Intercity passenger rail is expensive. It's estimated that Amtrak would
save the taxpayers money, (and in fact on some runs actually make a
profit), if every time someone bought a train ticket they simply issued
them a plane ticket to the same destination. Australia is a mostly low
population density place, much like most of the US so I expect the same
economics would apply.
Brian Walters wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2009 15:24 -0400, "John Sessoms" <[email protected]>
wrote:
From: Scott Loveless
On 5/23/09, Bob W <[email protected]> wrote:
I like railways travel. It's very civilised - by far the most enjoyable way
of travelling long distances.
Obviously, you have never experienced Amtrak - the airline of the railways.
It's not that bad everywhere Amtrak runs ...
Still, it doesn't make sense that every other country in the world seems
to be able to figure out how to get passenger trains to go where they're
needed, pretty much when they're needed, in a fairly efficient
expeditious, affordable manner, but we can't do it in the U.S.
We struggle here as well. Our State Governmments seem more intent on
closing intercity passenger services than on promoting them. Or they
make the timetable so inconvenient and so infrequent that few people
bother. Tasmania has even managed to totally remove *all* of it's
passenger services.
There are 3 or 4 memorable long distance services in Australia but
that's about it.
Cheers
Brian
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Brian Walters
Western Sydney Australia
http://members.westnet.com.au/brianwal/SL/
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