Word: amtraks
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...Acela Express zooms along the New England coastline at up to 150 m.p.h., bare trees and backyards flying by, it's hard to believe that the nation's first high-speed train is really the work of Amtrak. Where is the sluggish, lurching ride we've come to count on--and curse--from the nation's famously floundering passenger-rail operator...
...over in about three and a quarter, thanks to a new "tilting" technology that helps the Acela negotiate curves. More than a year behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget, the Acela, which is expected to launch in the Washington-Boston Northeast corridor on Dec. 11, is Amtrak's last chance to prove that intercity passenger rail can be a legitimate travel alternative in the U.S., as it is in Europe and Japan. "It's a stake in the ground," says CEO George Warrington, who envisions Acela as the first of a necklace of high-speed rail corridors (such...
Given the company's 30 years of spotty service, many observers think Amtrak's termination wouldn't be such a bad thing that only by opening up train service to the free market will high-speed rail have a real shot at success. Since it was cobbled together from the ruins of the freight railroads' dying passenger business in 1971, Amtrak has chugged through $23 billion in federal funds and been plagued by an entrenched bureaucracy, pork-barrel politics, high labor costs and stagnant ridership--all the things, in short, you might expect from a state-run monopoly...
...that the $800 million Acela has finally arrived--after a series of engineering snafus, fights with Canadian manufacturer Bombardier and a premature ad campaign--Amtrak is confident that it can steal a large chunk of the airlines' shuttle business, adding close to 2 million passengers and $200 million annually to the bottom line. It needs the money. Even with a record 22.5 million customers, Amtrak lost $520 million last year...
...them. For starters, his antics have made Lebed something of a hero in his hometown of Cedar Grove. "I'm proud of my son," quickly proclaimed his father Gregory Lebed, a railroad worker for Amtrak who drove up to his house last week in a forest-green Mercedes suv. Proud? Support you can understand. But mass fraud seems a strange accomplishment to crow about...