Word: rails
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reading your story on Amtrak's new Acela train [BUSINESS, Dec. 4], I sadly noted continued ignorance about why America lags behind the rest of the world in developing high-speed trains. The explanation lies in Washington's lack of a balanced transportation policy. Europe and Japan place intercity rail on an even playing field with other transportation modes for federal assistance. Washington, however, treats Amtrak like a bastard child that receives billions in "subsidies" while aviation and highways receive blessed federal "investment." Amtrak needs the same financial commitment enjoyed by the airlines and highways. DONALD SHAW Bloomfield, Conn...
...involving performance of a classic play, and the minor characters and chorus ensure that the audience does not daydream. Best is Thomas Derrah as the Sentry, the farcical messenger who comes to Creon bearing bad news. He evokes a bratty 12-year-old impersonating a defensive but cynical rail worker who has caused a six car train wreck...
...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...
...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 as Los Angeles-San Francisco and Chicago-Milwaukee...
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...