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    Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service
    Unavailable
    Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service
    Unavailable
    Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service
    Ebook439 pages19 hours

    Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service

    By James McCommons

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    During the tumultuous year of 2008--when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records, and a commuter train collided with a freight train in California--journalist James McCommons spent a year on America's trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails throughout much of the Amtrak system. Organized around these rail journeys, Waiting on a Train is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism.

    Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible?

    Distrust of railroads in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads.

    While riding the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in America--and what role government should play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nation's stimulus program, he explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized in America.



    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChelsea Green Publishing
    Release dateNov 6, 2009
    ISBN9781603582599
    Unavailable
    Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service

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    Reviews for Waiting on a Train

    4/5

    32 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A really interesting look at the past, present and future of Amtrak through the lens of the long distance trains. McCommons is a university professor and some chapters come through as feeling like a published paper, but overall it was super readable. Especially as I began reading it on a Lake Shore Limited between Albany and NYC. While not a foamer myself, long distance train travel fascinates me and I enjoyed this look at the history of some - especially why the Empire Builder has that name. While the cost of gas isn't the issue that it was in 2009, there remain many reasons to take trains. Seeing the country is one amazing one - getting there quickly isn't always.
    • 4/5
      This book really lays out the entire passenger rail system in the US, how it came to be, what's wrong with it, who the passenger rail advocates are and what is possible if we all pull together. I read this book and wanted to ride the trains and plan to do so this year.
    • 4/5
      I thought I knew what there was to know on the (inadequate) state of railroad funding in this country. McCommon's book educated me otherwise.
    • 2/5
      I really tried to finish this as I love trains but his style was just too dry
    • 3/5
      Exhaustive. Fascinating and boring in roughly equal measures. I'm a huge Amtrak enthusiast, though not a "foamer" (slang for the truly devoted), and this book was quite informative. I learned much about the way the US passenger rail system works, but I came away convinced that I'd have been just as happy reading 3, maybe 4, magazine articles on the subject instead.
    • 4/5
      First of all McCommons should get some sort of medal for riding on almost all of Amtrak's distance or intercity trains. Despite his obvious fondness for train travel, McCommons experiences and obversations tell us what many of us who have patronized Amtrak know - that U.S. passenger train service leaves much to be desired. McCommons supplements his observations with interviews with a variety of train experts. The overriding theme is that Amtrak is starved for capital investment, and is left at the mercy of big freight railroads (who own most of the track) and politicians. The book was written at the dawn of the Obama Administration, so there was hope that capital appropriations in the form of fiscal stimulus, would begin to turn things around for Amtrak. There was some optimism generated by state investments and partnerships with Amtrak, which have created successful passenger service in the Pacific Northwest, California, the Northeast Corridor, among other areas. The book is a must read for anyone interested in U.S. passenger railroad policy. Given the cast changes in the works in 2008 (when the book was written), it would be most interesting to see what a sequel might reveal in terms of the improvements that were forecasted.