refuse to listen to experts who have been telling them for decades how to get people back on them. Cut the price, make it attractive for people to take the train again. But it is like they are doing everything in their power to kill what is left other than their commuter services.

I'm following this conversation and i find it hilarious that you've spent this long reasoning with a complete idiot. LOL

I have given up completely by now.

When he turned offensive and insulting, I lost all interest in even trying anymore. I see it as silly and childish to become offensive and insulting just because 2 people do not agree. And the failure to even understand the speeds of different types of trains told me that they really did not know anything about the subject at all.

And as the comments later became almost conspiracy theory fodder and Libertarian thought infused, I knew it was best to just end it. I learned long ago that there is absolutely no point in every trying to have a serious discussion with a fanatical Losertarian.

 

[22lcidw]

Why the Us has no highspeed rails? is it the distance that the US enjoys that most other countries don't?

At the time that that technology was being rolled out, the US rail system was owned by dozens of companies. Each with their own tracks and corridors, so it was not possible. Also, the high percentage of private auto ownership meant it would never really work for commuting.

Then when it was looked into in the late 1970's and early 1980's, it was primarily as a form of medium distance leisure travel primarily. The most famous proposal of that era was the Jerry Brown proposal to build one from LA to Las Vegas. And ideal test project actually, as every weekend at that time the freeways were clogged with cars going to and from those two cities. But ultimately, turtles cancelled the project.

There have been proposals since to bring it back, especially along the "Capitol Corridor", the commuter line between Sacramento and Baghdad by the Bay. Once again, a great proposal, and a highly traveled commuter line. But instead, the Governor (Brown again) decided to run it in the middle of nowhere, with no plan on how to even get it into San Francisco or Los Angeles. They still do not know how they are going to get it into LA, at this time when finished it will only run from Bakersfield to Merced. Construction started over 6 years ago, and has yet to finish a single segment. It only took 6 years to build a rail line that connected New York with San Francisco. Over 150 years later, California could not even connect Bakersfield to Merced.

The problem in the US is that there are few places such would be really useful. Many areas are already so built up that they could not be used safely. And other areas (specifically California) that could use it have major issues with topography. Which is why this 20+ year old system they are building there now still has no plan how to reach Los Angeles.

There are to many lawyers and to many communities in the way of routes needed. Local trains work but are expensive also and most routes were built a long long time ago when it was much cheaper and less roadblocks obstructing them to be built. Heavy subsidizing is needed as the times have changed. Perhaps the United States splitting up into a few or several nations could jumpstart some areas to do what you believe.

 

[Mushroom]

Why the Us has no highspeed rails? is it the distance that the US enjoys that most other countries don't?

At the time that that technology was being rolled out, the US rail system was owned by dozens of companies. Each with their own tracks and corridors, so it was not possible. Also, the high percentage of private auto ownership meant it would never really work for commuting.

Then when it was looked into in the late 1970's and early 1980's, it was primarily as a form of medium distance leisure travel primarily. The most famous proposal of that era was the Jerry Brown proposal to build one from LA to Las Vegas. And ideal test project actually, as every weekend at that time the freeways were clogged with cars going to and from those two cities. But ultimately, turtles cancelled the project.

There have been proposals since to bring it back, especially along the "Capitol Corridor", the commuter line between Sacramento and Baghdad by the Bay. Once again, a great proposal, and a highly traveled commuter line. But instead, the Governor (Brown again) decided to run it in the middle of nowhere, with no plan on how to even get it into San Francisco or Los Angeles. They still do not know how they are going to get it into LA, at this time when finished it will only run from Bakersfield to Merced. Construction started over 6 years ago, and has yet to finish a single segment. It only took 6 years to build a rail line that connected New York with San Francisco. Over 150 years later, California could not even connect Bakersfield to Merced.

The problem in the US is that there are few places such would be really useful. Many areas are already so built up that they could not be used safely. And other areas (specifically California) that could use it have major issues with topography. Which is why this 20+ year old system they are building there now still has no plan how to reach Los Angeles.

There are to many lawyers and to many communities in the way of routes needed. Local trains work but are expensive also and most routes were built a long long time ago when it was much cheaper and less roadblocks obstructing them to be built. Heavy subsidizing is needed as the times have changed. Perhaps the United States splitting up into a few or several nations could jumpstart some areas to do what you believe.

The only thing that would make it possible would be a population crash. Even the country splitting up would do nothing. Unless one of them became some kind of Totalitarian Marxist state, which would think nothing of evicting tens of thousands from their homes and businesses in order to clear enough land to build such a system.

 

[Dusty]

Since you obviously think I am joking...

The Capitol Corridor is a 168-mile (270 km) passenger train route operated by Amtrak between San Jose and Auburn, California. Most trains operate between San Jose and Sacramento, roughly parallel to Interstate 880 and Interstate 80. Some trips run from Oakland to San Jose, while a single daily round trip runs all the way from San Jose to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.

Auburn is actually a town about 40 miles farther East, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

During fiscal year 2017 the Capitol Corridor service carried 1,607,277 passengers, a 2.9% increase over FY2016. Revenue in FY2017 was $33,970,000, a 5.3% increase over FY2016, with a 57% farebox recovery ratio. It is the fourth busiest Amtrak route by ridership, surpassed only by the Northeast Regional, Acela Express, and Pacific Surfliner. In large part due to the route's success, as of 2017, Sacramento is the busiest station on the route, the seventh busiest in the Amtrak system and the second busiest in California.

The Capitol Corridor is used by commuters between the Sacramento area and the Bay Area as an alternative to driving on congested Interstate 80. Monthly passes and discounted trip tickets are available. Many politicians, lobbyists, and aides live in the Bay Area and commute to their jobs in Sacramento, including those connecting to the train via Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach from San Francisco, while workers in the Oakland, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley employment centers take the Capitol Corridor trains from their less expensive homes in Solano County and the Sacramento metropolitan area.

Starting on August 28, 2006 the Capitol Corridor had 16 weekday trains each way between Oakland and Sacramento, up from twelve in 2005 and three in 1992. (Seven of the sixteen ran to/from San Jose.) According to its management, ridership on the Capitol Corridor trains tripled between 1998 and 2005. On August 13, 2012, the Capitol Corridor dropped from 16 to 15 weekday round trips between Oakland and Sacramento; one round trip was discontinued due to high fuel costs, low ridership, and a new ability to store an extra train overnight in a Sacramento railyard.

Capitol Corridor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I worked at a "Dot Com" in SF, and they even offered to pay a percentage of your fare if you used mass transit. When I started I was the only one that took the ferry. But by the time I left, 3 others were taking it (but from Oakland and not Vallejo).

Amtrak is owned and operated by the government as Amtrak went bankrupt, passenger rail is almost dead while freight is doing well

Once again, government mismanagement. That to me was the single biggest case I can think of where it should have long ago been turned over to a company to run.

I actually used to take the train a lot. Several trips in the 1960's and 1970s from LA to San Francisco. In the 1980's it was my normal way to get from Camp Pendleton to where my dad lived in LA. I even took it when I returned from deployment to get from the Naval Air Station at San Diego to where my wife was in LA. But over the decades they have killed more and more lines, removed amenities, and raised prices. It simply makes no sense anymore to take the train for travel, they have destroyed it as a workable system.

I wrote an article about this decades ago for a now gone Internet Magazine, and laid out most of their problems. First was when they destroyed the "Rail Pass" system. Until the 1980's, it was a great system. Buy a pass for 7-30 days, hop on and off the train whenever you wanted. College kids loved it, as did families on a budget. But first they restricted the number of times you could get off, then added in things like fees to change trains and more insanity. They still have it, but why? It is now more expensive than just booking your trip as usual.

In the early 1980's, the train from San Diego to LA (and on to San Francisco and Seattle) and was almost always full. Now, the coast route only goes to San Louis Obispo, and it jumps inland for most of that route. $135 and 36 hours, I can fly nonstop for less than that in 2 hours. Even more insane, I have had to take multiple trips for the military. Sometimes 2 or 3 states away, sometimes across the country. Multiple times I even tried to arrange to take a train, but it was refused as it exceeded the allowable budget for the trip.

OK, now seriously, WTF? The government owns the system, and yet they will not let me take it because it costs to much? That is some serious Orwellian garbage there, they should be pushing their own employees to take the system, we could probably get better and more service from that alone, with all the government employees that fly all over regularly. That alone screams that they do not know what in the hell they are doing.

But the real problem started in the early 1990's when they killed smoking. Already by then, smoking was restricted to the last car in the train only. They could have kept that in place, and likely picked up a lot of travel from smokers. But nope, kill that also. My son used to take the train from LA to visit us in El Paso (and later from LA to Fairfield), and he said he hated that part. Could only have a smoke every 3-4 hours, having to rush off, get it down then back on the train in 15 minutes or less. Then they killed the club car, and finally the dining car. Now, if you want food it is only a snack bar with sandwiches, or things you can heat in a microwave.

And the fares! Good god, it is cheaper to fly across the country in most places than a few hundred miles by train.

Most countries can make their trains at least break even. And even if not, the huge ridership keeps them open. The US Government can do neither one, because they refuse to listen to experts who have been telling them for decades how to get people back on them. Cut the price, make it attractive for people to take the train again. But it is like they are doing everything in their power to kill what is left other than their commuter services.

I'm following this conversation and i find it hilarious that you've spent this long reasoning with a complete idiot. LOL

So you believe in mythical hyperloops. Where does one buy a ticket?

See, actually the idiot is you

 

[Dusty]

Since you obviously think I am joking...

The Capitol Corridor is a 168-mile (270 km) passenger train route operated by Amtrak between San Jose and Auburn, California. Most trains operate between San Jose and Sacramento, roughly parallel to Interstate 880 and Interstate 80. Some trips run from Oakland to San Jose, while a single daily round trip runs all the way from San Jose to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.

Auburn is actually a town about 40 miles farther East, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

During fiscal year 2017 the Capitol Corridor service carried 1,607,277 passengers, a 2.9% increase over FY2016. Revenue in FY2017 was $33,970,000, a 5.3% increase over FY2016, with a 57% farebox recovery ratio. It is the fourth busiest Amtrak route by ridership, surpassed only by the Northeast Regional, Acela Express, and Pacific Surfliner. In large part due to the route's success, as of 2017, Sacramento is the busiest station on the route, the seventh busiest in the Amtrak system and the second busiest in California.

The Capitol Corridor is used by commuters between the Sacramento area and the Bay Area as an alternative to driving on congested Interstate 80. Monthly passes and discounted trip tickets are available. Many politicians, lobbyists, and aides live in the Bay Area and commute to their jobs in Sacramento, including those connecting to the train via Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach from San Francisco, while workers in the Oakland, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley employment centers take the Capitol Corridor trains from their less expensive homes in Solano County and the Sacramento metropolitan area.

Starting on August 28, 2006 the Capitol Corridor had 16 weekday trains each way between Oakland and Sacramento, up from twelve in 2005 and three in 1992. (Seven of the sixteen ran to/from San Jose.) According to its management, ridership on the Capitol Corridor trains tripled between 1998 and 2005. On August 13, 2012, the Capitol Corridor dropped from 16 to 15 weekday round trips between Oakland and Sacramento; one round trip was discontinued due to high fuel costs, low ridership, and a new ability to store an extra train overnight in a Sacramento railyard.

Capitol Corridor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I worked at a "Dot Com" in SF, and they even offered to pay a percentage of your fare if you used mass transit. When I started I was the only one that took the ferry. But by the time I left, 3 others were taking it (but from Oakland and not Vallejo).

Amtrak is owned and operated by the government as Amtrak went bankrupt, passenger rail is almost dead while freight is doing well

Once again, government mismanagement. That to me was the single biggest case I can think of where it should have long ago been turned over to a company to run.

I actually used to take the train a lot. Several trips in the 1960's and 1970s from LA to San Francisco. In the 1980's it was my normal way to get from Camp Pendleton to where my dad lived in LA. I even took it when I returned from deployment to get from the Naval Air Station at San Diego to where my wife was in LA. But over the decades they have killed more and more lines, removed amenities, and raised prices. It simply makes no sense anymore to take the train for travel, they have destroyed it as a workable system.

I wrote an article about this decades ago for a now gone Internet Magazine, and laid out most of their problems. First was when they destroyed the "Rail Pass" system. Until the 1980's, it was a great system. Buy a pass for 7-30 days, hop on and off the train whenever you wanted. College kids loved it, as did families on a budget. But first they restricted the number of times you could get off, then added in things like fees to change trains and more insanity. They still have it, but why? It is now more expensive than just booking your trip as usual.

In the early 1980's, the train from San Diego to LA (and on to San Francisco and Seattle) and was almost always full. Now, the coast route only goes to San Louis Obispo, and it jumps inland for most of that route. $135 and 36 hours, I can fly nonstop for less than that in 2 hours. Even more insane, I have had to take multiple trips for the military. Sometimes 2 or 3 states away, sometimes across the country. Multiple times I even tried to arrange to take a train, but it was refused as it exceeded the allowable budget for the trip.

OK, now seriously, WTF? The government owns the system, and yet they will not let me take it because it costs to much? That is some serious Orwellian garbage there, they should be pushing their own employees to take the system, we could probably get better and more service from that alone, with all the government employees that fly all over regularly. That alone screams that they do not know what in the hell they are doing.

But the real problem started in the early 1990's when they killed smoking. Already by then, smoking was restricted to the last car in the train only. They could have kept that in place, and likely picked up a lot of travel from smokers. But nope, kill that also. My son used to take the train from LA to visit us in El Paso (and later from LA to Fairfield), and he said he hated that part. Could only have a smoke every 3-4 hours, having to rush off, get it down then back on the train in 15 minutes or less. Then they killed the club car, and finally the dining car. Now, if you want food it is only a snack bar with sandwiches, or things you can heat in a microwave.

And the fares! Good god, it is cheaper to fly across the country in most places than a few hundred miles by train.

Most countries can make their trains at least break even. And even if not, the huge ridership keeps them open. The US Government can do neither one, because they refuse to listen to experts who have been telling them for decades how to get people back on them. Cut the price, make it attractive for people to take the train again. But it is like they are doing everything in their power to kill what is left other than their commuter services.

I'm following this conversation and i find it hilarious that you've spent this long reasoning with a complete idiot. LOL

I have given up completely by now.

When he turned offensive and insulting, I lost all interest in even trying anymore. I see it as silly and childish to become offensive and insulting just because 2 people do not agree. And the failure to even understand the speeds of different types of trains told me that they really did not know anything about the subject at all.

And as the comments later became almost conspiracy theory fodder and Libertarian thought infused, I knew it was best to just end it. I learned long ago that there is absolutely no point in every trying to have a serious discussion with a fanatical Losertarian.

Tell us more about your hyperloop rides, then take your pills

 

[Dusty]

Why the Us has no highspeed rails? is it the distance that the US enjoys that most other countries don't?

At the time that that technology was being rolled out, the US rail system was owned by dozens of companies. Each with their own tracks and corridors, so it was not possible. Also, the high percentage of private auto ownership meant it would never really work for commuting.

Then when it was looked into in the late 1970's and early 1980's, it was primarily as a form of medium distance leisure travel primarily. The most famous proposal of that era was the Jerry Brown proposal to build one from LA to Las Vegas. And ideal test project actually, as every weekend at that time the freeways were clogged with cars going to and from those two cities. But ultimately, turtles cancelled the project.

There have been proposals since to bring it back, especially along the "Capitol Corridor", the commuter line between Sacramento and Baghdad by the Bay. Once again, a great proposal, and a highly traveled commuter line. But instead, the Governor (Brown again) decided to run it in the middle of nowhere, with no plan on how to even get it into San Francisco or Los Angeles. They still do not know how they are going to get it into LA, at this time when finished it will only run from Bakersfield to Merced. Construction started over 6 years ago, and has yet to finish a single segment. It only took 6 years to build a rail line that connected New York with San Francisco. Over 150 years later, California could not even connect Bakersfield to Merced.

The problem in the US is that there are few places such would be really useful. Many areas are already so built up that they could not be used safely. And other areas (specifically California) that could use it have major issues with topography. Which is why this 20+ year old system they are building there now still has no plan how to reach Los Angeles.

There are to many lawyers and to many communities in the way of routes needed. Local trains work but are expensive also and most routes were built a long long time ago when it was much cheaper and less roadblocks obstructing them to be built. Heavy subsidizing is needed as the times have changed. Perhaps the United States splitting up into a few or several nations could jumpstart some areas to do what you believe.

The only thing that would make it possible would be a population crash. Even the country splitting up would do nothing. Unless one of them became some kind of Totalitarian Marxist state, which would think nothing of evicting tens of thousands from their homes and businesses in order to clear enough land to build such a system.

Yup that would make hyperloops possible for sure.

K0OoocKo0

 

[Mushroom]

Since you obviously think I am joking...

The Capitol Corridor is a 168-mile (270 km) passenger train route operated by Amtrak between San Jose and Auburn, California. Most trains operate between San Jose and Sacramento, roughly parallel to Interstate 880 and Interstate 80. Some trips run from Oakland to San Jose, while a single daily round trip runs all the way from San Jose to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.

Auburn is actually a town about 40 miles farther East, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

During fiscal year 2017 the Capitol Corridor service carried 1,607,277 passengers, a 2.9% increase over FY2016. Revenue in FY2017 was $33,970,000, a 5.3% increase over FY2016, with a 57% farebox recovery ratio. It is the fourth busiest Amtrak route by ridership, surpassed only by the Northeast Regional, Acela Express, and Pacific Surfliner. In large part due to the route's success, as of 2017, Sacramento is the busiest station on the route, the seventh busiest in the Amtrak system and the second busiest in California.

The Capitol Corridor is used by commuters between the Sacramento area and the Bay Area as an alternative to driving on congested Interstate 80. Monthly passes and discounted trip tickets are available. Many politicians, lobbyists, and aides live in the Bay Area and commute to their jobs in Sacramento, including those connecting to the train via Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach from San Francisco, while workers in the Oakland, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley employment centers take the Capitol Corridor trains from their less expensive homes in Solano County and the Sacramento metropolitan area.

Starting on August 28, 2006 the Capitol Corridor had 16 weekday trains each way between Oakland and Sacramento, up from twelve in 2005 and three in 1992. (Seven of the sixteen ran to/from San Jose.) According to its management, ridership on the Capitol Corridor trains tripled between 1998 and 2005. On August 13, 2012, the Capitol Corridor dropped from 16 to 15 weekday round trips between Oakland and Sacramento; one round trip was discontinued due to high fuel costs, low ridership, and a new ability to store an extra train overnight in a Sacramento railyard.

Capitol Corridor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I worked at a "Dot Com" in SF, and they even offered to pay a percentage of your fare if you used mass transit. When I started I was the only one that took the ferry. But by the time I left, 3 others were taking it (but from Oakland and not Vallejo).

Amtrak is owned and operated by the government as Amtrak went bankrupt, passenger rail is almost dead while freight is doing well

Once again, government mismanagement. That to me was the single biggest case I can think of where it should have long ago been turned over to a company to run.

I actually used to take the train a lot. Several trips in the 1960's and 1970s from LA to San Francisco. In the 1980's it was my normal way to get from Camp Pendleton to where my dad lived in LA. I even took it when I returned from deployment to get from the Naval Air Station at San Diego to where my wife was in LA. But over the decades they have killed more and more lines, removed amenities, and raised prices. It simply makes no sense anymore to take the train for travel, they have destroyed it as a workable system.

I wrote an article about this decades ago for a now gone Internet Magazine, and laid out most of their problems. First was when they destroyed the "Rail Pass" system. Until the 1980's, it was a great system. Buy a pass for 7-30 days, hop on and off the train whenever you wanted. College kids loved it, as did families on a budget. But first they restricted the number of times you could get off, then added in things like fees to change trains and more insanity. They still have it, but why? It is now more expensive than just booking your trip as usual.

In the early 1980's, the train from San Diego to LA (and on to San Francisco and Seattle) and was almost always full. Now, the coast route only goes to San Louis Obispo, and it jumps inland for most of that route. $135 and 36 hours, I can fly nonstop for less than that in 2 hours. Even more insane, I have had to take multiple trips for the military. Sometimes 2 or 3 states away, sometimes across the country. Multiple times I even tried to arrange to take a train, but it was refused as it exceeded the allowable budget for the trip.

OK, now seriously, WTF? The government owns the system, and yet they will not let me take it because it costs to much? That is some serious Orwellian garbage there, they should be pushing their own employees to take the system, we could probably get better and more service from that alone, with all the government employees that fly all over regularly. That alone screams that they do not know what in the hell they are doing.

But the real problem started in the early 1990's when they killed smoking. Already by then, smoking was restricted to the last car in the train only. They could have kept that in place, and likely picked up a lot of travel from smokers. But nope, kill that also. My son used to take the train from LA to visit us in El Paso (and later from LA to Fairfield), and he said he hated that part. Could only have a smoke every 3-4 hours, having to rush off, get it down then back on the train in 15 minutes or less. Then they killed the club car, and finally the dining car. Now, if you want food it is only a snack bar with sandwiches, or things you can heat in a microwave.

And the fares! Good god, it is cheaper to fly across the country in most places than a few hundred miles by train.

Most countries can make their trains at least break even. And even if not, the huge ridership keeps them open. The US Government can do neither one, because they refuse to listen to experts who have been telling them for decades how to get people back on them. Cut the price, make it attractive for people to take the train again. But it is like they are doing everything in their power to kill what is left other than their commuter services.

I'm following this conversation and i find it hilarious that you've spent this long reasoning with a complete idiot. LOL

I have given up completely by now.

When he turned offensive and insulting, I lost all interest in even trying anymore. I see it as silly and childish to become offensive and insulting just because 2 people do not agree. And the failure to even understand the speeds of different types of trains told me that they really did not know anything about the subject at all.

And as the comments later became almost conspiracy theory fodder and Libertarian thought infused, I knew it was best to just end it. I learned long ago that there is absolutely no point in every trying to have a serious discussion with a fanatical Losertarian.

Tell us more about your hyperloop rides, then take your pills

Once again, why I think you have some serious issues.

How many times do I have to say that the Hyperloop is entirely a scam, not possible, and will never happen?

You on the other hand can not tell the difference between a Bullet Train (real), and a hyperloop (fantasy).

 

[Dusty]

Since you obviously think I am joking...

The Capitol Corridor is a 168-mile (270 km) passenger train route operated by Amtrak between San Jose and Auburn, California. Most trains operate between San Jose and Sacramento, roughly parallel to Interstate 880 and Interstate 80. Some trips run from Oakland to San Jose, while a single daily round trip runs all the way from San Jose to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Capitol Corridor trains started in 1991.

Auburn is actually a town about 40 miles farther East, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

During fiscal year 2017 the Capitol Corridor service carried 1,607,277 passengers, a 2.9% increase over FY2016. Revenue in FY2017 was $33,970,000, a 5.3% increase over FY2016, with a 57% farebox recovery ratio. It is the fourth busiest Amtrak route by ridership, surpassed only by the Northeast Regional, Acela Express, and Pacific Surfliner. In large part due to the route's success, as of 2017, Sacramento is the busiest station on the route, the seventh busiest in the Amtrak system and the second busiest in California.

The Capitol Corridor is used by commuters between the Sacramento area and the Bay Area as an alternative to driving on congested Interstate 80. Monthly passes and discounted trip tickets are available. Many politicians, lobbyists, and aides live in the Bay Area and commute to their jobs in Sacramento, including those connecting to the train via Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach from San Francisco, while workers in the Oakland, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley employment centers take the Capitol Corridor trains from their less expensive homes in Solano County and the Sacramento metropolitan area.

Starting on August 28, 2006 the Capitol Corridor had 16 weekday trains each way between Oakland and Sacramento, up from twelve in 2005 and three in 1992. (Seven of the sixteen ran to/from San Jose.) According to its management, ridership on the Capitol Corridor trains tripled between 1998 and 2005. On August 13, 2012, the Capitol Corridor dropped from 16 to 15 weekday round trips between Oakland and Sacramento; one round trip was discontinued due to high fuel costs, low ridership, and a new ability to store an extra train overnight in a Sacramento railyard.

Capitol Corridor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I worked at a "Dot Com" in SF, and they even offered to pay a percentage of your fare if you used mass transit. When I started I was the only one that took the ferry. But by the time I left, 3 others were taking it (but from Oakland and not Vallejo).

Amtrak is owned and operated by the government as Amtrak went bankrupt, passenger rail is almost dead while freight is doing well

Once again, government mismanagement. That to me was the single biggest case I can think of where it should have long ago been turned over to a company to run.

I actually used to take the train a lot. Several trips in the 1960's and 1970s from LA to San Francisco. In the 1980's it was my normal way to get from Camp Pendleton to where my dad lived in LA. I even took it when I returned from deployment to get from the Naval Air Station at San Diego to where my wife was in LA. But over the decades they have killed more and more lines, removed amenities, and raised prices. It simply makes no sense anymore to take the train for travel, they have destroyed it as a workable system.

I wrote an article about this decades ago for a now gone Internet Magazine, and laid out most of their problems. First was when they destroyed the "Rail Pass" system. Until the 1980's, it was a great system. Buy a pass for 7-30 days, hop on and off the train whenever you wanted. College kids loved it, as did families on a budget. But first they restricted the number of times you could get off, then added in things like fees to change trains and more insanity. They still have it, but why? It is now more expensive than just booking your trip as usual.

In the early 1980's, the train from San Diego to LA (and on to San Francisco and Seattle) and was almost always full. Now, the coast route only goes to San Louis Obispo, and it jumps inland for most of that route. $135 and 36 hours, I can fly nonstop for less than that in 2 hours. Even more insane, I have had to take multiple trips for the military. Sometimes 2 or 3 states away, sometimes across the country. Multiple times I even tried to arrange to take a train, but it was refused as it exceeded the allowable budget for the trip.

OK, now seriously, WTF? The government owns the system, and yet they will not let me take it because it costs to much? That is some serious Orwellian garbage there, they should be pushing their own employees to take the system, we could probably get better and more service from that alone, with all the government employees that fly all over regularly. That alone screams that they do not know what in the hell they are doing.

But the real problem started in the early 1990's when they killed smoking. Already by then, smoking was restricted to the last car in the train only. They could have kept that in place, and likely picked up a lot of travel from smokers. But nope, kill that also. My son used to take the train from LA to visit us in El Paso (and later from LA to Fairfield), and he said he hated that part. Could only have a smoke every 3-4 hours, having to rush off, get it down then back on the train in 15 minutes or less. Then they killed the club car, and finally the dining car. Now, if you want food it is only a snack bar with sandwiches, or things you can heat in a microwave.

And the fares! Good god, it is cheaper to fly across the country in most places than a few hundred miles by train.

Most countries can make their trains at least break even. And even if not, the huge ridership keeps them open. The US Government can do neither one, because they refuse to listen to experts who have been telling them for decades how to get people back on them. Cut the price, make it attractive for people to take the train again. But it is like they are doing everything in their power to kill what is left other than their commuter services.

I'm following this conversation and i find it hilarious that you've spent this long reasoning with a complete idiot. LOL

I have given up completely by now.

When he turned offensive and insulting, I lost all interest in even trying anymore. I see it as silly and childish to become offensive and insulting just because 2 people do not agree. And the failure to even understand the speeds of different types of trains told me that they really did not know anything about the subject at all.

And as the comments later became almost conspiracy theory fodder and Libertarian thought infused, I knew it was best to just end it. I learned long ago that there is absolutely no point in every trying to have a serious discussion with a fanatical Losertarian.

Tell us more about your hyperloop rides, then take your pills

Once again, why I think you have some serious issues.

How many times do I have to say that the Hyperloop is entirely a scam, not possible, and will never happen?

You on the other hand can not tell the difference between a Bullet Train (real), and a hyperloop (fantasy).

The hyperloop and all forms of bullet trains are illogical unless they are going very long distance like jets fly. Bullet trains are illogical because to make this a reality you would need to build thousands of independent tracks costing 100 trillion dollars just so a few people could use the trains. This is why there are no bullet trains and never will be. But you keep describing how great your fantasy train is